Matthew 5:13-16
Are you prepared to stand out?
A few years ago some tests were conducted on young people to see whether they were prepared to stand out from the crowd. This is how the test worked. 10 young people were called into a room. They were told that they were going to have their eyes tested. They were shown some cards. On each card there were 3 different lines: Line A, Line B and Line C. They needed to identify the longest line. The examiner pointed at each line. When he pointed at the longest line, they were instructed to raise their hands.
But here’s the catch.
Nine of these young people were told beforehand that this wasn't actually an eye test and that they must put up their hands when the examiner pointed at the 2ndlongest line.
So they all went in for the first test. The examiner held up the first card. Line C was clearly the longest line. But when the examiner pointed at line B (the 2nd longest line), 9 of the young people immediately raised their hands. For a few moments the poor 10th guy looked confused. He could see clearly that line C was the longest. But he didn’t want to stand out. So after a moment’s hesitation, he also raised his hand.
The examiner took out the 2nd card. He repeated the instruction to raise their hands when he pointed at the longest line. Once again, 9 of them voted for the 2nd longest line. So did this poor 10th guy. Over and over again he voted for the wrong line even though he knew that it was wrong. He didn’t want to stand out.
And it wasn’t just this guy. They conducted this test with many youngsters. 75 percent of young people responded the same way. It was more important for them to fit in than for them to be right.
I think this exposes what’s deep inside all of us; a desire to fit in. We don’t want to stand out. But Romans 12 verse 2 challenges this desire. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.”
And so this is the question for us, REACH SUMMERSTRAND, this morning: Are we guilty of conforming? Or are we prepared to stand out?
If you look at our passage, you’ll see it starts by saying, “You are the salt of the earth.”
What does it mean to be salt of the earth?
There are many different interpretations because salt is used in so many different ways.
We are most familiar with salt as something that adds flavour to our food.
Maybe Jesus is saying that we mustn’t be boring, that we must add flavour to the world.
But salt can also be used as a preservative. If you rub salt into meat, it slows down the decay.
This is probably the most common interpretation. We need to preserve society, to slow down the moral decay.
But salt also has a whole lot of other uses. If we go back to the ancient world, salt was often used as a fertilizer. Apparently, If you added a bit of salt to the manure pile, it helped your plants to grow.
So maybe Jesus is saying that we are the fertilizer of the world. Whatever that means.
But salt was also sometimes used as a curse. If you poured salt on your neighbours land then it killed the plants. A little salt helped the plants. Too much salt killed the plants.
This was one way of cursing your enemies land. You poured salt on it.
But surely that can’t be right? How could Jesus say that we are the curse of the earth?
Those are just a few uses for salt. It was also used in the OT. You added salt to the sacrifice to make it acceptable to God. It was also rubbed into newborn babies. I’m not sure why, but that was another use for salt.
So how are we going to understand Jesus’ words. We are the salt of the earth. Which use of salt is Jesus referring to?
This reminds us of a crucial principle for interpreting the Bible.
The most important information for understanding any passage is found in the passage itself.
That should be an encouragement for you as you read the Bible for yourself.
Yes, there’s a place for background studies and Bible commentaries that give you information.
But the most important information for understanding any passage is in the passage itself.
In fact, there’s always a danger that we’ll import our own background knowledge or our preconceived ideas about a word or a phrase and we won’t listen carefully to what the passage itself is saying.
We mustn’t do that.
Look carefully at the passage again. Jesus doesn’t only says that we are the salt of the earth. He also says that we are the light of the world. And He uses three different illustrations to explain these two images. Can you see them?
Firstly, in verse 13, salt that loses its saltiness.
Secondly, in verse 14, He speaks about a city that cannot be hidden.
Thirdly, in verse 15, He speaks about a lamp that shouldn’t be covered.
When you take those 3 illustrations and you put them together, then you start to see the point. It’s the same point in each of them.
Whether its salt,
or a city on a hill,
or a lamp in a room,
the thing about each of them is they are distinctive. There’s something about them that makes them stand out.
We don’t actually need to know all the uses of salt and light. Whatever salt and light are used for, they are only useful for those things as long as they stand out.
And so this is the point Jesus is making: if we want to be his disciples we must be ready to stand out.
It flows perfectly from what we saw in last week’s sermon. Remember we saw the standards of the kingdom. They are so different from the world.
The world says: Bessed are the rich. Jesus says: Blessed are the poor in spirit.
The world says: Bessed are those who laugh. Jesus says: Blessed are those who mourn.
The world says: Blessed are those who hunger for success. Jesus says: Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness.
These are very different standards. If we really live by them, then we can expect persecution. That’s how we ended last week. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.
The NIV doesn’t actually help us by separating verse 12 from verse 13.
Verse 13 flows naturally from verse 12.
What’s the great temptation when you are being persecuted?
It’s to lose your distinctiveness. It’s to stop being different. It’s to conform to the pattern of the world.
And that’s how Jesus challenges us here.
Just like Salt mustn’t lose its saltiness;
Just like a city on a hill cannot be hidden;
Just like a lamp shouldn’t be covered;
In the same way we mustn’t lose or hide our distinctiveness.
Are you ready to stand out for Jesus? That’s the challenge this morning.
I want us to consider this challenge under two main headings.
Firstly, don’t lose your distinctiveness (verse 13);
Secondly, don’t hide your distinctiveness (verses 14-15).
So firstly, don’t be like salt that loses its saltiness.
Now strictly speaking, if you’re a chemist, you’ll know pure salt is Sodium Chloride. It’s a stable compound. It cannot lose its saltiness. But in those days the salt that was commonly used was a mixture of salt and other impurities. And because salt is soluble it was possible for that salt to dissolve out of the mixture and for you to be left with only impurities. In that way your salt lost it’s saltiness.
Then it’s useless. You can’t make it salty again. It’s no better than sand or mud. You might as well throw it out.
That’s the illustration Jesus uses in verse 13.
And it suggests 3 dangers of losing our saltiness.
Firstly, the danger that we’ll never become salty again.
Verse 13. “If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?”
This reminds us of a warning we find repeated in the Bible. If you become a Christian, but then you turn away from Jesus, if you turn back to your old life of sin, if you become no different the world, then it’s impossible for you to repent again.
It’s the kind of warning we find in the book of Hebrews.
Listen to Hebrews 6 verse 4. “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss, they are crucifying the Son of God all over again.”
Now this doesn’t mean that a true Christian can fall away. If you keep reading, a couple of verses later, Hebrews chapter 6 verse 9, says: “Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are confident of better things in your case – things that accompany salvation.”
And so if you are truly saved, if you are a true follower of Jesus, then you can be confident: this won’t happen to you. You won’t lose your saltiness.
But this is still a real warning. The sign that you truly are saved is that you won’t turn back.
Maybe you are feeling tempted at the moment by pressure from unbelieving friends, a desire for the old life. Don’t give in. Don’t turn back.
Don’t lose your saltiness.
But then secondly, if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It’s no longer good for anything.
In other words, if we lose our saltiness, we are in danger of being good for nothing. The value of our contribution in this world depends on our distinctiveness.
Many unbelievers do good things in the world: I’m sure you know unbelievers who are very kind and very generous and who put Christians to shame in terms of their good deeds in the world.
But Jesus is speaking here in terms of the kingdom of heaven. If you want to be useful to God, if you want to make a lasting impact in terms of the kingdom, then you need to be different.
Athanasius is one of the hero’s of the Christian church. You can see a statue of him on the screen. He was an African man, born in Egypt in 296 AD. And he defended the church against a popular heresy called Arianism. Basically Arianism is the belief that Jesus isn’t fully God. That He’s a created being. And it was very popular. It gripped the church in the 4th century. So right at this early stage in the Christian church there’s a danger that the whole church will be led astray and true doctrine won’t be preserved.
But praise God for Athanasius. In spite of great opposition and great suffering, Athanasius stood up for the truth that Jesus is fully God.
During his life, someone came up to him and asked, “Athanasius, don’t you realize that the whole world is against you.”
This was his response, “Does the whole world hate the truth? Well then it’s Athanasius against the world.”
You see, here’s a man used by God for good. This crucial doctrine gets preserved even for us today because of this man. But he’s only useful for good because he’s willing to stand out.
If salt loses it’s saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It’s no longer good for anything.
Then Jesus adds these words, “...except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”
Obviously this doesn’t mean we must go and trample on people who fall away.
But I do think it points us to a third danger of losing our saltiness.
You‘ve probably heard it said that Christians mustn’t be like doormats?
Well, we are meant to serve other people. We are meant to love them, even if they take advantage of us. We are meant to be like Jesus Who gave up His privileges to serve. In that sense, we should be like doormats.
But when it comes to our Christian obedience to God, we mustn’t be like a doormat.
There comes a time when we need to stand up and say, “No!” We need put our foot down and say, “I cannot do this. I cannot just go with the flow.”
I heard about a man recently who joined a new company and towards the end of the year he was given a very large bonus. He went to his boss and asked him how this worked in terms of tax? How would he fill in the tax form? And the boss replied, “Oh no no no no, we don’t mention this bonus to the tax man.”
But the Christian said that he needed to declare the income He had received. The boss’s response was, “No you mustn’t mention this. This isn’t income. This is just a bonus. Ignore it.”
The Christian asked whether anyone else in the company received a bonus like this?
And the boss said, “Yes, everyone gets this bonus.”
Again the Christian insisted that he should declare it.
And the boss said, “You mustn’t declare it because no one else declares theirs. If you start declaring yours then everyone else will get into trouble for not declaring theirs.”
And so you see this is where it starts getting hard. We want to do what’s right. But it’s not popular. It’s so much easier just to go with the flow. It takes courage.
As the saying goes:
“A dead fish can flow with a river. It takes a living fish to swim against it.”
We need to be strong enough to swim against the flow.
And if we don’t then people will walk all over us. We’ll be like a doormat that’s trampled by men.
And I wonder if you can see the irony in this statement.
Why do we compromise in our Christian lives? Why do we give in and go with the flow? It’s because we want people to like us. We want to please men.
But the irony is that when we do compromise, it actually has the opposite effect.
We are scorned and trampled by the very same people that we are trying to please.
“If salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It’s no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”
Let me urge you this morning. Don’t compromise. Don’t lose your saltiness.
PAUSE
Then secondly, If verse 13 focuses on losing our distinctiveness, verses 14-15 focuses on hiding our distinctiveness.
So the danger now isn’t so much that we compromise as Christians and lose our difference;
The danger now is that we hide as Christians so that no one can see our differences.
Jesus uses two illustrations here about hiding. According to the first one, there’s a sense in which we cannot actually hide our differences. Look at verse 14, at the first illustration:
“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill …cannot be hidden.”
I don't know if you've ever noticed that as you drive towards a big city at night, from many kilometres out, you can already begin to see this brightening in the sky from the lights of the city.
And all the more so, if the city is set on a hill.
How can you hide a city that’s set on a hill? It’s impossible.
I think the lesson for us is that as long as we are true followers of Jesus and as long as we are out there in the world, as long as we are set on a hill, then it’s impossible for our light not to shine.
You see, if you are a true Christian, then Jesus has come to live within you. He’s the light of the world. His light is shining in you and through you. It will be seen by those around you.
I wonder if you noticed, these verses don’t say you must become the salt of the earth or you must become the light of the world. No! They say you are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. Jesus isn’t commanding something here. He isn’t saying we need to go and do something to make ourselves different.
He’s simply saying: Be who you are. If you belong to Jesus, you will stand out. You will be different.
And so we don’t have to go around as religious people wearing long robes or with badges that say: “I’m following Jesus.” We don’t need to put on religious language or act as if we are more spiritual than everyone else.
No, simply by following Jesus, by not hiding who we are, we will stand out.
I want to be clear to any unbelievers here this morning, anyone who isn’t truly trusting in Jesus yet: The message of the Bible isn’t that you need to obey some rules in order to change yourself. The message of the Bible is that you need to repent of your sin and come to Jesus and ask Him to change you into salt and light.
So there’s a sense in which we cannot hide as Christians. But secondly also, we shouldn’t hide as Christians, because that’s not our purpose. Look at the 2ndillustration in verse 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.”
Just think about when the electricity goes go out at night and you’ve got to go round and light all the candles. Where do you place those candles once they’ve been lit? I’m sure you don’t hide them under a bed or inside a cupboard or under a table. That would be crazy. You put them in a prominent place where they can give maximum light. That’s the purpose of a light: to be uncovered and to shine.