Matthew 5e
Matthew 5 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Handout
Today is Pentecost – a very significant day for God’s people – Jewish and Christian. 50 days after Passover and Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, Yahweh met Israel at Mount Sinai with fire and wind. Then about 1,400 years later, Jesus died on Passover, and 50 days after that, God poured out His Spirit on the disciples – and the were baptized with fire and wind. As much as I would like to talk about that, I believe there is something else that we need to address this morning that has connections to Pentecost.
We’ve camped out on Matthew 5:13-16 for a while – that we are the salt and light for the world.
Salt is connected to being the covenant people of God. E.g. Marriage is a covenant relationship that calls for faithfulness, love, loyalty, sacrifice.
When we think of covenant, we would do well to think of marriage. As covenant people of God, we should live in a faithful, loyal, loving relationship with Jesus. But if we don’t live faithfully to that covenant, we lose our saltiness or effectiveness for those who are not in a relationship with Jesus. Rich Roseberg has one of the best illustrations I have ever heard in my life. We know that
Salt can never truly lose its saltiness, but it can become diluted.
, with water or other liquid, that it becomes tasteless, worthless, it does nothing that it was intended to do. Bam! That’s it. If we as followers of Jesus become so diluted with the world’s systems, with sin, with self-centeredness ….
Then we focused on being light. Light, the Law or instruction, and Life are connected. Let your light shine – let others see your attractive, beautiful, good works so people see Jesus. Live in a way that instructs people how they ought to live according to God’s design.
Now, with salt and light, the emphasis is typically on who we are and what we do – it’s on us. We come up with ways to be salt and light. The more I thought about this the more I realized that something critical was missing. There is a reason why Jesus calls us Salt and Light. There is a reason why, connecting to Pentecost, we need the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We may know the reason theologically, we may know it in our heads, we may be in agreement, but do we know the reason in our hearts?
In Scripture,
Light is often used as a metaphor for Life (emotional, spiritual, physical, and eternal).
But we can’t really talk about Light without talking about Darkness.
Darkness is often used as a metaphor for Death (emotional, spiritual, physical, and eternal).
And so we are called to be light because there is darkness - death.
Being salt and light is not just about being good people doing good works – it’s about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps some of us have forgotten the importance of the Gospel what the Gospel is. We get distracted and preoccupied with so many things – even good things, church things, Christian things – and before long we’ve forgotten the Gospel. And when I say forgotten I mean that our Christianity has become more about God help us and bless us and get us out of this situation and God do this and God do that ….
Have we forgotten that Biblically there are only two kingdoms – light and dark, life and death.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Either alive in Jesus or dead separated from Jesus. No middle ground that I know of. What about all the people who never heard of Jesus? God is Sovereign and Just and Faithful – He knows how to handle that. I trust Him.
Again, there’s no middle ground. You either have eternal life in Christ Jesus, or you don’t.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
The Gospel is not about being good or bad. It’s not about us vs. them. It’s about being alive or dead.
It’s about being in God’s family of the devil’s family.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
What is the Gospel?
It’s quite simple. God, whose covenantal name is Yahweh in Hebrew, wanted a human family – a relationship with sons and daughters so He created humans.
God (Yahweh) wanted and still wants a family - sons and daughters.
But that relationship – that union between God and humanity was ruined by rebellion, sin – by choosing and defining our own ways, truths, lives, and love. Remember,
The essence of sin is a disordered love.
– meaning we love self, and others, and things above God. And sin creates the consequences of guilt, death, darkness, chaos, and separation from God and one another. But God has never given up on humanity and never will. And because He still wants us in His family, and knowing that there is no way we could ever become not guilty on our own, we could never earn or deserve our own forgiveness and salvation, God did what we could not do – He sent His unique one of a kind Son to bear our penalty, to shed His blood and die on a cross so that we could be reconciled to God and have eternal life.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
The Gospel – the Good news that we can have everlasting life in God’s family -
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
How do I share the Gospel?
What if people ask me questions that I don’t know that answers to? I get that, but that’s making assumptions. But what if they ask questions you know the answers to, like …? This sounds formulaic, but ….
1. Pray
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;
therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Ask God –
Increase my passion for you and renew my burden for the lost.
Send them and send me.
2. Obey
for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
(for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true),
and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
3. Display
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.
4. Proclaim
For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Don’t let the word preach scare you. If you’ve seen Jesus, if you know Jesus, if He has saved you – then you are a preacher, not as an occupation, but as a walking, talking, living testimony to Jesus – have a testimony that’s worth telling. We proclaim Him – not ourselves. We proclaim Jesus – not
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
Chris Green, Professor of Public Theology at Southeastern University, Florida. “Pentecost is the story of bewildered not-sure-what-to-believe believers swept out of prayer into the streets, into the public eye. Pentecost is the end of spirituality because the Spirit presses the church into the public square, into public responsibility. Following the Spirit always leads down from the upper room and out to the outer courts.”
Yielding Prayer: “Lord, bring in the harvest I pray! Propel us out of our prayer rooms and into the public squares, out of our church meetings and into the streets, out of our timidity and into courageous confession of your gospel! Revive us, sanctify us, unite us, and fill us once again, I pray. Set our hearts on fire again with the good news of your gospel.” Pete Greig
