Matthew 5 (8/27/2017) Series

Matthew 5:13-14 (Jesus Teaches about Salt and Light)

If a seasoning has no flavor, it has no value.

If Christians make no effort to affect the world around them, they are of little value to God. If we are too much like the world, we are worthless. Christians should not blend in with everyone else.

Instead, we should affect others positively, just as seasoning brings out the best flavor in food.

Can you hide a city that is sitting on top of a mountain? Its light at night can be seen for miles. If we live for Christ, we will glow like lights, showing others what Christ is like.

We hide our light by:

Being quiet when we should speak

Going along with the crowd

Denying the light

Letting sin dim our light

Not explaining our light to others

Ignoring the needs of others

We should be a beacon of truth – we should not shut our light off from the rest of the world.

Jesus Himself is the Light of the World (John 8:12). His followers reflect His Light and Glory.

Good deeds are not to be done in a public way for one’s own honor, but for the glory of God.

The grandest motive that a person can have is that by their actions, others may be constrained to Glorify God.

Matthew 5:17-20 (Jesus Teaches about the Law)

God’s moral and ceremonial laws were given to help people love God with all their hearts and minds. Throughout Israel’s history, however, these laws had often been misquoted and misapplied.

By Jesus’ time, religious leaders had turned the laws into a confusing mass of rules. When Jesus talked about a new way to understand God’s law, he was actually trying to bring people back to its “original” purpose. Jesus did not speak against the law itself but against the abuses and excesses to which it had been subjected (see John 1:17).

If Jesus did not come to abolish the law, does that mean all the OT laws still apply to us today? In the OT, there were three categories of law: ceremonial, civil, and moral.

The “ceremonial law” related specifically to Israel’s worship. Its primary purpose was to point forward to Jesus Christ; these laws, therefore, were no longer necessary after Jesus’ death and resurrection. While we are no longer bound by ceremonial law, the principles behind them – to worship and love a holy God – still apply. Jesus was often accused by the Pharisees of violating ceremonial law.

The “civil law” applied to daily living in Israel. Because modern society and culture are so radically different from that time and setting, all of these guidelines cannot be followed specifically. But the principles behind the commands are timeless and should guide our conduct. Jesus demonstrated these principles by example.

The “moral law” is the direct command of God, and it requires strict obedience. The moral law reveals the nature and will of God, and it still applies today. Jesus obeyed the moral law completely.

Some of those in the crowd were experts at telling others what to do, but they missed the central point of God’s laws themselves. Jesus made it clear, however, that obeying God’s laws is more important than explaining them. It’s much easier to study God’s laws and tell others to obey them than to put them into practice. How are you doing at obeying God yourself?

The Pharisees were exacting and scrupulous in their attempts to follow their laws. So how could Jesus reasonably call us to greater righteousness than theirs? The Pharisees’ weakness was that they were content to obey the laws outwardly without allowing God to change their hearts (or attitudes). They looked pious, but they were far from the Kingdom of Heaven. God judge hearts and deeds, for it is in the heart that our real allegiance lies.

Jesus was saying that his listeners needed a different kind of righteousness altogether (out of love for God), not just a more intense version of the Pharisees’ obedience (which was mere legal compliance). Our righteousness must

(1) come from what God does in us, not what we can do by ourselves,

(2) be God-centered, not self-centered,

(3) be based on reverence for God, not approval from people, and

(4) go beyond keeping the law to living by the principles behind the law.

We should be just as concerned about our attitudes that people don’t see as about our actions that are seen by all.

Jesus came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. There is no contradiction here between Jesus’ Teaching and the Teaching of Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, that we are saved by faith in Christ rather than by Works of the Law.

Jesus’ meaning is that God’s Moral Law is the expression of God’s Own Holiness, and is of Eternal Obligation on God’s People. And that, in reality, He came to give the Law’s former declaration a deeper meaning, and to enforce it, not merely in outward acts, but in the inner depths of the human heart.