Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount

Welcome to Year on the Mountaintop, a transformative 52-week journey through the Sermon on the Mount—the most influential, challenging, and misunderstood teaching of Jesus. In this foundational episode, Dr. Josh Olds introduces the radical kingdom ethic at the heart of Jesus’ message and shows why the Sermon remains essential for discipleship today. Drawing on Scripture, theologians like Augustine, Chambers, and N.T. Wright, and the narrative structure of Matthew’s Gospel, Josh explains how the Sermon on the Mount reshapes our understanding of faith, justice, obedience, and spiritual formation. This introduction establishes the Sermon as the central teaching of Jesus, the constitution of God’s upside-down kingdom, and the call for every believer to live a Spirit-empowered, counter-cultural life that reflects the character of God.

This episode lays the groundwork for understanding the Sermon not as inspirational ideals but as a practical, embodied way of life. Josh explores how Jesus teaches, practices, and commissions His followers into a mission defined by reconciliation, mercy, nonviolence, and radical love—an ethic that has shaped Christian identity for centuries. By tracing Matthew 4–10, Josh shows how the Sermon fits into Jesus’ preaching, teaching, and healing ministry, and how the disciples themselves were sent to continue that same kingdom work. This introduction centers the Sermon on the Mount as the core of Christian ethics, discipleship, and spiritual transformation.

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