Words of Hope Daily Devotional
START EVERY DAY WITH HOPE
Get the Words of Hope Devotional and get daily encouragement to love God, read his Word, and meet with him in prayer. Available in print and email.
START EVERY DAY WITH HOPE
Get the Words of Hope Devotional and get daily encouragement to love God, read His Word, and meet with Him in prayer. Available in print and email.
The Sermon Mount
Read: Matthew 5:1-12
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain. (v. 1)
Who is Jesus? That is the most important question any of us could ask. Who is this man who sits down on the slopes of a mountain and delivers the greatest sermon even given? We find some clues on the mountain in the story itself.
The mountain. As we’ve seen in Scripture, mountains represent a thin place between heaven and earth where God comes to meet his children. And Jesus seems to knowingly play into this theme. First, by meeting the crowds at the top of the mountain, he’s identifying himself as God, the great “I Am” (Exod. 3:14) who descended from the mountains in the Old Testament. But, second, he’s also addressing the heart cry of the psalmist: “Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?” (Ps. 24:3) by answering: himself! Jesus “went up on the mountain” (Matt. 5:1) to show us the way back to the Father.
And then Jesus opens his mouth and begins to dismantle the faulty interpretations that had built up around the law by revealing the true wisdom contained within it. Like Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus builds a community on a mountaintop—a new community in which God’s presence comes first to the “poor in spirit” (v. 3) and “those who mourn” (v. 4) and those who suffer persecution (v. 11), rather than the wealthy and powerful. So who is Jesus? He is the voice that spoke with Moses on the mountain (Exodus 19) and the one who descends to meet us, then draws us up the mountain with him. —Justin Kuiper
As you pray, thank God for meeting you in the person of Christ.
Justin Kuiper is a student from Holland, MI, studying English literature at Hope College. His own writing explores the many intersections of faith, storytelling, and the created order. Justin is a life-long soccer fan and plays on the Hope College soccer team.
