Salt and Light: Bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth (Matt 5:1-16)

Living towards the day: ‘Salt and Light’ (Matthew 5:1-16)

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The series Living Till the Day is looking at the Sermon on the Mount, so Matthew 5 to Matthew 7. I encourage you guys to read it. This series is the whole term, so maybe you can read through Matthew this term and see the context that this is coming from.

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Anyway, let me pray. Father, we thank you that we can come and gather and be together. Thank you that part of us gathering and being together is being able to open your Word and see what you taught your disciples and how that applies to us.

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And I pray that you would be speaking to us as a body and speaking to us as your people and helping us to become more like you. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. “What Child Is This”

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is the famous Christmas hymn from the mid-1800s, but the tune that the song was written to was from a much earlier song called Greensleeves.

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And Greensleeves is a very secular song. It’s to do with desired promiscuity of a lost love. So what did people think when those first few notes of Greensleeves was played in a church building on Christmas Day of 1871? Shocked. Surely they were shocked. What are they doing? What are we attending?

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But as the song went on, maybe they began to realize the words. Is this a correction? Is this a reorientation of Greensleeves, a story about love that comes not through promiscuity, but through the

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baby Jesus? But it’s all sung to a familiar tune that we all know. In Matthew’s Gospel, just before this passage in Matthew 5, Jesus has been going from town to town proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven has come near, chapter 4, verse 17.

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And He’s evoked a crowd from all over the place, verse 23 to 25 of chapter 4, and they want to be healed, but they also wanna hear what He has to say. Because they look around them, the kingdom that they live in, the Empire of Rome, and they see a powerful kingdom that grows by force.

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They see a kingdom that is rough. And then, even more on a local level, on an individual level, people are coming to Jesus for healing. At the end of chapter 4, there’s brokenness and death and sickness and loneliness and pain. And those kinds of

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people were the ones coming to Jesus to hear about the Kingdom of Heaven.

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What is it gonna be like? What is the Kingdom of Heaven gonna be like? Will it fix my problems? Will it heal my wounds? Will it bring rest and renewal to the world around me? And maybe we ask the same question as we seek to bring the Kingdom of God to the Blue Mountains. Will it fix the problems? Will it heal my wounds?

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Will it bring rest and renewal? Now, I’m gonna give a little overview on the Beatitudes, and then look at the salt and light passage that we looked at briefly last week, and then some practical aspects of it all afterwards. The Beatitudes, Jesus is traveling, proclaiming the Kingdom of God has come, and then He goes onto a mountainside, and He introduces his most dense and familiar teaching.

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He turns to his disciples, but he’s in

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earshot of the crowds. And he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted. Blessed” Why?

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Because theirs is the Kingdom of God. They will be filled. They will inherit the earth. They will see God, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. What is Jesus doing here? Well, firstly, he’s telling a poem. There’s repetition. In the Greek, there’s alliteration. There’s 36 words in each section.

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There’s sandwiching of phrasing. There’s rhythm to it. It’s a beautiful poem.

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But what’s he doing with the poem? Well, he’s doing the same thing that he has been doing as he’s traveling from synagogue to synagogue. He’s proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Beatitudes is not just an introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, it’s an introduction to the Kingdom of God.

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And like the song “What Child Is This?”, this introduction to the Kingdom of God is both shocking, but it’s also familiar. As Jesus speaks to his disciples with the crowds listening in, He says, “This is the kind of people that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to.” And it is shocking. It contrasts with what they all see around them, the powers and the riches of Rome and Caesar, of prestige and hierarchy.

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And it’s supposed to be

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shocking because you can’t imagine a kingdom belonging to such people that Jesus says in this poem. But also, it’s supposed to be familiar because not only does it so richly contrast with culture, but it also plays to the same tune as the promises of God throughout salvation and biblical history.

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Psalm 37 says, “The meek will inherit the land.” Isaiah 40, “Comfort will come on those who are mourning.” Psalm 18, “With the merciful, God shows himself merciful.” So throughout all of God’s historical interaction with his people, he seeks to restore what was broken after Eden, and it is the weak that he uses.

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Abraham and Moses and Joseph, it is

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these people that he partners with. So in one sense, the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount is shocking because it contrasts so much, but in another, it follows the same melodic line of what the kingdom of God breaking into Earth looks like.

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The kinds of people that God consistently moves towards and through are the meek, the mourning, and the peacemakers. They are the blessed. Not because they mourn more than other people, but because theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and because this is the kind of people through whom God delights to bring the kingdom.

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Now, there’s so much more on the Beatitudes. We’re gonna spend the next three weeks there as well. But for now, let’s look at this salt and light passage that we chatted about in groups last week.

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Throughout the Beatitudes, Jesus uses general terms, “Blessed are those who mourn… those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

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And then he finishes the poem in verse 11 and 12 by applying the generalization to the disciples. He says, “Blessed are you.” For the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, he is talking to the disciples as the people who the kingdom of God belongs to.

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That is really important. The “you” spoken throughout the rest of the sermon refers to the disciples as the people talked about in the Beatitudes. The people who have the kingdom and have the hope of seeing God, being comforted, and being called children of God.

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The “you” are the poor, the mourning, the

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peacemaking, persecuted ones. And if you are in the Kingdom of God, then the “you” is us as well.

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John Stott asks a great question: “What possible influence could the people described in the Beatitudes exert in this hard, tough world? What lasting good can the poor and the meek do, the mourners and the merciful? Would they not simply be overwhelmed by the flood tide of evil?

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What can they accomplish whose only passion is an appetite for righteousness, and whose only weapon is purity of heart? Are not such people too feeble to achieve anything, especially if they’re a small minority in the world?”

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But then

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John Stott says, “But Jesus doesn’t share this skepticism.” Jesus says in verse 13, “You are the salt of the earth. If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It’s no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

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You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father in heaven.”

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It’s pretty radical. Jesus uses two metaphors here: salt

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and light. Both are common household metaphors. Start with salt. Salt brings out the taste and the best in food; it enhances the flavor and its environment.

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But on the other hand, in that culture, salt was a preservative. It kept food from decaying. You rub it all over the meat so it doesn’t go rancid. You are to bring the best out in that culture, and you are to prevent its worst tendencies from happening—the darkness and the decay.

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Now, two things to be aware of:

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community and distinction. Community: salt is always used with other salt. It happens in community. Secondly, distinction: the whole point of salt is that it’s distinct from its environment. You don’t rub meat on meat to preserve meat. You rub salt on meat. It’s got to stay distinct. Its distinctiveness is the very thing that benefits its environment.

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The second metaphor is light. I love when you fly at nighttime over the ocean and it’s pitch black, but then you go over land and see a city—it’s just

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this little golden ball of life.

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It’s so contrasting to the darkness around it. Jesus’ call for his people to be the light of the world means exposing the darkness and bringing hope like a beacon. The same two things stand: community and distinction. A city on a hill is bright because it is a collection of lights.

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But it’s also distinct. Lighting a candle in an already lit room does nothing. Light is distinct from darkness. So salt and light bring

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goodness and hope into the world together as the people of God, set apart from the world.

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This idea of bringing hope set apart from the world works perfectly with the imagery of a city on a hill. Jesus isn’t thinking of a random town, but the one created to be distinct: ancient Jerusalem.

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Everyone in the crowd knew what it was to see those lights after a long trek through the

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Judean country. But the best thing about that light was where it led. At the peak of the hill, on Mount Zion, was the temple of God. The lights brought travelers upward to the place where God’s glory lay.

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The picture Jesus paints is a distinct people who expose darkness and point upward to God. That’s who you are.

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You are the

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salt. You are the light. Are you poor in spirit? Mourning, meek, merciful? If so, you are salt and light.

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It’s remarkable. And what’s more remarkable is that Jesus brought this into reality. He is the one who mourns over death and decay. He is the peacemaker, bringing reconciliation. He is the pure in heart, the persecuted, the merciful.

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He is the carrier of the kingdom. He is the light of the world who points to the top of the hill—but to a

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different hill, where he took the cross and died for everybody to see, becoming the beacon of hope that leads the world to God. No matter how poor or meek we are, we are offered a part to play in the spreading of this kingdom.

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We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. A distinct people who prevent decay and lead the world to the welcoming arms of Jesus.

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Soma is a city on a hill, distinct from the world, and it is that very distinction that benefits the environment.

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Now, how can we do this? N.T. Wright says in his book, “Surprised by Hope,” that there are three main ways: mercy, evangelism, and beauty.

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Mercy or justice: we are to serve those treated unjustly. We heed the call in Matthew 25 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for the stranger.

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Writing this, I was convicted that I do not do nearly what I could. We sit in a hard space between wealth and poverty.

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Our culture is one of comfort. To be merciful here means finding ourselves in between as salt and light, knowing the way to restoration is lighting the way to Jesus.

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We’ve been working on Soma Supply. That’s out of a heart for justice—wanting, even on a small local

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scale, to serve those around us.

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It’s small, but it matters. Please make use of Soma Supply. Other gospel communities have done a lot in this space, and many in our church have chosen this as their vocation.

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The second thing is evangelism. Proclaiming the gospel of God.

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N.T. Wright says, “If we’re engaging in the work of the new creation, there stands the personal call of the gospel to every person.”

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Evangelism has become a buzzword we shiver at. That’s fine. Don’t use the word. But lighting the way to Jesus means speaking the goodness of the kingdom.

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Finding a way to tell friends that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, and that the powers of evil have been

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defeated. Speaking this truth is being salt and light.

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The third thing is beauty. Overlooked, but so relevant in the Blue Mountains. Hope-centered artistry gives a felt experience of the kingdom.

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There is a reason Apple products play beautiful music behind slideshows. Art is intended to engage our affections.

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A good song makes your heart soften to its message. We have a message that things aren’t okay, but the kingdom of God has come. Beauty sheds light on hope.

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Art captures the pain of the world but points toward the promise of goodness. It can be both salt and light—preserving the good and

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exposing the dark.

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Just like “What Child Is This?” uses Greensleeves to expose wrong areas people look for love, Jesus evokes a crowd who sees local brokenness, death, and pain.

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They gather to hear: Will this fix my problems? Heal my wounds? Bring renewal? How did Jesus begin the introduction

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to the Kingdom of Heaven?

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With a poem. With beauty that captured the pain: “Blessed are the poor… those who mourn… those who thirst.” But the poem also points toward hope.

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Because theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. They will be filled. They will see God. So, will it fix my problems? Yes. That’s the promise—that the mourning will be comforted and the

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hungry will be filled.

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Because the Kingdom of Heaven has come near in Jesus. Until he returns, he delights to use those very people to be the salt and light. We get to point to Jesus himself, the king at the top of the hill, welcoming the broken and saying, “Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.”

Amen.