Matthew chapter 5. Now in our text here this morning
in Matthew 5, the Lord Jesus Christ is giving assurance to
His disciples, to His witnesses, to go forth and proclaim Christ,
be witnesses of Christ. And the assurance that the Lord
gives the believer so that we go forth and we boldly bear witness
of Christ is because of our union with Christ, because of our union
with Him and what we are in Him. Now, we begin reading here in
Matthew chapter 5, and I'm going to pick up here a little before
in Matthew 5.9. Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are
they which are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall
revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil
against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad,
for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets
which were before you. Ye are the salt of the earth.
But if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be
salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing
but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. There's a lot that we could say
here. In fact, I've looked at this
and beyond here this week so much that I probably have enough
to stay here for about three or four weeks. But I just want
to say something here that I think will get to the heart of what
the Lord is saying to us here. If you've been born of the Spirit
of Christ, ye are the salt of the earth. In Scripture, salt
represents concord. It represents covenant. It represents
agreement. And it's an antiseptic, salt
is. It draws out the poison. And it's a preservative. Salt
is a preservative. In Ezekiel chapter 16 and verse
4, we read this, As for thy nativity, In the day thou wast born, thy
navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple
thee, thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee. to do any
of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee, but thou was cast
out in the open field to the loathing of thy person in the
day that thou was born. And then in verse eight of that
chapter, he says, when I passed by thee and looked upon thee,
behold, thy time was the time of love. I spread my skirt over
thee, covered thy nakedness. Yea, I swear unto thee. and entered into a covenant with
thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest mine." In the law,
the Lord calls it the salt of the covenant of thy God. The
salt of the covenant of thy God. They were salted. God wrote His
everlasting covenant in our hearts when Christ was formed in us.
The covenant of God is yea and amen. All the promises of God
are yea and amen because the covenant is written in the blood
of Christ. He ratified the covenant by His
death. And so when Christ is formed
in us, there is a covenant of salt, an everlasting covenant
made in the hearts of His people. He covers us, covers our nakedness. in His righteousness, and we're
secure in Christ, we're kept in Christ, and nothing can separate
us from the love of God in Christ. And ye are salt. You're salt. You're saved from corruption
of sin, accepted in everlasting covenant bonds in Christ, and
preserved in Christ. And He says, you're the salt
of the earth. Now, He's talking to His disciples,
and He's talking to them collectively, ye plural. and you each individually,
but as a group, you're the salt of the earth. The purpose of
Christ's church in this world is to set forth the truth of
Christ Jesus the Lord. The church is the only preserving
strength in this earth. It's the only thing that has
any savor in this earth. Take the church out. Take the
Lord's people out of this earth. And it's corrupt. It's tasteless. It's putrefying. There's nothing
about this earth worth saving if you take the Lord's people
out of it. So, ye are the salt of the earth. Now, the Lord gives
us a word here to heed. Now look, verse 13. Ye are the
salt of the earth, but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith
shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing
but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men. Now,
He said, that his people are peacemakers. And I showed you
before that the only peace that can be made with us being salt
is through the preaching of the gospel. The only peace there
is, is the peace that God gives in the hearts of his people.
That's true peace. That's the peace that we proclaim. It's Christ Jesus, the peacemaker. But brethren, as much as salt
is a preservative, as much as salt heals, as much as salt is
that which symbolizes the everlasting covenant, salt stings the wounds
of a sinner. Salt is offensive to a sinner.
Salt hurts an open wound. And when he says here that you're
sought and you're sent forth to bear witness of Christ, he's
saying it right on the heels of saying, you're going to be
persecuted. You're going to be persecuted.
The persecution which the believer endures is due to the enmity,
the hatred natural man has to God and to his people. It's going to happen. You're
going to be persecuted whether it's to a lesser degree or a
greater degree. Whether your head's served up
on a platter like some of the apostles, or whether it's just
that you're standing around a fire and a woman says, you're one
of his apostles, aren't you? And you deny it. There's going to be persecution,
brethren. False accusations. Now, it's not easy, and we don't
have the sufficiency in ourselves to bear it. So the Lord says,
if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith is it going to be salted?
It's henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, to be trodden
under foot of men. Now turn to Luke 14. I showed
you Mark 4. We looked at Mark 4 in the parable
of the sower a week ago. And we're going to look at it
next time, I think, when we talk about the light. I just didn't
want to cover all of this in one lesson. But let me show you
something here that I think will help us understand what the Lord
said. In Luke 14, the Lord was sitting
at a table. in someone's house eating. And some folks had come in and
he noticed that they were all taking the chief seats in the
house and taking the best rooms in the house. And the Lord gave
them a parable to take the lower seat in the house. And then he
tells them that when you invite folks to a supper, to come in
to eat, to invite the poor folks, the rich folks can just pay you
right back and recompense you for what you did. He said, invite
people that can't pay you. They don't have anything pay
you with. And when he said this, verse
15, one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things,
and he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in
the kingdom of God. Well, everybody wants to eat
bread in the kingdom of God. Everybody wants to go to heaven.
Not everybody wants Christ. Everybody wants to escape hell,
but not everybody wants Christ. Everybody wants to be accepted
of God, but not everybody wants to be accepted in the Beloved.
And the Lord says here, He said unto them, verse 16, A certain
man made a great supper, and he bade many, and he sent his
servant at suppertime to say to them that were bidden, Come,
for all things are now ready. And they all, with one consent,
began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have
bought a piece of ground. I must needs go and see it. I
pray thee, have me excused. Is that savory? Is there any
savor in that? Another said, I have bought five
yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them. I pray thee, have me excused. And another said, I've married
a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came and
showed his lord these things. Then the master of the house,
being angry, said to his servant, go out quickly into the streets
and lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor and the maimed
and the haught and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it's
done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the
Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges,
and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I
say unto you that none of these or none of those men which were
bidden shall taste of my supper. They all had something of this
world that was a little more important. Something of this
world that came between them and the one who bade them come
to this supper. Now look, verse 25. And there
went great multitudes with him. Whether this was at the same
time or later time, I don't know. It doesn't matter. The point's
the same. Listen. And he turned and he
said unto them, great multitudes are following him. And he turned
and he said, if any man come to me and hate not his father
and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Well, the Lord's
just using an extreme example to make his point. No. No, he's
not. This is just how real union with
Christ and trust in Christ and dependence upon Christ and serving
Christ is. This is just how serious it is.
The Jews had a lot of experienced a lot of persecution at the hands
of their fathers and their mothers and their brothers and sisters.
They had a lot of tradition. They had done things the same
way for a long time when Christ came. And folks would say, He's
trying to tell you He's disannulling the law. Don't go after Him. And what did we read about in
the parable of the sower? Some of them went with Him a
little while. But then when persecution arose,
they turned back and didn't follow him anymore. What if it's your
mother? What if it's your father? What
if it's your sister or your brother? What are you going to do? Are
you going to follow after Christ? He says you must. What if it's
your own life? What if you've got a yolk of
oxen? What if you've got this or that? What are you going to
do? He said nothing can come between Him and His people. If
you're going to be My disciple, you can't love anybody else but
Me. Now look, and whosoever does
not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. You
see, when you bear a cross, it means there's going to be some
pain involved. It means there's going to be
some suffering involved. It means there's going to be
some trial involved. But he said, whosoever does not
bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Now
look, he gives a couple of illustrations here. Verse 28, for which of
you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth
the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? We all understand
that, don't we? Lest happily, after he hath laid
the foundation, is not able to finish it, all that behold it
begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not
able to finish." Now the Lord's not telling us
that we need to start pinching our pennies and we need to start
saving up all our money to make sure that we got the money to
build on this foundation. What he's telling us here, brethren,
is you don't have sufficiency to pay for this. You don't have
sufficiency to do this. And if you count up the cost
and think you have some sufficiency in you because of anything in
you, you're not going to fall after. You've already lost it,
lost the savor from the beginning. The savor, the salt, is Christ. We have to depend utterly on
Christ I love my father and my mother. I love my sister. I love my natural
relatives. Who's going to separate me? Who
separated me from my sin? Who put away my sin? Who kept
me? Who keeps me? Who called me by
his grace? Who preserves me? Christ does. These are things we can't do
by ourselves. These are things He has to do
in us through His Spirit. Now look at the next illustration.
Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth
not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand
to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or
else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sitteth an
ambassador, and desireth conditions of peace. Now see, this is what
we're doing, brethren. We're waging war with the king.
We're waging war with the prince of the power of the air. We're
waging war with the men, sinners in this world that think they're
kings, that think they're deserving of the throne, that think they
want to ascend to the throne of God and take His seat. How
are 10,000 going to put 20,000 to flight? How are we going to
overcome them that are outnumber us 1,000 to 1? How are we going
to overcome them? The only way, brethren, the only way is to
know we have someone that's going to win the victory for us. We
have a captain that's the captain of our salvation and we're going
to overcome. We're going to win the victory.
That's Christ, brethren. Now if we go into this battle
and we begin to to make excuses one after another. We begin to
have this thing or that thing that begins to interfere with
what we put here on this earth for. We're losing our savor. If we begin to go after father
or mother and compromise this gospel, we're losing our savor.
If persecution arises, and we have no root in ourselves, or
we become offended, or we're taken up with the deceivableness
of riches, or the cares of this world, or the lust of the flesh,
we'll be turned aside. If we go into battle, into this
fight of faith, brethren, and the multitudes come up against
us, If Christ is not for us, if we be not in Christ and be
not wholly dependent upon Christ alone, we won't be a saver in
this earth. We won't preach the gospel. We'll
turn and run. We can't do this in ourselves. So likewise, whosoever he be
of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my
disciple. That means if I'm going to be
a saver unto him, I've got to utterly, implicitly, completely
cast all my care upon him. Be assured, be persuaded, be
sure that my only message is Christ and Him crucified. Be
sure that no matter where I am, what I'm doing, my purpose for
being there is to season my walk and my conduct and everything
about me with salt, with the grace and mercy of Christ Jesus
the Lord. Trusting. Trusting. that He'll do as He said He'll
do. And then look, verse 34, salt
is good. But if the salt have lost its
savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It's neither fit for
the land nor yet for the dung hill, but men cast it out. He
that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Now look with me over to
Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10, real quick. Now you know when he said there
in Matthew 5, he said if the salt has lost its savor, if we've
lost Christ, our salt and our savor. There's nothing else that
we can be salted with. There's nothing else. Once a
person begins in this gospel and is enlightened at least with
his natural understanding, he gets a little taste of this,
he gets excited like we saw that parable of the sower that didn't
have any, the one stony ground here didn't have any roots. Another
one was in thorns and was persecuted and turned away, and one was
choked with the cares of this world. If that's the case, brethren... If we fall away, there's nothing
else to salt us with. There's nothing else to salt
a sinner with but Christ. Nothing else. So what about us,
brethren? What about us who He says, you
are the salt? Why would He say this to a believer?
He's urging us, brethren, to realize when we start this fight,
when we enter into this battle, to know The One who brought us
in. The One under whose banner we're
fighting. The One who is leading this fight is the One who's got
to win the victory. And we've got to count on Him.
We've got to be dependent solely upon Him. Now look what He says
here in Hebrews 10. Verse 21. Having a high priest
over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart. No divided heart. A true heart. It can't be set
on Christ and anything else. It's got to be set on Christ.
Trust in Him. Full of assurance of faith. Having
our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies
washed with pure water. And let us hold fast the profession
of our faith without wavering. For He is faithful, that promised.
What is your profession? When you hear that word, do you
just think, well, that's just something I did one time when
I made a decision, or I said some prayer, or I consented and
went ahead and let them baptize me, or something like that? A
profession! What is it that you get up and
do every day? That's your profession. You go to work. It's what you
do. It's your life. That's what this
is. It's a profession. It's an occupation. We're employed in his service.
We're sent to be salt in the earth, brethren. That's the only
reason we're here. The only reason we're here. When
he prayed to the Father, he said, I'm no longer in the world, but
these are in the world. And he said, I pray for them
that's going to hear the Gospel through their word. Through them
preaching. I've sanctified myself that they
might go forth and be a season of salt in this earth. That's
why he left us here, brethren. Now look, let us consider one
another to provoke unto love and to good works. Let's exhort
one another. Let's provoke one another. You
want to provoke somebody, just provoke them unto love. That's
a good provocation. Provoke them unto love and to
good works. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together
as the manner of some is, ye are the salter there. When you
think of salt, do you think of one grain of salt? You ever seasoned
anything with just one grain of salt? You think of a bunch
of grains of salt, don't you? And together they season. Ye
are the salt of the earth. Together, that covenant of salt,
the Lord says, present your bodies, through Apostle Paul in Romans
12, he said, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable unto God. Let me ask you a question. How
do ye, plural, present your bodies, plural, a singular living sacrifice,
holy and acceptable unto God? He says right there after that,
your one body in Christ. That's how you do it. You leave
Christ. You leave His body. You leave His people. You separate
yourself and get out here by yourself. And He said, you're
not fit for the land or the donkey. You're good for nothing but to
be cast out, trodden underfoot. Ye, together, by faith in Christ,
are one body. Every one of you, members individually
of that one body, and it's through His one sacrifice that we're
holy and accepted unto God. And we go forth into this world,
an oblation, a meat offering unto God, salted with the covenant
of the salt of thy God, and that's Christ, brethren, and that's
how we go forth. And therefore, we don't exalt
ourselves over one another. We don't fight and contend with
the pot shards of this earth. We subject ourselves to the higher
powers. We're not living in rioting. There's no power but of God.
Look at the world. That's all the world lives for.
If there wasn't a Republican and a Democrat, a black and a
white, this country and that country, Jew and a Gentile, a
bunch of different denominations in religion, a bunch of different
religions. If there wasn't, nobody would have anything to fight
about. That's how one is exalting themselves over another. He said,
don't you be that way. Forget that mess. God's in the
power. He's in control. He's the one
that's turning the king's heart withersoever he will. Trust Him. Follow Him. and let them fight
it out all they want to. Be a saver. Be tasteful. Be something that this world
is not. Now look here, read on. Stay
there with me in Hebrews 10. For if we sin willfully, After
that we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth
no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for
of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries."
What is willfully sinning after you've heard the knowledge of
the truth? It's thinking you've got something in you. It's thinking
you're holy and something you've done has made you holy. Something
you've done has made you acceptable to God. When you start doing
that, I guarantee you what you'll do. You'll exhaust yourself over
your brother. You'll feel like you're strong.
You'll side with mama and daddy against your brethren. You'll
take up with traditions against what your brethren, in the truth
of the gospel. You'll forsake the assembly.
You'll do everything that God's warning us not to do. That's
willful sin. That's rejecting Christ the Lord. That's counting the blood of
the covenant an unholy thing. Read on. Read here. Verse 28. He that despised Moses' law died
without mercy under two or three witnesses. of how much sorer punishment,
suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden underfoot
the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith
he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done to spike unto the
Spirit of grace. For we know him that hath said,
Vengeance belongeth unto me. I'll recompense, saith the Lord.
And again the Lord shall judge his people." It's a fearful thing
to fall into the hands of the living God. He's not trifled
with. He knows my heart and He knows
your heart. He knows you and I better than
we know ourselves. He's not trifled with, brethren.
This is not a game. God is real. Christ died. He put away the sin of His people.
He creates life in His people. And He don't create people and
call them into His body to play games. He effectually works and
He makes His people the salt of the earth. And they go forth
bearing witness of Him depending on Him and Him alone. And they're
a saver. They're a saver. Can't be lost,
can't be forsaken, can't turn away back. But if you can count
the blood of that covenant of vain thing, if you can forsake
the assembling of yourselves together, if you can side and
let all these other things come in between you and Christ, brethren,
you never had any saver in the beginning. And that's a fearful thing. That's
a fearful thing. But he says here, call to remembrance
the former days in which after you were illuminated you endured
a great fight of afflictions. You were made a gaze in stock
by reproaches and afflictions. You became companions of them
that were so used. You had compassion of me in my
bonds and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods knowing in yourselves
that you have in heaven a better and enduring substance. Cast
not away therefore your confidence Who's that confidence in? Is
it in you? Is it in me? Is it in a preacher?
Is it in a domination? Is it in a creed? Is it in a
church? It's in Christ who it's in. If it's in anything else, brethren,
we've lost our savor. We've lost our savor. Look down at verse 39, but we're
not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe
to the saving of the soul. One more scripture and I'll stop.
2 Corinthians chapter 2. 2 Corinthians chapter 2. If you are a saver, if Christ
is dwells in you, you've been salted, this everlasting covenant's
been made with you. You behold Christ as He is, brethren. As you bear witness of it in
your relations within the church and within your relations with
those in this world, this is what Paul says right here. And
this is what I think the Lord's saying, what I'm trying to say
to you this morning. Look at 2 Corinthians 2.14. which always causeth us to triumph
in Christ, and make manifest the savour of his knowledge by
us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savour
of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish. To the
one, the savor of death unto death. And to the other, the
savor of life unto life. And who's sufficient for these
things? Who's sufficient? If we start
thinking we are, if I start thinking I am, I've lost my savor. I won't
have anything fit to say for you or the dung heap. For we are not as many which
corrupt." You see that word corrupt? That's the opposite of what salt
does. Salt preserves. Salt cures. Falsehood corrupts. But as of sincerity, but as of
God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ. Look down at chapter
3 and verse 4. Chapter 3 and verse 4, And such
trust have we through Christ to Godward, not that we are sufficient
of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God. See there? Now you remember that,
and you go forth into this world with that in mind, and you'll
be a saver. We'll be a saver. And we'll look
at the rest of that next time. Thank you.