Sermon Tone Analysis

Matthew 5:13-16 (NIV)

Salt and Light

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 by men.

14 “You are the light of the world.

A city 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 men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Matthew 6:19–24 (NIV)

Treasures in Heaven

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

22 “The eye is the lamp of the body.

If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.

23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

24 “No one can serve two masters.

Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and Money.

I woke up really early one morning a couple of weeks ago and the verse from Matthew 6 about storing up treasure in heaven was in my mind.

I sat there for a while thinking about those verses and why did God wake me up this early to think about them.

When I was asked to preach this morning, those verses were the first to come to mind.

So I read and reread this section thinking about what it meant and then I backed up and looked through Matthew up to this point to get the context.

Once I feel like I know what a section of scripture is saying I like to look up sermons from other preachers to see what the scriptures were saying to them.

It seems that this section was telling their congregations to tithe more.

One pastor even preached on it to encourage his congregation to build a new building.

While all of these things are good and build the kingdom it seemed to me like they were still building treasures on Earth.

I want us to make sure we keep the section about Salt and light and the section about storing up treasure in Heaven in our minds as I preach this morning.

Before I start I’m going to ask that we keep these verses we have just read in mind.

They are kind of like bookends to this section.

We are about to study the sermon on the mount and it will help us grasp the meaning by keeping these verse in mind.

I want to clarify the meaning of a word before we go on.

You cannot serve both God and Money.

Some translations use wealth instead of money.

The KJV translates that You cannot serve both God and Mammon.

What happened is when the scholars that translated the KJV came to the word Mammonas, they could not find a good English equivalent.

So they put the word mammon in there.

Strong’s Greek dictionary translates it as confidence.

I found newer dictionaries translate it as worldly wealth.

Mammonas is more like being popular or thought well of in human eyes.

I state this just to further show you that we are not talking about monetary treasure only.

We are going to cover a whole lot of context this morning and I want to make sure that we get it right.

So back up to Matthew 5. I’m going to try and get us up to speed with what is going on here.

Matthew was written for believers somewhere between the late 50’s and early 60’s.

It was written by Matthew also known as Levi the tax collector who left his job to become a follower of Jesus (Mark 2:14, Luke 5:27).

The Gospel of Matthew starts off telling us the genealogy of Jesus, His birth, fleeing to Egypt, Baptism, temptation and calling of the first disciples.

Chapter 4 ends with Jesus traveling around teaching, preaching, and healing.

Large crowds are following Him and at the start of chapter 5, Jesus goes up on a mountain side and delivers a sermon to the crowds.

Let’s put ourselves there.

Its two thousand years ago.

You are a devoted Jew.

You love God, keep the Sabbath, obey the man made rules of the Pharisees, and offer sacrifices.

You hear of this prophet that can heal and cast out demons.

Plus you have heard He speaks against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

Today we, just as the first readers of this gospel, have knowledge of the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

So let’s quickly look at the Sermon on the Mount and listen in light of the sections about Salt and Light and Storing up Treasure in Heaven.

We start with the be attitudes.

If you read through these you will see that Jesus is telling everyone that God blesses those who seek God and righteousness.

At this time Judaism has become a system of rules and laws.

Many of these rules are mandated by Pharisees and not God.

I’m going to take a minute here to say some unpopular things.

I believe it will help us to see what these Jewish people were hearing and thinking and hopefully help us to see exactly what they saw when this sermon was delivered.

I told my wife once that every Christian needs to read the gospels and every time they see the word Pharisee stop and ask their self, is that me?

I promise that will put you on your knees begging Jesus for forgiveness.

We must remember that being a Christian is about following Jesus and trying to be more Christ like.

It is not about building a religion and being more like the Pharisees.

A society must have laws or it will fail.

The framers of our constitution realized this and they also realized that while we can base our laws on the moral laws of God we cannot legislate religion.

Do you see the difference there?

Religion is manmade rules to please God.

We can’t please God.

There is no way a fallen and sinful creature can please a Holy God.

God blesses us with His grace and forgives us on our acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice.

So as I quickly go through the Sermon on the Mount listen and ask, “Am I a Pharisee.”

So the beatitudes are telling us that God blesses us when we seek God and righteousness.

We are in chapter 5, look at verses 11-12 because it is a key to what I’m going to say.

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You see that Jesus is saying there is a great reward in Heaven for us if we seek God and righteousness.

Next we move to Salt and Light.

What Jesus is trying to make obvious to his followers is that they should be something that stands out.

You put salt on your food to give it that little something that stands out and makes your taste buds happy.

The same way with light it goes out and lets you know where it’s coming from.

Think about this you are driving down the road at night and you are heading toward Jackson on a road without street lights.

You get lost and you don’t know exactly which direction to head.

You look up into the sky and you can see the lights of Jackson reflecting off the clouds and now you know which way to go.

That’s us.

We should be clouds.

God’s light reflecting off of us should show lost people which way to go.

The psalmist says that Christians should stand out (Psalm 119:74).

There should be a hope about us that makes people asks us what it is (1 Peter 3:15).

We should be a people that cause other people to praise God.

If we are not doing that then Jesus asks us, “What good are we?”

Jesus goes on to tell us that He is not here to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

I always get a kick out of how when you are talking to someone about a sin they do not want to give up or a decision that will lead to sin, they come to a point where they realize they can’t justify their sin so they quickly tell you that they are a New Testament Christian and that the law does not apply to them.

They live under grace.

Paul referred to people like that as trampling on Jesus and said that there is no sacrifice for them.