The Be-Attitudes #10 – “Making the Be-Attitudes your attitudes”
Matthew 5:13-16
By James Galbraith
First Baptist Church, Port Alberni.
March 25, 2007
Text
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
14 “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Review/Introduction
The be-attitudes are Christ’s pattern for living.
They are his essential teachings as to how we should approach life.
To walk away from pride and confess our need for Christ.
To face sorrow with Christ at our side
To serve others as Christ serves us,
To crave righteousness more than supper,
To lend a hand when others are in need,
To remain focused on the true Saviour in a world of counterfeit messiahs
To bring harmony to broken relationships
and to be ready for opposition when we strive to serve Christ.
The Be-Attitudes mean nothing if we do not make them our attitudes.
He has explained to us what it means to live his way,
and now he encourages us to get on with it.
He was speaking to people who lived by simple means,
so he uses two simple illustrations to get them motivated.
Salt was one of their staples – serving as a seasoning and more importantly as a preservative.
Light was what they gauged their days by;
they patterned their lives after the rising and setting of the sun.
How do these two things move us to put the be-attitudes into practice? Let’s take a look at each of them, salt first, then light.
SALT
Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result.
Tears will get you sympathy, sweat will get you change. - Jesse Jackson
You are the salt of the Earth.
While salt that is actually mixed into the earth prevents growth, the phrase ‘salt of the Earth’ has come to mean the kind of people which promote “growth” all around them, and also the kind of person that we all should have a great deal of respect for.
Not so much the people who attract a lot of attention, but the people who hold our world together just by doing what they believe is right.
The people who give their time to help children learn how to read,
the people who pray for loved ones for hours,
the people who have a fresh pie for every new comer at the church,
the people who fix up a single mom’s car for free.
If you ask me, these are the kind of people that Jesus brought together to make us this church.
Note here that Jesus says that this is the kind of people we are.
Not were or should be or must be or can be or maybe be –
he says WE ARE these kind of people.
Part of living for him is being who we are, as Christians,
and doing what we can, as followers of Christ,
to make the world around us a better place.
We don’t need fancy programs or expensive gifts or elaborate worship services to make a difference; we just have to do what God gives us to do when the time comes for us to do it!
We need to put the be-attitudes into practice,
and allow Christ to mould us and make a difference through us.
When we do, we bring flavour to the world around us just like salt flavours the food it comes in contact with.
When we don’t, we are like salt that has lost it’s saltiness.
Now, salt losing it’s saltiness isn’t a picture we can relate to very well. When have we ever seen salt that has lost it’s saltiness? We buy a box of salt, stick it in the cupboard and five or ten years later - it’s still salt!
But Jesus isn’t just making stuff up here,
he’s drawing a picture from real life experience to make his point.
In Israel, salt was taken from the shores of the Dead Sea and in the hill of Salt (Jebel Usdum), a 15-square-mile (4,000 hectares) elevation at the SW corner of the Dead Sea.
This area was traditionally associated with the fate of Lot’s wife (Gn. 19:26), who was transformed into a pillar of salt when she looked back on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Such salt was of the rock or fossil variety, and, because of impurities and the occurrence of chemical changes, the outer layer was generally lacking in flavour. It was salt, but it had lost it’s saltiness, and most of it was discarded as worthless. It was literally thrown out and walked over as the miners chipped it away to get at the fresh salt underneath.
So, salt can lose it’s saltiness when it is exposed to the elements for too long. Which is probably why we read elsewhere in the Bible that we are to be in the world but not of the world.
When we’re in the world, acting as salt does to food, we make a positive difference. When we’re just sitting around letting the sin of the world wear us down, we become like salt that loses it’s saltiness.
Salt is a seasoning, and it is also a preservative.
Awhile back, I read “The Perfect Storm” - the book about a huge storm of the East Coast in 1991 that has inspired the movie of the same name.
In the book the author Sebastian Junger explains that before the age of refrigeration, the fisherman used to store the fish in salt barrels. This allowed them to preserve the fish and stay out fishing longer.
Now, how do we, as the divinely-ordained “salt of the Earth”, preserve the world around us? We are constantly bombarded by the message that the world we live in is falling apart, so what are we doing to preserve whatever good is left?
Well, imagine what the world would be like if Christians simply gave up trying to make a difference. Imagine if we ignored the be-attitudes all together and just worried about ourselves.
Our city sees a fair bit of poverty. Christians serve the city’s only food bank and only free meal ministries. These are the outworking of Christians taking seriously “blessed are the merciful”; if we stopped showing mercy, many people in Port Alberni would go hungry.
Our society is letting morals and values which we held high not so long ago slip away. Imagine how much faster they would go if Christians stopped standing up in protest?!
Our world struggles keeping everybody alive and well; imagine what the world would be like if Christians hadn’t started the hospitals, the schools, the hostels and the charities which help so many millions of people?
When we look at the world we live in, it’s not hard to get depressed at it’s state of unrest and uncertainty. But it could be so much worse if Christians were not preserving so much and enhancing so much around them.
One last look at salt before we turn to light.
Sodium is an extremely active element found naturally only in combined form; it always links itself to another element. Chlorine, on the other hand, is the poisonous gas that gives bleach it’s power and offensive odour.
When sodium and chlorine are combined, the result is sodium chloride -table salt -the substance we use to preserve meat and bring out its flavour.
Love and truth can be like sodium and chlorine. Love without truth is flighty, sometimes blind, willing to combine with various doctrines.
On the other hand, truth by itself can be offensive, sometimes even poisonous. Spoken without love, it can turn people away from the gospel.
When truth and love are combined in an individual or a church, however, then we have what Jesus called "the salt of the earth," and we’re able to preserve and bring out the beauty of our faith. -- David H. Johnson
LIGHT
The second analogy Jesus uses is that of a light shining in the darkness.
As with the image of the salt of the earth,
Jesus tells his listeners that they ARE the light of the world.
Not were or should be or must be or can be or maybe be,
he says WE ARE the light of the world.
The gist of this picture is that we are to be a presence in the world just like light is in darkness.
Light doesn’t adapt to darkness or co-operate with darkness or blend in with darkness - it is the opposite of darkness. Even if the light is very dim, it is still light, and it dispels the darkness around it.
The city on the hill picture amplifies to the concept of being a visible, distinct presence in the world. Cities on hills were built for security, and they were visible for miles around.
Our actions should make us stand out in the world just like a city on a hill or a candle in the darkness.
Not in the sense of showing off - Jesus has some pretty strong words about that! But in the sense that our actions as his disciples are to stand out from the way the world does things.
In a world that rounds up children for it’s factories and armies and gangs, we help children survive, grow, and learn how to help others.
In a world where dictators take the food from the mouths of their people to feed their expensive habits, we accumulate food and give it to those in need. Furthermore, we help people learn to sustain themselves.
In a world that says “anything goes”, we say “God stays”
The two analogies here, salt and light, are meant to say the same thing:
Be my people in the world I have put you in.
The picture of salt shows us that we enhance, even preserve the world around us.
The picture of light shows us that while we live in this world we are not to blend in.
We stand out, not to show off, but because that is the very nature of following a Saviour who stood out as well.
To end today, I will tell a story about light that I think takes these words of Jesus and applies them to our time, here and now. The story is called,
“Stubborn Candles”. (author unknown)
A few nights ago a peculiar thing happened. An electrical storm caused a blackout in our neighbourhood. When the lights went out, I felt my way through the darkness into the storage closet where we keep the candles.
Through the glow of a lit match I looked up on the shelf where the candles were stored. There they were, already positioned in their stands, melted to various degrees by previous use. I took my match and lit four of them.
How they illuminated the storage room! What had been a veil of blackness suddenly radiated with soft, golden light! I could see the freezer I had just bumped with my knee and my tools that needed to be straightened.
"How great it is to have light!" I said out loud, and then spoke to the candles. "If you do such a good job here in the storage closet, just wait till I get you out of where you’re really needed!
I’ll put one of you on my table so we can eat.
I’ll put one of you on my desk so I can read.
I’ll give one of you to Denalyn so she can cross-stitch.
And I’ll set you,” taking down the big one, "in the living room where you can light up the whole area,".
I felt foolish talking to candles, but what do you do when the lights go out?
I was turning to leave with the large candle in my hand when I heard a voice, "Now, hold it right there."
"Who said that?"
"I did." The voice was near my hand.
"Who are you? What are you?"
"I’m a candle." I looked at the candle I was holding. It was burning a strong, golden flame. It was red and sat on a heavy wooden candle holder that had a firm handle.
I lifted up the candle to take a closer look. You won’t believe what I saw. There was a tiny face in the wax. Not just a wax face that someone had carved, but a moving, functioning, flesh like face full of expression and life.
"Don’t take me out of here!"
"What?"
"I said, don’t take me out of this room."
"What do you mean? I have to take you out. You’re a candle. Your job is to give light. It’s dark out there. People are stubbing their toes and walking into walls. You have to come out and light up the place!"
"But you can’t take me out. I’m not ready,: the candle explained with pleading eyes. "I need more preparation."
I couldn’t believe my ears. "More preparation?"
"Yeah, I’ve decided I need to research this job of light-giving so I won’t go out and make a bunch of mistakes. You’d be surprised how distorted the glow of an untrained candle can be. So I’m doing some studying. I just finished a book on wind resistance. I’m in the middle of a great series of tapes on wick build-up and conservation - I’m reading the new best-seller on flame display. Have you heard of it?
"No," I answered.
"You might like it. It’s called Waxing Eloquently".
"That really sounds inter--" I caught myself. What am I doing? I’m in here conversing with a candle while my family is out there in the darkness!
"All right then," I said. "You’re not the only candle on the shelf. I’ll blow you out and take the others!"
But just as I got my cheeks full of air, I heard other voices. "We’re not going either!"
It was a conspiracy. I turned around and looked at the three other candles; each with flames dancing above a miniature face.
I was beyond feeling awkward about talking to candles. I was getting miffed. "You are candles and your job is to light dark places!"
"Well, that’s your opinion," said the candle on the far left - a long thin fellow with a goatee and British accent. "You think we have to go, but I’m busy."
"Busy?"
"Yes, I’m meditating."
"What? A candle that meditates?"
"Yes. I’m meditating on the importance of light. It’s... enlightening."
I decided to reason with them. "Listen, I appreciate what you guys are doing. I’m all for meditation time. And everyone needs to study and research; but for goodness’ sake, you guys have been here for weeks! Haven’t you had enough time to get your wick on straight?"
"And you other two," I asked, "are you going to stay in here as well?"
A short, fat, purple candle with plump cheeks that reminded me of Santa spoke up. "I’m waiting to get my life together. I’m not stable enough. I lose my temper easily. I guess you could say that I’m a hothead."
The last candle had a female voice, very pleasant to the ear. "I’d like to help," she explained, "but lighting the darkness is not my gift."
All this was sounding too familiar. "Not your gift?" What do you mean?"
"Well, I’m a singer. I sing to other candles to encourage them to burn more brightly." Without asking my permission, she began a rendition of "This Little Light of Mine."
The other three joined in, filling the storage room with singing.
"Hey, I shouted above the music, "I don’t mind if you sing while you work! In fact, we could use a little music out there!"
They didn’t hear me. They were singing too loudly. I yelled louder. "Come on - There’s plenty of time for this later. We’ve got a crisis on our hands."
They wouldn’t stop. I put the big candle on the shelf and took a step back and considered the absurdity of it all. Four perfectly healthy candles singing to each other about light but refusing to come out of the closet.
I had all I could take. One by one I blew them out. They kept singing to the end. The last one to flicker was the female. I snuffed her out right in the "puff" part of "Won’t let Satan puff me out."
I stuck my hands in my pockets and walked back out into the darkness. I bumped my knee on the same freezer. Then I bumped into my wife.
"Where are the candles?" she asked.
"They don’t....they won’t work. Where did you buy those candles anyway?"
"Oh, they’re church candles. Remember the church that closed down across the town? I bought them there."
Then I understood.
***
Light, if it is hidden from sight, illuminates nothing.
Salt, if it stays in the cupboard, flavours nothing.
The be-attitudes, if they do not become our attitudes,
mean nothing in a world that desperately needs Christians to take them seriously.
But when they are taken to heart, God blesses the world through us.
and we are blessed by God as we strive to make his word our word.
You are the salt of the Earth.
You are the light of the world.
Now let’s go and make a difference!
…let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven
