THE BOOK OF MATTHEW
Lesson 14, Chapter 5 Continued 2
We have now completed studying 7 of the Beatitudes. It is usually said that there
are 8 of them, but some Bible commentators say there are 9, and others say 10.
My position is that the separating away of the first several verses of Matthew
chapter 5 and giving it a title.... the Beatitudes..... is artificial in the first place. The
downside of doing this is that it can give us the impression that this decoupling of
them from the rest of His Sermon on the Mount was Christ's intent. It certainly
was not. Essentially Jesus was looking out at His enormous crowd and directly
addressing them by offering a blessing that described the group in general and in
some cases referring to certain segments of it.... the poor, in spirit (the Essenes)
for example. So we won't get into a debate on just how many of the so-called
Beatitudes there are, because it's unimportant for studying Yeshua's seminal
speech. Yet, for the sake of continuity and to make it easier for us to study and
not confuse matters, we'll follow the traditional Christian outline of the opening
verses.
Open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5.
READ MATTHEW CHAPTER 5:10 - 16
The 8th Beatitude is contained in verse 10. Nothing like this is contained in
Luke's Sermon on the Plain, which further points to the two sermons being
different speeches spoken at different times and different places.
CJB
Matthew 5:10
10
"How blessed are those who are persecuted because
they pursue righteousness! for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
1 / 13

The word "persecuted" is rather standard in English Bibles and it is used
regularly in the New Testament; and it isn't wrongly translated. However in
modern times we view the term "persecution" as nearly synonymous with
strenuous oppression, often involving violence. That is, persecution is something
quite severe in which one's life is either greatly hindered or even put in danger.
The Greek word is dioko. If the various Greek lexicons are consulted we'll find a
rather long definition for the word because it carries quite a range of meaning. So
in our time a better word is probably "harassed". Perhaps even "made fun of" or
"ridiculed" also captures another aspect of it. It is not that this
term dioko (persecution) can't at some point rise to a meaning of true, virulent
oppression and harm, but that is the far end of the scale of the word's intention.
And that meaning is not something that most Believers in Christ's day faced, nor
do the majority of Believers face today (while fully acknowledging that there are
parts of the world, especially where there are Muslim majorities, in which life as
Believers is under daily threat).
So to help us better understand what Yeshua is telling us, I'll repeat the verse
using a word that history would show us is closer to what He meant to
communicate to the crowd. "How blessed are those who are harassed
because they pursue righteousness! For the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs."
Regardless of precisely how to transmit the idea of persecution in modern terms,
the point of the verse is that there is cost to pursuing righteousness. But the next
question is: what form or display of righteousness is this referring to? Every Jew
in that era would tell you that they were pursuing righteousness; it was but part of
their unique culture. By observing the Torah, the Sabbaths and the Feasts,
praying and (in the last couple of centuries) the following of Traditions and going
to Synagogue along with generally being a good person, this would have
represented the popular Jewish understanding of pursuing righteousness. To put
a finer point to it; righteous was wrapped up in behavior. Complicating the matter
was that there were several distinct and competing sects of Jews who had
formed varying interpretations of the Torah and so each sect acted out Jewish
Tradition and God's commandments somewhat differently from one another. In
fact these differences in doctrine sometimes led to serious confrontations. So if
Yeshua's final few words of this Beatitude had not been spoken, no doubt it
would have been somewhat difficult for the listeners to take the concept of the
pursuit of righteousness any other way than precisely how one behaved in every
day life and in how fastidiously they observed Torah rituals and commands.
When Yeshua completed His statement with: "For the Kingdom of Heaven is
2 / 13

theirs", it changed the focus and the source of that righteousness from earth to
Heaven..... that is, from humans to God... even if a goodly part of the crowd didn't
understand the implication.
Our human righteousness is indeed based on rules-following and behavior. But
that is not a kind of righteousness that can save us, even though righteous
behavior and rules-following is certainly an ongoing expectation that God has of
His worshippers. Human based righteousness is of a kind that our own devotion,
focus and determination can achieve; but it does not, because it cannot, join us
to the Kingdom of Heaven. On the other hand, God's perfect righteousness is
part of His substance. It has at its center His will, His plan, and His unique ability
to save and to restore. God's righteousness cannot be duplicated or replicated by
humans; it can only be given to each of us as a free gift of the Father's love for
us. The agent that brings this divine gift of loving salvation to mankind is God's
Son, the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.
For those of us living today who were born in the mid to early part of the 20th
century and living in the West, it is hard to accept that now, in the early part of the
21st century, being a Believer is starting to bear a tangible cost, which we could
have never anticipated. Being a Believer is no longer an accepted cultural norm
nor is it as widely popular. When I was younger man, professing to be a Christian
(whether you really were or not) was the expected. In fact, the terms American
and Christian were very nearly organically linked. One of the first questions a
person might be asked when meeting someone in the local community was "what
Church do you go to?" The answer would only rarely be "I don't go to Church" or
"I don't believe in God". Today asking such a question is fraught with negative
social implications. Being a Believer in Christ is openly criticized in our education
system, ridiculed by the mainstream media, and outright rejected and slandered
by some of our top level political leadership. It is even called a threat to peace
and tolerance by global interests. The general expectation upon Judeo-
Christianity has become more of an insistence that our faith is to be
compartmentalized, unspoken, unrealized in public, and manifested only while
we're in Church or Synagogue, or within the privacy of our homes. As a result our
beliefs in the God of Israel and in Our Savior Yeshua are something we have
become prone to being silent about; we keep it to ourselves for fear of
confrontation or finding ourselves on the wrong side of the flow and political
correctness of our society.
I tell you this so that you see how this 8th Beatitude can be applied to us in our
3 / 13

time, but also the similarity to how it was for those who heard Christ speaking first
hand. From the P'shat interpretation sense, Yeshua was telling His 1st century
listeners that the harassment they would receive for pursuing God's saving
righteousness would be rewarded in their membership to the Kingdom of
Heaven. What those listeners didn't yet understand was that this pursuit that
would begin with repenting of sins, would then involve turning to God by means
of trusting Yeshua as Savior and Lord. Although after a couple more statements
Jesus would heavily imply that following Him was the key. Once the Jewish folks
did that, it was automatic that they would be ridiculed and harassed by both the
Temple and the Synagogue leadership, and the bulk of Jewish society. After
some years passed the harassment of Yeshua followers would indeed escalate
into oppression and violence against them. In fact, Yeshua prophesied that this
would happen and who would be the first to threaten and advocate harm to the
Messianic Believers.
CJB
Matthew 23:29-34
29
"Woe to you hypocritical Torah-teachers and
P'rushim! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the
tzaddikim,
30
and you say, 'Had we lived when our fathers did, we would
never have taken part in killing the prophets.'
31
In this you testify against
yourselves that you are worthy descendants of those who murdered the
prophets.
32
Go ahead then, finish what your fathers started!
33
"You
snakes! Sons of snakes! How can you escape being condemned to Gei-
Hinnom?
34
Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and Torah-
teachers- some of them you will kill, indeed, you will have them executed
on stakes as criminals; some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue
from town to town.
Yeshua says that it will be the religious leadership of the Synagogue that will lead
the way in slandering and mistreating His Jewish followers.
In the Remez interpretation sense, however, Yeshua's words in the 8th Beatitude
are referring to the End Times when Believers will be hunted down and severely
oppressed, on a worldwide basis. That is, persecution for pursuing righteousness
in Christ moves from mere harassment and ridicule (as is now happening in the
West) to persecution more as we think of the term; being hated, harmed and
murdered. In fact, as we know from Daniel, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Revelation,
being a Believer will eventually (in the End Times) be officially considered as
making us an enemy of the State.... of global humanity. For now, in the West, the
cost of pursuing righteousness is primarily ridicule mostly being incited by the
4 / 13

cultural elite. Later the cost may well be our jobs, our personal freedom, and then
our lives. I wonder: if so many of us are already reluctant to reveal our faith and
instead keeping silent merely to avoid being called out at work or excluded from
our desired social circles, what might we do when an admission of faith could
bring community exclusion, jail or worse?
For those who say there is a 9th or even 10th Beatitude, these are contained in
verses 11 and 12. The commentators who claim 9 Beatitudes wrap verses 11
and 12 together as one Beatitude. The relatively few commentators who claim 10
Beatitudes make verse 11 the 9th and verse 12 the 10th Beatitude. Verse 11
seems to be saying nearly the same thing as verse 10 (Blessed are those who
are persecuted).
CJB
Matthew 5:11
11
"How blessed you are when people insult you and
persecute you and tell all kinds of vicious lies about you because you
follow me!
The Greek word translated to persecuted is the same in both verses. So as I
explained earlier, dioko has a range of meanings from something as mild as
being ridiculed, to being followed and harassed, all the way up to being violently
assaulted or killed. I think the sense we are to take its meaning in verse 10 is a
bit different than in verse 11. So while verse 10 is primarily speaking about a kind
of mid point along the persecution scale, verse 11 is a bit lower in its intensity
and is not about serious threats or physical actions taken against the Believer.
Rather this is pointing to slanderous things that are said to discredit them (the
leadership and the people hurl insults and tell lies about Believers..... Jewish
Believers at the time of the Sermon on the Mount). For the first time, in the final
words of verse 11, Yeshua now ties together these various forms and means of
persecution as being the consequence of following Him. He says: "Because you
follow Me". And since Beatitudes 4 and 8 both speak of some form of persecution
that is the result of pursuing the kind of saving righteousness that Jesus is
speaking about, then clearly He is saying that the pursuit of Him IS the pursuit of
a saving righteousness! That, my friends, is a bold and enormous claim that no
doubt brought a wide range of emotion and reaction in that huge crowd. From
elation to anger, and from fear to disappointment or even befuddlement, this
Yeshua fellow was either a liar, a madman, or someone very special that needed
to be heard and accepted even if the folks couldn't absorb the meaning of all He
was saying.
5 / 13

Doubling down on His incomparable promise, He goes so far as to say that all
who will surely suffer from following Him will be rewarded in Heaven. And why
should they find that odd or suspect? After all, says Christ, the prophets of old
that God sent to Israel at various times throughout their history suffered the same
and worse for hearing and believing the divine truth (a truth that few, especially
Israel's leaders, wanted to hear). Thus rejoicing is the proper response for those
who trust Yeshua and act upon that trust. Rejoicing is the proper mental attitude
to maintain when knowing and speaking the truth, which likely reduces our
popularity and causes us to be excluded from some of our friends, family, and
perhaps from our congregation fellowship. It may well be that our rejoicing will be
muted in the here and now due to suffering; but at the same time there is the
greatest hope and a promise for a future in God's Kingdom that is nothing but joy.
It's a bit challenging to ascertain what, exactly, the audience thought Yeshua was
meaning about they're being rewarded in Heaven if they followed Him. Our
modern Christian thoughts instantly run towards what happens to our souls after
we die, and this due to a combination of Church Tradition and some of the words
of the New Testament. Generally the Christian thought is that there is for sure an
afterlife that begins upon our death. If we are saved in Christ, then our souls will
either immediately or eventually go to Heaven and dwell with God. But that was
not the thought of Jews in Christ's era. What happened after death was a
frightening mystery to them and to their religious leaders. Death was not a
welcomed thing; it was not a case of going "home" or "going to a better place".
Earnestly mourning the dead was the normal mode; it was certainly not having a
"celebration of life" as we often have at Believers' funerals today. In the minds of
the ancient Jews, the best condition for a person was to be among the living
because there was nothing good about being dead.
So I surmise that the thoughts of the attendees at the Sermon on the Mount was
that Messiah was talking about Heaven (God in Heaven, really) blessing them in
some undefined way during their lives as a reward for following Yeshua..... even
if life likely would include being ridiculed and harassed by their fellow Jews.
Verse 13 moves us beyond the opening series of blessings that Yeshua
pronounced upon the various groups of people who came to hear Him speak.
There we read:
CJB
Matthew 5:13
13
"You are salt for the Land. But if salt becomes tasteless,
6 / 13

how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except
being thrown out for people to trample on.
There is more here than meets the eye. Some Bible commentators and scholars
would classify this statement as a parable. I do not agree and in later lessons I
will speak extensively about the nature of parables, which will explain why I
cannot accept this verse as one. Rather, since this statement revolves around
the object of salt, then salt is a metaphor or it is symbolic of something larger, or
it's both.
First; recall that the opening 10 verses of the Sermon on the Mount were spoken
to address the presence of the thousands who came to hear Yeshua speak.
Each of those statements were made either to describe and give recognition to
the entire crowd in general or more often to call out and recognize specific
groups of people within it. Verse 13 is another instance of this and it is a general
statement to the crowd at large. Remembering who Jesus is speaking to is
critical throughout the Sermon; it is to Jews. Certainly there were small
smatterings of curious gentiles and those of mixed blood and religious loyalties
present; but overall we have a Jewish Jesus speaking to a thoroughly Jewish
audience. Therefore we must take His words in a Jewish religious and cultural
context. As a result we must also be prepared to understand the meaning of His
statements in both the P'shat and the Remez interpretation senses.
Let's begin by dealing with a key word in the first part of the verse. In the CJB
and in the YLT (and a few other versions) we'll find that the general reference to
those sitting before Yeshua is that they are salt for the Land (meaning, eretz
Israel..... the Land of Israel). The vast majority of Bible versions, however,
choose it to mean that his audience is salt for "the earth".... that is, the entire
planet. As Bible commentators tend to do, they demand that one interpretation is
correct and the other is wrong, and so debate incessantly about it. This is modern
Western Greek thinking at work and it has nothing to do with ancient Eastern
Jewish thinking. Thus we must consider the speaker, the audience, and the
setting when deciding what the words mean. Let's lay that aside for the moment.
The next matter is what the meaning of salt was to Christ and to His Jewish
audience. It can be surprising that "salt" in the Bible is an enormous subject; this
is partly because as so much does over time, the use of the term can evolve. So
while it is not that there is no connection to what "salt" meant in Abraham's time
to what it meant in Moses' time to what it meant in Yeshua's time, what it meant
7 / 13

to the contemporary people Jesus was speaking to carries the most weight for
what it needs to mean to us.
Salt was, as a practical matter, very valuable and central to life itself in
Abraham's and Moses' time. Unfortunately it was not readily available or easily
accessible to most people. It carried as much value as we apply today for
precious metals like gold; so it was used as a medium of currency in some
cultures. It was a necessary ingredient in body chemistry to sustain life. It was a
desired ingredient to flavor otherwise bland food. It was a preservative for meat in
their food supply. It was used for healing wounds and for skin conditions.
Therefore it took on symbolic meaning and so salt would even be given or
exchanged as part of a covenant ceremony.
Biblically one of the attributes of salt was its use for purification. Levitical law
requires that all sacrifices of meat have to be salted. Even grain and produce
sacrifices that are to be burnt up on the Altar have to be salted. Why? It is not
directly addressed in the Torah. Very probably it had to do with both the matter of
practicing the precise sacrificial ritual in obedience to the Covenant with Moses
(remembering that it was an ancient tradition to exchange salt as part of the
ceremony), but also because salt was seen as an element of purification and so
by salting the sacrifices they were further purified. Some Bible scholars say it was
because salt was so important in the meals of the Israelites that it naturally would
be included in the offering of food to God. I find that incredulous because while
pagans thought that their sacrifices were meant as food for their gods (who would
starve to death if they weren't provided with food) the Hebrews never thought
they were feeding God. In fact, it was the Priests who were able to keep the bulk
of the sacrificed meat and produce to provide for themselves and their families,
and this was ordained in the Torah.
In Christ's day, in the Holly Land region, salt was readily available, relatively
cheap, and used by the ton for Temple sacrificial rituals. The largest use of salt at
the Temple in terms of amount was for rubbing it on the meat that was to be
sacrificed. It was utilized as an absorbent in obedience to the law that required
removing the blood from a meat offering. A batch of salt used in this way could
only be used one time; and then the bloody salt was thrown out. But, there was a
wonderful use for the tons and tons of now ritually impure salt; it was spread on
the many roads and pathways as a vegetation killer to keep these roads well
maintained. So the final part of this verse where Yeshua says of salt that once it
loses its taste "it is no longer good for anything except being thrown out for
8 / 13

people to trample on" is literally the way that waste salt was used in that era.
Now let's back up a bit. The first words of verse 13 are: "You are the salt of the
Land (meaning the Holy Land)". The next words are: "But if salt becomes
tasteless...." Christ is not speaking to several thousand Torah scholars; He is
speaking to throngs of common folk. Thus He is using an illustration that every
day people would understand. And by Yeshua's day the primary use of salt for
those Jews NOT associated with the Temple operations, it was to season and
preserve food, and for medical purposes. Interestingly, a curious Greek word is
used to describe what happens to salt to make it no longer usable. The word
is moraino. Literally it means to become foolish. So if we to more literally
translate the first part of verse 13 it would be: "You are salt for the Land. But if
salt becomes foolish....." So to translate moraino to mean "tasteless" is
dubious to me unless it was a known expression in that era, and I have found no
evidence of that among Jewish or gentile scholarship. Having Jesus say
"tasteless" has to be an educated guess from the translators. It seems to me that
a better way of understanding it (in our modern terms) is about what happens to
salt that has become adulterated or contaminated in some way. So whether salt
is used in every day life to season and thus flavor food, or used in food as a meat
preservative, or whether it is used for Temple sacrifices, the broad idea is to
explain what happens to salt that, for whatever the reason, loses its ability to do
what it was meant to do because it has become impure, adulterated, or
contaminated.
Bottom line: salt was a good, desired, and needed thing for a number of common
uses in Yeshua's time. And Yeshua says to the crowd of Jews who are coming
for the purpose of healing and for hearing this man's wisdom, that they are the
ones who provide the good flavor to influence the people in a positive way, the
good preservation of the land and the people in their God ordained purpose as
His set apart people and land, and if they become contaminated with the false
ways of some of their religious leaders or they are corrupted by the dazzling and
advanced culture and beliefs of their Roman occupiers, then they will lose their
purpose and they won't gain it back. If that happens, then they are suitable only
to be thrown upon the ground and trampled into the dust, for the purpose of
poisoning the soil so that nothing can grow. Everything I've just explained to you
is to interpret this passage in the P'shat sense.
But in the Remez, it transforms. It speaks of a larger purpose and scope. Since
the Hebrew word eretz (which is what the Greek word ge is translating) can
9 / 13

mean earth or land, then while in the P'shat sense it means the Land of Israel, in
the Remez sense it expands to mean the earth... the entire planet. Thus the salt
of the Jewish people rises from being salt ONLY for the Jewish people in the
Holy Land, to salt for the gentile world as well. And in such a larger capacity, if
these Jews become adulterated in their ways and thinking, how can they bring
the purity and truth that God gave to them to the world? So in the Remez sense
this is sort of a warning from Christ that in time, the Jews will have the
opportunity to be salt for the world; but if they become contaminated in their ways
and thinking they will lose that opportunity and become useless in God's hand.
And when we are useless in God's hand, we pay an earthly price for it. For 18 or
19 centuries that has generally been the outcome for the Jewish people.
However (praise God), we are seeing a growing segment of Jewish society called
Messianic Jews (Believing Jews) realizing what has happened to their people
and actively working to regain their saltiness and to reclaim their God-given
purpose to lead all humanity back to the Lord.
Therefore back to the question I asked at the beginning of examining this
important verse. Is this speaking of the Jews being salt only to the Holy Land or
to the entire world? I said that Bible commentators say one answer is correct
and the other incorrect. I hope to have shown you that when we adopt the
Eastern way of interpreting the Bible..... which was produced from an Eastern
thinking people.... that in fact both answers are correct when placed in their
proper historical setting.
Verses 14 through 16 provide a complementary statement to the previous one. It
uses the illustration of light to represent God's intended purpose for Yeshua's
Jewish audience.
CJB
Matthew 5:14-16
14
"You are light for the world. A town built on a hill
cannot be hidden.
15
Likewise, when people light a lamp, they don't cover it
with a bowl but put it on a lampstand, so that it shines for everyone in the
house.
16
In the same way, let your light shine before people, so that they
may see the good things you do and praise your Father in heaven.
Here Yeshua's statement clearly swells the hoped-for Jewish influence to the
world, and not just the Holy Land. No doubt He is basing this thought upon the
prophet Isaiah because this is nearly precisely the same message that Isaiah
brought from the Lord 7 centuries earlier.
10 / 13

CJB
Isaiah 49:1 Coastlands, listen to me; listen, you peoples far away:
ADONAI called me from the womb; before I was born, he had spoken my
name.
2
He has made my mouth like a sharp sword while hiding me in the
shadow of his hand; he has made me like a sharpened arrow while
concealing me in his quiver.
3
He said to me, "You are my servant, Isra'el,
through whom I will show my glory."
4
But I said, "I have toiled in vain,
spent my strength for nothing, futility." Yet my cause is with ADONAI, my
reward is with my God.
5
So now ADONAI says- he formed me in the womb
to be his servant, to bring Ya'akov back to him, to have Isra'el gathered to
him, so that I will be honored in the sight of ADONAI, my God having
become my strength-
6
he has said, "It is not enough that you are merely my
servant to raise up the tribes of Ya'akov and restore the offspring of Isra'el.
I will also make you a light to the nations, so my salvation can spread to the
ends of the earth."
Therefore the future time that God will make it Israel's task to be a light to the
nations, an event that Isaiah prophesied, has arrived according to Christ. Folks,
in its plain sense (P'shat) or in its literal sense but with a hint at a deeper
meaning (Remez) this is a call to action. The goal is that other people.....
gentiles..... will come to faith in the God of Israel. But in God's plan it is Israel (the
Jews) that cannot be passive but rather the light that God gave to them must be
put before people. Look at the final words of verse 16. There it says: " so that
they may see the good things you do and praise your Father in
heaven". This is the truest evangelism. It is the most effective spreading of the
Good News. How does Jesus say it should be done? By letting people see our
good deeds; by letting others see how we praise the Father in Heaven. In other
words, it is not by speaking words but by actively living out our faith. Only doing it
inside the walls of our Church or Synagogue, or our home, is not sufficient. In this
age when our faith is not as popular or admired as it once was, and in fact we
can find ourselves under verbal attack for it, that is not to discourage us from
outwardly displaying it by doing good deeds and publicly praising God. This is not
to say, of course, that speaking the Gospel is not to be done; it must be and it is
a necessary ingredient to effective evangelism. But words can be cheapened
when there is no evidence of their truth in action to back it up. We have an
English word to describe people or institutions that do this: hypocrites. I can't
think of a word more used by those outside of Christianity to describe us than
hypocrites; sometimes unjustly, sometimes quite justifiably. Why? Because we
have not always displayed the truth in action; we've settled for advocating for it in
words.
11 / 13

Yeshua likens the way that His listeners should be a light to world by saying it
should be as if they were set in a city on a mountain. He stays with the thoughts
of Isaiah when he says this.
CJB
Isaiah 2:1 This is the word that Yesha'yahu the son of Amotz saw
concerning Y'hudah and Yerushalayim:
2
In the acharit-hayamim (the end of
days) the mountain of ADONAI's house will be established as the most
important mountain. It will be regarded more highly than the other hills, and
all the Goyim will stream there.
3
Many peoples will go and say, "Come, let's
go up to the mountain of ADONAI, to the house of the God of Ya'akov! He
will teach us about his ways, and we will walk in his paths." For out of
Tziyon will go forth Torah, the word of ADONAI from Yerushalayim.
4
He will
judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. Then they will
hammer their swords into plow-blades and their spears into pruning-
knives; nations will not raise swords at each other, and they will no longer
learn war.
5
Descendants of Ya'akov, come! Let's live in the light of
ADONAI!
The Torah envisions the gentiles (all the nations) making a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem in order to learn God's Word. Thus we must understand that in the
Jewish mind, light carries a dual meaning (as it often does in the Western gentile
mind). There is a type of light that represents truth, knowledge and revelation; in
English we call it enlightenment. Then there is a type of light that fills a darkened
space with visible light so that we can read, walk, work, eat, etc. The light on a
hill in the P'shat sense is speaking of something like a torch that is held up on a
high place so it can be seen in all directions and for a long distance; like a signal
fire. In the Remez sense this is speaking of God's enlightenment; His truth. The
hill is Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. And those who hold up the torch and who bring the
divine truth to the world are to be the descendants of Jacob...... the Israelites.
After telling the Jews to be a light Yeshua cautions: what good does putting that
light on a hill and then covering it over so that it can reach no one? What good
does it do to hold a firm faith in the Father and His Son, and then keep it quiet
and private because you encounter opposition? And what does it say to have
such a faith and have it bear no fruit in the form of good works and deeds?
The Early Church Father Chrysostom says this:
"You are the light of the world.... not of a single nation nor of twenty cities,
12 / 13

but of the entire inhabited earth. You are a like a light to the mind, far better
than any particular sunbeam. Similarly, you are spiritual salt. First you are
salt. Then you are light. The metaphors of salt and light drive home the
great benefit of these stinging words and the profit of this rigorous
discipline; how it binds and does not permit us to be dissolute in our
behavior."
Having greeted His great audience, and having prepared them with blessing after
blessing, and having encouraged them in faith and divine purpose, Christ is
about to present them.... all of us.... with the fulcrum, the balance point, of His
entire message. If any misses this, or in some way disturbs it, or intentionally
dismisses it, or changes its plain meaning in order to create or support a false
doctrine, or bypasses it in order to slander Yeshua or His people or God's Torah,
then all the words of the Sermon on the Mount that came before it and will come
after it become tainted and out of context. That person who approaches this
passage becomes like the salt that absorbs contamination and so becomes fit for
nothing but to be thrown upon the ground and trampled under foot.
If you think those are harsh or severe words, then just wait until next week when
we open with the 17th verse of the Sermon on the Mount.
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
13 / 13