LAST TIME, WE saw how Matthew arranges the material in the first four chapters of his gospel to highlight the theme of God’s kingdom. To a reader familiar with the history, the genealogy in chapter 1 already tells a story. It begins with the birth of God’s people through Abraham, continuing through the birth of the monarchy as exemplified by King David, to the tragic death of the monarchy by invasion and exile. Generations pass, and finally, the long-awaited Messiah is born. His name is Jesus.

Chapter 2 suggests that the Messiah, God’s anointed king, will not be a king like Herod. In chapter 3, John the Baptist prepares the way for him by preaching the coming of God’s kingdom. Chapter 4 shows that the Messiah will not serve Satan, but God and God alone, even when Satan promises to give him every earthly kingdom. And when the Messiah begins his own preaching ministry, he brings the same message as the Baptist had before him: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

At this point in the story, with a lead-in like that, we should be ready to hear what the King has to say about the kingdom.

REMEMBER YOUR SCHOOL days? Trudging from class to class with a backpack laden with massive textbooks that challenged your attention span? By contrast, many scholars and researchers today want to reach a wider, non-academic audience, and have taken to writing books that are much easier to read. Often, they begin each chapter with an engaging or relatable story. The point of such a “hook” may not be clear at first. But hopefully, the story piques your interest and eventually gets you thinking about the topic that the rest of the chapter will address. And in many cases, the author will circle back to the same story at the end of the chapter, bringing a satisfying sense of closure for the reader.

Something similar can be true of biblical texts. One verse introduces a particular theme. A few verses or paragraphs later, the same theme crops up again. This is neither an accident nor disorganized, stream-of-consciousness writing; often, it’s an intentional literary device.

Scholars give this device different names; some call it an inclusio, some call it an envelope structure. But whatever you call it, I like to think of the two verses or texts as a pair of matching bookends. Their point is to draw the reader’s attention to what’s between the bookends, and how that text relates to the bookends themselves.

If you like, imagine a pair of cat-themed bookends bracketing a collection of books. What are those books about? Cats, of course. That’s the basic idea.

And as you’ve probably guessed by now, what we see in the Sermon on the Mount is kingdom-themed bookends.

LET’S TAKE A look at these bookends, beginning with the opening words of Jesus’ sermon:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:3, NIV)

As we’ll see shortly, Jesus repeats the phrase “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” in verse 10, bookending the verses between. This signals that everything he says about blessing in these verses — much of which seems counterintuitive! — is also about the kingdom. If we find his words puzzling, it’s because we have to ponder what kind of kingdom would make sense of this kind of blessing. More on that later.

Something similar is true of the Sermon as a whole. Let’s leave aside for the moment the very last verses of the Sermon, the gist of which is a conclusion that says, “Don’t be a fool; wise people will heed what I’m saying.” But listen to how the section just before that begins:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Matt 7:21)

There it is again: the kingdom of heaven. The phrase makes a matching bookend with the first verse of the Sermon, suggesting that everything Jesus says in between is directly or indirectly about the kingdom.

Indeed, some interpreters take the literary analysis further, arguing for an even more sophisticated structure that draws attention to what’s at the rhetorical center of the Sermon. And what do we find at the center? The Lord’s Prayer, which begins like this:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. (Matt 6:9-10)

Do you hear how this part of the prayer is echoed in the verse we read earlier? A person can call Jesus “Lord,” and still not enter the kingdom of heaven, not if they don’t hallow the name, not if they don’t recognize that the kingdom is where God’s will is done.

Jesus taught his followers to pray to their heavenly Father for the coming of the kingdom. That’s something they were probably eager to do. But what kind of kingdom would they pray for, if left to themselves? A political kingdom to be brought about by holy war? A kingdom in which the shackles of the Roman Empire would be thrown off, in which a powerful and charismatic son of David would rule instead?

Jesus teaches differently. To pray for the coming of God’s kingdom is to pray that God’s will would be done here on earth in the same way it is done in heaven: perfectly, completely, willingly.

Obviously, that’s not the world in which we live. For that matter, it’s not even an accurate description of the lives we ourselves lead. We cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer in good conscience unless we really and truly want God to be sovereign over all — not just the universe in some abstract sense, but our world. Not just creation in general, but our communities, our relationships, our very lives.

THUS, THE KINGDOM of heaven is the main theme of the Sermon. We see it in the chapters leading up to it. We see it in the bookends and everything between. We see it in the Lord’s Prayer, the rhetorical heart of the Sermon. We pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, and in so doing, pray that God’s will would be done everywhere by everybody.

But what does it mean for God’s will to be done? Let’s study Jesus’ sermon together and find out.