Analysis Of The Sermon On The Mount

The Sermon on the Mount: The Greatest Speech of All Time?

Doctor Hans Dieter Betz, professor and renowned religious scholar at the University of Chicago Divinity School once said about the Sermon on the Mount: “The influences exerted by the Sermon on the Mount generally far transcend the borderlines of Judaism and Christianity, or western culture.” He also remarked that this sermon has “a peculiarly universalistic appeal.”- [Betz, H. D., & Collins, A. Y. (1995). The Sermon on the Mount: A commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3-7:27 and Luke 6:20-49). pp. 3, Minneapolis: Fortress Press.]

James T. Fisher, a psychiatrist also noted: “If you were to take the sum total of all the authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene-if you were to combine them, refine them, and cleave out the excess verbage-if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expresses by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison.” – (Fisher, J. T., & Hawley, L. S. (1951). A few buttons missing: The case book of a psychiatrist. pp. 273 Philadelphia: Lippincott.)

Thus is the viewpoint of a renowned religious scholar and psychiatrist about the quality of speech and rhetoric conveyed in the Sermon on the Mount. Even over 2000 years after this speech was given, this sermon continues to touch and influence the lives of millions and about a billion people all over the world at least know it in part. What was the set...

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... care for our listeners. Research about the audience can help us to be able to discern what influences their hearts. Like Jesus in his speech, we can help our audience analyze and refine their motives so that they can act and make changes if needed (Matthew 5: 21-24, 27-32).

There is no doubt that the Sermon on the Mount has impacted the lives of billions of people over the past 2000 years. The surprising thing is, the counsel given in that sermon is as relevant today as it was back then. Isn’t it true that even advice from the best of today’s counselors often soon become outdated, revised, and replaced? Compare peoples’ common viewpoint about Dr. Benjamin Spock advice on parenting children back than and what it is now, for example. Unlike so many of todays’ counselors, Jesus’ sermon has withstood the test of time and is just as memorable now as it was back then.