The Shocking Meaning Behind This Biblical Parable Few People Know About

[Music] you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world and in both cases that is not by saying anything or by doing anything but by being something salt affects its environment simply by being what it is and light affects its environment by being simply what it is not by saying or doing anything and if we're going to be salt light it's not by a lot of talk or even a lot of action that we're going to be Sal and light it's by being totally different from our environment and so different that

we affect it and it is Luke's gospel that tells us what Jesus meant when he said you are the salt of the earth Matthew's gospel doesn't Define it it just says you are the salt of the earth and that allows the preacher preaching from Matthew by itself to put any meaning he likes into it and unfortunately what we do is we put our own experience of salt into the meaning we think of salt as either a flavoring or a preservative and almost every sermon I've heard on you or the salt of the earth talks about

flavoring or preservative that somehow a little sprinkling of Christians makes the atmosphere sweeter or somehow we manage to be the Museum of society and in Luke's gospel Jesus defines what he means he says if the salt loses its saltness it is no good either for the field or the dungill and this tells you what salt was used for in the ancient world it was scraped up from the shores of the Dead Sea which as you probably know is 28% salts in solution now it's not pure sodium chloride NAC it is a mixture of various salts

there are all kinds of different salts there and one of the main ones is potassium chloride potach if you're a gardener then you know that every plant needs three kinds of fertilizer it needs phosphate to develop the roots it needs nitrates to develop the leaves and it needs potach to develop the flowers and fruit and a balanced fertilizer will include all those three and so the salt that was scraped up from the Dead Sea was widely used as a fertilizer largely because of the potach in it there were other things too magnesium bromide there are

all kinds of major salts in the Dead Sea there is also sodium chloride quite a lot and that of course was used in the kitchen but Jesus is thinking about its use as a fertilizer he said on the soil and the word soil there is exactly the same as the word Earth in Matthew the salt of the earth the salt of the soil the fertilizer that you put on the soil to make good things grow and then he mentioned the dungill that was a reference the word there is a word for not animal manure but

human manure he's now into the backyard they simply had a heap of dirt at the bottom of the yard you went and emptied your bowels at the bottom of the yard and then by the side of the dirt was a box full of salt from the Dead Sea and you put a handful of that on your dirt and that in fact was a disinfectant a very simple disinfectant to stop the spread of things you didn't want to grow now those two put together give you a negative and a positive influence of salt that it promoted

the growth of good things that you wanted to grow and it inhibited the spread of bad things that you didn't want to grow it is a vivid picture and Christians are to be the salt of the soil here you've got a very clear Vivid picture Jesus was always using very familiar pictures from ordinary life and using them to illustrate profound truth you are the salt of the soil you are the people who will stop bad things growing and spreading and who will promote the growth of good things that are wanted there now that's a vivid

picture and you are that salt not by saying anything and not by doing anything but by being totally different from the environment and it's as simple as that in the kitchen a sprinkling will do a little salt in the soup and that's enough but as a fertilizer or a disinfectant you need a considerable amount before the effect shows you need handfuls in both cases a little sprinkling on the soil will not do a thing and therefore the very concept of being salt in society Demands a certain proportion of that Society being Christian being different being

salt and the simple fact is we have not got enough salt it is as simple as that and that is why social trends are going the wrong way and there's no way it can be reversed until there is a sufficient amount of salt to do the trick in other words we might be able to win an occasional battle by lobbying and by protesting but we will lose the or while there is an insufficient amount of salt and you can apply this in any situation and while you read the papers and decry what's happening in society

it all shrieks at me we no longer have enough salt in this country we once had but we no longer have and we can't expect the trends to reverse until we do now how much do we need now this is where I've got some good news for you that in fact when in any Community or Society there is 5% salt the social trends reverse for the better and it's not by anything that 5% are saying or doing but just by being 5% until we are producing enough salt to save a society we're going to continue

to work in a situation that's going downhill and where incidentally it becomes increasingly difficult to be a Christian because the tide is running hard against us at the moment and we'll continue to do so well now that's the quantitative aspect of salt sprinkling is no good we need shovel fulls and we haven't got them the second aspect is the aspect not only of amount but of distribution of Distribution Salt is no use in the box or the salt Celler it has got to be in direct contact with the dirt before it op operates in other

words it operates by presence and not absence and as long as salt is locked up in a meeting like this we cannot be salt of the earth this morning we just can't do it because we're out of contact with the dirt and therefore distribution we need first of all 5% but if that 5% were all locked up in Christian schools and in Suburban churches it would not be salt it's got to be in among the dirt it's got to be in direct physical contact if it's going to operate in a factory where there's a 5%

Christian presence the language changes without anybody saying anything think of your street or the place where you work don't Grumble because you're in direct contact with the dirt that's precisely where salt can act but it does need a 5% presence and there is a disturbing attitude among Christians to try and get out of that dirt and to get into a Christian situation but I remember a girl coming to me and saying isn't it wonderful she said I'm the only Christian in the office where I work and she said it's so hard but she said I've

seen an advertisement for a Christian firm and they they want someone and I'm qualified for the job and I've been accepted in a Christian firm she was looking forward to starting the day with prayer and all the rest of it you know and going to work in a firm where everybody was Christian and she saw my face and she said what's the matter I said you just told me that you were the only Christian in the office where you worked and now they have no contact with Jesus I want that to be an encouragement to

some of you to stay right where you are or to put it in Bible terms to remain in the vocation in which you were called cuz God called you right there cuz he wanted some salt right there better to pray that more Christians will join you in that situation until you get the 5% then run away and join a Christian outfit we need salt in national government local government we need salt in sport distribution of salt is very very important and the more we shrink back into Christian ghettos the less that salt can operate it

can only operate in direct contact with the dirt the third aspect of salt and perhaps the most important for us is the aspect of quality you see salt is needed in a certain amount in any given situation it is also needed to be in direct physical contact with the situation it's going to influence but thirdly it must be salty and Jesus talked about salt losing its Savor now how can sodium chloride lose its salty quality the answer is it cannot it is a physical impossibility and yet it must must have happened in Jesus day for

him to be able to talk about it he said if the salt has lost its Savor it's no good for anything and Men throw it in the street which is where they threw all their rubbish and it was trotten under foot trodden into the dirt that's what happens to dirt in the Middle East or to rubbish now how could salt lose its Savor a very simple way not by ceasing to be sodium chloride but by being adulterated with other substances and a clever salt salt dealer would scrape up plenty of sand with the salt from

the Dead Sea Shores and so a lot of it was not salt at all that's the only way in which salt can lose its saltness by having too much other stuff mixed in with it and so it loses its quality and any housewife who bought adulterated salt that was half sand would throw it out of the door into the street and men would walk it back into the dirt from which it came now the lesson of that is pretty obvious Christians will only influence the world if they're different from it somebody said of the church

the Lifeboat should be in the sea but when the sea gets in the Lifeboat you're in trouble and in fact our real situation is is not just that we don't have enough salt but that the salt we do have is losing its saltness very very rapidly by being adulterated by having too much of the humanist secularist society around us getting right in among Christians because the pressure is enormous to conform well now it therefore can lose its Savor and Jesus said if it does all it will do will produce contempt in men they will treat

it with disgust so we have the rather sad spectacle of Christians trying to be to quote the Archbishop of Canterbury we must be credible to our contemporary generation we called to be credible or we called to be different that's the real issue the feeling we've got to be with it we've got to be one of the boys we've got to go along with contemporary Society or we'll lose them that is when the salt loses its soul nness and in fact it's not the way to save Society it's the way to follow it we should be

leading Society into a better way not following their way 30 years after them and then Jesus said something which I don't think people have taken too seriously he said if the salt loses its saltness there's no way it can be restored wherewith shall it be salted again now that's important once you lose your saltness you can't get it back again once you've lost when an individual Christian loses their reputation almost impossible to get it back again once salt loses saltness wherewith shall it be salted it's gone for good now then so what is saltness well

we've got to go back to the Beatitudes and when you read those Beatitudes properly they are the exact opposite of the attitudes of the world in which we have to live and move to be poor in spirit is to be despised by the world it means to lack self-confidence to the point where you say God if you don't help me I can't do it now the world admires self-confidence people who are proud in spirit people who stand up for themselves people say I can do this poor in spirit is the exact opposite it's to say

hey this is Way Beyond me it's the opposite of self-confidence it's God confidence but it's a lack of self confidence to be mourning in a world that loves to be happy and jovial and joking to weep when others laugh to be meek the world I'm afraid is an aggressive competitive meritocracy and meek people are not going to get very far people who can be pushed around and then hunger and thirst for righteousness that means those whose top ambition is to live right not to live rich but to live right that's their major ambition in life

that kind of person will be salt not the person whose ambition it is to be famous or powerful or wealthy to be merciful in a competitive cruel opportunist world to be merciful to give others a chance to be pure in heart not only means to be clean in desires it means to be unmixed in motives not to have ulterior motives to be motivated by Simple Pure motives in what you do in your career and to be peacemakers rather than Fighters now Jesus was a realist and when he outlined the character of salt in this way

he realized he knew from his own experience as well that this was the shest way to be persecuted which is why he adds an extra beatitude blessed are you when you are persecuted when people say all kinds of bad things about you and he knew that Saying sticks and stones hurt your bones but names don't hurt at all that's one of the most untrue Proverbs that's ever been coined what people say does hurt hurts deeply and Jesus said blessed are you when people say all manner of evil against you because if you're going to be

assult in your situation this is certain to happen people will not believe that you have unmixed motives you can't believe you're doing it for the right reasons they'll try and Satan was ever the slanderer and the accuser of the Brethren so Jesus said if you're going to be salt it's going to be tough it will not pay in this world it will in the next great is your reward in heaven which means you really have to have faith to believe your reward is going to be big because you're not going to see it in this

world so you better accept that but it's going to be pretty big in the next depends where you want your reward said Jesus the choice is contempt what a choice contempt or hatred you either are good salt in which case you'll get contempt sorry hatred or your bad salt and you lose your salt in which case you get contempt so I tell you a Christian loses every way in this world but if you're real Salt there's a great reward for you in the next now what about light light also has its negative and its positive

aspects its negative aspect is to expose bad ways to show people up and that's not the way to popularity either but it also has a positive function in exhibiting the right way the better way so its negative aspect is to show up bad ways the positive aspect is to exhibit a better way neither way will be popular again now this is the only thing Jesus ever said about himself and his disciples he said I am the light of the world you are the light of the world he didn't say I am the salt of the

earth but he did say I am the light of the world and he said you are too and the occasion on which he said it is fascinating it is in the context of the woman taken in adultery a story which you probably have never understood it is a Jewish story as the Bible is a Jewish book happy are you if you've a Jewish friend to teach you the scripture because a Jew understands it now you see this is the situation they have caught a woman in the very Act of adultery so they brought him to

Jesus knowing that the law of Moses said she must be stoned and knowing that Jesus if he said Stone her would go against the Roman law which forbad execution by Jews or if he said don't Stone her then he was going against the law of Moses in other words they trapped him between the law of Rome and the law of Moses do you see it is perfectly true that the law of Moses said she must be stoned so what did Jesus do he wrote with his finger in the dust now to a Jew that means

one thing that's a claim to be God it's a claim to be the one who wrote The 10 Commandments with his finger on the stone was Jesus saying I wrote that law now Jews would come to that conclusion we don't when we're hear it read in church because we're not Jewish a finger writing I hear preachers say now what did Jesus write that's not the point in a vivid act he's claiming to be responsible for that law as he did all the way through the sem on the mountain incidentally Moses but I say unto you

this is what I meant when I gave that law this was my intention behind it and then Jesus reminded them of another law of Moses which they'd forgotten and that is it's a very simple law it says nobody can be a witness in a criminal charge if they have ever committed the same crime so when Jesus said he that is without sin let him throw the first stone he did not mean you've got to be 100% morally perfect before you can punish anyone that's how most Gentiles take it uh but you see that would rule

out parents punishing children or police punish it would rule out all the Law Courts cuz no judge is without sin but he was re quoting the law that said if you have never committed adultery you can be a witness in this case that's when they began to go away one by one beginning with the oldest The Young Ones tried to Brazen it out but even they had to admit that they' done it so in fact the Witnesses were dismissed on the basis of the law do you follow me then he looked up he said where

are your accusers where are the witnesses they all gone yes they're all gone now then another point of the law was that there had to be Witnesses two or three and of course the case had to be dropped Jesus said neither do I condemn you no just because he was not a witness and there were no other Witnesses case dismissed neither do I condemn you but he said don't do it again I might not be around to defend you if you get into trouble do get Jesus as your lawyer I mean it is a brilliant

he was showing I know the law better than you do and I'm going to use the very law of Moses to sort out this situation isn't it it's an amazing story but when she'd gone and notice he said now don't do it again cuz Mercy is not offered to us to go back into sin but to stop doing it he then said to the crowd that had gathered I am the light of the world and he who follows me he won't walk in darkness but he'll have the light of life now that tells us a

profound truth about what light is meant to be it is not what we say or do it's what we are what he's saying is that woman would never have got into that situation if she'd followed me cuz that's a situation of Darkness moral darkness and the man with her and all the men who accused it they were all living in darkness and if you follow me you don't get into that kind of a mess it's really a very simple situation but he had actually shown them all up hadn't he he'd shown them all up expose

their bad ways and exhibited the better way don't do it again don't sin anymore now then the only action that we have to do as light but put ourselves on a lampstand in other words there is a responsibility deliberately to put yourself in public view now that's a difficult thing for Christians to do because uh hiding your light is no use to anybody else you may be shining by yourself but that's not going to help anyone else now then what is it that we have to let Shine the answer is Christians are to be seen

for having a higher standard of living than everybody else but not in material ways in moral ways a higher moral standard of living is what Jesus meant when he said let your light shine before men that they may see your good actions and by good he didn't mean doing good he meant being good and he then proceeds to spell it out in one sphere after another and he raised moral standards higher than anybody has ever dead to raise them there is no ethical teacher in the whole of human history dead to say what Jesus said

in The Sermon on the Mount and that is why many dismiss it as impracticable and idealistic and they say it's impossible for anyone to live like that and it is it is not natural for anyone to live like this it is Supernatural which is why Jesus said let them see how you live and glorify your father in Heaven they will say that's not natural it's not natural let me take one example from The Sermon on the Mount Jesus forbad in fact he spent more time on this sin than any other in the sun of the

mount he forbad anybody in the Kingdom to worry and this is why you never see a Christian [Music] worried now why is it why is it that whenever I say that it's treated as a joke because Jesus didn't mean it as a joke we treat it like that because we are laughing it off but he said worry is forbidden In My Kingdom because it is Al liable on my heavenly father it is saying your father in Heaven cares more about his animals his pets and his garden than he does about his kids he clothes the

lies of the field and he looks after the birds of the air but me I'm his child I have to worry now do you see what a liable that is why did he spend more time on that than anything else in the sermon on the m not cuz he knows how natural it is to worry it is Supernatural not to do you understand what an influence it would be if people said why is it Christians never worry in a world that everybody's having to worry about the mortgage and everything else why is it Christians not

worried boy that would be an opener for a testimony wouldn't it why are you never worried well I don't need to now Jesus said that will be light in the world that you of all people as things get worse and they're going to get worse you're at peace my father's running this world and I'm his child and therefore he will see that I always have enough to eat and enough to wear that's the best welfare state in the world he will not see that I get everything I want but everything I need right till my

dying day who wouldn't want to be in a Ware State like that when the government is scrapping every other bit of welfare you see Jesus fixed moral standards higher than anybody else but what he then did was he lifted people to the standard what the church in our country is doing today is lowering the standards to meet the people now that's not going to be light of salt do you follow me and Jesus was quite clear that being light is going to be terribly unpopular because he went on to say I the light of the

world he went on to say and because I am you hate me and you want to kill me and he knew perfectly well that being light is a very costly thing and standing for what you know to be right and true will be painful and profoundly unpopular and yet that is what it is to be light in the world of Darkness but I hope I've left you with a sense that Salt and Light are not what you do or say but what you are and they only operate when you're in direct physical contact with a

world that's in darkness and dirt and we need a certain amount if it's going to operate and we need above all a quality of salt and a quality of light that is totally different from the society in which God has placed us I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end sayth the Lord Lord which is and which was and which is to come the almighty he which testifieth these things sayth surely I come quickly amen even so come Lord Jesus