Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD
www.mycrossway.org
On this Resurrection Sunday we are celebrating the glorious defeat of death and our eternal suffering by the Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his death on the Cross and his defeat over death through his resurrection that we are able to look forward to an eternity in His Kingdom. It is through Christ that we are the adopted children of God and inherit His Kingdom as citizens of heaven.
Over the last few months, we’ve gone through the first part of the Sermon on the Mount and studied the beatitudes. Here we found that there was a progression, a ladder to climb if you will to the realization of who we are and our place in the Kingdom of God. The first rung of the ladder is the realization of our spiritual poverty. We have nothing to offer God and we have done nothing to earn our citizenship of heaven. It is only at the realization of our spiritual poverty that we understand that we are in desperate need of a savior to save us, redeem us, and who paid our ransom to be counted as God’s children.
As we climb that rung of the ladder our spiritual poverty leads to our grief and sorrow over sin. Jesus said, in Matthew 5:4 “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” It is the stain and curse of sin that separates us from God and so we mourn over that sin. Not only that sin but the sin and corruption of the world. This sorrow brings us to a place of meekness (Matthew 5:5), strength under control to bring our sin and our nature under the headship of God
From there we find ourselves hungry and thirsty for righteousness (Matthew 5:6). The more we grow in our faith, the more we desire to walk more closely and deeply with God. That brings us to a place of extending that mercy to others because we understand we lack merit, just as every man does. If God can have mercy on us for our iniquities, then we too will have mercy on others for how they’ve wronged us (Matthew 5:7).
All of this leads to the development of godly character, purity, holiness, and a life of living at peace with God and with others, but the world will hate us and persecute us for our walk with God. All of this is part of our necessary influence on the world. As Jesus describes us in Matthew 5:13-16:
13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out to be trampled underfoot by men. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; 15 nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13–16)
Now last week, I shared with you the key characteristics of us being salt. And of the many uses of salt described, the key influential characteristic of salt that should be seen in the Christian’s life should be an agent to prevent decay. Yes, we season the earth with God’s grace, and yes we heal wounds, but most importantly, salt was the preserving agent used in Jesus’ day to prevent the food from rotting. Likewise, the Church is the only thing God put in this world to keep the corrupting power of evil at bay.
This week we’re going to talk about light and being this is Easter Sunday, I think it is a powerful connection to us as the light of the world.
Now, Jesus said in verse 14, “You are the light of the world” and just as he used the emphatic voice in his reference to salt, Jesus uses it to refer to us as light. Literally, he is saying, ‘you and only you are the light of the world’ with ‘you’ being in plural form. And at the conclusion of his statement at the end of verse 16, he reemphasizes the notion, that we live in the darkness of the world and with the Church as the only light in the darkness that we are to let our light shine.
I think it is important to realize here that the property of being light isn’t something that we obtain to be or something we can hope to be; it is in our very character and nature that we are light. God’s plan to bring hope to people isn’t through systems, programs, or buildings. His plan is for us. All of us.
Now if salt influences through bringing out the flavor and preserving it from decay. Light influences through revelation. Just as light reveals what is hidden in darkness and things that cannot be seen, so does the light of Jesus reveal the mysteries of God and shine light into a world of darkness. That is part of our purpose.
We live in a time, known as post-modernism. A time when man has rejected that there can be any objective truth. Everything is relevant to the perception of the individual. It is how society can move the boundaries of marriage and sexuality so easily. But think about this, when we move the boundary of morality from where it is set by God and replace it with the preference of man, when will the boundary stop? Who has the right to determine that?
We say that marriage and sexuality are no longer restricted to being between a man and woman, but can not be between a man and a man or woman and a woman, or a man pretending to be a woman, and so on. But what about pedophilia, bestiality, or necrophilia? Oh no! That’s gross and immoral, someone may say. But based on whose standards now. Just as we say it is infringing on the rights of two men, can we now say the same for the other if we keep going down the relativist road?
G.K. Chesterton once said, “Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask yourself the question, ‘Why was it put there in the first place?’
Howard Hendricks says, “You are I are living in a time when fences are being removed all around us. America is playing a dangerous game with her destiny, removing fences that were put there for a reason. Fences that were put in place for our own spiritual protection. Fences for our national character. Fences for our families. Fences for the church of Jesus Christ. Fences that were built on the nature and character of God. And we are now trying to remove them.”
"Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (John 8:12)
Jesus’ resurrection from the grave underscores our existence as eternal bearers and reflectors of his light. At the conclusion of the First Council of Nicaea, the bishops reached a consensus concerning a number of important matters, including when exactly to celebrate Easter. But above all, they reached a consensus on the definitive answer to the question Jesus had put to his disciples: “Who do people say I am?”
In the words of the Nicene Creed, the answer is this: Jesus, you are “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” In other words, Jesus is both human and God. “I and the Father are one,” Jesus himself states plainly in John 10:30. Which is why John 14:6 makes perfect sense when Jesus explains, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” If you reject Jesus, you reject God himself, because the two are one and the same. (Guillen, Michael. Amazing Truths: How Science and the Bible Agree p. 47).
Today, more than ever we have to shine our lights brightly into the vast darkness of this world. There are too many in the church hiding their light under a basket in fear of offending. The danger is that when you turn the lights off, it is to the peril of many.
According to Jesus, if we are not shining our light, then we are intentionally hiding it. Matthew 5:15 “nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.”
Light in the Bible is related to the knowledge of God:
"Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path." (Psalm 119:105)
"To give to His people the knowledge of salvation By the forgiveness of their sins," (Luke 1:77)
"There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens everyone. (John 1:9)
"For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Corinthians 4:6)
What Jesus is telling us in his Sermon on the Mount is that you are the only light the world is going to ever have. They may not always like it. They may not always want it, but we have to be visible. Someone is somewhere out there looking for a way home and Christians can’t put their lamp under a basket by pretending to be more like the world than Kingdom Citizens.
There was a recreational pilot who was flying his single-engine plane toward his home at a small country airport. Unfortunately, when arrived in the vicinity of the field the sun dropped behind the mountain. With no instruments to fly by, he could not see the hazy runway below.
There were no lights to guide him and no one on duty at the airport. He circled the field for another attempt to land, but the darkness had made it impossible for him to tell where he needed to land. For 2 desperate hours, he flew his plane around and around in the blackness of the night, knowing that probably death awaited him when he ran out of fuel.
Then a miracle occurred. Someone on the ground heard the continuing drone of his engine and realized his predicament. His friend drove his car back and forth on the runway to show him the location of the airstrip. Then he let his headlights cast their beam from the far end while the plane landed. Without the lights of a friend, the pilot would have perished (James Dobson, The Strong-Willed Child).
We take a candle into a room to dispel the darkness. Likewise, the Light of Jesus Christ has to be taken into the darkness of sin that engulfs the hearts and lives of those who are not following Him. That’s the condition behind having this Light—that we follow Him. If we do not follow Him, we will not have this light, this truth, this eternal life. (Got Questions)
You are the light, my friend. We are the city on a hill. We are the salt of the earth. The gospel is our message. The world is drowning in darkness with an empty cross, an empty tomb, a risen Savior, and a victorious Church. There can only be on explanation. If Christ’s death on the cross was sufficient (and it was). And His resurrection from the tomb was triumphant (and it was). And the Church was given all we need to overcome evil (and we have). Then the decay of this world is the result of a Laodicean Church hiding its light under a basket and the savor of its salt losing its flavor.
John Ortberg wrote that L. Ron Hubbard’s writings of Scientology have been translated into 65 languages; the Koran is supposed to be read in Arabic so it hasn’t been translated as much; the Book of Mormon is in about 100 languages. But 2,656 languages have all or some of the Bible. Some 65 million copies of the Bible are brought or distributed in the U.S. every year--nothing else is a close second. The average house has at least three. People cheer the Bible, buy the Bible, give the Bible, own the Bible-they just don’t actually read the Bible. According to George Gallup: One-Third of those surveyed know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Fewer than half can name the first book of the Bible; 80 percent of born-again Christians believe the phrase God helps those who cannot help themselves is in the Bible (it’s Ben Franklin if you’re curious). (Leadership Magazine, Winter 2008).
One more thought as we conclude today. When you are sitting at a table and ask for salt, do you take a single grain of salt and place it on your food? Likewise, when you turn on a lightbulb or shine a light into the darkness, it is not a single ray of light that shines, but a symphony of light of all colors that flood the area. So it is with God’s people.
"for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light" (Ephesians 5:8)
A magazine once carried a series of pictures, and that series of pictures depicted a very sad story. The first picture was a picture of a vast wheat field in Kansas. It was a farm in Western Kansas, and from horizon to horizon, all you could see was the wheat waving in the wind.
The second picture was of a mother in distress inside her farmhouse in the middle of that wheat field. She had a small boy who had somehow wandered away from the house into that wheat field, and the little boy was so small that he couldn’t be seen.
She had called for her husband, and the two of them had searched all day long for that little fellow; they finally decided that they should call the neighbors, who began to search frantically all over the wheat field with no success.
The third picture depicted all the people who had heard of the little boy being lost, gathered in the morning, joining their hands, hand-to-hand, and in a great, long line of humanity, linked only by their hands, sweeping from one end of that wheat field to the next.
The last picture was a picture of the father standing over the body of his little son. They had finally found him, but he was dead. The cold night had claimed its victim. And underneath the final picture of a weeping father were these words: “O God, if we had only joined hands sooner.” (MacArthur)
If Jesus says that we are the light of the world and light is necessary not only to enable our eyes to see, but for our minds, bodies, and spirits to live. (Guillen) Then let us shine the light of Christ from this place as brightly as we possibly can until the trumpet sounds.
How about you today? Are you walking in the light or in the darkness? Will you come to the light of Jesus Christ? Let his resurrection and defeat over death and the grave restore you, revive you and bring light into the darkness.
