Kingdom Influence

Good morning church! Glad to be able to open God’s Word with you this weekend!

We are on week 3 of this introductory study to the sermon on the mount! If you have missed the last two weeks, I would check them out on Facebook, Youtube, or, something we don’t talk about much, on our podcast. You can look up Lindsay Lane East in your podcast app of choice and find the audio from the sermon each week. Listen while you are cutting grass or working out. Guaranteed to get you in better shape if you listen to my sermons instead of music.... Maybe...

Go on and open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5.

Today we look at another very familiar passage if you have read the Bible for a while. It’s all about salt and light.

I’m gonna read the passage, pray and then we will start talking through this.

Matthew 5:13–16 CSB

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It’s no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. “You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are 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 in heaven.

PRAY

Here, Jesus uses two analogies in his teaching to his disciples.

Let’s take the first one.

1. You are the SALT of the EARTH

(sit salt on the table)

How many of y’all are salt adders? Like you don’t even taste someone’s mac and cheese. You just go on and add a couple shakes of salt.

Salt on watermelon?

My great grandparents had an above ground pool when I was growing up that we wore out during the summer. My favorite part of swimming was when I would hear the legs on an old wooden folding table snap out. We would jump out and start drying off! We would find my Papa Tom slicing a fresh watermelon from the garden with a butcher knife that seemed 2 feet long when I was a kid. And right next to it, would be a big pourers of Morton Iodized salt. With the big metal mouth on it!

Anyway...

This is not what Jesus and his disciples thought of when they talked about salt.

This is one of the biggest ways we can be a little careless in our Bible study. We hear Jesus say, “salt.” And we think “I know what that is!” And so we keep that analogy in our day, and draw meaning from it for today. Then we apply it to our lives.

Good Bible study leaves the text in its day! We leave analogies, phrases, and people in the Bible times! That may take a little research and thinking. And once we comprehend the analogy, then we still kick it old school and ask “What was the meaning for them?” THEN, we bring that meaning to our day. We don’t bring the analogy. That stays there because salt is very different then than now. But we can bring the meaning to our day! Then we ask, “What does it mean for us?” THEN we can make application. “How does this change the way I live?”

You see that? We don’t bring words and phrases and analogies and the parables to our day. We keep them contextually accurate until we get the meaning. THEN we can time warp to modern day!

Here’s why that’s important!

Can salt be less salty?

Well, that’s what the text says! If the salt “loses its flavor” how can it be salty again? The idea is really, what good is unsalty salt? But that’s not a thing in our day! Right? You ever tasted unsalty salt?

Maybe No Salt. That low sodium stuff. But Sodium chloride is sodium chloride. The only way it changes is to become something completely different through some science experiment.

In the first century salt was used mainly as a preservative. In a world without the modern luxury of refrigeration, salt was vitally important to preserve fish and other types of meat.

And in Jesus’ region, much of the salt people used would have come from the Dead Sea. This was a heavily salty, salt water lake. Throughout certain times of the year, the shores would be lined with a white substance that people discovered to be salt. The water settles into shallow pools and is evaporated by the sun, leaving behind the particles in the water.

The problem? It wasn’t just sodium chloride or salt that was left behind. There would be other particles mixed in with the salt. So when you gathered or purchased “salt” it usually wasn’t just salt.

So, imagine, you have a large slab of meat that you need to get preserved quickly, but you are getting towards the bottom of a bowl of salt you bought from the market. How would you test the salt to make sure it is salty enough? You would taste it, right? If it tastes salty, then you know that there is a high salt content and that it would preserve well. If it tastes unsalty, then you know the salt content is low and it won’t protect the slab of meat much at all.

So, with that context, let’s look at Jesus’ question again...

If the salt should lose its flavor (if there is no flavor that means its less salt content) how can it be made salty?

Jesus answers this rhetorical question: No. It can’t. In fact it is not worth anything. So all you can do with it is through it out on the street and let it be trampled into the ground over time.

So, what does Jesus mean by this analogy? This is where we can begin to speculate and infer, but Jesus doesn’t actually tell them what he means by it. Instead, he just jumps into another analogy.

Let’s do the same! Instead of trying to find meaning from this, let’s see if we find our answer in the second analogy.

2. You are the LIGHT of the WORLD

Jesus begins the second analogy in a similar way, right? Only major change is the word salt —>light. Let’s read verses 14 and 15.

Matthew 5:14–15 CSB

“You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house.

This one’s a little more obvious. Jesus and his disciples didn’t think of a light bulb of course. The thought here is an oil lamp. Which my great grandmother from earlier kept in the sketchy storm shelter on their property. It’s oil in the bottom and a wick sticking out.

For Jesus’ day, however, it was really just a bowl of oil and a wick, nothing fancy like this. These bowls would be placed on a high table or stand so that it would spread throughout the whole room as Jesus speaks about.

Jesus conveys here that it would be ridiculous to cover up a lamp after lighting it! Why would you even light it if you were going to cover it up with a bowl or basket that will eventually suffocate the flame and put it out. A lamp has a particular purpose, and it should be used according to that purpose.

Do you see how this fits in well with the salt discussion? Jesus is making the same point! Salt and Light have purposes which were very important in their day, it’s silly to try and use them any other way. They become useless.

Again, I want to refrain here from searching for meaning until Jesus tells us what it means for us.

Let’s move on...

Matthew 5:16 CSB

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

AHHHHH! Here we go! IN THE SAME WAY!!!

That sounds like Jesus is about to explain some things, doesn’t it?

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

3. Let YOUR LIGHT shine.

That’s the action step for his disciples! Just as salt and a lamp are great when they are used properly, Jesus challenges his disciples to live their lives in such a way that their light shines.

But what does that mean, right?

Let’s look at some subpoints here...

a. It’s Y’ALLS LIGHT

If you were here two weeks ago, I introduced you to the idea that Greek (which is the language Matthew is writing in) has a plural form of “you.” In English, it doesn’t translate so we read “you” whether it is plural or singular. If our translators used Southern English, they could use “you” and “y’all” but they haven’t asked me! Nevertheless, you can look up the Greek word if you want to nerd out a little and you can know which one is being used.

In this verse, Jesus says let Y’ALLS (plural, speaking to all of the disciples) LIGHT (singular) Shine. Do you see how cool that is? Jesus didn’t say, “Let Y’alls lights shine.” Jesus speaks in collective language. It’s why the unity of the disciples was so important and, in turn, why the unity of our church is so important! It’s a collective lifestyle we have chosen here folks!

Look at what else is said here...

b. See your GOOD WORKS

Clearly letting your light shine involves good works. Which is a general term that Jesus has just put skin on with the Beatitudes. Remember, Jesus just spent a little time walking through several Kingdom principles. Jesus is probably referencing these things (read a few of them?) when he says good works. When Jesus’ disciples “let their light shine” those around them would notice their goodness. They would see their humility and pureness and their insatiable desire for righteousness.

So the goal was to be bragged on by the world, right?

c. Glorify your FATHER IN HEAVEN

The word glory literally means to give weight to. Give importance to. Notice, the goal of letting the light shine is not to get glory for ourselves but glory to God our Father! So, these good works are not self-seeking! They must be done in humility with all the emphasis pointing towards God.

Several men from our church worked to seal a man’s roof yesterday morning who needed it. A young guy who is a two time brain cancer survivor! He came outside while we were working and kept bragging on the guys about how much he appreciate their kindness and care. And I heard more than once, that appreciation being deflected to God. “Hey man, God’s done so much for us, we just want to be used by him to help others.” “It’s our pleasure to come and help you out. God is the one who brought us together! He is the one who really did the work!”

You see, letting your light shine, in context, is living out the beatitudes with your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in such a way that God gets the glory not man.

But there is one more piece to this that’s so important to grasp. Who are the “others.”

d. GLOBAL LIGHT

The call of Jesus to his disciples here is not just being the salt of Judea or the light of the region. It is the salt of the earth and the light of the world. The Greek word for world here is KOSMOS. Which to them was all encompassing: the WHOLE earth. The disciples would have understood Jesus to be calling them to an international mission. Do you understand that?

It was also a

e. CONSTANT LIGHT

None of us who are Christians have trouble letting our light shine. It’s the consistency that’s difficult, right?

When we come to church we are so spirit filled, we just ooze the love of the Lord! My favorite thing is to go on mission trips with grumpy men and women. Because we are on a mission trip they will put on a smile and speak so kindly to those we are helping or ministering to. Why can’t you act like that to the people you are around every day, right? You acting like the second coming of Jesus on the mission trip but cussing out a customer at home!

Look, I struggle too! We all do! But Jesus is making it clear here that this is a constant light! And this is something I have missed every time I have read this passage up until this point in my whole life.

How can we effectively be the salt of the earth and the light of the world? All Jesus says is “Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Surely y’all have learned through 8 months of listening to me preach that I believe CONTEXT MATTERS! It’s why I like to preach through larger sections of Scripture. If we just grab these four verses and read them, we miss what’s going on around them.

The sermon begins with the Beatitudes in verses 3-10, we’ve already covered that. But let’s read verses 11 and 12 which are two verses stuck in here to add more context to the last beatitude in verse 10 but I’ll argue, they also set up the context for the verses that follow.

Matthew 5:11–12 CSB

“You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

And the very next thing Jesus says is “You are the salt of the earth...” There is probably a paragraph break and a new heading in your Bible. Those things were not there the way Matthew wrote it! They were added later. They can be very helpful, but we can’t see them as scene changes. This is still the same guy speaking to the same guys listening in the same place.

So, what is the context in which Jesus is challenging his disciples with these two analogies? Persecution!

Jesus says that because you are following me, some people are going to hate you. They are going to try and stir up trouble by insulting you and even accusing you of false things. Don’t let it get you down! In fact, be glad he says!

Jesus presents the most difficult situation for a Christian to stand firm and live out the beatitudes. When someone is just ripping you down for no good reason! If any of us lose our cool and don’t shine the light, it’s when we are feeling attacked. However, it’s into that very situation that Jesus says, remember you are salt and light. And you have a very particular purpose. You can get fired up and act differently than you are supposed to, but what good is that? Like unsalty salt and a covered up lamp. Instead, live like I have called you to, then those around you (even if they are wearing you out) won’t be able to argue against your character, and, Lord willing, they will see the Father who gives you strength to act in such humility.

Do you see this now? How it all fits together? It may be a little different from how you have thought of salt and light in the past, but this is reading it properly in context.

So, we know what Jesus said to his disciples 2000 years ago. But what is he saying to you, right now in this moment?

Are you living out the beatitudes with your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in such a way that God gets the glory not man.

Do you understand God has called you to live differently?

Are you doing life with this church?

Are you deflecting the glory to God?

There is probably more to be studied from these verses, but I pray that God has used what he has helped me see this week through studying to help you move. So, what’s your NEXT STEP?

What action is the Lord leading you to take this week to more faithfully live this out in Christ?

We are going to have a time of response...

Invitation