Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5. And we're going to start at verse 13. Just read a few verses together. Matthew chapter 5 and verse 13. Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted. This thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world, a city that set in a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and that giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Amen. The Lord will add his blessing to the reading of his word for his name's sake. Briefly, if you take an overview of Matthew chapter 5, which of course is the first of three chapters which deal with the Sermon on the Mount, as we call it. If you take an overview of Matthew chapter 5, you find that the first 12 verses describe the Christian and the blessing of God. So it's really the Christian and God. Whatever is happening in the world or in their experience, the Christian and God. Blessed are the poor in spirit, etc. Starting at verse 13, through the rest of our Bible reading, you have the Christian and the world. And then, starting at verse 17, you have the Christian and the law. Now those are three huge overall headings, and there's a lot of detailed material under each. But it's not my purpose or plan to go into it all this evening. But I do want us to take on board at least the basic lessons of this passage that deals with the Christian and the world. Verse 13 through to the end of verse 16. What is said here is said of particular people. Ye are the salt of the earth. Ye are the light of the world. Now, the ye, obviously, is speaking to the same people throughout. It's speaking to God's people, the disciples, believers in Christ. But I don't think it's pushing it too far to say that this is specifically addressed to people as they are described in the opening verses of chapter 5. Those who are living in the blessing of God. Now, I know that that's definitively true of every Christian. If you have eternal life, you have the greatest blessing of all. You're in Christ. You are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. So this is true in the most fundamental sense of every Christian. And so you can say that you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. That's true of every Christian. But if we are going to function as salt and light, I think we have got to narrow this description down somewhat. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, and so on down to those who are blessed, even when they are persecuted for righteousness' sake." You've got a description of a people whose religion is much more than form. It's much more than profession. It is the reality of living in a conscious enjoyment of Jesus Christ. These are blessed people, happy people. Now let's look at it that way for a minute, because this is something that convicts me. Maybe as you get older this is true of you. I don't know why it should be, but maybe it is. But I look around and I don't think that You can honestly say that we're overburdened with happy people. Have a look at yourself. I'm going to make a confession, I shouldn't do it because it'll come back to haunt me. I haven't ever even told my wife this. I found a period of time I was feeling a lot of pressure. And just as the pressure mounted, I would find myself getting up in the mornings, and it almost would... I don't know whether this is just the thought of, I don't like water. Strange for somebody who's not a sprinkler but an immerser, but I don't like water. As I'd be reaching for the shower door, that's when at least, maybe I'm only waking up then and I'm conscious of it, but the thought would come up, I'm not a happy camper. Now, you Americans, of course, that's your fault. Understand that. That's your fault. Because I never heard that language until I came to America. I'm not a happy camper. And I wasn't a happy camper. But here's the worst part. I get over that. I have prayed through that. I found that there comes a time when I've got to get alone with God and I've got to get down to brass tacks and down to the real root of the matter until I can really be rejoicing in the person and work of Christ and all that I am in Christ and only then can I work my way through and get my head above water and see the sunshine again. So all that's past. But this was ingrained and I would find myself reaching for that shower door. I'm not a happy camper. Then stop and say, you're a fool. I mean, what on earth are you unhappy about? And it becomes very easily a way of life. Very easily a way of life. Now let's have a real good look at ourselves. You happy people are the salt of the earth. You're living in a world of misery, a world that's sinking in an ocean of tears, behind all the rap and the pop garbage that's being spewed out to make the world think that they're happy. Remember, that's only the narcotic of hell, to try and blind people and numb people to the reality that they're living in a very wretched, miserable world, and their own lives are rotten, empty, wretched and miserable. That's all it is. And you happy people, you're the salt of the earth. But what happens when the people who have most to be happy about really aren't happy at all? What happens then? And I'm not going to be judging you or anybody else, but I can tell you, I think there's an awful lot of Christians, if they're honest with themselves, would have to say, I'm not living the happy life. I'm not living the happy life. And here is the the most amazing thing. It's my experience that those who are the happiest are those who are the most afflicted. The people who would be, you would say, would be the ones who have the most excuse to be grumping, griping, groaning and frustrated and unhappy. They're usually the ones that are smiling through it all. And those who should be living on top of the world, they're griping and they're grumping. I don't know if it's because we have bought into the materialism of the age. We don't have everything that everybody else has. We don't have the latest vehicle. We don't have the biggest house. We don't have the best clothes. We don't have this. We don't have that. We don't have the other thing. We don't have as much money as we'd like to have. I never met a person yet that had all the money he wanted to have. I don't know if that's the reason. It may have nothing to do with it. I have no idea. But if that is the reason, the reality is life is very good to us. The lines have fallen onto us in pleasant places and it must be nauseating in the nostrils of a holy God who has given us so much to find a grumping, griping, frustrated, unhappy bunch. And then we have the audacity, biggest bunch of hypocrites in creation, preacher included, we have the audacity to have sermons criticizing the children of Israel going through the wilderness for murmuring against God. We're not in the wilderness they were in. But where's the joy? Now that's just by the way. I hadn't intended to go down that line at all by the way. So that doesn't count towards my brief time. I hadn't intended that. But I hope that'll challenge you. I hope it'll challenge you. I mean, I speak it first to me. Happy. Is that where you are tonight? You can have a deep spiritual burden. I'm not talking about you running around with a charismatic N.E. and N.C. and leer on your face. It's not what I'm talking about. This can go with the deepest seriousness of heart. But there's happiness. You know one thing? When I read the times when God's people and their testimonies were greatly used, I read in the days of say Moody or Spurgeon or R.A. Torrey or any of these great preachers of the past, when they were testifying, they could speak of some realities that everybody accepted and knew. Now I'm not saying it was utopia, it wasn't, and they weren't perfect, But they lived in the joy of God. They knew what it was to be saved. They were happy to be saved. And what's more, they lived at peace. R.A. Torrey, for example, in a sermon, he had a vast congregation and he decided to do a public test. And he stood up. Before that, people said, no, I want you to listen to me. And I want everybody in this meeting who is living in perfect peace through Jesus Christ, why don't you stand up. And all across that auditorium, thousands of people stood up, Christians, who could testify, we're living in perfect peace. Now, I'm sure you had some liars among them. You always get people who stand up because others are standing. But I don't think they were all liars. I think they were living in a vital reality where joy and peace were something personally, vitally real. Then of course he went ahead and says, sit down, I want those of you who are without Christ and you can still say, I'm living in perfect peace to indicate it now. And he looked across that vast auditorium and there was one person who put his hand up. And Torrey said, one man has done so. He says, I thank you for doing it. I would really like to talk with you afterwards. I'd like you to come and see me because this is interesting to me. The man came to him when Torrey said, honey, you're living in perfect peace. And when he began to talk, he said, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not talking. I'm living in that kind of peace. I'm not at all. And that night he came to perfect peace in Christ. I wonder if we were to do that in our church. If I were to say, and I'm including me in this, stand up everybody who's, first of all, you would say generally, completely living a happy life. How many of us could do it? How many of us could do it? Stand up all who are living in perfect peace or anything approaching it. How many of us could do it? Then we wonder why we have so little impact on the world. Men and women, it's a deep reality here. And I'm not trying to put you in a guilt trip saying, oh, I'm not happy, therefore I'm even more unhappy now. That's not my purpose. I mean, that would be dumb. I'm an Irishman, but I'm not that dumb. That's not my purpose. My purpose is to tell you, you and I have got a grasp, there is a reality, an intimate reality of a living fellowship with a living Christ. A living faith in a living Christ that produces vital results in the life. Now speaking to those people, Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. There's a whole lot of things I could say about salt and light that I'm not going to get into tonight because I don't want to be proved a liar. I've taken a lot of time and I said I would try to be brief. And there's a lot there, but it occurs to me You know those are two absolute essentials to life on earth. You can't live without salt. You can't live without light. In parts of Europe they used to have a very particularly odious form of capital punishment. It was for a prolonged period to deny a person any access to any intake of salt of any kind. And they died in excruciating agony. It's essential to life. Light is essential to life. So when the Lord Jesus says, you're salt and you're light, listen, no matter what the devil tells you about you, no matter what the devil tells you about the church, no matter what the world wants you to believe about these fundamental nutcases who believe the Bible, remember, God says, you are essential to life in this world, to the very continuance of this world in its existence. You are essential to it. We could do without the President of the United States. And that's not a personal attack on the present incumbent. We could do without him. I don't want you to take me too literally here, but if you're pushed to it, the world could do without the United States. To do without Britain. To even do without Ireland. Believe that or not. To do without all the things that the world thinks is so important. But the one thing it can't do without, without coming under the absolute judgment and the immediate judgment of God, is God's people. God's people are essential to the continued life of this planet. Jesus said it. Your life are your salt and your light. And when you look at that relationship, I'll tell you how important it is for us to be the Christians we ought to be. Here's, I said, our relation to the world. There's no integration. Light does not integrate with darkness, it dispels it. Salt does not integrate. It's there to sometimes irritate. If you ever got salt in an open wound, you know just how painful it can be. It can irritate. But while we're not integrated with the world, neither are we isolated. There is a tendency Shall I say, among Christians, to look at the world in which we're living and say, this is such a wicked, evil, rotten society, and we just want to pull away back. We're going to isolate ourselves in our own little houses, in our own little churches, and we're not going to have anything to do with that big, bad world out there. Now, there's a sense in which you've got to pull back. who introduces his children to the world and brings the world to his children is a fool. Possibly a murderer as well. There's a sense in which you certainly have to protect. But we're to be agents of Christ in the world. That's the meaning of salt and light. His agents in the world. That's why we're here. The world is bad. Sinners stink in the nostrils of God. Sure, but how are they ever to be saved? How shall they hear without a preacher? If God's people don't reach them, how are they ever to be reached? Tonight we meet to pray for missionaries. Now, it's easy to get a false view of a missionary, set them on a pedestal. When they're on the mission field, they must be ever so spiritual. Let me tell you, every burden you have here, they have there. Every battle you have here, they have there. Every failure you have here, they have there. Easiest place in the world to backslide is on the mission field. The easiest place in the world to backslide is the mission field. You can be so easily caught up with the work of God that you lose out with God himself. It's easy to become disenchanted. Some of you have listened to the tape of Paris Redhead. And he's talking about his missionary time in Africa. Ten shekels and a shirt. You've heard that sermon. If you haven't heard it, get a load of it and listen to it. It's certainly a striking sermon. He went to Africa as a missionary. And he went there with great zeal. Those poor Africans, there they are, in need of the gospel. Here we are in America. Everybody's heard the gospel so often. And here are these poor people perishing. They haven't heard the gospel. And I love them and I want to see them saved." And he went out there to give them the gospel. And he soon got totally cynical and frustrated. Why? What he found didn't matter what the color of a man's skin was, didn't matter what the culture was, didn't matter what the nationality was. A man's a man for all that. And so here in Africa, what did he find? The same filthy, black-hearted sinners that he found in America. The same selfish, God-hating, Christ-denying sinners that he found in America. Were the poor people there in Africa just waiting to hear the gospel? Not at all. They were no more interested in Christ than the biggest sinner in America. And why should that come as a surprise? Whoever said that heathens were godly underneath it all, just longing for Christ. They're not. It was only when he came to the place, I'm not here because they deserve it. I'm here because Christ deserves it. I'm here for his sake. Only then could he get the freedom to minister and only then of course could he see these black hearted sinners turned into saints of God. And that's true anywhere. Whether it's America or Africa or anywhere else. So our missionaries are out there. Don't have some over romanticized view of missionaries in the mission field. They're real flesh and blood people facing real flesh and blood problems and difficulties. But they are the salt, they are the light. Pray that God will bless their work and make them effective. What's the hope for Argentina? Folk like these and their church will really be salt and light. What's the hope in Capanguria? That our missionaries there and the local pastors in their churches, their people will be salt and light. That's the hope. Let's pray for them that the Lord will do that. And by the way, we can start being the salt and lighter cells right here and now. We can do it by start praying for those who are already out and then we can do it among the people whom God has set us. We're here. Jesus said, let your light so shine that they may see your good works. You are the light. But when you let that light shine, what do they see? They see your good works. Now we come to the last thing that will be the last. You see, this happiness that I talked about, this peace that I talked about, it's not all turning in. If that's the way it is, it's bogus. It's all turning out good works. You're doing something for God. You're doing something for eternity. And by that standard, how few of us, how few of us are serving Christ. doing something for God, doing something for eternity, are good works that will glorify God. One of those good works is to do what he says and pray for the work of God. So we're about that tonight. As the Lord gives you opportunity, go out and do some more and bring the gospel to others. But let's tonight give ourselves to prayer for those who are already out in the work of the ministry on the mission fields of the world. And as we remember these, let me remind you At this Christmas time to keep those who can't get home and those who are in isolated positions. It's always an emotional time, always a trying time. And do keep them particularly before the Lord. And then even more. Remember that there are many in the world tonight who are saved. And they love nothing in terms of this world's goods. Some of them are living under tyranny. Some of them are living in starvation. Some of them are living in places of civil war. Some of them are living with their friends and their relatives incarcerated in jail because they've been found to be Christians. Some of them are mourning the murder of their loved ones for the crime of having a Bible in their hand. That's why I was infuriated at the absolute stupidity and ungodly folly of that self-appointed spokesman for what is God's purpose in the life, Rick Warren, and his absolute idiocy in running to Syria to tell the world that there's religious freedom here. Try telling that to the people whose families have been disemboweled for being a Christian and the same idiot is now about to go to North Korea where no doubt he will again find religious freedom the freedom to be hacked to bits by communist murderers if you're found with a page of scripture in your hand we have brethren and sisters tonight who are not living the good life as Americans would think it, but they are living the good life in that they're proving God. But remember those that are bound as being bound with them. Pray for the prisoners of the hope of the gospel of Christ. There's a great work of God out there across the world. We have some specifics to pray for here tonight. There's a whole lot we can't be too specific about because we don't know too much. The Lord knows. There are people in Chinese prisons tonight. There are people in India who are living under a cloud, under the threat of annihilation. There are those who have lost everything for their stand for God, simply to preach the gospel of Christ. So, across the world and around the world at this Christmas time, remember the Church of Christ, that it will be salt and light. and that God will bless the ministry and the ministers of his word for the honor and for the glory of his own thrice holy name.