Jesus in the sermon on the mount is making a radical claim that he is the nation of Israel’s rightful legislator. What’s more, look at where he’s making this claim; he is doing it very deliberately on top of a mountain, and as every Israelite would have remembered, the great law giver (God) gave his people the Old Testament law by speaking to them from the top of a mountain. Jesus was claiming for himself a breathtaking authority that no one else has ever dared to claim. He was claiming to be Israel’s and Humanity’s King  - Greg Gilbert