Salt and Light

The Beatitudes Are Not a Call to Retreat From Culture

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged Strengthened in your faith and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you. When we look at that wonderful and beautiful scripture that section that's called the Beatitudes. There's a lot of misconceptions maybe that we could gain from that group of scriptures.

We could say if I just do this then God will be pleased with me. That's wrong. There's nothing we can do to please God. It's by the pleasure of God that he's done great things for us. But there's another misconception that we can have with the Beatitudes.

When it says blessed are those who are poor in spirit. Maybe we think that poverty is a blessing that we all should aspire to. That everyone should just be poor. Blessed are those who mourn so therefore we should cry every day because it's blessed.

To mourn blessed are the gentle and the merciful the peacemakers and those who are persecuted we could begin to get the idea. That it is a blessing to be a glorified doormat. That if I'm persecuted and if I'm a peacemaker.

And if I'm gentle and merciful and I retreat from culture entirely. Then that's blessed. But that's actually not what this passage is saying. The passage is not calling us to be a glorified turtle. Where we retreat back in our shell and we hide and we wait for Jesus to come rapture us out of here.

That's not what this passage is saying at all. It's actually the exact opposite of what it's saying. It's saying blessed and that word means happier those who are poor. Spiritually because Christ is the one who makes us rich.

Blessed are those who are broken because it's Christ who's gonna comfort us. Blessed are those who Are peacemakers and we have to understand what that word means in the Bible. Peacemakers doesn't mean the absence of all conflict.

Peace comes from the word shalom. Which means the mending of everything that's broken. A better way to translate this might be. Blessed are the fence menders. Blessed are the culture menders. Blessed are those who are bringing the true peace of God to the world.

Because Christ himself first brought his peace to us. The Beatitudes though just as they're written are not statements on cultural engagement. The Beatitudes are statements on what Christ will do for his elect.

That he will bless them that he will be merciful to them that he will comfort them that he will bring peace into their hearts. The Beatitudes are a statement of being not of doing. But They're not advocating.

That we would adopt a posture as Christians. That the most blessed thing that we can do is hide in the world. They're not advocating non-engagement with the world. They're not advocating silence with the world.

And yet. How much has the church adopted that posture today? Where we can't live in the public square. We can't say the truth of God. We can't lovingly be a witness to the gospel in public because if someone Becomes offended by us then we're the problem.

That's not what this is saying at all. And in fact the very next section Deals with cultural engagement it deals with. How do you engage with a sinful culture as Christians? How do you live your faith out publicly?

So we know that the Beatitudes can't be about that. What I'd like for us to do today is I'd like to look at the section right after the Beatitudes who we are in Christ. So that we can discover now, how do we live for Christ?

So if you will turn with me to Matthew chapter 5 Verse 13 through 16 and today we're going to be looking at three basic premises from this passage we as Christians have been called to be agents of preservation.

We're to preserve the world. We're to preserve the decay so that it doesn't continue. We are to preserve things. The second thing we'll look at is that we cannot be agents of worthless witnessing and.

Then the third thing is that we can or that we must be agents of illumination. We must show forth the gospel so the world may see the good news of Jesus Christ. So I'm gonna read we're gonna pray and we're gonna dive right in.

Jesus says you are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

You are the light of the world a city set upon a hill that cannot be hidden. Nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a lampstand and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father.

Who is in heaven? This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray Lord Jesus. I love how many times in Scripture that after you tell us who we are. You tell us what you want us to do. Doing doesn't come before being.

We don't do something to make you love us. We are loved. Therefore we do the things that you've called us to do. For it's by grace that we've been saved so that no one will boast so that we can first 10 of Ephesians to Do the very deeds that you've predestined for us before the foundation of the world Lord.

You have made us something in Christ. Today, let us examine what you want us to be for Christ in our culture and our homes at our jobs and Everywhere that you've called us Jesus. It's in your name. We pray.

Amen. Now again, it's easy to examine the Beatitudes and say that this is calling us to a sort of separatism. And there's been many strains of Christianity all throughout history that have totally left culture avoided culture.

You can think about today the Amish the Hutterites. Culture is so bad. And we want to remain unstained that we leave the world and We go do our alternate society apart from the world. I don't believe that's what the Bible is teaching us.

I don't believe the Bible is teaching us to adopt a quasi monastic life where we avoid culture at all cost. In fact Jesus calls us to the opposite. He doesn't call us to avoidance or separatism. He employed he calls us to participate.

He calls us to herald the gospel publicly vibrantly unapologetically passionately humbly. So that those who are dying will be raised to life in Jesus Christ. And he uses very basic elements, I love how Jesus does this a Communion he gives us bread and wine.

When he tells us about a topic that's difficult like cultural engagement he talks about salt and light. He gives everyday elements that we bump into on a regular basis to teach us who he wants us to be so there's no confusion and I pray that that's true for us that confusion would not abound on this topic.

He begins with salt. He says in Matthew 5 13. You are the salt of the earth and at that time salt was a preserving agent in a world without electricity and Without frigerators. We told this to our children Friday at the story hour.

Imagine living life without a frigerator. You wake up at early in the morning you go to the frigerator you grab your yogurt that doesn't exist in ancient Israel. So what did they do? Because it was expensive to live back then.

Food was expensive and they lived at a time in Jesus's day when taxes of between the Romans and the Judeans would have been about 40 of their income plus what they gave to the temple so To waste food would have been absolutely unfathomable in fact really honestly until the modern era wasting food would have been seen as as evil in most cultures.

Even in early America you look at like I remember reading as a child that the little house on the prairie books. And I was astonished that they took even the organs of the animals and turned them into toys.

So they could kick the little liver ball down the road. You look at the Native Americans and how they use every single facet of the animal because You can't waste resources were just too Precious we honestly take that for granted now that we can.

You can just throw out the hamburger that went bad and we can just go to the store and grab some more. In a world without ice they had to have mechanisms to keep their meat from spoiling and I'm not sure when this actually began.

I Wasn't able to find a definitive answer on when the practice of packing the meat that they were trying to save with salt Was adopted but we know that in the New Testament times it was they would take the salt and they would pack the meat with as much salt as they could possibly pack on it every single square inch of that meat would have had to be Covered by the salt liberally not in the modern way of thinking of that generously.

Salt would have been generously. Put on that animal's body so that it would not decay. And so that it would not become polluted with toxins and so that the family could eat it. Animals were precious at that time.

The way that a Hebrew would have thought about an animal is that when you have to slaughter one animal. You're not just slaughtering that animal. You're slaughtering every single offspring that could have possibly come from that animal so that you're really honestly taking generations of resources into your hands.

So you could not waste it. It had to be treated as sacred and they would pack this animal with salt. To keep it over long periods of time. That's very different than the way that we think about salt today.

I'm in the south. I love salt. When I moved up to New England, I was like man, they really have a very conservative view on salt. Everything else in the culture is liberal, but not salt when we cook for people now.

We have to remember not southern salt. But I think that view of that salt is just for seasoning has affected the way that we view this passage. That just a little dash. Just a little sprinkle is all that we have to put if Christianity could just put a little dash here a little dash there a Little sprinkle here a little sprinkle there.

Then we've done what Jesus is saying. And what we say when we say that is that the world is basically, okay. They just need a little something extra added on top to make it all better. And that is not what this passage is saying about the world.

The work that Jesus is saying that the world is like the animal that is decaying. That if you don't liberally Generously pack it full of salt then you're gonna wake up the next morning and it is going to have a foul Stench and no one's gonna be able to eat it and it's worth nothing but to be thrown away.

He's not calling Christians if we're to be salt to give a little dash here a little sprinkle there he's saying that we must generously graciously Permeate every aspect of society so that they will not be lost.

So that they will not decay because the world is dead that's what he's saying. The world is dead like an animal baking in the noonday Sun and if Christians do not engage Flies maggots. The carcass will turn pale you get the point.

That's the metaphor. Jesus is working on what culture is and Christians Would be unloving to avoid it. We would actually be unloving if we pull back. How many times have you heard that it's more loving to pull back.

It's more loving not to engage. It's more loving not to offend. It's more loving to make people happy and placate them in their Perversions. And yet if this metaphor is true, we know it is because Jesus himself spoken in the Holy Scriptures.

It's unloving to stand back and watch the world decay. It's unloving to watch them perish right before our very eyes. It's unloving if we adopt a posture of sprinkling and dash and just a little bit of seasoning on top.

The most loving thing we can do is to engage holistically. Lovingly of course in everything that we do we must be done in love. But to engage liberally generously. So that the culture doesn't decay now, we know that the culture is not gonna love us for doing this.

They're gonna call you if you tell them the truth about Scripture. They're gonna call you a bigot. They're gonna call you a homophobe a xenophobe. Maybe a phobophobe. I don't know if that's a word or not.

Maybe we're the phobophobe. I don't. I don't even know but just because they don't love the engagement doesn't mean that it's not for their good. We can't just gather ourselves boldly here on Sunday morning and then leave to go Quietly into our Monday and our Tuesday and our Wednesday.

Because the posture of that is to look at the world and say to hell with you. You be damned. That's what that's that's what that says. That would be the most unloving thing you have to think about it.

You ever heard of Penn and Teller the magicians. I Think it was Penn or maybe it was Teller. I can't remember. It's the the larger of the two. He said I respect Christians when they come up to me and they tell me the gospel.

I respect them when they tell me that if I don't repent I'm going to hell. Because how much do you have to love some or how much do you have to hate someone? To know that they're dying and going to hell and not tell them this is an atheist who said this how much do you have?

To hate someone to to refuse to give them the good news of the gospel and maybe you say well the world's not going to. Like that well, there's plenty of things that don't like that. Think about the meat.

Do you think the meat likes to have salt packed all around it and obviously it's dead. But the meats most natural state what it wants to do more than anything else is to decay. That's what it wants to do.

The salt is actually preventing it from decaying. The same is true of the world the world's most natural state is to go from one degree of decadence to another degree of decadence. Decaying and corroding in its sin, and they're not going to like the presence of the salt.

But that doesn't mean the salt is not good. There's plenty of things in life that that protest something that actually need that something in order for it to be good. You think about it children. Any parent you take your children to target?

I want that. I want that. I want that. No. No. And if you gave into every whim and every fancy that they had. They would become little monsters. Example you you go up, and you talk to someone a homeless person on the street.

And they say I want I just need some. I need something to drink. You want to Give them money, and they and or you want to give them a coffee. And they say no give me money, and then you look and you see them going to the liquor store.

We have to think about the way that we give people care sometimes because sometimes they're not in a good place to care for themselves right. So it's unloving to give them a $20 bill as they get ready to go in and drink themselves to death.

It's more loving to to give them something else. You think about an addict who says I? Just if you would sell me your prescription medicines. I'm trying to think about examples. But you think about a relative in Canada physician assistant suicides now becoming a thing.

You think about a relative that says I want you. To sign off on this. I want you to agree with this. I want you to let me die because I'm miserable. Do you think that's loving to go along with that? There's plenty Thousands of things that we could describe here that it's unloving to participate in.

It's unloving and the person that is Corresponding to us is not gonna understand that they're not gonna get that but it would be unloving if we did it. This culture is craving death. Craving the disease of sin.

It would be unloving if we allowed them. Without any whisper of the gospel to dive headlong into their depravity. Many will say well if the people will get angry there may not like us. They'll say mean things about us.

But that's like a parent saying I'm gonna give my child candy at 12 o 'clock at night. Or in the morning. Because I don't want my child to be angry at me. The church has a parental role in culture. The church is called to maturity in Christ true maturity.

We have a role in a sense where we are trying to help those who are not mature. Help those who are broken help those who are sinful help them see what they truly need and it's not loving to give them What they don't need.

They don't need us to retreat. They need us to be bold and to say the gospel. They're going to be offended by that but we don't engage them for their approval. We engage them because we love them. I Think about a moment.

When I was a kid My dad said something that I didn't like and I said well if you do this to me dad I'm never gonna speak to you again, and he said that would be a lot more peaceful. And I went to my room and I stood for about 45 minutes, and then I came back out.

Imagine the kind of person I would have been if my dad caved to me in that moment. Imagine the kind of person I would be my character. Would have been if my dad would have caved to me or my grandparents would have caved to me every time I said I wanted.

Something we don't engage for their approval. We engage because it's what's best for them. And we engage because we want to obey Christ. Christ said here we are salt. He didn't say it in any confusing way.

It's fairly clear. So we engage with the world because we want to obey Jesus. We engage with the world because we want to see it one to Christ. We want to see the whole world filled with people who love God and who worship him and we want to see though the world.

Filled with the knowledge of God. We want to see the great promises of Scripture where all the families of the earth will be blessed. Genesis 12 that that that Christians By faith in Jesus would spread out and be fruitful multiply to the ends of the earth and fill the world with worshipers.

Genesis 1. We want to see the great promises of Scripture come true in our lifetime, right. So we share because we want to see them come to Christ and we share because we really truly love them. Again, what we cannot do is sit in our holes and hide in our churches.

We've done that for a long time haven't we is not not this church but we've done that for a long time in Christianity where we've hid and we've been silent and We said don't rock the boat. Have to engage them with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There's all kinds of examples that we could give on how to do this. Most recently Friday, we did a pastor story hour where we just gathered our children in public to read about God's good design of gender.

We told them that God has a wonderful plan for their life and that plan is that he made some of us boys to the glory of God and some of us girls to the glory of God and that is a Beautiful and glorious thing and you look at the reaction of the world like a carcass of meat packed with salt.

They were agitated but my prayer in that is That through consistency and Through continually sharing the gospel with them. Not a pop shot. We're not going in there one time to make a point. We want to be in their life.

We want to do this for the rest of our lives. Maybe not pastor story. However, we want to be consistent about sharing the gospel publicly because eventually what we're praying is that they've come to know Jesus.

That these types of things would make inroads for them. That there would be people who stood out there protesting us that would sit in these seats and would say God is in this place. We're also praying Because we don't have any delusions that every single person in Chelmsford is going to come to know Christ.

But what we do know is that if we retreat Chelmsford will become worse. Westford and Kingsborough and Lowell will become worse. We have an opportunity in Christ to be a Preserving agent in culture. We can't let the court.

We can't let the carcass bake in the Sun without Going and saying here's Christ. We're salt. Here's Jesus right now. We have to qualify this because We can't be sinful in our engagement either. There's so many examples of sinful nasty UnChrist like ways to engage in culture.

We're called to be Jesus to this society. We're called to show him God's show them God's love and his grace and his affections. We're Christians. We're called to live out the fruits of the Spirit in front of them in the power of the Spirit in front of them.

And to not engage them in any sinful judgmental hateful ways. They may call us every ism. They may call us bigots. But do you think that that hurts our feelings? We know Jesus Christ. Everyone on earth can disapprove of us because we've been approved by the only one that matters so therefore we can be truly mature in a situation and love them even while they hate us and care for them even while they're angry and smile at them and say God loves you and If you want to talk about it, let me know.

To engage sinfully is to throw dung on a steeping the stinking corpse to engage like Christ. It's a vivid image to engage like Christ those to be salt. Not to fight culture wars. Not to fight left-right politics.

Not to fight conservative versus Democrat. But to see the one see the world one to Jesus Christ. That's the first thing. The second thing we learn in this passage. Is that our Engagement can be spoiled by the way that we Live and by the way that we act.

Jesus says. But if the salt has become tasteless How can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. There is a reality where our witness can become worthless.

Where Jesus or Jesus people can lose their effectiveness. Where our witness can be wrong and Wicked. Where we will be trampled underfoot by culture when we're out of alignment with his vision. Salt as I understand it.

I'm not a chemist. But salt doesn't change on its own. Salt changes when external elements are added to it and then it's corrupted. Salt is not like bread. It doesn't mold. It's not like tile in your bathroom.

Mildew won't sit in. It's not like radioactive isotopes. Which I know nothing about but apparently they change. Salt maintains its Posture unless it's corrupted from outside. In the ancient times. Salt would have been corrupted by sitting on the ground and being introduced with other elements.

Other minerals would have gotten into the salt and it would have corrupted the salt so that it would no longer be useful. And What's its use. Its use is not to season the food. Its use is to preserve the carcass.

So you imagine that the man who goes to sleep that night having packed all of his steaks and his chops and his hamburger meat. With all the salt that he could find and he wakes up the next morning and it stinks.

His salt has become worthless. We have to understand that we're gonna have a witness no matter if it's biblical or not. Our inactivity is a witness, but it's a worthless witness. Mean-spirited and judgmental activity is an activity, but it's worthless.

There's all kinds of ways to be polluted by outside forces and to allow our witness to become tainted. By the things of the world you think about churches That have adopted sinful views and how they're corrupted.

When they adopt worldliness like hanging a rainbow flag outside of their their church, that's not how you win the world to Christ. You don't help them out of death by giving them more death. You think about all the pagan philosophies that we've seen.

Critical race race theory. Marxism. Pluralism, I've seen pastors online saying We're all going to heaven in this town. Universalism you think about all of that? That's worthless. If it's not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is worthless.

It does not say that a rainbow flag outside of your church will win the world to Christ. It says that we're not ashamed of the gospel for that is the power of God and nothing else. I think probably Just in my mind as I think about what has perverted the church's witness.

What has corrupted the church's witness. The one thing I think that is so subtle and I wouldn't argue that maybe it's the worst, but I think it's really high up there is the equivocation of love and acceptance.

The world has basically said that if you disagree with us you're unloving. If you don't approve of every single thing that I do in my life, then you're unloving and if I have a bad experience based on you, you're the problem and Since the church is supposed to be loving right?

We're supposed to love people. That's our thing and Since we've let the world define what love is. We've basically said that if anyone has any bad experience, it's our fault if people's feelings are hurt.

It's our fault and The whole thing is entirely a great farce. Because we can't let the world define what love is, of course, we're supposed to be loving. But we don't let the world define love if a doctor looked at a patient said you're not dying.

You're perfect. You're in great shape. You should try for the Olympics and then we got stage four cancer. Man should lose his license. He's a monster. Think about a football coach. Football coach wouldn't be loving if a player comes to him has no skill.

No talent and a bad attitude and and causes division among the team. They'd be unloving to the team. It'd be unloving to the child be unloving to the parents be unloving to everybody to let that child continue to play.

When when he shouldn't be there. You think about it? If a parent says to your daughter, I don't care if you have a boy in your bedroom. I don't want to hurt your feelings. What's wrong with you? There's a thousand examples of where Loving someone doesn't approve of something.

It doesn't affirm their sin. It doesn't placate them into their fantasies,. I Remember I struggled with this at the jail. I was not in jail. I Worked at a jail for seven years and there was a man that came in who had drank so much.

So often for so long that he was hallucinating and had no idea who he was and he believed himself to be a fictional character. And I wrestled with that I was like all the officers around me were calling him by this fictional characters name because he was a violent man.

And they didn't want to have him turn on them. I Thought to myself that's not loving you're participating in this man's delusion. Now you don't you know, we you don't be mean to him you certainly don't want him to you know turn on you.

But we don't participate in lies as Christians. We're people of the truth. We look at a situation we say no. No, that's that's error. We don't play act our way through life and say you do you. You do you causes people to go to hell?

You is the problem think about our own life if God gave us exactly what we wanted every person in this room would be in hell for eternity. It's because he overturned our wants. It's because he dragged us kicking and screaming out of our sin.

It's because at some point in our life. He said you're mine. I don't care if you like it or not, and he dragged us to Christ. Sometimes being loving is not giving people what they want, but it's giving people what they need.

Again the wise parent Understands this and loves their children, even if they protest. The wise believer does the same thing in culture when our culture screams like toddlers at times. We don't look down on them.

They don't have the Spirit of God. We don't we don't judge them and say look at how crazy they are or look at how mistaken they are. We look at them with pity and we say of course, that's what they think.

They don't have the Spirit of God. Let me pray for them. Let me care for them. Let me show them the truth. Let me be the mature one in the room. See the problem with all of this left right and culture war stuff is that it pits everybody against each other.

And there's nothing but anger. We should be standing on the side of truth and saying come to Christ. We love you. We must place our obedience to God over their response. Because the culture really has been spoiled.

Over the last 50 years I Was a spoiled child at one point because my grandma every week I grew up in a very very small southern town voted second most redneck town in North Carolina. Because we don't win anything.

My grandma would take me to Walmart. That was our big treat and she would buy me Whatever I wanted every week and For years. I just thought money grew on trees. I Swear to became a little bit of a monster for a season.

Because I was always given what I wanted and it wasn't until my grandpa stepped in and said enough. That was good for me. The culture around us has become that monster because no one has said enough. Look to Christ.

That's the second aspect of cultural engagement is that way it can become worthless very quickly if it's sinfully applied. Or if it's sinfully retreated, we must stand on Christ and his gospel. We must be like Christ in this culture.

That's how your salt. The third aspect that Jesus talks about in this passage is with light and he calls us agents of illumination. Jesus concludes this section by saying this you are the light of the world.

A City on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket because but on a lampstand it gives light to all who are in The house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your father.

Who is in heaven? Jesus is saying here that you are a light that illuminates things. You're a light that exposes things. You're a light that that takes things that were living in the shadows and brings them to light.

That's what a city on a hill does. So that all those who are living in the darkness and the valleys can see the light of The gospel. I find this passage to be one of the most peculiar yet beautiful passages.

Because it's Jesus himself who said I am the light of the world and here Jesus is saying you are the light of the world. You ever thought about how? Amazing that is because the Holy Spirit's power at work in us and because of his testimony in our lives and because of the way that we Imitate the light who is Jesus Christ that we are the ones who become like that shining city.

We are the ones who become like that burning lamp in the living room. So you don't stump your toe or step on a Lego as anyone ever stepped on a Lego in the dark of the night. There's nothing more dreadful, but we're the light.

We're the light that shines so that people can find their way to Christ. Where are the ones who? Who let the works that Christ has determined for us to do before the foundations of the world to live out publicly deliberately?

Confidently passionately and humbly. So that they may see the truth of Christ in his resurrection. We don't hide. We don't retreat. I Thought about this this week. Isn't it funny how often the church retreats when the world belongs to God?

Chelmsford Center belongs to Jesus. Boston, Massachusetts belongs to Jesus, New York and LA belong to Jesus. They're his. He said all authority in heaven and earth has now been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples if anyone is squatting on someone else's land.

It's the world who's living on his land and we need to tell them that they're encroaching on him. That they need him. We retreat like they own the world. They don't. Christ owns the world. Christ died for the world.

Christ bought the world paid for the world with his precious blood and now we're to Be lights to shine and tell them the hope of the gospel. So that they will repent and turn to Jesus. Paul picks up this theme in Philippians chapter 2 verse 15 through 16.

He's talking to the Philippian Church so that you may prove yourself to be blameless and innocent children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Among whom you appear as lights in this world holding fast to the Word of Life so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run nor toil in vain.

Peter says the same thing in 1st Peter chapter 2 11 through 12. Beloved I urge you as aliens and as strangers to abstain from fleshly lust. Which wage war against the soul and to keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles?

So that in the thing in which they slander you as being evildoers they may because of your good deeds observe them and give glory to God on the day of visitation and This is where we'll end our sermon today.

Both these metaphors expose a very powerful and poignant truth for the church. We're salt and we're light. We're not the kind of salt that is sprinkled on. With a dash here we have to engage Generously and liberally in this culture or else they'll continue to decay.

That's what Jesus is teaching. We have to be lights so that we can expose the misdeeds of darkness and so they can see our good works and so they can glorify God in Heaven. And may it be that in our time in our place in This town and in the towns that we represent that Christ would have dominion here.

Because a church Had the courage to live this passage out. Dominion is not domination. Dominion is commanded by Christ. And the reason it's commanded by Christ is it's because it's what Christ did for us 2 ,000 years ago Christ came assault to a dead and dying culture and he came and he gave everything to preserve his people.