“The Works of God”

Scripture: Matthew 5:13-20

From now until Lent begins, we will be taking a look at a few of the messages that come to us from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Of course, 5 weeks is in no way sufficient to cover all of the sermon, so we’ll just have to consider some of the other ones at a later date.
The overall tone of the Lord’s message offers teachings in 3 general areas – discipleship, trust in God, and the moral way for all who would profess a relationship with the Lord.

During his presidency, Abraham Lincoln regularly attended worship services at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. The pastor was Dr. Phineas Gurley. On one particular evening, while walking home from church, an aide asked President Lincoln about Dr. Gurley's sermon. The President replied in fragmented phrases: The content was excellent...he delivered it with eloquence...he had put work into the message...
“Then you thought it was a great sermon?” asked the aide.
“No”, replied the President. “Dr. Gurley forgot the most important ingredient. He forgot to ask us to do something great!”
- From Homiletics Online

Jesus wants us to know greatness. As we journey toward Lent, open your hearts to each of Jesus’ teachings, and consider what great thing he may be asking you to do.

Read Matthew 5:13-16

Jesus calls the church to be three things – salt, a light to the world, and a city that is obvious, strong, and focused. But what do each of these imply for our lives?
Each of them is an attribute that every disciple of Jesus should strive to exhibit. None of these– not salt or light or a great city - exist for their own benefit. They are for the lives that experience them. And we who follow cannot see our life in faith as an “end all” mission to benefit ourselves – we are to be a witness and blessing to the world.

The term “salt” can have any number of meanings. In Leviticus 2:13, we read that Israel was to add salt to all grain offerings, as a sign of the covenant they had with God. As such, Jesus may have been reminding his followers of the importance of loyalty in their relationship with Almighty God. In 2 Kings 2:19-22, Elisha uses salt to make a spring of bad water good to drink, so salt can also be seen as a sign of healing and new life. And we all know that salt is used to season and flavor our food, and that not so long ago, it was used to preserve meat for long periods of time.
In being called to be “The salt of the earth”, we are 1) to remember our covenant with God – that we are to be loyal to the one who has saved us, and to allow him to use these lives as he desires; 2) that we are to be healers in the world – not necessarily in a physical sense, but in relationships that have been damaged between people, and between them and the Lord; 3) to help others to experience the true “flavor” of a life in Christ; and 4) to be intentional in our efforts in preserving the truth and fullness of the Christian faith.

Then there is the “light of the world” – at first glance, this could be seen as a call for us to actually be that light, but I believe that Jesus is calling us to be his light-bearers throughout the world. Light itself is not what is important, the thing that is to be seen. The important issue is whatever is being illuminated by its light. The Light of Christ is that which presents the truth of God, that exposes false faith and other evils, that reveals obstacles in our faith walk that can trip us up. The world is filled with darkness, and while darkness is used to hide things and people, the light reveals those things for all to see.
Again, the light is not for light’s purpose – it is God’s gift to the world, and the displaying of his Light is our mission to the people of the earth.

And the city on a hill – what’s that all about? It is, I believe, a symbol representing the Church. A city on a hill can be seen from a long way off, it is highly defensible, and can be a place of refuge for those who are under attack. The Church must be obvious in a very powerful and Godly way, it must be defended against all who would pervert and attack it, and it must be available and open and supportive to all who are struggling and persecuted and oppressed.

Jesus was, himself, each of these. Jesus is our salt –faithful in his relationship to the Father and to us, he is the one who makes true faith possible, he is the one who preserves us for eternity; Jesus is the light – he illuminates our sins and helps us to reject them, he lights our way through this world and into the next, and he exposes false teaching and false prophets for what they truly are – lies; and Jesus is the city – he is our refuge and our strength. And he calls each and every person who would be his disciple to be the same for others.

Read Matthew 5:17-20

This passage has been a difficult lesson for people throughout the ages. He has come, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And yet, the Lord was constantly in hot water with the Pharisees because he always seemed to be contradicting the law of the day, and he flat out ignored many of them. He healed people without the benefit of the temple’s priestly order, and there were even a few he healed on the Sabbath; he associated with the wrong kinds of people, such as Samaritans, women, tax collectors, and those other “unclean” people; he forgave sin, when everyone knew that only God could do that (!); and his teachings were, in general, constantly in conflict with those of the Pharisees. a
And in his sermon, he says that he has not come to abolish the law, and will actually be fulfilling it. As a matter of fact, not a single word of it will ever be taken away! Is it any wonder that there is confusion over this matter? The truth is there, though. In the New International Version, the word “Law” is capitalized, and when I checked about 25 other translations and paraphrases, about ½ had the same or similar emphases. The implication is that the Law (capitalized) refers to God’s law, and not the general law that is attributed to Moses. As a matter of fact, only the New Living Translation and Peterson’s The Message actual use the words “God’s Law”.

Remember that Israel placed a very high regard in the ritual of faith – sacrifice, adherence to personal laws, and so on. They believed that failure to do so would incur the wrath of God, and your relationship with him could be irreparably damaged. Jesus turned it all around by deemphasizing the things we do, and rightly placed the emphasis on faith in God and morality with each other. He never eliminated “good works” from our efforts, but they no longer could gain eternal life for us. They would become a response to faith, and not a means to it.

So, Jesus is telling us that God’s Law will never change in any way, shape or form. And not only are we not to break these Laws, we aren’t to teach, or even encourage, others to break the Law. He says that those who do will be called “least” in heaven. I’m not sure what “least” actually means in this context, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't a good thing!

Jesus tells us that our righteousness – our faith – must be greater than that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Their entire approach to faith was about earning your way into God’s good graces, of condemning anyone who thought differently, of believing that perfection in this life had to be achieved by doing things perfectly. But Jesus would teach us that there is no human way to earn perfection in this life – that salvation can only come through faith in him and trust in his great acts of redemption.

At the beginning of this message, I mentioned that there were three aspects to Jesus sermon – discipleship, trust in God, and living a moral life. We certainly covered the first, at least in part – that a disciple of his must live as he lived – to be faithful in bringing a true and joy filled faith to the world, to carry the light of Christ wherever we go, and to live our faith in an obvious and natural way.
As for “trust in God”, we are to know that his Laws are good and that they can never be changed. As for morality - the way we live with each other within God’s Laws - we will see some specifics later in this series. And later, Jesus will reemphasize this when he says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God (trust) with all that you are, and that the second is to love your neighbor (live morally) as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40)

So for this week, let’s begin focusing on our discipleship – the way we walk and the way we talk with our Lord. That we don’t do it just on Sunday, or when we are in the presence of other Christians, but all the time – when we are in the checkout line at the grocery store, when we get cut off in traffic, when we become angry over something that happens at home, when we are choosing a show or movie to watch on television, when we decide on an activity for our spare time, and on and on.
And when the Spirit of the Lord speaks to us, let’s not say “later”, or “maybe”, or even “soon”. Let the Lord be our guide every moment, of every hour, of every day. And when we do, we will be on the way to being “called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
And that will be a glorious day indeed!