Salt and Light

1. Matthew 5:13-16 Salt and Light

2. The Importance of Salt • Over 14000 uses for salt. • Fights ants and moths • Makes water boil hotter (cook faster) • Eggs boiled in salt water peel more easily. • Cleaner (with vinegar – brass and copper) • Thin paste of salt and salad oil will remove white marks from wooden tables • Essential for good health http://www.saltworks.us/salt_info/salt-uses-and-tips.asp

3. Salt as a preservative • Salt was and is used to preserve meat. • Genesis 18:23-25 • As a nation, we are great because of our godly heritage, but we’re losing our salt. • John 15:19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

4. Salt for Sanitizing • Salt is a good antiseptic, toothpaste, throat gargle. • Sin is a poison. • STD’s, cirrhosis, some cancers, stress, ulcers • We must sanitize and sterilize our sphere. • Perhaps God has placed us where we are for this very purpose. (1 Peter 2:11-12)

5. Salt with no flavor • Is no good for anything but walking on. • Matthew 5:13 • Lukewarm, Revelations 3:14-16 • Matthew 12:30 He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad. • Romans 12:6a Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them:

6. The Light of the World • John 9:5 “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” • Matthew 5:14a “You are the light of the world.” • John 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

7. The Light of the World • Matthew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. • 2 Corinthians 3:3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. Cf. “The World’s Bible”

8. The World Wonders: • How can they have fun sober? • Why do they dedicate Sunday to the Lord and not the lake? • Why don’t they laugh at the same jokes as we do? • Why can they hold up so well in trials?

9. The Light of the World • 1 Thessalonians 5:5 You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. • 1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. • 1 John 5:19 We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

10. We are not “The Light of the Church.” • William Barclay quotes an unattributed writer: “There can be no such thing as secret discipleship, for either the secrecy destroys the discipleship, or the discipleship destroys the secrecy.” • We must shine our light when it’s dark all around us. (Flashlights don’t do much good in a well lit room.) • We must shine to receive praise from God. (Matthew 6:1-6)

11. Obey the gospel today! • Believe – John 8:24 • Repent – Luke 13:3 • Confess – Matthew 10:32-33 • Be baptized – Mark 16:16 • Be Faithful – Revelation 2:10