Matt 5:13-16. Salt and Light
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Introduction
Introduction
On the heels of Jesus introduction into the good life we are given a picture of how that good life operates in the world.
Jesus does it by pointing
In the first 10 verses Jesus is saying blessed are they or those. He is drawing a picture for us of the flourishing life. Anyone who lives in the divine grace of Jesus is called to live this out.
But then in verse 11 he changes gears a bit.
He seems to be talking about something that is a little more general. Here is what a good like looks like.
Then He shifts and says “you.”
Up until this point we can listen without paying much attention if we wanted to. But then all of the sudden, Jesus gets direct and personal. Blessed are you.
And that continues in our passage for this morning.
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
Up until this point we can say Jesus is talking about someone else, even something else. Up until this point it is a helpful story
But here is where we have to figure out where we stand and who we stand for.
We are no longer off the hook. We are drawn in. We are being called to act. Jesus is calling us to act within covenant as the church and to proclaim through our actions that covenant in the world
They are images to draw us into His promises and power. And they are images to push us out into the world.
There is comfort and push in these verses, both at the same time.
These are not images He is pulling from His own mind or from the culture. These images are grounded deeply in ideas about how God deals with His people.
To hear them come through Jesus is not just helpful pictures of what the church is, but rather a proclamation, an understanding of who we are called to be, and how we are called to be.
Salt: Drawn into His Promises
Salt: Drawn into His Promises
“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.
The pictures the Bible uses are never random. They are set deep into the cultural understanding of the OT and they are understood to mean and communicate certain things.
We don’t want to rush ahead with what the Scriptures are saying. We do this quickly and too easily in the Bible and every other place. We hear a phrase or picture or image and we know what it means. We think we do.
But to know what something means in the Bible, because it is written by many authors in 66 books over thousands of years, we begin by checking it against itself and against it’s own culture
We often want to apply the Scripture. And we need to apply it. But not before figuring out what it means.
There is lore in my family history about the time my sister brushed her teeth with bengay. Bengay is a medicine that you put on sore muscles, it is not intended for consumption. When my sister was little, she took a tube of bengay and, because it looked like toothpaste, assumed it was. She put a bunch on her toothbrush and began brushing. Then she screamed. She had the tool. She knew what she wanted. She mis applied.
Same with how we read the Bible. We need to begin by looking at the label. Is it even toothpaste? We understand the Bible by what it says about itself.
The images salt and light mean something specific about the way God interacts with His people.
When God makes promises to His people He uses the images of both light and salt.
Look at this passage in the OT
All the holy contributions that the people of Israel present to the Lord I give to you, and to your sons and daughters with you, as a perpetual due. It is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord for you and for your offspring with you.”
Again we want to see where Jesus is getting this language from. He is getting it from His own cultural background. Salt was a picture of what God used to show the promise He made and kept with His people. This is a covenant. A covenant is like a contract except that a contract ends when the work ends, a covenent ends when someone dies. God has placed His entire self into the covenant and He doesn’t die.
we are the representation of Gods covenant in the world. The bearers, the markers of that covenant.
So salt is the reminder that God has promised to care for and bring rescue to His people. Jesus fulfills that. By calling His followers the salt of the earth, He is showing His audience that they are responding to what Christ is doing in God. They are brought in. This is not just about doing more work, this is about responding to God bringing us back to Himself.
The salt reminds us that we are sustained by God’s promises in Christ.
Salt is what we experience by knowing we are kept in Christ.
On top of that, the image of the salt of the earth invites us in. Christ is showing that He is doing the heavy lifting and sustaining His people on His promises. That Christians walk through the world differently.
Up until this point, we have been able to look at all of this and agree that we would want to kind of “hive off” from the rest of the world. But the image doesn’t allow us to.
Sent through His Power
Sent through His Power
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 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. 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.
all throughout the scriptures li is the way God shows up, invades, the world . It is represented as how God interacts with the contrast of the world.
God’s first words recorded are Gen 1:3
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The early church had flames on top of their heads at pentecost. Light has been the image that God has used to understand the way the Kingdom of God has broken into the world.
SO then as soon as we see light used in this passage we understand that God is breaking into the world.
But how?
Through the church. Through those devoted to Christ and His life. That is light as well. The way we navigate through the world as Christians is what Jesus Himself calls light.
We are called to act as light in the world.
And He makes a joke here just to double down on the use of salt and light. He says that people don’t light a lamp and then put it under a basket. They put it on a stand so everyone can see by it.
This is the collective role of the church. That as we interact with the world around us, they get a sense of what God is like. Because these are not just nice things to do but they are rather the way of life that communicates there is a new way to live in the first place. IT is the call of new life through Christ.
work with Wheaton. As we just served the students at Wheaton, parts of the administration saw that and invited us to take a greater role in the lives of the students. That is the work of light. We act and people see and the world cannot help but respond.
Living the life that Jesus shows us in the SOTM is not just good things to do, it is the communication that there is a new King entirely. That we can rejoice no matter what because we have the kingdom of heaven, because our reward is great in heaven, because we are called sons and daughters of God.
that gets carried out into the way that we love. Salt preserves the ability to consume food. we are called to invite people in through reminding them and us of Gods promise to the world. Light allows us to see. We act in such a way that people see what God is like.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was raised in Islam and in adulthood became an adamant athiest, so much so she has been considered a part of the new athiest movements, of which Richard Dawkins was a part.
But in the last couple years Ayaan has converted to Christianity because, as she says in her own story, in the last couple years, something has been off. She was dealing with her own difficult mental health issues and while she had been a large proponent of athiesm, she realized that the structures of the world she believed in just did not work. And she recognized she needed more than she had and found it in Christ.
As she has come to trust Christ in public ways, detailing her need for God and the need for God in greater society. She states that there is a new generation that is just trying to figure out what to do and we are not helping them with offering them nothing. We need to offer something. She would say we need to offer Christ.
The church, according to Jesus, is the necessary voice in the culture. That God is still working, still moving, still acting, always reconciling.
How is your life reflecting that reality?
Where do you see salt?
Where do you get to be light?