inspiration, the light that Sharon done. Wilson, I went out to dinner this week with our good friends, the Smallmans and the Arnold's and while we were having dinner together we were talking about a number of things but one of the topics of conversation that Arnie brought up was relating to our non-Christian friends and what it's like to be in relationship with unbelievers and he was sharing his frustration with how often people sort of hold him at arm's length when they know that he's a religious person. And more often than not the kind of comment that he gets is, you know, someone will make a statement and use an off-colored remark or a curse word and then they'll go, whoops excuse me, I forgot you were here. The religious guy is in the room, I don't want to offend you. And it's obvious that their behavior changes when they're around a religious person. And I, you know, I immediately said, you know, that's my life story as a pastor. When you're a pastor you're immediately labeled as, you know, a religious guy and people's behavior is different around you. I keep begging Sandy Lockert's husband Calvin to take me to one of his card games and he's always saying, the very pastor, the language there is not appropriate for you. I can't win, you know, a little league, the barbershop, you know, anywhere I go as soon as I walk in, you know, everybody puts on a different posture, the preachers here, the religious guy. There's a certain sense in which that's good, you know, people recognize that there's something different. But it becomes frustrating when that's their only response. When the only thing that's different about you from other folks is that you're religious, that people need to maybe behave differently around you. And as I've been thinking about people in our neighborhood that I have gotten to know over the past three years, folks that I coach little league with, friends at the barbershop, the ladies at the bank, others that I have engaged in relationship with in the neighborhood, the families of the children in shining lights. I've become increasingly burdened that my life would have more of an impact on them than just the fact that they wouldn't cuss around me. How does that come about? How does it come about that our church would begin to have such an impact on our neighborhood that we would see a radical change in more ways than just the conversation. I've been burdened that God would bring this about. And so as I consider that this week, I have come to a passage which is very, very familiar to all of us. A passage which, it's hard to preach a passage like this because probably everyone in this room who has been a part of a church for any length of time in their life has heard a sermon on this. And so it's a challenge to make it fresh and make it to really apply to our lives today. But I believe that that's what God would have us do to look afresh at this passage from Matthew chapter 5 verses 13 through 16. If you will, if you have a Bible and you want to turn with me there, and let's listen together to God's word, Matthew chapter 5 verses 13 through 16. 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. You are the light of the world. The city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on a stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we ask this morning that you would speak to us through your word. Father, you know my sinful heart. You know that I am a weak and broken vessel. But I thank you and praise you that you choose the foolishness of men to show forth your wisdom. You use the weakness of men to show forth your strength. And I pray, Father, that by your power and by your spirit, you would use a weak and broken vessel, such as me, to proclaim your truth. I pray that your word by the power of your spirit would touch our hearts this morning. That you would cause the lane to walk, the depth of here, and the blind to see. And that you would even raise from the dead those who are not in Christ this morning we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. The context of this passage that we find this morning is a very familiar context. Again, it's the sermon on the Mount. And the Lord Jesus has been teaching what it is to be a follower of Christ, what it looks like when you are following after the Lord Jesus. And the Beatitudes in many ways spell out some of the details of the Christian life and how that affects those who follow after Him. And now, in a certain sense, verses 13-16 are a summary of the Beatitudes. Another way of saying all of these things, blessed are you can be summed up and seen in action as two things. Salt and the light. I want us to consider this morning for a time together. What it means for us in the 21st century to be salt and light, particularly as it relates to us at Abbott, is it relates to those of us who have our faith in Christ, and as we have a desire to reach our community for Christ. You see, again, we talked a little bit last week when we were talking about moth and rust corrupting and how we lost something in the translation there, or in the passing of time there because we live in a world where we have all sorts of means of preserving and caring for things that would otherwise decay. Well, again, when we look at something like salt, I would venture to say, if I ask everyone this congregation, what's the purpose of salt? 99.9% of you would say salt is a seasoning, it's a flavoring. And so when we hear that, we think, well, to be salt in the world is to be flavoring. And that's something like what I was talking about earlier. As I'm a flavoring in the community, people realize I better watch my tongue around the preacher because he's savoring our context here in our conversations. But the original audience that Jesus was speaking to had such a more powerful understanding of the concept of salt, not just the concept, the reality of salt. It was a major, major aspect of their life. You see salt was used very differently in Jesus' day. It was used primarily as a preservative and as an antiseptic. We went to see the new Tom Hanks movie the other night cast away. And there's a scene where he's trying to escape the island on the boat and the waves throw him into the coral and his leg is torn to pieces on the coral. Afterwards, I was saying that he didn't have triple antibiotic cream on the island. Wouldn't that cause a horrible decay in his leg? Wouldn't it just cause real sickness? And everybody would be like, you big dummy, he was in salt water, salt and antiseptic. That would help heal. He would be fine with salt water. I'm not even thinking of salt as an antiseptic. But as an antiseptic, what does it do? It kills germs and it helps preserve and prevent decay. As I studied this this week, the big word that was used over and over in all the commentaries was putrification. The delay is putrification, you see. Salt has a preservative effect. And since there were no refrigerators in those days, since there was no triple antibiotic cream, salt was a major, major factor in their lives. Killing germs, preserving, stopping the putrification or the decaying process that was so prevalent around them. Now Jesus says to his audience and he says to us, you are the salt of the earth. He's not talking about seasoning a salad. He's talking about preserving and preventing decay. Now when we hear this, there are certain things we can assume. First of all, if we're the salt of the earth in this context, the earth is going bad. The earth is decaying. It's undergoing the process of putrification. You see that's one of the laws of thermodynamics that all things tend towards disorder, all things tend toward destruction and decay. We know it from looking at our own bodies. Any of us that are getting to be my age, this is a big year for me, 40 years old this year. And I'm beginning to see the putrification process advance more rapidly in my own life. We know it as we grow older that our bodies begin to decay. So what do we do? We try to preserve them. I go out and run 18, 20 miles to try and preserve it. But what am I actually doing? I'm just delaying the decay. No matter what I do, my body is going to decay. One day it's going to die and go into the grave and expire completely. But in our bodies, we see the process of decay. We see it in our society. We see it in our society so prevalently to decay. You didn't have to watch the evening news. I have quit watching news on television. Read the newspaper, listen to the radio. Read the news on the internet. Or just live in this world and you see the fact that our society is decaying. If you're my age or younger, the statistics say that it's more than likely your parents are divorced. If we look around our neighborhood, the community that we live in, the children that come to our Shining Lights program, the vast majority of them are not being raised by a mother and a father together in the home. We read the statistics about sexual abuse. We're staggering. Statistics tell us today that one out of every three women and one out of every four men at some point in their life have been sexually abused. We think about the violence and the crime in our community and our neighborhood. And probably more of us than not have been in some way been affected by crime. I used to think that I was somehow special and not subject to that. Just a couple weeks ago somebody broke in and tried to steal my car, tore the ignition out. We see the society in which we live in the world around us decaying. Why is that? It's not because society as an institution in and of itself is inherently decaying. It's because society is made up of human beings with corrupt hearts, hearts that are decaying. So it leads us in to ask if we're corrupt human beings with decaying hearts ourselves, how can we be salt and light in this world? How can we become an antiseptic or a preservative to stop the decay and the futureification of our society? What we look to the example, we look to the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and we see Him becoming salt in His incarnation. Salt only works as a preservative. If you go back again to the ancient Near East and the time of Jesus, when they had meat that they wanted to preserve, they took the salt and they rubbed and they rubbed and they rubbed the salt into the meat to preserve it. And that's the only way that salt can act as a preservative if it's rubbed into the thing that is trying to be preserved. And God looks at the world and its corruption having fallen into sin and knows that it needs salt rubbed into it and He sends his own son, He sends Jesus who shows Himself to be salt. That was God's plan for saving and redeeming the world. Now imagine on the other hand, how silly it would have been if God were sitting in heaven, sees Adam and all of mankind with Him falling into sin and He calls the meeting and says, alright, we're going to have to do something about this decaying corrupt world. So Jesus, I want you to come up with a plan to get radio and television stations to proclaim the message of salvation throughout the world. And Holy Spirit, I want you to set up a website so that people can read the message of salvation. Archangel Gabriel, get billboards and put them up all over the countries of the world so that people can see and hear the message that they need to be saved. That sounds ridiculous and of course it is. The plan that was necessary for salvation was the incarnation for Jesus to come into the world like salt being rubbed into it. That was one of the reasons Phyllis and I chose the Christmas card that we sent out this year. I love the message was very simply taken from Eugene Peterson's translation of the New Testament, the message. And it said the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. You see Jesus, God Himself came and lived among us. He lived with the prostitutes. He lived with the lepers. He lived with the sinners, the tax collectors, the publicans, the hated elements of society. Jesus came in and touched them and rubbed elbows with them and became a part of those around him. He was salt rubbed in to that thing that needed antiseptic, that needed preserving, that needed saving. You see one of the problems we have in the church today, one of the problems that we have with Christianity in general, is that instead of becoming salt and becoming involved and becoming rubbed into the society in which we live, we decide to remove ourselves from it. As soon as there are problems, as soon as there are sin, as soon as there are things that make us uncomfortable, we pull back. One of the reasons that there is such a cultural divide in our country today is that the church has failed to be salt and light in the world. You see, instead of coming in and being salt, the church has tended to stand outside of the corruption and throw grenades into the corruption. The church has tended to remove itself and to decry the citizens of the world and yet keep itself at arm's link. The church has tended to protest, pick it, and otherwise yell at and scream and decry the sins of the world, hoping that somehow that will bring about change, but the reality is that it doesn't. It only inoculates those who you are decrying against you. You see, when you decry something, when you yell at that thing, when you scream at that thing, when you protest against that thing, you've lost that thing. I wonder how many homosexuals in our country have been won over by the church that pickets with signs that says, God hates fag. I doubt that any have come to know Christ through that message. When they're decried, when they're screamed at, when they're protested against, we've lost the opportunity to be salt to them. The same is true as we decry the abortion in our country. Some of you know the name Norma McCorvey. Norma McCorvey was the woman in the row versus Wade case when all the way to the Supreme Court, which made abortion legal in our country. And for a while, she hated those who were in the pro-life movement because of the anger and the hatred and the bow that was yelled and screamed at clinics and protests. And she wrote a book called I Am Row and the importance of freedom of choice. And then one day, instead of protesting, instead of picketing, some pro-lifers moved in next door to the abortion clinic where she worked. And instead of yelling and screaming at Norma McCorvey, they begin to love her. As a matter of fact, it was a small girl whose mother volunteered in the pro-life clinic who by her love reached Norma McCorvey for Christ. Norma McCorvey has written a new book, a second autobiography entitled One by Love, by a little girl, by individuals who moved in to the neighborhood. Who moved in and gave of their lives, didn't stand outside throwing bombs, didn't stand outside waving pictures. But entered in to her life and won her to Christ. That's why I'm so thankful for the ministry of the Greater Baltimore Crisis Pregnancy Center that has moved into our neighborhood across the street. Moving in in a tangible way, providing help by loving and serving and being salt in the community. That is how we become salt. That is how we become light by moving in and serving. There's one other aspect though before I move on to light about salt that I discovered this week as I studied. There's a very interesting obscure passage in Numbers, chapter 18, verse 19, that talks about a covenant of salt. The scholars debate back and forth what that has to do with and there are a number of mentions of a covenant of salt. And no one's quite sure what to do with it. But if you study the ancient Near East and even the Arabic world today still, a covenant of salt has to do with a pledge of friendship, a commitment to one another and the confirming of a path. It's said that even if the worst of enemies sit down together at a meal and share in a meal with food that is preserved in salt, that they are bound to one another for life. That's the kind of commitment and involvement in life that it takes, making a covenant of salt. You see people are one to Christ because of incarnation, because of entering into relationship, because of becoming involved. People are not one to Christ because of radio programs or television shows or billboards or tracks or anything else. They're one to Christ because someone loves them because someone cares for them because someone becomes salt in their life. You see that's the message of Christ. That's the life of Jesus. He moved in to the neighborhood. He moved in and he calls us to do the same. When we move in, we have to be seen and that leads us to the second thing, which is light. You see a world that's living in darkness is desperate for light. That was another thing that I noticed in watching this movie cast away. Tom Hanks is stranded on this island. When the sun goes down, he's in pitch darkness. You can't see and he needs something and eventually he finds a flashlight. It's precious to him as long as it lasts before the batteries go out because the light enables him to see darkness. That's what we need to be to a dark world enabling them to see. The Apostle Paul ties light to service in a very powerful way and second Corinthians chapter four verses five and six, he says this. For we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus sake. For God who said let light shine out of darkness made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. See for Paul being light meant being a servant, being a servant for the sake of Jesus and that's what we are called to do. You see quite often the church doesn't have a voice and cannot speak to the sins of the world and cannot speak to those who are on the outside because we've never shown love and we've never served. It'd be interesting to know how many of this morning know who Paul Crouch is. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands but I would doubt very many of you know who he is. Paul Crouch is a media magnet. He owns over 150 Christian television stations. I would bet 99% of the people in our culture today have no idea who Paul Crouch is. But if I were to ask you who Mother Teresa is, how many people do you suppose would know? What's the difference? One of those persons was committed to service. One of those persons gave their life to touching the lepers, to feeding the hungry, to bathing those who couldn't bathe themselves, to cleaning out bed pans, and doing the work that no one else dared to do. And in a life of service a life committed to Jesus became a light to the world. It didn't become famous by having radio stations, TV ministries, writing books, preaching sermons. She became known worldwide by giving her life and service. That's the way we become salt and light. That's the way we win others to Christ. If we want to win homosexual community to Christ we have to be willing to serve them. We want to win the abortion doctor to Christ. If we want to win those and the abortion movement to Christ we have to humble ourselves and serve them. That's what the incarnation of Jesus was all about. The scriptures tell us that Jesus did not come to be served but to serve. And to give his life is a ransom for many. It summed up so well in that very familiar passage in Philippians chapter 2 verses 5-11 says, your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. Who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of the servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every time confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. You see Jesus was rubbed in to our lives. He was rubbed in to the society, the culture, the world. He became a preservative. He became the antiseptic. He became the saving one, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And if we want our neighbors, if we want our friends, if we want our co-workers, if we want our family to see us as more than just a religious person who we shouldn't cut around, then we need to give ourselves away. We need to humble ourselves. We need to serve and be salt and light as Jesus has called us to be. Our great God and Heavenly Father, we pray and ask this morning that you would indeed make us your children salt and light in this world. As we look at the decay of our society, as we look at the godless nature of the world around us, we pray Heavenly Father that you would enable us by your spirit to be salt and light. That we would not become enemies of the culture but that we would become servants, modeling for them the life of Christ and the message of salvation that is through the cross, through his giving up of his own life that we might have life. Working our hearts today to make us salt and light we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.