Warning To The Worthless - Matthew 5:13 Series

Matthew 5:13-19 "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. 14 "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Introduction

This is a dark world

I read this week about a 16-year-old girl in Bangladesh who was raped by one of the men in her village. She ended up getting pregnant from the rape. The Muslim leaders of that village did nothing to punish the rapist, but they sentenced this 16-year-old girl to one hundred one lashes for getting pregnant out of wedlock. They are going to brutally beat this girl for conceiving while being raped. And I could read you a whole lot of other headlines from the news that would make your blood boil just as much. We live in a dark, depraved world, and God’s solution to that darkness is light – and salt.

What is salt and light?

If you ask any Christian, “What exactly is to be our relationship with the hostile, unbelieving world?” you would get the same answer – we are to be salt and light. But what does that mean? What exactly is saltiness? Some people seem to think the way to function as salt and light is to complain about the darkness. You turn on the news, you hear about the darkness of this world, and you start going off about how those people are bunch of stupid idiots. “This country is going down the tubes thanks to those morons. The President is an imbecile, the Congress is corrupt, the Supreme Court is trashing the Constitution, the Governor, the Mayor, city council, the police, the dog catcher – they’re all a bunch of meatheads…” – and you just complain about it. Is that what it means to be salt? Are you going to arrive on Judgment Day and hear the Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You really complained a lot about the darkness in the world – good job! That’s what I call salt and light, here’s your reward…”?

Some people say, “Stop complaining and get involved in the political process so you can have some influence.” Is that what saltiness means – for Christians to gain control of the political system, and get moral laws passed? Should we focus on protests or activism? What about other methods? Should we work on getting Christian movies produced? Should we use music to impact the world? Should we get some famous celebrities to endorse Christianity on TV? What exactly is saltiness and light? What is our relationship with this world supposed to be like? And what should our ultimate goal be as we influence the culture?

Two temptations – withdraw or conform

We are studying verse-by-verse through the greatest sermon ever preached – the Sermon on the Mount. The past twelve weeks we spent in the amazing introduction Jesus gave for that sermon – the beatitudes. The King begins the sermon by pronouncing eight blessings on the citizens of His kingdom. And when He gets to the eighth one He makes that a double. Jesus pronounces a double blessing on those who are persecuted by the world for His sake.

You are double blessed if you get persecuted for righteousness. But Jesus is not content to just leave it at that, because He knows persecution brings with it some spiritual dangers. There are two temptations we will face when we are persecuted for righteousness. Whenever we suffer our first impulse is to put an end to the suffering. And if you are suffering because of righteousness and you want the suffering to end you have two options – either stop being so righteous, or hide your righteousness. Becoming less righteous – we will call that compromise. And hiding your righteousness from the world – we will call that withdrawal. One is movement toward the world and the other is movement away from the world.

The compromiser solves the problem of persecution by just becoming more like the world. If they are going to laugh at you for not swearing and joining in dirty jokes, you can get out of that by compromising your standards and joining in with them in their filthiness. Make your language a little more course, laugh at their jokes – see if you can fit in. Eliminate just enough righteousness out of your life so they will like you. Or, if you do not want to compromise, then just withdraw from the world so they cannot see your righteousness.