|
|
Salt of the Earth
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, April 17, 2005
One day Jesus gathered His friends on a mountainside
overlooking a lake. He taught them many things. We know this as the Sermon on
the Mount and it’s found in Matthew 5 through chapter 7. Jesus is dealing with
how to make a difference. It is as if He is right in the middle of the sermon
when He has their attention, giving them what may be the greatest challenge of
their lives and He says, if you want to make a difference in your world here’s a
way to do it. You wrap your arms around two words – salt and light. You are the
salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.
Now I need a little ownership here. You see, even though
salt and light are the key words of this passage and of this teaching of Jesus,
both of them began with this word – you! You are the salt of the earth; you are
the light of the world. If you will claim this truth it will be because you hear
it relating to you. With your eyes open, I want you to think about your world.
Draw a map in your mind of your world and maybe it would involve five places
that you often go to. Maybe it would be where you live, where you work,
hopefully your church. It might be where you buy groceries or it might be where
you play – the golf course, the soccer field, the ball diamond. Think of five
places that have your name on them because your presence is sometimes, maybe
often, there. All right let me ask you a question…will you open yourself to the
possibility that in those locations you will be salt and light?
Now we have a little bit of a problem here as 21st
century Americans. You may remember that during World War II, C.S. Lewis wrote a
little book entitled, ‘The Screwtape Letters.’ It was an imaginary bundle of
letters written by Screwtape and veteran demon, tempter, destroyer, friend of
Satan – demon. Now he had a young apprentice named Wormwood and the letters are
from Screwtape to Wormwood. By the way with demons – if you’re a basketball fan,
Chris Paul leaving the demon deacons, somehow the demons of Screwtape and
Wormwood pull that off! If you don’t know basketball forget it! He’s a
sophomore, All American and he’s going pro! All right – in that Wormwood,
Screwtape letter, Screwtape says to Wormwood, now if you want to destroy virtue,
the best way to do that is to take the word that describes it and ruin it. You
ruin it by changing the way people think about it.
Salt and light – Screwtape and Wormwood have been doing a
good job here with us because you see salt is a throw away substance for us and
a seasoner. What about light? Well, lights all about us and so we can see. Well
let me try and pull a little bit of the meaning of salt and light, as Jesus
would have meant it. Let’s take them in turn. Salt…Salt is one of those things
that we look upon as optional. You’ve got a saltshaker on the table. You can use
it to flavor, to change the taste of your food, but if you don’t, no big deal.
But you see in the earlier part of the history of the world, salt was absolutely
essential. As a matter of fact, there was a book that was written in 2002, a
best seller, New York Times best seller list and it bore the title simply,
‘Salt,’ and underneath the subtitle ‘in the world’s history.’ Kurlansky who
wrote it, Mark Kurlansky, tried to show how that you can almost trace the
history of the world by the history of salt because you see, up until 100 years
ago when modern geology discovered that salt was virtually everywhere, salt was
seen as a very valuable substance.
Wars were fought over salt mines and salt works. Generals
from Napoleon to Robert E. Lee discovered that waging a war without salt was a
dangerous enterprise indeed! When Napoleon was trying to attack Russia they ran
out of salt and his troops became weak, emaciated and sick. Many of them lost
their lives. You see, salt opens the possibility of you being alive. It’s a
catalyst. You don’t need much of it, but you’ve got to have some and as you eat
your diet, you probably eat too much of it. But the truth is, if you didn’t have
any of it, you couldn’t live. Like some other things that you take for granted,
salt is indispensable. And it was very valuable; valuable for example during the
Civil War. So much of the Civil War took place around where we live. Did you
realize that the South during the Civil War and prior was absolutely dependant
upon imports from other lands? If you’d been down at New Orleans at the
beginning of the Civil War, a 200-pound sack of salt from Liverpool would have
cost you 50 cents. By 1862, which was the summer of the six days war around
Richmond, it was up to $6.00, that same sack. In 1863, down in Savannah,
Georgia, where of course Lincoln had blockaded the port, it was up to $25.00.
From 50 cents to $25.00 in two to three years you see how valuable it was. As a
matter of fact, the Union troops and the troops from the South fought over the
salt works in West Virginia; sometimes the Union people had it, sometimes the
South had it. It was crucial.
You say, I didn’t know salt was that valuable! That’s the
whole point! You think salt is indispensable. That’s not the way Jesus meant it.
You know there are so many people who are like salt in the sense that they don’t
think they’re very valuable, that they don’t have a price tag, and that there is
no real value there in them and Jesus comes along and says, you’re salt! You’re
salt of the earth. You have value. You are indispensable to me. Be salt in the
world that I love.
Salt has another meaning… permanence. You see until we had
refrigeration the way in which you preserved meat was with salt. Salt pork… a
carry over from those days. But you see, it was very old the idea of salt
bringing permanence. I want you to turn in the Old Testament to two phrases you
have probably missed. The first one of these is found in the book of Numbers,
the 18th chapter, and the 19th verse; if you have a pew
Bible that’s page 238. Now let me tell you what’s happening. Moses is describing
to Aaron what the priests, how they’re going to survive. This is a new nation, a
new religion so to speak and Moses is the key builder and God comes to Moses and
says, this is the way you do it and he’s talking to the Levites, to the priests
on they’ll survive because they aren’t herdsmen, they aren’t agricultural
people, they are supposed to attend to the tabernacle. And then Moses says a
most interesting thing. In that verse he says, “From generation to generation as
long as you are alive, it is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord.”
Did you know that phrase was in the Old Testament? An everlasting covenant of
salt? What does that mean? It means it’s permanent, it’s in place, and it’s not
going to go away.
Look if you will now to another passage – Second Chronicles
13:2. There’s a king by the name of Abijah. Its like Elijah, except it’s got an
A in front of it, but it’s pronounced Abijah and Abijah is not a very good king.
He’s about to get run off and so he pulls back his ancestry and he says I’m
related to David and then he says, “Don’t you remember that the kingship to
David and his descendants was sealed by a covenant of salt?” A covenant of salt?
There it is again. In Ezekiel you will find the very same phrase. What does this
mean? Permanence, protection, going to survive… when the Lord came and said, you
are the salt of the earth, He was saying, my relationship to you is a salt
covenant. It’s there. It’s not going to go away. It’s not impermanent, it’s
permanent. Remember what Jesus said in John the 14th chapter? Jesus
said, “I go and prepare a place for you.” That’s all the way to eternity. Your
relationship with the Lord is all the way to eternity, all the way to heaven –
it’s a salt covenant and then He says, “Some day I will come and receive you
unto myself that where I am there you may be also.” It’s permanent – it’s a
covenant of salt.
Well, let’s go on to light. Jesus says, “You are the light
of the world.” Now He doesn’t expect you to be a light all over the world. The
Lord took care of that. He’s the cosmic light; we are the local light. In our
little world, we are called to be light. Some early words of the creation story
are so graphic. You’ve heard me mention them before. For the Bible begins…after
it says God created the heavens and the earth it says, “The earth was formless,
empty and dark and the Holy Spirit was hovering over the face of the deep.”
Let’s see… is it not true when you go through a tough time that it turns out to
be formless, empty and dark? Do you believe that the Holy Spirit is hovering
around you? And when it breaks through and when suddenly there is a burst of
good news and a burst of great joy or you began to see, how is it described?
Light. You see the very first thing God created was light because if you don’t
have light you don’t have form. If you don’t have light, you don’t have fullness
in the place of emptiness. If you don’t have light, you can’t chase away
darkness. Light is crucial.
The light maker becomes the darkness chaser. The light that
fills also forms and the light overcomes that which is meaningless and drifting.
The Bible has light and God together all the way through. Not only does God
create light, He is described as light. Psalm 27:1; the Psalmist says, “The Lord
is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?” Psalm 104:2 – it speaks of God
enfolding Himself, clothing Himself in light. Jesus said in John the 8th
chapter, “I am the light of the world.” Now comes Jesus and saying you are light
and you say to me, wait a minute! Light describes God? Light is the first thing
God created. Not only that, Jesus says I am the light of the world. How could He
come and say to us, you are the light of the world? Well you see, it’s like the
moon and the sun. We see the moon and it has light, it reflects light, and it is
very important to us. It has no light of its own. It’s a reflection of the sun’s
light. So also do we as Christians reflect the light of the Son – S-O-N. The
light of the world delegates to us and dispenses to us His light so that in our
little worlds we can become light. How do you do that you say? Well, maybe it’s
a change in attitude. Maybe it’s by your action, maybe it’s by your presence,
maybe it’s by your willingness to share. Maybe it’s by your willingness to pray.
You can be the light within your world. Without that light, it may very well be
that the one who said, I am the light of the world will never break through and
create possibilities. You say, but I don’t know how to do that…
I remember when I was in Elementary school and the teacher
for the first time I ever saw it took the prism to the window and all of the
sudden all of the colors of light were against the wall and I remember the class
going ahhhh! I believe the angels in heaven when you discover how to be a light,
whatever color yours is, I believe the angels in heaven say wow! It’s happening
and the Spirit of God is able to open some doors He couldn’t if you weren’t
there.
Brennan Manning once went to France to spend some time in a
very disciplined life with some fellow believers. They were to work as laborers,
get together at night for prayer, intercession, and meditation. So it went on –
a good group of seven guys. It turned to be New Years and none of them had to
work. They were sitting around a table and they got to talking about where they
worked – the bosses, the people that they worked with and the longer it went, it
became a kind of a boss bashing time. At the end of the table, a man by the name
of Dominique was quiet through it all and Brennan looked and saw him and said,
Dominique, I see tears in your eyes, why? And Dominique said, I was just
thinking of our Lords words from the cross. When the Romans put Him on the cross
He said, Father forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t
understand.
About 54, that same man Dominique, strong of body was
diagnosed as having terminal cancer. When it became clear that he had a limited
time to live, he asked for permission to go to the darkest slum, the most
troubled slum in Paris and just live. He was granted permission and he got a
little apartment. He was able to get a job as a night watchman and every night
he would get off of the bus, he would walk straight to a park right out in front
of where he lived and he would sit on a park bench and on that park bench people
would come by, he got to know them by name. He laughed with them, he knew their
stories, listened to their stories and he told them some of his. One day when he
had been there for some time, they said, tell us about yourself. Why are you
here? You’re not an addict, you’re not a throwaway, you’re not a marginal
person, you’re not a street person, why are you here? And he said, well, you
see, I don’t have long to live and I’m a priest and I am here because I want you
to know Jesus loves you and that He came and died for people just like you;
people who are on the margins that others have forgotten. I am here to let you
know that Jesus hasn’t forgotten you and if you need, I will tell you more about
Jesus.
One day he didn’t show up at the park bench and his friends
that he had gained were worried and they finally got the attention of somebody
and they went up to check and sure enough, he had died through the night in his
room. He was penniless; he was in a part of town that nobody who mattered ever
went. When they buried him in a little cemetery it was with a wood cross and all
it said was Dominique –A Friend of Jesus. Would it matter to you if I told you
that at his funeral 7,000 people came from all over Europe so they could be
there? You are the light of the world and even when it seems like it doesn’t
matter it does and you are the salt of the earth.
|
