The Biggest Story Holy Bible
50% Off Picture Books
Breaking Down Jesus’s Sermon on the Plain
The Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:17–49)
J. R. R. Tolkien loved to create stories about places he called “perilous,” places where we come into contact with a kind of power that, if rightly respected, leads us to unexpected joy and, if taken too lightly, leads to overwhelming misery. The “level place” where Jesus delivered his famous Sermon on the Plain is such a place. As Jesus says, “everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). If we will trust Jesus to reshape our hearts to reflect all that he is and all that he offers, we are on a path that leads to perfect and permanent happiness: “Blessed are you . . . .” If we choose any other path, it will lead to misery and ruin: “But woe to you . . . .”
One peril we encounter as we hear this sermon is the danger of dismissing it as second best. After all, Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is three times as long and is more widely known. Details of the Gospel texts allow for two possibilities: Matthew and Luke may recount two distinct moments in Jesus’s teaching ministry, or they may give accounts of the same event. Either way, a fully trained disciple will give full attention to all of Jesus’s teaching. When we hear the Sermon on the Plain on its own terms, key themes for the training of our hearts emerge.
Luke
C. D. "Jimmy" Agan III
This 12-week study walks readers through the Gospel of Luke, showing how the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are just as relevant and important today as they were two thousand years ago.
First, we notice that what happens in this perilous place is more than a sermon. Somewhere near Capernaum (Luke 7:1; Luke 5:17), Jesus had spent a night praying in the hills surrounding the Sea of Galilee (Luke 6:12; Luke 5:1). As day broke, he called a group of disciples and chose twelve of them as apostles. He then comes down to stand on “a level place” (Luke 6:17)—the detail that gives rise to the title, Sermon on the Plain, referring either to flat ground at the foot of a steep hill or to a level terrace on a hillside. Here Jesus is joined by another “great crowd” of his disciples and by a “great multitude” of others who have come to hear him and to be healed. While power is going out of Jesus to heal many in the crowd, he lifts up his eyes “on his disciples” and begins to speak. What happens on the Plain is therefore an encounter with Jesus’s powerful deeds, which can restore the body, and his powerful words, which reshape the heart. Luke wants us to see Jesus as a Teacher who both says and does. A fully formed disciple will therefore never speak empty words. We will not only call him “Lord” but will also put into practice everything Jesus says (Luke 6:46–47). Hearing is perilous, because it confronts us with a choice: are we attracted to Jesus’s power, willing to hear what he says? Or will deeper commitment make us willing to hear and obey? Whether we are among the disciples to whom Jesus speaks most directly or among the crowds in whose “hearing” as he speaks (Luke 7:1), we must choose.
Second, the setting of this sermon in Jesus’s unfolding ministry speaks to another kind of peril: being trained as disciples of Jesus will expose us to controversy, conflict, and criticism. In Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount begins before we read of any opposition to Jesus’s public ministry. By contrast, Luke lets us see that in addition to early successes, Jesus faces opposition, whether murderous rage (Luke 4:28–29), suspicion of blasphemy (Luke 5:21), objection to his association with “tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 5:30), or criticism of his lax practices regarding fasting and sabbath rest ( Luke5:33; Luke 6:2). The Pharisees and scribes, looking for reasons “to accuse him,” are “filled with fury” when they find one (Luke 6:7, 11). Against this backdrop, the Sermon on the Plain issues a challenge. It warns us that being a religious person who is committed to knowing the Scriptures and serious about applying them to life is not enough. Many teachers matching that description also reject Jesus. They are blind guides (Luke 6:39). Only Jesus’s approach to understanding and applying the Scriptures will lead to joy in the end. But with this challenge comes a promise: Jesus offers grace to sustain us when following him is costly. If we are hated now because of our commitment to him, we are on the path to a future of infinite joy (Luke 6:22–23). When floodwaters rise against us, he is strong enough to keep us safe (Luke 6:48). Being near to Jesus is a perilous place, multiplying both hardship and grace.
Being near to Jesus is a perilous place, multiplying both hardship and grace.
Finally, as the two previous themes have hinted, the Sermon on the Plain has a relentlessly Christological, or Jesus-centered, focus. While this could be said of all of Jesus’s teaching (in fact, of every part of Scripture!), this sermon sharpens the focus in a very specific way. Verses 39–40 (whose near equivalents in Matthew are found outside the Sermon on the Mount) stress two facts: negatively, a disciple cannot rise above the limitations of the teacher; positively, a fully formed disciple will “be like his teacher.” We could take this to mean that Jesus is only a great teacher and a good role model. But neither Jesus nor Luke leaves us this option. Luke invites us to marvel at the unique authority of Jesus’s teaching (Luke 4:32, “his word possessed authority”). As the miracle following the sermon shows us, when we embrace this authority, we aren’t simply obeying commands but putting faith in the Lord who speaks them (Luke 7:7-10). Jesus underscores the point as he opens the sermon. He speaks words of blessing and woe as the Son of Man, declaring who will and won’t enter the kingdom of God (Luke 6:20–26). Jesus goes on to answer the question raised by controversies with scribes and Pharisees: Whose approach to Scripture is best? “But I say to you . . . Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27) is Jesus’s way of saying that his approach to knowing God through the word is best, for two reasons. First, Jesus is not only a student of the word but its definitive interpreter (Luke 6:5, “Lord of the Sabbath”), its fulfillment (Luke 24:44, “everything written about me”), and even the source of revelation (“I say”). Second, divine perfection lets Jesus lead us to places no other teacher could safely go. He can call us to love our enemies because his love is always perfect, as the cross will supremely show. He can tell us that the Father’s infinite mercy and generous forgiveness set the standard for our lives because he himself embodies these things (Luke 6:36-38). Jesus’s life shows not a hint of hypocrisy (Luke 6:42) and it produces no bad fruit, because the “treasure of his heart” is completely good (Luke 6:43–45).
All of this magnifies a subtle signal Luke sends as he introduces the Sermon on the Plain, using an emphatic pronoun to stress the fact that it is Jesus who speaks: “And he himself. . . began saying . . . ” (Luke 6:20). What is most significant about this sermon is not its content, says Luke, but its preacher. This is what makes the “level place” so perilous. How could we overestimate the joy of trusting—or the misery of refusing—the One who offers to train us in the ways of perfect spiritual integrity, divine mercy toward those who least deserve it, and everlasting blessing for any who will receive it as a gift?
C. D. “Jimmy” Agan III is the author of Luke: A 12-Week Study.
Related Articles
Why Did Jesus Tell People Not to Bury Their Father or Say Goodbye to Their Family? (Luke 9)
Disciples have a more important calling and responsibility: heralding the good news of the kingdom.
Did Jesus Teach That Our Prayers Are Bothersome to God? (Luke 18)
In Luke 18 Jesus tells of a judge who does not fear God or respect human beings.—especially those who, like the widow, are poor and disadvantaged.
The Sermon on the Mount Is Not an Impossible Standard to Make Us Feel Bad
If we approach the Sermon on the Mount only or mainly as a means by which we see our sinfulness, we’ve not taken the sermon on its own terms.
What Is Distinct about the Theology of Luke?
The four Gospels present Jesus as true Israel and the divine Son of God who lived a faithful life, died for sins of his people, and rose from the dead, but each evangelist retells this story a bit differently.
