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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Reading: Philippians 1:27-2:18 Text: Matthew 5:13-16 Singing: Ps 29; Ps 79:3,5; Ps 17:3; Ps 73:1,4,7,8; Hy 23:1,2,3,5; |
Beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ
Imagine for a moment that our church suddenly left our community.
And by that, I don’t mean that this church building vanished.
But imagine that as Christians we were no longer present in Smithers and the surround area.
What sort of impact would that have on our area?
Would it make a difference?
Would our community notice that we are gone?
Would the people living here feel that our community has gotten worse?
Or, to put it another way,
“If we were no longer present in Smithers, would God see a difference?”
Would he say that things have gotten worse here, in how people live and act?
Would he see a marked difference in the overall state of this community?
You see, this sort of thing is what our Lord Jesus is talking about in our text.
Our text this morning is from our Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Christ had gone up on a mountain.
When he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he taught them.
First he proclaimed the beatitudes, then he spoke the words of our text.
In these verses, Christ describes something about us, his disciples.
He proclaims to us who we are!
And he says, “You are the salt of the earth:”
And a little later on: “you are the light of the world!”
And as we will see, these things are meant to have a huge impact on this world.
You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world!
The purpose of what you are
The outcome of how you act
As we dig into this text, it’s good to begin by asking this question:
Why does the Lord Jesus call us these things?
Well, Christ is using a metaphor – we are salt, we are light.
He’s teaching us that as disciples of Christ, we are different than the world.
And this difference we have as disciples of Christ,
is meant to have a beneficial affect on the world.
To understand this better, we need to dig into these metaphors some more.
You are the salt of the earth, says Christ.
Salt was hugely important in the days of Jesus, as it is now.
Salt often serves two major functions – to preserve food, to improve taste.
Preserving food by salt was especially important in the time of the Ancient World.
This was a warm climate, and they didn’t have refrigerators.
Food could spoil quite quickly.
But when salt was added, it preserved the food for a longer period.
It prevented the food from rotting.
Salt was also used, and is still used, to flavour food.
Without salt, food often tastes bland.
You notice if a dish is missing salt.
I remember growing up, my mom would regularly bake her own bread.
We loved it because the bread tasted great!
However, occasionally my mom forgot to add the salt to the recipe.
And when that happened, we all could taste immediately that the salt was missing.
It was not an improvement and for the next number of weeks we slogged through ten loaves of bread without salt.
Then when I first moved to Hamilton to go to seminary,
I lived with someone who owned a bread maker.
The recipe he used was a little low on salt, it was only 1 tsp.
I didn’t really like it.
It reminded me of the bread my mom made back home when she forgot the salt.
Anyways, one day I decided I was going to make my own loaf using his recipe,
but this time I would double the amount of salt.
However, when I read the recipe, I accidently confused teaspoon and tablespoon.
So instead of adding only 1 tsp as the recipe called for, I put in 2 tablespoons of salt.
Well let me tell you, there was no mistaking the presence of salt in that loaf of bread.
And that’s one of the main points Jesus is making.
The absence or presence of salt makes a huge difference.
And Christ is saying,
you are like that in the world!
The presence of my disciples in this world makes a huge difference!
The same is true of light.
The presence or absence of light makes a huge difference.
“You are the light of the world”, says Christ.
No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl.
Instead, they put it on a stand and it give light to all in the house.
In the ancient world, they didn’t have light bulbs or flashlights.
When nighttime came, the darkness took over.
To help see at night, they had little oil lamps.
And one oil lamp was all you needed to give light in a one room house.
Shining there on its stand it gave light to everyone in the house.
But without that lamp, everyone in that house would be sitting in complete darkness.
The presence of that one lamp made a big difference.
And Christ says to us, “You are like that lamp shining in a dark room.”
That’s the difference your presence can make in this world.
You see, darkness in Scripture is so often used as a metaphor for sin.
Darkness describes the mind that doesn’t know God.
Darkness describes the actions of someone who doesn’t live by God’s Word.
Darkness describes the blackness of evil deeds.
But light on the other hand, contrasts with darkness.
Light describes the mind that has come to know Christ by the power of the Spirit.
Light describes the actions of someone guided by God’s Word.
Light describes the beauty of obedience.
And so, Jesus is saying, “My disciples are completely different than the people who don’t know me.”
My disciples reveal the things of God to those with darkened minds.
My disciples spread the truth to people who love holding onto lies.
Their good deeds shine like a lamp in this dark world full of sin.
In the words of Philippians 2:15
“[You] live in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.”
Now, before we get into the details of being salt and light, we should first ask something else:
Why are we like this?
How can Christ call us the salt of the earth and the light of the world?
Is it perhaps because in ourselves we are better than everyone else?
And of course the answer is ‘No’.
We are only salt and light in this world because of God’s grace.
We are God’s salt and light in this world because of the saving work of Jesus Christ.
Consider the words of Ephesians 4 and 5
In Ephesians 4 we read these words: “You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God.”
But in Ephesians 5 we read,
“At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.”
We are the light of the world, not because of ourselves but because of the Lord Jesus.
We are light in the Lord.
Listen also to Colossians 1:12-14 “[The Father] has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
We once were firmly in the kingdom of darkness.
We would have stayed there forever if it were not for the rescuing grace of God
We would have no hope of being salt and light if it were not for the redemption we have in
Christ, the forgiveness of our sins.
Look at what Christ has done for us.
Though he is by nature God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be clutched onto, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by become obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Christ did this to save us from the kingdom of darkness – to bring us into the kingdom of light.
He now gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can more and more act like kingdom citizens.
The Holy Spirit gives us the mind and attitude of Christ.
He transforms our hearts so that we can act like salt and shine like light in this world.
As salt and light, God has a specific purpose for us in this world.
As the salt of the earth, you have a preserving function.
Faithful disciples of Christ prevent the world from turning into complete rot.
Of course, the world is full of corruption already because of sin.
And yet, sin and lawlessness are still not at their maximum expression.
And even if sin reaches the max in some people on earth,
as disciples of Christ, we ensure that this does not happen to all people.
The more we purify our desires and our actions out of reverence and thankfulness to God, the more we prevent the entirety of the human race from being corrupted to the uttermost.
As the salt of the earth, we also serve a flavouring purpose.
Without faithful disciples of Christ,
this world would be absolutely repugnant and nauseating to God.
But the faithful disciples of Christ make this world palatable to him.
As the light of the world, God has a similar purpose for us.
He calls you to make God known to people darkened in their understanding.
He calls you to expose the sin and wickedness of this world.
He calls you to shine the light of God’s Word on people led by destructive world views.
He calls you to illumine Christ for people who are on the path to eternal darkness.
We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. This is God’s purpose for us.
The outcome of how we act
So the purpose of salt is to preserve and to season,
The purpose of a lamp is to shine light into the darkness.
As salt and light we serve those same purposes in this world.
But the next question is,
“What does that look like in our day to day lives?”
How are we to act like salt and light?”
Well, if we have a preserving function in this world,
being salt of the earth means not going along with the sins of this world.
As James 1:27 puts it,
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
Or as one translation put it, “It is refusing to let the world corrupt you.”
Everyday as you go to work,
as you use the internet, as you use social media,
or whatever it might be,
you are going to come across lifestyles and ideas and actions that are completely against
how God wants you to live.
And because we still are attracted to sin, these things are going to pull on our hearts too.
Refusing to let the world corrupt you can be challenging.
There will always be the temptation to fit in with non-Christians when it’s the easy thing to do.
Think of on the jobsite.
If you are the salt of the earth on the jobsite, you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb.
Your language will be different
The things you joke about will be different.
Your stories about the weekend will be different.
Think about university.
If you are the salt of the earth in university, you’re going to be noticed too.
Your worldview will be different.
Your sexual ethic will be different.
Your Friday nights are going to be different.
But being salt is more than just avoiding things.
Remember salt not only has a preserving function; it also seasons. It gives good flavour.
And this means following the words of Romans 12:1,2
Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of you mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Being salt on the earth means studying God’s word and being transformed by that Word.
It means rejoicing in what is good and right and true.
It means celebrating God’s ways and God’s law and God’s character.
It’s means walking in ways that are pleasing to God.
And by doing these things, you will have the desired outcome of being the salt of the earth.
You prevent this world from being completely rotted by sin.
You give this world a pleasant flavour to God.
And notice that the Lord Jesus attaches a warning.
He says the salt can lose its saltiness.
Now we might wonder about this.
How can salt lose its saltiness?
Well one explanation I found went like this:
“The impure…salt of ancient times could lose its saltiness because the sodium chloride could leach out or dissolve in humid weather and leave only tasteless crystals which no longer tasted like salt.” [1]
But even if ordinary table salt never loses its saltiness Christ still presents this as a possibility to warn us against something.
He’s warning us that we can lose our distinct flavouring as disciples of Christ.
We can be corrupted by the rot of the world.
If we embrace the sin that’s so rampant around us, we lose our persevering function as disciples of Christ.
And when that happens, there are consequences.
Christ says, “if the 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.”
It makes perfect sense.
If the salt people used in that time could lose its saltiness, would they bother keep it?
No! They would just chuck it out.
It would be easiest to simply throw it out the door onto the street.
And if there’s no difference between our hearts and lives and those who don’t know God,
we are showing that we aren’t true disciples.
And those who prove by their lives that they aren’t true disciples will be placed outside the kingdom of heaven.
So that’s the outcome of not being the salt of the earth.
On the flip side there is being the light of the world.
Again, what does that look like in our day to day lives?
The first thing to remember is that we are not the source of light in ourselves.
Jesus Christ is the ultimate light of the world.
We shine like lights as we reflect him to the world.
You could say, the more we soak in the rays of the gospel of Christ, the more we will shine like lights.
Think of a solar panel that absorbs energy from the sun.
That absorbed energy can then be used to power another light.
Likewise, some glow in the dark materials absorb energy when a light source shines on them.
Then, when you take that glow in the dark object into a dark room,
it emits that light energy it absorbed earlier.
So it is with disciples of Christ in this world.
Ultimate source of our shining light is not in ourselves.
However, we gain that power to shine in this world through Jesus Christ.
As we heard the good news of our salvation in him,
As we read his words and imitate his life,
As we pray to the Father to transform us into his image, the more we will shine.
We do this also by the power of the Spirit through the Word of God.
Think of what we read in Philippians 2
“[You live] in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life!”
It could also be translated like this, “as you hold out the word of life.”
As we grab tightly of the Word of God.
As we hold it out for others to see and hear, that’s one way we let our light shine in this world.
Philippians 2 says this in light of another command.
Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure.
Do you want to shine your light in this world?
Follow this command.
Do everything without complaining or grumbling.
If you do that, you will shine on those who live in darkness.
And Christ specifically mentions another in our text.
He says, “In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
Jesus isn’t telling us here to be show-offs like the Pharisees.
Christ denounced them for doing their acts of righteousness before people.
But he is telling us to be Christian all the time.
Never try to hide your Christian faith or your Christian identity.
Instead, we are Christians no matter where we are.
And when we do that, then our good works will just naturally be seen by others.
As Christ says,
A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
Think of a city on a hill.
It’s right in the open. There’s no hiding it.
Anyone who comes by is going to see it.
Christ is saying, “That’s how it is with my disciples too.”
They are my disciples all the time.
It’s who they are.
There’s just no hiding it.
When you act as a Christian all the time,
it shouldn’t take long before people realize there’s something different about you.
Similarly, Christ also says,
People don’t light a lamp and put it under a basket.
Imagine the power goes out at your house one night.
You would probably go grab a flashlight and turn it on to give you some light.
Well imagine someone turns on that flashlight only to stick it under a bowl.
It doesn’t make any sense.
In the same way, it doesn’t make any sense to keep our Christian identity hidden.
If you are trying to hide away your Christian faith or your Christian life in public because your scared of what others may think, you are effectively placing your lamp under a bowl.
You are not shining in the way God intends you to shine.
But when we do shine as lights in this world, there can also be a beautiful outcome.
The Lord ends our text by saying,
“In the same way, let your light shine before people, so that they can see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
The goal of all this, is the glory of God.
How might they glorify God?
It’s not that everyone who sees your Christian life will suddenly praise God.
In fact they might even persecute God’s people.
But, they will have no real reason to blaspheme the name of Christ.
They will see living testimonies to the work of God in our lives.
And when they see our many good works they will have to confess,
“You know those Christians, there’s something different about them.
They are always doing good things.”
May we bring glory to our God in this way. Amen.
[1] Exegetical summary of the NT – Matthew the sermon on the Mount
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rick VanderHorst, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright 2024, Rick VanderHorst
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