Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will come quickly. Your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.Then your light will break out as the morning, and your healing will appear quickly; then your righteousness shall go before you, and Yahweh’s glory will be your rear guard.Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward.Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of Jehovah shall be thy rearward.
4 sermons cite this verse
is definitely high on the list. Two Sundays ago, an ice storm blew through my corner of northeast Georgia, taking down thousands of trees, snapping more than 100 utility poles, and dropping over 10 miles of live wire on the ground. The power at my house was off for two and a half days, giving me plenty of time to meditate on what Jesus said about light. in this morning's excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount, except I didn't want to be the light two weekends ago. I just wanted it to come back on. And last Sunday, we got six inches of snow. There was no power outage this time, but the county manager said everyone should stay off the roads because we were almost out of salt, and there were already a lot of cars in ditches. He explained the shortage wasn't due to poor planning. It was just that the county had used most of its salt the week before and was sharing what was left with neighboring counties in worse shape than we were. …
In place of my usual holy greeting, let me just say, go devils, go. And for any of you watching from somewhere else, that was an athletic reference and not a metaphysical one. There are big sermons being preached in small places all over the world today, but you're about to hear a small sermon in a big place. So small that it only cares about two verses in the gospel you just heard and only two words out of those. Salt and light. It's not like those tiny lockets of meaning have somehow suffered from too little attention over time. If anything, they've suffered from too much. They've lost their tang from overhandling. They've lost their shine from overbranding. so I'm here to shrink them down to size if I can. Here they are in Jesus' own syntax, at least in translation. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. It's the you that makes them interesting, especially the second one, since in another gospel, Jesus says, I am the light of the world, but not here. …
… that you cover them and not hide yourself from your own flesh? Then your light, so here's cause and effect, then your light will break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You will cry, and he will say, here I am. So here the Lord is saying, here's cause and effect. Take care of these things that are important to me. When you do it, it will unleash the open heavens you've been longing for. You will enter a season of answered prayer that you've never seen before. You will come into a season of personal health, replenishing, being revitalized. You'll come into that season, and it's all by you being moved with compassion for the needs of people around you. this passage is uniquely linked to Isaiah 61, which I'll show you a little bit more in a moment, I think. Isaiah 61 says, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me to do what? Release captives, recovery of sight to the blind, et cetera. And then these who were healed will be the rebuilders. …
Jesus was a Jew. I know you know that, but I wish it were in the creed somewhere. I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God who was born of a Jewish mother, lived his short life, a Jew, was crucified, and died a Jew. On the third day, he rose again in accordance with the Jewish scriptures. I wish we had to say it out loud every Sunday. I wish we sang it in some hymns so that we had a prayer of hearing him when he teaches us something from his religion instead of ours, the religion that grew up about him. Jesus was Jewish. He argued with other Jews about how Torah should be observed, which was very Jewish of him. All of his first disciples were Jewish. With all the religions in the world to choose from, God decided on a Jewish mother to bear a Jewish son. I know I'm sounding a little bit insistent, but that's because I'm teaching Introduction to the New Testament this semester. …