Ye Are the Salt — Leonard Ravenhill

Persecution Follows Purity

All right, Matthew 5 again. It's a great sermon. Not mine, but his. Great sermon on the Mount. Last week we meditated a little, at least, on the fact that persecution follows purity. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

The other side of the coin is, blessed are the persecuted. And that there is no way of living the Christian life without persecution. There was none for Jesus, there was none for the early church, there was none for the martyrs, and there's none for us.

And to say that prayer will get us out of every situation is not true at all. As I've said very often, we may sing sweet hour of prayer, but when you've sung it, you go out of the door of the sanctuary and the problem's still there.

It isn't always removed. And what the sweet hour of prayer does is not necessarily remove the obstacle, but give us grace to manage the obstacle. Climb over it, get rounded, or carry the burden. And this has been the way that God has matured his people.

Stephen and the Measure of a Faithful Life

We said again that it doesn't matter if you make your mind up you're going to be the holiest person in this community, or San Antone, or wherever you live. They won't come and ask for your autograph or take your photograph.

They'll test you and see if it's really true, if you're for real, they've every right to do this. We gave the classic illustration of what I think, the person I think is the most perfect example of a spirit-filled believer.

I doubt if he was more than 19 years of age, and that was Stephen in the early church. I think the early church fully expected that he was going to be the grand marshal of their outfit, if you like, to say he was going to be the brigadier general, or the general, whatever you want to call him, the leader of the army at that time.

And to their amazement he was the first martyr. It's amazing how quickly God has taken some men. It's not how long you live that matters, it's how we live that matters. If you have to live till you're 88 like John Wesley to prove your point, well then God isn't just in letting David Brainerd die at 28.

If you just get a more reward for living longer, then God gave David Brainerd 60 years less to live than he gave John Wesley. It's not that. I believe the whole secret of living is this, that if you do die consciously, and the odds are against you, there's so many air crashes and folk drive like mad, except me, but the odds are that you may not die conscious.

But if we do die conscious, the thing is that we may say like Jesus, I have finished the work thou gave us me to do. Not that somebody else gave you to do. I'm quite sure of this. I know it's not popular to say, but I've never been too popular anyhow, and it's a bit late to start right now.

Obedience to God's Will

But I believe there are people who kill themselves literally, almost literally, in church service, and it doesn't mean a hill of beans to the Lord. It's purely church organized stuff. They've been taught to do it.

You do this, you knock on so many doors, you're almost buying your way to heaven, like the Roman Catholic system, except the taxes are a bit less. But that's not the way God wants it. It's knowing what God wants me to do, and then having the courage to do it.

I believe that's what the will of God is. Knowing, I believe that's what faith is, pardon me, knowing what God's will is, and having the courage to do that thing that he's revealed to me, or he has revealed to you.

Jesus' Disciples and the Two Kingdoms

Now we come to a, I nearly used the word, I will use it, we come to a salty situation here, because Jesus says right here, ye are the salt of the earth. It's not very flattering. Salt isn't very expensive.

We don't value it too much. It's very commonplace. An awful lot of things Jesus could have said, that he did not say about this amazing, this amazing Sermon on the Mount. I looked back in the chapter a little earlier this week, and reminded myself that in the fourth chapter, there are a number of things Jesus did.

The one thing, he called four disciples. Before that, he had had a ministry of at least three things. It says he'd been teaching, and he'd been preaching, and he'd been healing, and then he went on to calling.

And it's as though he takes those four disciples and says, now sit down, I'll tell you what discipleship is all about. As we said last week, part of this wonderful teaching of Jesus is, ye shall, ye shall, it all, they shall pardon me, they shall, they shall, they shall, they shall inherit, they shall be blessed.

And then he pins it right down, he says ye shall. I know men have argued for years about who heard the Sermon on the Mount. Well I'm quite sure that Jesus was speaking directly to his disciples, and I'm equally sure that on the outskirts, there was a crowd of other people that were listening.

And you know, we have, I think, established this fact in most of our minds, at least I hope so, that there are only two kingdoms in this world. There may be many levels in the one kingdom of the world.

You can talk about the sports kingdom, you can talk about the business kingdom, you can talk about the religious kingdom, you can talk about the political kingdom. But they're all kind of subdivisions, they're branches in the one tree.

They're one kingdom. And the other kingdom is the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the scripture is very explicit when it says, one day the kingdoms, all that bunch of kingdoms, shall become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ.

There's an amazing story, is it in the 18th of Revelation, that talks about the collapse of the world system. Those who buy silk and buy gold and do this, that and the it says, in one hour the whole thing's going to fall.

It doesn't look like it sometimes, at least it didn't, it looks more like it now than ever it did in history, I suppose, that every underpinning is gradually falling away. But one day these kingdoms, the kingdoms of this world, shall become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ.

Now, these kingdoms are opposite. They don't run parallel, they're in collision, at least they used to be. I forget who it was, I'm not sure if it was MacArthur, not the general MacArthur, but a man that, he once wrote some great words about this Sermon on the Mount.

I don't have it, I hope to get it, but I think it was MacArthur who said that if one of those beings from another world suddenly found himself on this earth, and he could read our English, preferably, and he picked up a New Testament and read it.

And he started with the people that lived it, he'd say, well, one of two things, either that's wrong or this is wrong. I mean, they don't just gel, they don't mesh like cogs that shouldn't fit together.

The Sermon on the Mount is one level, the spirituality of the average church is entirely different. Now, of course, very often I've heard that quoted, and people say, well, of course, if people came in our services, they wouldn't see signs and wonders and miracles, are you sure?

Character Over Spiritual Display

Do signs and wonders and miracles always have to go before these eyes of ours? I can show you people that do signs and wonders and miracles that live immorally. And they live in our church, in our fundamental churches.

And I could start at the top and go to the bottom, and you'd be staggered by them. You wouldn't have to go too far from here to find some that fairly recently ditched their wives, but they still carry on with their gifts and their evidences, and they still make money, and they still have a following.

What does it prove? Isn't it rather amazing that in this Sermon on the Mount, which is addressed specifically here to the disciples, the immediate disciples, that Jesus never said, blessed are the prophets, blessed are the miracle workers, blessed are the preachers, blessed are the spiritually successful.

He didn't say that. Right here, he's after character. Again, he never blessed the material thing. You see, it's easy for us, we've kind of been, what shall I say, we've been kind of toned down. This thing hasn't hit us like a bomb.

Supposing you never heard this in your life, and somebody came in and began to say, uh, quote the Beatitudes. Man, you'd sit back and say, just, just a minute, man, that, could you stop? I've got enough to think about for a week.

Could you give us one a week? These are, these are fantastic. But you see, we've got used to hearing the blesseds, the blesseds, the blesseds, the blesseds. Doesn't mean too much to us. But I'll tell you the effect it had on these people, because it says at the end of the seventh chapter, it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, and remember, the Sermon on the Mount goes through chapters five, six, and seven, and when he got to the end, it says in verse 28, it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at his doctrine.

They were dumbfounded. Why? Well, let the next verse explain it, because I could exaggerate. For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. You see, even his enemies said, never man spake like this man.

Nobody's going to drop a bombshell on men and women like this. What does it say? He taught them. He taught them what? Well, why didn't he teach them about Socrates? He knew that Socrates had been around 400 years before.

Why didn't he teach them from the Greek masters? Why didn't he teach them about Hillel, the greatest interpreter, maybe, of the Old Testament that there was around? Maybe Gamaliel was still, was around at that time, but Paul was taught by, I don't know.

Isn't it amazing, Jesus never made any references to the classics. He never made any reference to history. Isn't it rather amazing? He never made any blast against the Roman Empire, and every time he went down the street, people were slaves to the Roman Empire.

He never said a thing about slavery. How impractical can you get? Isn't this pie in the sky when you die? No, it's pie on the road to the sky for me, as far as I'm concerned. It'll be pie afterwards, maybe, and I don't know, there'll be ice cream on it, but it's going to be wonderful when we get there anyhow.

But what about the journey of life right now? And after all, this is what Jesus is after in giving us this Sermon on the Mount. Now, he says, again, he says a lot of things that, pardon me, he did not say a lot of things that I think he could have said, and I could add a lot more to what I've already said.

I'm conscious more and more and more that Jesus is pinning us down to these things. What is the Sermon on the Mount? I'll tell you in a nutshell, as far as I'm concerned. I believe the Sermon on the Mount is a character sketch of Jesus Christ.

He was what he said. And if you and I aren't what we say, well, forget it, as far as I'm concerned. You can shout to high heaven and raise the dead. I'm not that much interested in your spiritual life, except to pray for it.

The Character of Christ in the Beatitudes

Jesus was everything that he said. What does it say? Blessed are the poor. Was anybody poorer? Well, he says poor in spirit. Luke doesn't say that. He's more raw still. He says, blessed are the poor. Now, in the context, it's poverty of spirit, sure enough.

Blessed are the meek. Who was meeker than Jesus? His own testimony was, I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your soul. Blessed are the merciful. Who was more merciful? I've often thought when they challenged him to do what the perennial challenge to every one of us, till you quit breathing, come down from the cross and save yourself.

Why did you decide to do that in a missionary meeting? Because there was so much pressure on you. Why did somebody get you to give away so much money? Are you sorry you did it? Why did you say you wouldn't do this, or you wouldn't fast so many days a week, or do that?

Why did you do it? Come down from the cross, save yourself. You won't save the church, you'll save yourself. I think it's wonderful that Jesus didn't show that he didn't have to come down for the cross.

He could have breathed on them and shriveled them all up. He cursed the fig tree and it perished. Even his disciples said, oh master, they said, that's the tree that you withered. You spoke to it withered.

He could have done the same thing from the cross and he would have been petrified. He didn't. He was full of mercy. So merciful that right at the end, he said to the man who cried, I well, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

Anyhow, he had some idea about the kingdom, whether we have or not. He said, when thou comest into thy kingdom, remember me. And Jesus said, thou shall be with me this day in paradise. Again, I say, it's amazing.

If you and I had been dying there, we'd be shouting ourselves hoarse to testify, wouldn't we? We'd be telling him how we got saved and filled with the spirit and Jesus let them both go to hell and didn't say a word to either of them.

Why? Well, in this very sermon on the mount, he said just before in that fourth chapter, you don't always cast your pearls before swine. There's a time to speak and there's a time not to speak. There's a time where you'll be a coward if you didn't speak and there's a time when you'd be a fool if you did.

You see, one of the things that his judges didn't like about it, don't you answer me, was it Herod or Pilate that said that? Don't you realize I've got power? Well, it's great when you realize there isn't a person in the world has any power over you if you're a child of God.

Because Jesus said, you won't scare me. You haven't power to take my life. I have power to lay it down and what's more, I have power to take it up again. And you see, I think that that's one of the situations in which when you say to people, well, you can be crucified with Christ and then they say, well, why does the apostle talk about being, I die daily?

Why does he do it? He does it for this reason that there are situations in life where you can die. You can die once to self but you die many times to choices that come maybe in the week. One choice comes and you decide that, well, you'll do this or you won't do that, whatever the thing is, you see.

You can't make a decision right now for every situation in life. You can make it as regards yourself. But there are times when again, somebody might say, well, do you want to come and fish or something?

And you say, no, nothing wrong in fishing. As I say to preachers, Peter did when he backslid. But by the same token, fishing's good for you now and again. I quite agree. But there are times when you say, well, I can't afford the time.

I need that time for something else. Somebody says, would you like to buy this? Oh man, you know, it should cost you a hundred dollars. You can have it for 20. It will be wrong if you bought it for 20 cents sometimes.

You say no, the Lord just says no. I remember one day we were having what we call tea in England. There wasn't too much to it. We were living on a starvation diet nearly and somebody had given us some cookies and we hadn't eaten much more than jam and bread that day.

And somebody passed a dish over to a young man and, don't you want one? Well, he said, yes, yes, yes, I do. Well, well, take it. He said, well, I say yes, but the Spirit says no. Some people look down the note.

I thought it was very wonderful that he had such control that even though he could have eaten it, maybe eaten a dozen more, he said, no, the Spirit says that's enough. So he obeyed the Lord in that little thing.

Again, as Pascal said, perfection is made up of trifles, but perfection itself is no trifle, you see. And if God is going to perfect that which concerneth me, not concerneth you, but concerneth me, he's going to do a little pruning here and a little correcting there.

And after all, I think so often of that word that says we are his workmanship. I do a bit of sketching now and again and sometimes people say, give me a sketch. Sign it and say, not on your life, not on your life.

Too bad, I wouldn't give it. If you think it's all right, take it, but I wouldn't put my name on it. I don't want to autograph something that I don't think is worth even my poor little name. Well, is God happy to autograph my daily conduct as he turns me out to the world?

Am I showing forth the praise of him who's called me out of darkness into his most marvelous light? Now, Jesus said, hear the salt of the earth, and this raised a problem in my mind. What saved Jesus from corrupting?

Jesus' Purity, Temptation, and Obedience

Why didn't he corrupt? He was a man of like passions as we are, and well, why didn't he get corrupted? Well, I guess your immediate answer is because he had no sin, and my immediate answer to you is neither had Adam, but he corrupted.

Where is the difference? Well, one school of theology says he couldn't be corrupted because he was God. Well, that's one answer if you want it that way. Only to me, it seems to make a kind of blessed or a funny show of the 40 days of temptation if he could not be tempted, if he couldn't be, if it wasn't possible for him to fail.

Why didn't he fail? Well, I found some answers that satisfied me. Number one is, he did have a period of temptation for 40 days and nights, and somewhere in that situation, he decided that whatever it cost and wherever it led, he'd do the will of his father.

In other words, he made up his mind that he would do God's will whatever it cost him. I delight to do thy will, O my God. Number one. Number two is given in Luke chapter four, where it says in verse one, and Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost.

Wasn't he filled with the Holy Ghost before? If I say I doubt it, will you think I'm a heretic? He was born of the Spirit, but you see, then he was anointed of the Spirit. And I say this, and I'll still say it, I'm gonna, another month I gotta preach to a hundred preachers and seminarians, and I'll say this to them too.

Ordination, Calling, and the Anointing

I know nothing more ridiculous than the way that we ordain preachers, because they answer a few questions. I've used the illustration before, if I were to win a national competition as the smartest man in America in answering questions on baseball, does that mean I could phone tomorrow to the Yankees and say to the boss there, well, I want to play shortstop?

Well, who are you? Well, I'm Leonard Ravenhill. Oh, did I see you on TV? Yes, I was on TV yesterday, and I won the national competition. I know more answers to baseball than any other man living. Does that make me eligible to play baseball?

Because a man answers 20 questions a professor gives him, does that make him eligible to go and be a shepherd over sheep? Does that mean that he passes God's standard? A young man wrote me recently about being ordained, and I said, yes, I believe in ordination.

I'll give you the chapter and verse, at least I could give him the chapter, not the verse right off, but chapter 15 of John, I have ordained you that you should go forth and bring forth fruit. That's the ordination I believe of him.

You see, you get a difference in the, in the, in the New Testament. Again, I had a preacher came down, he took too much time, I think I'm going to put a notice on my office, stay one hour. After that, it's $12 an hour.

Why not? You go see a lawyer, he doesn't let you talk. I had a man came the other week, he stayed seven and a half hours in my office, and I couldn't get a word in edgeways, so you can tell how tough it was on me.

He stayed seven and a half hours. Now, if he'd gone to a lawyer, it would have cost him a bit more than that, wouldn't it? I guess it would. I don't know what they charge these days, but it cost you 10, maybe $20 an hour.

So if you come to my office, you better watch out, I may send you a bill the week after. But his question was this, what is the difference between deacons and elders? Well, in the New Testament, they were told, they were told to go and select deacons.

They were never told to go and select elders. Deacons do what? Deacons serve for the church. Elders serve in the church. One is a selection of men, the other is the ordination of God. I have been to churches more than once where somebody said, well, glad to see you, Brother Raymond, but you know, I wouldn't have cared if you hadn't have come.

You know, so-and-so there, I just as soon hear him preach as hear you preach. I have preached in the, I suppose, the most fashionable church in Nassau many times. And there have been celebrities there, millionaires, the Lord Chief Chancellor of the court and so forth.

But recently they had a wonderful Sunday, the preacher was absent, the usual preacher was absent. And who came? The governor of the colony came, the prime minister of the colony came, the leading ministers of education and everything else.

They all came and packed the church to hear who? To hear a wonderful colored preacher, one of the smartest and most inspiring preachers I know, and he's never been trained for the ministry. At least not by men.

I guess that's why he's so good. Nobody spoiled him. As Dr. Tozer said one day when a fellow said, well, I've never been to Bible school, Brother, he said, you've an advantage. Well, he sure had. You see, what happened?

That man is such an anointing of God that immediately somebody says, uh, I think we need elders in the, oh, well, so-and-so, of course, he'd have to be number one and number two. He surfaced himself by the fact that the anointing of God is there.

You can't select elders, you can select deacons, you can't select elders any more than you can give gifts to men. You can't give them, God gives them. And if man, if God hasn't given man the gift of preaching, well, heaven help him, he won't be much good in the church anyhow.

I'm glad, and I say this with all honesty, I'm glad that God still has prerogatives. The church thinks she's got them all. She can put in office who she likes and that's why she's so bankrupt. The Holy Ghost still has some offices that he gives.

And you can work it up and do as you like and try to imitate, but Brother, you'll not get any place at all. I like that word, is it in Exodus? It is somewhere about 32, I guess, where it tells you how to make ingredients for the anointing of the priest.

There are five of them, which are typical, five is the number of grace. And it tells you how to make them and how to mix them and it says a number of things about it. It says number one, there's to be no imitation of it.

No imitation. Imitation things are not good, are they? In the war time in England, we didn't have eggs. They gave us something, I don't know what it was made of, but it sure wasn't eggs. George Washington Carver made an egg, I think it was.

You could cook it, you could fry it, you could eat it, you could do anything and nobody could tell the difference between the egg he made and the egg the hen laid. Wasn't a man on earth, not a scientist could tell the difference.

But I'll tell you who knew the difference, the old hen knew the difference. They put some of them under her and she ignored the whole bunch. So hens must be smarter than scientists. But anyhow, you can cook them, cook with them, cook the eggs.

They were just beautiful, but they were not the real thing. By the same token, these gifts and these ministries that God has. You know, I'm a rebel, I like to be a rebel. I'm a bit of a maverick, I guess, but maverick came from Texas, didn't he?

And I still say I don't know a church where every gift of the Spirit operates. There are at least 17, if you put them all in order, and I'd love to be in a church where they were all developed, and I don't think that would happen in a weekend.

But you see, God still has prerogatives, he still has gifts. And the only way to get to the top of the tree is to start at the bottom. The old Chinese proverb, the man that's going a thousand miles has to take the first step.

And it's the same in the spiritual life. We have to be born of the Spirit and we have to be filled with the Spirit. Now it says here, this is one reason I believe that Jesus was, if you like, you can say he's incorruptible.

Prayer, Scripture, and Remaining Pure

Well, I'll say he was uncorrupted. Number one, why? Because he battled it out with Satan. I would love to see every true believer, and I would particularly like to see every young man that's going into ministry, go hide himself for 40 days with God, and come out of it either facing earth and heaven and hell and say, look, I'm going through God's calling, or else quitting somewhere in the 40 days business.

Be a tough school, you wouldn't get too many students. But we've had too many of one kind, we better start with another. And if this is a school of Jesus, which it was, it might be good to uh, to copy it.

Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned to the Jordan, and was led of the Spirit. That's number one reason, number two reason. One, he battled it out, and decided he would do the will of the Father, whatever it cost him.

Number two, he was full of the Holy Ghost. But number three, the deciding factor to me, was this. Was what? That he knew the Word of God. You know, at first, when I reacted to this, why was Jesus salt?

He was salt. He was the salt of the earth. We're the salt of the earth. To me, praying people are the salt of the church. You don't get many of them. I had a letter from England recently, this past week, in which a man said, if I, if I put a bunch of, you know, the Bible blues are coming to sing, I can't have it, I don't have enough chairs in the place.

But if I announce, we're going to have a protracted prayer meeting, you could sit anywhere you like. I get about a half a dozen people, just about the same everywhere. The answer that was in my mind, as I thought about this, Jesus was pre-eminently a man of prayer.

That was another thing. But the thing was, he knew the Word of God. My first reaction was, he didn't have a Bible. Then I, I stopped myself and said, didn't he? Are you sure he didn't? He sure did. It says in Luke 4, 17, that he went to the synagogue, as was his custom.

He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. There was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he opened the book, he found the place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

All right. Previously in that same chapter, he had been in the wilderness, and what did he do? When Satan came to him, and remember this, he was a man of like passions. He had feelings, he had emotions, he had nerves, and sinews, and everything else.

What did he do when he was attacked? Every time he was attacked, he did the same thing. He said, it is written, it is written, it is written. So his defense was that he settled, that he would do the will of God, number one.

Number two, he was filled with the Holy Ghost, put them in what order you like. Number three, he knew the Word of God, it is written. And he held that Word of Satan every time that he came to him. His submission to the Father, his total submission to the Father, that whatever the Father asked, he would do.

Being Continually Filled With the Spirit

Well then, isn't that the way we're going to be kept from corrupting? The thing is not, as one preacher is emphasizing a great deal these days, and he's making a lot of headway with it too in churches.

If you say, how many of you have been filled with the Spirit? You'll get a forest of hands in certain meetings. Put them down. And then he says now, be careful here. How many of you are filled? You'll be amazing how few put their hands up.

They were filled. Are they filled? You see, when we talk about be filled with the Spirit, actually that's not what the Scripture says. The Scripture says, be being filled with the Spirit, stay in the place of submission.

And as I say, if you had a faucet here, and a pipe, and that pipe went up to the reservoirs with billions and billions of gallons of water in, you turn that faucet on, and you hold your vessel there, that water is going to come in, and come in, as long as that thing stays there, it's going to be filled.

But if you move it out, you're going to lose some. It's got to stay in the place of submission. Then there's an inflow, and an overflow, and an outflow. And you know the loveliest thing about that to me is this, when there's an inflow and an overflow, you never see the vessel, all you see is the overflow.

See, so many people want to strut gifts because it can be attractive. You know, self will get back in every way it can. We'll even use the Lord to our own ends unless we're careful. But there is an inflow of the Spirit, there is an overflow of the Spirit, and there is an outflow of the Spirit.

If I stay in that place of submission to the Spirit, if I keep my prayer life up, if I keep reading the Word of God, I'm safeguarding myself from the attacks of the enemy. I'm defending myself from the power of the enemy.

Salt as a Picture of Christian Influence

All right, now we come to this statement of Jesus. He was a salt when he was here. He is a salt. Again I say it's, it's, it's, it's not really very flattering is it? Salt's about as cheap as anything you can buy in the store, pity you can't fry it.

It's about as cheap as it was. Get a great big box for 15, 17 cents. Who values salt? Not very valuable. And yet there are still areas of the world where people trade with salt. It isn't, doesn't mean much to us because it's plentiful.

But I'm sure in my own mind, this is one of the most devastating things that Jesus ever said, and he said an awful lot. Number one, he said you're the salt. Number two, he said salt can lose its flavor.

Number three, he said if it does, you deserve to be trodden on the foot of men. Now if that isn't hard, what is? Do you wonder? They said these are hard sayings. What do you think Jesus is after? A bunch of lollipops?

He said one day concerning John Baptist, boy he was rough and rugged wasn't he? He just ignored the whole bunch of them. I said often, and I often meditate on it myself, to see the high priest going in the temple one afternoon with his garments that the Bible says were of glory and beauty, and a thing around his neck with 12 precious stones, the names of the tribes on.

He must have looked marvelous. He wore a helmet, it's called a crown, they put a crown on the head of Moses. He must have looked wonderful. And you go down the street and see the high priest the same.

I tell you what, he's the greatest preacher. I mean he's right in the apostolic succession we'd say. I mean he can trace his authority back to Aaron. He's a great boy around here. And you drive your camel just a few miles down the road and you see a ragged rugged preacher like John the Baptist blasting his head off and blasting the sin of the king on the throne and tearing everybody to bits.

Woohoo, quite a difference. He has no priestly garments, he doesn't care who's around, he has no sanctuary over his head, he has no ephod, he has no terathim, he has no altar, he has no sacrifice. What do you mean he's God's anointed?

Just as ridiculous as could be. Just as if somebody came along today devastating some of the idols that we have and the shibboleths that we have. He wouldn't be taken very very comfortably into any any fellowship, any sanctuary.

Now Jesus says you're the salt of the earth. Well as I say again, salt doesn't seem to be very valuable, it's very commonplace isn't it? There's some beautiful things about salt. One of them is it never shouts, doesn't scrut, doesn't shine.