Trust & Obey, Week 3: Luke 6, Part 1
You may have heard of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. That famous passage is found in Matthew 5–7. But have you ever heard of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain?
His Sermon on the Plain has many similar, or even the same, teachings as those found in the Sermon on the Mount. This Thanksgiving week 2025, we’re going to learn about Jesus’ surprising take on blessings in his Sermon on the Plain.
Feel free to follow along in your Bible, in Luke chapter 6. First, the context. Look at verses 17 through 19 where Luke sets the scene.
“He went down with them and stood on a level place.”
That level place, that’s the plain.
But who is there with Jesus on the plain? Luke tells us.
“A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon.”
Quite a scene, right? Huge crowds. Notice that Luke describes two groups. First a large crowd of his disciples. Second, a great number of other people. That first group, the large crowd of disciples, is a good reminder to us that while Jesus had selected twelve disciples to be a part of his inner circle, he also had a much larger group of disciples, including men and women. Are we talking 20, 30, 100, 500? We don’t know. John 6 tells us that many disciples left Jesus when they found some of his teachings too difficult. After his death, resurrection, and ascension, Luke tells us in Acts 1 that there remain 120 followers of Jesus. Back here in Luke 6 on the plain, it is not unreasonable to suggest, therefore, that Jesus had multiple hundreds of disciples.
In addition to his disciples, Luke reports that out there on the plain, crowds showed up. A great number of people, Luke says. By this point, Jesus is no longer just a nobody from a tiny town in northern Israel. He’s got name recognition. Word has spread as far as to the southern region of Israel, Judea. Thousands of people come to him.
But why was Jesus so popular? We keep reading:
“[The crowds] had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.”
People are hearing about a preacher who has power. Power to heal, power over spirits. It is wild that all they needed to do was touch him, and power would come from him and heal them. Of course people from all over wanted to see him, hear him, touch him. It was a mob scene.
But at some point, Jesus is able to pause the crush of people, and he begins teaching. We learn what he says in the next post.
Photo by Nicholas Friend on Unsplash
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