Sermon on the Mount: Salt, Light, and the Purpose of Your Life (Matthew 5:13-20)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into Newsung Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said, You are the salt of the earth.

But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty?

It is no longer good for anything, but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

You are the light of the world.

A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden.

No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and to give glory to your Father in heaven.

Don't think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished.

Therefore, one who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

You are the light of the world.

Let's remember, Jesus did not come to abolish the law and prophets, but to fulfill them.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, would you sustain us with your willing spirit once again?

Plant your word in our hearts that it may renew us and bear fruit.

Let our good works glorify our Father in heaven.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, as we do our readings this morning, I realize Exodus 32 really deserves a sermon all its own.

But I think we can make a couple of observations and bring them into our gospel lesson.

Number one, God is not afraid to name exactly what we deserve.

Right?

His, what did we say in Psalm 51?

We said.

But what God wants to show us is that he will perform his committed, ongoing, covenant love.

That's what he'll do towards us.

He won't abandon the promises that he makes to his people.

And that's what he wants to show Moses.

That's what he wants to show us.

As we journey into the Sermon on the Mount, we are considering how God's kingdom reorders our life toward heaven.

As we began our journey last week, we looked at what are called the Beatitudes, verses 1 to 12.

And we consider together what the character of God's kingdom looks like, or what our character looks like when it's reordered by God's kingdom, which flips the world, you could say, upside down, but really right side up.

And suddenly it orders our life towards God's heavenly life.

And so now it's not power or self-exaltation or self-importance that matters.

It's humility, it's service, it's meekness.

These are all the sorts of things that reflect God's own character and God's own kingdom.

And now, if we've considered what the character of belonging to the kingdom looks like in the Beatitudes, we continue into verses 13 and 20 to consider what is our purpose?

We know our character, what's our purpose in the world in which we live?

And even more importantly than that, we could say, what's Jesus' purpose?

How do we understand our purpose in light of the purpose of our Lord, the one giving the sermon, the one ordering our life towards heaven?

And maybe we want to say something like this: God's kingdom reorders the purpose of my life in light of Jesus' purpose.

God's kingdom reorders my life in light of Jesus' purpose.

So what we want to understand this morning is something of what's my purpose according to God's kingdom, and what's Jesus' purpose in God's kingdom.

I think if we consider this question of purpose, we're going to arrive at a greater sense of peace, what it means to be citizens of this kingdom.

I think we're going to see three things.

Our purpose is given to us in two illustrations, but it sounds like this.

Our purpose is to influence the world for good.

Our purpose is to illuminate the world with truth.

And Jesus' purpose is to accomplish true righteousness.

Influence, illuminate, accomplish.

Now I have to say, you have no idea how hard I tried to make all three I words.

But accomplish is the best word that I have, so we're going to go with it.

Influence, illuminate, accomplish.

Let's see how our the purpose of our life is reordered in light of Jesus' purpose.

Open up, if you will, to Matthew 5, 13 and 20 if you haven't already.

What's the purpose of my life?

To influence the world for good.

Jesus says, verse 13, you are the salt of the earth.

If the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty?

It's no longer good for anything, but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

You're the salt of the earth, is what Jesus has to say.

He's giving us our purpose in an illustration.

Now, salt has at least three implications or three applications, I should say, in Jesus' day, as in our day.

Salt, I understand, is one of the most stable compounds there is, sodium chloride.

Rachel can correct me if I'm wrong on the science.

What's true in Jesus' day is true for our day as well.

Now, at first reading, I read that and think, we're the salt of the earth.

Christians, you know, give the world a little bit of flavor.

You know, putting a little bit of salt on your boiled egg, right, brings out the flavor of the egg.

And that might be true in some sense.

We come alongside what's good in the world and we we uh bring it out to a bigger, greater fullness than it would be otherwise.

Maybe that's true.

Another thing we could consider is how this phrase salting the earth is used in literature around Jesus' day.

Often that's a phrase that is connected with warfare.

So when one army vanquishes another or one land is vanquished, the conquering army would do what's called salting the earth, which is literally just pouring salt over all of the fields where their harvest where their crops would be grown and where the harvest was.

So nothing can now grow in a salted earth.

It's a way of absolute domination, which is kind of weird to think that's, you know, Jesus might employ a sort of warfare metaphor, but let's think about it.

God's kingdom is breaking into the world and reordering it.

So when God's kingdom encounters oppositional forces, forces of darkness, forces of evil, what does it do but stop them in their tracks?

Stops evil from growing or multiplying.

Maybe there's the sense of that too, but I suspect the third sense is what Jesus has in mind.

He might have a combination of all three in mind, but principally, if you're living in Jesus' time, you know the most important thing you can do with salt is to use it as a preservative, right?

This is before you had fridges, before you had deep freezers, before you went to Costco and did your giant shop.

You had to preserve the meat that you had.

And so you salted it.

You rubbed salt into the fibers of the meat that you had.

That's why the salami we have in our fridge is like still good to eat.

It's been there forever.

Christians are act to act as a preservative in the world that we're just, we're rubbed into the fibers of God's world and God's creation, to act as a preservative of what's good, what God delights in, what God wills for his good world.

And we're meant to act as a preservative against decay or deterioration or death that results from immorality or results from evil that contradicts or opposes God's will, good will for his good world.

We're meant to be something like a preserving agent, rubbed into the fibers of our community, rubbed into the fibers of our families, rubbed into the fibers of our workplace, so that we can preserve what's good and what God wills for there to be.

For Jesus, the important part of being salt or understanding ourselves as salt and the influence we are meant to have is that we're not, we are not, pardon me, how do I want to phrase this?

We ought not to lose our distinguishing quality.

Salt should not lose its saltiness.

And perhaps by that, Jesus has in mind the way that salt was harvested in his day.

It was harvested with all sorts of impurities, dust and dirt and all sorts of things mixed in.

If you wanted to use salt for anything productive, you had to filter those things out.

If you try to use salt with all sorts of impurities mixed in, it's not going to do you any good.

It deserves to just be tossed out and trampled under people's feet.

Don't lose the essential character of what it is to be a Christian.

Don't lose the essential character of what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom.

Don't let impurity of character, don't let immorality corrupt your virtue, but instead let your virtue be rubbed into the fibers of the world that we live in and see the world preserved and transformed by God's common grace at work.

One commentator puts it this way: if Jesus' disciples are to act as a preservative in the world by conforming to kingdom norms, they can discharge this function only by retaining their own virtue.

So to be a Christian is to maintain Christian character, is to go into the workplaces and families and vocations to which we are called and to be an influence for the good of the kingdom in the place God calls us to be.

Which is really a heartening thought, I think, because it suggests to me that no matter where we go or no matter where we're called to go, we can safely assume that God's already there and he's already at work.

I'm not going where God isn't already.

And so when I show up at a given vocation, a given place, whatever that is, I can ask God, where are you already at work?

What good did you desire for this place?

And how, Lord, can I partner with you in it?

Not how can I do it for you, but how do you want to use me as a preservative, as an influence for the good of your kingdom in this place?

That's a heartening thought, isn't it?

But it does mean this, that Christians are going to be distinct.

Wherever we go, we're going to risk being distinct.

I was reading a letter written in the early second century, so let's say AD 110 or something like that, from a guy named Pliny, which is a great name, to Emperor Trajan, the Emperor, the Roman Emperor.

And Trajan is asking Pliny for some advice on, well, one, help me understand what this new sect called Christianity is, and two, help me understand what I should do about it.

And so Pliny, writing, not a Christian, writing about Christians, is talking about how weird Christians are.

He says, Christians meet on a certain day before light, where they gather and sing hymns to Christ as to a God.

They all bind themselves by an oath, Pliny says, not to commit any crimes such as fraud, theft, or adultery.

And subsequently they share a meal of ordinary and innocent food, which I wonder is Holy Communion.

But that's not really the point.

The point is the tone with which Pliny talks about Christian character and Christian behavior.

It is puzzling to Pliny that Christians would conduct themselves in such a way that they would refuse to commit crimes like fraud or theft or adultery.

Isn't that just what you do to get by?

Isn't this just how Romans conduct themselves?

I mean, from the earliest years of Christianity even to today, to be a committed Christian, to follow Jesus, is to stand apart from the world and its values.

We have to recognize that yes, God is at work in the world.

And yes, God has reconciled the world to himself through the cross of Christ, and yet the world on earth lags behind as it is in heaven.

And there will be a sense in which Christians will remain distinct in our vocation.

If we want to be an influence for the good, then we will have to risk being distinct.

When we encounter dishonesty, we will have to have the courage to meet it with truth.

Where we encounter gossip, we will have to have the courage to speak in an edifying and upbuilding way.

And where we encounter our own self-centeredness or our own self-importance, we will have to meet it with a generosity and compassion towards others.

You see what I mean?

We will stand out.

And to be a Christian is to risk standing out as an influence for the good, rubbed into the fibers of the world that God has put us in.

Christians will be an influence for the good.

That's what it means to have the purpose of my life reordered in light of Jesus' purpose.

But there's a second thing we should notice here.

Jesus tells us we're salt to be an influence for good.

We're also meant to be light to illuminate the truth of the kingdom.

Verse 14.

You, Jesus says, are the light of the world.

A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden.

No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are 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's in heaven.

You are the light of the world, Jesus says.

And right off the bat, we should recognize this as a very, very loaded biblical image.

Right?

The very first act of creation, God separates light from darkness.

And ever since that passage in Genesis chapter 1, light carries with it a connotation of truth where there would otherwise be error, right?

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Illumination where there otherwise be darkness, goodness where there would otherwise be evil, you get the picture.

When he says you are the light of the world, he is saying you participate in the illuminating work of God's truth, bringing truth to bear and darkness, right?

Bringing the reality of the kingdom to bear to those who are otherwise in error.

And yes, we can probably remember Jesus calling himself the light of the world in John chapter 8, right?

John 8 · chapter mention

He announces that twice.

I think John chapter 8 and chapter 12.

John 8 · chapter mention

I am the light of the world.

And we might want to ask the gospel authors, Matthew and John, well, which is it?

Is it Jesus the light of the world, or is it us the light of the world?

And probably Matthew and John would both reply, yes.

Why?

Because we are meant to be those who reflect the very light of Christ into the families, the communities, the workplaces, the places that God has put us.

We are meant to be a light, to bear the light of Christ and illuminate the world for the sake of the kingdom.

Peter writes in his first letter, you, Christians, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We are here to proclaim the praises of the one who has called us out of darkness and into his light, so that we can be a light in the darkness.

The important thing that Jesus wants us to understand is that light needs to be allowed to shine.

Right?

Second half of verse 14, a city situated on a hill can't be hidden, right?

No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but it puts it on display, so it illuminates the whole house.

I mean, one, light can't be hidden.

In pitch darkness, a single light will still shine through, won't it?

Light can't be hidden.

It's in its nature.

It will overcome the darkness.

But two, why would we try?

Why would we want to hide that light?

Especially when that light gives glory to God.

I can think of a conversation I had a long, long time ago.

I was getting to know someone, this is pretty early in my ministry, and we're talking about a mother's adult sons and one son and his involvement in the church.

And I asked, Well, is the other son involved in a church at all?

And I remember Mom's answer was something like, Oh, I don't know that.

And I go, Oh, have you asked?

And the answer was something, oh, you don't ask something like that.

That's awfully a private thing, don't you think?

I mean, I was really kind of puzzled by that.

Now, there might be any number of reasons unknown to me why that's something that these folks don't talk about.

So I don't want to make you know categorical judgments or something like that.

But it does strike me that it's a very Canadian attitude to say, well, religion is a very private thing.

So if you want to take the initiative to make it known, that's fine.

But you know, generally that's the kind of thing you should probably keep consigned to your own personal life, your own personal time, your own personal household.

And I think the challenge, perhaps, to those of us with Canadian sensibilities that would otherwise sort of file away our faith as a private little endeavor, Jesus would challenge us to consider why we would try to hide the light that He has given us?

If our vocation is to illumine the darkness, then perhaps we should be known as children of light.

We are the light of the world, after all.

So the risk of being a Christian is, yes, to be distinct in the world that we live, but it's also to be very visible, to be exposed, so that we can shine in what would otherwise be darkness.

This will call us out of the comfort zone, I think, sometimes.

I was very self-conscious when I was first ordained and realized that whenever I'm at a party meeting new people and they ask me what do you do for your work, I can't just like sidestep the, you know, I'm a Christian conversation.

But you don't have to be ordained to feel that tension, do you?

We all feel that tension in a way.

Being late in the world might start with, God, would you increase the courage within me to identify with you?

To identify as a Christian.

When someone asks how my weekend was to mention, I went to church and I love my church.

I hope you love your church.

We love you.

It gets us out of our comfort zone being visible.

And we ought to pray, we ought to pray for the courage to increase our visibility, not that our visibility would decrease to meet our lack of courage.

Does that make sense?

I mean, I'm saying that to my own self.

Because when we are visible, when we are on display, then our good works, the things that we do that accord with God's mind and his will, will give him glory because it's him at work through us in the communities and in the life that we live.

We will reflect his light where he calls us to go.

So, friends, we start to see the purpose, the calling, the vocation of our life as followers of Jesus, aren't we?

We are salt who influence the world for the good.

We are light who illuminate the world with the light of the kingdom.

And this means we have to be distinct and we have to be visible.

Let me share one just lengthy quote from the good Bishop J.C.

Ryle, because I think this quote is really worth it.

It is challenging to me, and I hope you join me in this challenge.

Bishop Ryle writes this Surely we are meant to learn from these two pictures, salt and light, that there must be Something marked, distinct, and special about our character if we are true Christians.

It will never do to idle through life, thinking and living like others, if we mean to be owned by Christ as his people.

Have we grace?

Then it must be seen.

Have we the Spirit?

Then there must be fruit.

Have we any saving faith?

Then there must be a difference of habits, tastes, and turn of mind between us and people who think only of the world.

It is perfectly clear that true Christianity is something more than being baptized and going to church.

Salt and light must mean something special, both in heart and life, in faith and practice.

We must dare to be different and unlike the world if we mean to be saved.

End quote.

Now that's a challenge.

And that's convicting to me.

But I think we ought to bear a few things in mind.

We are different from the world, not because we are better than the world.

We are different from the world for the sake of the world.

Because we desire to see God's kingdom break into the world.

And we are saved by grace, so it's not like we can boast about how good we are.

We are just as much in need of grace as anyone we bump into on the street.

But lest we lapse into the despair of thinking, boy, I really got to pull up my bootstraps if I'm going to earn, you know, my membership in the kingdom, then we need to bear in mind this that the mark, that even though being salt and light and living out that reality of influence and illumination is a mark of saving faith, it is not the cause of saving faith.

It is the outworking of a saving faith in Jesus.

It is the outworking of understanding Jesus' purpose, because understanding his purpose informs this purpose, being salt and light.

So what's Jesus' purpose?

Let's land the plane here.

Verse 17, Jesus says, Don't think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished.

What is Jesus' purpose?

His purpose is to fulfill God's purpose, God's promises, all of God's design, which we find in the Old Testament.

You know the bulk of the Bible that comes before the New Testament?

Jesus is fulfilling the whole of God's story and the whole of God's promises in our midst.

And through the cross and through the resurrection brings it to complete fulfillment.

Jesus has come to be the true Israel who renews and accomplishes God's story.

Bishop N.

T.

Wright writes this: Jesus was in himself the true Israel formed by Scripture, bringing the kingdom to birth.

When he spoke of the Scripture needing to be fulfilled, he was not simply envisioning himself, doing a few scattered and random acts which corresponded to distant and detached prophetic sayings.

He was thinking of the entire storyline at last coming to fruition, and in an entire world of hints and shadows now coming plain, coming to plain statement and in full light.

This, I take it, is the deep meaning of the sayings like this passage in front of us, where Jesus insists that he has come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

This is why I find it unsettling when some popular Bible teachers, popular pastors with far-reaching influence will suggest things like what we ought to do is unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament as New Testament believers.

Because the New Testament is full of, let's say, grace and truth and Jesus, and the Old Testament is full of confusing stories and moralisms and strange whatevers, and let's just unhitch ourselves from all of that and focus on the New Testament.

And to that I say we are completely detaching ourselves from the purpose that Jesus has come to accomplish.

The fulfillment of all God's promise, the fulfillment of God's design, the fulfillment of all righteousness, right?

Reminds me of what those poets, the Backstreet Boys, said once.

They said, I don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did, as long as you love me.

That's a very millennial reference.

I'm sorry about that.

But a little bit I'm like, I hear that and I'm kind of like, that's nice, but you probably should care about some of those things.

If it's really love that you're talking about.

And sometimes I wonder if we have that attitude towards Jesus.

It doesn't really matter where he's from, what he did, whatever, as long as I know that he loves me.

And I think, boy, if we're not careful, we will miss the mission that Jesus has come to accomplish.

To accomplish true righteousness, to fulfill the law and prophets, to be the obedient one where we have been disobedient, to go to the cross and to be raised to new life so that we can share in his righteousness, the righteousness that he accomplishes.

And that's what's so important in verses 19 and 20.

Jesus points out the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and what Jesus is trying to get at it, it doesn't matter the quantity or your understanding of the quantity of your righteousness.

What matters is the kind of righteousness to which you appeal before God.

He has come to accomplish true righteousness.

So do we, like scribes and Pharisees, therefore try to accomplish, try to fulfill God's will by our own self-righteousness?

That's a futile effort.

Or do we trust in what Christ has done on our behalf and therefore have a righteousness that surpasses the self-righteousness of scribes and Pharisees?

Do you see Jesus' purpose?

He has come to accomplish true righteousness, to satisfy all of God's demands, to be the obedient one where we were disobedient, so that His cross and His resurrection can be our hope.

We can rest assured that Jesus has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

He is the Savior, and we are the ones who are being saved.

And if that's true, then it orders our vocation, doesn't it?

If he is the Savior who saves us, who accomplished everything, then we go into the world as salt and light not to not to do the pardon me, how do I want to say this?

Not to supply what's lacking in what Jesus did, but rather to bear witness to what Jesus has accomplished, to bear witness to the reality of the kingdom in our midst.

That is what being salt, that is what being light looks like.

It gives us purpose because this is how we live as Christians in the world.

But it gives us peace because we know that Jesus has gone before us and done for us all that needs doing.

God's kingdom reorders my life, your life, in light of Jesus' purpose.

So my prayer for us new song is as we continue into this series, as we continue looking at the Sermon of the Mount, we discover more of that purpose, what it means to be salt and light in our community and in our vocations, but also we discover more and more of that peace of knowing that it's to Jesus we go to find our assurance.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.