I Did Not Come To Abolish But To Fulfill

So we are moving on to the second section in the Sermon on the Mount. We spent the last ten weeks studying the Beatitudes, which is the first section of this Jesus sermon. And I told you at the very beginning of this sermon series, through the Sermon on the Mount, that I picked the Sermon on the Mount because I think it's something that's been taught on quite a bit in Christian churches. But I think that there are parts that have been left out or not emphasized that are very essential and very necessary. And our passage this morning and next week, I think, are two of those passages that are talked about a lot, that we are very familiar with the words, but perhaps not the meaning. And so this week we're going to be studying the verse that says, you're the salt of the earth, and next week you're the light of the world. And I think these are things that whatever stripe of Christianity you come from, these are things that get talked about. And yet I think that there's...

a deficiency in the way that they're talked about. And there's parts that are neglected, important parts. And so my hope this morning is that we'll be able to draw those things out and that these passages will be helpful to us as we study and consider them in their context and in their entirety. And so this week, as I said, we'll be focusing on just the first verse of our section, verse 13, where he talks about being the salt of the earth. And my hope is that we will actually see by the end of it what it means to be the salt of the earth. Would you please stand now as you read the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 5.

verses 13 to 20. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. 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 on a hill 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 works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls the least of these commandments,

and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. If we were to take just verse 13, I'll read it again for you. You're 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. If we were to take that verse and I were to ask you, what is Jesus trying to communicate or accomplish here? What's the point of this verse? I think most of us would focus on the first phrase, which is, you are the salt of the earth. But the balance of the verse, the majority of the verse, is not about you being the salt of the earth, but rather about the consequences of not being the salty.

And so I would describe this verse primarily as a warning, that Jesus is actually warning the disciples. He's calling them to something. As I was preparing and thinking about the sort of teaching I've received and found on this verse, I find that most instruction focuses on just this first verse, you are the salt of the earth. And it's treated as though it's suggestive. That there are words supplied or intentions communicated that aren't actually there. You should be the salt of the earth. Or you can be the salt of the earth. Or if you want to, be the salt of the earth. But this is not what the passage says. It is not a suggestion. It is a state of being. It is indicative. You are. You are the salt of the earth. This is not something that we aspire to. It's either true.

of us or it is not true of us. Jesus isn't trying to motivate us and say, come on along with me. He's saying, you're my disciples. You are the salt of the earth, which is another way of saying you've been created to be salt. And so if we misunderstand this first phrase and we understand it in some way that's suggestive, you can be or you should be or you should be striving after this, what ends up happening is we lose the rest of the passage. And I suspect that if you were to consider the teaching that you've heard on this passage throughout your life as a Christian, most of the focus is on the first part, what it means to be the salt of the earth. And it's meant to stir you up and encourage you to be or do something. And that the rest of the verse, the actual warning of the verse, is just really driven by and kind of pointed at and said, and don't do that. But the majority of this verse is actually a warning. Jesus isn't primarily telling us to be salty, but warning us.

That those who aren't salty will what? What will be true of those who aren't salty? If someone came up to you and read this verse and said, what's it mean to become tasteless? Like, what's that mean? We spend all of our time saying, what's it mean to be salt and light? What's it mean to be salt and light? Okay, we're going to come to that. And there's probably good things you've been taught about what it means to be salt and light. But I want to change the question and say, what does it mean to become tasteless? What's he warning us away from or against? What's he saying, hey, you should be aware of this?

Is it just some nebulous kind of bad thing that we generally should try to avoid? No, I don't think that's the case. I think, actually, Jesus is warning that those who are not salty, those who have become tasteless, he describes as being good for nothing, having failed in their most essential basic responsibilities, and they have become worthless. And as a result, they're cast out, thrown out to be trampled underfoot by men. And so this verse, if we were to describe what type of warning it is, I think it's a warning simply to say, if you don't live as a Christian, if you are not faithful, you will be cast out to hell. Now, I want to come to this in more detail about what it means to be cast out later. But I hope that in starting out this way, you can see why we would want to take away the indicative command, the you are the salt, and to make it, you can be or you should be. Because if it's you should be the salt, then you might be cast out. As opposed to, if you are not the salt, you will be cast out. You realize one's much harder, much more definite, much more intimidating. It is to me. When I read this verse, I go, oh, here are my heels and I'm back on them. If I'm not salt, I will be cast out. That's what Jesus tells me.

And what we would like to do is to live in a gray area where there's not clear and distinct lines about right and wrong, good and bad, holy and unholy. We want there to be this like, well, our intentions and our desires and our trajectories and our good and what we meant to do. It's actually what's important. But when we stand before God, those are not the things that will be judged. Whether we're Christians or not, what will be judged are our deeds. Did you do? Did you say? What did you say? What did you not say? And so in every context that we find ourselves in, we are interacting with and working out our salvation, our responsibilities to God. If we were to take marriage as an example, it's very easy in a marriage to think that when there's sin, it's sinning from husband sinning against his wife or wife sinning against their husband.

But that's not primarily what's going on here. It is a secondary truth. But the primary truth that's going on here is when the husband sins, he sins against God. When he refuses to love his wife, when he fails to love his wife, yes, he has sinned against his wife. But she's not the one who's going to judge him. God is the one who's going to judge him. And when he sinned in that way, he sinned against God. And the same is true of the wife. When the husband is harsh or whatever he's been and she feels justified in saying, You did this, and she runs her mouth. Her sin, yes, it's against God, or against her husband, but it's primarily against God. And so in whatever context we find ourselves in, Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth. Now the question that should be bearing on our mind is, well, then what am I supposed to do? What's it mean to be the salt of the earth? And we should not assume that it's some passive thing that's just true of us, right? If you had salt on the table,

would it do you any good for it just to sit there in its little shaker? No. If you want it to affect anything, what do you have to do with it? You have to put it on it, right? You have to get the thing and you have to put it on it. And so when he says you're the salt of the earth, he's saying you are to be affecting, changing, interacting with the earth. He didn't say you're the salt of your home or the salt of your family or the salt of your workplace environment. or your school, you're the salt of the earth, which is meant to communicate wherever you go and wherever you're at, you're to be salt. There is no downtime. There are no days off. There is no procrastination. I will get to it. And so God has a purpose in this world to have his gospel proclaimed, to have his truth magnified, to have his kingdom built, and it's our job to do it.

Now the question is, how? The first thing I want to say to you is, the fact that you're a Christian and you say, well, I'm a Christian. I come to church on Sunday. I've been baptized. I'm faithful. That does not mean you are being salt anywhere. It doesn't mean you're being salt. It's not a passive thing. In the same way that if you got the salt, like I said, and you set it on the table, it is not doing what salt does if it just sits there on the table. It has to be applied. And so if you're to be the salt of the earth, You have to be active as a Christian everywhere. And so we should be thinking, in what ways am I the salt of the earth? What does it mean for me to be the salt of the earth? Not, do I want to be the salt of the earth? Because if we ask that question, then the answer is, no, you don't want to be the salt of the earth, which is to choose the wide path that leads to hell. And you might feel like, man, you're putting a lot of pressure in this. I didn't expect the salt of the earth to be the sort of sermon that was going to be about hell.

But it is what the passage is about. It's a warning. We either are or we aren't being salt. And you say, well, you're unsettling me. You're creating tension in me. You want me to go to school or work or home or the holidays or wherever it is I go. And you want me to be thinking about what it means for me to be a Christian in this context. And I say, yes, you are tracking very well. That is exactly what I'm saying. Well, I don't want to feel that pressure if the salt becomes salt. then it's not good for anything. It's lost. It's worthless. Have you ever had old table salt? You use a lot of table salt. We never have old table salt. Some of you may have gotten a hold of old spices. What happens to spices as they age? They become less flavorful, right? If you were to read a recipe and it says it calls for, you know, three leaves of fresh basil, and you're like, okay, three leaves of fresh basil.

You know, and then it's like, well, if you're going to use, but if you're going to use dried basil, all of a sudden it's like you have to use way more. Why? Because it's lost its flavor. It's not as potent. And the same thing happens with salt. It can become less flavorful, less, it takes more of it to, for you to discern it, for you to notice it. And so what does it mean to be the salt of the earth? What does salt do? Well, you've probably heard that salt adds flavor or it intensifies flavor, that you're supposed to be as a seasoning, that God has scattered his people as salt throughout the earth, and their job is to add a Christian something, largely by virtue of their presence, to the world. Go out and be the salt of the earth. Go out and love Jesus. Go out and wear t-shirts or hats or listen to music that says I'm a Christian.

You've probably also heard that salt is meant to preserve or to protect things. These were common uses for salt in the ancient world when Jesus was speaking and teaching, and they are still today. Those aren't bad applications. Salt actually is meant to change the flavor or the environment in which it's found. It does preserve or protect things. One of the things that I think will be helpful to us in figuring out what it means to be the salt of the earth is to look at this sermon on the mount, this passage in other gospels, because they actually record for us other things that Jesus said, other contexts in which, or not another context, but other things that were not recorded here in Matthew. In Luke 14, in this parallel passage in verses 34 and 35, Luke says, therefore salt is good, but if the salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned?

It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is to be thrown out. And so you get the impression that there was a use for salt and that one of the uses was that it would either be thrown on the soil or it would be thrown in the manure pile. Because it says when it's lost its saltiness, when it's become tasteless, it's not good for those things anymore. And so we're left going, well, what did the salt do to the earth? Or what did the salt do to the manure pile? Why would people throw the salt on there? They weren't throwing the bad salt on there. They were throwing the good salt on there. Why would they throw salt on the ground? Why would they throw salt on the manure pile? One, to clean or to reduce the smell. If you were to pour salt on a manure pile, if you were to put it there, it would reduce the smell. It would reduce the stink. So if we could, if we would use lime nowadays for that type of thing.

But if you can hear it, I'll say to you, your job is to reduce the stink of the world. It's to be righteous. It's all of the effects of sin and filth in this world. Your job is actually to come and to mitigate and to lessen and to reduce that. But that's not the only reason that you would put salt on a manure pile. I don't know that any of you have, hardly any of you have any experience with farming. Amos, you might with your dad. What do you use manure for? Oh, somebody else knows. I heard it. Fertilizer. And so after a while, after the manure is broken down and it ends up becoming very good fertilizer, so farmers will take it out and they'll broadcast it on their fields. So what's the point of putting fertilizer on the ground? To make the things that are there grow better. Okay? So from this passage, you can say, okay, salt had two purposes on the manure pile. One was to reduce the stink, and two was to make it more potent as a fertilizer. So you're supposed to reduce...

the stink of the world, and you're supposed to make things grow. But if salt's become tasteless, it doesn't do either one of those things. And this is where it's important for us to remember that we're to be the salt of the earth, not the salt of our homes. I think many of us, if we were left to say, where are you going to put forth effort? Where do you want to see Christ formed? Where do you want to see people become Christians and be faithful to God? We'd say in our homes, in our families. But Jesus says you're the salt of the earth, that your desire and the reason you're here, at least in part, is to cause others to grow. And I think largely the reason that we don't do this work the way we should is because of the work that it requires and the sacrifice that it demands. It's not enough for you to be a consumer of God's grace or even for you to just give back exactly what you've been given. If fertilizer did that, you know, if I had a field and I decided it's growing however it's growing, I could put something on it and it could kill the field.

And you say, well, that's a bad thing to put on the field, right? It has come and leached out of the field, the life that was previously there. Don't put that on your field. What if I came to my field and I spread manure on it and it had no effect? Then you'd say, that's a waste of time and energy. The manure is not doing what it's not fertilizing. It's not doing what it's supposed to do. That fertilizer is supposed to cause growth. You're supposed to cause growth. Your job is to turn a profit, to bear fruit, so that there's something left when you're gone.

Mark also mentions this passage in chapter 9. The context of Mark mentioning it is not... It's the Sermon on the Mount, but he's got the flow of it is different. So things that come after this passage in Matthew 5 come before it in Mark 9. And so the context, what's come right before this, is Mark is warning about the dangers of hell and how to avoid it. He's talking about the millstone being tied around the neck of anyone who causes little ones to stumble. It would be better for the man never to be born than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. He's talking about if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, for it would be better for you to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye than to enter into hell with both eyes still intact. And so at the end of that, he says, for everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.

So what do we learn about salt from this passage? Well, we learn one thing about salt here that we've seen in other places, that salt purifies, salt cleans, salt reduces the stench, the odor, the filth of things. An example of that would be in hunting. If you had an animal and you wanted to have it taxidermied or you wanted to have it cared for, one of the things that you would do to preserve it after you've taken the skin off of the animal is you'd lay it open with the fur down and the flesh up. And you would cover it in salt. Lots and lots of salt. Pounds and pounds of salt. Not a little bit, but like a big, huge, thick coating. Why do they do that? Well, it's because there's bacteria. This is a living animal. Now it's dead. And there's bacteria and there's blood. There's all this stuff. And if you don't do something to kill that bacteria and something to draw out all of the moisture, what will happen is it will rot. And so you put the salt on there to clean it.

You rub it in there, and you put a bunch of it in there, and it's meant to clean it, to preserve it, to protect it. And so salt has a cleansing effect. None of us ever get salt in a wound. It hurts. Is there any benefit to having salt in a wound? Yes. It cleanses it. It cleans it. It destroys the danger, the bacteria. And so here we see he says, everyone will be salted with fire. And you realize that what he's saying here is that To be salted with fire means to be purified by fire. Fire is a purifying element in the same way that salt is. We can see that salt cleans wounds, that it removes bacteria. Fire does the same thing. If you want gold to be purified, what do you use? You use fire. If you want your dishes to be clean, what do you use? You say, well, I don't use fire. And I say, no, but you use the effect of fire, which is heat.

Intense heat. Your dishwasher only has one water line that goes to it, and it's not your cold water line. Have you ever opened a dishwasher right after it's done, had all the steam hit you in the face, and then touched something that's inside of it? What happens? Ow! Because it's hot. Why is it hot? Why doesn't it use cold water or a mixture of cold and hot water to make warm water? Why does it use hot water? Because heat cleans things. It kills the danger. It kills the bacteria, right? You can blow cold water at something, and it'll blow the little pieces of spaghetti off of the plate, but the heat sterilizes. It purifies. And so salt, like fire, both have a purifying effect. And so if salt loses its ability to purify, if it loses its ability to clean, then all you're left with is the pain. It's worthless. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do anymore. It's worth noting here that Mark says,

Jesus is speaking, Mark records, he says, everyone will be salted with fire. And the implication here is everyone will be cleansed. Everyone will have their impurities dealt with. And it will either be dealt with with salt or it will be dealt with with fire. So what is the salt in this context? Well, the salt is the word of God. That it's meant to be a cleaning agent. That when the word comes to us, it's meant to scrub us and to clean us. and that we as Christians are meant to take that salt and to apply it in the world. But to those who reject it, their filth will be dealt with another way. It'll be dealt with with fire, eternal fire, the fire of hell. Mark also gave us another example of how salt is used. He says, salt is good, but if the salt has become unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. And you're like, what's that have to do with?

We were talking about judgment. We were being warned against hell. And all of a sudden he says, be at peace with one another. Well, that's one of the applications of what it means to be the salt of the earth, to have peace in you. Having salt means that you will be at peace with one another. In John 13, 35, he says, by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Now it goes without saying, but I will say it. We are not naturally peaceful people. I've said before in sermons, it's as though we prefer to have fights and tensions. It's the thing that's familiar to us. It's the thing that's normal. When we're offended or upset or our desires get denied, our natural inclination is to be upset about it, to not be at peace, but to cause strife, to cause anger. But then the gospel comes in and the gospel says no to that. And Jesus makes peace between us and God and says, now, therefore.

you should have peace with one another. And so one of the fruits of being the salt of the earth and being a Christian is that you would be at peace with other people. Christians should not be the people in the world who are stirring up strife and causing problems all over the place. And so when you wonder what it means to be the salt of the earth, there's much more that could be said particularly, but these are good places to start. Is your testimony, your behavior, and your speech, are they a purifying influence on those around you? When you see something foul get said or done, do you step in or say something as a Christian to help clean up the mess? Or do you just go on your way saying, that's not my problem? Are you a man or a woman or a child of peace? These are the questions we should ask ourselves when it becomes, these are things we should focus on when we're asking the question, am I salt? Am I peaceful? Do people not only know that I'm a Christian, but know what it means?

To be a Christian. Because I speak and because I act. The rest of the verse, the warning that Jesus gives is this. If the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? Now that is a scary question. Because I think most of us would like to be able to say salt can be made salty again. It can be salty and then not salty and then it can gain a little bit. And it's just this back and forth thing that we really can't control or know anything about. It's just out there. But Jesus asked this question, and it's a rhetorical question. It means that if we lose our saltiness, if we aren't acting, behaving, speaking as Christians, if we've become tasteless, we can't be made salty again. And I realize that may rub you the wrong way, and you may say, well, I don't like the way you're saying that. What about repentance? And I say, okay, yes, repentance. But as a general rule of thumb, we should not live our lives thinking that the way that we live and the things that we do don't matter.

We should not just presume, I'll do the right thing next time. Because the best indicator of the future is the past. If you want to know what you'll do in that situation next time it presents itself, look at what you did last time that situation presented itself. And if your life builds a repertoire of unfaithfulness, you should not be delusion into thinking, in the future I'll be faithful. When the testimony of your past is that you're unfaithful. I think part of the difficulty here is that we want very clear and very lasting distinctions. If we ask the question, am I salt? We want a very clear yes or no, so we don't have to worry about it anymore. But here's the thing. It takes time for that to be revealed to us and to others. In the parable of the sower or the parable of the soils, you see this.

You see the Word of God being sown on the rocky path and then on the rocky soil and then in the soil with the thorns and thistles and then in the good soil. And ask, how long did it take in the soil with the thorns and thistles, how long did that seed grow before the thorns and thistles choked it out? How long before it became clear that that seed wasn't going to bear fruit? Was it real quick? No. It was real quick along the path and it was fairly quick. in the rocky soil. But then there's this other environment where it took time. Time. And you say time like weeks and months? I say no, probably time like years and decades. Time. And so the question of am I the salt of the earth is not a question that we're going to answer here today and say, check, it's been answered. I don't need to worry about that anymore. We will face opposition and difficulty and hardship in becoming or in being the salt of the earth.

If we're to bear fruit and to continue to bear fruit, we will prove that we're the salt of the earth. One word about the soils here, as which one bears fruit and which one doesn't. Do you have the impression in your mind that this good soil had no weeds? That's sort of the picture you get. If you close your eyes and you're like, okay, a rocky path, okay, I can see that. Nothing can grow there. And then you see the rocky soil and you're like, yeah, I've seen that. Nothing can grow there. And then you think of the field with the thorns and thistles, and you think, okay, well, lots of things grow there, but not all of them are good. And eventually the bad overpowers the good. But then when you come to the good soil, all of a sudden it's just pristine. And no bad things ever grow there. There's never any difficulties. Now, if that's what you think, I want you to know someone has worked very, very hard to have a field like that. Because the weeds are always growing. Always growing.

The difference between the field with thorns and thistles and the field without the thorns and thistles is the amount of effort that was put in by the landowner. That's it. That's the difference. And so to be the salt of the earth, to be the good soil that receives the seed and produces fruit means lots and lots of work, lots and lots of effort, lots and lots of weeds and opposition over a long period of time. Losing your saltiness, as Jesus warns here, is not something that usually happens all at once. but rather something that happens over the course of our lives. If that's the case, that the salt has lost its taste, Jesus says it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. To be trampled underfoot points toward hell. And the Bible is full of warnings, just like this one, that we shouldn't be in the habit of brushing off. Rather, we should square up to them and face them and hear them and receive them and let them soak in.

To suppress our fears about our eternal destiny is not godly. To say that it doesn't matter or to say that it can't be known or to say that you have nothing to do with regard to it is foolish. Now, some of you may be the type who think constantly about it and wonder, am I a Christian? Am I not a Christian? Am I salt? I don't think I'm salt. The measure here is not are you perfect or not. The standard and the expectation is that you would be perfect. But the reality is you're not perfect. And so none of us sit here and say, I am salt. I do it. I say it. I got it all figured out. Because you don't. Many times what we want is something outside of ourselves to answer this question for us. We want somebody else to say, you don't need to worry about it. You're faithful. You did this thing. These things are true about you. Don't feel the tension. But inside we go, but if you knew this is something that we work out over time.

with the Lord directly. That's why Paul tells us in Philippians to work our salvation with fear and trembling. What is it that we're supposed to fear and tremble about? What do Christians fear and tremble about? Whether they're the salt of the earth or whether they've become tasteless. Whether they're doing the works of God or whether they're avoiding the works of God. Whether their justifications are sophisticated or simplistic like a child would give. We're working these things out. We're asking these questions, and Jesus here is not passing over those things and saying, don't worry about all of that. He's saying, you will do well to consider these things. You are the salt of the earth, and you're supposed to go, I am. I'm supposed to be? How? It gives us a context and a way to process our lives.

It would be good for you and for me to live our lives and to go out this next week and say, okay, I'm supposed to be the salt of the earth. Okay, I was at the grocery store. I was at the park. I was at work. I was in that meeting, wherever I was. What did I do? Was I a Christian? Did I give glory to God in the way that I spoke? Did I speak of him? Or was I careful not to draw any attention or to say something that might upset someone else? And I realize that you would like me to resolve the tension for you and tell you, if you'll just do these few things, you don't have to worry about it. This is what it means. It's all that it means. And I can't. This is something you have to sort out in your conscience with God about what it means to be the salt of the earth and what you should say and what you should do and what you shouldn't say and what you shouldn't do. And over the course of time, you'll be able to see if you have a purifying effect, a saving effect, whether you cause growth or whether you...

leech off of the grace of God. So what should be said regarding this text to those who are not Christians? Or to who are given to sin? Who say, I'm a Christian, but I'm caught in the sin. Does this passage teach me that I can never become a Christian? Or that I can't turn away from this? No. No. That's not the message of the gospel. And so the point of this passage is not to say, you either are or you aren't, and there's nothing that can be done about it, and so you'll just have to accept it. I think many times we would like it if it was that simple. You are just an unbeliever and there's nothing that can be done about it, so just go on your merry way and do what you want, because hell's coming, but you might as well enjoy this life. That would feel like less pressure and less tension than having to be faced with our actions and our desires and the necessity of repentance. We'd rather be told, you can't repent. There's no hope for you.

So go and do what you want. That's what the unbelievers do. Eat and drink today. We eat and drink and be merry. For tomorrow, we die. They've taken the possibility of salvation and said, no, it's not for me. But they haven't taken responsibility for their rejection. They said, that was out of my hands. And so if you're here this morning and you say, you know what? I can think of numerous examples of where I have not been solved. In fact, what I find in myself is a principle against it. I don't want you to take any comfort in the fact that... there's no hope for you, which is sort of a crazy thing to say, isn't it? I don't want you to take comfort in the fact that there's no hope for you. I actually want you to repent and to become the salt of the earth. So much of Christianity today is aimed at putting away the tension of your sins and having to fight against them. All of it's aimed at putting it away. As Eric was teaching in Sunday school, I was back there biting my lip being like, I want to say something, I want to say something.

And I was talking to Eric and Daniel between Sunday school and the service, and I said, you know, pastorally, the reason I think that's so attractive, the idea of losing your salvation, is it just blurs the distinctions of whether you're a Christian or not. It reduces the pressure that you feel. Because you can just say, oh, well, I wasn't a Christian. And that reduces somehow your responsibility or the judgment, perhaps. You think, well, I couldn't help it. Why would we want to think that? Well, because we don't want to live in the reality that Christians sin. Daily, regularly, they struggle in the same ways that they did last week and last year. And so we want something to turn the pressure down. And so if you're sitting here and you're like, you know, I'm not the salt of the earth. I have not been the salt of the earth in these areas. Then I'm not saying there's no hope for you unless you refuse to repent. These are not the sort of sins that are beyond the grace of God. They're just not.

Whatever you've done or haven't done or should have done and failed at can be repented of, needs to be repented of. So what do I say at the end of it? What's the application of all of this? It's pretty simple. Be salty. Act and speak and think like Christians, realizing that that will bring you some trouble. As we finish the Beatitudes, we saw that that was the result of righteousness, that those who are righteous, who hunger and thirst after it, receive persecution. And that's no reason to stop. I said last week, I said, you know, we minimize the pressures that we face. We're like, oh, it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. And then I said, well, but it is a big deal because it ends up making us stop doing it. We become more worldly and are conformed more and more to the world because we're like, oh, it's not a big deal. When in fact, it's a big enough deal that it's changing our behavior. It's changing our priorities. I don't want anyone here to come short of the grace of God.

To be good for nothing and to be thrown out, to be trampled under the foot of men. That is not my desire. In saying this, I don't want you to be tasteless. I don't want you to be tasteless. I want you to be faithful. So be salty. Believe the truth and speak it. So much pressure in our society is simply meant to keep your mouth shut about the truth and to make you despise even believing it. And there's threats of danger and... hardship if you were to speak. But the best way to become tasteless is to become silent. Now, am I arguing that Christians should be a bunch of loudmouths out running their mouth all the time? No. I would be much happier with simple, faithful obedience, loving the people that God's put in your life with the truth of God over time. If you want to grow in your faith, you say, I weaken my faith. I'm immature as a man. I'm immature as a woman.

Speak and live the truth. And it will make you grow because you'll realize you don't have the strength or the wisdom or the knowledge in you to persevere. And you say, Lord, help me. Be faithful. I've started something. I don't have the strength to finish. That's what marriage is. You get married, you have no idea. You have no idea what you're getting into. You have a baby. You have no idea. No clue what it's going to be like. And then another baby. Then you hit 30 or 40 or 50. It's like you don't know. You just don't know. And so you can either take that uncertainty and say, I'm not going to get in situations where I'm out of my depth. Or you can say, I'm going to go proceed in faith and I'm going to trust that God will meet with me and provide for me the things I need when I need them. Words to speak. And so I want you to be the salt of the earth. I want us to be the salt of the earth. I want our church to bear fruit.

And the way to do that is for us to unite ourselves to Christ and to repent of trying to hide our allegiance to him, which is what the next section, being the light of the world, is about. The teaser, the trailer for next week is, what does it mean to put a basket over the light? But to be ashamed of it. So I don't want you to be ashamed of it. We're going to talk more about that next week, to suppress the truth, to hide the truth, to bury the truth. Be the salt of the earth. Speak in your classrooms. Speak in your workplaces. Speak at the grocery store and on your kids' soccer teams and wherever it is you're at. Love the people around you. They may get upset at you, but their frustration may lead them to faith. I think oftentimes we think that if we're going to speak the truth, we want to do it in such a way that it's not offensive and that the people never get angry at us and that they come to faith without there being any friction. It doesn't work like that.

It doesn't work like that. To someone who's been committed to the ways of this world, to come to them and say, no, you've been living your life as though you are the supreme decision maker, that you are the authority and that you know best. What it means to become a Christian is to say, you're an idiot, and that God is the one who made you and now directs you how to live. He's the one who dictates these things to you, and your job is to come under his lordship, not to continue to be your own lord. That creates friction. Because you talk about what's going on in their life or the things that they're doing or the things that they've done or the things that they're pursuing and you say, that's not godly. That's not what God made you for. Who are you to say that to me? A Christian. A Christian. That's the answer. I'm to say that to you because I'm a Christian. And I love you. Now it's true that that can be said poorly or that can be said well. But what can't be presumed is that there's a perfect way to say it that removes all of the offense. Because anytime someone is told no,

They don't like it. I don't like it. You don't like it. Unbelievers don't like it. We don't like to be told, no, you're doing something wrong. You need to do something different. So be the salt of the earth. Speak and act as Christians. It doesn't have to be a big, long, drawn-out thing. It can be a by-the-way comment. Unite yourself to Christ. Repent of your tastelessness and love God and your neighbor. Speak to them. Care for them. Do that in your family. That's what it means to be the salt of the earth, to preserve, to purify, to build and grow, to bring about peace. That's what a Christian is. That's what a Christian does. Let's pray.