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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 5
Matthew 5:13-16
On Sunday you heard about the tasks to which you, along with all Christians, have been called, tasks to perform throughout your earthly life, tasks that serve to build up Christ’s beloved Church. They’re not flashy, extraordinary tasks. They’re the tasks involved in daily sanctification, as we walk not according to the flesh but according to the New Man who is led by the Spirit of God, as we speak, and behave, and even think differently, righteously, with reverence for God and love for our neighbor. They’re the tasks that form the Christian life—distinguishing the Christian life from the life of unbelievers, forcing the world to acknowledge that you and I, as Christians, are different, that we are servants of God, that we have something special as members of Christ’s holy Church, that we have something to offer to the world, something precious, something admirable, something desirable.
In the four verses you heard this evening from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught His disciples that lesson by using two metaphors to describe what Christians truly are: You are salt, He says. And you are light.
You are the salt of the earth. You Christians, you children of God, you who know God, who know the difference between right and wrong, who know Jesus’ love and Jesus’ sacrifice, who have been born again, and who know how to lead God-pleasing lives in the world—you are the salt of the earth. You add a necessary component to human society. When you live as Christians in the world, when you speak like Christians, when you behave as God’s Spirit teaches you to behave in His Word, then you have a positive effect on the world.
That doesn’t mean, as some people think it means, that Christians are supposed to take over the world, or control the culture. Far from it! Salt isn’t supposed to take over a dish. It’s supposed to enhance everything it touches, make it tastier, make it better. And so you do, in the world, when you live lives of love, when you live according to God’s commandments, when your words are seasoned with God’s word and with God’s truth, and with praise for the God of your salvation. You enhance the world when you keep apart from wickedness—without smugly or pridefully looking down on the wicked. You make the world better when you don’t return insult for insult or injury for injury, but entrust your cause to God. You season the world when you choose to suffer rather than to sin, when you choose to forgive rather than holding a grudge, when you choose to hope rather than despair.
But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it become salty again? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. In other words, you are intended to be a blessing to the world. You’re intended to be a good influence on it. But if you Christians fail to be what you are, if you fail to live differently from how the unbelievers of the world live, if you go right along with them in their focus on this life, and in pursuing the riches, cares, and pleasures of it, then what good are you? Then you become like salt that has lost its flavor, that no longer has any purpose. Be careful not to let that happen!
Then Jesus moves on to His second metaphor. You are the light of the world. You know how dark this world is. People don’t know the true God by nature. The natural knowledge of God, the things that are knowable about God through nature, aren’t nearly enough to guide anyone to Him. How much less in these especially dark times in which we live, when most people deny even the things about God that they could and should know from nature. The world is dark when it comes to knowing and believing in God. It’s dark when it comes to knowing right from wrong. It’s dark in its wickedness and violence, and in its hatred of Christ and His Church, and even of truth itself. But the Lord Jesus has left behind a light in this dark world, a light for men to know Him, a light for men to be saved, a light for men to walk by so that they no longer live as slaves to sin. You are that light—you, and every Christian, everyone whom God has called out of darkness into His marvelous light. You are the light that God has given to this dark and dying world, to reflect Christ, who is the true Light, to those who sit in darkness.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. This is where Ronald Reagan, and the Puritans before him, got their image of America (or the city of Boston) being a “shining city on a hill.” But they took that image out of context. The “city on a hill” isn’t a city, or a country. It’s the Holy Christian Church, which is not synonymous with any city or country on earth. God has set the Church on a hill, as it were, to be a light, to be a beacon, to be a fortress in which men can find refuge.
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. Again, God has placed you, the members of His Church, as lights in the world that are not to be hidden away, that are not to be covered, but as lights that are to shine brightly and give light to all people. That doesn’t mean that each of you is to be seen by everyone, everywhere in the world. It just means that, in the scope of your existence, in the ways in which God enables you to interact with other people, He has put you there, intentionally, to give light to those around you.
Let your light so shine before men, Jesus says, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Letting your light shine means doing good works in the sight of men, shunning evil, doing and saying what is right, good, helpful, and beneficial, not to earn a place in heaven for yourself, but all for your Father’s glory, that men may see you, a Christian, living unhypocritically, living a sincere, genuine, godly, upright life, that men may give praise and glory to God for turning you into such a person, and for being such a great God that His children are led to serve Him in the world with such grace and with such truth.
Now, you and I know that not all Christians live as such lights. It doesn’t matter! There’s nothing you can or need to do about “them.” All you need to focus on is you, how you live, how you speak, how your light shines. Focus on yourself, and let your light shine!
But, this is important. Only focus on yourself when the question is, what would God have me do as His child in the world? When you’re called upon to live your life in the world, that is the question before you. But at other times, when it comes to your soul, your conscience, when it comes to your salvation, then the question is different. How can I know that I have a gracious God? How can I know that He accepts me as a son or a daughter? When that is the question, you dare not focus on yourself at all. When that is the question, focus only on the Lord Jesus Christ, and what He has done for you. Why are you the light of the world? Because Christ, the true Light, has shined on you with His Gospel, called you to faith in Him, and forgiven you all your sins. Only now, as a forgiven, accepted, beloved child of God, are you called to this crucial task of living as the salt of the earth and as the light of the world. May everything you say and do point people to the Lord Jesus! Amen.
