Welcome back. This is week three of a seven week series studying Matthew 5-7. If you are new, welcome to the party. Here are a few things to know: The study is best done in order. Each study takes about 90 minutes. If you haven't done week one, click here. If you have done week one, but haven't completed week two, click here. Though the studies are posted on blogger, they are best experienced as a member of facebook. Click here to become friends with Bible Study on Facebook. Additionally, click here to join the discussion group on Facebook. I cannot overstate how much these studies build on one another. I won't take much time to review from week to week, so make sure you have a grasp of lessons one and two before proceeding.
Once you are in a comfortable place and free of distractions continue onto lesson three below:
week three. section one. salt and light.
Let's start by learning about salt. Why not, right? Watch the youtube video below:
Let's now read the passage we will be studying this week. Click here to read Matthew 5:13-20. Then return back to the study.
The Sermon is wrapping up its introduction. The "beatitudes" show us statements of reality in light of the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven to our lives here and now. Because the kingdom has come, the spiritually bankrupt are blessed. These statements about salt and light are similar in intent to the beatitudes in that these statements express a current reality to his disciples: "You are this already." However they are also statements of judgement against Israel. Jesus' disciples are the salt of the earth and the light of the world because Israel is not - Israel has lost it's "saltiness" and become dark. Jesus is telling his disciples that they are the new hope for Israel, but only because the Kingdom (reign) of Heaven (God) has come upon them through Christ. They are now what Israel was always destined to be - salt and light.
Before we look at the twofold imagery of salt and light, let's review some of what we learned in lesson one.
There is this overarching, historically-rooted, real promise that God made to humanity. He made a covenant (promise) to Abraham way back in Genesis 12. At that point Abraham was just one man with no heir, but through YHWH he was about to create an entire nation. He embodied all that Israel would and should become. This is what God promised him. Read Genesis 12:1-3 and return.
Notice that the promise to Abraham is that 1.) He would be blessed, 2.) He would be a blessing and that 3.) All the people of the earth would be blessed through him. God's original idea in calling a nation to himself through the one man Abraham was to birth a blessed nation that would bless the entire world. In Jesus we come full circle. One man again contains the hope of God's people - and the hope of God's people is the hope of all people...God's people will be a blessing to the entire world. Though every disciple of Jesus would have known all of this, many were losing hope in the practical world that Israel could really become a blessing to the nations.
I have hopefully built a compelling case that Matthew is showing us Jesus as the revolutionary Christ - the one to bring Israel to a place of ultimate fulfillment - where they are blessed and a blessing. (Notice that Jesus starts the Sermon on the Mount proclaiming to his disciples that they are truly "blessed" in the present. They are blessed already, now he will teach them how to be a blessing.)
John Ortberg, who taught us last week via video, says it this way in his sermon entitled "Vital Signs," a primary source for this week three lesson. (I'll post it as the "extra" at the end of our study.)
"A lot of people think of Jesus as a kind of guru, who went around just dropping out these beautiful, but kind of random sayings, like they would belong in a Hallmark card or something. That’s not what was going on. The Sermon on the Mount, among other things, is a piece of brilliant thought. It’s designed to launch a movement in the face of powerful opposition from at least four factions, that Jesus was aware of...And, all of them had power, and money and reasons to get rid of Him. So, these words are not kind of happy little esteem boosters. They are dangerous."
Ortberg goes onto categorize the four factions of people in the world of Jesus into these categories:
1. The Romans - The Romans (occupiers) view of Israel was that of a place to be exploited financially. Israel existed to be enslaved to Rome and make Rome richer.
2. The Zealots - These were radical Israelite nationalists committed to the violent overthrow of Roman occupation. (From the Roman perspective they would have been seen as terrorists.) Their view of Israel was that God wanted Israel to rule the earth and that they should bring about the revolution by any means necessary.
3. The Sadducees - Mainly consisting of the priests, the Sadducees were modernists and liberal theologians. They denied the inspiration of the Scriptures and did not believe in the coming of the Kingdom or even the idea of God intervening much at all in human history. Practical realists, they viewed Israel as a captive nation under Rome. They managed to "make the best of it" and assume local positions of power and influence in their world as they played within the political system. They were ultimately collaborators with Rome.
4. The Reformers - These were the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. Like the Zealots, they envisioned a world where Israel fully reigned in God's name. Their strategy was much different though. They became pious isolationists. The thinking was that if they separated themselves enough from the Romans, Zealots and Sadducees by their good living and rule keeping God would eventually notice them and reward them by destroying both their enemies and the "sinners" in their own nation. Many saw Messiah coming as key to this. At first glance, Jesus would appear to have the most in common with this faction. However, as we have already seen, this is the group of people most commonly at odds with Jesus in the gospels.
Again, Ortberg puts it this way:
"So, these were the visions: Rome, they kind of were the world. And the zealots said: we exist to rule the world. Sadducees said: we ought to be like the world. And the reformers said: we ought to withdraw and isolate from the world. Nobody was talking about blessing the world. It was in the middle of this cauldron that Jesus comes. He stands on the side of the mountain, and He remembers how God said to Abraham one day, "I will bless you."
In the midst of this reality, Jesus calls together his small group of mountain climbing disciples and creates a "fifth faction" that will overcome and outlast them all. He tells his followers that they are the new hope for Israel. That they already are salt and light. That they already are the blessing to the world promised to Abraham. Ortberg continues...
"And the people respond, of course. Who, us? Insignificant us? Not the Romans, with all of their power and wealth? Not the Zealots, with all of their passion? Not the Sadducees, with all of their connections, not the reformers with all of their piety and religiosity? And Jesus says, no. He says they’re all wrong. The subjugators and the dominators and haters, and the collaborators and the isolators, they’re all wrong. And here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to love them all. I’m going to love the Centurions. I’m going to have a Zealot become one of my people. I’ll love the priests, I’ll love the Pharasees, and I’ll love them all. But a lot of them won’t get it. They’ll fight me, they’ll oppose me, they’ll persecute me, and they’ll imprison me. Eventually they’ll kill me. And then, here’s the next step in the plan. You, my little rag-tag crowd, you will love them. And then they’ll fight you and oppose you and persecute you and imprison you. And kill many of you. And what will you do? Then you’ll love them even more. Isn’t that a great plan? Aren’t you all fired up about that plan? And, of course, a lot of people weren’t. But some people were."
These rag-tag disciples are the real fulfillment of Israel. They are God's people living in God's reign with God's King leading them. They are the rebels bringing blessing to the world.
They are salt. This salt business ties directly into God's covenant (promise) to Abraham to be a blessing to the world. Again, it evokes imagery from the Torah: Read Numbers 18:19 and return back to the study.
God has a "covenant of salt" with Israel. He has a promise of salt with his people. What it the world does that mean? First, it is important to not confuse our modern idea of salt with the ancient understanding. We generally use salt to add taste or spice to food. The ancients, especially the Romans, did this as well. However, the primary use of salt in the ancient world was to preserve meat and other foods. Salt was used to stop corruption and decay in a piece of meat. Salt saved. Beyond whatever other imagery we may pull from being the "salt" of the earth, I've come to believe that Jesus is primarily saying that Israel had a covenant of salt with YHWH, which they broke. They were to be true to Him and He was to use them like salt in the world. He would bless them and they would be a blessing. They would turn the corrupted world around and give blessing to the parts where decay had set in. Now, the Kingdom has come. Jesus can say, "You (my disciples) are what YHWH always wanted Israel to be. You are the salt of the earth."
In blessing his disciples, Jesus is also cursing the other factions. They have failed to be salt and lost their "salt-ness." This is a new day. A new covenant. A new salt covenant to radically fulfill the old one. Now the new deal goes something like this, "Messiah and Heaven have come to you. Repent from your old ways of thinking and your factions and God will overwhelm you with his rule and presence, making you salt like he always wanted to do - not just for you sake, but for the sake of the whole world."
Jesus doesn't just reference the salt covenant, but also light. Now read these verses from Isaiah and return:
Isaiah 42:6
Isaiah 49:6
Notice this word covenant again. Isaiah is seeing the day when the blessed/blessing covenant promised to Abraham is fully realized. Someday, he says, light will come from Israel to the Gentiles (the rest of the world.) Someday, Isaiah says, the Kingdom of Heaven will reign and a covenant/promise of light will be fulfilled on the earth.
Jesus says clearly in our passage, "that day is today" when he says to his early followers, "you are the light of the world." They had to know with these two covenant-packed analogies what Jesus was saying. They likely had a hard time believing it, but they had to know he was telling them that today begins the day we have all hoped to see for generation after generation. We are finally salt and finally light. The new covenant/promise/deal is enacted. God is reigning and He has chosen the least likely faction of all to bring it all about. He has chosen us - the nobodies. (Again there is back-handed judgement here for the four factions. They have hidden the light in one way or another, but now Jesus and his disciples will let it out from under the bowl.)
week three. section two. righteousness.
This concludes the introduction to the Sermon. Now Jesus will move onto his main idea, which we will look at in this lesson. Next week we will watch as he walks us through some different real-life scenarios to test his main idea.
Let's re-read the section we are studying presently as we move on to the latter verses: Matthew 5:13-20.
There must have been some rumor floating around that Jesus was blowing everything up - the Torah, the Law, the Prophets. Some most have been saying that he was starting a new covenant at the expense of the old one. He has to address this concern immediately after his introductory remarks. He speaks plainly: I have not come to abolish (get rid of) the old covenant, but to fulfill it. Jesus is going to focus in on faction #4 (the reformers/pharisees) to let his followers know what he does and does not have in common with them.
What he does have in common with the Pharisees:
He loves the Law (Torah/Scriptures) as much or more than they do. He has not come (like the Sadducees) to downplay the Scriptures but to elevate the promises and the heart of the practices within them. Like any good Rabbi, Jesus loves and values the Law and Prophets down to the tiniest of pen strokes within it.
What he does not have in common with the Pharisees:
Jesus placed love for God and people above obeying the rules and external compliance. This, again, is part of the revolution - the new covenant. Jesus put it this way later on in Matthew:
Matthew 22:37-41
Notice what Jesus is doing here. It is radical and must be wrestled with, not just in this passage, but throughout the Sermon. Jesus is redefining righteousness as love for God and people. He is working from the inside out vs. the outside in. And in this section he judges the Pharisees most viciously. When he says, "unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven," he is certainly not calling his disciples to be MORE religious or law-abiding or rule-keeping. (That is the Pharisees' faulty definition of righteousness.) By Jesus' own definition, he is calling his followers to a life of relentless love. He is not raising the bar on religious piety, but rather condemning the very pious who do not really love God or their neighbor. The irony is rich and thick. He looks over the crowd of whores, mobsters, ex-zealots, abandoned widows, religious nobodies, and the poorest of the poor. He's already told them that they are blessed. He's already informed them that they are entering the Kingdom of Heaven by accepting his invitation to repent. Then he tells them that they have a righteousness that exceeds the ones they have always thought were the most righteous people to ever live. He tells them that the Pharisees will have to become like them to see Heaven.
This radical idea will propel his message forward. Jesus will now start putting flesh to the bones of his new covenant. That is what we will cover in lesson four next week.
week three. section three. assignments.
1. Commit at least one verse in Matthew 5:13-20 to memory this week. Think about it daily.
2. Take some time this week to be alone with God. In a journal or notebook write this question, "God what things do I try to do or not do in order to be right with you?" Spend some time asking God to give you a heart that loves him. Then ask, "What things do you want me to do or not do this week?" See what comes to your mind and take a risk that maybe God is trying to show you something.
3. Type this in your FB/twitter status, "I'm part of a salt and light rebellion. You can join too at http://facebookbiblestudy.blogspot.com"
4. If you haven't yet, join the discussion on the Facebook Group Page.
This week's extra:
Follow this link to John Ortberg's sermon entitled "Vital Signs." Watch it for free by pushing the arrow button. (It was the primary resource for this week's study, so parts will feel like a review.)
Vital Signs Link
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