Today we are looking at Matthew. Chapter 513 to 16 is a part of
our series on the Sermon of the Mount.
And this is a setting of identification of who we are.
And then the rest of the next three chapters are are going to
be a process of of finding out how God wants us to live.
So this is to identify who you are.
And he starts out in verse 13. You are the salt of the earth.
But if the salt loses its savour, how shall it be
seasoned? It is then good for nothing but
to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.
Verse 14. You are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they
light a lamp and put it under a basket, but the lamp about on a
lampstand stand, and it gives light to all who are in the
house. Let your light shine before men,
that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in
heaven. When we first got to Japan, we
couldn't read Japanese, which made it difficult for us to go
shopping. But we stayed in a Center for
Christian for missionaries during the first six months of
our language study, and we were excited that there was a little
grocery store on the main floor. When we were given a tour of the
store, Lydia tried to memorize where all the items that she
knew she would need to pick up. Lydia picked up some salt, but
we couldn't figure out that it didn't seem to be all that
salty. We figured out Japanese salt
must not be the same as Canadian salt, and it just tasted bland.
No matter how much we would dump on it, it didn't seem to get
salty. Maybe this is what Matthew 513
is telling us about here we thought.
I thought at least. But when we asked one of the
more seasoned missionaries whether Japanese salt was so
bland, they kind of were puzzled and and she said she'd never
experienced this, so she asked if she could see the package
that that he had picked up. And then started to laugh.
We had been flavoring our food with laundry starch, not salt.
Oh yeah, maybe you've gotten mixed up at times.
I needed others to help you sort a few things out, but that was a
interesting experience for us last Sunday.
Our passage ended up with talking about being persecuted
for righteousness sake. Matthew 5 verse 12 tells us
rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in
heaven for so persecuted they the prophets which were before
you. So why do you think Jesus spoke
of being salt and light after just talking about being
persecuted for righteousness sake?
When we face struggles or even persecution our character is
tested. How will we respond to the
challenges of persecution? Will our character be able to
depend on Jesus as we grow in our spiritual life or will we
buckle under the onslaught? The church is it is being
attacked in the world today. According to a report released
on August the 10th, but a month ago, more than 7000 Nigerian
Christians have been killed in 2025 in the 1st 220 days days of
2025. That's an average of 32 deaths a
day. Additionally, 7800 followers of
Jesus have been abducted, have been abducted by for their
faith, and over 1100 Christian communities are now dealing with
what's happening in their community.
Persecution is happening in the world.
How do we respond in our cozy homes to what our brothers and
sisters are experiencing in Nigeria, in China, in Pakistan,
in Afghanistan, in Syria, and many other places where
persecution is real? Jesus tells his followers what
their response to persecution is to be by telling them who they
are. Jesus reminds us that we are the
salt of the earth and the light of the world before he explains
in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount how we are to live our
lives. So how does Jesus see you?
How do you identify yourself? Are you an agent of the evil
one? Or are you going to make a
difference in this confused and aggressive angry world?
You will not make much of a difference in this world Just
coming to church here on Sunday morning for an hour.
You are a little bit like that light that is hid under the
basket. Yes, there's a light, but it
doesn't do any good under a basket.
In the passage we see that our Creator Jesus has declared that
you are salt and you are light, not becoming, but are.
That is your identity today. What does that mean for us then?
Well, 2000 years ago people would create shallow ponds and
those ponds would hold seawater. The heats from the sun would
would evaporate the water and leave behind salt crystals that
they would have to rake up into piles and then put into bags for
sale. This was a long and arduous
task. Today we have discovered huge
salt deposits under the ground and we can mine it very cheaply.
The biggest salt mine in the world is Godrej, Ontario.
The salt mine in Windsor has been in operation for over 100
years and pulls out hundreds of tons of salt each year, not just
a few pounds of evaporated salt water.
So salt had a lot more value in Jesus Day, not only because it
took a lot of work to get it, but because they didn't have any
refrigeration. Now I'm just old enough to
remember the ice chest. Have some of you know about the
ice chest? OK, we would get a big and I, I
can still remember my parents having one of those ice chests
where we would get a chunk of ice and that would go into our
refrigerator and that would get changed out when it went down to
the bottom. But in today's age, we have
refrigeration. We, we, we don't even think
about it anymore. I can remember the freezer being
at a cold storage in town. And anytime we wanted to get
some meat that we had in the cold storage, we'd have to go
into town to pick it up. So things have changed
drastically. So things are very the the salt
that we have today is very cheap.
Before the refrigeration we have today, salt was the main way
they preserve preserve food. Meat, fish, peef, pork was
packed in salt and dried much like our beef jerky is today and
just kept for years. But just as the meat was dead
and could putrefy, so the world around us is dead.
But if we treat the meat, it can be preserved.
Some foods just taste better with salt.
Could you imagine opening up a bag of potato chips and it
didn't have any salt on the chip?
You can buy them by the way, but somehow salt just brings out the
flavor in foods. Colossians 3 verse sorry 4 verse
6 says let your speech always be with grace as those seasoned
with salt so that you will know how you should respond to each
person. A person that is following Jesus
has joy and peace. Jesus said in John chapter 15
verse 11 that if we abide in him we will have complete joy.
Joy that remakes makes our relationship so much better.
When we bring that joy into our relationship we bring hope and
transformation. But some Christians are
tasteless. They lack wisdom and class.
They might be vulgar and insipid.
We don't want to be those kind of Christians.
The salt as salt of the earth. We preserve society from
destruction. Just like in the days of Noah or
Sodom and Gomorrah. Noah witnessed for 120 years and
sought to keep his neighbors that mocked and jeered him from
the destruction that was coming. He kept going, obeying God, and
in the end saved his family and mankind.
Whenever there's a revival in society, like the Welsh Revival
in Britain or the revivals that took place in New England in the
1700s, there were transformations of society.
On February 8th, 2023, a routine 50 minute Chapel at Asbury
University in Kentucky turned into a 16 day revival that
captured attention around the world, transformed the lives of
students and the community. They even made a movie on that
one. Back in the 1970s, there was a
revival in Leamington here. When the Cetera twins came and
visited for several weeks, it changed the hearts of people.
Salt also disinfects and destroys harmful bacteria and
germs. Salt keeps disease at Bay.
When people are sweating in intense heat, they take salt
tablets to keep from muscle cramps, dizziness and fatigue.
Salt replenishes the electrolytes in our body, and if
someone is dehydrated and taken to the hospital, one of the
first things they do is to give them an IV of a saline solution.
So what do you do? Do you preserve?
Do you stop decay or do you add flavor or all of the above?
Salt that stays in the shaker doesn't do much good.
And when you salt others with the love of Jesus, you could end
up preserving them for eternity. Salt doesn't do anything sitting
in the sea or the ground. Are you working for the Lord or
just sitting there? We need to get out of the shaker
and create some thirst so that people will drink from the
fountain of Jesus's love and forgiveness.
Lot's wife became a pillar of salt for looking back at the
lifestyle that they had enjoyed in Sodom.
Gomorrah, Never look back to your old lifestyle with regret
or go back to it. We are never to live like the
world, but we are to bring a new kind of life that radiates and
lifts up those around us. God wants us to live a pure life
that looks forward to the future.
God has an eternity. Look forward to the life that
God has for us in eternity as we live our salty life here.
Can you preach and say nothing? I think you can.
Have you ever been around others when they said, oh, he's a
Christian or she's a Christian? We should watch our language.
Yeah, you can be salty in that kind of an environment too.
Matthew 5 verse 14 goes on to say you are the light of the
world, your salt and light. But Jesus also said in in John
chapter 8 verse 12, I am the light of the world.
He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but will have the
light of life. That sounds like a bit of a
contradiction, but if we consider that we are a little
bit like a moon and we are lit up by the sun and we reflect the
light from the sun. Jesus, if we think of how the
moon reflects the light of the sun, the moon has no light of
its own, but can light up a landscape in on a clear, dark
night. Every morning the sunflower
turns its face to the sun. It rotates slowly as the sun
moves to the West. It was very interesting going
through, I think it was Manitoba area, southern Manitoba.
There were fields of sunflowers and it was really kind of cute
to see all those sunflower heads pointing toward the sun.
We should be focusing our face on Jesus so that we can absorb
his goodness throughout the day. The Bible also compares us with
a city that is built on top of a hill, one that cannot be hid.
It's very difficult to hide some of the castles in Japan.
They're not built in the valley, but on top of a high hill.
They could see the enemy coming from afar.
On the other hand, the enemy can see their target from a long way
off, but they have to climb a steep hills and on one side
usually is a Cliff, so that it's impossible to attack from the
back. In our Modern Warfare today, the
enemy is trying to hide deep in tunnels in the ground.
They hide because their deeds are evil.
How does it feel to be in the dark?
You can't see anything. You can stumble on anything and
fall and scrape yourself, hurt yourself.
You might even feel lost. We are to bring the light of
Jesus into the darkness in the souls of the people around you.
When Moses went up on Mount Sinai and spent 40 days with
God, he returned with his face aglow.
Does not does our countenance glow with a joy and radiate
God's glory when you spend time with Him?
Perhaps we are not spending enough time with God for a hymn
to transform us. How much light does it take to
light up the darkness? One photon, and that's just one
small particle of light, is all that is needed.
Darkness is the absence of light, and so when light enters
darkness, darkness is dispelled. God created light even before he
created the sun and the moon and the other stars in the universe.
You know, it doesn't take a lot of light to light up the
darkness. I've seen stories or pictures
of, of people getting out their cell phones at a dark stadium
when the lights went out one time and they all turned on
their got their cell phones out and, and started to shine their
lights out so that soon the whole place was lit up with cell
phones. So we can, it doesn't take a
whole lot, but we can light up the world around us.
If the electricity, electricity goes out at your house, what do
you do? Some of you get out your cell
phones now. But in the old days, which I am
part of, we used to, well, we still do.
We have candles, right, and most of you probably have candles at
home and you find a match and and if you're having trouble
finding out where it is, you get yourself went out and use a
flashlight, right? But we we grab a match or a
lighter and we get that that candle lit.
Now what if you would grab a container and put it over top of
that candle? It would be foolish, wouldn't
it? You would be back in the
darkness and in reality that candle would go out is the
oxygen under the can under the container depletes and the light
then goes out. You suffocate the light of the
candle. Taking that container and
putting it over the candle is like going back to your old ways
when Jesus, the light of Jesus, wasn't shining in your life.
Some people live in darkness so that they cannot see the chaos
around them. When the light shines brightly.
Even dust on the table is seen and reminds us that we need to
do some dusting in our life to get good air quality.
You are the light of the world. How does God shine in this
world? He needs lights like you and I
God wants us to use. God wants to use us to be His
light in this Dark World. God works through His people and
His word. God's light can be hidden if
your lives don't reflect. His character Joe Stowell told
the story of a stressed out woman who was tailgating a man
as they drove down a busy St. When he slowed down to stop at a
yellow light, the woman hit the horn, cursing and screaming in
frustration and gesturing angrily.
As she was still in her rant, she heard a tap on her window
and looked up into the face of a police officer who ordered her
to exit the car with her hands up.
He took her to the police station and placed her in a
holding cell. An hour later, the officer
returned and said, I'm sorry, I miss this has been a big
mistake. When I pulled up behind you, I
noticed that you're What would Jesus do license plate holder
and follow me to Sunday school bumper sticker and I assumed
that the car was stolen. So letting our lights shine
might be illustrated with the idea of a lighthouse.
Lighthouses have saved many ships from being destroyed on
dangerous rocks. Light from a lighthouse is used
as a warning and as a guide. Today, lighthouses guide ships
along the coast of the sea to find a harbor or to mark the
way. Are you like a lighthouse
shining forth with a brilliant light into The Dark World?
Sailors can see light from afar, but you know that the light
itself isn't very strong. Actually, the first light that
lit up lighthouses were candles. These candles were magnified by
the use of mirrors and lenses. Thus, the light was focused to
shine out to the sea. And by this means, even a weak
light shines a long way. With reflectors, they can double
the power of a lighthouse lamp. The Bible can be likened to
those reflectors which make our light shine even brighter.
The brighter, the bigger the reflector and lens, the brighter
the light, and the farther away it can be seen.
If we use the God Word of God wisely, we can let our light
shine and our testimony is magnified.
Now light needs a source of energy.
As believers, the Holy Spirit empowers us.
We can run out of power if we don't feed on the Word of God.
The more we immerse ourselves in Jesus, the brighter we will
shine. Also, since we're reflecting the
light of Jesus like the moon reflects the sun, the purer the
reflector, the stronger the light that shines from you.
Some people's light is going out, but they're not aware that
their lamp is getting dimmer and dimmer because they're asleep.
Jesus told the story of the five virgin, foolish virgins waiting
for the bride, and they fell asleep.
And when the announcement came that the bridegroom was coming,
they awoke, but their lamps were going out and they couldn't join
in the procession to the bridegroom's house.
I trust that you have plenty of oil in your lamps and that
you're on fire for Jesus. Being asleep, being at the
sleep, being asleep at the wheel is a dangerous situation.
Now, Peak Fair taught me that the more sunshine there is, the
healthier that the healthy plants.
I'm sorry. The more sunshine that healthy
plants get and if they are is adequate water and fertilizer,
they will produce more fruit. You can always see Pete checking
his phone. What is the sunlight like at the
greenhouse? He has sensors there and seeing
how much light the plants are getting.
If he knows how much light they're getting, he knows how
much they will have to pick how much crop there will be.
Light gives life to the plants and they turn that light into
energy which is stored in the fruit of the plants.
How much fruit are you producing?
Who can you be a light to in your family or in your
community? I'd just like to take, have you
reflect just a moment and say to yourself, who is it that I can
be a light to? Is there somebody that God has
brought into my sphere of, of influence that I can possibly
share Jesus with? I'd like to write, I'd like you
to write that person's name on your heart.
I'd like you to pray for that person and wait for
opportunities that God will give you.
If you really are desiring to be a light to that person.
Use your assets to transform the society around you.
If God reveals truth to to you and gives you an idea to
explore, research it, develop it, and share it with others.
Let's make this a very different community and a very different
world. We've been going over those who
call LEMC their home church, but how can it be a home church if
you are never at home? It pains the leadership and
Jesus when the light is so dim that no one can see it.
For a while we had major problem with different colors lighting
the skies over Leamington from the greenhouses at night.
We need your light to be shining in the darkness so that others
actually know that you are Christian and you love the Lord.
Jesus said to his listeners. You are salt and you are the
light of the world. So ask the question, have you
believed what Jesus said? Are you salt and light?
If not, why not? What's holding you back?
It's very simple. Believe that Jesus died for your
sins, Admit that you're a Sinner, repent, change your
ways, and Jesus will flood your heart with His love and
forgiveness. He will send His Holy Spirit to
cleanse you and to make your light shine for the world to see
that you have become a radiant believer.
Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good
works and glorify your Father in heaven.
If you are truly salt and light, become pure, tastier, preserving
your family and community, shining the light of Jesus in
the dark corners of the sinful world, and the whole world can
know that you are a believer in Jesus Christ.
When they see what God is doing in your life, they should give
God glory. Let's pray.
Lord, thank you that you made us salt.
You made us light as followers of Jesus.
I pray, Lord, that if there's anybody here today or watching
on TVI pray that your spirit will be at work in their hearts.
And if they have never made that commitment to follow Jesus, I
pray that they can become salt or light today, become a
follower of Jesus. Thank you, Lord, that You've
worked in our hearts, many of us, and that you are
transforming us, making us taste better, allowing us to shine
your light into the world around us and bring hope and joy.
Thank you that you guide us into the truth, and I pray that the
truth will set us free. Amen.