Voice of the Nazarene 7-26-26

From North Church, Ohio, we share with you the Voice of the Mazarine.

A week-by-week venture into the Word of God sponsored by the New Stars Ohio Church of the Mazarine.

We join our pastor, River Grey List now, and the Voice of the Mazarine.

In hospitals.

One young lady had flipped her car I don't know how many times.

Another with that brain bleed.

One of our guys had passed out and had driven into the side of a house.

And um just a lot of needs.

And certainly again, this morning we sense the need of God for our people.

I want to talk to you about salt.

I have noticed that about every time I sit down in a restaurant, just as soon as prayer is over, I say, pass the salt.

You'd think after 11 years she would catch on and just hand me the salt.

But it hadn't happened yet.

I'm waiting for the next eleven.

And it's uh very aggravating when you take the salt shaker and you can't get it out of the shaker.

I wonder what God thinks when he calls on us to be the salt of the earth.

And he can't get us out of the shaker to a world that needs the flavor of Christianity.

Something that'll stop decay.

Something that'll create a thirst for God.

Immediately following the greatest sermon ever preached on that great mount about beatitudes, Jesus stops and he begins to tell us what we ought to be.

We always think it's in doing what we don't do and what we don't do.

But I remind you that we're human beings.

God is concerned about what we should be and start being.

Interesting to me that the word sugar is never mentioned in divine writ.

But the word salt is listed more than 36 times.

God wanted our attention on this thing about salt.

In ancient times, salt was probably the most ultimate of seasoning, and its value was so great that they would pay the Roman soldiers in salt.

You realize that salt is not man-made.

Salt is created by Almighty God.

Humans never invented, they never created in some chemical lab this thing called salt, but God, the God that made the heaven and the earth, and when he got through, he'd put together this thing of sodium chloride, created salt.

And there's plenty of it on our planet.

Trillions of tons of salt.

Here in Matthew chapter 5, verse 13, Jesus from the great lips of God's own son, said, Ye are to be the salt of the earth.

Matthew 5:13

And I sat in my office the other night and thought about our people.

We have some people that are literally the salt of the earth.

In these 34 and a half years, I've met some great, great people that have been a part of this very ministry.

Some have already gone on to heaven, some we still have with us.

They're the salt of the earth.

I believe the reason God hadn't wiped out America is because across rural America are people that are the salt of the earth, still God-fearing, still trying to live the right kind of a life.

While in some of the great metropolises where paganism and liberalism is having its way, and they hate God.

But I believe there's the salt of the earth out there that kept us from being destroyed.

He said, Ye are the salt of the earth.

And he said, But if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?

It is thenceforth, thou catch these words right here.

What are the words?

He said, if we've lost our savor, then he said it's good for nothing.

Don't hear that mentioned much, do we?

Good for nothing.

But to be cast out, to be trodden underfoot of men.

Now, I don't know about you.

I have to be very careful at night because if I don't watch it, I'll eat something right before I go to bed that'll make me thirsty.

I stay away from a ham sandwich, and I want one.

And I love fish.

Boy, does fish make me thirsty.

And my favorite is French fries.

And if I'll eat those things, guess what?

They're salty.

And it makes me thirsty.

And I wonder if maybe God put you here on earth next to somebody to create a thirst in them for God.

If God can get you out of the shaker, that is.

My dad worked at a trucking firm, and he worked as the assistant in the parts department.

Guy by the name of Duncan was the head man, and then dad worked for him, and mom and dad had gotten saved, and they'd moved Indianapolis.

Dad had got this job, and Dad was seeking the Lord.

And you know that one of the best places to find God is right in this book.

It's his love letter to us, it's his guide for us.

Everything about you need to know to get to heavens right here in this catalog.

And Dad would, instead of eating lunch, he would go over and get behind some of the park bins, there at a desk, take an apple, maybe, and he'd open his Bible and he'd begin to read, and guys would come in and they'd say, Well, where's Wolbur?

And they said, Well, he's back in the back.

It's lunchtime.

Everybody's on lunch break, and they wanted to see him.

They said, Well, he's back there reading his Bible.

And it wasn't long, they began to gather back there to hear what the Bible was teaching.

But Duncan, that my dad worked for, really got tired of it and told him, I don't like you bringing your Bible here.

But he knew he couldn't stop him.

It was his own lunch break.

Resisted, made it hard on Dad.

But you know something?

God put Dad next to Duncan.

And one day Duncan came in and he said, I can't fight this anymore.

I don't know what it is you've got, but whatever's in that book, I need to know what's in there.

And God saved Duncan and he became a Baptist pastor.

God may have put you right next to somebody to create a thirst for them.

Not to start an argument over the fence, but to create a thirst.

You know, down at the bar, they tell me, I haven't been down there lately.

That they have free salted peanuts.

Right there at the bar.

All you want, free salted peanut.

You know why they have salted peanuts?

So you'll get thirsty.

By another wiser, Bud Wiser, it don't make you wiser, but anyhow.

Have you ever gotten your finger cut during the day, maybe a paper cut?

Did you ever get your lips chapped and they crack?

And then you eat something salty, and does it ever burn?

Why?

Because salt is a cleanser, it's like an antiseptic.

Sometimes the things of God can really burn when we're doing what's wrong.

I don't know, I already mentioned to you about French fries.

For about eight and a half years, I went to the local nursing home every night, nearly every night of my life.

For eight and a half years, my first wife had died, and they, if you're new here, you may not know that, but uh it left her brain damaged when they brought her back.

I would go in every night, but she hardly ever knew who I was, never had a clue.

She called me daddy.

My hair wasn't this color yet either, but she still called me daddy.

But there's one thing she did know, I'd always stop down here at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

It's not KFC, it's Kentucky Fried Chicken.

You'll need to abbreviate that.

Bring the word chicken in it.

And uh, I'd bring her a chicken leg or something and some fries.

Or I'd stop at McDonald's and grab a hamburger and fries.

And she'd never even look at me.

They'd already started what's what's that word when they grind up your uh food?

Is it parade or parade?

Or you can't say, man, you couldn't handle a word like that anyhow.

That's what my notes said.

Not really.

And the food was so bland and blah.

But when I walked in, her eyes would go straight to that sack, and I'd begin to open that paper sack, and it would rustle, and and she would try to set up and she would get excited, not about me, but about the flavor of that chicken leg and those French fries, that hamburger.

It had salt.

I've been around some Christians.

If their personality was in collar, they'd be transparent.

When you're trying to preserve meat and you're using salt, you've got to spread the salt evenly over every inch.

If you don't, decay and corruption will break into that one little area.

I worry about the church these days.

God said we're the salt.

And we've got a soft, sick, pink social gospel that is corrupting our land and ministry and churches.

Till nearly every kind of contaminant that can get in is influencing what's going on in the house of the Lord.

Every sick segment of society with their crazy lack of belief and their corruption is trying to get in and get the church to accept them and ordain them and on and on it goes.

The very thing that God says I can't tolerate, I'll turn you over to a reprobate mind if you go in those directions.

And destroy the salt that we are to be.

Do you understand that God says you are the salt that I put here?

And if the salt isn't what it ought to be, to create flavor, to stop decay, to create thirst.

And I thought, sitting in my office a little bit ago, if the Lord God could come in a form that you and I could see and was to walk among us and to go down these aisles and out among these chairs and rows, and uh if we would say, Lord, I want you to point out those who are good for nothing.

And when he walked by me, what would he say?

And when he walked by you, what would he say?

May I ask, are you the salt?

Were to be salt?

Because God is saying, if you've lost that saltiness, you're good for nothing.

And he tells you what will happen.

He said, You're the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be saltin'?

It is thenceforth good for nothing.

And here's what God is saying is going to happen, but to be cast out and to be trodden under the foot of men.

May I suggest to you what's happening in America?

We're being cast out and trodden underfoot.

It's amazing to me for the first time in history.

Missionaries are coming from other countries and coming to America.

Are you cognizant of that?

But when I look around, I begin to realize we're needing some missionaries.

I mean, think about America for a moment.

The fastest growing religious movement in America is Muslim.

For every one convert that we get, they're getting 18.

90% of all the pornography in the world is coming out of our country.

The highest abortion recorded rate on planet Earth is right here in America.

Human trafficking is literally through the roof in our country.

If we're not cast out and trodden underfoot, then God's gonna owe Sodom and Gomorrah that apology.

Now we've lost the culture war in America, but we do not have to lose our nation.

And I want to say to you, these can be the most exciting days in the life of Christians that we've ever dealt with here in America.

Ever.

If we become the salt that we need to be.

And I'm positive, based upon the word of God, we do not have to lose our nation.

But here's the key the fate of a nation does not rest upon the infidel.

The fate of any nation rests upon the child of God.

Did you ever read 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 17?

1 Peter 4:17

Read it again and fasten it and fashion it in your mind.

Judgment must begin at the my house, God is saying.

Not the White House.

We blame everything on the White House.

God is saying it has to do with my house.

Judgment needs to start at my house.

And that's where we're at.

It has to start with my people.

And the question is: will we be the salt that God calls us to be?

Mother's dad, my granddad, his name was Saxton.

He was half Indian.

I've seen pictures of his mother.

She was a full-blooded squall Indian.

He was a coal miner.

He didn't live for God.

He worked underground during the week and drank on the weekend.

Sometimes like a fish.

He went through the Great Depression.

They never had a bathroom on the inside of the house till just a few years before they died.

My dad loaded up a commode and a bathtub and a sink and put it in a trailer and we towed it all the way to Jasonville, Indiana.

And when one day dad had crawled out of the house, they had moved from the country, nothing but an outhouse out back, no running water.

For years had been without electricity.

When they moved into the town of Jasonville, they still had an outhouse.

Houses right against each other, but theirs had an outhouse.

They did have water in one sink in the kitchen, cold water.

Dad crawled under that thing, ran piping and drainage and everything else, and installed, I don't know how in the world he did it, but did it in one long day with the help of my brother.

And of course, I sympathized and supervised.

Grandpa had gone through the Great Depression.

They had a few chickens.

They always tried to have a hog or two just to survive on.

They had no refrigeration whatsoever.

And so the only way that they could make these hogs, that meat last, they would slaughter the hogs, and then they would rub them down with salt.

They would rub salt all over that big old ham and over the bacon, and they would soak it in salt and salt water.

And that afternoon, going into the cellar, suddenly the stench was so great it reeked.

You talk about sick, I mean, you could not only smell it, you can nearly taste it.

I've never figured out what's wrong with me, but I can smell stuff a day or two later like mama could.

It was so bad you could taste it later.

What in the world?

You gonna eat this, Grandpa?

No.

And his head dropped.

And he said, We've got bad salt.

And the meat's destroyed.

I said, What are you gonna do?

He said, They've got to get rid of all of it.

They've lost all of that hog because they had bad salt.

Cast it out, throw it away.

Now, how do we get our saltiness back?

Well, there's a verse in the Bible that I believe gives us five keys to this salt.

Turn to me to 2 Chronicles chapter 7, verse 14 if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.

2 Chronicles 7:14

Here's what God says.

If you do these five things, then he said, I'm gonna make a couple promises that I'll do.

Then you'll hear from heaven, have your sins forgiven, and your land's going to be healed.

And the only hope for America is if God does something.

Do you know the answer is not in the next election?

I think people are a vote.

I think votes help.

But the answer's never been in any election.

Did you realize that America has deteriorated under both political parties?

The answer is not in political parties, our political policies.

And it's certainly not in Hollywood.

The answer's always been in Jesus Christ.

That's our answer.

And I want you to take these five things.

I'm going to glance over them for a moment or two.

And in these next few moments, inventory your own heart and life against them, because here is God's salt markers.

He said, if you'll do these five things, then I'll heal your land.

And he begins, if my people who are called by my name.

Notice what it doesn't say, and we we often misread it.

It doesn't say if my people which call themselves Christians.

If my people which are called by my name.

Does anybody looking at me say that's got to really be a Christian, right?

Right there's a Christian.

By the way you carry yourself, by your personal holiness, by your conduct, by the very atmosphere that we bring with us and the way that we handle things.

Do they point and say there's a genuine Christian?

I remember some time ago a guy asked me, he said, You don't seem to ever cuss.

I said, I just disgust.

He said, Are you a Christian?

The world's looking.

Or has our culture conformed us to a point where if we don't tell them that we're we're a Christian, they'd never guess it.

Would anybody say about you?

Would anybody say about me that is a Christian?

Well, Jesus tells us what the answer is.

And if you'll just put your finger there in 2 Chronicles and hold it for a moment, turn with me to John chapter 13, verse 34.

John 13:34

Jesus said, A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

That's not talking about grudges and avoiding each other and not speaking.

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if you want, love one another.

Have you ever noticed there's no ifs on God's part?

You can't find one if.

All the ifs are on our side.

If you walk in the light, if you abide in me, and if you love one another.

And while the world's looking on, saved or unsaved, they know whether or not we're Christian by whether there's a love that we have.

So how's your love life?

Well, don't tell me.

Jesus says, I want if you want the whole world to know who you are, who you belong to, then you've got to start loving the way that I love you.

You say, Well, Pastor, I got to deal with a lot of people who are not nice.

And by the way, Jesus doesn't tell us to love just the nice people.

And uh incidentally, there may be moments when some of us are not so nice to others.

You say, well, Pastor, no, don't pastor me.

Would anybody look and say you're the most loving people that I've ever seen?

Now I've been preaching for a long time.

I don't mean this morning.

And uh I've pastored for a while.

This will surprise you.

This will just blow you away.

You'd never dream it as nice as I am.

I get some letters.

People who don't like me.

And I don't know why they never sign their name.

I wish they'd signed their name so I could send them back an unsigned letter sometimes.

Wouldn't that just be fun?

Sure wouldn't be Christian though, would it?

Be lowering yourself to act like others.

Funny thing is, when cameras were put up around this church and somebody would slide a hate note under my door there, they would be on the camera.

And here, I better come back regularly Sunday after Sunday and face them like it never happened.

It's like one old bird said, he said, I don't understand him.

Said, he walks right up and shakes your hand and smiles at you.

Doesn't he know we're trying to kill him?

I know.

Leaders handle their, hide their terror better than others.

One letter said, I hope you get old soon.

It was so nice of them.

I hope the soon hadn't got here yet.

And you know what I've had to deal with?

I've had to deal with not allowing my spirit to want to respond like their note.

And I have sat in my office sometimes with my Bible laid out, and I couldn't get a thing out of it.

All I could picture in my mind was the hate and the anger that was in that letter.

And all down through the accusations.

Have you got any for a long while?

No, I haven't, but I'll be open to a few here soon.

It's just I'm missing them so much.

That's humor, in case you missed it.

But we don't want to respond as we're treated sometimes because we're to love.

Fact of the matter, Matthew 5 tells us, love your enemies.

Bless them, pray for them, do good to them.

By this shall all men know that you belong to me.

You say, well, Pastor, I love, but I just don't show it.

Well, you can't hide love.

It's going to show.

And that's why Jesus said, You do this, and all men will know you're my disciples.

So watch the first key: being called by his name.

By the way, I believe the Bible has a divine order.

And if you don't get the first thing right, no use reading the next four.

And here's the next key: humble themselves.

You know what it means to humble yourself?

It means to get small.

You can't be humble and be proud.

The enemy of humility is pride.

And I remind you again that God resists the proud.

We've been talking about that lately.

And God's against you if you're proud.

And he wrote that to Christians there in the book of James.

Now, if I knew you as you know you, and if I knew you as God knows you, most of us would have a lot of catching up to do.

Do I need to repeat that?

You can get too big for God, but you can never get too small.

For he said, humble yourself under the hand of the Almighty God.

Key number one, call by his name.

Key number two, humble yourselves.

And it's written in the continuum, we've got to keep humble.

And then the key number three, pray.

Do you know the devil to do anything and everything to keep you from prayer?

Because he doesn't want you to get to know God very well.

He doesn't want you spending any time with the Lord.

He doesn't want you in a relationship with God Almighty.

He'll do anything and everything to keep you from having a prayer life.

Because when you get in the presence of God, begin to share things with God, God gets involved, and the devil doesn't want that to happen.

Pray.

And then key number four, seek my face.

That's something we don't do very well sometimes.

What does it mean to seek his face?

It means you go to him just because you want to be with him.

You're not going to get something from him.

God, I need this healing.

God, I need my finances cured.

I need a situation to happen.

God, and as soon as we get it, we're back living like we were.

But we sure make a lot of promises when the kids get sick and it looks dire.

God, if you'll heal my boy, if you'll spare my daughter, God, here's what I'll do.

I uh had a young chap in one of my pastors set on the porch with me and he had visited a little while.

He was a great kid.

He had a problem of sleepiness.

He'd had several wrecks just go to sleep while he was driving.

He left my porch and he headed home and went to sleep and went into a side of a train.

I mean, he was cut up all over, bleeding literally to death, and they're trying to, I think it was more than 400 cuts, deep cuts.

And the lady in my church, his mother that I'd pastored, she'd show up about, oh, at least she would bless God with her presence about once every three months.

I mean, she almost overexposed herself to the church.

And she was there in that emergency room while he's lying on the table and they're trying to put stitches in and trying to save his life.

And she was screaming, God, I promise I'll be in church every Sunday.

God, I'll live right.

God, I'll start tithing.

God, forgive me, I'll be there.

Well, she wasn't.

But we make a lot of promises to God, and we show up when we need God really bad.

My boy's got a sister.

Her name's Renee.

And I remember Renee running in, she's just a little thing and jump and clear up in my lap.

Well, that'll mess up your high, it'll hurt you.

And I said, uh, Renee, what do you want?

Just to be with you, Daddy.

Yeah, but what is it you need?

I just need to talk to you, Daddy.

But was there something that uh are you wanting some money?

No, Daddy, I just want to be with you.

How long has it been since you ran into the lap of God and said, God, I just wanted to spend a little time with you.

I don't need anything this time.

I'm not needing a healing, and I'm not needing finances, and I'm not needing a miracle.

I just how long?

And yet we call him Father.

And he wants us to be his children.

Then he said, number five, turn from their wicked ways.

Do you realize the problem is not sin in Washington?

Did you know that our problem is not sin in the leadership of Usirus?

I'm gonna go a step farther.

Our problem is not sin in Trump's life.

Everybody blames everything on Trump.

They trump up a lot of stuff on Trump.

You get mad at me?

Oh, go ahead and get mad.

I don't really care.

I'll just be real frank with you.

I'm he's to blame for more than all the presidents put together and all the ones that'll ever be elected.

It's always Trump's fault.

The problem is not sin in Trump's life.

It's not sin in Washington, it's a sin in Mesire.

The problem is sin in our lives.

My life, your life.

And he said, you need to turn from your wicked ways, your grievous ways.

And lo and behold, he's writing this to the church folk, those Jews back there.

Not to the heathen.

We have the power to change everything in America.

For he said, if you'll turn from those grievous ways, you're gonna hear from heaven.

Anybody want to hear from heaven?

Anybody hear what?

He said, I'll forgive your sins.

God said, I'll I'll heal your land.

And we blame everything, but we never take any responsibility ourselves.

We want everybody else to change, but not us.

Would you be willing to start loving your enemies?

Like God's called people ought to?

Would you be willing to humble yourself and pray and seek his face and turn from wrong things?

Because God says if you'll start doing that, you'll start hearing from heaven and you'll start having a healing across your land.

I close with this question: if the Lord were to tarry, if he tarries, how are we going to explain to our kids what it was that we had that they don't have?

How are we going to explain to them how we lost what we had?

And why we didn't keep it as clean as it was handed to us, and why we didn't hand it on to them.

And then the kids ask, Well, what did you do about it?

And I want to tell you something.

If we don't do 2 Chronicles chapter 7, verse 14, then we have nothing to say.

2 Chronicles 7:14

Because by God's grace we can stop things.

He said that you're the salt of the earth.

And that salt can literally change a nation.

He can stop the decay.

It's in my hands, it's in your hands.

He's given us the salt.

Preserving godly virtue, enhancing life, influencing the world.

And when I walk out of here this morning, forget clergy clothes, forget the reverends and all that stuff.

I start up the street.

Am I going to be the salt that God called me to be or not?

Am I going to hide that light under a bushel?

Am I going to stay in the little shaker and never get out of the little church shaker?

Am I going to get out there and live a holy life when all hell breaks loose and business deals flip sideways?

And when things don't go my way, am I going to be that salt?

It's always there steady.

And God can count on it.

And a world can count on me being the Christian that God called me to be.

You say, Pastor, I want to be that salt.

I want to be that salt.

I want to be salty.

I'd like to create a thirst in my children's lives.

In my in-laws' lives.

In the people that I work with.

People that I meet, I want to create a thirst.

I want folks to feel like they're better because they've been around me, not wishing they could get away from me quickly.

I hope that my life is stopping decay, not contributing to what's wrong.

Father.

Thanks for being a part of the Voice of the Nazarene.

Visit us every Sunday at 9 a.m.

with BNC's pastor Ray Lastyle.

For more information regarding BNC, visit TusirisNazarine.org.