Salt and Light

Last Sunday we finished making our way through the Beatitudes and so today we're going to continue that journey through the Sermon on the Mount. This familiar sermon of Jesus Christ is a sermon intended for the followers of Christ. It describes what the Christian, faithful Christian life ought to look like.

It contains doctrine, it contains application, it contains motivation for the Christian life. We do well this morning to listen to and heed these living and powerful words from our Lord. Today we're going to consider verses 13 through 16 of Matthew chapter 5. If you would turn there and stand with me in honor of God's Word. Matthew chapter 5 verses 13 through 16. 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 give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Let's pray together. Holy Spirit, would you open our eyes now to the truth of what we've just read? Lord, and to the moral obligation that it binds us to as Christians. Lord Jesus, you said that when we hear and heed your words, we're like the man who has built his house upon solid ground, upon the rock. But when we neglect obedience to your word, we're like the man who is building his life on sandy soil. So Lord, would you ground us by your grace to the solid ground of truth? Help us this morning to submit our lives and our affections and our minds to what you would have us know and do and be. And we pray it all for the sake of the glory of our Heavenly Father and in your name, Lord Jesus. Amen.

You can be seated. One of my favorite old movies is an old Gregory Peck film called The Guns of Navarone. Now I realize it's not a very current movie. I think it was made in the 60s and so the special effects are not all that great.

The resolution is not overly impressive, but it has a great storyline. It's set in World War II and it's about a team of allied soldiers whose mission is to infiltrate a German stronghold and destroy these two massive guns that are preventing the rescue of 2000 British soldiers. In order to do this, this team has to cross the island of Navarone, which was enemy territory, and they have to do it without being detected. So they're constantly having to disguise themselves and blend in and hide in order to keep suspicions from being raised. Their success, in fact, hinges on their ability to go unnoticed in enemy territory.

Now I tell that story by way of analogy. You see there are a lot of similarities between allied soldiers on a mission in enemy territory and followers of Christ who are on mission in enemy territory. As Christians, we find ourselves in the world but not of the world. We are, in a sense, on foreign soil and we've been given the assignment of infiltrating this world's strongholds, but there's a crucial difference between our mission and that of the team that had to cross the island of Navarone.

Their success depended on their ability to go undetected, to blend in. Our success depends on the exact opposite. Our ability to accomplish the mission we've been given depends on there being a very noticeable and obvious distinction between us and those of this world. Victory for the Christian depends on detection. As Christians, we're often tempted to a preoccupation with trying to be like the world in order to win the world. We're drawn to the smooth path of blending in and doing all we can to erase and cover the differences between true followers of Christ and the enemies of Christ.

And yet Jesus declares unequivocally that it is a Christian's distinction from the world that makes him useful to the world and actually maximizes his ability to bring God glory. As we walk through this text today, I want you to notice three things that Jesus gives to those who find themselves in enemy territory, who find themselves in the world but not of the world. We're given an identity, we're given a warning, and we're given, thirdly, a motivation.

Let's look at these three in turn. First, we're given an identity. This identity is communicated to us through the use of two analogies, salt and light. Christ says you are the salt of the earth. He also says you are the light of the world. Notice he doesn't say be salt, be light. He says you are salt and light. It's a fact.

It's a reality. This is what we are. We've been given an identity, and that identity is salt and light. Now, what is meant by salt and light? Obviously, Jesus is speaking figuratively, not literally. So in what sense are we salt and light?

Let's look at both of these elements and try to unravel the analogy that Christ is making. First, there is salt. When we think of salt, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is a shaker that usually sits on the table or in the kitchen, and it's used to make bland food taste better. How would Jesus' hearers have understood the salt analogy?

What would have been the first thing that came to their minds? Well, salt in ancient times was used for the same thing, for seasoning, just like we use it now. We see allusions to this throughout Scripture. In the Old Testament, for example, Job 6 says, Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt?

It was intended for flavor. In the New Testament, Colossians 4, 6, Let your speech always be gracious seasoned with salt. So Jesus' hearers would have understood that salt analogy like we would have. Believers are to season or enhance the earth in some figurative way.

We'll talk about what that means more here in just a moment. But salt does more than just season, doesn't it? Particularly in ancient times, before refrigeration and all the modern day preservatives were available, salt was their primary preservative.

It was an antiseptic. It was common practice, in fact, to rub newborn babies with salt to prevent diseases. Ezekiel 16, 4 makes reference to this practice.

It says, And as for your birth, on the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt. God required the Levitical priests to always put salt on the offerings that were presented at the temple. Leviticus 2, 13 says, You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt. So here was this altar in the Old Testament in the courtyard of the temple, and it was always being covered with the flesh of dead animals, and so God in his wisdom tells the priests to never sacrifice the offerings without salt.

This would have kept the whole area much more sterile than it otherwise would have been. All that to say, Jesus' hearers would have understood salt as something that not only seasons but also preserves. It slows down the natural process of decay and rottenness. In some sense, Jesus was telling his followers that they were agents of seasoning and agents of preservation. Now we understand this analogy because salt is used in our day in the same ways, right?

It seasons and it preserves. But there would have been, I believe, another aspect of this salt analogy that Jesus' hearers probably would have picked up on that is not quite so obvious to us. In ancient times, salt was referred to figuratively as something that established perpetual obligation between two parties. In other words, salt indicated that peace had been made between two people. In the Arab world, it's very interesting, sharing salt between two enemies makes them friends, and it actually obligates the one to die for the other if it becomes necessary.

It's also interesting that the Arab word for salt is the same word for treaty. To eat salt with someone else in that culture was to receive his hospitality, and whoever did so was then bound to look after the interests of his host. Ezra 4.14 makes an allusion to this custom of salt binding two parties to loyalty.

The enemies of Israel there in Ezra write a letter to King Artaxerxes, and they say that it is not fitting for them to witness the king's dishonor because they eat the salt of the palace. Salt was seen as binding people in loyal obligation to each other. Even God himself describes his relationship to Israel several times in the Old Testament as a covenant of salt. The sharing of salt established obligation.

It established relationship. It established covenant, if you will. I believe all of these ideas then would have been present in the minds of the disciples as Jesus declares that they are the salt of the earth. As Christians, we are to season the earth. That is, we are to make the world yearn for Christ and his gospel. People should come away from being around us with an increased hunger for righteousness and with an appetite for God.

This is a delicate process, isn't it? If we carry the analogy a bit further, we could say that too much salt and too little salt are both problematic. We've all experienced food that's bland and it's disappointing. It takes away your appetite.

It doesn't satisfy. But we've probably also all experienced the problem of too much salt. If food is too salty, you just can't eat it.

You end up throwing it away. Well, in the same way, Christians fail when their lives display a bland, tasteless religion. There's not enough salt, and so people aren't drawn to Christ. On the other hand, a Christian in his zeal and passion for spiritual things can be too salty.

I think this is what the Pharisees of Jesus' day did. They were zealous. They were fired up for God. But their enthusiasm and passion drove them to put a yoke of bondage on themselves and everyone they came into contact with. Their self-righteousness was too salty.

I've known Christians that were fervent evangelists, and I admire those who are bold and uninhibited in their witness for Christ, but being salt requires discernment and discretion and prudence. Several years ago, Laura and I were moving into a new home, and on moving day I was walking through the backyard loaded up with a huge stack of boxes, hardly able to walk. My new neighbor, whom I had not met yet, came over and introduced himself, and the first thing he said was, Are you going to live here? And I said, Yes, sir. And he said, Do you know Jesus?

I said, Yes, sir. And he said then very fervently, Well, those folks in that house over there don't know Jesus, and these people do know Jesus, so just be warned. And the guy walked off and left me standing there holding this giant pile of boxes. I appreciate his desire to make sure I knew Christ, but you know, had I been an unbeliever, what would have heightened my appetite for Christ much more effectively would have been if he said, Hey, let me help you with those boxes. Let me meet this need, this material temporal need. Jesus has done so much for me, the least I can do is help someone else.

By the way, do you know Jesus? Being the salt of the earth requires that we season our interaction with the world with understanding, with servanthood, with love and genuine concern. Too much salt produces bareness rather than hunger. And if we're not careful, we can leave people's souls, like Jeremiah 17, 6 describes as parched places of the wilderness, an uninhabited salt land. We don't want to be too salty. So we're to season the gospel by how we live and interact with the world, but not only are we to season, we are to preserve.

We're to act as a preservative. Now, when Jesus calls Christians salt, he implies, does he not, something about the world's character, doesn't he? He implies that the world needs salt. He implies that the world is saltless.

It does not possess the preserving quality of salt. The world without a Christian witness tends toward pollution and rottenness. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, the world left to itself is something that tends to fester. As salt of the earth, we have been put here to slow down the effects of sin, to be a deterrent to evil and wickedness, to counteract the downward spiral of man's depravity.

This is a negative function because it demands that we acknowledge there's something wrong with the world system. It requires that we admit there's a problem with humanity apart from Christ. Being the salt of the earth would be a very enjoyable experience if it only involved declaring the excellencies of Christ.

But we cannot declare the excellencies of Christ without also declaring that man without Christ is decaying and putrid. And this is the difficult aspect, I think, of being the salt of the earth because preserving something that will otherwise rot is by definition a confrontational process. But this is what we're called to be and do. And related to the task of preserving the world is that third function of salt, the covenantal use of salt. We are to be that element which binds enemies together in lasting friendship and loyalty. We, as salt, are to be peacemakers between God and man.

Our lives, our witness bring people into covenant with the Lord. And this is only so because we ourselves have found peace with God. Mark 9.50 is a sort of parallel passage to our text today and it says this, Mark 9.50, Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.

We cannot help others find peace until we've found that same peace ourselves. We cannot be salt until we first entered into that covenant of salt with the Lord ourselves. So Jesus says that we are the salt of the earth and this means that our lives are to give people an appetite for Christ, that our lives are to preserve souls that are otherwise rotting in sin and ultimately that our lives are to bring about peace and lasting loyalty between God and sinners. So this is our identity as believers.

Well, Jesus uses a second analogy. He calls us the light of the world. Not only are we the salt of the earth, we're the light of the world. And just as salt implied something about the nature of the world, so the image of light implies something about the nature of the world. It implies that the world is what? Darkness, that it's in the darkness.

Now to say the world is decaying in its own wickedness and needs the preservative of salt is one thing. But to say the world needs light means that humanity doesn't even know that it's decaying and in sin. John 3, 19 and 20 tells us the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. Being light in a dark world will entail being ignored and misunderstood and even hated by the world. It would be naive of us to think that being light in the darkness is a bed of roses.

Most of the time it's not. It's grueling, painstaking work because it causes us to be shunned and ostracized and even persecuted. So how then are we to shine as lights in the world?

Jesus is very specific about this. He says, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works. We function as light by living out Christian character in such a way that others can see it. We do good works.

This is how we function as light. Jesus will go on in his Sermon on the Mount to describe what those good works look like but to just kind of summarize what he says, the good works that Christ has in mind boil down to living a life that is consistent with God's law. Christ tells us to do good works and then he begins preaching through the Ten Commandments. He isn't looking for good works of our own invention. He has already defined what those good works are.

It's the moral law. We shine brightest when we live according to what God says is moral and right and good. Now keep in mind that we're not talking about doing good works in order to earn salvation.

We're talking about good works being the result of a life transformed by grace. I want to mention one more aspect of our being light. Jesus said in John 8, 12 and in John 9, 5, I am the light of the world. How can we be the light of the world if Jesus is the light of the world? Well, Jesus is the source of light. We are just reflections of his light.

We have no light in and of ourselves. If we shine, it's only because we possess Christ. We could say that Jesus is the sun and we are the moon. So don't be confused by the relationship between Jesus as the source of light and Christians as reflections of his light. And we reflect his light by living lives consistent with Christian character and behavior, lives that are consistent with God's revealed will. So we've been given an identity, salt and light. As salt, we give people a taste for Christ.

We slow down the decay caused by sin and we even reverse that decay by being peacemakers between God and men. As light, we reflect Christ by modeling his character and actions before a watching world. This is who we are.

This is what we do. But not only does Christ give us an identity, he also gives us a warning as well. We're given a warning.

In fact, we're given two warnings. The first relates to our being the salt of the earth. Jesus says, 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. So the warning is this, don't forget what you are.

Don't forget what you are. You are salt. But what good is salt if it can no longer season and purify and make peace?

It's worthless. Now, I'm not a chemist, but I'm told that salt cannot essentially change, that it can never cease being salt. Its chemical makeup will always remain the same. But the loss of taste, the loss of the preserving quality occurs when salt is so contaminated with a foreign substance that it no longer produces the effect for which it exists. Nobody would use a shaker full of salt that's been mixed with sand. Nobody would rub salt on a wound to cleanse it if the salt were full of impurities.

That would only make matters worse. The value of salt is in its purity and distinction from other elements. The implication is this, when a Christian loses that distinctiveness due to contamination with the world, it is impossible to regain that lost purity, to regain one's effectiveness at redeeming the culture around him. To put it bluntly, worldliness makes us useless. Worldliness makes us useless. Isn't it ironic then that so many Christians see the task of bearing witness to Christ as essentially one of blending in with the world, of being winsome and being likable and building bridges that supposedly erase the differences between Christian and non-Christian? We try so hard, don't we, to make Christianity palatable to unregenerate hearts, that perhaps without even realizing it, we undermine the very thing that makes us effective at changing the culture. Jesus is saying the world doesn't need to see that you're just like them. The world needs to see that you're different.

You've been saved by grace, and that should make a radical difference. Don't forget that. Don't forget what you are. Don't lose your saltiness. That phrase, lost its taste, in verse 13, literally means has been made foolish.

It's the Greek word morano, from which we get our word moron. The Christian who embraces worldliness in order to reach the lost really ends up making the fool of himself. He's rejected by the world, and he's rejected by Christ. Jesus says this person is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. John Calvin, in commenting on this verse, puts great emphasis on this warning from Christ. He says once the Christian's saltiness is lost, there is no remedy. It cannot be regained. He says it even spoils the dung hill.

It's a serious warning. The Christian, don't forget who you are. You are distinct.

You are different. And your effectiveness as a witness for Christ and his gospel lies in that distinction. But Christ gives us a second warning, one that's related to our function as light. He says don't forget what you do.

Not only don't forget what you are, don't forget what you do. Jesus says a city on a hill cannot be hidden. A lamp isn't lit and then placed under a basket. It's meant to be seen. It's intended to illuminate. You are the light, therefore be visible. Be seen.

Don't hide. Our good works expose the darkness, and this is to be a very public and visible thing. A light that doesn't illuminate is as useless as salt that doesn't taste. I remember as a young boy, I was the only son in our family, and so I was often my dad's gopher. We did a lot of handyman projects together, and on more than one occasion, it was my job to hold the flashlight for my dad. I can remember being under the house in the dark or under a car working on the engine, and my dad couldn't see what he was working on. He needed both hands to work, so he told me to shine the flashlight where he was working. Well, I'd shine it for about 60 seconds, and then I'd get distracted, or I'd be following a bug or something, and the light would go with me. Before long, I had quit paying attention and would let that beam drift away from whatever my dad needed to see.

He would say, son, I can't see, and I would get jolted back to what I was supposed to be doing. I had the light. I possessed it, but my light existed for someone else's benefit, and without the light, the job wouldn't get done. If the light of our good works doesn't shine before others, it's of no use, Jesus says. And so he warns us, don't forget what you do. You are light.

You need to be seen. Now, as we think about Christ's warning here, there's a reality about salt and light that I think we simply cannot ignore, and it's this. For both salt and light, its essential quality is its only quality. Its essential quality is its only quality.

Once it loses that, it becomes entirely useless. Now, this isn't true of everything. Think with me for a moment about flowers. We could say that flowers exist for beauty and aroma. Maybe these would be their essential qualities, but what if they lose their beauty and aroma? Well, some flowers can be eaten. They provide nourishment long after their beauty has faded. Dead flowers can be thrown into a compost pile and continue serving a purpose, but this is not the case with salt and light.

Once these elements have lost their essential quality, in the case of salt, it's purity, and in the case of light, it's brightness, they become useless. This all points to the supreme importance of Christians bearing witness with our lives. It's why we're here.

It's why we exist, and if we ever stop functioning as witnesses in this world, what's the point? We've become good for nothing. I'm afraid there's a great number of Christians today who take up space on a pew faithfully. They've got their catechism down. Their offering and church attendance are up to date, but somewhere along the way, they have become useless. They have become good for nothing. One preacher said, There's nothing in God's universe that is so utterly useless as a merely formal Christian. I mean by that one who has the name but not the quality of a Christian. Have you lost your saltiness?

Has your light grown dim? The truth is every Christian fails at this point in one way or another. We understand our identity. We're to be witnesses with our lives and words. We've heard Jesus' warnings to not forget who we are and what we're to be doing, but we need something more.

And so in our text this morning, we were given thirdly a motivation, a motivation. Jesus makes it clear why we are to be salt and light, why we are to bear witness with our lives, and Jesus says it's for this reason that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Our motivation as bearers of the light, as salt of the earth is nothing less than the glory of God. When food is properly seasoned, the salt goes unnoticed, right?

Nobody compliments a chef by saying, Oh, your salt was so delicious today. No, we function as salt in order to draw attention to another. We don't exist to illuminate ourselves. We illuminate Christ. If we lose sight of this motivation, we fall into the danger of being motivated by something else. We begin seasoning and illuminating in order to be seen by men, in order to appeal to the world, in order to produce results.

It's so easy, isn't it, as get-it-done Americans to be motivated by results. You don't have to look far within the Christian community to find folks who have wholeheartedly embraced pragmatism in the name of making disciples. The glory of God ceases to be the primary motivation, and instead we get motivated by what works, what gets results. You know, Paul, I think, has a timely word for us in this regard. In 2 Corinthians 2.17, he says that we are not peddling the gospel. God doesn't need us to sell his truth. We are to clarify the gospel by living lives that are consistent with it. We are to offer God's truth, God's gospel to all men. But what the world does with the gospel is never held up as incentive for the Christian, as the driving motivation for witnessing. Our motivation is to bring glory to God. And God is glorified when we live like faithful Christians, regardless of how the world responds. As I was thinking about these things this past week, I asked the question, why is it that God commands us here in Matthew 5 to let our good works be seen by others, but then tells us in chapter 6 to pray and to fast, to do good works in secret? And I think the answer lies in our motivation. The caution of chapter 6 is not against our good deeds being seen, but against doing these good things in order to be seen.

The difference is one of motivation or intent. If you're truly a Christian and walking with God, your identity will be evident to other people. Others will observe a difference in you, and this is good. Public devotion to God, with the goal of bringing glory to God, ought to be visible. The world ought to identify you as a godly person, a spiritually devoted person. What Jesus condemns is when we act holy or pious in order that others might think highly of us. Don't be godly in public for the sake of your own glory, but by all means, be godly in public.

Do it for the sake of God's glory. This is the motivation that Jesus gives us. I want to close by considering how these verses specifically and practically apply to our lives. Most obviously, these verses are calling Christians to bear witness with their words and with their lives to the truth and the power and the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have been made disciples by the grace of God, and we are to go and make disciples by pointing people to that same grace.

That's what being salt and light entails. It means we are proclaimers of God's gospel, and we are to proclaim with both our words and our obedience. My whole life, I've noticed that well-meaning Christians sometimes take this call to be salt and light, and they slightly twist it into a caricature of what Christ intends it to be. In the name of evangelism or disciple-making, they subtly shift the emphasis from gospel clarity to gospel appeal. They ask, how can I make the gospel of Jesus Christ palatable or even appealing to sinners? This starts them down a path of pragmatism and compromise that often ends in anything but biblical evangelism, where they shift the focus of being salt and light away from making peace between God and man and begin pursuing a temporal sort of peace of sorts between man and man. That's just the social gospel that's been with us for decades.

In fact, there are so many potential ways in which we can pervert the task of being salt and light, isn't there? We can confuse politics with the gospel. We can be motivated by economics rather than by the truth of God's word. We can be self-absorbed and point people to ourselves rather than sacrificially pointing them to Christ. We can be motivated by results rather than by God's glory.

We can become exceptionally man-centered in 100 different ways, and we often do. But church, God's word is explicitly clear. We make disciples by simply teaching them the commands of Christ, by pointing them to the solution for their sin. We bring light into the world by simply obeying God, doing good works, obeying God's law in such a way that people give glory to God. We stand up for God's truth by faithfully heeding God's truth.

It's all rather ordinary, isn't it? When Jesus calls us to be salt and light, he simply intends us to live out personally and individually lives of devotion to God. Live like a Christian in your sphere of influence.

That's what he's calling us to. A while back, I was talking with a Christian mother, and she was sharing with Laura and me that she had tried to ingrain a love for Christ in her kids, but because of that love for Christ, they were not considered to be very cool around other young people their age. And the problem was that her children didn't know they weren't cool. And so the mother was a little anxious that her children might be ridiculed or belittled or not even realize it.

Folks, I applaud that mother. She's teaching her children to be salty, bright Christians in a world that loves the darkness. And it's these kinds of children that grow up to be adults who make those around them hungry for what they have, hungry for Christ, hungry for the gospel.

The brightness of our lives lies in our distinction from the world. Why has God seen fit to leave us on this earth, on foreign soil, right in the middle of enemy territory? Christians, he's left you here to be salt and light to a tasteless world that's rotting in darkness. Our presence is a declaration of the very forbearance and longsuffering of God to sinners. It's a testimony to his mercy and love for sinners. The presence of Christians in this world is meant to bring glory to God. Does your life bring glory to God? Does your existence here say, God's grace really does change the heart? Or does it say to the lost soul, I'm just like you.

Christ really makes no essential difference. God's glory is on the line. And so he says to us this morning, you are salt.

You are light. Now go and fulfill your mission to the world. Let's pray. Jesus, we cannot draw others to you unless we have tasted of you and been fully satisfied in you. May we find such deep satisfaction and joy in you and in your gospel of peace that we cannot help but season this world and illuminate this world with your beauty. May our lives be different and make a difference, always for the sake of your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.