Jesus identified His disciples as "the salt of the earth" the light of the world? in Matthew 5:13-16. To be salt indicates that we are radically different from the world. The power of the kingdom citizen is in his difference from the world, just as salt is different from that into which it is placed. Salt also acts to preserve, and the kingdom citizen must act to preserve the world from corruption and to save it from condemnation.
If you have ever had salt in a cut you know how it stings. Yet in its sting it is cleansing that wound. As disciples of Jesus Christ we are called to have a preserving influence in our culture. This involves more than simply living out our Christian life behind the closed doors of our homes and churches. It means engaging our culture precisely where it is rotten and corrupt. It requires speaking the full truth of God?s Word to people who reject the Truth and seek to prevent the Word of God from impacting our culture. The opportunities to practice this call of Jesus upon our lives are rapidly multiplying, as the days grow more evil. The list of arenas where the salt of God?s Word is needed is long ? abortion, defending the family against the assault of the sodomite lobby, the indoctrination of children into atheistic secular humanism, the infection of our nation with pornography, the loss of the full freedom to practice our faith as promised by the Declaration and the Constitution as well as many other areas.
By modest estimate, more than a quarter of the entire population of the United States have professed an evangelical conversion experience. William Iverson wryly observes that
"A pound of meat would surely be affected by a quarter pound of salt. If this is real Christianity, the 'salt of the earth,' where is the effect of which Jesus spoke?"(Christianity Today, June 6, 1980, p.33)As one author has observed, the problem is that the salt is being kept in the salt shaker rather than being shaken out into this rotting culture.
But the good news is that even a small number of true disciples of Jesus Christ can make an enormous difference. In 1992, disgusted with the topics he saw on Phil Donahue's talk show, Richard B. Neill, a Christian and a Fort Worth dentist, launched a personal campaign to get four sponsors of Donahue to pull their advertising dollars. Some three-and-a-half years later, Neill's persistent outcry resulted in 221 sponsors and the television stations in New York and San Francisco dropping the show. The decline in ad revenue and viewership had the industry speculating Donahue will be off the air completely within a year. And they were right, Donahue was quickly defeated.
As salt we are to preserve, as the "light of the world," a subject of the kingdom is to witness to his faith through personal example and manifest the light by his testimony and actions. Our goal at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church is to be a community of disciples who make disciples that truly fulfill our Christ-given mandate to be salt and light in the world.
- David Whitney
David Whitney,
Pastor
View list of sermons available in .mp3 format.
