And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching. The crowd's response to the Sermon: astonishment. Not agreement or conversion, but astonishment — the recognition that they have heard something categorically different from what they were accustomed to. Mark 1:22 records the same response in a different context. The astonishment does not indicate that the crowds became disciples; the Sermon's challenge requires more than astonishment. But the astonishment is the first response to genuine authority: the categories have been disrupted, the expectations exceeded, the horizon expanded.

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