Where Kingdom Meets World: Salt & Light (Matthew 5:13-16)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said, You are the salt of the earth.

But if 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.

You are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and to give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfil them.

For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

So, sisters and brothers, you are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

Let's pray.

Lord, it's only by your grace that we can be as you will us to be.

What you've purposed us to be.

To live out our highest calling.

Would you meet us by grace today?

Would you illumine your word by your Holy Spirit to our understanding?

Cause us to be salt in a needy world and light in the darkness to your glory.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So we're journeying through the Sermon on the Mount in our lectionary.

The Sermon on the Mount is perhaps the pinnacle of or the characteristic of Jesus' teaching.

This is where the kingdom of heaven meets earth.

This is where we're being invited to be agents of the kingdom in the world that we live in.

And our passage this morning, especially the first verses 13 to 16, I think raise an important question that Christians have wrestled with for many centuries, and the question is this: how do Christians relate to the world we live in?

That assumes we live in the world, which I think is a safe assumption.

How are we supposed to relate to it?

I want to suggest that there's been many different options and that have essentially been variations on two themes.

One of two responses to how we're supposed to relate in the world in it.

One is any variation of retreat.

Christians are supposed to be those who withdraw from a corrupted world around us.

And so maybe we get in our little holy huddles, or maybe we feel comfortable in our little church circles.

But we know that the world's going to hell in a handbasket, so why would we have anything to do with it?

Maybe this is something of a fundamentalist instinct.

We're going to retreat from the world.

But I think the other common option is something along the lines of assimilation.

When we relate ourselves to the world, we want to take our lead from what the world says.

Maybe we uncritically adopt the world's ideologies or philosophies.

Maybe we essentially make ourselves into the world's image, maybe with a good heart to relate to the world or be relevant to the world.

But our doctrine essentially gets hollowed out and becomes a reflection of the world that we live in.

We become assimilated to the world that we live in.

Now, there's any in different numbers of options, of ways to answer that question, but I wonder if, generally speaking, we see those two answers in many different variations.

The two may be very different in many ways, but I think underneath the surface they're a very similar answer.

I think what the two options, retreat and assimilation, have in common is they are both self-serving options.

They begin with the question of what best suits me and how I relate to the world.

How do I want to respond?

What do I think?

These are self-serving options that ultimately serve our own self-interest.

I think Jesus is calling us to an even more challenging way still.

In the Sermon on the Mount and especially in our passage in front of us.

There is a more challenging but more beautiful way for Christians to relate to the world.

I think it's a gospel-centered way.

And Jesus wants to capture this gospel-centered way to relate to the world, neither collapsing into retreat or assimilation.

He communicates this way through two images, salt and light.

In the world for the sake of the world, but not of the world.

See, I think this is an important thing for us to consider, even right here at Newsong, Friends, because it is tempting to be in the world and to pursue a self-serving option.

It is always an easier thing to prioritize our own self-interest.

It is easy to lose what makes us distinct, perhaps in the name of being relevant.

But it's also easy to conceal the hope within us, perhaps in the name of avoiding conflict.

We're being called to a more beautiful and more challenging way to relate to our neighbors, to our neighborhood, to this community that we've discerned we're called to serve.

We are called to be salt and light.

That's how we're supposed to relate to the world we live in.

But how are we supposed to understand these two images?

Let's dive in.

If you have your Bibles, if you have your order of service, please open up with me to Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

You are the salt of the earth, Jesus says in verse 13.

When we think of uh salt, at least when I think of salt, I think when us moderns think of salt, we tend to think of its flavor.

And I'll tell you, I'm much more of a savory guy than I am a sweets guy.

I can eat potato chips all evening in a way that sweets just don't do it for me.

We tend to think of salt as a seasoning, as a as a spice, it's a flavor.

It makes something more palatable, more flavorful.

And I suppose that's true, but it's tempting to read that into the passage in such a way that Jesus is calling us to make the world a more flavorful place.

You know, go and be sort of seasoning that makes things more palatable.

I don't necessarily think that's untrue, but I also don't think that that's the thrust of what Jesus is getting at.

I think we need to keep a couple of things in perspective.

I think there's two particular things Jesus has in mind when he calls us to be salt.

We need to be mindful of how salt was used in the ancient world.

In the first century, first century was, I don't know, a couple of years before the invention of refrigerators.

You can look that up if you want.

But to preserve meat, it had to be cured, it had to be rubbed thoroughly with salt to be preserved.

Rubbing salt in the fibers of the meat prevented decay, it arrested corruption, it meant you could take it with you on a long journey, you could have it for a long time.

Salt was a preservative.

It preserved what was good and desirable.

But salt was also a preventative.

When one nation would conquer another nation, often you would see in their capital city it would be laid waste, but it wouldn't just be the buildings that got knocked down.

Often they would take salt and literally salt the earth, which was meant to cause the earth to be so uh so dry, so dead that nothing can grow there.

It was like absolute victory.

Nothing is going to come up where it shouldn't be, where we don't want something to be.

We're going to render our enemy lifeless.

Both of these uses, pardon me, both of these examples of salt point to a use beyond just being flavorful for its own sake.

Salt is being used in a particular way.

Salt is being used towards a greater purpose.

So what's Jesus saying about being salt here?

I think first and foremost, Jesus has it in mind that we're going to be rubbed into the fibers of the world.

I mean, that's true.

We all of us have our jobs, our vocations, our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, our relationships, our hobbies.

All of these things have us rubbed into the fibers of the world around us.

Retreat is not an option.

We're rubbed into the fibers of the world both to preserve what's good.

We are purposefully placed exactly where we are, as individuals and as a church community, to preserve what is good, to prevent moral decay, to arrest corruption.

We're meant to be rubbed deeply into the fibers of our community so that we can be agents of good and of God's work in our community.

But we're also rubbed into the fibers of our community to be something of a preventative.

We're meant to prevent what's evil.

Christians are rubbed into the fibers of our workplaces, of our civil society, to bear witness to the truth of the gospel, to bear witness to what is right and what is just, to arrest evil when it marches forward.

God has us in the world for a purpose, rubbed into its very fibers.

I think one person who understood this very thoroughly is a fellow named Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

You might have heard me reference him beforehand.

Sorry, he's just such a hero of mine.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Germany in the early 20th century.

At a certain point, he left Germany to study in the United States, where he enjoyed great success and was becoming more and more of a notable theologian and churchman.

He could have had a very comfortable and successful career in the United States.

But back home he was watching the Nazi Party take over his home country, and he understood something so deeply that the ideology of the Nazis is fundamentally opposed to the gospel.

And so where many Germans were who were afraid of the Nazi Party, who saw what was written on the wall, were fleeing Germany for America, Bonhoeffer made his way back to Germany because he understood that if he was going to be a part of rebuilding Germany after the war, after an impending war, he needed to be there in the very thick of it.

He understood that he needed to be salt, as it were, in Germany.

And so Bonhoeffer, along with other like-minded pastors, began what was called the Confessing Church, which refused to capitulate the church's doctrine to Nazi ideology.

Bonhoeffer said, We are going to be here to preserve what is good in our nation.

And we are going to be here to prevent what is evil from marching forward.

Bonhoeffer gave his life for the cause of the gospel realized in Germany.

Bonhoeffer writes a very famous book called The Cost of Discipleship, which I can't recommend highly enough.

In it, Bonhoeffer reflects on the Sermon on the Mount, and on this passage in particular, he writes this.

Bonhoeffer understands that being salt in the earth is not an option for Christians.

It's not something we opt into.

You, Bonhoeffer writes, are the salt of the earth.

It doesn't say you should be the salt.

The disciples are given no choice whether they want to be salt or not.

No appeal is made to them to become the salt of the earth.

Rather, they just are salt wherever they want to be, whether they want to be, pardon me, or not, by the power of the call which has reached them.

You are the salt, not you have the salt.

What is meant by the disciples' whole existence, to the extent that it is newly grounded in Christ's call to discipleship, that is the existence of which the Beatitudes speak.

We heard the Beatitudes read last week.

All those who follow Jesus' call to discipleship are made by that call to be the salt of the earth in their whole existence.

Let me read that again.

All those who follow Jesus' call to discipleship are made by that call to be the salt of the earth in their whole existence.

In other words, being the salt of the earth is not something for really serious Christians.

For those who really want to earn an A.

Being the salt of the earth is what it means to be a Christian.

To be rubbed into the fibers of the world that God is at work in, that He has created, that He is at work redeeming.

This is what it means to be Jesus' disciple in the world in which we live.

This is what Bonhoeffer understood so thoroughly that it brought him right back to Germany.

Friends, we live in very different circumstances, that's true, and we can be thankful for that.

But exactly where we are today, God has purposed us to be salt.

What is good where you are?

What is good in your communities?

What is good in your families?

What is good in your workplace?

Work to preserve that.

Courageously promote integrity.

Practice the beatitudes.

Arrest what's evil.

When it is easier to capitulate, when it is easier to give way, when it's easier to succumb to pressure, be salt that prevents decay and evil to advance.

Get rubbed into the fibers of the world, not for your benefit, but for the world's.

But friends, this comes with a warning, doesn't it?

Verse 13b.

Which I should just say the last half of verse 13.

Either way, I suppose.

Verse 13.

But if 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.

This is a sobering warning.

Now I'm not a chemist, you're probably not surprised to hear that, but I'm made to understand that salt is a pretty stable compound.

Salt doesn't lose its properties very easily.

But I don't think Jesus is trying to give a chemistry lesson here.

I think he's trying to make a point.

He's trying to make an illustration.

It is easy for something like salt to lose what makes it distinctive.

If salt loses its saltiness, not just its flavor, but its capacity to preserve or to prevent, then that salt is rendered useless.

It has no purpose.

This often happened to uh uh salt and um in ancient Palestine, first century Palestine, you'd get these uh drifts of salt coming off of the Dead Sea, which themselves got mixed in with sand and other debris.

It might look like salt, but it doesn't have the usefulness of salt.

It's not used for anything, so it's discarded.

Friends, it is a tempting thing for a Christian to lose what makes them distinct, to become mixed in with the world in such a way that we lose that gospel-centered call to discipleship to preserve what is good and to prevent what is evil, to go along, to capitulate, to just compromise, that much more.

The call to discipleship is don't lose what makes you distinct.

Be salt, because the world needs salt.

How can we stay as salty as we can be?

I know that word salty has different meanings nowadays, and I don't mean it in an insulting way, but how can we be salty in the sense that Jesus is talking about?

I think the answer is this.

I think we live our life in constant, humble surrender to our living God.

We constantly lay ourselves down before him because he alone can make us to be that salt that he requires.

Going back to Leviticus 2.13, we see salt is used in the sacrifices, altar sacrifices, when animals were brought in the Old Testament to be uh symbols of atonement, the meat would be salted along the lines that we've described.

Salt was a purifying agent.

And now in the New Testament, in Mark chapter 9, which is something of a parallel to uh to our passage today, Jesus says this.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

He's calling his disciples to deal seriously with sin.

Jesus says, for everyone will be salted with fire.

Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again?

Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.

Everyone, Jesus says, will be salted with fire, and undoubtedly, in the imagination of Jesus' first hearers, they're thinking about those temple sacrifices.

They're thinking about those sacrifices laid down for the sake of God and for his glory and for the atonement for sin.

This is a call to lay ourselves down, to be salt, to have salt within us is to be purified through this sacrificial work of God within us.

And so Paul can call us to be living sacrifices.

And he can say in Colossians chapter 4, let your speech always be gracious and seasoned with salt.

Colossians 4 · chapter mention

Laying ourselves down as living sacrifices before the Lord is how we preserve our saltiness, what makes us distinct.

We need to come to the source of the one who makes us salt, if we are going to be salt in the world around us.

You are the salt of the earth.

Be agents of God's goodness, preserving what is good, the very fibers of the world that God has rubbed us into.

Be salt.

And Jesus says, be light.

Verse 14 You are the light of the world.

We're used to Jesus saying, I am the light of the world.

From the Gospel of John, aren't we?

Chapters 8, chapter 9.

Are we surprised to see here Jesus is saying, He's pointing to his disciples and saying, You, in fact, are the light of the world.

I think this is realizing what Isaiah chapter 49, what we read at the beginning of our service, says that God is making his people a light for the nations.

Isaiah 49 · chapter mention

In life explored this last Wednesday, part of the video teaching was talking about what it means to image God, be image-bearers of God.

And the illustration that was used is that of a mirror.

The fellow on the video says that there's a nearby banquet hall with a stunning uh port a mural on the ceiling, a 17th-century building with this stunning painting on the ceiling.

And he says folks would come into the building and they'd spend so long looking up at the ceiling that they'd literally get a pain in their neck.

So he said, what this kind banquet hall did is they sort of rigged up these trolleys with angled mirrors on them so that they could wheel these trolleys around and very comfortably see what uh what was so stunning and beautiful in the ceiling above.

This is an illustration of what it means to be God's image-bearers, to reflect his glory, to reflect his goodness, to reflect his character outward into the world around us.

If Jesus says he is the light of the world and calls us to be the light of the world, that's a call to be a mirror that reflects his glory outwards, not inwards, but out into a dark world around us.

Such lights can't be hidden.

That's why Jesus says a city on a hill set on a hill cannot be hidden.

These are the kind of cities set on a hill that you'd navigate by in first century Palestine.

You didn't have GPSs, you didn't have Google Maps, you had to go by landmarks.

And so when you're traveling by night and you see a dazzling city on a hill, you know that you are heading in the right direction.

Such lights can't be hidden.

But Jesus would have us consider why would we even want to hide such a light?

This is why he goes on to say that no one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket, but you put it on a stand so that it can illumin the whole house.

Now the trouble is we moderns have made lights that are so bright we literally need to put a shade on them.

So for us it's a little bit counterintuitive.

But that would be the last thing on Jesus' the mind of Jesus' audience here.

Why would you possibly conceal a light?

It's such a valuable thing.

It illumines the world we live in.

We put it on display, we make it manifest.

The point is this lights are made to shine.

They're not made to be hidden, they're not made to be concealed.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

That's Jesus' point here.

I think that's a challenging thing, perhaps, for us Canadians.

At least it is for me.

Because often I find it's the case that when we think about faith, we tend to think of it as a very private venture.

We tend to think as this is the sort of thing that, well, we'd best just kind of keep it to ourselves.

I'm not going to ask those sort of questions.

My heart was really broken a number of years ago when I was talking to a parent about their adult child, and I asked this parent, you know, does this, does your child participate in a church?

Do they have a church community around them?

This parent said to me, Whoa I wouldn't ask that question.

And I said, Well, why wouldn't you?

And they said, Well, that's a very private thing.

That's not the sort of thing you ask one another, you know.

And I thought, that's a really heartbreaking answer.

Isn't this what it means to be lights in the world?

Isn't this what it means to give glory to our Father in heaven by being put on display?

I'm not saying we be obnoxious and blasted in everyone's face.

I don't think that's the motivation here.

But be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within you.

It means we have to have that hope on display and not concealed away.

Let your good works shine so that they can glorify your Father in heaven.

I think that's a pretty comprehensive phrase and on purpose.

Everything we do for the sake of the kingdom should point to the King, should make known his goodness and beauty and majesty and glory.

It's not being ostentatious, it's not being obnoxious.

In chapter 6, verse 1, Jesus says to conceal some of those good works, but he says that for the sake of self-glorification.

Say no to putting yourself on display.

Say yes to putting the goodness of your father on display.

That's what it means to be a light in the world.

This, again, is the call to discipleship.

Another person who understood this very well was Mother Teresa.

She observes this: that lights need power.

Often she says you can see power lines running across alongside the street.

Unless current is flowing through them, there is no light.

She says the power line is you and I, the current is God.

We have the power to allow the current to flow through us and thus to generate the light of the world, Jesus.

Or to refuse to be used, and thus to allow the darkness to spread.

Okay, Creighton's here, tell me I got to be Mother Teresa.

Not trying to say that.

We're not all called the Calcutta.

But God has purposely placed you and I exactly where we are.

And He's asked us to say yes, to putting on display, as it were, the energizing grace of God in Christ, to illumine the world with the light of the gospel, to live out what it means to participate in the kingdom in the present, so that folks can catch a glimpse of the promise and goodness of the king.

Let your light shine before others in an unashamed, unconcealed, dazzling commitment to Christ and his kingdom.

Friends, I think Port Perry needs Christians who are distinct and unconcealed, not obnoxious, not ostentatious, but those Christians who put the dazzling hope of the gospel on display.

Isn't that what we want to be, New Song?

Don't we want to be a community-serving church?

Don't we want to be a gospel-centered church?

I think that begins by saying yes to being salt and being light.

Because this is how we're meant to relate to the world in which we live.

Let me offer this final thought.

Because you might be hearing all this and think, that sounds pretty heavy.

And probably it should.

It should land heavy on me, and it probably should land heavy on you.

But consider this: Jesus calls us to follow him only where he is first led the way.

He calls us to be salt, to be agents of redemption and preservation, to prevent what is evil.

On the cross, Jesus calls all death and sin and guilt to himself, and he puts it to death.

His cross salts the earth.

He is the great agent of our redemption.

And now he calls us to go and do likewise in the fibers of the world into which we've been rubbed.

And Jesus says, I am the light of the world.

We have seen the glory of God, full of grace and truth, made manifest in Christ.

And when we mirror him rightly, the world catches a glimpse of his glory and beauty and goodness, exactly where we are.

So, friends, follow Jesus.

Be the salt and the light of Christ in God's worlds.

Be distinct, be unconcealed.

You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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