Sermon Tone Analysis

Salt and Light: Living Righteously in a Culture of Death

Text: Genesis 2:4-7; Jeremiah 1:1-5; Colossians 1:16-17

Theme: In a culture of death, Christians need to be Salt and Light.

Date: 11/03/2013File Name: Salt_and_Light_03.wpdSermon

ID: 25

Jesus commands us to be 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 underfoot.

“You are the light of the world.

A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

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.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

(Matthew 5:13–16, NIV)

In a culture of death, Christians need to be Salt and Light.

The actual term “Culture of Death” first entered common use after Pope John Paul II mentioned it several times in the 1993 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae.

Evangelium Vitae is Latin for “the Gospel of Life”.

In this encyclical, John Paul II wrote about the intrinsic value of every human life, which must be welcomed and loved from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.

Here is a quote from this encyclical in which he defines what he means by a Culture of Death: “A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated.

In this way a kind of 'conspiracy against life' is unleashed.”

The Culture of Death is a culture where "it is the strong who decide the fate of the weak."

How do we live righteously in a culture of death?

As we did last week we will 1) Read the pertinent Biblical Texts, 2) articulate the Christian Doctrine, 3) examine the Cultural Challenge, and 4) contemplate the Believer’s Response.

I. THE BIBLICAL TEXT

•“This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

(Genesis 2:4–7, NIV)

•“The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin.

The word of the LORD came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile.

The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

(Jeremiah 1:1–5, NIV)

•“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

(Colossians 1:16–17, NIV)

1. these passages, and many more, teach us that God is the Creator and sustainer of life

a. he breathed into Adam the breath of life and Adam became a living being

b.

we are a revolutionary creation of God and not an evolutionary accident of the

cosmos

2. from these verses and others we develop the doctrine of man and our humanity

II.

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

1. the doctrine of man teaches that a Sovereign God created human beings to reflect His

glory, to enjoy the blessings of marriage and family, to accomplish good works, and live in relationship with Him

ILLUS.

Some of you have seen the 1980 movie The Elephant Man.

It is based on the life

story of Joseph Carey Merrick, an English man with severe deformities who was exhibited as a human curiosity named the Elephant Man.

If you’ve not scene the movie, I recommend it to you.

There is a scene in which Merrick is traveling by train to London.

When in public he wears a hood with eye-slits because his appearance is so hideous that children flee and women faint at his sight.

As he leaves the train platform a group of young teens begin to follow and torment him.

All they see is a hooded man walking with a severe limp.

Soon the crowd grows and he is chased into a the men’s lavatory where he is cornered.

Someone grabs and removes his hood and the crowd gasps and recoils in shock, but then closes in to attack.

At that moment, he cries out, “I am not an animal.

I am not an animal.

I am a human being!”

2. we are not animals—we are the summit of God’s creative work

a. ever since Charles Darwin’s release of his book Origin of the Species in 1859 the

prevailing theory among the intelligentsia of the world is that there is no clear boundary between Homo sapiens and the lower species from which we supposedly evolved

1) it’s a scientific theory that negates the need for a sovereign deity who creates

and rules over his creation

2) it’s a worldview that dispenses with personal survival beyond death

ILLUS.

Toward the end of his life, Darwin wrote, In the theory of evolution, man

emerges with the marks of his lowly origin upon him.

It makes him a brute, only more intelligent than other brutes.”

b. evolution is a theory that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy—if a man is told often

enough and loud enough that he is nothing but a brute, we should not be surprised when men as a whole begin acting brutishly

1) Karl Marx took Darwin’s theory and applied it to human society, suggesting that a

man has no inherent significance or value beyond his contribution to the well-being of society

2) in other words, the individual simply is the servant of society and when his or her

usefulness ends they lose their right to use up valuable commodities that are better used for the strong and healthy

c. the result has been a devaluing of human life over the last century and a-half that

sees the very young and the very old, or the sick and disabled as dispensable

1) Western culture has now become a Culture of Death in which the sanctity of

human life is demeaned and those who would defend it, ridiculed

2) when a culture devalues human life and then airbrushes God out of public view it

brews a toxic mix

3. the biblical view, of course, transcends this idea that man is simply a biological

phenomenon

a. a grave injustice is done to the dignity of man when he is seen as just an animal,

merely a more advanced animal who got lucky in the throw of the cosmological gene-pool dice

b. the Christian understanding of man as a special product of God’s creative genius,

therefore, cuts directly across the naturalistic interpretation that is evolution

4. a biblical view of the doctrine of man begins with unapologetic commitment to a

sovereign God who formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life making him a living soul

5. thus the doctrine of man encompasses four axioms

A. WE ARE THE PINNACLE OF GOD'S CREATION

1. the structure of Genesis 1 accentuates that mankind is not an afterthought, but is

instead the pinnacle of God's creation

2. the psalmist asked, “What is man that you are mindful of him?”

(Psalm 8:4)

a. the question reveals that thoughtful people long ago were puzzling over the human

race

b. even the ancients realized that man is fearfully and wonderfully made—that we are

different than the rest of creation