Audio Transcript:

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Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new or if you're visiting, we'd love to connect with you and do that through the connection card, either in the worship guide or in the app or online. If you fill it out, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week. With that said, would you please pray with me with the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly father, we thank you that you are a God of revelation, that you reveal yourself to us through creation and that you reveal yourself to us through the word of God, the holy scriptures. And the holy scriptures point us to the culmination of world history of the scriptures, which is Jesus Christ. We thank you, Christ, that you're the son of God. You came and you fulfilled the law of God.

You, the word of God, fulfilled the word of God. And we thank you for living a perfect life, a righteous life, a holy life as you fulfilled the law. And we thank you for dying on the cross, paying the penalty that we deserve to pay for our law breaking so that when we repent and turn to you by grace, through faith, you extend to us the blessing that you deserved for your law abiding.

We thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us today, that you have written these holy scriptures. We pray, reveal them to us and make us a people who live according to your will because we have new hearts that desire to honor you, new hearts that are filled with gratitude for the work that you've given us, new hearts that are filled with love for you.

We want to honor you, and we want to worship you with our lives and make us a people who are truly salt and light, who influence the corruption in this world and the darkness, and make us a people who are used by you to extend your kingdom and draw many into the kingdom of God. And we pray all this in Christ's name, amen. So SNL had a little skit last night, it was called What Still Works. That's what it was called, What Still Works.

And the correspondent was sitting there and then she had guests come in about what still works and the first one was a guest representing the government. And the guest comes in and well, does the government still work? Clearly two seconds in, no, the government does not work. She leaves. Then the next one was does social media still work? And it was Mark Zuckerberg and the Twitter guy, what's his name? Jack Dorsey.

There's a second sermon, the brain's not as fresh. Holy Spirit, please fix that. Jack Dorsey, they come in, or are actors playing them and then obviously social media definitely doesn't work. And then they're like, "Does the stock market still work?" And the majority owner of GameStop shows up and she's like, "Hey, shouldn't your stock represent the value of your company, which is like $17?"

He's like, "No, it should be $400." And she's like, "What do you guys do?" They're like, "We sell video games, physical video games." Does anyone buy physical video games? No, they download them all. Are you good at what you do? No, so he leaves. Then Tom Brady walks in, what still works? Tom Brady comes in, played by John Krasinski, love that guy. Tom Brady comes in, sits down and she's like, "Tom Brady, you're going to your 10th Super Bowl."

Now, if you don't know me, I'm a big fan of Tom Brady. We had a little falling out when he left New England Patriots. But I clearly learned that my love for Tom Brady is there because I believe in fidelity. And by the way, Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl when I was a freshman in college. So that tells you something. So he comes and she's like, "Tom Brady, you clearly still work, what still works? You work, Tom Brady works."

And so he gets into that whole thing. And as she did that, that's kind of beside... the reason why I bring that up is because I remember listening to the interview of Tom Brady because I'm fascinated with really successful people and learning about their mindset. And in one interview they asked him, "Why are you so good when there's two minutes left in the game, moments of greatest pressure, why do you show up?"

And you know what he said? He said, "I remind myself of who I am." He said, "I tell myself, you are Tom Brady, be who you are, do what you do." And that mindset is so powerful in particular for the Christian life. And this is what Jesus Christ does in this section of the Sermon on the Mount. We're in a series in the Sermon on the Mount that we are going through till Easter. And this is the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever preached, Jesus Christ.

And so in the first section in the beatitudes, in the first four of the beatitudes, he showed us how to enter the kingdom of God through repentance, poverty of spirit, mourning over sin, growing in weakness, hungering and thirsting for righteousness and then he showed us how we grow as disciples. But here, this section is crucial because he here gives us an identity.

He says, this is who you are, you are salt and light. And in the rest of the series, the rest of the sermon, he's going to show us how that looks like practically. Here he speaks our identity over us, you are salt and light. And why is this important? It's important because he here is telling us that we have a job, this is our job description, and our job description is to influence the world around us.

We are salt, meaning we are thrown into social decay around us and we need to fight the putrefying effect of sin on our society. The world is prevailing in darkness and we, as Christians are called to illuminate society showing a better way. And I say that because a lot of Christians in particular, when they move to Boston, they realize that they are one of the only Christians in whatever sphere they're in.

We have a temptation to back off, we have a temptation to say, you know what? I'm just going to focus to make sure I don't lose my saltiness, my saltness. I'm just going to focus on myself, on my walk, on my private relationship with Jesus so my light isn't snuffed out. And this mindset of just mere survival is not what God calls us to.
In particular, in this place, God has called you here to Boston, Massachusetts. This is a place of particular darkness, spiritually speaking, particular societal decay and we have a job to do, and that's what the text is all about. So would you look at the text with me? This is Matthew 5:13 through 20, Matthew 5:13 through 20. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.

Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets, I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does them and teaches them, will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never or enter the kingdom of God. This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to bring up our time, talking about good workers, salt and light, great worker, that's the law fulfilled and three good work, law and lifestyle. First of all, good workers, salt and light. Jesus calls his disciples to himself through repentance, they repent. He says, "Follow me. I will make you fishers of men." They're now the disciples of Jesus Christ and he gives them an identity, marching orders, if you will, that's verse 13.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall saltiness be restored? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. What does it mean to be salt? It's not to be confused with being salty like in New England. There are a lot of people, we're all salty in New England, just a little irritable, just a little angry, just mad at something all the time, salty.
We had fresh snow this week, it was wonderful. My girl, they love snow, they love it. We're out in the park. After I finished my day where I took them to the park, the Rose Garden here off of St. Paul, I got my youngest in the sled. I'm running around with her. She is having a ball, the time of her life, obviously screaming because she's a Vezikov girl, they're loud.

A lady comes, crosses the street, comes up to the fence, "Excuse me, sir. Could you tell your kids to keep it down? I'm trying to have a nice dinner." I did not know her name, but we all know her name. Then she says, "I can call the cops on you because you're in the park after dusk." At this moment, my wife starts pulling me away. Why? Because she knows that my natural reaction to saltiness is to respond with saltiness, not saltness.

Jesus is saying, he's not saying you're the saltiness of the earth, he's saying you're the salt, you are salt. What does it mean that you are salt? Well, salt had two main purposes in the ancient times, flavor, make things taste good, but also more importantly preservation. They didn't have refrigeration, that was only meant to be a hundred years ago. They canned foods, that was about 200 years ago.

So preservation, to keep specifically meat from rotting. So the disciples of Jesus Christ, Christians are to have a preservative effect on culture, to keep culture from rotting. Yes, we are to delight culture. There needs to be a flavor that's different about us that draws people to us in the same way that people were delighted by Jesus. And then Jesus, that's the love, but then Jesus will speak truth, grace truth.

And the truth was to keep the society from rotting. Here he says that salt can lose its salinity if it loses its taste. Pure salt can't lose its salinity if it's chemically stable. But the salt in Judea, Galilee, it wasn't pure. The way that they derived or harvested salt was to take water from the Dead Sea and they will put in a pit and let it evaporate and then they would take the salt out of it.

And because it took so much work to get salt, salt was very valuable, even used as a medium of exchange. We kind of take salt for granted. But Jesus here says, this is who you are, you're salt. He also says you are the light of the world. Verse 14, a city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house.

Jerusalem was perched on Mount Zion, Rome was built on seven hills, which cities he's talking about, we're not sure. But the best cities were always high up for security purposes. And when people are living in the city, there's lights and that light emanates in the same way with in a house, he's saying that you light a lamp and you don't hide it, you don't put it in a basket or under a bowl. Why?

What's the point of light? It's to illuminate, it's to make visible, it's to shine into darkness. And certain lights also provide growth. Sun, sunlight can tan skin and stimulates the formation of vitamin D and sets biological rhythm. It's used in treatment of disease and depression. It energizes, cheers, reflects, brightens, it disinfects. And it's fast, we talk about the speed of light.

The point here is both are indispensable. We need salt and we need light. And the rest of the sermon, Jesus explains how to be salt and how to be light. Here, he's speaking identity to his disciples, he's speaking a powerful word of identity over them. He's not saying you should be salt, or you should be light. Think this is who you are. It's a powerful word of identity.

And by the way, this is an incredible parenting hack if you're a parent, for all the parents in the room. And not even... this is like a human hat, you got to speak identity over the people... I do it with my kids all the time. My youngest, she's three. She's one of the hardest, she was the hardest. But this is what I speak over her, "Milana, you are the most obedient girl. You are my most obedient daughter. You are so obedient. You will listen to everything your dad says."

And I speak it into it, it's kind of like brainwashing or programming, but everything else, brainwashing or programming, so I want to do the good thing. That's what parenting is, you actually got to teach your kids stuff. And this is how God... where did I learn that lesson? This is how God actually, he tells us to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Why? By speaking truth. This is who you are, now be who you are.

And what's fascinating is if you study languages, some languages like English or German, word order is important. Other languages like Russian, word order isn't important. That's why Germans are very organized and meticulous and they care about details. And Russians are like, "Man, whatever goes." And language, it was kind of like it's fluid. Like in English, you can't... it's I love you, it's not love I you or you I love, that's weird.

In Russian, you can go "ya lyublyu vas", "kogo ya lyublyu", "lyublyu ya tebya". Greek is like that as well. And the way it's so fluid and the way that you emphasize stuff in written Greek is you put it first. And here he says in verse 13 and verse 14, you, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. That's who you are. It's not the Pharisees, it's not the scribes, it's not people of other religions, it's not politicians. That's how he changes is the world ultimately, it's you Christians.

Christians change the world, be who you are. Light can't but illuminate, salt can't but preserve and season. He doesn't say, bring salt with you, bring light with you. He says, this is who you are, and wherever you go, you are salt and light. You live a life that looks different, that tastes different and don't lose your savor, don't lose your difference. Because as soon as you lose your difference, you lose your influence.

We influence because we're different. Salt is not meat, that's why it's so effective. Light is not darkness. A lot of churches today have absolutely zero influence on the world because they are the world, they have no salt, they have no light. And what's Jesus saying here? He's saying the world is decaying and it's dark.

There's corruption in the world, there's rot in the world and there's a deep darkness that you can cut through with a knife. And here I add this whole section written out by statistics about darkness and corruption, perversion, sexually in our culture people just addicted, absolutely addicted to sexual pleasure and others making so much money off of it. Obviously they want us addicted, darkness, financial darkness and corruption, political darkness and corruption.

It's all around us. And God says, you are salt and you are light. And the answer to the rot and rotting of the human light, the darkness is be who you are. That's his answer. Sometimes people come to me like, "There is so much darkness in the world, what do we do, how can we fight this?" And Jesus answers be who you are, be salt and be light, be distinct, think different, act different, dream different live different.

Our difference from the world gives us influence in the world. When people live... so he talks about salt and light and then afterwards in a sermon, he gives us practical examples in the most important areas of our life, how we can be different. And then in this context, he says, you are a city set on a hill. And what he's saying is you are a city within a city, you're a people within a people, you're a kingdom within a kingdom.

Which is just tricky because we live here, we navigate with people around us and some people around us are in the kingdom of God and some people are not. We're resonant aliens, we're citizens of the kingdom of heaven, but we're still here as ambassadors, as change agents. And what we do is by living the life that he calls us to live, we influence the people around us as a city set on a hill.

And what do we do? We need to let our light shine, this is Matthew 5:16. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. So how do we bring salt? How do we bring light into the world? In the same way Jesus did. What did Jesus do? He, through the incarnation, came and lived. He lived a certain life, he spoke truth, but he also lived a certain life.

That's how we shine the light. That's how we attract attention to the glory of God, through our good works. Now here, I need to pause because a lot of people think when they hear good works, they hear good deeds like a one-off every once in a while. Like if you're at Dunkin' Donuts and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to do a good deed. I'm going to pay for the people behind." That pay it forward. Or, "I'm going to go work at a soup kitchen, I'm going to do something good, I'm going to do a good deed." That's not what he's talking about.

Because the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, he doesn't say, here's what the good deeds look like, give someone money, et cetera. The rest of the Sermon on the Mount is about a lifestyle, about a life you live. God doesn't need your little one-offs to pay him off and get them off your back. He said, no, you're part of the kingdom. You are a servant of God. You're an ambassador of the king. You are a change agent. I want you to live a certain way.

As a lifestyle, this is your good works, this is the way you shine the light of Christ. John 8:12, Jesus himself is the light. Jesus spoke to them saying, "I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." This is what it means to follow Jesus. You will follow me, you will walk with me and you will walk in the light. And the purpose is to attract attention to God, not to parade our own virtue or virtue signal.

Titus 2:10, so that in everything, they may adorn, dress up the doctrine of God, our savior. The point is not for us to be praised for our life and our good works, but the point is to create legitimacy to our words. When I speak of words of Christ, people believe them because they see my lifestyle. I've created a plausibility structure with my life. That's what Jesus is calling us to.

Here Jesus pauses from the good workers and we get to the greater worker. He brings it in gospel of the law fulfilled. So you are salt and light, we do that through your lifestyle. But before I tell you that you must live like that, I want you to know that you must live like that because you are part of the kingdom, and you're part of the kingdom because I fulfilled the law.

We are saved. We're in the kingdom, not because of our righteousness, but because of his. We are not accepted because we were righteous, we are accepted because he is righteous and we repented of our sin and righteousness. So here he gives us the gospel, which then just is the motivation for our good works. So the greater worker, law fulfilled, Jesus Christ came to work.

Verse 17, do not think that I've come to abolish the law over the prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Jesus Christ came to work. Jesus Christ was the greatest worker who ever lived. And by work, I mean fulfilling the will of God. The disciples would come to him and say, "Jesus it's time to eat." And he says, "I have food that you do not know of, it's to do the work of God. While it's still day, I'm going to work" Jesus' work.

What's fascinating is Caleb read the passage in Matthew 11:20 through 30 where it says the words of Christ, come on to me all who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest, rest for your souls and take up my yoke upon you, take my yoke upon you. It's so fascinating. Yoke is two animals harnessed, harnessed for what? To plow a field.

So Jesus is talking about rest in the context of work. Come, I will give you rest and I'm going to give you a job because he is yoked to do the will of God. And we find rest for our souls when we're working with God, doing the work of God. And that's what Jesus came to do, to fulfill the law and the prophets, not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them.

By law and the prophets, he's talking about all of the Hebrew scriptures. This is how the religious leaders of the day talked about the Hebrew scriptures. The legalistic Pharisees and scribes accused Jesus, because Jesus talked about grace and forgiveness, they accused Jesus of abolishing the law.

And Jesus here is saying, "I didn't come to abolish, I came to fulfill." What does that mean? What does that mean? Because it doesn't say obey, he doesn't say, I've come to obey. He doesn't say, I've come to keep. He says, I've come to fulfill. It includes obey and keep, but it's more than that. Fulfill means more than just obey and keep. So what does God mean, what does Christ mean by saying I fulfill?

Because this is important and you need to have a theology of grace and law, especially in the new testament, because a lot of Christians do not. A lot of Christians believe, oh, I'm saved by grace through faith, Jesus forgives me of my sins, I can live any way I want, come back to him anytime I need forgiveness and continue the cycle and then I end up at heaven. That's a false, false theology of law.

Christ is king of the law, obviously because he's king. And he demonstrates there's a certain sovereignty over the law in the old testament. For example, on some occasions, he cancels the law from the old testament concerning the clean and unclean foods. And this is important because a lot of people who reject an inerrancy of scripture, they say, "Well, Christians are inconsistent because they say homosexuality is wrong, that's from the law of God, but they eat shrimp and pork, which isn't allowed in the old testament."

And they just combine all of the laws into one category of it's all law. Well, what every Christian needs to know is there're three kinds of laws in the old testament. There's the civil law, the civil code given to Israel as a nation state under God. Are we Israel as a nation state under God? No. So that law does not apply to us. And the second part of the law is the ceremonial law which had to do with the dietary codes and also included the sacrificial laws given to us and all of that, the sacrificial laws and the diet, that all was typology pointing to Christ, and Christ fulfills that law.

They pointed to Christ, like the Passover lamb. If you had the blood of the Passover lamb over your doorpost, the angel of death passed over your household. Well, that was a sign of Jesus Christ, the lamb of God who died on the cross for our sin. And if we are in him by grace through faith, then condemnation passes over us. There is no condemnation who is in him. So Jesus fulfills, he fulfills that part of the law. That's what it means, I came to fulfill it, I came to die as a sacrificial lamb.

And then the third part of law is the moral code, the 10 commandments. And every single one of the 10 commandments is still enforced for Christians because every single one of them is repeated in the new testament except for the fourth commandment about keeping the Sabbath because Jesus Christ is our Sabbath.

The principle of Sabbath is there and we are to celebrate the Sabbath and keep it, but we do that on Sundays as Christians because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So that part of the law, Jesus fulfills in that he perfectly obeyed it. And Jesus obeyed that law perfectly, a moral code, the 10 commandments, he fulfilled it perfectly because we could not and we would not.

And then he goes to a cross to die as a penalty for our sins so that he could offer to us when we repent of our sins, the righteousness that he earned, the blessing that he earned for law keeping and he took upon himself the curse that we deserve for our law breaking. First Corinthians 7:9, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.

So Jesus came to fulfill the prophecy and the ceremonial law and to fulfill the 10 commandments because we did not, could not. And then Matthew 5:18 for truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. What's Jesus' view here of the Hebrew scripture? He believes it's God's word.

What's fascinating here is the word truly, in the King James Version, it's the word verily. And Jesus often would say, verily, verily, I say unto you and people are like, "What's he doing?" In the Greek it's the word amḗn, amen. And I remember doing a deep dive in seminary study, why did Jesus Christ put amen at the beginning of his teachings, at the beginning of his sentence, not at the end? Did anyone else do that of the teachers of the age? No.

Jesus was the only one who would speak this way. And he speaks like this often. In Matthew, this occurs 31 times, in John it's 25 times. Why is that important? Because the prophets in the old testament, they came and they said, thus, saith the Lord, this is what God says. Jesus Christ doesn't come saying, "This is what God says." He comes what? I say. Truly, I say. What's going on? He is God.

And what does God believe about the Hebrew scriptures? That not one iota, not one dot, not one of the smallest letter, not one of the smallest marks of all the holy scripture will ever pass away, meaning it's eternal. God's word is eternal. Even when the world will come to an end, the holy scriptures will not, they're permanent. That's why at Mosaic we believe that the holy scriptures are God's word, inherent, infallible, authoritative.

We love God's word because Jesus loved God's word. And then Jesus believed that about the old testament and then Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit that inspires the writers of the new testament to give us the holy scriptures. So because of what Jesus did on the cross, when we believe in him and repent of our sins, we enter the kingdom of God.

And when we enter the kingdom of God, now he gives us a work to do, he gives us a new identity, you're salt and light, and then he tells us what that means, and that's point three, good work, law and lifestyle. So be who you are. It's not just about one off. Okay, I'm going to influence someone here or I'm going to shine a little light on this conversation. No, it's about a lifestyle. And that lifestyle is to keep the commandments, that's God's will for our life.

Matthew 5:19, Jesus says whoever relaxes, therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. First of all, I want to point out there's levels in the kingdom of God, levels of obedience, levels of usefulness, levels of influence. There's great and greater, and then there's lesser.

And that doesn't feel good to our egalitarian sensibilities, but it's just the case that if you are not an obedient Christian, you're not very useful. And God says, "Yeah, okay, you're not a useful servant." It's just like with kids, I was meditating on this. You can't love one kid more than another, or at least you can't say it out loud. So I don't rank them in that, but I do rank them in obedience.

And I know who the easiest one is and who the hardest this one is. And here's what I don't want you to get from this. I don't want you to read this text and say, "Oh, I can be disobedient and still remain in the kingdom of God." Because you can get that from here. You're still in the kingdom of God, but you got to balance that out with other scriptures like Hebrews 12, where God is a good father and when his kids are disobedient, he disciplines them.

And if you're just obedient, you don't get less of the attention of God, the father, you get more, but the attention is the attention of discipline. That's the first thing I want to point out here. The second thing I want to point out is that there are weightier matters in the law and less weightier matters in the law. The commandments concerning the care... in the old testament, the commandments concerning care of people and of birds. And Jesus says you are more important than the birds.

In verse 20, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So he just talked about disciples who are obedient, they're greater, disobedient, they're lesser. And then he talks about the Pharisees, that your righteousness needs to be more than the Pharisees who are not in the kingdom.

So there's three categories here. There's obedient people in the kingdom, disobedient people in the kingdom and the Pharisees who aren't even in the kingdom. What's going on here? Why aren't the Pharisees in the kingdom? The Pharisees were the religious elites and the Pharisees believed that the way into the kingdom of God was to earn it, was to be obedient to God's law.

So this is what they did. They were meticulous observers of the law's requirements, in particular, of the letter of the law. They simply followed the regulations governing outward behavior. They poured over the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of the Bible and they found 613 commandments, 248 positive, do this, and then 365 negative, don't do this. And they took those commandments, they dissected them without end and they then create collateral regulations, or they took the commandments and they built a fence around it with their own regulations.

And this is what the Mishnah is, the compilation of these unending regulations. And they focused on the superficial parts of the law, the easy stuff to fulfill. So for example, with the tithe, God commanded the tithe. They said, "Okay, we'll tithe." And they tithe so scrupulously that Jesus says, "You tithe of your till and your cumin and of your spice rack, but you forgot the foundational weighty matters of the law is faithfulness, love and mercy."

So they were fulfilling the letter of law, not the heart of the law, because their heart wasn't with God. They weren't in the kingdom because they did not have a heart of flesh, they had a heart of stone. And this is what Jesus says. He's saying you cannot enter the kingdom of God through your own work. No matter how righteous you are, you become a child of God, you become a citizen of the kingdom by repenting of your sin.

And the moment that you repent of your sin, God forgive me for my law breaking, God forgive me for not doing your will, God forgive me for choosing sin over you, God forgive me, when you repent, God gives you a new heart, a heart of flesh. So even if as a baby Christian or when you're unhealthy spiritually, when you are being disobedient to God, you still have that heart and you're still in the kingdom.

And what happens is even those people, God continues to work on you and fills you with the Holy Spirit. And as you do, as you grow in that, you begin to grow into faithless. In Matthew 5:16 he says, in the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. It's your father, God's your father.

God adopts you into his family. And he will work on our obedience. And the more obedient we are, the better we make our father look, and more attention we attract to him. First Peter 2:11 and 12, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passion of the flesh which wage war against your sin. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

We are to attract... And this is all to say, why does Jesus do all of this before he gives us all of the rest of the teaching? What he is saying is you can't earn your salvation by keeping the law. You can only be given salvation by trusting in Jesus Christ, but then after you do the law is still in place. And the law is in place to guide our lifestyle, to show us how to be who we are, how to be salt and light.

This is very important because this is what the Pharisee said and this was a lot of people said to that. The Pharisee said, "No, no, no. You can't just be saved by grace through faith. You can't just be saved by repenting of sin because then people won't keep the commandments." That's what a lot of people say today. You can't just say that you're saved by repentance and faith. Because Christians, they won't keep the commandments.

And Jesus is saying, no, you don't understand what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be a Christian is to become a new creation, to be a child of God, to become a citizen of the kingdom where you can't but be who you are, which is salt and light. So that's what happened there. And then so the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us what the transformed life looks like.

Jesus tells us what it means to be salt and light. And what he means is that new heart that God gave you, you live that out. So with the commandments, you live out the heart of the commandment, the spirit of the commandment, not just the letter. So for example, he starts with the commandment, you've heard it was said, don't kill anybody.

But I say to you, whoever, whoever even attacks a person with their tongue, whoever hates a person, I'm telling you already killed that person because you killed their humanity. Now you see the weight of this. And the next one that you've heard that it was said, thou shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks upon a woman or upon another person with lust for them in your heart, you've already transgressed that commandment, you've committed adultery.

So as we see that, we're like, "Ah, that's the life we're supposed to live. But ah, I've transgressed this so many times." At the same time, the Sermon on the Mount shows us the way of Jesus and shows us our need for Jesus. Jesus, I can't live like this apart from you, please forgive me. He forgives us, fills us with the spirit and gives us power to live like this. That's the cycle.

He talks about marriage and divorce, that God's will for marriage is one man, one woman, one covenant and one lifetime. And it's not God's will for a divorce to happen. He talks about monogamy fidelity. He talks about our words, don't swear by anything. You've heard that it was said do not bear false witness. I say to you speak, yes as your yes, no and no. Speak as if you're always under oath. That's what God cares about truth.

He talks about retaliation and loving your enemies. If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek, and we'll talk about that. He talks about generosity and mercy ministry. Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing so that you're not virtue signaling what a good person I am. You do it to help the person because God has helped you. God's given you generosity, you give generosity to others.

He talks about prayer and fasting. And we do it not so people think we're righteous, we do it because we love our father and we want to have a conversation where we desire God more than anything and more than even food. He talks about possessions, not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, but in heaven. Where's your main portfolio, where's your real wealth? It's in heaven, now, it's in ministry.

So we see everything's upside down, this is the upside down kingdom. Anxiety teaches us, don't worry in its command. There's good anxiety where we worry about the kingdom of God and seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness instead of worrying about food and clothing, et cetera. This is what he means by be who you are. He saves us, we're in the kingdom, we are salt and light. This is what it means to be salt and light, be who you are.

Acts 1:8, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Sumeria and to the end of the year. God fills us with the Holy Spirit as Christians and we now are his witnesses. So be who you are. And we witness the truth, the voracity of God by living it out with our own life. People do not see God, they see God through us. They don't see the light of God, they see the light of God through us.

So the Sermon on the Mount tells us, put your life where your mouth... put your money where your mouth is, put your life where your mouth is. Are you a Christian, are you're a follower of God? Then be who you are. Benjamin Franklin used to go to the big rallies of George Whitfield even in Boston. In Boston Common, George Whitfield had 30,000 people that he was preaching to.

And Ben Franklin would show up and people would ask him, "Ben Franklin, are you a Christian? Do you believe what George Whitfield is saying?" He says, "I don't come because I believe what he's saying, I come because I believe that he believes what he's saying. He speaks with such conviction, he believes what he's saying." Christians, do you believe this? If so, be who you are.

And it all starts with loving the law of God just like Jesus loved the law of God. Psalm 119:97, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. C.S. Lewis says the order of the divine mind embodied in the divine law is beautiful. What should a man do but try to reproduce it so far as possible in his daily life. Why do we love the law of God? Jesus did, but it's also the law, his word is a reflection of himself. We love him, we love it.

And it shows us how to be holy as he is holy and to love God is to be like him. Today or this week, in conclusion, when you have some steak, you take the salt shaker and you pour salt onto the steak or Brussels sprouts or together, those two together, a match made in heaven, and you pour salt on it, I want you to be reminded of the fact that's who you are. And you have the light on, obviously no one eats delicious steak in the dark.

You have the light on, be reminded that you are the light of the world. We're not pepper, we're not sugar, we are salt called to preserve and fend off decay, called to heal and soothe, called to bring flavor, enhance other flavors. And we're light, so let us walk in the light as children of the light, showing the world a better way, the only way, the way of Jesus Christ, the way of the gospel.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the reminder that you have given us a new identity, that we are children of God, we are servants of the king, we are ambassadors of God, ministers of reconciliation, and we're also change agents called to influence the corruption, decay, the darkness of this world by living out our identity according to your holy scriptures.

And Jesus, we thank you for this incredible sermon. We thank you that you have come to fulfill the law, not to abolish it, and you call us to live according to your word, in a manner worthy of the gospel. I pray that you give us strength to do that. And I pray Lord that through us, through each member of this church, through each listener of this word, I pray you continue to use us to influence this dark and decaying area and transfer many into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of your beloved son, Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.