Series: The Sermon on the Mount

April 18, 2021 - Ryan Romeo

We’re diving into the Sermon on the Mount series. Matthew 5:13 is where we are at today. We’re continuing from David Stockton, who kicked us off really great last week. He talked about the Beatitudes. If you missed that sermon, you should go check it out because it was really, really good.

He talked about the Beatitudes representing this attitude, not just what we should strive to be, or if we find ourselves happening to be in that place, what we should be aware of, the blessedness that we have, really, David was saying Jesus was explaining himself when he was talking about blessed are the meek, blessed are poor in spirit. This is Jesus. Jesus was a man of sorrows. Yes, he was a man that conquered death and he is coming back on the clouds. It’s going to be amazing. But he was also a man that was acquainted with death and sorrow just like we are. He’s not aloof and separate from us.

The story of Jesus coming is this beautiful story. And the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest sermon ever preached. I know that’s a bold statement. But this is the greatest sermon ever preached. We’ve been studying it for a very long time and we still have more to gain from it this morning.

I love it because David talked about how it started, but then he talked about how this sermon ended. In Matthew 7, when Jesus is wrapping up this Sermon on the Mount with his followers, he says, “Blessed are you if you build your life upon my teaching.” And he said it’s like those who build their house on a sure rock foundation. The people afterward were amazed by Jesus. Why? Because he was so handsome and eloquent? Because he had so many Instagram followers? No. They were impressed by Jesus because he taught with such authority. It said the people went away amazed because of at the authority that Jesus preached with.

If you pay attention to the wording in there, he’s going, “If you build your life on my words, you are on a sure foundation.” That is a bold statement. Jesus is coming at it with authority. He’s going, “Hey, I’m not just giving you a really nice sermon, or another way to think about the law, I’m giving you something that will hold you steady and it will be way abetter than the person who builds their house on the sand, the shifting sands of culture or governmental authorities, whatever it is. If you’re trying to build your house on anything else, it will shift. It will change. But my words are the rock.” And how much do we ned that right now.

For those of us building our house or tempted to build our house on the shifting sands of culture, we’re going to find ourselves very confused, very fearful, very stressed out. But Jesus is going, “Come to me. Put your anchor into me and I will give you sure footing.” So Jesus is coming with authority.

With that as a backdrop, let’s turn to Matthew 5:13. I’m reading out of the ESV translation:

13 You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

I’m going to read the exact same passage again, but I’m going to read it out of the Message. The Message is just a paraphrased translation, but I love the way the author puts it. Matthew 5:13 in the Message (MSG) says:

13 “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.
14-16 “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

Amen. I could just read that over and over, I feel like, for us this morning. Jesus is saying something that’s bolder than just, “Hey, this is a good idea about us.” Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey, work really hard to be salt.” Or, “Maybe if you memorize enough scripture, you’ll be light.” Jesus is saying something about our identity as followers of him. He said, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

He’s giving us this sort of identity anchor — something for us again in the tumultuous seasons of life that come and go in our society — he’s giving us something that we can anchor ourselves into. He’s saying, “Anchor into this value that I’m placing on you,” saying, “You are salt and light.”

Now, if we’re being honest, when we hear this we go, “Okay, you’re the salt of the world,” it’s kind of like Jesus saying, “You’re the paprika of the world.” I guess if we’re the flavor of the world, it’s kind of nice. The habanero of the world, yeah, I like that. Jesus isn’t just talking about this spice that we could go, in our society, we could just go to the dollar store and get a collar worth of salt that’s probably like this big. It’s no big deal for us. We use salt all the time. We get it. We have access to it all over the place.

But in this time, things were really different. Historians say there were times in the Roman Empire where salt was more valuable than gold. Salt was one of those things that was given out to people as payment for their work. So Roman soldiers that put in their two weeks, and they would go get their bag of salt — I don’t know if they got paid every two weeks. I’m just making that up. They would get paid in salt. They’d get a digital deposit of salt into their bank account. They would go get a bag of salt. This is the payment that they would be getting, they would receive for the work they put in. Salt is valuable.

Jesus is saying, “You are the salt of the earth.” He’s not saying you’re this thing that you can go to the 99 cent store and get a bunch of. He’s saying, “No, you are very, very valuable.” In fact, the word salary that we use right now, that first part sal comes from the root of salt. So we’re still getting paid in salt. Our salary still harkens back to the time where salt was so valuable.

And Jesus is saying, “You are the salt of the earth.” You carry a lot of value, much more than you understand. The thing about salt, it was valuable, but it was very useful too. If you were carrying gold around and you were starving, or you needed to preserve food or do something, gold didn’t do anything for you. It looked pretty, but it was pretty heavy to carry around. Salt was really different.

Salt was used as a preservative for the time. They would use it as a preservative for meat. So they would have the family animal out back. Maybe they would slaughter old Bessie out back. They probably didn’t have a cow. Maybe they had Frank the goat that they slaughtered out back. They would eat like half of it as a family, and there would be this other half of the meat left over. They couldn’t just put it in a Ziploc bag and put it in their freezer like we do. They had to either let it rot or they would put salt on it. Salt was very useful.

If you had an animal and it was very expensive and you slaughtered it to feed your family, you didn’t want it to just feed your family for one night and then throw the rest out and let it rot. You needed it to sustain you longer. When people put salt on meat, it pushed back against the decay. It created a barrier against decay and rot of the meat.

We are salt. We are called to push back on the decay of culture. Whether culture knows it or not — and most of the time they don’t — the church has this value of holding things fast and preserving things that would get lost otherwise. If you look at the history of the world, you can see so many times, so many different major players in the world, when morality started to decline, it signaled the decline of that society. We could look at history and it happened over and over again.

We know, as the church we are here to preserve certain things. We’re preserving the word of God. We’re preserving church. We’re preserving the gathering together of the saints and worshiping together. There are certain things that we are holding our ground on and going, “This is so important.” Whether society knows it or not, we are helping a lot. Whether you know it or not, we’re helping a lot.

One of the things that, when you read this passage though, you know you hear this, “We’re preservative. We’re valuable,” and all of that. But one of the things that is so important when we’re reading scripture is, what does it actually say, too? So there’s the reading between the lines, absolutely. But what does Jesus actually say? He says, “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?”

We are that God flavoring. I love the way the Message puts it. We are to be “the salt seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.” Whether the world knows it or not, the things that they are trotting out as brand new is not brand new. It’s been trotted out many, many times over the years. It’s something that, when you pay attention to it, you go, “This is the exact same thing that we’ve heard.” And if you want to know the roots of all of it, go back to Genesis 3 and hear what the serpent said to Eve. He said, “Did God really say…? Did God really say not to do that? Did God really say that?” He’s putting this second guess into the nature of God, going, “Did God really way that? Does he really have your best interests at heart?” Then he throws in this other thing and says, “God knows that if you ate of that fruit that you would be like him.”

And the root of everything that we’re seeing in our society is not brand new. I don’t care if it’s just posted on TikTok or now it’s internet based. That doesn’t matter. That tool is interesting, but the prescriptions that the world is trotting out is bland and predictable. It is the same over and over and over again. And we are that salt flavoring to the world.

I went to art school, surprisingly. I went to UofA because it’s better than ASU. I would say I’m joking, but I’m not. I went to art school at UofA. It is not a normal thing for a Christian to be in art school. I’m just throwing this out. I sat in art classes and there were many people that found out I was a Christian and they were like, “What? Christians don’t make art. Christians are boring.” You know? “They just sit around and read the Bible and judge everybody.” I mean, that’s what they think we’re all about.

I found myself —not that I’m judging other people’s hearts, but I am judging just a little bit — they would trot out these same ideas, like the same, basically, you would start to see the root of it in this idea that, “I am God. I’m in control. The Christians are bad. The people that talk about morality are just trying to judge you.” It was like this same thing over and over and over. I had moments where I would look around the class going, “Does anybody else see this?” It’s kind of the same thing, you know.

We are the God-flavoring of the world. There is something the world is missing. It is bland without us. We don’t hold on to that very often. A lot of times, when you watch pop culture, you don’t feel like that. But we are adding flavoring to the world. We are adding this God-flavoring to the world that everybody’s hungry for. Without it, the world is bland.

We see this with Jesus when he comes onto the scene. You look at the Beatitudes. This attitude that Jesus brought to us was so different. He was not the kind of leader that we’re used to seeing. He didn’t lord it over everybody. He didn’t beat it over anyone’s head. He was lowly. He was humble. He met with the people he shouldn’t have. This was Jesus. He did everything against the social norms. And we are called to walk in that same path. We are salt and light in our community. We are called to be a separate community. There is something about us that should stick out in the world around us.

As I was looking at it, I started to see, you know, what are some of the things the world says, and some of the things that are impacting us right now. You know, they kind of trot out the same prescriptions over and over again. But I see the world saying this right now and saying it over and over again in history. The antidote to injustice is vengeance. The antidote to fear is control. The antidote for shame is justification of behavior.

You see injustice and people are not just saying, “Hey let’s try to make it right.” They’re going, ”Let’s get even. We’ve got to get even.” And I’m a huge fan of the Count of Monte Cristo. I get it. It feels really good to have vengeance. But what did Jesus do in the face of injustice? He was lowly. He didn’t open his mouth. He was murdered completely unjustly. And he took it on his shoulders as a servant. Serving people. Loving them. Doing the exact opposite of what anybody thought he would do.

The antidote for fear is control. We see this in the world all the time. And if you and I are honest, we exercise this in our private life all the time. When we feel fear, when we come up against something that we can’t control, we try to grab control as much as we can. Maybe we hear something about financial trouble, so we start checking on our 401k , or start saying, “Maybe we should pull money out.” You’re trying to traverse everything as much as you can. You’re hearing things in the world that are going wrong and you’re like, “Maybe I need to pay attention more to the news to find out what’s happening.” We’re trying to grab control. We’re white-knuckling things that we really have no business white-knuckling.

Jesus. What did he do in the face of fear? Because he felt that in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was faithful. The antidote for fear is faith. The antidote for fear of going, “Okay, I’m completely out of control, but Lord, I am going to pour myself deeper into prayer. I’m going to pour myself deeper into understanding that I’m not in control. And I’m going to relinquish it to you.”

The antidote for shame is justification of behavior. This is one of those things that is not new. I’m sorry. 2021 did not invent the justification of wrong behavior. When we walk in shame, and shame is kind of the darker version of feeling this sense of like, “Okay, I did something wrong.” But it’s repentance. That is the antidote. Repent. Turn away and go, “Hey, I get it. This is not right and this is not good for me. I’m going to turn away.”

Again, over and over society tells us that’s an old idea. “That is no good. It doesn’t matter anymore. We don’t need to do that. We need to take control of our lives. We need to take control.” We should see it for what it is. It’s a Genesis 3 lie. It’s been around for a long time. But as Christians, we are called to be salt and light.

Jesus says this interesting phrase. He says, “You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?” Jesus is giving us a bit of a warning here, saying, “Hey, you can lose that salty flavor. Though your identity is salt, you can lose your flavor as that granule of salt.”

I saw this in two different ways. One, I think we can dilute our saltiness by living a flavorless life that just echoes the world. We’re just bringing in the philosophies of the world. It’s so interesting when Jesus says, “If it loses its saltiness,” the word that he uses in there is this word moraino and it’s the root for the word moron. If you have lost your flavoring…I read that and I thought Man, I don’t know if I’ll ever read that passage the same! It’s like don’t be foolish. There’s this sense of like you’re trading something of such value for something that’s so foolish.

It’s sad to see this happen over and over. There are a lot of people I know that are following Jesus and they’re going, “You know what? I’m going to just kind of add a little bit this and add a little bit of that.” Pretty soon they’re not salty. They’re not living a life that’s separate at all from anybody else. At some point they just completely exchange their life in Jesus for what the world is telling them is life. We know it’s foolish. We know it’s not going to fill. Yet, we see people doing that all the time.

If we’re being honest, we’re tempted to do that all the time too. “Did God really say that?” “Do I have to really do that?” How many of you today are going, “I didn’t even really want to come to church.” Or, “I argued with my kids on the way here.” I’ll just say it was me, too. I was like, “I don’t know if I really want to come to church today.” But we are pushing back against the entropy of the world. We are pushing back against the decay of the world in our own spheres and our own lives, and going, “No. I’m not going to lose my saltiness.”

So you could dilute it by bringing in things of the world. You can dilute by bringing in old trotted out philosophies that don’t line up with scriptures, that don’t line up with the teachings of Jesus. But you could go the opposite direction, too. You could lose your saltiness from self-righteousness. Now, later on in this passage it hit me really hard. Later on when he says, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden,” and he says, “In the same way let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” I started going, Okay, we’re not saved by works, I get that. But seeing our good works and glorifying our Father in heaven felt a little contrary to the next chapter.

If you turn over to Matthew 6, the very beginning he says, “Beware of practicing righteousness in front of other people like then Pharisees do, because you’ll get no reward at all.” I started going, “Okay, well, you do want people to see our good works, Jesus. But you don’t want us to be walking in righteousness just to be viewed by other people. So what is the difference here?”

I think if you’re walking in self-righteousness, practicing righteousness just to be seen by other people, you’re doing it on a heart level for different motivations than you would for good works. With everything Jesus says, it’s all about heart posture. It’s all about understanding the heart behind this.

Practicing righteousness in front of other people is to be noticed. You’re acting superior, so you’re doing it in a way to be noticed and to gain leverage and superiority over people around you. If you find yourself trying to memorize Bible verses to make sure you’re the sharpest one in the room so that you’re impressing people – you’re not. That is operating in this sense of “I’m going to practice righteousness to make everybody think I’m doing great.” At the end of the day, it’s not bringing glory to God. It’s bringing glory to yourself. So don’t do that. Jesus is going, “Don’t do that. Don’t fall into that trap of trying to practice righteousness.”

But he does say, “Let your good works shine in front of other people.” So what are good works? What does that mean? What is the difference there? Well, the heart posture for good works are to genuinely impact people’s lives. You’re coming to the table and going, “I just want to make a difference here.” Maybe my neighbor is going through something hard and I want to bring him a meal. Maybe there’s a neighbor that hasn’t been around people for a long time and I’m going to give him a call and see how they’re doing.

These small acts or big acts, these things that are, “I just want to make an impact for the kingdom,” and it’s coming from this heart posture of displaying humility and love. You want to come to the table and go, “I’m not a big deal. I’m not coming to you because I have everything sorted out and I’m perfect. I’m coming to you because I love you and I want to display the love of Jesus to you who was perfect. He lived the perfect life and I just want to tell you about him.”

At the end of the day, good works give glory to God, not to you. At the end of the day good works are one of those things that you walk in, and people don’t go, “Wow. Wasn’t that person amazing?” They go, “Wow. Wasn’t God amazing?” This is what it means to be salt. This is what it means to be light. This is what it means to walk that out in the community around us.

But I have some encouragement for us this morning, as we’re looking around and we’re seeing the world. As the world gets darker, our light shines brighter. I’m going to say that again, because I feel like that needs to sink in. As the world gets darker, our light shines brighter. It becomes easier and easier to walk in the ways of God when the darkness around us is so palpable and so different. When we’re living a simply different life than other people, it’s easier to become a light.

In 2005, I think, we spent a few years before that doing missions work. In 2005 we went to Cambodia. The last time I spoke I talked about the first time I went to Cambodia right out of high school in 2000. It was real war torn. I saw the red light district of Cambodia. It was a kind of oppressive darkness that I couldn’t really handle. It seemed that it felt so dirty, I just, honestly, on an emotional level, “Lord, I can’t even handle the darkness of what’s going on here.”

A few laters later, five years later, we felt like the Lord was calling us to go back to Cambodia. So my wife and I led a team. We were in Phnom Penh. We started working with a church. And the think you notice about the Cambodian people, there are so many things about the culture that are beautiful. I really do love Cambodian culture. But there is this sort of sense of darkness and lost-ness that is very, very evident. You just see the people walking around with their heads down. There is just this deep sadness. They’ve gone through things that you and I would never understand. I mean, there are parents selling their kids into the sex trade. Things that we just really don’t understand, can’t wrap our head around, and they feel the darkness of that. Even if they didn’t experience it, chances are half of their friends experienced it. And they have this weight and this darkness as they’re walking around. And you just see it in the people. Their heads are down, their eyes are not bright. There’s just this utter helplessness.

I remember the first church that we went to in Cambodia, and you showed up and it was just like, “Wow, something’s really different here.” And the worship was really different. They all sang in Khmer. I had no idea what was going on. It was probably like three steps higher than I could sing. I didn’t know what was going on. Lots of symbols clashing. It was completely different in terms of style. I had no idea what the sermon was about; because, again, it was in Khmer. My wife and I just sat there for an hour and a half, just not really understanding.

But there was something that we did understand when we looked around at the people. There was this difference in them. They were so different. And the biggest thing that was different about them was that they smiled. They just smiled. And they were hearing a sermon. I’ll bet more than half the people in the room couldn’t even read or write. Nobody had a theology degree. Nobody had the pedigree to quote due ministry. But there was this movement of the Spirit that was so palpable in the room. You’re going, “The Spirit of God is in this place.” And being a light was really, really simple. They didn’t need to be experts. They didn’t need to be the smartest people in the room. They sat at the feet of Jesus. They sat in community with each other. And they worshiped God. And it brought such a difference to them.

And, church, as the world gets darker, it’s going to become a lot easier for you to shine your light. It really will be. It will be easier when you sit down. I started writing some things down, going, “What does it meant to be salt and light? What are the things that we can do?” And it’s so simple:

Put yourself under the authority of Jesus. We’re hearing all sorts of people tell themselves and each other, “Hey, put yourself under this authority.” Or “Listen to this new book.” Or “Check out this new show.” Or “Listen to this new YouTube channel,” or whatever. At the end of the day, the only voice that has authority in our life to give us stability in unstable times is the voice of Jesus. We have to understand it. We have to put ourselves under his authority and go, “No matter what the world tells us, Jesus, I trust you. If you’re the last one I can trust, Jesus, I trust you.” Put yourself under the authority of Jesus.
Anchor your hope in him. Have a hope that doesn’t make sense, like Paul said. It absolutely makes no sense to be walking around with hope. But we need to be the people that are smiling. We need to be the people that, when we’re burying ourselves under the news, and when we’re burying ourselves under all the hopelessness of what we see in the world, trying to get a grasp on it, we have to push back occasionally. We have to go sit with our kids, sit with our family, sit with our friends, slow down and remember the hope that we have in Jesus that is surpassing anything else that the world would give us.
This is the most important thing: Spend time with him and spend time in community. The second one is a lot like the first one. Spend time with Jesus and spend time in community, because iron sharpens iron. We need people around us that don’t think exactly like us. We need to show the sort of crazy unity under the lordship of Jesus where we could hear from each other and push back against each other and bring out new ideas of scripture with one another. We need community. If 2020 taught us one thing, it was this. Community is beautiful and it’s not to be taken for granted. Even as I stand in front of you today, I think, God, what if this is the last time we stand in front of our church? What if this is the last time we get together? What are we going to say to each other? What are we going to spur one another on? That’s the gift of 2020 that I feel like I’ll carry the rest of my life. Community is not something we take for granted. And spending time with Jesus every morning. It’s not something to take for granted.

So church, we are called to be salt and light. But it’s a lot easier than you and I think. Jesus said his yoke is easy, his burden is light. There’s something so beautiful about sitting under the teachings of Jesus and just receiving. Let’s pray:

Jesus, we thank you that you call us salt and light. Thank you that we didn’t earn it, Jesus. You earned it for us on the cross. Thank you that there’s one mediator between God and man, and that is you, Jesus.
Holy Spirit, we thank you that you guide us in our life. We thank you that you’re that dove on our shoulder, leading us, guiding us, speaking to us.
And God, we want to be salt and light. We want to be a city on a hill. We want to be a culture that is counter to the culture that we’re seeing in this world. God, not from a distant, judgmental way, but, Lord, as salt flavoring that brings out the God-flavors of the world around us. Lord, help us to be set apart for you.
We pray for more of what we’re seeing in our church, more of what we’re seeing in our church and other churches, God. More of a move of your Spirit. More of a move of worship. More of a move of your gospel, of putting ourselves under the authority of your teaching, Jesus. Right now we just repent. We’re sorry, Lord. Anything that we’ve put ourselves under this week — any authority that we’ve put ourselves under this week, Lord, we’re sorry. Right now we put ourselves under the authority of your word, under the authority of your teaching. And we sit at the feet of the beautiful, joyful, hopeful King that is one day coming back in splendor and power, and it’s going to split the sky in two and, in one moment it’s going to be so clear. So strengthen us before that day, Jesus.

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