You Are - The Salt of the Earth

Well, take your Bible and turn back with me to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5, like I said earlier, will be in one verse, verse 13, although we read verses 13 on down to verse 16. But Matthew chapter 5 verse 13. I think all of you know we have just finished up the first section of the Sermon on the Mount. We started our series quite a few weeks ago. This series through the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7. Now this first section that we just finished up is the Beatitudes starting in verse 2 all the way down to verse 12.

Now here at verse 13 we find ourselves not just in the next section of the Sermon, we find ourselves at the next divinely inspired spiritual step in explaining the true Christian life. Now that's a mouthful, but it needs to be said. We find ourselves not just simply at the next step, but this is the next divinely inspired spiritual step as Christ is explaining the true Christian life. Now this is not a logical step according to man. This is the logical step according to Christ. All that we have here in the Sermon on the Mount is God's Christianity laid out before us.

So if this runs contradictory to anything that man teaches, it's man who is at fault. Now in delivering this greatest sermon that was ever preached, Christ is explaining the true Christian life section by section, step by step. And that's what we saw last week. Jesus taught, did not necessarily line up with the Jews who were there in the crowds because they were living out their religion in a physical, physical way. Now I want us to be careful here as we transition from this first section to the second section. I do not only want us to see a transition, but we also must see a connection. We need to see a transition and a connection.

Now let me explain. In verses 3-12, Jesus is describing true Christian character. This is who the Christian is to be. This is supposed to be the inside being of the man, of the woman, of the young person who is truly born again. Now starting in verse 13, Jesus is explaining how that Christian lives out their faith in the world, how they should relate to the world, and mix with the world, and live in the world. Now we see a transition from the inside of the man, how he relates to God, to the outside of the man, and how the man relates to the world. But remember, we must keep both of these sections connected.

Man relates to the world out of his character. They are connected. Now let me say it another way. Man's character determines how he relates to the world. You can't separate man's behavior in the world from his character that comes from God. The work God does within a man from verses 3-12 determines how he relates to the world, and we start to see how he relates to the world in verse 13. So this morning, we will see a transition as to how man relates to the world. Now I want to emphasize the importance of this connection by showing you two mistakes. These mistakes are more common than you know.

Certain people do not see the connection of these two bodies of teaching. Now what I mean by two bodies, verses 2 on down to verse 12, and then from verse 13 to verse 16. Certain people do not see the connection of these two bodies. They either don't see the connection, or they fail to maintain that connection. There are those who make the mistake of focusing on the inner man. They focus on verses 3 on down to verse 12, but they ignore how the man relates to the world. They are attracted to verses 3-12, but they shy away from the teaching and teaching like we see in verses 13-16. Now this lends itself to isolationism. Yes, isolationism.

Remember the Essenes that we talked about last week? Remember that group of Jews who were trying to live out the Old Testament faith by hiding? There were those Jews who sought to live out their religion by getting out of society. They wanted to retreat from the world. And these people say they are living out verses 3-12, but they actually never are. You cannot isolate one portion of scripture which is meant to be connected to another portion of scripture. If you do, you always distort the scripture that you are highlighting, or you are isolating. So that is one mistake certain people make. They isolate verses 3-12.

They focus on that, and then they ignore the other. But then there are those who make the mistake of focusing on how man relates to the world, but they ignore the teaching about how man relates to God. They are attracted to verses 13-16, but they in turn, they kind of shy away from verses 3-12, another teaching that is like that. Now this lends itself to modernism. Remember the Sadducees. Those were the Jews who sought to live out their religion in a new way. They wanted to disconnect from the old ways, and even certain portions of Old Testament scripture. These people say they are living out verses 3-16, but actually they are not.

Remember what I said a moment ago. You cannot isolate one portion of scripture which is meant to be connected to another portion of scripture. If you do, you always distort the scripture that you are highlighting, or you are isolating. Now that is another mistake. Simply if you say you focused on the inner man and you ignore how Christ says we should relate to the world, inevitably you invent a religion of externals. That was the problem of the Jews. You are moving away from the original intent of the author who is God.

This was the approach of the Essenes, and the heartbeat of the Essenes still beats in the chests, in the minds, in the lives of many people today. But if you focus on the world and you ignore how Christ says we should relate to God, you inevitably invent another religion of externals. You are moving away from the original intent of the author, and that was God. This is the approach of the Sadducees, and I'm sad to say, oh the Sadducees, their hearts, they beat in the chests, the minds, the lives of people today as well. So all of that to say, starting here in verse 13, we transition.

We transition to how we as born again Christians should live in the world, our world, the entire world, but that comes out of a work that God does in us. We are not talking about an inner work that is some pie in the sky, subjective, experiential work. We are talking about a work of God in us that is anchored within the truths found in what? These scriptures, verses 3 all the way down to verse 12. The work of God within us is bound up in these verses. It flows out of these verses. And that work, it compels us. It calls us, it enables us to go out into the world starting in verse 13. Now let me show you an important lesson here.

This relates to these verses, yes, but so many more. There are those who have these experiences and calls, and they do these so-called things that they call ministry, but they're not bound up in the word. Look, any experience, any call, anything that you do must be anchored to the truth of God's word. I'll give you an example. There's a big discussion and debate and argument in so-called Christian circles today about this women's Bible teacher, Beth Moore. Now I'm not trying to stir that up, but let me show you how this relates.

She claims to be called as God to teach and to preach, and she claims that she has the authority to stand behind the pulpit and teach women and to teach men, but the only problem is she has this calling and this so-called experience, but it's not anchored to the word because that is in direct violation of Titus chapter 2 and passages in 1 Timothy. So what we are seeing is someone who has this call and this so-called experience, but it's not anchored to the word. Now let me bring it back down to you and to me. If we're going to go out into the world, that calling must be anchored to the work that God does within us.

And the work is verse 3, verse 4, all of the Beatitudes, everything that God would do in us in the Beatitudes, which enables us to go out into the world as what? A true Christian. So we must see the transition starting in verse 13. Oh, but we have to maintain that connection. Now before we get into the verse, verse 13, we need to understand some background here. I've talked about background quite a bit, spent quite a bit of time last week on the background. Now, not the Jewish background. We talked about that a lot. I mean the background of the world, more specifically the condition of the world.

Now believe it or not, we have a presupposition here by Jesus, an assumption. Jesus assumes that the readers understood the condition of the world and that the world is utterly sinful and we must see that. Now look at how sinful the world became rather quickly. This is a very brief summary. If we go back into Genesis, Genesis chapter 1 and 2, we see that God created everything and in the creation, God repeatedly said that it was good. Go back and read in your own time, in your own study, read how many times God, he created and then he stepped back and said it was good. Now a question for you to ponder. Why was the creation good?

Was it because God, a holy and perfect God created everything? Well the answer to that is yes, but that's only a part of it. The creation was good because God had created it, but the creation was good because the world and the entire creation was not corrupted by sin. You see? All of the creation was good because it was formed by the hand and the mouth and the word of God, but it was not corrupted by sin. But sadly, notice how fast the train just comes off the tracks. Genesis 3, both Adam and Eve sinned against God and then by Genesis 4, one of Adam and Eve's sons killed the other, Cain killed Abel.

And then by Genesis 6, the whole earth was so corrupted by sin that God destroyed all of humanity through the flood. He only saved one man and his family and it only continues to get worse. The entirety of all of creation, all of humanity, every family, all governments, all nations are seen as corrupted by sin from Genesis chapter 3 all through the Old Testament and beyond. The history of mankind is a history of peoples and nations and governments and kings and rulers that have all been corrupted by sin. The history of humanity is a story of sin and corruption.

Sin history is a story of unjust wars, murder, sexual sin and perversion of all kinds, you name it. And I will say more about this background of the sinful world and man's sinfulness as we continue in the verses, but that is the background. Now before we move on, I want to show you the scene here really as I have it in my mind. I've just been painting for you this picture of the scene. To me, I see Jesus, he is sitting up on the Mountside teaching the great crowds. We see that in verses 1 and 2. Verse 1, seeing the crowds, he went up onto the mountain and he sat down. He had this wonderful vantage point and he began to teach.

The disciples came to him, the end of verse 1, there were these crowds of Jews and a few Gentiles. So that's the scene. But in my mind, I know I've said this many times, on the front row we have the disciples. Those were his chosen disciples, those first believers. I don't know where I ran across it, but a commentator quite a few messages ago showed me that this was like their ordination service and I do believe that's the case. But then behind the front row we have the crowds. Now there were a great crowd, mostly of Jews. There were some Gentiles there as well.

And we know that great background of the Jews and that was the Jews, the Jewish nation, the nation of Israel and their system of religion, their religious works. We talked about that last week. But a larger, a broader background was the sinfulness of the world, the sinfulness of humanity. Jesus is assuming that his disciples really understood this. He presupposes that we understand this reality. Both of the verses, 13 to 16, they don't make sense unless we understand this reality, the sinfulness of the world. Now when we get into our verse this morning, we're going to look at verse 13, but I want us to read all of these verses together.

Verse 13 to verse 16, and then I will explain to you what we're going to do with verse 13. What does Jesus say? You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall it be made salty? Again, how shall it be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out, to be tossed out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city, a city on a hill, it cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket or a bushel. But they put it on a stand and it gives light to all who are in the house.

In the same way, you let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Now we will start off with verse 13, and we're going to examine this verse in three ways. Now let me show you my approach to the verse. We're going to look at this first portion of verse 13, the salt of the earth. Then we're going to look at the question, the second part of the question. Then we're going to look at this sentence that is there on the end of the verse. So first I want us to look at this phrase, the salt of the earth. Go back. You are the salt of the earth.

Now truthfully there's a lot that needs to be understood here. Maybe a lot more than you might know. Now salt, salt is common in our day. We know what salt is. We will probably use it on our lunch here in a few moments. Now salt was very common in their day as well, just like it's common in our day. But our understanding and use of salt is much different in our day than it was in their day. Now we could spend a whole lot of time here, but I want to give us a basic understanding of salt in their day. And this is more relevant than you know. Salt was a very, very common substance in their day. In many ways more common to them than it is to us.

It was common, but it was a lot more valuable. The Romans, the Greeks, they believed that salt had even a divine quality. They were a polytheistic people. What that means is they worship many, many gods. So it shouldn't surprise us that they saw salt as having some type of divine or godlike quality. As a matter of fact, they had, the Romans had a little saying that showed how they revered salt. They lost this quite a few times this week and quite a few resources. There was this little parabolic saying that they had and it said, "There is nothing more useful than sun and salt." Of course this shows us how the Romans viewed the sun as well.

The ancient Romans worshiped the sun just like they did other gods. So in the time of Jesus, salt was very valuable to the Greeks for practical reasons, but for spiritual reasons. But to both Jew and the Gentiles, salt had many uses. When Jesus spoke these words, many things would have come into their minds. Bible scholars help us here. Scholars help us see how the culture used the salt and I will mention some of the uses of salt in their day and then we'll see how it applies to the teaching. First and foremost, salt in that day was used as a preservative. It was used as a preservative. It was the most common preservative in their day.

Now think about it. They did not have refrigeration in their day and time. That meant that they did not have a refrigerator. They didn't have a freezer. They didn't even have that old fashioned icebox that your grandparents might have talked about. So salt was used to keep foods. It was used to keep foods from spoiling particular meats and other foods. I was reminded of this reality in my trip to India back in 2014. As we were going through the capital city of Delhi, we went through the markets and we go down one particular street and there is the meat market.

And what that meant was literally all types of meat hung up on the side of the road, no refrigeration being sold right out in the open. I'll never forget we're going down the road and on my left, one of the Indians pointed out and said, "This isn't just the meat market. This is where they sell dog." No preservatives, no refrigeration, no freezers, what? They just had meat out there to be eaten or it would spoil. So what they would do in that day is they would take certain foods and they would salt them for preservation. This prevented spoilage. This prevented the food from rotting. What happens when that meat isn't preserved? Oh, it rots.

I'm sure that many of these disciples and these other Jews and even Gentiles thought about preservation. This was very common among the people of the day. This was really a simple part of their life. Preserving food was essential. And then second, salt was used for flavoring. Salt makes certain foods taste better. I think we know that. I think we know that certain foods just need salt. I think about the southern delicacy of grits. Think about it. Grits. Who from Mississippi does not like a bowl of grits? Well, you may or may not put butter on your grits, but I'm telling you, you do put salt on your grits. Why? Because of flavor.

Now, I don't think they ate grits in that day, but that helps us understand that they used salt for flavor. So in Jesus' day, they would use salt for flavoring. Scholars tell us that they use salt just like we do. It may taste better. So no doubt many of the crowd would have thought about salt being used for food. Salt was used in cooking. It was commonly put on the food while for flavor. And then third, the word purity. The word purity. Now, for some, salt was seen as something which was pure. No doubt some could have imagined white salt glistening in the sun because it was very common for salt to be stored outside in piles.

The Greeks, of course, saw salt as having divine quality. So they would have seen purity in salt. The Jews did use salt as part of their religious sacrifices within the sacrificial system as we see in the Old Testament. So purity could have come to their minds. The disciples and others listening could have thought of purity as Jesus was using salt as a teaching tool. That's not a far-fetched idea. And then fourth, thirst. Fourth thirst. Salt does produce thirst. Their environment was a dry and hot environment. They needed water and salt. Without water and salt, they would die.

Salt was a necessary part of their diet, but salt would make them thirsty just like it makes us thirsty in our day. So they easily could have thought of thirst. Salt was common. It was needed. But especially too much salt would make a man thirsty. So these people could have understood thirst. So what do we have here? This is a teaching tool. This is a metaphor. This would have struck into their curiosity. This would have brought up pictures and experiences, smells and sounds. All of the things of culture would have come into their mind. This was a teaching tool. Salt would have resonated with everybody within the crowd. What a question.

What was Jesus doing here? Go back to the verse. You are the salt of the earth. What was Jesus doing here? Here is where many begin to get things wrong. First, this was for the disciples. We must see who's on the first front row. This was for those who were truly His. Those who were born again. Only the true Christian. Only the true Christian within the crowd can receive the teaching. But what was Jesus telling these men? He was saying, "This is how you relate to a rotten world, a sin sick world, a world that is sin sick because of a rebellion against God." He is saying, "This is how you go out and touch putrefying humanity.

This is how you connect with the culture." Jesus is saying, "You go out into society and you touch humanity doing what salt does." He is saying, "You are to be pure and you are to be clean just like pure salt." Of course, this is only because they can have Christ's righteousness and Christ's purity in their lives. Remember, verse 6 and verse 8, "In the Beatitudes." He was saying to them, "You go into society and you act as a preservative." Now a question, how does that happen? How can they act like a preservative in a sinful culture? They had the message of the cross. They had the message of the gospel. They had the message of God's Word.

The standard of God's Word and the message of the gospel had the power to change humanity. He was telling these disciples to go into the world and to give the world flavor. Not just this attitude of spicing up the party. True. As true Christians, their lives would have been much different than the world. The flavor of their lives would have done one or two things. First it would have attracted lost sinners. Or second, it would have caused lost sinners to reject them. Remember verses 9 and 10 from our Beatitude Study.

So Jesus was calling these men to go into the world and to make men thirst for Christ and Christ's ways are to reject Christ and Christ's ways. Jesus was calling these men to head straight into sin, to straight into the world of rebellion and into lost humanity. He was calling them to go after the rotten, the putrefying, the dead and the decaying people of the world with life-giving, preserving the message of the gospel and Christ.

Finally Jesus was saying, "You go into the world with pure hearts seeking to purify the world with two things, the gospel message and the standard of the word." He was saying, "You go into the world and you give this sinful world flavor, the flavor of me." The flavor of Christ. He was saying, "You talk like me, you act like me, you be like me." He was saying, "You go into the world and you cause lost sinners to thirst after me. You go into the world to preserve it from sin and hell and the only way they can do that with the message of the cross and the standard of God's word." That's what he's saying. But there's one more layer.

Look at your verse. Look at the very first word, that personal pronoun you. You are the salt of the earth. Well, if you study the language itself, you will see that this personal pronoun is in the emphatic. What Jesus is saying here is this, "You and you only are the salt of the earth." What Jesus is saying is, "You are my plan A and I do not have a plan B." He is saying, "You go into the world and you live the life that I prescribe for you," starting in verse 3 all the way down to verse 12, "and you go and you be salt to the world, doing what salt does." This was plan A and he did not have a plan B. Now, let's move on.

I want us to see this second part of the verse, verse 13. I want us to see what is this losing saltiness. Go back to the verse. "You are the salt of the earth," a statement, "but then he transitioned, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall it be made salty or how should the saltiness be restored?" What is this losing saltiness? Now, this can cause a problem because by nature salt cannot lose its saltiness. It cannot lose its flavor. What does it mean here? Now, there are two possibilities that I ran across in my study. I will bring both of them before you.

First, in the time of Jesus, most of the ovens that were used for cooking were outside of the door. Now, you got to remember most everyone lived the same and right outside of their doors in the day of Jesus, there would have been an outdoor kitchen. These kitchens were built on stone and they had a foundation or a bed of tiles that were laid. This was very common. "For the ovens to hold their heat, a thick bed of salt was put under the foundation or the bed of tiles. For a certain amount of time, the salt would lose its usefulness. And at that point, the tiles were taken up and the salt was removed and it was thrown out.

And they did not just discard it. It was placed out on the paths and on the roadside. It was useless for its original purpose." But then a second reason, some commentators made the mention of contamination. I've already mentioned this. Salt was stored in piles and it was put outside of doors and piles out in the open. And if it was not covered, it could become contaminated by dust and dirt and really anything that should get into the salt. This was a common problem. And it would lose its color because it was contaminated and it would become dingy and brown. And at some point, if the salt became too contaminated, what would happen?

They would throw it out. They would put it along the roadside. They would put it along the footpaths. So what do we have here? In their day, salt could lose its usefulness. Salt would lose its usefulness. It would become useless and it could not be restored to its usefulness. It had lost its saltiness. It had become contaminated. It was corrupted. It was useless. Now this leads me to the other part of the verse. Third, what is this thrown out? Go back to the verse. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

And then the statement, it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out to be trampled under people's feet. Simply impure salt was thrown along the roadsides, along the footpaths, and it was used to keep unwanted vegetation from growing. History tells us that a lot of salt that came from the Dead Sea area was contaminated with other minerals, so it was useless from the beginning. And it would have been useless for flavoring foods or preserving foods, but this salt of lesser quality was used commonly along roads and footpaths, why? To keep vegetation back. So what do we have here? This was a common practice.

To deal with useless salt. Contaminated salt. And wanted salt, and it was thrown out all along roads and all along walking paths. It was used to kill vegetation, and it was trampled on by the feet of men and women and young people and animals all day long. So what is Jesus saying to these disciples? Remember our scene? Jesus is there on the mountainside. There's a great crowd, and there on the front row, he has his chosen disciples, and then there are the Jews. Jesus is saying that if you lose your saltiness, you are worthless for my purposes for you.

My purpose for you is to be salt into the world, and he is saying that if you become contaminated by sin in the world, you are not useful to me. He is saying that if you allow the world to affect your purity, then you are not useful to me. He is saying to guard and to protect your saltiness, he is calling them to guard their life and to be in the world, but not of the world. So in summary, with this verse, go back to the verse, "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." What do we see here?

Notice what Jesus is doing. He has taught his disciples that the true Christian life begins on the inside. It is first an inner work of God within them. Oh, in verses 3-12, we do see small glimpses of the true disciple relating to the world, but verses 3-12 are primarily about the man and how he relates to God. But here in verse 13, Jesus makes a big transition. Now remember, this message is primarily an ordination service for the disciples. He is calling these men to go out into the putrefying world of lost humanity. He is calling them to go out, and he is calling them to go out with two things and two things only.

First, the message of the gospel, the message of the cross, the message of Christ, and then second, the word of God. They were to go out pure and holy because of Christ's righteousness and pure hearts. They were to go out and affect the world. They were to be a completely different flavor to the world. They were to seek to preserve humanity, even society, by giving the lost world two things, the gospel and God's word. That is what peacemaking truly is. Go back to verse 10. Remember this is a glimpse of how they relate to the world.

Blessed are those, or excuse me, verse 9, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." In peacemaking, you're taking the gospel and the standard of God's word to the world. So Jesus is saying, "You are it. You are my plan B. I do not have a plan B. You are plan A. Now you go into the world and be salt to the world." Now at this point, I want to do two things. First I want to explain my approach. We will continue to look at the message. We will continue to look at the message of being salt in the world as we continue to move through the verses. We've read several times, verses 13 on down to 16.

Originally this was all together. I'm just taking one verse at a time. So I will not completely move away from verse 13 when we move into verse 14 to 16 next week. But second, I want to make some application before we close. And then I will continue to make application from verse 13 as we move along. But this morning I want to make application by asking us a question. How does this apply to us? How does this apply to you and to me in our day? Now we were not there in that great crowd. I know. We are not a part of the 12 disciples and we definitely are not Jews. So how does this apply to us?

We must see that as born again Christians, we are seen among the disciples. We are seen among the believers. We are a part of the 12. We are not in the office of the apostle, but we are a part of that band of believers. So this teaching definitely applies to us. And I want to start off by reminding us that we must keep ourselves connected to the work of God in verses 3 to 12. We should read over these verses, verses 3 to 12. We should pray over the beatitudes. We need to ask the Holy Spirit of God to teach us and encourage us and to correct us continuously out of verses 3 to 12. We need a fresh work of God from these verses in our lives.

And we should go out from the work of God. We should go out from the work that God does within these verses. And then we need to see how this transition applies to us. Yes, we transition into verse 13, but personally we transition into our calling into the world. Jesus is saying to us, "You, you and you only are my salt. You are my salt that is to go out into the earth and into the world." He means for us to go into the sin sick world, into the dead and decaying and lost world around us. This world where we live, and we need to see this in two ways. This is our responsibility and our calling. This is our responsibility and our calling.

Now a question, who has Christ entrusted this work to? To us. If you are born again, he has entrusted this work to us. Now not just us individually, but us collectively. This is our calling and our responsibility, our responsibility and our calling. But I come all the way back around to something that I shared with you in the introduction. Remember the two errors that I spoke of earlier. If we focus too much on the inner man, if we only stay tied to verses 3 to 12, if we disconnect that teaching from verses 13 to 16, then we become like the Essenes.

We try to hide in our holiness and that is reinventing Christianity and there are some who are prone to that error. So what do we do? We stray true to the text, both portions of scripture. We stay tied to the verses. And then also, if we focus too much on the doing, if we only get into verses 13 to 16, if we do not stay connected to the verses, verses 3 to 12, then we become like the Sadducees. We invent a new way because we are not tied to the scriptures. This is reinventing Christianity as well and some are prone to this error. So what do we do? We stay true to the scriptures. We stay connected to all of the scriptures.

And I bring up those two errors because all of us are prone to get off balance in one of two ways. All of us are prone to get out of balance. Some are worse than others. Now here is where I'll close. I will start local. I've been talking about the earth and the world and the corruption and the sinfulness of the world, but I want us to notice where we live, in our neighborhoods, where we shop, where we trade, where we school, where we live, where we work. I want you to think in your mind about the stores that you visit and the neighbors you speak to and the streets that you ride down. I want you to think about the world that you live in.

Ask God to open your eyes to the lostness and to the sin around you. Yes, as you go this week on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, wherever you go, ask God to open up your eyes to the sinfulness and to the rebellion and to the sin-sick world around you. Listen, if you are a true believer, I believe you will sense, feel, and even hear the Holy Spirit echoing these verses in your mind. You will even hear the Spirit of God saying, "You, you are to be my salt in this world. You are to be my salt in this store and with this neighbor and on this street and at this job and in this school." Yes, you.

So I ask you, this week, as we begin to transition into our responsibility and calling in the world, ask the Spirit of God to open up your eyes and open up your mind to the lost world around you. Now, here's a warning before I close. Here's a warning. Some of you will be just like the Jews. Listen, when Jesus calls them to look around them, they were horrified because what was the attitude of the Jews? We're God's chosen people. They prayed two things every day. Every Jewish man prayed two things. They said, "Lord, thank you that I'm not a woman and thank you that I'm not a Gentile." Here's what I'm showing you. They did not like the world.

They did not want to go into the world. They wanted to stay with their own people and we all have that tendency. As we look around us, don't step back. Allow the Spirit of God to enable you to step out. That is our calling. That is our responsibility. Die to the attitude of the Jews of stepping back. Now what's the title of the message? I wrestled back and forth all week with how to title this message. It really just comes back down to the verse. I can't make it any better. You are the salt of the earth. What have we looked at? The salt of the earth. It's the salt of the earth. But I have to personalize it.

As you write in your notes, the salt of the earth, I would ask you to do what's in the text. You. Maybe underline you in your scripture right there in verse 13. You underline it, highlight it. You. You are the salt of the earth because we are going to see more and more as we get through these verses. But this is our responsibility and this is our calling.