Sermon Tone Analysis
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Matthew 5:13-16 “13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?
It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.
14 “You are the light of the world.
A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
“Let your light shine before others so that they might give glory to your Father”
There are major themes running through Scripture, and LIGHT is one of those themes
In fact, when we open the book of Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, we read about light.
When God set about to create the world, He came down and looked and it says that the earth was formless and empty
And darkness reigned over the face of the earth.
In other words, darkness dominated or controlled the face of the earth
So what did God do?
The very first words out of God’s mouth that we read are these
LET THERE BE LIGHT
And immediately there was light
Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear this, a couple of questions come to mind.
Why did God create light first
Did He need light because it was hard for Him to see?
Where did this light come from?
He didn’t create the sun, our source of light on this earth, until the 4th day
Why didn’t He create the sun at the same time He created light
Well, I’m pretty sure that I can’t answer these questions perfectly,
But I’m fairly certain about this:
since God is omnipotent, all-powerful, I don’t believe that He needed to create light in order to see
And I don’t know why He didn’t create the sun at the same time that He created light
But here is one thing that we do know about God.
God IS light.
John declares to us in 1 John 1:5 that God is light.
And in Him there is no darkness at all.
That’s perfect light!
Even in our best attempts to create light, we still deal with darkness, with shadows.
Heidi is a photographer and I know that she always looks for shadows and how they might affect the picture.
But with God, He is perfect light.
And I wonder if His command, “LET THERE BE LIGHT” can be seen as a declaration of who He is.
It is a declaration of a key part of His character.
He is light
And then Jesus comes on the scene and
When the Apostle John wrote his account of the life of Jesus, he says this:
John 1:1-5 “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Why hasn’t the darkness overcome the light?
Because God is Light and in Him, there is NO darkness.
And Jesus, being God in the flesh, was Himself Light, and was not overcome by darkness
Jesus declares In John 8:12 “...., saying, “I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
So God is light
Jesus, being God, is light
And that brings us to two points that I want to highlight this morning
We are invited to Walk in the light
Jesus says, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness
And if we find ourselves in darkness, then we know that we are not following Him
1 John 1:6-7 “6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
So walking in the light means that we have both fellowship with God, and we have fellowship with all of those who also are walking in the light
And we can’t have one without the other.
We can’t walk apart from the Light and still have true fellowship with each other
And neither can we walk out of fellowship with each other and still be in fellowship with God
It has to be both
So Jesus invites us to follow Him and walk in the light
but not only are we invited to walk in the light, Jesus says to His listeners in Matthew 5, “YOU are the light of the world”
WE are the light of the world
And this really is quite amazing when you think about it.
Jesus declared Himself to be the light of the world, but He also declares His followers to be the light of the world
What an amazing truth this is!
What an amazing responsibility this is!
Our theme for this year is “Image Bearers”.
As His image bearers, we have been tasked with being the light of the world.
Now what does this mean?
Does this mean that we are on the same level as Jesus?
That we are equal with Him?
No, I don’t think so.
in the 1st chapter of John, we are introduced to John the Baptist.
And John makes it clear to us that John the Baptist was not the light that he was talking about.
Rather, John was sent to bear witness about the True Light
He was sent to prepare the way for that light.
To tell others about the light that was about to dawn
He was sent to lead or to point others to the Light
And I believe that is what Jesus is talking about in Matthew chapter 5
We are sent to both bear or carry the Light into the world, and to witness about that Light
We ourselves are not the light.
It is not our responsibility to singlehandedly chase away the darkness and to improve the world
But it is our responsibility to both carry the light and witness about the Light
So, what does it look like to be the light of the world.
What does it look like to be an image bearer that reflects the Light of the World
Well, Jesus statement that His followers are the light of the world follows right on the heals of
What we call the Beatitudes.
What is really His description of the kind of fruit that will grow in the lives of His followers
and I believe that at the same time He is also describing what it looks like to “be the light of the world”
Because the fruit or the qualities that are given to us in Matthew chapter 5 are opposite of the fruit that Scripture describes as the “works of darkness” in Ephesians 5
Things like
sexual immorality
Covetousness
crude and foolish talk and so forth
Those are works of darkness.
But in Matthew 5, Jesus shows us what it’s like to be the light
Being the light means that we are poor in spirit
That is, those who depend fully on God instead of themselves
Those who realize that they do not have nearly sufficient will-power or ability to please God on their own.
They have “poverty of spirit” and they need God more than anything else
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