Matthew 5:13-16 Salt and Light

One of the great questions that we must answer as a church is what is our place in the society around us. How are Christians to engage with the larger culture? Should we take a path of standing against culture? There are certainly times when being a faithful Christian means we do stand against certain aspects of our culture. For instance, as Christians we must be honest about what the Bible says about marriage and sexuality. We must be honest about what the Bible says about protecting the lives of the unborn. There are certainly times when we have to stand on God’s word, regardless of how unpopular it is in our culture, but do we always have to stand against culture? Some would ask the opposite question: Should Christians accept the outside culture completely? There are times when we might want to do this. For instance, to be Christians, we don’t think that all our music has to be from the 17^th or 18^th centuries. Sometimes, we adapt to our culture in order to reach those around us with an unchanging Gospel. However, some would say we should do this about everything—that the Bible is wrapped in a cultural husk, and that we should try to get back to the spiritual kernel inside, and then communicate that spiritual truth through the culture of our day. Attempts at doing this have often failed. In this approach, it is often hard to know what is culture, and what is the enduring spiritual truth. Who is to judge that? How do we know that what we think is cultural isn’t really abiding truth? For reasons like this, I think it’s dangerous to take this approach. So what is the Christian relationship to culture? Jesus’ words to his disciples in this passage give us some direction as we think about this question. I believe what we see here is that Christians are to make our communities better places so that God gets the glory.

Let’s look at our text:

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.

Jesus uses three examples to make his point. He says that his disciples are salt, they are light, and they are a city on a hill.

But first, let’s back up. Who is he talking to? Now, we see at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, the text tells us that he sat down and began teaching his disciples, but at the end it tells us that there were crowds. I would suggest that because this is still close to the beginning, we should read this as pertaining to disciples. So, who is this speaking to today? Believers. We who have trusted in Christ are his living disciples. He is saying that we, if we are believers, are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We don’t want to get this confused. Jesus is not saying that all human beings are the light of the world. He is saying that disciples—both those at the time, and today—contribute something to the world that it would not have apart from us.

Now let’s look at each comparison that he makes. First, Jesus says we are the salt of the earth. Why does he say this? Usually, people answer this in two ways. First, salt brings out flavor. You want your food to taste better, and you put a little salt on it to season it. So, one thing Jesus might mean by telling us that we are the salt of the earth is that we make the world a better place by our presence. We make everything taste better. The other way that this is often taken is that salt is a preservative. Of course, in the ancient world they didn’t have refrigerators. So, in order to keep meat and other things from spoiling they would use salt. So also, there is a sense in which believers are a preserving agent in society. Because of the fall, our world is broken, and it often seems like it’s getting more broken all the time. There is a general cultural decay in which people seem to be becoming more and more hostile to the things of God. By the presence of believers, there can be a preserving power. As believers engage culture, we speak out against injustices and it may have some effect at slowing cultural decay.

Which of these is right? Or are they both? I think both have merit, but I lean toward the first explanation. We make the world taste better. Here’s why. The first disciples were a small group with hardly any hope of making any impact on the larger culture. I don’t think the early church would have been preserving culture, but rather they would have been counter cultural. It wasn’t until later when Western culture had been so widely influenced by Christianity that we might say that Christianity preserves culture. So I’m inclined to say that Jesus’ disciples are to be a positive good in the world that makes the world and our communities a better place.

Next, Jesus says that his disciples are the light of the world. Now, here Jesus mixes two metaphors. He first says we are the light of the world, but before explaining it he says “a city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” As modern people it might puzzle us as to why he does this. But what do we notice when we are traveling at night. If you are driving a long distance at night through the country and you begin to get close to a city, what do you notice? The lights of the city begin to light everything up. So think of being on a long journey, and you are traveling at night, and off in the horizon you see the city you are heading for, up on a hill, and you are guided by the light. There is no way you can hide the light that comes from the city. Now, back then, they didn’t have electric street lights, but they had fires and lamps and torches which all gave light—not only to those immediately using them, but also the cumulative effect made the city give off light all around. Jesus says that disciples are like this kind of light that cannot be hidden. The world is in darkness, and we give light to those around us leading the way to Him.

Jesus continues the analogy of light. He says that you don’t cover a lamp with a basket. That would be silly, wouldn’t it? Especially in a day when you didn’t just flip a switch for a light to come on, but you actually had to light a candle or a torch or an oil lamp, why would anyone have lit a lamp, and then covered it up? The idea is absurd. No one would do that. Rather, Jesus says that when you light a lamp, you put it on a lamp stand. You lift it high so that it gives light to everyone in the house. Jesus says that we are light, and that as light, we are not to be hidden. Our light is to shine.

Maybe we think of the old song, “This Little Light of Mine.” [Singing] This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

Jesus continues, and he tells us this is what we are to do. He says, “In the same way, let your light shine, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Just like you wouldn’t hide a lamp under a basket, so you don’t hide your light.

Now here’s a question that may occur to you: Doesn’t Jesus say in the next chapter to “beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them?” (6:1) Do these two things contradict? It seems like in chapter 5 Jesus is saying do good works before men that they may see your good works, but in chapter 6 he says to beware of it. These don’t seem to fit very well in our minds, but they are only a chapter a part. How can we reconcile these two thoughts? I believe it comes down to our heart motivation. Are we seeking our own glory or God’s? Jesus tells us to let our lights shine so that people will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. The warning in chapter 6 is against doing good works to bring glory to ourselves.

There is a fine line here, and often we can have mixed motives. As Jeremiah 17:9 warns us, the heart is deceitful above all things, who can know it. Maybe we have a good and godly desire that God would be glorified when we do some good work, but we also may have down deep a desire for others to think highly of us—that we would be glorified. And what I would suggest is that for most of us, we ALWAYS have these mixed motives. Since Jesus warns us of this ulterior motive, our response should be to recognize it, confess it, and mortify it within ourselves. Here’s one way we might recognize this tendency in us: Do we get upset when people fail to recognize us for our good works? Do we get upset when other’s are recognized for something that we have done as well?

With all of this said, Jesus still tells us that we are to let our lights shine so that others will see our good works and glorify God. It is a good thing to do good works in public view—so long as the glory we seek is for God.

Believers, we have to remember that this is what Jesus saved us for. Ephesians 2:10 says “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We saw as we went through Titus that in 2:14 it says that Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

God has planned that he will bring glory to himself by saving a people for himself who would do good works. So, how do these good works bring glory to God? God has called us to do good works that not just anyone would do. God has called us to be radical in our works of generosity and love. He has called us to do good works that people sit back and ask, “Why do they do this? What can motivate people to do something like this?” And when they ask, we are ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within us. We do this because we love Jesus. We do this because God has put love in our hearts for you. We are generous because Jesus became poor to give us the riches of heaven. We act with works of self-sacrifice because Jesus laid down his life for us. With works like that, when people ask why we do what we do, we reflect it back to our Father so he gets the glory.

What kind of works should we do? David Platt is now the president of the International Mission Board of the SBC, but when he pastored in Birmingham, AL, he recorded this story:

One day I called up the Department of Human Resources in Shelby County, Alabama, where our church is located, and asked, “How many families would you need in order to take care of all the foster and adoption needs that we have in our county?” The woman I was talking to laughed. I said, “No, really, if a miracle were to take place, how many families would be sufficient to cover all the different needs you have?” She replied, “It would be a miracle if we had 150 more families signed up to help with foster care. When I shared this conversation with our church, over 160 families signed up to help with foster care and adoption. We don’t want even one child in our county to be without a loving home. It’s not the way of the American Dream. It doesn’t add to our comfort, prosperity, or ease. But we are discovering the indescribable joy of sacrificial love for others, and along the way we are learning more about the inexpressible wonder of God’s sacrificial love for us.

What an amazing story! All the needs of the foster care system of an entire county were taken care of by one church that wanted to make a difference. Now, we are not a big church like that one, and maybe foster care isn’t the cause that fits the our church—or maybe it is? But the point is, God didn’t save us so we could sit back and be comfortable and entertain ourselves. He saved us to live lives of self-sacrificial love that brings glory to Him. God didn’t put Woburn Baptist Church here so we could just keep doing business as usual, meet here on Sundays, keep the doors open, and go home feeling like we did our church thing for the week. God has placed this church here, and called us all to be a part of it, so that he might be glorified in our self-sacrificial works.

Now there is another danger we can fall into. When we start talking about good works, and about churches doing things to alleviate poverty and other social ills, there is the danger of falling into what is called the social gospel. This is basically what happens when you divorce Jesus’ ethical teaching from his work on the cross. The danger is that we can reduce our faith to merely doing good works. We begin to think that doing these good works is what it means to be a Christian, and we begin to look at Christianity in a performance based legalism.

One way we must combat falling into this error is that we have to be motivated by the right things. We give generously because we have received from Jesus. We lay our lives down for others because he laid down his life for us. We don’t do good works to earn God’s favor. We do good works because though we could never earn God’s favor, he saved us by grace. He left the comforts and the riches of heaven and became poor and dejected, so that we might be rich and that we might have the comfort of the Holy Spirit and of knowing that our sins have been forgiven, that our consciences have been cleansed, and that we are kept by the power of Almighty God.