Tag: righteousness

We Are Being Watched, Matthew 5:13-20 (Ordinary 5 Lent -3 Year A 2023)

Matthew 5:13-20

Earlier this week I was at the Byfleet Tuesday Fellowship where over a series of meetings I have been telling them the story of my life and faith. Bit by bit, episode, by episode, this week we finally got to the point where my family and I arrived in this circuit in 2010 – which was probably a good point at which to end.

One of the hymns we sang on Tuesday was ‘Blessèd Assurance’, for its theme of testimony and those lines, ‘This is my story, this is my song.’ I hope that in hearing my story people heard how my story fits into the bigger story of Jesus.

We’ve been tracking the story of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel in recent weeks. A fortnight ago, we heard how Jesus came into Galilee of the Gentiles with a proclamation that was to begin forming his community of light, a community that forms through repentance. Last week (if you watched my video) you’ll know I preached on the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus shows us what the repentant life with him looks like.

This week, Jesus tells us what the community of light is meant to look like to the watching world.

Firstly, says Jesus, his people are the salt of the earth.

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Now before we think about the salt, I want us to think about the earth.[1] The word here could just mean the soil, or it could mean the land, be that the local land where they are or the land of the whole world.

If it’s the local land, then it would be an image of Israel. Remember that before Jesus ever said, ‘Blessèd are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’ (Matthew 5:5), the Psalmist had said that the meek will inherit the land (Psalm 37:11). The land was so crucial to Israel: it was, after all, the Promised Land. If that’s what we’re talking about here, then Jesus is seeing his people as a renewal movement within the people of Israel. And I guess initially that’s what Christ-followers were.

But I mentioned a fortnight ago that Matthew has the mission to the Gentiles in view. He emphasises that Jesus comes to ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’, and he ends his Gospel with the Great Commission. So in the long term the earth here is surely the whole world. We are to be salt in the whole world. This is an image of the mission to which Jesus calls us.

So we need to know what the salt is. We know how salt had various uses, the main ones being as a seasoning, a preservative, and as a fertiliser. I am going to dismiss the first two of seasoning and preservative here, partly because they refer to food whereas Jesus is talking about salt of the earth, and that’s where it was used as fertiliser.  Besides, it makes little sense to talk of the Christian calling as merely seasoning the world or preserving it. We are not here simply to make the world more flavoursome, or to preserve it, when there is much wrong with it. It is not our calling to bless everything that goes on in the world.

No: if we are salt of the earth, then Jesus means that we are fertiliser. The kingdom community is divine fertiliser. We enable life and growth where there is death and despair. Ultimately, that life only comes in Jesus Christ. We point people to that by our words and deeds. Food banks and the like are signs and pointers to the life of Christ in the midst of death and hopelessness. We also need to speak about the life Christ brings.

So a church community is meant to be fundamentally outward-looking. A fellowship that only looks inwards on itself is one where the salt has lost its saltiness. That may seem strange to us, who are used to our salt largely just being made up of one chemical compound. But in the days of Jesus salt was often found in a mixture with other minerals, and it could be dissolved out of it.

To us, salt losing its saltiness is absurd. Jesus would say to us, a church that only looks in on itself and does not make outreach a priority is equally absurd. Such a church cannot offer life, because it has dissolved the life out of itself.

Secondly, says Jesus, his people are the light of the world.

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 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. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Go back two weeks again in our story. Jesus has come to Galilee of the Gentiles to bring light to those living in darkness. Now, he says, that’s the ongoing task of his people. While in John’s Gospel Jesus owns the title ‘Light of the world’ for himself, here in Matthew he gives it to his kingdom community.

Sometimes we’re happy at the thought that Jesus is the light of the world, but we baulk at the fact that he called his church to be that light, too. It would be easier and more comfortable for us if our faith were just a private thing. We wouldn’t have to worry about being a good witness and what reaction we might get to that in society.

And there are factions in our society who would like us to adopt that attitude. Groups like the National Secular Society and others argue that faith has no place in public life. Either they don’t understand what faith is, or they don’t want to understand.

Jesus says, we are going to be seen – both as individual disciples and as a community of believers together. It will be our good deeds that shine light into a darkened world. We are not doing them so that people praise us, as Jesus condemned some religious leaders for doing: we are doing good deeds so that people may ‘glorify [y]our Father in heaven.’

Do we want to make a first step in changing this world for the better, for the glory of God? Surely we do. Then we need to think, talk, and pray about what good deeds would show up as light in our dark world.

So let me remind you of some of John Wesley’s most famous words:

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

I think Jesus would approve of those words.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus calls us to be better than the Pharisees.

Jesus says he hasn’t come to abolish the Jewish Law but to fulfil it, that we should therefore not dilute it, and that in fact our righteousness needs to exceed that of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law (verses 17-20).

We need to hear this, and hear it carefully. Jesus is not saying that we should obey every Old Testament law, for he said that the food laws were no longer necessary (Mark 7:1-22) and the New Testament generally sees his death on the Cross as fulfilling the sacrificial laws.

Therefore, we need to read the Old Testament and its laws carefully. As Dr Ian Paul says,

… God looks on the heart as well as the hands. We must, in our reading of the Old Testament, always move from ‘What does it say?’ through ‘What is the intention?’ before we ask ‘What is God saying to us now?’[2]

The bottom line is that we cannot be casual about our conduct. Just because we believe in grace, mercy, and forgiveness does not mean we can live carelessly. That will not shine light into darkness. That will simply make us hypocrites, just as Jesus often said the religious leaders of his day were.

No. In God’s grace and mercy in Christ we do indeed find forgiveness and many a fresh start in life after we have messed up. But that grace then calls us to aspire to a higher standard. If all we are called to be as Christians is ‘nice’ then what makes us shine as the light of the world?

That’s why the early church gave dignity to the dead by taking funerals for those not considered worthy of one in the Roman Empire. That’s why they also took care of babies abandoned to die because they were the wrong sex or in some other way did not fit their parents’ aspirations.

Friends, if we are called to bring life to our world and shine in the darkness, how is the Holy Spirit calling us to a higher standard than mere religion?

It’s a question we need to ponder.

[1] Here and in most of what follows I am dependent on Ian Paul’s blog post ‘Being distinctive as the people of God in Matthew 5’.

[2] Ibid.

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Video sermon And Text: Active Patience (Second Sunday Of Advent)

This week, having realised that the copyright fears that led me not to post my videos these last couple of weeks were groundless, I’m going to give you both the video and the text of my talk.

2 Peter 3:8-15

In my teens, one of my favourite pop songs was ‘I’m Not In Love’ by 10cc. It was cleverly arranged and produced, and it had wry and touching lyrics that even clicked with a fifteen-year-old.

However, I heard both the single version and the album version on the radio. The single was a four-minute butchered edit of the full six-minute album track, and so I saved my pocket money to buy the album.

The album – ‘The Original Soundtrack’ – also contained much darker material, not least a song called ‘The Second Sitting For The Last Supper’ in which the band mocked the Christian hope of Christ appearing again in glory.

Two thousand years and he ain’t come  yet
We kept his seat warm and the table set
The second sitting for the Last Supper

It’s a hope for which many people mock us. It’s a hope with which numerous Christians struggle.

Perhaps sometimes it touches on those never-quite-disappeared childhood traits, remembering the times as little ones that we sat in the car while our parents drove, and within five minutes were asking, ‘Are we there yet?’

The third chapter of 2 Peter can give us help in understanding God’s purposes and responding appropriately. What these verses tell us is that when we understand God better, we shall also understand better how to live.

So firstly, understanding God better:

8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

This verse, which takes some words from a psalm, tells us two things about God which get taken up in the next two verses. If a thousand years are like a day to the Lord, then he acts over a long period of time. But if the reverse is also true, that a day is like a thousand years, then God also acts suddenly and quickly.[1]

We see the long-term patience in verse 9:

9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

The slow – to our eyes – acting of God is a mercy to the human race. He doesn’t want to wrap things up without people having a full opportunity to repent and put their faith in his Son, Jesus.

So if someone mocks us as Christians for the fact that Jesus has not returned, we can remind them that he is hanging back to give them the chance to hand over their lives to him. ‘Why hasn’t he come?’ we might reply. ‘Because he’s waiting for you.’

They may or may not appreciate that answer! But it is consistent with the merciful and gracious character of God. The offer of salvation is not a quick, instant, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it event. It is there on the table and stays on the table even for the most recalcitrant of sinners.

God is patient. Jesus hasn’t forgotten to come again, because he hasn’t forgotten the sinners he loves.

But as well as the long-term patience of God there is also his ability to act suddenly and quickly. Verse 10:

10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

God may be patient, but he will not suffer mocking. He will ‘come like a thief’. Christ appearing again ‘like a thief [In the night]’ is a common New Testament image for his return in glory. No-one expects that a thief is coming: you need to be prepared in order to avoid suffering loss.

It’s no good, then, having a casual attitude to God which says, ‘I’ll live just how I like, and then I’ll repent at my leisure on my deathbed.’ That is to treat a patient and merciful God with contempt, and to forget that he is also holy.

And – although in some cases it can be emotional manipulation – the old line of the evangelists that asked, ‘If you were to be hit by a bus tonight, do you know what would happen to you eternally?’ makes a good point to those who would be casual with God and disregard the fact that he can act suddenly and quickly.

So I think we can put these two apparently contradictory elements of God’s character together and see where that leaves us with our Advent hope. God is patient, because he longs for everyone to repent. Yet he will not be mocked by those who treat him casually, and one day he will come both suddenly and quickly. He will even do that before the end in individual people’s lives.

Therefore secondly, we look at understanding better how to live:

Just as there were two elements to understanding God better, so there are two corresponding ways to live in the light of that as we await our Advent hope of Christ’s appearing again in glory.

In response to God’s sudden and quick action, not least in his glorious return, we read verses 11 to 13:

11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

Forty years ago, I went to Spring Harvest for the first time. On the first evening, a preacher named Stuart Briscoe said that he believed in 2 Peter 3 when he saw the atomic bomb fall on Hiroshima. Then he knew it was possible for the heavens to be destroyed by fire and the elements to melt in the heat (verse 12).

But we do this a dis-service if we think that Christ’s sudden and speedy return is only about destruction. For we go on to read of the hope expressed elsewhere in the New Testament, not least by Paul in his letters and John in Revelation, that Christ’s goal is to bring ‘a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells’ (verse 13).

This is why Christ will come again in glory: to bring a new creation, where righteousness dwells.

And so the way to live in the light of that is to live in righteousness now. Christ calls us to live now as a sign of his new world that is coming. Live according to the new creation, not the surrounding culture.

What would it mean to live in righteousness now? Well, the English word ‘righteousness’ might be a little misleading here. Often we take it just to refer to matters of personal morality. But the Greek word means not only personal righteousness but social righteousness – justice, if you will – as well.

So our personal moral conduct needs to come more closely in line with what Jesus calls it to be. But so do our actions in society.

Abraham Kuyper was a Dutch Christian theologian and politician – in fact, he became Prime Minister. He put it this way:

‘There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!’

Is there any part of our lives where we don’t want Christ to cry, ‘Mine!’?

And then there is the way we live in response to the patience of Christ. This comes at the end of the reading:

14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom that God gave him.

‘Our Lord’s patience means salvation.’ As we saw earlier, that patience means salvation in the opportunity for repentance, and so another way we live in the light of Christ’s coming is to offer the Gospel.

But it’s also the climax of our own salvation. For our salvation is not just the forgiveness of our sins through the Cross, it is also the transformation of sinful lives by the Holy Spirit into those that live righteously as we’ve just been saying.

And it is also that our salvation will be completed when Christ appears in glory. For when righteousness dwells, sin will be abolished. Peace will reign. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, as Mother Julian of Norwich said. This is part of our great hope.

To conclude – Christ’s appearing in glory seems to be a long time coming, but it is because God is patient. The chance is there for repentance, and the Church must announce that.

But Christ will still come suddenly and quickly. Let us be prepared by living according to the pattern of his great future.

[1] My understanding of these two contrasting elements is owed to Ben Witherington III, Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians Volume II, pp376-8.

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Sermon: Advent 2, An Undiluted Prophetic Hope

Isaiah 11:1-10

If I were ever to be on a TV show, I think Grumpy Old Men might suit me. Not that I would ever be famous enough to be invited, but I can be the sort of person who thinks that Ebenezer Scrooge was given an unfair press. It’s not simply that this is the time of year when Debbie gets out all the Singing Santa toys that she and the children love (and which can drive me mad), it’s this Second Sunday in Advent.

You see, the grump in me wonders why it got changed in the current Lectionary. You used to know where you were in the four Sundays of Advent. The first Sunday was about the Advent Hope – not just Christ’s original coming but the promise of his appearing again in glory. The second Sunday was about the promise of the Messiah in the Old Testament prophets. Sunday number three introduced you to the man with the extreme diet, John the Baptist. Then on the fourth Sunday it’s the Annunciation by Gabriel to Mary.

What went wrong? How come we now get a reading about John the Baptist this week as well as next week? Some of it has to do with the moving of Bible Sunday into October, although I’m not sure which came first. Perhaps a grumpy old man like me should appreciate two weeks’ worth of his fire and brimstone preaching, but actually I miss the emphasis on the prophets.

And no, it’s wrong to see the prophets as a job lot of grumpy old men. In the short term, they did warn people about the consequences of sin. But in the long term, they held out the hope of God’s future. In Isaiah’s case, that included the hope that God would send his Anointed One, that is, the Messiah.

So, then, what does this passage from Isaiah point us to in the hope of the Messiah’s coming? I want to take Isaiah’s original intentions and give them a distinctively Christ-centred flavour.

Firstly, let me take you to the manse Debbie and I had in the circuit before last. Known among local Methodists as ‘the Frost manse’, because David Frost famously lived there as a boy when his father was the local Methodist minister just after World War Two. The house had begun life, though, as the admiral’s house for the nearby Chatham Dockyard. Thus, although it was terraced, it was a large house. The downstairs study which Paradine Frost, David Frost’s father, had used when he was there, had by our time been converted into a huge kitchen. There was ample space not only to cook but also to seat several people around a dining table for meals.

There was a large window from the kitchen looking out onto the garden. Unfortunately, it didn’t let in much light, and we had to turn on the lights earlier and more frequently than might have been expected.

Why was this so? Because a large tree stood not far outside the window. Far enough away for the roots not to affect the house, but near enough to darken the kitchen. Eventually, we asked the circuit if they could send in a tree surgeon, which they did, and we gained more natural light when he had reduced it to a stump.

Isaiah begins by talking about a stump:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. (Verse 1)

‘The stump of Jesse’ is a tragic statement. You will remember that Jesse was the father of David, and all Israel’s hopes had been in him. Yet this seems to suggest that David’s line has failed, even to the point where his father is named instead of him. The great tree has been cut down to a stump. ‘The stump of Jesse’ implies human failure and sin. Time after time, Israel and Judah had been let down by her kings.

Yet, says Isaiah, ‘from the stump of Jesse’ shall come ‘a shoot’ ‘and a branch shall grow out of his roots’. From a long line of human failure, God will grow his purposes. From generations of sinners, God will bring his Messiah. From iffy patriarchs whose morals crumbled under pressure, to Rahab the prostitute, to King David the adulterer and murderer, the ancestral line of the Messiah is filled with broken sinners. Within the purposes of God you get Moses who murdered a man and ran away, then protested when God called him that he couldn’t be a public speaker. You have Gideon, who was fearful and full of doubt. There is Jeremiah, who may well have suffered from depression, yet only Isaiah exceeds him among the prophets.

And so that is the first theme I want to take from Isaiah – the hope of the Messiah is one of God working through sinners. God’s purposes are accomplished through a people that one video clip I saw the other day called ‘The March of the Unqualified’.

This Advent, then, be encouraged by the prophetic hope that whatever your failures, whatever your weaknesses, whatever your disappointments, God is capable of working his purposes out through you. If you think that your sins have disqualified you from God and that you have shrivelled from a tree to a stump, then know that God is able to develop a shoot from your stump and a branch from your roots. The God of grace and mercy has come to shine his light into the world even through a cut-down stump.

Secondly, if there’s one thing I get very little of as a parent of young children, but which I would like to have more of, it’s rest. While – as I told Knaphill last week – I begrudgingly rely on an alarm clock in the morning, there are times when it’s not needed. We have two small human alarm clocks, and one in particular. Rest is something Debbie and I envy in others.

But the trouble with words is one of multiple meaning. Think of how you look up a dictionary definition for a word, only to face a range of options. And ‘rest’ is one such word. In the way I have just used it, the connection is with sleep. But ‘rest’ can also mean ‘stay’. I’d like to combine the two meanings of rest into one, of course: stay asleep!

But it’s this second meaning of ‘rest’, that of staying, which Isaiah uses here:

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (Verse 2)

It’s not simply that the Messiah will have the Spirit of the Lord, it’s that the Spirit of the Lord will rest – that is, stay – on him. Generally in the Old Testament when the Spirit of God comes upon someone it is a ‘tumultuous and spasmodic’[1] experience. The Spirit usually comes dramatically, but only temporarily.

Therefore it’s a big thing for Isaiah to speak about the Spirit resting on the Messiah. Here is the one on whom the Spirit will come and remain. The Messiah will have God’s Spirit permanently. And when John the Baptist says that Jesus is the one on whom he saw the Holy Spirit come and remain, he is making a big claim – a claim that here indeed is the Messiah.

What does this resting of the Spirit upon Jesus mean for us? It ushers in the New Testament era of faith, where the people of the Messiah may receive the same gift. The coming of Jesus the Messiah is the coming of a new age, the age of the Holy Spirit, where Jesus, who received the Spirit permanently, gives the Spirit to his followers in the same way. There may still be dramatic experiences of the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit does not generally depart from a person any more. The Spirit may become distant when we grieve him by our sin, but the intention of Jesus in the messianic age is to give the Holy Spirit as a permanent endowment. In this way, Advent and Christmas look forward to Pentecost!

So be encouraged. Just as the Christ child is called ‘Immanuel’, God with us, so he comes with the promise of God being with us – ‘even to the close of the age’ – because he who receives the Spirit permanently gives the Spirit in the same way. Do not think that God has deserted you. As one Christian scholar puts it, even doubt ‘is a time of “disguised closeness” to God’. Or as the liturgy puts it, in a dialogue between minister and congregation: ‘The Lord is here.’ ‘His Spirit is with us.’

So far, then, we have good news twice over: firstly, that God works even through sinners and failures to bring his messianic purposes to fruition. Secondly, that the Messiah receives the Spirit permanently and gives the Spirit in a similar way to his disciples, so we may know that God is always present with us, even when we can neither see nor feel him. I want to draw out a third strand of this messianic hope before I close.

Just as we’ve thought about the word ‘rest’ as having more than one meaning, this third thought also depends on a double entendre. Not in the sense of a rude joke, but because biblical words are often so rich they convey multiple meanings.

There is one such word in our passage, and Isaiah uses it more than once: righteousness: ‘with righteousness he shall judge the poor’ (verse 4); ‘Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist’ (verse 5). Isaiah uses the word ‘righteousness’ of the Messiah here in terms of who he is, and what he does. Isaiah uses ‘righteousness’ for the Messiah’s dealings with people, and for the society he creates.

It’s a many-layered word, and at the heart of God’s righteousness in Christ is God’s covenant faithfulness. In covenant faithfulness through Jesus, God will make people righteous with him. Ultimately, we know he will do that through the Cross. But this righteousness is not just a ‘get out of jail free’ card for the Day of Judgment. God’s righteousness is also about the transformation he wants to bring to people, to societies, to the world and even to all creation. God’s righteousness is about personal and social salvation, personal and social transformation.

If this is what Jesus the Messiah came to do, it crosses the boundaries we sometimes erect in the church. On the one side we have those who say personal conversion to Christ is the be-all and end-all of faith. They say that society will not change until people are changed by God. On the other there are those who are almost cynical about personal conversion and say the big thing is social justice. Yet the righteousness of the Messiah doesn’t allow us to split personal conversion and social justice and play them off against each other, supporting our particular favourite. Jesus has come to call people to personal faith in him, and to share in his project of transforming the world.

And if that’s the case, woe betide us if we reduce Advent or Christmas to gooey sentimental thoughts about a baby. The baby who came did so through God’s purposes of using weak, sinful people. The baby who came would receive the Spirit in full measure and permanently, and came to give the Spirit permanently to those weak sinners that God delights in using. And the baby who came gave the Spirit to weak sinners to bring them to faith in him and to empower them to work for God’s kingdom.

The prophets don’t let us settle for a half-hearted, diluted hope. Let’s make sure we drink their hope neat.

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