“When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying…. ‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock'” (Matt 5:1-2; 7:24).
What is the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount in the context of Matthew’s Gospel? Key allusions to the story of Moses in the framing verses of the Sermon make Matthew’s intentions quite clear. Yeshua’s ascent up the mountain to give the disciples his Torah (Matt 5:1) alludes to Moses’ ascent up Mount Sinai to give Israel God’s Torah (Exod 19:2-3). The reference to Yeshua opening his “mouth” is not only a strategic allusion to God’s promise to be with Moses’ “mouth” in Exodus 4:12, but also to God’s promise to put words in the “mouth” of the Prophet like Moses in Deuteronomy 18:18. And yet another allusion to Deuteronomy 18 appears in Yeshua’s concluding words that “everyone who hears “these words of mine and acts on them” will live (Matt 7:24; see Deut 18:18).
So when Yeshua says he has come to fulfill (not abolish) the Torah and the Prophets in Matthew 5:17, these strategic allusions to Moses in the Torah show us exactly what he means. Yeshua (and Matthew) is telling us that he is the promised Prophet like Moses.
And now for the “So what?” One could possibly excuse (well, actually not) the pagan nations for rejecting Yeshua because he a Jewish prophet the God of Israel sent to the Jewish people. But there is one people group on earth who cannot say, “Yeshua isn’t for me.” For since Yeshua is the Prophet like Moses, we of all people are most accountable to his words. Jewish evangelism (i.e., telling Jewish people about Yeshua) is not, therefore, disrespectful to the Jewish people. Quite the opposite is the case. We share our faith with the Jewish people because in the Torah Moses told us we must listen to Yeshua!
“I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him” (Deut 18:18-19).
