The sermon on the mount
Seeing the multitudes, Jesus went up into a mountain and taught them: the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
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The whole story
He opened with the Beatitudes: blessed are the poor in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers. He called his hearers the salt of the earth and the light of the world, a city set on a hill that cannot be hid.
He taught them to love their enemies and to pray in secret, and gave them the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9). He told them to consider the lilies of the field, to seek first the kingdom of God, and to build their house upon the rock rather than the sand.
The people were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. The Church of the Beatitudes, built in 1938 on a hill above the lake, has eight sides for the eight blessings. Luke tells a shorter sermon spoken on a level place in the plain.
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:3, KJV
Where it happened
The Sea of Galilee, Lake Kinneret, Israel.
The lake is known; Capernaum, the fishermen’s town, stands on its north shore, and the mount of the sermon is remembered nearby.
Every story stands at its place on the Worldwide Watch map: the Bible’s world, on the map.
More from the Gospels
Matthew to John
Sources and editorial method
Research and editorial references used for this page include:
- The King James Bible, as published by bible-api.com
- The Book of Enoch, translated by R. H. Charles (1917), Project Gutenberg
Every story is told from the King James Bible, and from the Book of Enoch in R. H. Charles’s translation (1917) where a story names it. Every quotation was checked word for word against those texts. Where a place is not known, the page says so. The paintings and the narration were made for the house.
