The people of Israel kept forgetting their uniqueness as the people of God. Although in Balaam’s words they were ‘a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations’, yet in practice they kept becoming assimilated to the people around them. Are we being assimilated into our corporate cultures? Does what our colleagues think matter more that what God thinks?

• ‘They mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did.’
• So, they demanded a king to govern them ‘like all the nations’, and when Samuel remonstrated with them on the ground that God was their king, they were stubborn in their insistence: ‘No! but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations.’
• Worse even than the inauguration of the monarchy was their idolatry. ‘Let us be like the nations,’ they said to themselves, ‘… and worship wood and stone.’

So God kept sending his prophets to them to remind them who they were and to plead with them to follow his way. ‘Learn not the way of the nations,’ he said to them through Jeremiah, and through Ezekiel, ‘Do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.’ But God’s people would not listen to his voice, and the specific reason given why his judgment fell first upon Israel and then nearly 150 years later upon Judah was the same: ‘The people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God … and had … walked in the customs of the nations.… Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God but walked in the customs which Israel had introduced. Is it possible that walking in the customs of the nations is the same as walking in the way of the culture of a company?

All this is an essential background to any understanding of the Jesus Manifesto (Sermon on the Mount). The Manifesto is found in Matthew’s Gospel towards the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The Manifesto has huge implications for how we live out our faith at work.

• Immediately after his baptism and temptation he had begun to announce the good news that the kingdom of God, long promised in the Old Testament era, was now on the threshold.
• He himself had come to inaugurate it. With him the new age had dawned, and the rule of God had broken into history.
• ‘Repent,’ he cried, ‘for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Indeed, ‘He went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom’.

The Manifesto, then, is to be seen in this context. It portrays the repentance (metanoia, the complete change of mind) and the righteousness which belong to the kingdom. That is, it describes what human life and human community look like when they come under the gracious rule of God. It describes our faith life at work.

And what do they look like? Different! Jesus emphasized that his true followers, the citizens of God’s kingdom, were to be entirely different from our co-workers. They were not to take their cue from the people around us, but from him, and so prove to be genuine children of their heavenly Father.

To me the key text of the Manifesto is 6:8: ‘Do not be like them.’ It is immediately reminiscent of God’s word to Israel in olden days: ‘You shall not do as they do.’ It is the same call to be different. It is our call at work. We must work it out daily. We must be different.

And right through the Manifesto this theme is elaborated. Their character was to be completely distinct from that admired by the world (the beatitudes). They were to shine like lights in the prevailing darkness. Their righteousness was to exceed that of the religious elites, both in ethical behavior and in religious devotion, while their love was to be greater and their ambition nobler than those of their pagan neighbors.  That is the life Jesus calls us to at work.

There is no single paragraph of the Jesus Manifesto (Sermon on the Mount) in which this contrast between Christian and non-Christian standards is not drawn. It is the underlying and uniting theme of the Manifesto; everything else is a variation of it. Sometimes it is the Gentiles or pagan nations with whom Jesus contrasts his followers.

Thus, pagans (our co-workers) love and salute each other, but Christians are to love their enemies (5:44–47); pagans pray after a fashion, ‘heaping up empty phrases’, but Christians are to pray with the humble thoughtfulness of children to their Father in heaven (6:7–13); pagans are preoccupied with their own material necessities, but Christians are to seek first God’s rule and righteousness (6:32, 33).

At other times Jesus contrasts his disciples not with Gentiles but with Jews, not (that is) with heathen people but with religious people, with the ‘scribes and Pharisees’. ‘The scribes are the theological teachers who have had some years of education, the Pharisees on the other hand are not theologians, but rather groups of pious laymen from every part of the community’ Certainly Jesus sets Christian morals over against the ethical casuistry of the scribes (5:21–48) and Christian devotion over against the hypocritical piety of the Pharisees (6:1–18).

Thus, the followers of Jesus are to be different—different from both the nominal church and the secular world of work, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Manifesto is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian counter-culture. Here is a Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships—all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian counter-culture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule, at home, church and work.

We come now to Matthew’s editorial introduction to the Manifesto, which is brief but impressive; it indicates the importance which he attached to it.

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them (Matthew 5:1, 2).

Jesus deliberately went up on the mountain to teach, in order to draw a parallel between Moses who received the law at Mount Sinai and himself who explained its implications to his disciples on the so-called ‘Mount of the Beatitudes’, the traditional site of the Sermon on the northern shores of the Lake of Galilee.

• For, although Jesus was greater than Moses and although his message was more gospel than law, yet he did choose twelve apostles as the nucleus of a new Israel to correspond to the twelve patriarchs and tribes of the old.
• He also claimed to be both teacher and lord, gave his own authoritative interpretation of Moses’ law, issued commandments, and expected obedience.
• He even later invited his disciples to assume his ‘yoke’ or submit to his teaching, as they had previously borne the yoke of Torah.

At all events, Jesus sat down, assuming the posture of a rabbi or legislator, and his disciples came to him, to listen to his teaching. Then he opened his mouth (an expression indicating the solemnity of his utterance) and taught them. ^[1]

So how does the manifesto start. What might we consider our charge to be as we work out our faith at work?

• Fortunate [blessed] are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
• Fortunate are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
• Fortunate are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.
• Fortunate are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
• Fortunate are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
• Fortunate are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
• Fortunate are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
• Fortunate are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”

^[1] Stott, J. R. W., & Stott, J. R. W. (1985). The message of the Sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian counter-culture (pp. 14–21). Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.