God's Lightbearers Matthew 5:13-16

I'm going to begin this sermon today by reading an excerpt from the article

I wrote for our February newsletter. This is very relevant to our text today.

So instead of reinventing the wheel, I'm going to quote what

I wrote. So this is what I wrote. The Bible calls each of us to give the best we have for God while we are here on earth.

The wisdom of King Solomon tells us, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.

Ecclesiastes 9 .10. In this life, we have an opportunity to make a difference.

What is fascinating about life is there are no restarts. We get one shot.

And so what will our legacy be? Will it be a life of mediocrity where we squandered our time?

Or will we live a life worth examining? Jesus calls his followers to be influential in whatever sphere he has placed them.

He said, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your

Father who is in heaven. The goal that God has for believers is not that they make a name for themselves.

We should heed the counsel of John the Baptist. He must increase. We must decrease.

The goal is not to magnify ourselves, but to magnify him. We know that we have lived a life well for the

Lord when Christ is seen in our lives. Jesus tells us to let our light shine wherever he has put us and others will look on and be drawn to our legacy.

This legacy is one of God's works being produced in each of us. And through this,

God is praised. In this sermon today, we will take a deeper dive into what this means and see exactly how

God uses us in this world to bring praise to his great name. So this time,

I encourage you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 5. We'll be looking at verses 13 through 16.

And if you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 963. This sermon is titled

God's Lightbearers. And here's our big idea.

If you're going to remember one thing from the sermon, it's this. Let God's beauty be displayed in you to a watching world.

Let God's beauty in you be displayed to a watching world. And we're going to see two manifestations of this in our text.

The first one is this. Your influence decreases decay in the world. Your influence decreases decay in the world.

And we'll see this in verse 13. But before we jump into our text, let me give you a little recap of last week's sermon.

In fact, the last three Sundays, we looked at the Beatitudes. And what we saw is that Jesus began the most famous sermon ever preached, the

Sermon on the Mount, with a bang. Every good sermon, every good speech has an attention getter where you pull people in.

And Jesus did that with the Beatitudes. And what Jesus said to the crowds is that if you want to be happy, then you will follow him.

When Jesus says this, he says that happiness comes through pursuing humility, repentance, meekness, living holy lives, which includes being merciful and peacemakers and standing for Christ in the face of persecution.

This is the key to true joy. What we saw is that Jesus promised a true joy that he will deliver on.

When God says something, he always fulfills his promise. And the joy that Jesus promises is deep, full and lasting.

Once Jesus finished getting the crowd's attention through this powerful introduction, he then moves on to the main body of the sermon.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus covered what it looks like to be one of his followers. To be his follower will have an effect on other people.

We've already seen that today with our missionary. You see that the effect of the gospel and people like Dan and others serving in Senegal has had an impact on those people.

If you're going to follow Jesus and you're going to follow him closely, it's going to have an impact on other people.

There's no way it can't. So after telling the crowd what it means to be a follower, he says, you are going to look a certain way to a world that is very dark.

So let's read what Jesus says in verses 13 through 16. Then we will take this apart and see what we need to see.

Jesus says to the crowd and to everyone here, 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.

As we just saw in the Beatitudes in the previous weeks, this true joy that is produced in believers as they live out their faith will be unleashed like a tidal wave on this earth.

The world will look on and take notice. And people are going to say, you know what, I've never seen anything like this, especially if you're the first believer they've ever met.

Jesus begins our text this morning by telling the crowd gathered on this mountain overlooking the

Sea of Galilee, he says to them, you are the salt of the earth. The obvious question we are going to ask is, what does this mean?

It takes a little bit of digging to figure out the meaning of the salt of the earth. There have been many explanations put forward and some are more persuasive than others.

What we know and what everyone in Jesus' audience would have known is that salt is very valuable.

Throughout history, wars have been fought over salt. In fact, we can't live without it.

Our bodies need it to function. But when Jesus is talking about the value of salt, what does he have in mind?

One explanation that has been put forward is that Christians are to be pure as salt is pure.

And what this view argues is that salt represents purity because it is the color white.

And white represents purity. On the face of it, this one's not very persuasive.

And as we see the strength of the other views, we will see that this is not what Jesus has in mind, I believe. His audience would not have been thinking about the color of salt when he mentioned salt to them.

We have to put ourselves in the shoes of his audience here and say, what would they have been thinking about when he mentions the word salt?

Another view that's been put forward is that we are to sting the world through conviction as the word is brought to bear on people's lives.

In the same way, a wound stings when salt is applied. John 16 .8

says that the Spirit convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.

And as the Spirit works through believers, they bring conviction upon the world. Now, this is a possibility, but probably not.

Again, would this have been the first thing that came to mind when they hear the word salt? You can see it, how someone could maybe get there, but probably not.

A third view is that God uses believers to make unbelievers thirsty and draw them to Christ.

This is so because when you eat salt, what happens? It makes you thirsty. You don't eat pizza without something to drink.

And this one sounds like a stretch and not something that would have immediately come to the mind of the crowd on that mountain.

Now, each of these, the first three explanations that I mentioned here, they're true in some sense, right?

No question about it. But is that what Jesus has in mind here? God uses believers' holiness to influence unbelievers, yes.

He also uses believers to convict unbelievers of their sin. And believers have the ability, by God's grace, to give unbelievers a thirst for Christ.

Yes. However, I don't think this is specifically what Jesus had in mind when he tells believers, you are the salt of the earth.

Here's what I think he has in mind. I think he has two things in mind in particular.

And these are two aspects of salt that would have been well known to the Jewish people in Palestine, listening to Jesus.

Number one, when Jesus references salt, he's referring to the way salt is used in food to prevent decay.

Something these people would have been very familiar with. Now, when you put salt on food, it prevents bacteria from growing on the food.

And in connection with believers, what Jesus is saying is that God uses his followers to keep the world from becoming worse than it is.

In other words, God uses believers to keep the world from falling apart as the world plunges deeper and deeper into immorality.

Here is my view on how world history is going to end based on what I see in scripture. And this has been the position of our church since its beginning.

The Bible describes that there will be a few tumultuous years before Christ's second coming.

What I see is that Christ is going to take believers into heaven with him before God pours out his wrath upon the earth.

This period when God pours out his wrath is known as the Great Tribulation. And during this period,

Satan is going to have his way on earth, unlike any other time seen in history.

And one of the reasons he is going to have his way is because Christians will be gone. There won't be churches meeting, at least there might be new ones meeting, but churches like this.

And with believers gone, what happens, right? Evil is unleashed on the earth.

The presence of Christians in this world keeps this world from becoming unhinged. This world is full of demons right now, but the presence of Christians indwelt by the

Holy Spirit keeps them from doing as much damage as they could.

In fact, the Restrainer in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, some people believe that's believers.

The believers are ones that keep the world from coming to an end where Satan takes over at the end of world history.

It could be the Holy Spirit whose presence is taken away when believers are taken away.

And as evil is present in this world, so is God's church right now, right?

There's this cosmic war going on between Satan and his demons and the church as the

Holy Spirit works through the church. And as people are influenced, some come to Christ, but others who don't come to Christ are still influenced by Christianity.

We even saw that from our missionary today as he explained that in Senegal.

There was a 20th century pastor by the name of Martin Lloyd -Jones who described Christianity's influence over England during the 18th century.

And this is what he said. He said, most competent historians are agreed in saying that what undoubtedly saved

England from a revolution such as that experienced in France at the end of the 18th century was nothing but the evangelical revival.

This was not because anything was done directly, but because masses of individuals had become

Christians and were living this better life and had this higher outlook. The whole political situation was affected.

And the great acts of parliament which were passed in the last century were mostly due to the fact that there were such large numbers of individual

Christians found in the land. End quote. Even in our world right now, we can see places that have

Christian influence. When Christian influence is present, there is less chaos and Satan's work does not have near the whole.

We are the salt that prevents the world from morally spoiling and decaying.

The world could be a lot worse than it is. And people see the moral purity of believers as opposed to the decaying world around them.

And people are drawn to Christ through this witness and the society as a whole benefits.

When a man or woman full of the Holy Spirit leaves this world, it's as if this world just got a little bit worse.

Sometimes maybe you know someone who was a strong Christian and they died and you think this world just got a little bit worse.

In 2000, there was a well -known pastor by the name of James Montgomery Boyce. And he preached one

Sunday. Planned on preaching the next Sunday, but he died. That next Sunday never came. He had a sudden death.

He pastored 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. And theologian R .C.

Sproul, who was good friends with Boyce, said that this was God's judgment on America.

Him taking this man out of the world. The absence of faithful believers truly does lead to decay in our world.

Because when Jesus says salt here, I think his audience would have said, because they would have, especially back in these days, they would have really used salt to keep food from decaying.

I think that's one thing they would have had in mind. Now, not only that, but the second way Jesus uses salt that his

Jewish audience would have understood is in the sense of seasoning. Believers are used by God to be attractive to the world.

Jesus points to this after saying, you are the salt of the earth. In the middle of verse 13, Jesus says, if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

This tells us that Jesus has taste in mind or lack thereof, depending on whether we are faithful or not.

In parts of Israel near the Dead Sea, there were minerals that would contaminate the salt.

The minerals would make the salt tasteless and have a really a nasty taste to it.

And what Jesus says in the remainder of verse 13 is that it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

People would throw this bad salt in the roads and people would walk over it. God has made believers to have an attractiveness to some of the world.

In 2 Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 15 and 16, the Apostle Paul wrote, we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death and to other a fragrance from life to life.

To some people, we are death to their fun and excitement as they enjoy their sin and indulge in a sinful lifestyle.

Now, imagine if the halftime show today was Mark Brooks playing hymns or someone like that.

I would love it. Most of the world would probably hate. It's because the culture produces the values of the culture, right?

And the values of the culture are sinful. So therefore, the music is sinful, which we will see.

And I encourage you, don't even watch the halftime show. And I know some people are even boycotting the

Super Bowl because of reasons. But anyway, that's a sidetrack here. But some people see

Christians as death, but not always. Others see messengers of Christ as that which they really are, those who are full of life and bring true life in Christ to others.

To these people on earth, we are attractive. But as Jesus mentioned above, believers can lose this value as a preservative in a decaying world.

And we can lose this attractiveness that looks good to some in the world. The Apostle Paul warns about us losing our saltiness in 2

Peter chapter 1, verses 4 through 10. This is what he wrote. He has granted to us, so God has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self -control and self -control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.

When Jesus says that a believer loses their saltiness, what he's referring to is not losing your salvation.

The Bible teaches very clearly that one cannot lose their salvation. John 10, 27 would be an example where Jesus says,

My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

And there's many other texts just like that. However, if you have no fruit in your life, if godliness is not being produced in your life, then you have no assurance of salvation.

And the saltiness that you lose is your effectiveness for God. The letter of 1

John was written to tell us how we can know that we are saved. And it lists litmus tests. And if you look at your life and you don't see those litmus tests, then you don't have assurance of salvation.

But if you do, you should be encouraged to say, Yes, the spirit is indeed working in my life.

God wants to use you to make a difference in this world for Christ.

And when we go down the path of sin instead of righteousness, we can't be influential for up to others for Christ's sake.

You are only going to encourage someone toward the path of life if you are moving along that path yourself.

I was talking to a gentleman the other night. I gave a biography last

Sunday night on the life of Eric Little at a different church. And one of the elders of that church explained to me that he used to go to a church that was preaching the

Bible, teaching the Bible, word centered, gospel centered. And then they wanted to get more people to come in the door.

So they figured, how can we get more people? And so they started to try to meet the world's needs to draw people in instead of drawing them in the right way through the word of God, the real genuine way.

And he noticed this happened and he couldn't stay at the church any longer because he noticed that they had become watered down.

They were becoming more like the world. They weren't becoming more like Christ. Right. We want to be, we don't want to lose our saltiness.

And sometimes there can be an appearance that, oh, these people are really doing God's work when they're not because they're using the world's methods to try to accomplish

God's purposes when God in his word has told us exactly how we're supposed to do it. And it's not flashy.

It's old fashioned. Give people the word of God, live the word of God, and then let people, let's see the people's lives changed through the power of the

Holy Spirit. That's how true transformation comes. And so we want to be a salty church with the right understanding of that word.

OK, so let God's beauty be displayed in you to a watching world. The first manifestation of this is that your influence decreases decay in the world.

Secondly, the second way, the second manifestation we should see God's beauty displayed in us to a watching world is through your influence, because your influence gives credence to God's truth.

Your influence gives credence to God's truth. We'll see this in verses 14 through 16.

We do this when we are his salt in the world. We also do this when we are his light.

What Jesus tells us in verse 14 is that you are the light of the world. Salt and light are two different sides of the same coin.

They are similar, but a little bit different. Salt indirectly communicates the good news of Jesus as people see a difference between a believer and the corruption of the world.

But people will only know that your works point to Christ if they know you are a messenger of Christ.

In other words, if you if you have great works and you're a Christian, but nobody knows you're a Christian, then then you're not light.

You're just you're just salt and we need to be both salt and light. So light, on the other hand, directly communicates the gospel as the word is made known and people leave darkness and are brought to God's light.

When Scripture talks about light, this is truth being communicated to people. If you see the truth, you have been enlightened.

If you do not see the truth, your mind is darkened. Ephesians 418 says that believers are dark.

Sorry, unbelievers are darkened in their understanding. Psalm 36, verse nine says, for with you is the fountain of life in your light.

We see the light. The Apostle John tells us in First John, verses five through seven, that God is light.

And in him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. People will travel down the path of unrighteousness unless, unless they first see the truth with the eyes of their heart.

And then they will travel down the path of righteousness. A verse we saw last week is that Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers.

You ever wonder why people have no interest in Christianity? That's why. Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers.

And Dan Penney was just sharing that animism and Islam, those are two methods of blinding that are taking place in Senegal, right?

And he's willing to use whatever means possible as long as people aren't brought to Christ.

In Second Corinthians, verse six, this is what he says. So either you see

God as beautiful and precious or you don't. If you are, then you are a believer.

If not, then the Holy Spirit does not dwell within you. In John, chapter eight, verse 12,

Jesus says that he is the light of the world. And in our text, in verse 14, he calls us the light.

In other words, he is the light and we are the reflectors of his light.

What Jesus tells us is this light cannot be hidden. It stands out like a city on a hill, as he says in the second half of verse 14.

When you drive toward Minneapolis and St. Paul, one can see the skyscrapers from miles away.

No matter what time of day it is, you can see the buildings. During the day, you can see the texture of the buildings.

And when you drive at night, you can see the city lit up. This is so when you follow

Christ closely. You stand out like a sore thumb. This is something we should embrace.

One of the reasons the Lord desires for us to walk with him closely is to be influential in this world for his sake.

When we do this, God's word says this about you. Philippians 2 .15, as I read in the call to worship says, we are blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world.

We just saw Jesus tell us not to lose our saltiness. And now he tells us in verse 15, do not let your light go out.

He tells the crowd on this mountain and us, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but understand, and it gives light to all in the house.

It's so sad when you see someone walking closely with the Lord and the Lord's using that person and then something happens.

The world pulls that person in and the light starts to go out. We don't want to be dim lights.

We want to be that bright light that shines. And it's kind of symbolically,

Mike Rademacher put some lights over there on our Madison building. And we're talking about putting a light on our steeple.

And symbolically, I want that to be a representation to our community that we are light.

We are the light of Christ to our community. We let our light go out in a similar way.

We let our saltiness go. And that is when we are not walking faithfully with the Lord. If we are not walking closely with him, how will people see him in us?

If we are not walking zealously with him, we will have no desire to share Christ with others. We might be private

Christians instead of public Christians. When we fear a man more than God, we will not speak the truth to others.

What Jesus tells us to close out this text in verse 16 is this.

He says, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.

As I mentioned in the introduction, there is a way in which the world is drawn to Christians.

Last week, we looked at the flip side that Christians will be persecuted because they stand with Christ. However, there is a certain admiration that some people have for Christians.

And some of these people even come to faith in Christ. I mentioned last week

I gave a biography on the life of Eric Little. And what a fascinating life and what an inspiring life he lived.

Matthew 5 .16 can be seen in his life as believers and unbelievers alike were drawn to his legacy.

All right, one secular source called him an exceptional human being. So it's not always persecution.

Sometimes people look on and they say, wow, I'm attracted to that. Even if I don't believe it, I'm attracted to that.

The same goes for Billy Graham, who died just a few years ago. In fact, Graham was one of only a few civilians who body lay in the

Capitol Rotunda after his death. We might look at that and say, how in the world did that happen?

He preached the gospel to millions and millions and millions of people. And the truth is probably what he's doing today could not be done in the country that we live in now.

The country back then was much more Christianized, much more friendly to Christianity. But still his body lay in the

Capitol Rotunda and only three or four civilians in the history of our country have had that honor.

When Jesus says that people give praise to his father who is in heaven, this is what he's referring to.

People see God's works in a man and they admire him, even wanting to follow that example.

And they may say, there might be something about that Christian faith that these people talk about.

And the false caricature that our world often gives about Christianity, you know what? I don't think that's accurate.

I want to see what this is all about. And when you live a testimony for Christ, that's what people start to think.

That's how they start to think. God is glorified through your faithful life for Christ, even if people do not come to faith in him.

God's glorious plan is that some people do see the salt and light of a Christian and they do believe in Christ through this witness.

However, you may become a Christian witness to others and they might never come to faith, but God is still glorified through your influence.

What is incredible about this verse is the application of this goes beyond unbelievers noticing the works of Christians and being influenced by them.

It also applies to Christians who travel through the life of faith. Each of us knows

Christians who have been influential in our lives. Right? God uses salt and light as we are already walking with the

Lord and we see and we're inspired to walk with him all the more closely. And God is glorified through that as well.

Now it's worth noting the word good that is used in our text in verse 16.

It's a different Greek word than is typically used in the New Testament. The Greek word here is

Kala. In fact, we have a friend whose name is Kala. This word has the meaning of beautiful.

So the way we can translate this verse is that people would look at your beautiful life of following Jesus and give praise to God because of his works in you.

True beauty to God. It's not just physical. It's inward beauty. And that's what we see here. In our world, there are lives that are a mess.

And there are lives that are beautiful. The life of one who follows Christ closely is a beautiful life that God is praised for.

Since he is the one who causes the transformation in an individual that shines the beauty that people can see, right?

So people see God in us as we live out what he has called us to live out and as the spirit works in our lives.

So what we've seen this morning, let God's beauty be displayed in you to a watching world.

We see two manifestations of that in our text. One is that your influence decreases decay in the world.

And secondly, your influence gives credence to God's truth. People look on and they consider

Christianity. They have a more positive outlook of it, maybe than they did before. And some might even come to faith in Christ through you being salt and light to them.

As I mentioned in the introduction, God has placed each of us where he wants us so that we would be influential.

None of us are the same. We're all uniquely different. Each of us has gifting.

Some of you have gifting that I wouldn't dream of in a million years. And God is using you to influence people in the sphere that he has placed you.

Each person in this room should desire to be one of influence that God would be praised in our lives and people would be helped.

And may Eureka Baptist Church be full of people who are mightily used by God.

And what a beautiful sight this will be as we see more and more reflecting

Christ, more and more. And salt being more tasty in our community and light being more visible.

How wonderful that will be and what a sight it will be. And as this text says, it'll be a beautiful sight.

And so by God's grace, may we live that out as a church together. Now next

Sunday, we are going to see how Christ came not to abolish the law.

He came not to abolish the Old Testament, but he came to fulfill it. And we're gonna see what in the world does he mean by that?

And I look forward to looking at that with you next Sunday. Let's bow our heads together. Father in heaven, the instruction is simple for us.

May we be salt and light to the watching world around us. May we be salt and light,

Lord. And may others see this light and give praise to you.