Why Read the Bible: To Learn More About Our Marching Orders

“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.

–Matthew 5.13-15 (NIV)

The Gospel not only gives us hope and assurance about life eternal, it also gives us our marching orders right here and now. To see the Gospel as only some future hope with no relevance regarding how we live our lives here and now ignores massive chunks of the Gospels. No, if we live in hope that we will get to live for all eternity with God, that hope starts right now and we’d best start acting like we believe it.

In today’s lesson from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds us of our marching orders. We are to be stewards of his Kingdom. We are to help him bring about his Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven (remember that clause in the Lord’s Prayer?). We are to be his salt and his light. Salt, of course, preserves and light is biblical language that refers to God’s presence. It is an awesome privilege and honor to think that God calls us to help him bring about his Kingdom by being his salt and light. Is that not way too cool?

So how do we do that? By imitating Jesus and obeying his commands. We don’t have to be rich, famous, or powerful to follow Jesus. We simply need a servant’s heart and his Spirit living in us to enable us to be his agents of transformation. This means that we start to make a difference in God’s world wherever we are or whatever it is we do. We are Jesus’ salt and light to our families. We are Jesus’ salt and light in our work environment and neighborhood. We are Jesus’ salt and light to our friends and yes, our enemies. Jesus will use our personalities and the gifts and talents he has blessed us with to help remind the world who he is. We will make a difference because we are living to bring Jesus honor and glory, not ourselves.

This is why it is important to read the Gospels to see how God in Jesus is bringing about his Kingdom here on earth. We might not be able to raise the dead or give sight to the blind, but we sure can serve and love others. We sure can work to bring justice to our neck of the woods. We sure can love and forgive our enemies and pray for them. We sure can act with integrity and a good will toward everyone we meet. We sure can feed the hungry and clothe the naked. We sure can love our families and serve them in our respective roles as husbands, wives, and children. You get the point. The list of opportunities is endless and in obeying Jesus, you will find that your obedience will bring you joy, fulfillment, and purpose to life that will satisfy your deepest needs and longings.

Are you being Christ’s salt and light to his world? If you don’t know how, sit down and start reading the Gospels so that you can better understand how to do that. Ask Jesus to come live with you and show you how he wants to use you to help transform his broken and hurting world and people. Then be prepared for the ride of your life. You will face opposition, scorn, and criticism. But you will also find that in obeying Jesus and imitating him, life will be richer and more meaningful than you ever dared imagine.

7 thoughts on “Why Read the Bible: To Learn More About Our Marching Orders

  1. And my point is that isn’t it God working through us when we are serving others, feeding the poor, taking care of our families, etc.? As well as His work of healing, working miracles, bringing about supernatural events and natural ones?

  2. Only God can raise the dead and heal. Period. This was the main point the evangelists were trying to get us to see. Look at what Jesus is doing. It is consistent with what God’s Messiah will do.

    Now we too can seek to imitate Messiah but unless God chooses to let us imitate Jesus using the full spectrum of messianic behaviors, this is not something we should expect to be able to do, especially in terms of raising the dead.

    • A couple of points of clarification about my post above. My response should in no way be read as to imply a false dichotomy of any kind. God can and does choose to use medicine and the medical sciences as instruments and agents of his healing power, and for serious illness this seems to be God’s chosen path. Like the common spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, and fasting that God uses to communicate with us and to help us grow spiritually, so God uses medicine, doctors et al., and the medical sciences as ordinary means of grace to bring about healing. But he is not limited exclusively to medical science nor is he limited to the ordinary means of grace to speak to and with us.

      We humans have tremendous power to heal by the gentle touch of compassion and understanding, by extending mercy, etc. Healing can occur naturally and it can occur extraordinarily. The sky is the limit because God is limitless and that is my point. God heals. We don’t. God raises the dead and for the most part, except for a few isolated instances in the NT outside of the gospels–specifically in Acts–God has not chosen to do that through human agency. Can he start? Certainly. He can do anything he likes! But this has not been a typical or common sign of the inbreaking New Creation. That function, for the most part, has been reserved for God and his Messiah Jesus.

  3. You also went on to list how we can do God’s Kingdom business. I should think raising the dead and giving sight to the blind would be that too (along with any other kind of healing).

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