Sermon on the Mount (Part 3)

I'm Matthew chapter 5, and we'll begin with the final beatitude there in verse 10.

"'Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?

It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your

Father in heaven.'" Now, we have talked about the beatitudes together as a group looking at that designation of blessed, that we are not only the saints and the children of God, but we are also the beatified.

That is not a special title given to certain Roman Catholic celebrities on their way to sainthood.

The beatified describes all who are in Christ. This is our kingdom -issued standard

ID card. We are the blessed ones. We are blessed. And Jesus is describing here in the first section of the

Sermon on the Mount who belongs to His kingdom so that everybody will know to whom

He is giving His instructions, who may claim these promises, who should have these expectations.

Well, He has identified who belongs to His kingdom as a king who He rules over.

We come to the last beatitude, and we see that it is emphasized by two following verses that just flesh out the whole idea of what

He says in verse 10. We're going to think about that a little bit. And then think about the connection that that has with the public testimony of the saints there in verses 13 through 16.

I forget who it was who commented on this particular section that you move from the promise of persecution yet being blessed into maintaining a public witness and how that's so logical that Jesus would put those two together for the instinct would be to reduce the public witness, reduce the visibility of the church to avoid the persecution.

The old Chinese proverb is, the nail that sticks out gets hammered. And so the idea is like,

I don't want to stick out, I don't want to have sharp edges, I want to try to blend in so that I won't be persecuted.

So these two things come together, it's like, no, no, no, you're blessed if you're persecuted for righteousness sake, for the sake of Jesus, and here's how you stand out as salt and as light.

Now, this is the last beatitude, and this clarifies that this list of beatitudes is no sales job.

This is a culminating consideration that is fitting. If we didn't have this last beatitude,

I wonder how the others would read on their own. There'd be a massive incompleteness here.

We would have the sense that somehow that everything has to be going right for us to truly be blessed, but here we are as the blessed ones who are being persecuted.

This is an expanded beatitude. This is given to us in three verses rather than one.

The Lord is driving home His point. He's allowing no misunderstanding of His application, no misalignment of what

He means. This is an imperative beatitude. This is the first time we have a command.

We haven't had any commands at all yet in the Sermon on the Mount, but here's the first one. And what is the command there in verse 12?

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad. First time we have a command in the Sermon on the

Mount. And then we have this beatitude as a direct beatitude. Notice in verses 11 and 12, we transition from the third person plural all through the beatitudes, theirs and those and they, to a very personal direct use of you and your, or y 'all if you prefer.

But there's a pointing at the disciples and the multitudes now in a way that's more direct than previously.

So what is the principle to be learned here? It's a challenging principle to be sure to think about what

Jesus is saying. It's hard to grasp and to believe. Beatified are the battered, happy are the hunted.

Hard to believe. It's like, well, I don't know, it seems to not really fit together.

But notice the clarifying clause, for righteousness' sake, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

And then we're given the substantive reason, the sweeping reason for this state of blessedness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

So when we start off with this expression of blessed, we've already been talking about that. Last week, we spent a long time thinking about what does it mean to be the blessed ones.

And we recognize that the state of this happiness is in Christ, not in our circumstances.

But nonetheless, some of our circumstances are directly related to Christ and how we interpret them and how we understand them.

And so indeed, we can adopt this title of happy and blessed, especially favored.

And this beatitude, this last beatitude you see, stands in parallel with the first.

Both of them end the same way, and this should catch our attention. Verse 3 says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

So blessed are the spiritually impoverished in the sense of, blessed are the humble.

Blessed are those who are lowly. Blessed are those who have the essential ingredients of repentance and godly sorrow as they enter into the kingdom.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So you have that in verse 3. And then verse 10, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

These are the only two beatitudes that end the same way. And you can see that they denote the beginning and the end of the eight beatitudes.

And you'll notice that the boundary Jesus draws is belonging to the kingdom.

He's explaining who's in. He's drawing the boundaries of His kingdom, and He's doing so very intentionally.

Think about this. Entry into Christ's kingdom is not by fraud.

You don't get in by a violation. You only come in if you're the poor in spirit.

He set a child before them and said, of such is the kingdom of heaven. The humble, the lowly, those who don't come offering their own merit, but pleading only their need.

They come lowly. They come humble. So there's no way into the kingdom by fraud.

Also notice there's no success against the kingdom by force. That's the last beatitude.

Most kingdoms, how are they undermined? Well, you can have all manner of violations against the kingdom, all manner of people coming into the kingdom, undercutting the kingdom that way, or you can have violent attacks against the kingdom.

Maybe the kingdom will fall by external force. One way or the other, these are two ways classically throughout history that kingdoms fall.

But notice Christ's kingdom is not subject to those same assaults.

Can't get in by fraud, and you can't succeed against it by force. Attack those who belong to the kingdom, and they're just blessed.

So, this is obviously a different type of kingdom, and indeed, He calls it the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who are persecuted. So what is the meaning of persecution? It means to make someone run or to cause someone to flee, to put to flight, to drive away.

This is what you do to a stray dog too close to your home and children. Clap your hands, you yell loudly, charge a few steps, and what does the dog do?

He turns around and runs, checks, you do it again, he's gone. Putting someone to flight, that's what

Saul of Tarsus did. He was putting Christians to flight, and they fled, and they left

Jerusalem in droves, using hostility and violence to scatter the saints.

Now, of course, they tried to treat Christ that way, they tried to treat His followers that way.

Blessed are the persecuted. Now, notice it's for righteousness' sake.

Christ's people are blessed even when they are persecuted on account of their commitment to righteousness, because of their apparent righteousness, due to their uniform that they're wearing.

Notice the first seven Beatitudes describe what Christians appear like in the world.

Our family resemblance, we belong to a family, and it's not that we have all the same type of ear shape and eye color.

Right? Our similarities look like the traits, the eight different traits there in the

Beatitudes. Well, the first seven are different ways of describing righteousness, describing what it looks like in real life.

And so, because that's the uniform that the saints wear, they can be identified, targeted, and persecuted.

The coat of many colors makes many brothers jealous. Wearing the favor of God makes others jealous, especially in this context between the old covenant stewards who are envious of Christ and His people who are being favored by God.

Now, when we think about righteousness, we recognize in verse 6, this is something to be hungered after and thirsted for.

Here, righteousness is something that is targeted. In verse 20, we're going to see that righteousness is a standard for entry into the kingdom, so we're going to talk about what that means.

But what is righteousness in general? Righteousness may be thought of as an essential correspondence to that which is right.

It is the trait of rightness. God Himself is the standard, as well as the standard bearer, and He is the standard setter, which is why original righteousness was described as being made in God's image, right?

So He is the standard, the standard bearer, and the standard setter, so if we're made in His image, we're made according to His standard, that means that we are right.

Well, Adam and Eve were right from the very beginning. They were very good, good and very good.

So there was our original righteousness. Any movement from unrighteousness to righteousness, therefore, is movement towards the fullness of the image of God, a renewal of what we would call godliness.

The more the image of God is clear, the more godly the person is. That's how those ideas come together.

So it is our inherent design for conformity and reflection made in God's image that communicates righteousness.

My favorite YouTube contractor, Essential Craftsman, I should call him Grandpa, he always is talking about having everything plumb, level, and true.

And you can really tell, especially when the inspector comes along and gets out his level and his ruler and his plumb line, when it's not plumb, level, and true.

And sometimes you can just tell it from the outside. Sometimes you walk by a house and say, that ain't right. That's just not right.

Look at that. That's going to fall over. You can just tell. Christ's righteousness is perfect.

He is the image of the invisible God. That's what the Scriptures testify of Jesus. So He is the perfect manifestation of the righteousness of God, and He is the image of the invisible

God. He is our standard. He is our standard bearer. He is our standard setter as the king of the kingdom.

And which is why you'll see in the text that after Jesus says, you know, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake,

He gets real personal and says, blessed are you when you are persecuted for my sake.

Do you see how He puts righteousness and His own person in parallel?

He's telling us where we're to look to understand righteousness. Now, we are forever saved by Christ's righteousness, and His salvation brings about righteousness in our lives.

Our experiential pursuit and growth in righteousness is according to Christ, and we should think of that relationship very briefly.

The righteousness that we pursue and grow in is not the basis of our relationship with God, it is the fruit of our relationship with God.

The way that we are being shaped by righteousness, it will show up.

He will continue the good work that He has begun in us. But the way we're being shaped by the righteousness of God is the way that an island is shaped by an ocean.

The ocean comes again and again with the various tides and storms, and the island is shaped again and again by all of that ocean.

So also, every wave of sanctification that breaks upon the shore of our lives comes in from the ocean of justification.

We are situated there in the righteousness of Christ. We're situated there, and then we are affected by the righteousness of Christ in that way.

But our situation, our placement, our status is according to the righteousness of Christ, and we can't help but be affected.

Now, the interesting question is, why would anyone persecute righteousness?

They see righteousness somewhere, they see something good, true and beautiful, and they say, oh, that's got to go.

Well, why would there be a persecution of godliness, that which accords with the image of God?

Why would there be a targeting of righteousness? What is most human?

What is best human? Well, where the glory of God shines brightest, there the opposition of darkness will be most fierce.

Notice, everything diabolical is consistently anti -human, absolutely against it.

Anything that is looking for the destruction of human life, the disruption of human life, the doing away with human life, be sure to find the diabolical behind it.

Notice the present tense promise of theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Now, this is why those who are persecuted are so blessed. It's not that we own the kingdom of heaven, but it belongs to us, it belongs to the saints as we belong to it, we have a full stake in the kingdom of heaven.

Now, what is the kingdom of heaven? That question is answered by Christ throughout the gospel of Matthew in an abundance of ways.

Not something that can be answered very quickly, for Jesus spends chapters talking about it. The kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like, how often do we hear

Him explaining and describing the kingdom of heaven for the benefit of His hearers? But when you think about a kingdom, let's be very simple.

A kingdom necessarily has a king, and we already know who that is. Chapters 1 through 4 talk to us about who the king is.

So to possess the kingdom of heaven is to have heaven's man as our king. To belong to the kingdom of heaven is to have

Jesus Christ as king. And we see that this kingdom is a present tense possession, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and yet there's all manner of future certainties.

They shall be filled, they shall be comforted, they shall see God. So there's all these future tense ahead of us, even though it's a present tense reality.

And we get the significance of this kingdom being of heaven rather than being of the earth.

Now, this contrast has been made already back in the original location where Jesus and the apostles get the language of kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God and get it from Daniel.

In Daniel 2 .44, it says, in the days of these kings, in the days of these kings, this kingdom will be established.

And what kings were those? Well, the vision shows the rock that is Christ, uncut by human hands, coming down from heaven and smashing into the age of the emperors in the fourth empire of Rome.

Very clearly, this is when the kingdom shows up. The apostles knew it. And this kingdom is not like the other kingdoms.

The other kingdoms were in the shape of a man, right? The head, the shoulders and arms, the waist and the legs, four different precious metals, all in the shape of a man.

And what was it described? Standing on the earth. These are all kingdoms of the earth. But the kingdom that comes from heaven is not like those kingdoms.

It is uncut by human hands, whereas the idol is very much shaped in human hands.

What a contrast. And so, the kingdom of heaven comes in and crashes into this statue of men, undoes all of these kingdoms, and then grows to become a mountain that fills the entirety of the earth.

And so, for the more literal -minded of us, now we're thinking of an ice cream cone upside down.

It's a mountain on top of the earth, it fills the entire... No. It is a power and an authority, a dominion that fills the earth.

You know, which is why today we have all manner of fellow kingdom subjects in all different tribes, tongues, and nations.

His mountain, His kingdom is filling up the earth. And so, preaching the gospel of the kingdom accords with that as Jesus tells different parables and examples and shows how

His kingdom spreads and how it's different and superior to the kingdoms of men. Now, verse 11 tells us the person to be loved, and that, of course, is

Christ. "'Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you, falsely for My sake.'"

Falsely for My sake. Very clearly, this comes from thinking about a system to a

Savior. Both are true, but our focus should be upon the Savior. It's for His sake, right?

Putting our attention there. He's the one that we love, and when we rightly order our affections, it's for the sake of Jesus that we would be blessed if we are persecuted.

We will be reviled. That means they will lie about us in mean ways.

To put it as simply as you can, they're going to say nasty things about us that are not true as a standard way of talking.

This has happened again and again in the book of Acts as we see Paul going and preaching the gospel in a variety of places.

How often does he get reviled? How often is Christ blasphemed? And Jesus says, no, you are blessed.

When they say all kinds of evil against you, falsely for My sake.

Notice the expression falsely, right? We get no brownie points for them saying things about us for what we actually did that was wrong, right?

And how often do we have that, especially how often is there a scandal in evangelicalism and it comes out that so -and -so who's been saying such -and -such didn't live according to his own standards.

And then there's a big blow up and everybody sees it and how awful that is. But when they say all kinds of evil against us, falsely for Christ's sake, for His sake.

Verse 12, this is the pattern to be lived. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Here is the command. He's saying, fist pump and jump up and down in celebration. Congratulations, you get an

A. Be happy about this and truly rejoice about this, because they persecuted the prophets before you.

This is the same they you'll notice in verse 11 who reviled, he says, when they revile you, when they say evil things about you, and you start hunting around for the antecedent for this pronoun.

It's like, well, who's the they? All of a sudden, it's they, they are doing this and they are doing, well, who are they?

And you're not going to find a really great candidate for the they in this passage other than this, that they are the same that persecuted the prophets who were before you.

That's as specific as he gets. And who was it who persecuted the prophets who were before the saints?

It wasn't the Romans. The Romans didn't even know about the prophets. Who was it?

Yeah. And so, there were the unfaithful, prideful, idolatrous leaders in the

Jewish nation who were not faithful. There were other faithful ones who were grieved by sin and tried to do the right thing.

And, of course, the prophets themselves that proclaimed God's Word appropriately. But then there were many others who were idolatrous in a variety of ways, and they are the ones who persecuted the prophets.

They didn't like Isaiah. They didn't like Jeremiah. They didn't like Ezekiel. They didn't like all the prophets, and they targeted them and persecuted them.

How often are the stories of Elijah and Elisha about them being persecuted, right? So Jesus is identifying where the strongest resistance is going to be for His audience.

And this makes a whole lot of sense because He's describing who are the real people of God.

They're the blessed ones who are in the kingdom, and that doesn't sit well with those who think that they're blessed of God simply by being born.

There's a whole lot of Jews who have, in Jesus' day, who have this ethnic pride, and they're going to be very upset with Jesus saying these types of things and very angry at those who drove the way, and they're going to persecute them.

He said, but they did that to the prophets before you. And of course, Jesus goes into greater detail about that in Matthew chapter 23, right before He pronounces judgment upon Jerusalem.

Now, Jesus says, rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

You're going to be rewarded for this suffering. It's not going to be meaningless. Very often, we get the idea that if we try to do the right thing and say the right thing and people respond poorly, well, that was pointless.

Oh, no, no, no. Not according to heaven. It's not. It's not pointless according to heaven. There is reward.

There is joy. There is something good out of that. And they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

This is long in tradition, the scribes and the Pharisees.

It is significant that the righteousness which they persecute stands in agreement with the prophets.

Think about that. The prophets declared the meaning and direction of the old covenant.

They declared the need for the people's repentance and faith in God's promises. They called all the people to fear

God, forsake their idolatry, forsake their immorality, forsake their injustices, and that Jesus Christ and His people would be persecuted as the prophets were, indicates that Jesus Christ in His kingdom is the meaning and the direction of the covenants that the prophets preached from the very beginning.

So who is in the real line of meaning of the Old Testament? Who is bringing forward the true meaning of the scriptures?

Who really has the right idea about what all of this means in the Bible? Well, it's

Christ and all His followers. They're the ones who are truly carrying forward the faith that was proclaimed for thousands of years.

When we look at the followers of the way, the Christians versus the temple loyalists or the law loyalists, and ask which one stands in the proper progression of the scriptures, which group is the main group, which group is the breakaway group, what would the saints say?

Well, they say it in 1 John 2, they left us. They say antichrist, the spirit of antichrist is very clear, they left us, denying that Jesus is the

Christ. Romans don't know who Jesus is or what the big deal about the

Messiah is at all. The ones who denied that Jesus was the Christ and that the Son of God came in the flesh, which

John identifies as antichrist in 1 John, are the Jews, the temple Jews, the law -abiding, the law -zealous

Jews. And so they're the ones who actually left. They were the dissenters, something to keep in mind as Jesus teaches.

Now, let's move on to the kingdom's publicity or their public testimony in verses 13 through 16.

We have these two expressions that are very classic and favored, salt and light.

What they teach us in the main is that there is no possible way to make the

Christian religion a private matter that has no impact on public life. Any politician that says that their

Christianity is a private matter doesn't have Christianity. Christianity at its heart is salt and light, or it's nothing at all.

It's actually something that is transformative and overflows and touches everything, or it's nothing at all.

And this is the way Jesus tells it. First of all, we have salt. In verse 13, you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?

It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. So Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth.

Now, what does that mean? Now, that is the expression that we have in our common tongue. When somebody says, oh, you're the salt of the earth, what do they mean by that?

They're not calling someone Lot's wife. That's a different thing. But when someone is described as the salt of the earth, what is normally meant by that?

Well, yeah, but I mean, this is used about people, right? Really good person, really good person.

Somebody you want in your town, right? Somebody you want maybe on the city council of some small town somewhere.

Someone that makes a really good neighbor, salt of the earth, right? That's how it's been used, and it's a fairly accurate rendering of the idea.

It's not as specific as it could be, but the salt of the earth is the metaphor that we have to understand.

And notice that the follow -through on the next portion of verse 13 envisions an idea of what happens if salt becomes unsalty.

It's good for nothing, right? But I'll tell you what's good for everything, salt.

Unsalty salt's good for nothing, but salty salt, well, that's good for everything, especially in the days of Jesus.

Salt was so useful. It was used for all kinds of things in the ancient world. Salt could aid in fertilization, or in abundance, it could be used to curse a land.

Salt preserved and seasoned food. It was used in dyeing textiles and in tanning hides.

Salt was helpful in some forms of construction and in various types of construction. It was used in the practice of medicine, thus it was used in trade.

Sometimes, soldiers were paid in salt for their wages. Salt was used in covenant making, in rituals, in sacrifices, and more than anything, when you read the

Bible, salt is connected with the idea of purification, purification.

It was used to sanctify sacrifices in Leviticus, used to purify babies, we read about in Ezekiel 16, it was used to cleanse water in 2

Kings 2, and it was used in covenants to testify to the purity of the intentions of those who were agreeing with one another.

And so, normally, we think of salt as a preservative, but why is it a preservative? Because it purifies.

So the root of the idea of salt being a preserving thing is the idea that it purifies.

A lot of food was preserved by salt. I mean, this is the way that they kept food for a long time.

In most of world history, that's how meat was preserved, and a lot of different types of food was preserved, was just by salt.

If we can imagine a world today without refrigeration, that's hard to do, can you imagine your world today without refrigeration?

Imagine a world without salt. How much life goes away if salt goes away?

That's the construct that Jesus is building in the minds of His hearers. The normal interpretation of this verse is that without Christians, society rots quickly.

Well, who can argue with that? The root of that is salt is about purification.

Christ's blessed people are the salt of the earth. It means that we have a direct, meaningful impact in the world today.

Salt isn't a preservative to be packed away, you know, with, you know, moisture absorbers, kind of put aside, a little bit of rice there in the salt, keep it from clumping, and then put away for 50 -year storage for the apocalypse when we can finally break it out, right?

Salt is an everyday thing. Salt is an everybody thing.

It's to be out there and to be used. It's not to be tucked away and preserved for a grand exit.

And whatever the meaning of salt of the earth, it's going to accord with the light of the world. Now, you think about how everyday salt is, how much is everyday light, right?

Light is an everyday thing. Look at useful salt is, how useful is light.

How welcome is salt? How welcome is light? These are going together, and so we're thinking about the earth, we're thinking about the world, we're thinking about that scope of Christ's kingdom is going to be a whole lot bigger than the

Levant. It's going to be a lot bigger than Palestine. It's going to be a lot bigger than Canaan.

It's going to be a lot bigger than any kind of boundary territory in the old covenant. We're talking about the earth.

We're talking about the world. The Old Testament says, the meek shall inherit the land. Jesus says, the meek shall inherit the earth.

He's thinking much bigger. He's thinking new covenant, not old covenant. So, when we think about the salt of the earth, we need to think about it's more than just a solid citizen, it's more than being a generous neighbor, it's more than virtue signaling, it's more than therapeutic compassion,

I do good things for people because it makes me feel good, right? It's about a world that is in need of purification.

The earth under the reign of Christ. Remember that we are God's image being renewed in Christ, thus renewing

His creation by His resurrection life. We are blessed to be a blessing in all ways and in all directions.

That's the whole idea of the Beatitudes being followed up by these metaphors of salt and light, blessed to be a blessing.

The idea of salt losing its flavor, I mean, how does that do that? A lot of people begin to get out their chemistry textbooks now and says, okay, how does sodium chloride break down?

Actually, let's think about how they got salt in the land of Israel. Where would they find salt?

The Dead Sea. Boy, there was a lot of salt. And they would go grab water out of the

Dead Sea, get all that white clumpy stuff out of the Dead Sea and put it out in the sun, let it evaporate, and it'd have this white dust.

And there was salt in there and a bunch of other stuff. But it was white powder and they would use it and the salt that was in the white powder would do its job.

But what would happen if that got wet? The first thing to dissolve would be the sodium chloride and what was left was white dust that had no salt.

And you'd be sprinkling white dust on stuff and, boy, that doesn't taste like what it's supposed to taste like. And you put your white dust on the meat, but, boy, that meat rotted, didn't it?

And all of a sudden, you have unsalty salt. Jesus is just making a common observation, you know, when your salt isn't salty, it's just useless, isn't it?

Good for nothing but road dust, throw it out in the street. The street, by the way, was the big garbage bin in the ancient

Near East. If you didn't like something, you just threw it out in the middle of the road and that's where it would go. And if you had unsalty salt, just throw it out in the middle of the road.

What else is it good for? Throw it in the trash. D .A.

Carson put it like this, the purpose of salt is to fight deterioration and therefore it must not itself deteriorate.

I would put it more fundamentally, salt is prized for purification, so what happens if it becomes impure?

What good is it? So, the saints, the blessed ones, we are more than a moral disinfectant for society.

There's a truth to that, but there's a whole lot more about it because it's not simply that we are retarding the progress of slime and corruption, it's that we are following a king and we're calling everyone else to follow that king and to submit to his authority and to go his direction.

The last metaphor is that of light, you are the light of the world, a city that is set on the hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a lampstand and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your

Father in heaven. Now, when it says, you are the light of the world,

Jesus is speaking to His disciples, to the multitudes, everybody who would own Him as king, everybody who would be blessed to be a part of His kingdom,

He's saying to them, you are the light of the world. Now, that might be a little surprising because,

I thought Jesus was the light of the world. And He says that He is the light of the world in the

Gospel of John. He also is called the light of the world in Matthew chapter 4.

So the king has already been identified as the light to the nations in Matthew chapter 4.

Now, He's saying to His kingdom subjects, you are the light of the world. Well, how can that be?

Because He's the one who set them on fire, He's the one who lit them up, He's the one who has blessed them to be a blessing.

So we are not furthering our agendas, we're not pushing forward our fame and our glory, but we're setting forth the fame and the glory and the goodness of Christ.

It is in this way that we do our good works so that our Father in heaven is the one who is glorified rather than us.

I think it's funny how the Sunday school song has become a very pop secular song,

This Little Light of Mine. How is it sung? In the popular secular side,

This Little Light of Mine is all about, I'm going to showcase myself. I'm going to put myself out there. I'm going to believe in myself and present myself as this bright light that everybody should look at and watch.

And I'm not going to let anybody poof it out. And the whole idea of the metaphor is lost.

And so, when we look at the Scriptures, the light that we have is very particular. And we have to identify our light in Christ's light.

Now, Isaiah 9 is the passage that is quoted in Matthew 4, that Jesus is the light of the nations.

But also we have Isaiah 42, verse 6, I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness.

This is God speaking to Messiah, as recorded by the prophet

Isaiah. And I will hold your hand. I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the

Gentiles, a light to the nations. So, the Lord says to my

Lord, David says, well, Isaiah got to listen in to. And God says to Messiah, I am going to give you as a covenant, you yourself, your person is going to be the covenant.

So Jesus Christ in His humanity is the ark of the covenant. He bears the covenant.

He offers His blood and body as the new covenant. And this means that He is the light of the nations.

He is the light of the world. And so everybody in Him, following Him, we reflect that light.

The same thing is said in Isaiah 49, verse 6. But even more clearly in Isaiah 60, verses 1 through 3, speaking to Zion, the mountain, to Zion, the city, the new covenant people in the

Messiah was said to them, Isaiah 60, verse 1, arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the

Lord has risen upon you. So they shine because their light has come, right? So why are they a city on a hill shining forth?

Because their light has come, who is Messiah, the King. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people, but the

Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles, that's the nations, it's all the different tribes, tongues, and peoples, they shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.

So this was long anticipated. You know, Jesus, in the next passage,

He's going to say, I didn't come to destroy, to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill.

So He's taking up the Old Testament, and He's preaching it as He goes along in the Sermon on the

Mount. And He's like, I'm here to fulfill it. This is happening now. Remember how

He read when He went to His hometown of Nazareth, and He read out of Isaiah? It says, today, this has been fulfilled in your hearing.

It made Him mad, but it was the truth. So He's preaching the fulfillment of the

Old Testament, and He's doing so here, saying that those who belong to His kingdom should be identified as this promised

Zion. They should be identified as those whose light has come. They should be identified as those who were commanded all the way back in Isaiah 60 to shine, because they are to give glory to God.

So when we think about the expressions, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. The Old Testament is filled with promises of a city yet to come, and the

New Testament agrees with that. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

The impossibility of hiding a well -lit, elevated city is braced with the foolishness of lighting an oil lamp and hiding it under a bushel.

Both of those are nonsense. What are we told? We are shown that Zion is a city that has no walls, according to Zechariah chapter 2, but its borders are what?

Righteousness. The kingdom of heaven in its populace is a people who occupy a place well -seen by all, but they're throughout all the world, throughout all the earth.

And their obviousness is not related simply to their elevation, but to their illumination.

Thus, the works that they do is for the glory of their

Father who is in heaven. Just to be clear, how can we be sure that there is a clear and clean attribution of glory to the heavenly

Father when we're the ones doing the good works? It's kind of nice to get a pat on the back, kind of nice to get a handshake.

Boy, you are awesome. You are so kind and wonderful. Thank you for coming over and doing this wonderful thing. Well, I could use an injection of that every day.

I could live for that, right? But that's not what I was made to live for. How is it that we make sure that we are not honored and we are not elevated, but God, our heavenly

Father is? How do we make sure that that occurs? Notice that Jesus says, let your light so shine.

The word so means in this manner, in this manner, in the manner of the aforementioned salt and light and blessedness, that they may see your good works and glorify your

Father in heaven. So if we will do good works for the pleasure of our

Father rather than the demands of men, then the glory will go where it's supposed to.

Many will demand of the saints, well, you're Christians. You ought to be doing this, this, this, this, this, and this.

Sorry, we have one King, right? We have one Lord. We have one authority. We have one

Father in heaven. So, and here's what He wants us to do, and we're going to be doing this, this, this, and this. Sometimes you'll see maybe that there's a crossover on the list, but we're not doing it because it's on your list.

We're doing it because this is what God wants us to do. And we're going to give glory to God, our heavenly Father, rather than being pulled along by the demands of men, which change every half decade.

Okay, next time, we're going to look at only four verses because those four verses have more

Bible in them than half the New Testament. So we're just going to do our very best to grab hold of the next four verses in our next session.

Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you so much for the day that you've given us. We thank you for the reminders of our blessedness, even though we are persecuted.

And we thank you for the metaphors of salt and light. I pray that these images would be in our minds, that we would meditate upon them to be blessed by them.