S.O.T.M. Let Your Light So Shine [Matthew 5:13-16]
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S.O.T.M. Let Your Light So Shine [Matthew 5:13-16]
S.O.T.M. Let Your Light So Shine [Matthew 5:13-16]
We come again this morning to this marvelous section on believers as being salt and light in the world. Our focus this morning will be on the practical side of this text, as we looked at defining what salt and light is in the world the last two weeks, we’ll try to apply that to ourselves this morning.
Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 5:13-16]
The last two weeks we’ve considered the two positive statements our Lord made about the Christian; he is the salt of the earth and the light of the world. But Jesus was not content on just making some positive statements and leaving it at that, He went on to emphasize these positive statements by some negative assertions as well. Which He often did. Our Lord wanted those listening to Him then and all Christians of every age to see clearly that we are what He has made us to be in order that we might glorify Him who has redeemed us.
This is one of the great themes running through the bible. Peter captures it in his Epistle [1 Peter 2:9] ‘You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” This is the theme running through all the Epistles of the NT, which again shows the folly of referring to the sermon on the mount as some generic positive standard for all people or even for Christians in a future day. What the apostles do in their letters in the NT is simply elaborate on the teachings Jesus gave here.
The NT letters provide many examples of this, in Philippians 2, the apostle Paul describes Christians as ‘luminaries’ or lights in the world, and exhorts them to hold or shine forth the word of life. He makes constant use of the comparison of light and darkness in order to show how the Christian functions in society because he is a Christian.
Our Lord impresses this on us as Christians, we are to be the salt of the earth. But remember if the salt loses it’s flavor what good is it? You are the light of the world, but remember a city on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do you put a candle under a basket, it’s meant to give light for all to see. Our Lord sums it up with His final statement, ‘Let you light so shine, that they might see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.’
In view of the way in which our Lord emphasizes this it is obvious that we must consider it also. It is not enough just to remember that we are to act as salt in the earth or as the light of the world. We also have to grasp the fact that it must become the biggest thing in the whole of our life i.e. it is who we are in Christ. So let us consider why this is...
Why should a Christian desire to be salt and light?
Why should a Christian desire to be salt and light?
It seems to me our Lord has three main reasons why we should desire to be salt and light in the world. The first being, We are meant to be salt and light. His very comparisons convey that teaching. The business of salt is to be salt, just that. The characteristic of salt is saltness. It is exactly the same with light. The whole function and purpose of light is to give light. We must start there and realize that these things are self-evident and need no illustration. Yet the moment we put it like that, does it not tend to come as a rebuke to us all? How prone we are to forget these essential functions of salt and light. How prone are we to forget our essential function as Christians? To influence the world around us for the glory of God.
As we continue I think we’d all agree that this is something we need constantly to be reminded of…our essential function as Christians. We can easily get caught up in the hustle and bustle of life that we forget our essential function as salt and light in the world. A lamp, as our Lord puts it—and He is just appealing to ordinary, natural common sense—a lamp is lit in order that it may give light to all that are in the house. There is no other purpose in lighting a lamp but that. The whole object is that light may be give light in that particular area. We have to realize what a Christian is by definition and a Christian is what His Lord says he is, salt in a decaying world and light in a dark world.
So from the beginning our Lord is defining what a Christian is and what his essential function and purposes are. So many Christians today are overly concerned in what their purpose in life is, or what plan God has for them. I hear that all the time, “God has a plan for you”, but you notice those who say that never give you any suggestions as to what that plan might be? Well I’m here to tell you, God does have a plan/purpose for you and He’s told each of us what the plan/purpose is…to be salt in a world of decay and light in a world of darkness. I’m not trying to be flippant about this, I’m just pointing out this is every Christians primary function as Christians. This is what we are meant to be.
Second, if we are truly Christians we cannot be hidden. This seems obvious by the illustration our Lord uses in a city set on a hill, it’s quite obvious. Charles Spurgeon said, “Christ has lighted us that we might enlighten the world…God intends his grace to be as conspicuous as a city built on the mountain’s brow.”
Put in a different way, the contrast between us and others is something which is to be quite self-evident and perfectly obvious. But our Lord does not leave it at that; He presses it still further. He asks us, in effect, to imagine a man lighting a light and then putting it under a bushel instead of putting it on a candlestick. Now, in the past, commentators have spent a good deal of their time in defining what is meant by a ‘bushel’, sometimes with amusing results.
To me the important thing is that it covers the light, and it does not matter very much what it is as long as it does that. What our Lord is saying is that it is a ridiculous and contradictory procedure. The whole purpose of lighting a light is that it may give light. And for a foolish man to cover it with something which prevents that quality from manifesting itself is, we are all agreed, utterly ridiculous.
There is obviously a danger, or at least a temptation, that the Christian may behave in this completely ridiculous and futile manner, and that is why He emphasizes the matter in this way. He seems to be saying, ‘I have made you something that is meant to be like a light, like a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. The question is... are you deliberately concealing it? Well, if you are, apart from anything else, it is something which is completely ridiculous and foolish.’ The assertion automatically calls for self-examination.
To not function as salt and light is to render ourselves useless. This is very striking and hard, but the point is straight forward. Salt without flavor is useless. There is only one essential quality of salt and that is saltness. And when salt has lost its saltness it is of no use at all. Now that is not true of everything. Take flowers, for example; when they are alive they are very beautiful and they may have an aroma; but when the flower dies it does not become quite useless. You can throw it on to the compost heap and it may be useful as compost. So with many other things; they do not become useless when their primary function ceases to operate. You can still make some secondary or subsidiary use of them. But the extraordinary thing about salt is that the moment it loses its saltness it is really no use at all: ‘it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.’
It is very difficult to know what to do with it; you cannot throw it on a compost heap, it does harm there. It just has no function or value at all, and the only thing to do is to get rid of it. Nothing is left once it loses the essential quality and purpose for which it has been made. The same is true of light. The essential characteristic of light is that it is light, and gives light, and it really has no other function whatsoever. In other words, the moment it ceases to act as light it has no value. what do you do with light bulbs that burn out??? Nothing, but throw them away. Its essential quality is its only quality, and once it loses that, it becomes entirely useless.
According to our Lord’s argument that is the truth concerning the Christian. As I understand it, and it seems to me to be an inevitable piece of logic and interpretation, there is nothing in God’s universe that is so utterly useless as a merely formal Christian. I mean by that, one who has the name but not the quality of a Christian. The apostle Paul describes this when he speaks of certain people ‘having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof’. They appear to be Christian but they are not. They want to appear as Christians, but they are not functioning as Christians. They are salt without savour, light without light, if you can imagine such a thing.
The formal Christian is a man who knows enough about Christianity to spoil the world for him; but he does not know enough about it for it to be any positive value. He does not go with the world because he knows just enough about it to be afraid of certain things; and the people who live in the world know that he is trying to be different and that he cannot be whole-heartedly with them. On the other hand he has no real fellowship with the Christian. He has enough ‘Christianity’ to spoil everything else, but not enough to give him real happiness, peace and joy and abundance of life. I think such people are the most miserable people in the world. Our Lord certainly says they are the most useless people in the world. They do not function as worldlings or as Christians. They are neither salt nor light. Jesus called the church in Laodicea lukewarm, neither hot nor cold…he said he would vomit them out. I think that’s a good picture of the formal Christian, which is really no Christian at all.
Perhaps we can sum it all up in this way. The true Christian cannot be hid, he cannot escape notice. A man truly living and functioning as a Christian will stand out. He will be like salt on food; he will be like a city set upon a hill, a candle set upon a candle-stick. But we can also add this further word. The true Christian does not even desire to hide his light. He sees how ridiculous it is to claim to be a Christian and yet deliberately to try to hide the fact. A man who truly realizes what it means to be a Christian, who realizes all that the grace of God has meant to him and done for him, and understands that, ultimately, God has done this in order that he may influence others, is a man who cannot conceal it. Not only that; he does not desire to conceal it, because he argues thus, ‘Ultimately the object and purpose of it all is that I might be functioning in this way.’
If you ever find yourself at some point with the temptation of covering up the fact that you’re a Christian, imagine this image, a man lighting a candle in a dark house so everyone can see…then putting it under something that stops it from illumining the house, instantly you’ll see how ridiculous it is and that that bushel or what ever it is that has made me to hide the fact I’m a Christian is nothing but the hand of the devil and I’ll reject it and shine all the more brighter.
How are we to ensure that we function as salt and light
How are we to ensure that we function as salt and light
Both illustrations give us understanding of this, but perhaps the second one is the easiest to grasp. These are the practical truths gleaned from this text. We cannot function as light without the light of the world in us. We are only ‘the light of the world’ as He who is ‘the light of the world’ works in and through us. The first thing, then, which we must ask ourselves is, Have I received this life divine? Do I know that Christ is dwelling in me? Have I repented and believed in the gospel? That’s first. Paul prays for the Ephesians that Christ may dwell in their hearts richly by faith, that they may be filled with all the fullness of God. The whole doctrine concerning the work of the Holy Spirit is essentially that. It is not to give particular gifts, such as tongues or the various other things about which people get so excited. His purpose is to give life and the graces of the Spirit, which is ‘a more excellent way’ as Paul puts it.
So, we must constantly seek to be filled with the Spirit. That means, of course, constant prayer, which is the action of going to receive it. We so often tend to think that these gracious invitations of our Lord are something which are given once and for ever. He says, ‘Come unto me’ if you want the water of life, ‘Come unto me’ if you want the bread of life. But we tend to think that once and for ever we come to Christ and thereafter we have this permanent supply. Not at all. Yes we are saved once we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, but we need renewal of the Spirit daily. It is a supply that we have to renew; we have to go back and receive it constantly. We are to live in contact with Him, connected to the vine, and it is only as we constantly receive this life from Him that we shall function as salt and as light.
But, of course, it not only means constant prayer, it means what our Lord Himself describes as ‘hungering and thirsting after righteousness’. You will remember we interpreted that as being something that goes on continuously. We are filled, yes; but we always want more. We are never static, we never rest upon our oars, we never say, ‘Once and for ever.’ Not at all. We go on hungering and thirsting; we go on realizing our perpetual need of Christ and of this supply of life and of everything He has to give.
Also, we continue to read God’s word to learn about Him and the life He offers. You can never know God’s word too much. Read the biographies of great men and women who were like cities on a hill that would not be hid. You’ll find nowhere them saying ‘I have come to Christ once for all; here is the one great climactic experience of life that will last forever.’ Not at all, they often tell us of the absolute necessity of spending hours in prayer and bible study and meditation. It was Martin Luther who said, “I have so much to get done in a day that I cannot help but spend at least two hours in prayer.” He understood the necessity of being connected to the true vine Jesus Christ.
Using our Lord’s illustration, think about a lamp burning brightly, oil is essential, which is the fuel for the lamp, the word of God is like the oil to our lamp... but also there’s a wick. Most of us have no need for oils and lamps today with modern electricity. But I remember as a child with the electricity would go out mom would light oil lamps so that we could see in the dark night. So the oil was necessary, but the wick had to be taken care of as well. The wick must be trimmed in order to function properly. If the wick wasn’t keep trimmed it would begin to smoke and not shine light, so it needed constant attention to function properly.
I think it means that we constantly have to remind ourselves of the Beatitudes and live accordingly. We should read them every day. I ought to remind myself daily that I am to be poor in spirit, merciful, meek, a peacemaker, pure in heart, and so on. There is nothing that is better calculated to keep the wick in order and trimmed than just to remind myself of what I am by the grace of God, and of what I am meant to be. That, I suggest, is something for us to do in the morning before we start our day. In everything I do and say, I am to be like that man I see in the Beatitudes. If we would start each day with that and concentrate on it through out our days imagine how different our days might be.
If we do we will look very different from the rest of the world. I think we’d all agree that the Christian influence is diminishing in our country and the tone of society reflects that and it’s becoming more and more gross and the decencies and politeness of common courtesy are become less and less evident. The Christian is not to live in that way. We are far too prone these days just to say, ‘I am a Christian’, or ‘Isn’t it wonderful to be a Christian?’ and then sometimes to be just as rude and inconsiderate as the rest of the world. No we are not to be like that at all. We should be extending much more grace than we do.
We are to be humble, peaceable, peacemaking in all our talk and behaviour, and especially in our reactions to the behavior of other persons. I believe that the individual Christian has a greater opportunity today than he has had for many years, to influence the whole state of the world and of society. I believe that people are watching us very closely because we claim to be Christian; and they are watching our reactions to people and to the things they say and do to us. Do we flare up? The non-Christian does; the Christian should not. We should be like the man in the Beatitudes, and reacts differently. And when confronted with world events, with wars and rumours of wars, with calamities, diseases and all these other things, the Christian is not over-anxious, troubled and irritable. The world is; the Christian is not. The Christian is essentially different.
Why? Because of what Christ has done for us. This leads into the last principle which is of supreme importance…
To live in such a way must also be done the right way.
To live in such a way must also be done the right way.
There must be a complete absence of ostentation or display. This my be a little difficult in practice, to draw the line between truly functioning as salt and light without putting on a show or display for personal praise. Yet we are told to function as salt and light for what purpose??? So that men might see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. This can be a truly difficult thing to function as an active Christian in the world and not display some sort of showmanship. As we live the Christian life in our daily lives it should not draw attention to ourselves but to our Father in heaven. For everything we do is for God’s sake and for the advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is difficult in our day of celebrity Christian personalities, preachers and bible teachers…we should have the mindset of John the Baptist… ‘I must decrease…He must increase.’
When we are living in such a way as that all the glory goes to God it will also leave us with a great sense of sorrow for the lost. The more we realize what Christ has done for us in are dark world and the more we see the world in that state of darkness the more compassion we will have for those walking in darkness. i.e. the more we draw our life from Him, the more we shall become like Him; and He had a great compassion for the people. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd. He had great sorrow for them in His heart, and it was that which determined His conduct and behaviour. He was not concerned about Himself; He had compassion for the multitude. And that is the way in which you and I are to live and to regard these matters. In other words, in all our work and Christian living these three things should always be uppermost. We shall always live for His sake and His glory. We shall lead men to Him and to glorify Him. And all that will be based upon a love for them and a compassion for them in their lost condition.
A little light makes a big impact in a dark place. A righteous life and a bold witness is a powerful combination. As followers of Jesus we know we are not the source of these good works but they are from a transformed life.. a life that has been changed by Jesus Christ. And my faithful witness to the work of God’s grace in my life brings God all the praise. The spot light is on as Christians in the world…and that gives us an opportunity to put the spot light where it should be…on our Father in heaven.... so let your light so shine that they might see your good works and glorify our Father in heaven.