Lineage: Matt 5

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0:00 For the rest of us, we're going to be in Matthew chapter 5, like I promised earlier. I love Matthew chapter 5. Matthew does this thing in chapter 5 that kind of Luke does too, but not all of the gospel writers do, where he makes this big lump of Jesus teaching altogether called Sermon on the Mount because it says that he went up on a mountain and taught this and it's a lot of his teachings all kind of mashed up together.

0:32 I was trying to look at the context for Matthew chapter 5 to see where might Jesus have been, who might he have been talking to, and it's not really satisfying if you try and get that from Matthew. The Sermon on Mount comes a little out of conflict without context. It's kind of a bummer. In the end of chapter 4, if you were to kind of skim it, you'd see that Jesus is walking all through Galilee and he's building a reputation like teaching and healing people as he moves

1:08 through Galilee. And remember what Galilee means? There's Jerusalem, kind of the core of Israelite faith in first century world. It's like the red hot center still at the time of Jesus in Jerusalem, in the temple, in the holy of holies is the one place where you know God will be. He promises he'll be there. And you can find his manifest presence right there inside the one little room, inside the

1:39 one temple, inside the one city. And by the first century, there are Israelites all over the known world. They've been conquered so many times and repopulated all over the places. And so they come to Jerusalem, to the temple, to the one room, to offer sacrifices to the presence of God where they know God will be. And Jesus, of course, is the long awaited incarnate God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Comes down.

2:10 So he goes to Jerusalem first and at several times he says, I came for these people first because these are my treasured possessions, my holy nation. I come to them first, but what's interesting is Jesus, even Jesus incarnated Jewish Messiah, delivering king, doesn't spend all his time in the temple. He doesn't even spend all his time in Jerusalem. And Matthew says that he spends a lot of time walking around Galilee, which is the region

2:42 outside of Israel proper, where there are some Jewish folk and then some people who have Jewishness in their lineage back in the way, but maybe a potato thief mixed in with somebody from Great Britain mixed right like a whole. And Jesus is walking around Galilee and at some times thousands of people are coming to hear from him and bring their people to be healed.

3:12 And so that's what's happening in Matthew's story in chapter four. And then it doesn't say where he is. That's why I was trying to find out like, hey, where is Jesus when he gives the sermon on the Mount? And when you reach chapter four, it looks like he might be in Galilee, but he might have come back into Israel. It's not really clear. He might be in Jerusalem. Might be out of Jerusalem. But what is compelling to me there is that Matthew, if it were important, he would tell

3:50 us that we're critical for us to understand what Jesus is about to teach in the sermon on the Mount, he would make sure we knew. For example, if it were important that what Jesus is about to teach is for the Sadducees, the people that keep the temple. The people that steward the place where God is. If Jesus' teaching was for the people who steward the temple, Matthew would tell us. If it were for the Pharisees specifically, if Jesus were teaching for the law givers

4:20 and the religious folks who keep all the rules, Matthew would tell us. If it was for the people way outside, if it was only for the non-Jews, Matthew would tell us. If it was only for the Jews, Matthew would tell us. He doesn't tell us. He just says that there are, let's look and see what it says, chapter 5 verse 1, seeing the crowds, Jesus goes up on the mountain. And when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

4:51 This is true in Jesus' time and all the way through into Acts of the Apostles in the first century. The teacher would sit and the hearers would stand. Jesus goes up on the mountain side to sit down and teach his disciples come to him first and then there are crowds around him. And the first thing he gives them is what we read for our call to worship the Beatitudes. We're going to skip over that because you just read it.

5:22 It's beautiful, but we don't have time. Look at verse 13. Now to this assortment of people whom he has blessed and blessed and blessed with the Beatitudes over and over and over again. That it's unclear, almost arbitrary, who the crowd is. He looks at him and says, you are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

5:58 It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. And he says again, you are the light of the world. A city 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 in all the house. Jesus looks at this random assortment of people, lots of people that seem to just kind of

6:30 have happened to be around him at the time. It's not like he gave out invitations. He has the disciples with him, which the disciples he picked. But remember, he didn't pick the way that rabbis traditionally picked disciples. As a matter of fact, when you normally would get a disciple, if you were a rabbi in Jesus time, they would have finished Hebrew school and then having finished Hebrew school gone to the end, farthest end of it, then they would pick out a rabbi that they liked if they

7:01 wanted to keep trying not to go be a Pharisee or a strategy to take care of a specific thing. But they wanted to be an itinerant rabbi. They would go find one that they liked and follow him around and he would quiz him. And if they kept passing the quizzes and had the energy and the stamina to keep following him wherever he went, then they could be one of his disciples until he died. Then they would take become a rabbi and begin teaching his teaching around. They would apply to him. Jesus, you remember the story, goes seeming at random and picks guys who are not looking

7:33 to be disciples or feel like they're not good enough. So Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 walks up on the sermon of the Mount, sits down and has a random assortment of thousands of people plus his closest friends whom he seems to have picked at random and tells them they are the light of the world, which is... I don't know, foolhardy? What does he know about these people?

8:03 I mean the 11, the 12 he probably knows pretty well, but what about the rest of them? What does he know about them? To call them the light of the world? You know, they have made no unifying commitment other than they happen to be there and intrigued at what Jesus is about to say. We don't get the sense that they necessarily have signed any doctrinal statements or have

8:34 agreed to any list of theological propositions. We don't get that sense. We don't know that they've all been baptized if they came through the Jordan River. We don't know that they've made any sacrifices at the temple before or will in the future. We don't know if they're all circumcised or not a part of the covenant community of Israel. It seems almost at random. They're certainly not all Pharisees, religious lawkeepers and lawgivers or Sadducees, ones

9:09 who tend to the temple. Jesus has pulled together a random assortment of people and says, you are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. I thought I felt this phrase a lot over the years. And you know, you wonder what he means. Jesus uses metaphors all the time. Of course, light is this crazy thing.

9:40 I've talked about it before, but it's the first thing God makes. Remember, out of nothing God imagines the whole universe into existence. And the first thing with the power of his word and the force of his will, he speaks light into existence. And we still can't figure out if it's a particle or a wave. We can predict how it acts, but it doesn't need matter to move through. But it seems to act as according to a particle if you try and filter it in different ways. We don't know exactly how it's manifested.

10:12 We can make with the diodes, we can make light. But Jesus, our God in creation, just makes light out of nothing. And then all throughout the story of Scripture, light is associated with God. When Moses speaks to God as another man speaks to another man face to face, he walks out of the presence of the tents of meeting in his face, is glowing white with light. Jesus walks up to the mountain of the transfiguration where he's elevated in front of his three closest friends and the voice of God comes from heaven and Moses and Elijah stand next to him.

10:42 He's transfigured so that his clothes are glowing bright white so that they have trouble looking at him. When John sees a vision of the end of all things, when we get to the world as it's intended to be, he says, we'll need no sun or moon because the sun and man sitting on the throne will be all the light that we need emanating from him. Light throughout the whole story of Scripture is associated with God and Jesus on the Mount looking at a random assortment of people, maybe in Galilee, maybe in Jerusalem, maybe

11:13 in Israel, maybe Galileans, maybe Jewish folk, maybe Pharisees, maybe Sadducees, a random assortment of people looks at them and says, you are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. This is a random assortment of people. I mean, y'all are pretty random.

11:46 You found your way into the warehouse in the neighborhood because it's cool people and because maybe the gospel is good news. And it starts today with this, Jesus to a random assortment of people ascribe to them something that throughout the whole Scripture ascribe to God. He said, you are the light of the world.

12:19 What does the light do? You are the light of the world. A city 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 the house in the same way. Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to God the Father who is in heaven.

12:53 I mean, you get it right. You need light to be able to see. I remember the first time I realized, you know, it's like a ridiculous, that colors are like the kind of light that's bouncing back at you. When you're starting to learn that and then learn about people that are colorblind and you begin to wonder is what I see as blue.

13:25 The same thing as what Beverly sees as blue. Is it is the world completely subjective or is there an objective blue reality? I can't get inside of light but without light you see nothing. You start to wonder is anything there at all until you bump into it, right? Change is your experience. This uses this metaphor to say that there are people in the world who work like light.

13:57 So if other folks are going to see what's true, they're going to be able to navigate their way through the world. But they're going to folks are going to be able to see things for what they really are. It's because there are some folks who work like light in the world who when they walk in places, truth is illuminated. The world is revealed for what it is because these people are around.

14:31 Jesus looks at a random assortment of people and tells them, you all are the light of the world. If anyone is going to see what's real in the world, what's true, what matters and is substantial is because you're out there turning lights on letting people see how the world works.

15:02 That's kind of a big calling. What's interesting to me is like you start to go, Jesus is like getting crazy here. Jesus of course is the culmination of the whole story of scripture. It's like the capstone of the narrative of God. He has made creation out of his own imagination and at the fatal flaw of humanity, the whole thing breaks down so that death enters in and he makes a commitment to fix it.

15:33 And Jesus is the capstone of the fixing plan of God. And you come in and first you think, oh my gosh, he's changing the plan on its head completely. He's telling this random assortment of people that they can be the light of the world. When the light of the world is supposed to be the God, but look down further, just a little bit further, Jesus said, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

16:08 Or truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one eye order or dot, shall pass from the law until all is accomplished. People debate what Jesus means when he says I did not come to abolish the law or the prophets. Does that mean specifically the Ten Commandments? Does that mean the covenantal promise? The broadest sense would be I did not come to abolish any of the old story or scriptures, but to fulfill them. When you start to begin to realize that Jesus understands himself in the full lineage of

16:42 the people of God, a continuation not a break. An evolution but not a re-beginning. He says I am in continuation with this story, this lineage. Then you realize, maybe, I do anyway. When Jesus says you will be the light of the world, a city on a hill, do not hide it under a bushel, my brain goes to the other mountain, Sinai, where Jesus gathers a group

17:19 of slaves who would prefer to be back with their idols and says you all will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Peace not to the exclusion of the rest of the world, but for the sake of the rest of the world. Priest that usher the holiness of God out into the world, that mediate a conversation with the God of the universe to the people of the universe. That he says I will select a group of people who will usher people in to what the world

17:53 is intended to be. Like a little light walking around a show people what is true. Jesus is sermon on the mount, his light of the world, conversation is the same conversation that the God of creation in life had with the Israelites on Mount Sinai when he said you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and my brain keeps going. When Noah got off the boat after the flood and they were going to repopulate the world,

18:28 God says go out and be the rule over the world and subdue it. Fill the earth with yourself. Turn on the lights for all of creation and it mimics what God says at the very beginning to the first ones. You all now he says are my creation. My image bears in the world. As you move through Eden all of creation will be reminded of the truth of the God when

19:05 they look at you. Jesus can look with such confidence on the random assortment of people in wherever he is in the first century and ascribe to them the responsibility of being the light of the world.

19:36 Not because he knows each of them perfectly. Not because each of them will be perfect. Not because he knows that if they are interested this is the calling of all humanity. From the beginning of time through his time into the day to day to be image bearers of the Creator God out in the world to walk in keeping with that God love, justice, generosity,

20:13 hope in the future, solidarity and pain. To carry the character in fact the image of God out into the world so that when people see them they might see him. Jesus says you are the light of the world. Sidion and Hill can not be hidden. He doesn't need to put on a basket. You walk around and they see your good works so that they might glorify your Father in heaven. He does not know these people.

20:46 But he is confident that if you are interested in being the light of the world that the presence of the Spirit of God comes to your aid, that good works enough exist and that when they do they point to the God of creation and life. Not to you. Our lineage is the same as Jesus as the Israelites as the first ones.

21:17 Your lineage is the same as Jesus as the Israelites as the first ones. Christ accomplished what he did on the cross in order that in you might be the light of the world.

21:47 I remember I told the story a couple weeks ago to a friend. I remember I started the first couple of sermons I gave were in seminary under weird circumstances like at a large suburban church. Maybe the third time I preached, the first two times I felt dynamite, like a pro from the start.

22:21 Third time reality came through. It was not good. I had a bad week. I had a lot of other things going on and it just wasn't great. The first two weeks dynamite very few remarks afterwards. It was a big church to shake people's hand. Thank you. The third week, saying not very much.

22:52 In the end, people go to the next thing. But I did have one comment after that third week. Someone came up and was like, oh my gosh. That was amazing. It spoke exactly to what I needed. It was not good. I remember I didn't know what to say because I didn't want to say it was bad. So I remember I said, ah, it just happened.

23:23 I didn't think about it. God must really like you because he used a crappy sermon to speak just to you. God has put you as light out in the world because there are people around you whom he loves deeply. And through folly or wisdom, through creativity or ignorance, he has decided he will communicate

24:01 to them through you. So just be open. Love generously. Forgive freely. Offer mercy. Stand for justice. And know that as you do, that primordial light of the world seeps out through you. That's your lineage.

24:31 That's what we value. We're part of a tradition that's been doing that from the very beginning. Let's pray that we could play our part this morning. Hey Lord, thank you for your confidence, hope in us and capability that you give us. Teach us how to humbly carry your light well in a way that points people to you.

25:05 That your son may be glorified in all that we do. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.