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Now, Father, we ask that that pure word that you would take it by your Spirit and apply it to our hearts today. So that in your word we might truly see ourselves and we might truly see you. We might turn to you in faith again. We ask these things in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen. Please proceed. At just 26 years of age, young King Josiah was already 18 years into his reign. After generations of royal neglect, he sought to restore God's temple in Jerusalem. As the work began, the signs of the temple's corruption, the bales and the altars to pagan gods, they were cast out of the temple precincts. Now, after his father and grandfather's rebellion and defilement of the temple, Josiah, he would set things right. It's hard, I think, for us to comprehend just how bad things had gotten. One verse that we didn't read this morning, but in the preceding chapter, it might shed a little bit of light on the depth of the depravity that the kings of Judah had drugged the nation. Having rebuilt the Asherah, the high places that his father Hezekiah had torn down, King Manasseh, who we read worshipped all the host of heaven, he built altars to those demon gods in the courts of the temple itself. And in 2 Kings 21, verse 6, we read this. Manasseh burned his own son as an offering. The Lord's anger raged against Manasseh and against Judah. And he promised in verse 13 of chapter 21 that he would wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish. Manasseh's son Amon, he was no better. He would continue down Manasseh's wicked and idolatrous path. So when Josiah becomes king at eight years of age, all he has ever known is the wickedness of his father and grandfather. And despite that, he sets out to make things right. To set things in order, because we read in chapter 22, verse 1, he walks in the way of David, his father. Well, the Masons are hard at work. You can hear them hammer and chisel, going to town, and the filth of previous idolatrous generations is now lying in a junk heap outside the temple. And then Hilkiah, the high priest, he comes rolling out of the temple with a dusty, long-forgotten scroll. And so Chafan reads aloud, this scroll, Josiah, he tears his clothes in anguish. The law of God had come near once again. God's voice was heard again in Judah, and Josiah knows that he and all the nation they stand condemned before God because, as we read in 22, 13, our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book. Last week we began our look at the Sermon on the Mount, considering the beatitudes which Jesus pronounces to his disciples. Blessed, Jesus says, are the poor and the meek and the merciful, for they shall be comforted, inherit the earth, and receive mercy, etc. So often we we read these beatitudes and we wrongly conclude, I think, that they are prescriptions. If you want to be blessed, work really hard at being merciful, meek, poor in spirit, and do a better job at mourning. Your morning is not quite up to par. If you work really hard at doing all these things, God will bless you. In fact, he'll have no choice but to bless you. We like thinking that somehow we can hold God over a barrel, right? That's not, however, what Jesus says in the Beatitudes. He's not giving a prescription for how to become blessed. He's simply declaring what is. Simply telling what is. And this is more than just a semantic distinction for you English nerds. It is the very difference between the pure gospel and a false gospel, between eternal life and eternal death. The confusion amongst so many Christians regarding the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount is so great that 500 some odd years ago Martin Luther called the Beatitudes Satan's favorite sermon. Because that great liar can so easily twist the pure word of God, which he's done from the beginning, mind you. He can twist the pure word of God and he can somehow turn the gospel of our freedom into a new law, and the newfound freedom we have in Christ into fetters and chains. The result being that one generation to the next has manufactured an altered gospel. An altered gospel where Jesus gets us in and we keep ourselves in, or where the gospel justifies, it saves, and we then go back to the law and use the law to sanctify ourselves and to make us holy. To better understand what Jesus is saying to his disciples, and by extension to you and me, I'm going to give a brief explanation of kind of salt and light, and then I want to turn to two remarkable things that Jesus says. I'll invite you to turn with me. Obviously, there's an error in the bulletin. We had the World Mission Sunday gospel reading, but we are in fact in Matthew chapter 5. So please turn there with me, and you can find that on page 760 of the Pew Bible if you don't have your own copy of God's Word this morning. So first, salt and light, and then we're going to look at the necessity of exceeding righteousness and the prophets and the promise. First, salt and light. So on the heels of these Beatitudes, Jesus, he has two more indicatives, statements of fact of what is. And he says to these disciples, salt and light. You are salt and light. And indeed, you are the salt and light of the whole world. Let me give you a brief survey of some of the references to light in the New Testament. Of course, probably the one that comes most readily to mind is the beginning of John's Gospel, John chapter 1, where we read of Jesus in him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. In John chapter 8, Jesus will say, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes to the church there, God has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God, of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And then later he writes to the Ephesian believers, At one time you were darkness. But now you are light in the Lord. Jesus says to his disciples there on the mountain, you are the light of the world. Of course, they had no light in themselves, no light of their own, just as you and I have no light of our own in and of ourselves. We are the light of the world because Christ has shown his light in our hearts. Our light is a derivative and a dependent light. It's like the light of the moon, which is merely reflecting the light of the sun back to us. So Jesus says to these disciples, shine light, but not your own light for your own glory. Instead, shine my light, the light of Christ, for the glory of God, the Father who is in heaven. In the same manner, he says, you disciples, those of you who are in Christ, you are salt. You have been given this ministry of salting, not us salting, but salting the world. What does salt do? It purifies, it preserves, it seasons, it burns. You salt meat to keep it from rotting. That's pretty far from most of our experience. It's an experience, though, that our great-grandparents and our great-great-grandparents would understand before modern refrigeration, right? You salt meat, or what's gonna happen? The meat's gonna go bad. It's going to rot. Maybe someone has rhetorically rubbed salt in your wounds. Of course, that turn of phrase finds its origins in historic medical practices where you would pack an open wound with salt to keep infection from spreading. Being a gospel preacher, friends, is a dangerous calling. And I'm not saying being a gospel preacher in the pulpit with robes on, though certainly. Being a gospel preacher, as all of the disciples of Christ are, it is a dangerous calling because people hate it when light is cast on their dark deeds. And people will not stand for salt to be rubbed into their wounds. This is what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount. He's using the light and salt of the law of God to bring people to despair, like Josiah that day outside the temple. Friends, if you have not despaired of yourself, if God's law has never shed a light on those things that you thought were safely tucked away in darkness, if it has never salted you or assaulted you even, and brought you to clothes-rending despair, then friends, you have not rightly perceived or understood the law of God. In verses 19 through 20, Jesus says remarkable things. That question is brought to our hearts and our minds. How could I possibly live up to the law of God? Jesus' constant run-ins with the scribes and the Pharisees, they bring that issue to light again, right? Because Jesus is the light of the world, and because he is salting the world with the word of God, the Pharisees and scribes hate him. Indeed, they accuse him of breaking the law because his light exposes their darkness, and his salt burns their corruption. This is some of what is meant when Jesus says in our passage today that he has come to fulfill the law. And that same crisis that the Pharisees had, that Josiah and Luther had, it presents itself today to you and me. As the Sermon on the Mount goes on in the following verses and chapters, we see what Jesus means when he says he has not come to abolish the law, right? What does he say? He says, Have you a hated your brother? Murderer. Have you ever looked at a woman with lust in your eye? Adulterer. And not just adultery with your body, but adultery with your heart. Both of which are capital crimes, by the way, in the Old Testament. You see, Jesus will allow no wiggle room when it comes to the law of God. That's one of the constant temptations that the church faces. On one hand, we look at the law of God and we want to soften it. We arrogantly think that somehow we are more merciful than God. And what a lost and dying world needs is our mercy and not his. So Jesus warns us in verse 19: whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments, whoever softens the law and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Now, let's just camp there for a second, right? Who of you has ever done the law perfectly? Who of you has ever done the law perfectly and then taught others how to do the law perfectly? Are any of you the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? See, even that positive description of obedience to the law condemns us. Because it shows us just how far short we've fallen. So on one hand, there's a temptation to soften the law and be more merciful than the God who is mercy himself is. And then on the other hand, are folks like the Pharisees, who think that God's law is insufficiently merciful, insufficiently strident and strong. What God has said is insufficient, and we need more law. So Jesus says, they set about teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. They add to the gospel. It's not a less law, it's a Jesus plus your obedience. You see, man is always tempted on one hand or the other to alter the law of God, and in so doing to alter the good news itself. But an altered, an amended, softened, or strengthened law cannot do the job of the law of God. The job that Jesus alludes to here when he says, unless you are more righteous than the Pharisees, unless you are more righteous than the professionally righteous, you won't make it into the kingdom of heaven. Well, if you and I need an exceeding righteousness, a righteousness greater than the professionally righteous, who of us has a chance? All have sinned, have fallen short of the glory of God. You see, friends, the purpose of the law has never been to save. The purpose of the law has been to lead us to despair of our own righteousness, of our own performance, and ultimately to kill us. Jesus has not come to abolish the law. Thankfully, this is not the end of the sermon. In our circles, conservative, orthodox, Bible-believing church circles, we're quick to remember and to remind folks that Jesus has not come to abolish the law. But that's not what Jesus says, is it? Jesus has not come to abolish the law or the prophets. And that right there, friends, is the gospel key. Where the law sets forth the commands of God that condemn and kill us, the prophets are constantly holding forth the promises of God. Those promises that were first uttered in Eden just after the fall, when God looked to Eve and he said, You're going to have a son, and that son is going to crush the head of the serpent. And that crimson thread flows through all the prophets in the Old Testament. Abraham is holding on to that crimson thread as he lays Isaac bound on an altar and as he breaks the bonds that hold him and brings him into his embrace. Simeon is holding on to that crimson thread of the promises of God as Jesus walks, is brought into the temple, rather, held in Mary's arms, and he goes and he scoops the infant Christ up and he bursts out in song because he has seen God's salvation. John the Baptist is holding on to that same crimson thread of the promises of God as he says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The promises of God, not the law, have always been the hope of his people. And Jesus, he says, is the fulfillment of all of them. All the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ. Jesus has not just come to fulfill the law, but all the law and the prophets. Perfect obedience to God's commands and every longing to be brought to bear in human flesh. Because he is the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets, because he brings an end to the law's accusation, and he brings near the promises of God, bearing them in his pierced hands to you and me. Because of this, we can be free. Free from the condemnation we rightly deserve because of our sin and our rebellion. Free from the expectations of this world. Free from Satan's forked tongue constantly whispering in our ears, reminding us of every failure and sorrow and shame in our past. Because Jesus died. And not because Jesus died for you at your best, but because Jesus died for you at your worst. Because Jesus died for the very worst version of you, and he is the promises of God, you can be free. There is a freedom in letting go of our childishly prideful pretensions, thinking that somehow we can stand on our own two feet, or somehow we can measure. St. Paul talks about this in our epistle reading today. The freedom that that promise brings is a demonstration, he says, of the spirit and of power. But how is that demonstration of spirit and power characterized? What does St. Paul says? Weakness, fear, trembling. Paul's gospel proclamation mirrors the life and the ministry and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. It is the gospel of weakness, fear, and trembling of the crucified King. That gospel brings freedom. So now we go back to the Beatitudes. Blessed are the, not blessed will be those who perform, but blessed are the mournful, meek, peacemakers, poor in spirit, because they shall see God. There is, friends, a freedom in the unaltered gospel, where our circumstances no longer define us, where we have the hope and the promise that we have died, and our lives are hidden with Christ and God. That freedom that the gospel brings, it leads to this, as Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5. It's really fascinating. We don't Greek often here at all Saints Anglican Church. We're gonna Greek a little bit this morning, though. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. The unaltered gospel frees us to good works. Not good works so that we can keep ourselves in God's good graces, but good works that flow naturally out of the Holy Spirit of God living within us and freedom from the accusations of the law and Satan. That word good though, it's fascinating. There are two words in Greek in the New Testament that are used to render that word good. One is agathos and one is kelos. And you can geek out on that a little bit later on if you want to. But that word agathos, it means good in terms of uh purity, right? Like a like a pure burning flame or like pure and refined gold. It's a good word, agathos, but that's not the kind of good works that Jesus is talking about in Matthew chapter 5. Chaos, those works are beautiful. Handsome, excellent, eminent, choice, precious, surpassing, admirable. It's the same type of good that God says in Genesis when he looks on his creation and he looks on mankind and he says, it is very good. It is very colos. It is very beautiful and commendable. Jesus is the good, the colos, the beautiful shepherd. The psalmist tells us to taste and see that the Lord is a colos. Beautiful and good. The unaltered gospel takes the law and mercifully puts us to death. Then it takes the promises of God and of all the prophets, and it raises us up by faith back to life. So our works then can be beautiful because they flow from and flow for the one who is beauty itself. Friends, this day may the Lord give us all here ears to hear his unaltered gospel. And in Jesus Christ, his son, find freedom and joy, and purpose and life. Indeed, a new identity that frees you to busy yourself with joyful and beautiful work for the sake of your neighbors and for the sake of the kingdom of God to the glory of our Father in Heaven.