Kingdom Influence - Being Worth Your Salt: Matthew 5:13 - Matthew: Kingdom of God Revolution

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We think masculinity is about having no problems and being independent and strong.

It's not.

Masculine heart according to Christ is becoming more like Christ.

When we become more like Christ, we become moral.

It's the first of the Beatitudes.

Poor in spirit, and you give all the resources of the kingdom of heaven.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Gang, we are in Matthew 5.

If you have your Bibles, turn to Matthew 5.

We're going through the Beatitudes.

We finished the Beatitudes.

We're moving into the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

Greatest sermon ever given by almost anyone's standards.

And when you came in, you got this.

And if you didn't get it, then receive it when you leave.

But this is a great work that Alma Coslin and Vince put together to pray the Beatitudes, to pray Matthew 5, 3 through 12 into your life.

I love what's on here because it has the definition.

This is my definition, it's not inerrant, but this is my definition of a kingdom of God revolution, the governing influence of the king, Jesus, over his territory, earth, through his citizens, us, who are expressing his culture and values, reflecting the nature of the king, heaven, into all spheres of earthly society, seven mountains.

And the purpose of this is that you might take that seriously and pray each day.

Just put this in your Bible.

Pray this each day.

Let's look at the first one.

It says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

That's a need for God in our life.

Lord, help me to become poor in spirit and to be completely surrendered to you.

I recognize I do not have what it takes, and I cannot do it on my own.

I need you, Lord.

Empower me to humble myself, empty myself, and believe I will receive all the resources of the kingdom of heaven.

And if you've been with us over the last month or so, that in essence is what we were talking about with the first of the Beatitudes.

And so, you know, it's important that we realize, and I remind you again and again, you probably think, wow, this guy's like a just a he's a recording of the same thing.

But Jesus did not come to start a religion.

He came to start a revolution.

That's why he told us to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

He wants us, church, to bring heaven down here.

To bring heaven into your job, to bring heaven into your family, to bring heaven into your marriage, to bring heaven into your worship, to bring heaven into your computer programming, to bring heaven into all that you do.

It's a revolution.

And that's how Christianity, with all of its mistakes and all of the man-made aspects of the religious part of that, which we all know and we're reminded by the press all the time.

With all of that, it's still the greatest revolution the world's ever known.

It's still that, you know, when you go to these disaster places, and I've been to Oklahoma twice because of tornadoes and hurricanes, and I've been all over the world.

And when you go into these countries and you go into these disaster places, it's Christians who are there.

It's the church.

I didn't see any Hindus there.

I didn't see any Muslims there.

I didn't see any Buddhists there.

You see, you see, there's a revolution that supersedes all other religions of the world.

And when people get it, they just can't get enough of it, and they just want to give it away.

That's what I signed up for.

When I was a freshman in college and I got a hold of Christ, the thing that got me was John 10, 10.

I came at you and I have life and might have it abundantly, and I and the word was adventure.

I wanted adventure, and that's why I went on the mission field.

And that's why I became a pastor, is I wanted all of the adventure that God had because the kingdom is a revolution, it's not a religion.

And when we make it a religion, it becomes, it becomes regulations, it becomes all these things that suffocate your heart.

It just kills your heart.

But when we see it as a revolution of love to our world, our our heart comes alive.

That's what the whole heart advance is for men.

You guys, this this thing in September, you women, you know, you want a new man, then you pay for them to go to Whole Heart Advance.

And if he says, Well, I'm not going because I don't know anybody, then tell him to get a buddy and go together.

But it will, it's three days.

It'll change your life.

It's about having a whole heart.

And you guys heard me last week.

I talked about whole heart, whole heart, how I define it.

It's not just being all in, it's also being vulnerable about your weaknesses.

Being vulnerable about those areas of our life that we struggle with, and all of us have that.

And we men are just notorious for hiding and being cool and being, we think masculinity is about having no problems and being independent and strong.

And it's not.

The masculine heart, according to Christ, is becoming more like Christ.

And we become more like Christ, we become vulnerable.

It's the first of the Beatitudes.

Poor in spirit, and you get all the resources of the kingdom of heaven.

So turn in your Bibles, you're in Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

We've been through these first few verses.

I want you to actually turn real quickly to Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

And it's just like Jesus to do the opposite of what we humans would do.

If I was, as you know, they always tell you in speech class, or if you're in homiletics class in graduate school, they talk about give your thesis first, give your main point first, and then build from there, right?

If you ever take any speech class.

Well, Jesus puts it at the end.

So he does the opposite.

And he tells us here at the end of the Sermon on the Mount what his purpose of the Sermon on the Mount was.

So look at Matthew 7, 24 through 27.

Because this is why we're going through the Sermon on the Mount.

Therefore, verse 24, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

And the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.

You see, the purpose of the thesis, of the theme of what I'm calling the kingdom manifesto of Matthew 5, 6, and 7 is this.

He's training us, church.

He's equipping us because winds are coming.

Floods are coming.

Hail storms are coming in your life.

And he's saying, You've got to build this, you've got to build this into your life on a rock, a foundation, and here's what it's all about.

He's showing us what it's all about.

That's how we build is really, really important.

There's three things that we're picking up from the Sermon on the Mount.

One is you should be incredibly happy.

You should be, as a Jesus follower, you should be incredibly happy most of the time.

Number two, because of your happiness and because of your kingdom values, you should be persecuted.

That's actually the compliment of the world to the Jesus follower is you get persecuted.

Have you had any compliments lately?

The compliment of the world is persecution.

So, first of all, I'm saying you're going to be incredibly happy.

You're going to be persecuted.

And then number three, you're going to be an influencer.

Every one of you in this room are influencers for the kingdom of God.

And that influence of the kingdom of God is what we're going to talk about a lot here this morning.

I love G.K.

Chesterton, the great writer, poet, and dramatist, who said this.

Jesus promised his disciples three things that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.

Happy, persecuted influencers.

You are a happy, persecuted influencer.

The happier you are, verses 3 through 12, the more you'll be persecuted, verses 10 through 12, that you might be an influencer, verses 13 through 16.

So what's happening is Jesus is preaching a Sermon on the Mount.

We're up in Galilee, and this is important.

They're up near the Sea of Galilee.

You that are going with me to Israel.

I'm so excited.

There's 50 of us going to Israel.

No, 53 of us going to Israel from our church.

It's going to be really, really, you're going to have so much fun with me.

You can't go with a better, more fun guide in Israel than me.

I have fun.

And you know what's funny?

What's even funner is that my brother's coming.

And you that know Brian Michaels and have maybe been under his teaching, Brian's going to be with us.

It's just going to be outrageously, ludicrously fun.

And but we'll go up into Galilee and we'll see the Sermon on the Mount Hill.

We'll go up to the Hill of the Beatitudes, and you're up there and you're looking out over the Sea of Galilee, and it's super beautiful.

And so in that time, everybody's coming.

Thousands are coming.

Men are leaving their fishing trade and they're leaving their fishing company and they're going up the mountain.

And business owners and women and children, they're leaving everything, and they're going up to hear Jesus preach this sermon.

And men and women, what a picture of what it's like when we start to get a hold of the kingdom of God.

You start to leave your old life and find something fresh and new.

And so they're coming.

And they're and they're looking at this Jesus there.

They're just beginning to understand him.

It's the early part of his ministry.

They see him touching lepers, touching prostitutes, hanging out with tax collectors.

And here's what's confusing to the Pharisees and the religious leaders of that time is he's hanging out with them, but when he teaches, he's not affirming their lifestyle.

Which is just the opposite of the way the Jewish leaders at that time would have thought is that by being in their presence, you're affirming their lifestyle.

But he's not.

And he's actually calling those people out into a new lifestyle, and he keeps talking about it being the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God, the kingdom of God.

Men and women, some of you are in that place in your life and you're here.

And just a few months ago, you were not here.

You were somewhere else.

And somebody invited you, or you heard something, or you saw something, and you're here.

Because God's doing something in your heart.

He's doing a work in your heart.

And when we look at the Sermon on the Mount, we look at what's happening here, it's all about something different than the world.

It's a new, listen, it's a new social order.

He's speaking of a new social order, and he's speaking to the heart.

So look back to Matthew 5, verse 3.

Matthew 5:3

I'm just going to quickly run through again.

We've already covered this.

You can go listen to the sermons online.

Blessed beatus, Latin, where we get blessed, means happy, it means joyful.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And we've talked about need for God opens up the kingdom in your life.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

In other words, when we open up our heart to God, we get God's heart.

And men and women, when we get God's heart, we start to mourn for the things that cause God's heart to mourn, and he comforts you.

Blessed are the meek.

For they shall inherit the earth.

Renouncing our rights.

And you talk about the counter to this culture.

Renouncing rights is about as counter as you can get.

Everybody's about their rights.

Jesus saying, Die to your rights.

And I will enable you to inherit the kingdom, to inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

That hunger and that thirst for right relationships, a right relationship with God, a right relationship with others in our life.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

We talked about being whole-hearted and the purity of heart being in that aspect of giving it all to God, everything that we have to God, even the dark places of our heart.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Now this is interesting.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

So when we become peacemakers, we join the family business.

We join the ministry of reconciliation.

And with the ministry of reconciliation, that is the family business of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We join up, we become reconcilers instead of angry men and women that are only looking out for our own rights.

But here's the irony of it, verse 9 and 10.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God, but then blessed are those who are persecuted for a right cause, for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

So when we begin pe become peacemakers, we actually get persecuted.

We have this thing called the covenant of harmony around here.

And if you've been through the roadmap, you've heard us talk about it.

If you're on staff, you actually sign the covenant of harmony.

Because what the world needs are reconcilers that will do their very best to try to build bridges instead of walls with people we disagree with.

Everybody.

Everybody has an opinion.

God wants us to be peacemakers even when the opinions that we hold are different from those.

That this peacemaker, well, guess what?

When you do that, you're going to get persecuted.

Because that's not what people do.

It's interesting that when um John Shepherd and Steve McVitie with Empower Pictures did the most recent movie that we showed the trailer for, Emmanuel, that there's been a backlash from certain aspects of the community against it because we don't want to hear about forgiveness.

We don't want to hear about forgiveness.

What about our rights?

So when you become a peacemaker, expect persecution, expect it to come back the other way in our lives.

That's the way it works.

Well, I love Acts 1.8.

You guys know Acts 1.8.

You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be.

Jot that down.

You shall be my witness.

Everybody say you shall be my witnesses.

Say that.

Say that to your neighbor.

You shall be my witness.

It doesn't say go do witnessing, it says be a witness.

It's about our character, it's about who we are.

And this is what he's saying.

He's saying, Men and women, church, if we'll be poor in spirit, if we'll mourn, if we'll be meek, you'll be my witness wherever you go.

Whatever you, you'll be a witness, because it's so counter to the social order of our time.

You're bringing in a new world order.

You'll be happy, you'll be persecuted, and then you'll be an influencer.

You'll be a mighty influencer.

He says this blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice.

That's weird.

Be exceedingly glad.

Has anybody here really ever been exceedingly glad when you're getting persecuted?

Don't raise your hand.

We'll think you're weird.

But he's saying, You that's where I want you to go with this development of my spirit and my word in your life, is that you could actually rejoice and be exceedingly glad.

For great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who are before you.

Verse 13.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the salt of the earth.

But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?

So we're moving into influence, influencing the world.

It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by man.

You are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Linsky, the great commentator, translates it, translate this as you alone are the salt of the earth.

The church, nobody else is the salt of the earth but the church.

We're the salt of the earth.

You know, you alone are the salt of the earth.

How many of you have traveled to other nations?

If you've been in any of these third world countries, it's the church that's there.

You know when we had the Black Forest Fire up here, Samaritan's Purse with Franklin Graham set up in my church there at Mountain Springs.

They had their massive trailer.

And man, we just we had people by the hundreds coming through there to minister up in the Black Forest Fire area.

Samaritan's Purse was there.

Oklahoma, as I told you earlier, just lines of churches.

And then we went, our family went, and then we sent our youth group there to help and to minister.

You alone are the salt of the earth.

If you feel like you alone are the salt of the earth, if you feel like you alone are the influencer in your company, you are.

God's called us to be those influencers, and he says that we are salt of the earth.

And he gives a very familiar term.

In Galilee is Magdala.

You've probably heard of Mary Magdalene.

She was from Magdala.

Magdala's not far from there.

Magdala's known for its salt mines.

It's known for its salt up there.

So for him to use that metaphor would have been very familiar to all those that were listening to him.

You are the salt of the earth.

And I'll explain next week about why I think he used you are a light on the hill.

But you're the salt of the earth.

And the way it worked, you guys, is the salt would come out of the mines and they would dump it.

And huge piles of salt would often be found near the area where it was mined.

And the salt that was on top became sun bleached.

And the weather and the rain.

Hit it and it was and it would solidify and it would and it would be bleached out by the sun and guess what?

It would lose its flavor, it would lose its saltiness.

So they would take that salt, big wagons full.

Some of it would go into the city of places like Galilee or Nazareth and some of those particular areas like that, but but a lot of it would go to the temple in Jerusalem.

They'd go to the temple in Jerusalem, and there were these there were these four rooms.

There was the court of the Gentiles and there was the court of the women.

And in the court of the women, there were four compartments or four rooms.

And in one room was the wood that they used for sacrifices.

So there was a room full of split wood that was used for sacrifices.

There was another room that was a place where, if you were taking a vow, this is probably where Paul went when it said in Acts that he went and he took a vow, you would go in there and you could just sit alone with your vow before the Lord, quietly in this room.

Then there was another compartment, which is where you could go and debate or discuss scripture with the scribes.

And this is what we believe is where Joseph and Mary found Jesus when he was 12 years old and he'd been lost, and it would make sense.

He was in this room, so they couldn't find him around the temple area, but they finally entered that room, and there he was debating with the scholars.

Well, then there was a fourth compartment or fourth room, and that's where they dumped the salt.

So in that room was where they had salt, not unlike this salt.

Familiar to any of you here in Colorado?

So they would take this salt, this was a salt that had no more flavor.

Sorry, cleanup crew, I've got to do this.

But they would scatter it across the limestone and the and the stone slabs around the outer part of the court for snow and ice, and it would be trod under the feet of men.

And he's saying that's that's what happens if we lose our flavor.

But I've brought a little illustration here.

I took some, I want you to know, I sacrificed one of the round steaks from one of the elk I shot, and it's right here.

We're gonna season it, gang.

This is the flavoring that God wants us to have, and this is, I'm gonna use this piece of steak as a picture.

How about that?

Does that look kind of tasty?

It is tasty, I'll just tell you that right now.

Montreal seasoning.

We'll call it Colorado Spring seasoning.

This is you.

This is you, gang.

God wants you to be seasoning in this world.

And what he does is he shakes us.

I hate getting shaken.

Anybody hate getting shaken?

That's persecution, whether that's anxiety, that struggles in our life.

He shakes us, but the only way he can get us out is to shake us.

And he shakes us into the world, and he shakes us into our family, and he shakes us into our marriage.

And then God just rubs you in.

Because this is gonna rot.

This is gonna decay if it doesn't have that flavor and that preservation that comes through salt.

And they would give the Roman soldiers a bag of salt each month.

It was called a solarium.

It's where we get the word salary.

Did you know that?

That bag of salt was for them to flavor their meat, flavor their food with as Roman soldiers.

Or to even put on a wound.

If they had been in battle or they had hurt themselves, they put that salt on that wound and it was uh purifying.

So God's in the business right now, you guys, of pouring you out and rubbing you in into a decaying world.

That you'd be flavor for that world.

You bring the kingdom values of this world in a mighty and powerful way.

Isn't that exciting?

So are you are you flavorful?

Are you growing in Christ and becoming his seasoning to the world?

Because that's what you're called to.

And this world's it's gonna decay.

This world order is going to rot.

And we're here to come in and to make a difference in that time frame that we do have on this earth to make a difference.

Ask God today, God, what do you want to do?

How do you want to use me to make that impact, to be salt, the salt upon the earth?

Because that's what he wants to do through you.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.