The Christian and social order

What is up everybody, welcome to the CJ students costume party. I promise to keep this message short and sweet that way you guys can be on your way to hang out and have some fun. But as some of you may know we’re on our series called rooted and were looking at aspects of our faith and what the basis for it is.

Today we’re going to talk about the matthew 5 which is such an incredible passage and its the most famous sermon of all time.

Talk about the background of Matthew 5, beatitude, sermon to his disciples.

And then we get here, to verses 13-16, lets read those.

You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.

“You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Here we have jesus talking and he makes 2 very big descriptions as to who we are. Thats a big question here. Hes talking to his disciples, people who know jesus, who know him personally, In today’s world hes talking to people who have repented and believe the message of jesus personally. People who recognized their sin and they recognize Christ as the savior. And he says 2 very important things: You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world.

Those 2 statements have very big meaning

When jesus makes the statement we are the salt of the earth it's a bit strange cause salt is simply something we use for food to add flavor.

But salt is also used to preserve food, especially in olden times, there were no refrigerators so salt was used to preserve food. Salt was so important that there were wars fought over salt and there were economies built on salt as the monetary value.

Just as salt prevents or kills bacteria in food, the kingdom servant prevents or confronts corruption in the world. Notice that it is the earth that needs the salt, not the kingdom of heaven. If the kingdom servant did not have a function to perform on earth according to God’s plan, he might as well go straight to heaven upon conversion. The reality is that the earth needs the influence of Christ’s church in this age.

The second function of salt is to add flavor or interest. Jesus highlighted this purpose when he spoke of the danger of salt losing its saltiness. The kingdom and all associated with it are anything but boring. They are life! However, the kingdom servant is capable of living like a dead person. Part of the church’s task on earth is to live according to its new nature—alive, purposeful, hopeful, joyful! Christians should be living in such a way that others will pause and consider what is different about them. Believers are different and should appear so, because the Father is different, He is holy.

When salt loses its saltiness it can no longer be used as currency, it cant be used to preserve food. Therefore losing its value completely. We lose our saltiness as followers of Christ, when we start conforming to the patters of the world, when we start acting like the earth rather than the higher calling God has for us. The better and greater plans God has for us, when stop cherishing Christ and start being like the world we lose are saltiness and our value is no more.

And then we get to the light of the world, that one is pretty easy to understand right, a light bring visibility and bring value to a place, if a place is dark and you can’t see whats happening it sort of loses its value. Well when we come to Christ as repenting sinners, we are lit up, we are brought alive, a new life we didn’t even know we needed. We are brought from darkness and we are made light. We, like the rest of the world were once dead, in darkness and some of us may be there still, but God has and will bring us into the Light. We need to repent and believe in his sacrifice. We need to be brought of out darkness, in other words, we need Jesus. We need a whole lot of Jesus.

But it doesn't end there, once we are a light, we bring that light and that life into everywhere we go, our towns our school, our sports, we bring life to everywhere we go. We let our good deeds shine, so that all can see and praise the heavenly father. Will we fail at that? Yes we will, but the point isn't our works, but his, it points to him, our works point to the one who worked in us. Not our own doing… but his

Presentation of the lamp…