Again, I want to write something about an important passage we should memorize. However I hope you will not only to commit it to memory, but meditate upon it and come to understand it. The selection for this week is an important saying of our Lord. In case it is not obvious, the sayings of Jesus are the very embodiment of truth, and instruct us as to the finished work of God, of which we want to be a part, and partakers. The passage for your devotion this week is from the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7. The selections are verses 13 and 14. The ESV reads thusly:

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Mat 5:13-14 ESV).

These words from the teaching of the Savior speak to the role God intended for Israel, to which Jesus was calling Israel’s return. In the book of Exodus, God led Moses to write, “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:6 ESV). God’s desire was for Israel to be a witness of his glory and love, and that through Israel, all the world should see the light and be drawn to him, but as one speaker said, “Rather than putting in windows to let the light out, the Jews put up mirrors to keep it in.” During his ministry, Jesus was forced to sharply rebuke the scribes and Pharisees with the words, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Mat 23:15 ESV). The majority of the Jews during Jesus’ ministry were unconcerned with the lost people around them (especially Gentiles), and Jesus was fulfilling the prophecies by calling them to be, as intended, visible lights to shine the way to God to those lost in sin and despair.

As spiritual Israel (all Christians being Jews by grace -Rom 2:28-29, Gal 3:7), we must understand that we are the receivers of the restored and fulfilled kingdom of God that Jesus came to build (Heb 12:28). We are what Jesus was calling those who were Jews by birth to be. Let us heed his call that we be salt and light so that we need not hear his rebuke, as the ancient ones born sons of Abraham did.

—JLP