Dr. Rodney Plunket

Two Sundays ago we looked together at Romans 14:1-15:7.  That passage gives great guidance on how Christians can be united even when we disagree.  Last Sunday, we looked at how we might be salt and light by taking out into our politically polarized nation the lessons we learn from experiencing genuine Christian unity in God’s church.  One of the reasons that I preached last Sunday’s sermon is because I believe that contemporary Christians are often guilty of increasing the political polarization of our nation.  I think we do that because we believe that if we do not take a strong and vocal stand on political matters we will have no influence within our nation.

This morning we want to look at a sermon of Jesus in which He tells us how to be salt and light for our world.  He says nothing about political action committees or political parties.  He tells us how to be in our world.  He tells us how to live as His disciples in our world.  You see, for centuries the disciples of Jesus Christ had no political power; and yet they were the power of God within their world.  They fulfilled that role by being the people of Jesus, by living according to the will and word of their Lord.  Some might even argue that the Christians’ salt and light influence was lessened when they came to possess political power because they changed their way of being the people of God.

Now please do not press my words further than intended.  I think Christians today should vote.  I think it is altogether appropriate for contemporary Christians to be involved in politics.  I am confident that God actually calls some of us to serve God in that way.  Some Christians will join political parties and political organizations, and they must join the ones that best conform to their values and beliefs.  But I do not think that even those disciples who participate actively in politics exert their greatest influence due to that involvement in politics.  I do not think their most important power is of the political sort no matter how high they may rise.  I think our most important power is transmitted through living lives empowered and shaped by the Holy Spirit and the word of Jesus our Lord.

Jesus’ calling for disciples to be salt and light is in Matthew (Mt) 5:13-16, the passage just read.  Let’s look briefly at Jesus’ words about salt and light.

What Jesus means by saying that His disciples “are the salt of the earth” is not hard to understand.  Salt is used both to season and to preserve, so I think Jesus is saying here that we are to season our world by creating a Christian “flavor” within it.  The values of the Lord are to make inroads in the world through the way we live and through the message we share.  We are also to preserve people; i.e., we are to bring them to the Lord so they will not be lost to the rot and ruin outside of Christ.

The idea of being light is that our lives are to shine in such a way that they give glory to God.  We are not to hide and keep our lives hidden.  We are to be out there in the world living lives of faith and showing the power of that faith through the good works which flow from our lives.

It seems to me that in the remainder of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, that sermon found in Mt 5-7, Jesus describes what a life of salt and light looks like.  I will not be able in the time available to go verse-by-verse through this sermon, but I do want to look at some of the things that Jesus tells us here.

In Mt 5:17-48, Jesus articulates His vision for His disciples by setting the ethical principles that will guide His followers alongside the ethical principles of first century Jewish teachers.  The contrast is quite sharp.  Both sets of principles are based on ethical teachings found in the Old Testament (OT), but Jesus’ interpretation of those OT teachings is much more demanding than the interpretations to which He refers.

In Mt 5:20 Jesus reveals the demanding nature of what He is about to declare.  In that verse Jesus says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  The teachings of the scribes and Pharisees were viewed as being very demanding.  Jesus makes clear that His teachings are more so.

After this radical statement about exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus, in verse (v) 20, cites the OT law prohibiting murder.  Jesus pushes that law further, deeper.  He contends that the law not to murder needs to shape our hearts in such a way that we will not be angry with a brother or sister and that when something disrupts a relationship we correct it with earnestness and haste and that we certainly do not allow matters to get so out of hand that they have to be settled in court.  Jesus is saying that we must do more than just not murder.  He teaches that we are to build and sustain rich relationships with people that keep us as far away from murder as is possible.

In verses (vv) 27-30, Jesus evaluates the OT law’s prohibition against adultery.  He makes clear that this law also should reach more deeply into our hearts and lives than the traditional interpretations advocated.  He says that this law is tantamount to a law against lust because the person who lusts is committing adultery in his or her heart.  Jesus is telling His readers who had never had sex outside of marriage not to feel all smug and spiritual if on the other hand they allowed lust to live and breathe in their hearts.  Confront lust with the same energy that keeps you from violating your marriage vows; that is Jesus’ message.  Take this law and allow it to shape your heart and not just your actions.  Take this law and use it to clean up your mind.  Do not commit adultery; this is a good law that must be kept.  But Jesus pushes it further.  He pushes it into the heart and the mind.  He pushes it inward where it can clean up our thoughts, our attitudes, and our desires.

We do not have time this morning to look at all the applications of OT law that Jesus gives in Mt 5, but I must look at a statement that Jesus makes in the final verse of this chapter.  This verse can be the most frightening verse in the Bible.  Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).  I do not think that Jesus is saying that unless we are just like God we are lost.  Clearly, if that is the case, we are all lost.  I think instead that Jesus is saying, to employ the words of the commentator Donald Hagner, “The righteous­ness of the kingdom, which altogether exceeds that of the Pharisees, involves a call to be like the Father.”[1]  God is to be our standard, no one else.  If God is our standard there will always be more growing to do.  We will never stagnate.  We will never arrive.  We will always be pressing on.  We will long, we will hunger for God.  We want to be as much like God as God’s Spirit working within us makes possible.

Now please turn to Mt 6.  Please look with me at Mt 6:1-4.  Jesus says,

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.  But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Do you hear what Jesus is saying?  He is making clear that our religious acts must be done for God’s eyes only.  They must not be done to bring us human honor.  If human honor is our goal then that is all we will receive; we will receive no honor from God.  I believe that the desire for human honor shows who our real god is; and since the God of the Bible is the only real God, there is no tolerance of idolatry even when the idol is human adulation.  In vv 5-15, Jesus makes this same point with regard to prayer; and in vv 16-18, He makes this same point again with regard to fasting.

It is obvious that there were people in Jesus’ day who performed these important religious acts of giving alms to the poor, of praying, and of fasting to gain public praise.  Jesus calls upon His disciples to be different.  He calls upon us to look exclusively to God when we give to the poor, when we pray, or when we fast.  Do these things, Jesus says; but do them with eyes focused solely upon the Father.  If your goal is human praise, then you will get it; but that is all you will get.  You will receive no blessing from God for an act with self-serving motives.  May our every act of worship and righteousness be focused exclusively upon God.

In vv 19-21, Jesus aims at the same purpose but in a slightly different way.  In these verses Jesus does not refer to God personally but to God’s realm.  Instead of telling His hearers to do things in secret before God alone, He tells us to focus upon heaven and to do things which are known to be valuable there.  The result will be the same.  We will do what we do for the purpose of serving and pleasing God.  Such a purpose is very different from that of the person who constantly hungers for human approval and praise.

Verses 25ff conclude Mt 6, and here Jesus urges those who would show forth the righteousness of the kingdom not to worry.  Trust in God, Jesus says.  God looks after the birds and even clothes the grasses of the field.  Instead of worrying, we should focus the eye of faith exclusively upon God.  Seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness and all these things that people worry about will be given to you but without the worry.

What is the message of this chapter?  Seek God.  Seek God’s righteousness.  Stay focused upon God.  Do not be distracted by the desire for human praise.  Do not be distracted by the desire for wealth.  Do not be distracted by worry.  Do not be distracted by concerns about the future.  Be concerned only about the will and the purposes of God and the righteousness which characterizes God’s kingdom.  Stay focused upon job one.  Job one for the Christian is to submit wholly to the reign and rule of God.  It must be the highest priority in our lives.

The famous 19th century Scottish preacher, Henry Drummond, said to his theological students, “Don’t be an amphibian, half in one world, half in another”; and again, “Do not touch Christianity unless you are willing to seek the kingdom of heaven first.  I promise you a miserable existence if you seek it second.”[2]  I especially love Drummond’s metaphor:  “Don’t be an amphibian, half in one world, half in another.”  Give your whole self to the concerns of the kingdom.  Focus what you do at work, at home, and on vacation upon the purposes of the kingdom of God.  Make sure that everything you do finds its ultimate meaning in the will of holy God.

Now let’s look together at some of what Jesus teaches in Mt 7.  Please look with me at vv 1-2.  Reading from the New International Version, Jesus says,

Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

This passage is frequently read as if Jesus said nothing else regarding the need to discern or to evaluate.  The result is that people conclude that they should never make any kind of judgments.  All we have to do is read v 6 of this same chapter to be aware that such is a mistaken reading.  There, reading from the New Revised Standard Version, Jesus says, “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.”  No one thinks that Jesus here is talking of actual dogs or swine.  He is talking of people who are somehow like dogs or swine, but how do we determine who those people are?  We have to use discernment; we have to judge.  And, just a few verses later, he tells us to “[b]eware of false prophets” and that we will know who the false prophets are by their fruits.  We have to judge the fruit of prophets to know which ones are true and which ones are false.  We could look at many more passages, but hopefully these that are so very near will make the point.

But there remains a question we must answer this morning with regard to Mt 7:1 & 2.  If these two verses are not prohibiting all judging, then what are they prohibiting?  I think the majority of scholars are correct when they say that Jesus here is targeting uncharitable criticism or censoriousness.  To be censorious is to be highly critical, to be quick to denounce perceived faults in others, and to delight in critique.  Jesus is warning that a person who has judged and measured others with a harsh and uncharitable standard will be judged in the same way.  Brothers and sisters, we must take Jesus’ words here very seriously.  If God judges us harshly and uncharitably, let’s face it, we don’t stand a chance.  Since such is the case, we must not judge others that way either.  We must be slow to judge and quick to love because that is the way we want others to treat us and that is certainly the way we want to be treated by God.

Verses 3-5 of Mt 7 continue Jesus’ discussion of inappropriate judging.  Let me read these verses as rendered by Donald A. Hagner in his two-volume commentary on Matthew.  Jesus asks,

Why do you see so well the speck in the eye of your brother or sister, but fail to regard the log in your own eye?  Or how will you say to your bother or sister:  ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while behold there is a log in your own eye?  Hypocrite!  Take out the log from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to take the speck out of your brother’s or sister’s eye.

Persons who are so harshly judgmental, Jesus reveals here, are often the ones with the most to critique because their harshly critical attitudes demonstrate that, instead of quite minor imperfections, they possess imperfections of gargantuan proportions––as big as a log in someone’s eye.  As I thought about Jesus’ words here and what imperfections would stand out as would a log in someone’s eye, another NT verse came to mind.  That verse is 1 Peter 4:8; it says, “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.”  A person who loves to find and point out speck-like imperfections is not a person of love, and that failing is huge.  It is like having a log in your eye.

Are we quick to find fault in others?  Such likely signals profound faults within ourselves that we have refused to see but must address.

Now look down at Matthew 7:12, which contains the Golden Rule.  Jesus says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”  Treat people the way you like to be treated, Jesus says here.

There is so much that we could say about this command, but I just want to make one point.  Let us not allow our behavior toward others to be determined by the way others treat us.  May we treat others the way we would like to be treated no matter how they treat us.  This is a high calling, and it is a tough calling.  But let’s face it; God has certainly treated us a lot better than we deserve.  Our sins should have landed us on the dark side of God’s judgment, but instead God bought us back with the blood of the Son.  The way we treat others needs to look as much like the way God through Jesus treats us as possible.  That is what Jesus asks, and those whose hearts have been won by Jesus’ love cry out “amen” and seek to treat others the way we would want them to treat us.

Now look at Mt 7:21-23 and follow along as I read.  Jesus says,

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’  Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’

Jesus, from the very beginning of this sermon, has developed an alternative way of viewing religion and devotion to God.  Many would think that no one is more righteous than the one who performs miracles in Jesus’ name.  But Jesus reveals that there are some who do that whom Jesus does not even know; i.e., they are not His.  You see the Sermon on the Mount reveals that it is the ones who take on the lifestyle and the attitudes found in this sermon who are really His.  They are the real disciples.

Many of us know the little children’s song that sings about the wise man who built his house upon a rock and how that house stood firm even in the midst of a violent rainstorm.  The second verse of that song tells of the foolish man who built his house upon the sand and when a violent rainstorm assaulted that house it fell with a great and mighty crash.  The little song’s third verse calls upon us to build our lives upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

Those sentiments come from Mt 7:24-27, verses that form the climax of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus here is emphatically calling upon us to take the words of this sermon and build our lives upon them.

Some people love a great oration.  They sit entranced by gifted and charismatic speakers.  But they never change.  They hear great words, great thoughts, and great calls to action; but they do nothing in response.  They do not take the words and apply them to their hearts and lives.  For them it is all just a great spectacle/a great performance to be experienced for the moment.  Jesus says that anyone who treats His sermon that way is foolish and is headed for destruction because that person’s life is built upon the sand instead of upon the rock of the Word of God.

We must be wise.  We must take Jesus’ sermon and reflect upon it.  We must allow it to soak into our very souls.  We must allow God to weave it into the very warp and woof of our lives.  Then we will be salt and light.  Then we will change our world.

I hope you realize that you cannot fulfill this sermon.  I hope all of us know that the only way that this sermon can live within us is by the power of the Holy Spirit within our lives.  Only God can fulfill this sermon.  He can do that by the power of God’s Spirit within us.

In Mt 3:11 John the Baptist is preaching, and he refers to Jesus.  John says,

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

The power of the Spirit, from the Day of Pentecost on, is the power that the NT declares transforms us.  May we remove the pride and the self-will that neutralizes that power.  May we rely totally on the power of God to transform us from the inside out so that we will live the Sermon on the Mount and be salt and light in our world.  Let’s change the world by being true disciples of Jesus Christ our Lord.

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