+Word of Salvation – Vol.44 No.41 – November 1999

 

His Light Is What I Shine

 

Sermon by Rev. S. Bajema on Matthew 5:14-16

Scripture Readings: John 8:12-30; Matthew 5:1-16

 

Beloved in the Lord…

Well may our Lord call Himself the “Light of the world”, as we have heard in John 8, but to hear Him say to us, “You are the light of the world,” is surely something else!  I mean, isn’t that cutting it a bit rich?  The statement has such grandeur and importance!  Could there possibly be a higher compliment paid?

But to us who know ourselves to be so much full of darkness; to us who feel ourselves to be most of – if not all of – the time under a dark and dismal cloud?

Perhaps this illustration may help us.  A mother recently giving instructions to her son on such a climatically cumulus-filled day.  With the sky totally thick with clouds, her son was about to go out to play.  She reminded him to wear a hat, and when he responded about how cloudy it was, she sharply retorted, “Where do you think the light out there comes from?”

The answer was self-evident.  There was daylight because there is sunlight; the light which, despite the darkest clouds, still makes the difference between day and night.  And for that boy, the light which is still strong enough to cause sunburn.

“You are the light of the world.” You are the difference between the saved and the unsaved, because you are saved.  Precisely the same difference the Lord Jesus has just been proclaiming in His Sermon on the Mount, the famous ‘Beatitudes’.

As Christ brought out the different characteristics and blessings of being a believer, in the verses 3 to 12, He separates light from dark.  He is doing spiritually what He did physically at the dawn of creation.  Being poor in spirit, being in mourning, being humble, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, being pure in heart, being peacemakers, and being willing even to be persecuted for the Gospel – that’s living as light!  Whether we always realise it or not, congregation, we are quite different from the world around us.

But perhaps, then, the verse before our text, the verse with the picture of salt, seems a little out of place here.  What could salt possibly have to do with this living for the Lord, and so, witnessing for Him?

Friends, Jesus uses a contrast here to show the wholeness of our living unto Him.  For the action of salt is silent, hidden, pervasive, and unseen.  Yet the action of light is so open.  It’s obvious!

We are taught here that becoming Christ-like is two things: On the one hand it’s a silent, hidden, and all pervasive thing-reaching into the very fibre of our thinking and our vision; on the other hand, however, it’s wide open, lighting up so clearly what we show and what we do!

While in our reading from John 8 Jesus said, “I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life”, in our text He commands us believers to be what He Himself claimed to be!

And don’t think that it came out of the blue for those hearing Jesus on the Mount.  The principles taught here had been part of their Jewish make-up ever since God gave the Law at Sinai.

Now, on another hill, the Law is being renewed.  The difference is the power it now has.  You see, the Old Testament was and is God’s Word.  But at the same time it was also God’s foreword, looking forward to its fulfilment.  With Jesus that fulfilment had come.  It had become completely clear!  This is the essence of our first consideration.  We have the light, since we are Christ’s Body.

Then, in a second aspect, we see about knowing the Light; while, thirdly, the text tells us of showing the Light.

HAVING… KNOWING… SHOWING…!

Congregation, you are the light of the world!  There’s no doubt about it!  The Church is being addressed here.  The word “you” is the plural word used for a group together; “yous” is the way we would say it colloquially.  It’s a special group.

The group the apostle Paul says of, in his letter to the Ephesians: “…you were once darkness, but now you are the light of the Lord” (5:8).  Another picture, which Scripture uses to describe what this group is, is life and death.  It’s as we’re in Jesus that we have the light of life.  This doesn’t stop our present physical suffering and death.  But those temporary pains are so small compared with the eternal inheritance we have in Christ.

The contrast is of those outside this group, while enjoying now this life, yet being doomed to an unending suffering, compared to those within having such a short time until everlasting bliss!  From being relegated to an intense hatred that’s far beyond this world’s worst possible – hell itself, we’re lifted up to a peace beyond understanding – the life forever in heaven!

And it’s because of Him!  He who is none other than Christ Jesus!  He who revealed the glory of God, also graciously reveals God in us.  His work of salvation has made us believers, one with the Father.

This is the wonder of Pentecost.  For it’s Christ’s Spirit who has come and equipped His Church to be as Him in this dark world.  And can we say that this world doesn’t need salvation any the less now?

As we look around us at what goes at work, on the sports field, in our Houses of Parliament, what’s in the media – doesn’t the world need the Lord that much more?  Could being a Christian have finally become obsolete, like some archaic steam engine?  Is the protest against social injustice – the cry for the unborn child, the defenceless elderly, and the genuinely poor – could that all be just passe, just an old-fashioned dream?  If that was so, why did Christ come, the way we celebrate every Christmas, nearly two thousand years ago?  And would He have put you and I where we are right now?

You are the light of the world.  And if we can’t shine the way, then it is the blind leading the blind.  Where would society be without its Judaeo-Christian background?  One only needs to compare our system of justice with those countries which have no Biblical influence.  Whatever bedrock of goodness our society has is because the Light shone in time gone by, and because in His grace He’s still pleased to bless.

But it’s a light that can only come through knowing the Light Himself, and what He does – the second aspect to this text.  We continue with the words of the text, “A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.  Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.”

They are self-evident truths.  Naturally we know that a city on a hill cannot be hidden.  And how obvious isn’t it that once you’ve lit a lamp, you don’t put it under a bowl.

Imagine, boys and girls, if during the next power blackout, when everything has suddenly gone pitch black, that your Mum or Dad, when they finally find the candles and lit them, that they put them under cooking bowls?  That makes no sense at all!

Yet it’s this precise nonsense which affects much of this world.  Because to be able to put Christ’s light to any proper use, you need to know first of all that it is Christ’s light.  You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

So we’re not speaking here of some kind of intellectual head-knowledge.  If that were the case, many more would be saved.  And Christianity would be a fairly middle and upper class affair.

We’re speaking of something quite different.  To know this fully is to know inwardly. This true knowledge isn’t what passes examinations.  This can only be written upon the hearts of God’s chosen people.  That’s where His Word brings life – as it’s preached, and taught, and read. That’s where there’s the knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in His Word is true.

But, like we confess in the Heidelberg Catechism, we need to go further than this.  For true faith is also a deep-rooted assurance, made mine by the Holy Spirit, through the Gospel.  The Gospel, that great news that tells me of sins forgiven, of being made forever right with the almighty and all-holy God; and of me – me, of all creatures! – being given that most precious gift of salvation.

What – can we have this happen and not show it?  That’s why there is the third part to the text.  In the words of verse 16, “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

We are to show the light.  But could we ever say, since seeing the light, that we didn’t know this was so?  True, we’ve seen how the text points to our having and our knowing.  But aren’t all the three aspects as inseparable as the Trinity?

The Philippians, for example, were told: “…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it’s God who works in you to will and to act according to His purpose.  Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life…!“ (2:12b-16).

Congregation, the Word that is in you, and which can save you.  That Word of which the Psalmist said, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (119:105).  Still, shining your light isn’t like throwing a switch in your house.  It’s easy to slip away into the darkness.  Staying in the light is a different matter.

Our modern age has made having light at night a different thing than was the case in the New Testament.  Just that flick of a switch and whole rooms and halls become flooded with light.  But the light of the New Testament had to be carefully struck.  And while it was burning it had to be put in the right place, so that it could give the best light and it wouldn’t be snuffed out, and it had to be constantly looked after.

But in its burning there’s a complete contrast to the darkness all around.  The one solitary lamp was enough to help light up those one-roomed homes in Palestine.

Friends, in the places we have in this world, what does our light show up before men?  Do they see the beautiful Christian attitudes in the verses before the text?  That’s the way of God’s Word lit up by the lamp of Christ’s Spirit in our hearts.  Then they will see our good deeds.

The original word for “good” here goes further than simply describing what is good on the surface.  There’s also something gracious and attractive about the good deeds a Christian does.  It’s a depth and movement beyond what meets the eye.

There may be two people who help a senior citizen across the street.  Yet if one is a Christian their help has more meaning than the others’.  And it might be hard to comprehend.  Still, it’s true all the same.  For we begin to realise the reason behind the difference when we see the focus of the action.  Was it just a pat-on-the-back exercise?  “There, I’ve done my good deed for the day!”  Or was it something deeper?  Will those around us, as the text puts it, praise your Father in heaven?

What doesn’t belong to any believer is a put-on goodness.  That plastic smile which is so meaningless.  These words of Jesus completely ban what someone once called, “theatrical goodness”.  Don’t do on the outside what means nothing on the inside of your heart.  It will be seen, sooner or later, for what it really is.

The 19th Century evangelist, Dwight Moody, was once at a conference with some young people who took their faith very seriously.  One night they held an all-night prayer meeting.  As they were leaving in the morning, they met Mr Moody.  He asked them what they’d been doing.  They told him.  And then they went on, “Mr Moody, see how our faces shine!”  Moody answered very gently, “Moses didn’t know that his face was shining.”

You see, that goodness which you feel, that which draws attention to itself, isn’t Christian goodness.  The Christian should never think or speak of what he or she has done.  Always we must realise again and again what the LORD has enabled us to do.  I am never to attract the eyes of others to myself.  I am only to point them to God!

As long as men and women, young people, and boys and girls, are thinking of the praise, the thanks, the prestige, which i will get out of what they’ve done, they haven’t even begun the Christian way.  Jesus warned about those like this, later in this same sermon as the text, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mat.7:21).

Dear friend, unless you truly appreciate the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, your light hasn’t begun to shine.  For how can we be called God’s children, if we don’t see the hand of the Father?  And how could we know the Father’s Son, if we don’t acknowledge that the very light we do see and live by is from His righteousness, despite the dark clouds of our sin?

But as we acknowledge whose light it is, and keep everything we do illumined by that light, the world won’t have an excuse.  In the apostle Peter’s words, “…as aliens and strangers in the world, abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.” That’s the darkness which the devil desires so much to cover us with.

Instead, continues Peter, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1Peter 2:11 f).  For upon Christ’s second coming all will worship Him; they won’t have a choice.  But wouldn’t it be so much better for their eternity if we showed them we’re doing that right now?

Amen.

PRAYER:

Let’s pray…

O Light from Light, true God from true God, You who were begotten not made, of one Being with the Father, please hear our prayer.

As the apostle Paul was dazzled by Your light before He was the great bearer of Your light to the Gentiles, so too have we been humbled again by Your Word.

You who were the cloud by day and the fiery pillar by night to Israel of old, please shine bright in and through us, today and always.

Amen.