Biblestudy: Matthew (Part Six)

Matthew 5:10-20
#BS-MA06
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 16-Sep-81; 75 minutes

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I promise you, we are going to move at least twice as fast tonight as we did the last couple of weeks. The last couple of weeks, we have advanced by four verses, so we ought to be able to get at least eight verses done tonight.

There is a lot of great information here about the average between excessive anger and excessive angerlessness. There are some people that just cannot seem to get stirred up. There are some people whose temper is running red hot all the time. Well, these people who are meek in the biblical sense are certainly capable of anger, but it is always on the leash. They are humble people. They are open minded. They are willing to listen to others. They do not jump to conclusions and they are not really defensive people. They are people who have their spirit under control. So meekness has to do with a person's self-control.

Then there was the beatitude about "blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." Really, the emphasis here is on the hungering and the thirsting. I spent a long time trying to describe as vividly as I possibly could what these hunger and thirst words connote.

It is not a hunger or thirst that can be satisfied by a snack. It does not even imply the breaking of a fast, but it implies the kind of hunger or thirst that comes upon a person when he does not know when he is going to be able to eat. You know how ravenously hungry you would get under those kind of circumstances.

As I explained, this is probably the most demanding of all the Beatitudes. But it is also the one that in a way is the most comforting as well because all God seems to require here is not that we actually have the righteousness, but that we hunger and thirst for it. Because if we really do hunger and thirst for it in the way that He is describing here, we are going to really set our sights; our vision, our goals are really going to be high, and we are going to strive for them. We are not going to be satisfied with being partially righteous. We are really going to be striving after something that is good, really good. And if we do, the chances are very great that we are going to reach it.

Then the next one: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Something that I do not believe that I brought out the last time is that there is a verse that will help you to understand this maybe a little bit better.

Remember back in Matthew 23:23, Jesus is really castigating the scribes and the Pharisees, calling them hypocrites and murderers and snakes—that is what He calls them: snakes and murderers—and He gets to talking about tithing. He said, "You tithe of mint, anise, and cummin," but He said they left out the weightier matters of the law. Those weightier matters were judgment, mercy, and faith. And just with that verse and understanding some of the things I said about being merciful, that being merciful requires judgment as a prior condition because one has to know whether or not one should be merciful. And so this mercifulness that He is talking about is the kind of feeling that goes far beyond just being sympathetic.

Remember I was describing what it literally means. We have no words that we can translate this into English. Maybe merciful comes closest. But it literally means to experience by crawling inside of. Now that is really empathizing to the nth degree. And so it takes a great deal of control of one's mind to really put yourself in somebody else's shoes. Now, if we can do that, then we lack the basis for properly judging whether or not we should forgive, whether we should extend help, whether we should loan a guy a buck, whether we should give a guy a buck, or whatever.

And so this beatitude has to do with making proper judgments, righteous judgment, and we understand it more fully. And so those who do use their mind to make proper judgments are therefore going to know when to be tolerant, when to be forgiving toward a person's weaknesses, whether to extend help, or whether not to extend help.

Matthew 5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart."

This beatitude has to do with the person's motivation, the "why" of a person's action. And so it is going to be those who are pure in heart who are going to see God, as it says here. Remember, to the pure all things are pure. But those who are of a defiled mind, they can see something dirty, evil, cynical, sarcastic, or whatever in any kind of a situation. They can construe something out of that that would be bad. But the pure tend to be very positive. They can look at the same situation and be struck entirely different by it because their attitudes, their inclinations are different.

This one is very, very important because in Matthew 15, Jesus explained that this is where sin comes from. Remember He said it is not what goes into the man that defiles the man, but what comes out of the heart, that defiles the man. And He mentioned the very first thing, evil thoughts, murder, fornication, adultery. So the pure in heart, they are not going to have evil thoughts, they are not going to commit fornication, they are not going to commit adultery, they are not going to commit murder because their mind just does not even run in that direction at all.

So this beatitude has to do with a person's motivation.

Matthew 5:9 "Blessed are the peacemakers."

This one has to do with resolving problems between people, having to do with relationships between people. And it is important to note that it does not say blessed are the peace lovers. Everybody loves peace on their own terms. Everybody wants to avoid trouble. And so this has to do with people who are willing to stick out their neck to make peace.

Now, in other parts of the Bible (I am sure it would take at least a split sermon, maybe a sermon to go into this), but peacemaking is described as keeping the commandments of God. And so that is how peace, in a broad sense, is made. By following God's commands, by trusting in Him. But there has to be positive action taken by someone to produce peace. It just does not happen, you see, it has to be made. So that is one that would involve another whole sermon.

So this is not just talking about avoiding trouble, it is talking about, even at times there would be confrontation in order to produce peace. So it is talking about taking positive action to produce peace.

Let us begin in verse 10.

Matthew 5:10-12 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Now this one here can really be an enigma. We all know what persecution is. That is when somebody is attacking you either physically or psychologically for no good reason. That is that, here you are minding your own business, let us say, being good and suddenly you are made out to be a martyr and somebody is hurting you and you are in pain. You may be crying, you may be depressed, terribly discouraged because this person or persons are doing this to you. And you have not done anything to stir up to all this trouble. How can that be a happy situation?

That is what He says though. Blessed are you when you are persecuted. Well, that is kind of hard to relate to, but I will say this for Jesus. He is honest. If you follow His way, buddy, you are asking for trouble! And He always leveled with people: whenever you sign on with Me, you better expect that it is probably going to do something to your family that is not very nice. He said, "Think not that I come bringing peace but a sword." My way of life is going to divide father from mother, and mother from daughter, and father from son. And that is persecution when a person is kind of wrenched away from his family. You better be ready and willing to put Me before everybody else.

And I will tell you, that is going to be a heartbreaking situation, to be very close to people and yet, you see, your way of life, your beliefs run counter to what they believe and what they practice and just kind of wrenches you away from these people you love. You do not want to be wrenched away but you are. How can that be happy?

Well, you know, Christianity really disrupts life. It disrupts, in many cases, a person's work. Now, maybe in your case you came into this work and you did not have any problem because you had a Monday to Friday job. But even in those cases, sometimes the holy days fall on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, an ordinary work day. And if you are going to practice Christianity rightly and properly, you are going to going to obey God. And there is a good possibility that you are going to be brought into a head-to-head confrontation with your employer. Maybe he will give you the day off. And then again, maybe you lose your job over the holy days. It has happened. So it can disrupt your work.

But this way of life can cause you troubles in other areas other than just the Sabbath. What if you happen to be in the military? Being in the military, does that run true to form with the ideals of Christianity? Of course it does not, because really you are in a sense being trained to kill or to support those who are trained to kill. One of the commandments says you shall not kill. That runs counter.

Now, what if you have 18 years in the military? You have two more years to go before your retirement and God calls you and you begin to realize that, hey, I might have to give up 18 years of service, give up a pension in order to go this way. Boy, that could be pretty upsetting.

It happened many times when I was out in southern California. This principle that I am talking about was a real bugaboo because one of the biggest industries in southern California, the aircraft industry, McDonnell Douglas, that Rockwell Corporation (I cannot think of the first name there), they are involved in making fighter planes, they are involved in making rockets that carry nuclear warheads. And believe me, I ran across it often. We had a lot of men who were called into the work from those industries and they would be draftsmen or engineers or whatever. And here you are working for McDonnell Douglas and they generally pay pretty well. Here is a guy making $25,000, $30,000 a year (and this was back in the early 70s and the late 60s as an engineer for McDonnell Douglas), he has 18 years with the company. He is an engineer. He is building rockets to carry nuclear warheads. I tell you, you do not turn your back on something like that easily. That is an awfully big commitment. I will tell you, Christianity, if you are going to live it the way God wants it lived, it is going to cause persecution, even though nobody is pointing a gun at you. It is simply because you want to obey God.

Or your persecution can come socially. This happens to just about everybody because you no longer keep Christmas. You no longer keep Easter. Here is all your relatives. They want to get together on Christmas. They want to get together on Easter and have a big family reunion. They do not mean any harm. They are not intending to put the pressure on you. They are not saying, let's all get together on Easter. So Ritenbaugh is persecuted. It just comes. And believe me, the persecution that hurts the most comes from your own family, from your loved ones who really do not want to hurt you.

But when you start obeying the truth, it begins to sanctify you. That means set you apart. And when you begin to get set apart, persecution comes even though nobody is laying a hand on you.

Well, sometimes it really gets close to home because the husband is called and the wife is not or the wife is called and the husband is not. And I will tell you, that gets to be hard to live with. I know that that has happened to many of you. And if you are not in that kind of a situation, you better give God thanks every day that He has called your wife or He has called your husband and pray for God's mercy upon those people who are in that kind of a situation, that maybe He would at least give them peace within their family, if nothing else.

And so persecution comes from all kinds of sources. It does not have to be inflicted by a sword, a rifle. Sometimes it just comes from being excluded from things that you would normally participate in with family or employment.

We do have, I believe, trouble relating to the kind of persecution that others have endured before us. We have not had to go through the kind of persecution that those people did under the Roman Empire or that others had to endure when the Spanish Inquisition was going on. Some of those things. I do not know whether any of you ever read Foxe's Book of Martyrs? I will tell you that is gut wrenching. Did you know that Nero, the sixth Roman emperor, that he actually had pitch, you know, like asphalt, smeared on living human beings, Christians bodies, and then it is all saturated with oil, and he had it lit while these people were alive and he used these people as torches to light his garden while parties were going on. That is really grizzly! Apparently it is a well established fact.

We just cannot relate to anything like that. None of us have had limbs chopped from our body, which happened during the Spanish Inquisition. People actually had their arms severed from their body and then roasted in a fire before their very eyes, their own arm being roasted in a fire. It is hard to relate to that. Eyes gouged out, you name it. There seems to be no end of man's depravity to other men.

Now, why does this occur? It would be very easy to lay it at Satan's doorstep and no doubt he has a great deal to do with it. But there are more general reasons I think, or let us say, more specific reasons than that because I do not think that we can lay it all just to Satan because he uses man to yield to him in doing these things.

First of all, there is ignorance and of course, this is well documented as well. And of course, with ignorance is slander. You can see this right in the Bible where people in their ignorance slander Jesus. You know, whenever He was finally convicted, it took a slanderous accusation that He was going to destroy the Temple and in three days raise it up. You see what they did? They twisted what He said. He meant that His body was going to be destroyed and in three days He was going to be resurrected. But what they did is twist what He said to mean that He was going to tear down the Temple, which was a monument to God. And then three days later, He was going to to raise it back up again. An ignorant, slanderous accusation.

During the times of the persecution, both in Rome and in the Spanish Inquisition, the same pattern was followed. Do you know that they were accusing Christians of cannibalism? You know why? Because Jesus said in John the sixth chapter, "Unless you eat of My body and drink My blood, you have no life in you." And so the story got around that the Christians were sacrificing babies in their meetings and eating the baby's flesh, the baby representing the purity of Jesus Christ, and roasting the flesh and eating and drinking the blood.

They accused the Christians of having orgies. You know why? Because it says in a couple of different places to greet one another with a holy kiss. And because in the book of Jude, their meetings were called love feasts. It says that very plainly. Of course, they just meant the Sabbath. That is all Jude meant. He meant the Sabbath or the holy days and that they were feasting on the love, the fellowship of God's Spirit. But slanderous accusations were made that inside this meeting hall it was every man for himself and they were having sexual orgies in there.

So that inflamed people's prejudices. And because there are those differences, then the public does not feel too indisposed against permitting persecution. Usually the public is generally ignorant of what is really going on even today because it is very difficult to really explain news events in the amount of time that is given. We get little bits and pieces of news and it is very easy to twist something, maybe even unintentionally, to give the public a certain slant.

Do you know that Nero did that? Most of you ought to be well aware that Nero blamed the fire in Rome on who? The Christians. So they became the scapegoat for what he probably caused himself by secret directive, "burn the city down, we will have to rebuild it. And that'll give the people a lot of work to keep their minds off of trouble." You see, he used something like that to bring persecution against the Christians. He blamed everything on them and that of course, gave him license then to gather them up and feed them to the lions.

So he accomplished two ends. He got the pressure off himself because he was unable to keep the economy moving. And because of all the violence within the city could not be blamed on him, he blamed it on the Christians and then the public, being very ill-informed, they went right along with it. That took the pressure off him and he gave them sport.

That is one reason. But without a doubt through history, the second one is by far and away the major cause of persecution and it is political in nature. Now again, maybe we can see this from what happened in Rome. They seem to be the type for this kind of thing and it will probably be repeated at least in principle during the time that the beast and the false prophet are in power.

For about 400 years, Rome was a pretty good place to live. Rome and Italy. I will tell you how good it is. Did you know that there was not one divorce in 500 years of Roman history? That is pretty strong family ties. I do not know what all the reasons are or were that they had such strong families. Rome was a commonwealth, which is what the United States is. It is a commonwealth. Our government is a Republican form but we are a commonwealth economically. Well, that is the way Rome was. But as Rome began to increase in its stature and power then they began to experience a breakdown morally. And what caused the breakdown was their contact with Greece.

Rome conquered Greece militarily, but Greece conquered Rome morally. They just dragged the Romans down because the Romans adopted Greek customs and ways just wholesale. And as they began to do that, the family broke down in Rome and as the family broke down so did the general quality of life within the city and the state. And as it broke down, the government was unable to control it. So gradually, Rome's government changed from a representative type to an emperor, a dictatorship.

Now, whenever Augustus, who was the first Caesar, became emperor, he was a little bit afraid of the power and authority that was vested in his office. But gradually they began to assume divinity. It was not a real divinity, but they began to assume it. Now by the time we get to Nero, who was the sixth emperor, the emperor was "a divine being."

Every year a Roman citizen was required to go and stand before a figurehead, usually a bust of the emperor, and he was to take a little pinch of incense and he would make an offering to the great god, whoever it happened to be. You see Nero or whoever. Now, it did not cost him anything but a little pinch of incense to go and do that. And what he would do is he would go before this bust of the emperor in the company of official state witnesses and he would toss his little bit of incense and pledge his loyalty to his lord, Caesar. It just consisted of a one-sentence statement.

You know what? A Christian could not do that because, you see, his Lord is Christ. You know that that made every Christian then a lawbreaker. It automatically made him an outlaw. Now, could an emperor permit something like that, an affront like that, to be publicly demonstrated before the rest of the populace? He could not do it because that would inspire disloyalty in others who probably did not think he was a god anyway, but only did it in order that he might continue to be able to be a free Roman citizen and conduct his business and go about his daily life.

You see a form of this in Revelation 13, about no man being able to buy and sell unless he had the mark of the beast. That is why I say that something very similar, at least in principle, is going to be applied off in the future. A Christian in that kind of a circumstance, having the mark of the beast on him or being demanded of him, he could not give his pledge of allegiance to the beast either. And he would automatically then become an outlaw. Thus you see, it gave permission because this person was a law breaker, to give official authority to the states to round these people up.

Similar ordinances were enacted during the Spanish Inquisition as well that enabled the state to officially persecute because, after all, were not these Christian lawbreakers? Why, of course. During the Spanish Inquisition, what was it that they were constantly trying to get the Christians to do? They had to express their loyalty to the Catholic Church. And then who brought the pressure? The state brought the pressure on the people at the behest of the Catholic Church.

Most of the persecution has been political in nature and has been brought by the state. So in that kind of a circumstance, no matter how good of a citizen you are—you might be the most upstanding person in the neighborhood, the person that everybody would trust—but you would officially be an outlaw, a lawbreaker. You can have the best morals of anybody in the neighborhood and yet you are a criminal and so they can officially then persecute. I will tell you, it is a no-win situation, at least on the surface.

Let us look at this a little bit more positively and this is really where the blessing comes in. First of all, persecution does present an opportunity for you to publicly show your loyalty to Christ. Most of us do not really have an opportunity to do this. We are doing it in a subtle sense in that if we are quietly going about our business, keeping the Sabbath, keeping the holy days, and doing other things that are involved in this way of life. Our neighbors do notice. However, in a time of persecution, the attention is really focused on you, you become a focus of attention, and there are times when God does want us to suffer persecution publicly.

Now, the next thing is that if you do suffer persecution publicly, it puts you in good company spiritually. Because that is what He said, that puts you in the company of the prophets. And the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. All the apostles were persecuted to death as far as we know, except for the apostle John, and very few of the prophets lived out a long, full life. Most of them died an early death as a result of persecution. That is why Jesus said they killed the prophets. And so it puts you in good company spiritually and that is good.

The third thing. Maybe this is a little bit too abstract. Then again, maybe it is not. But when you are publicly persecuted and possibly even asked to be a martyr by God—hopefully it does not come to that—but if we are publicly persecuted, it enables you to share in a great occasion.

I will tell you what I mean in another sense. If there is anybody in this room that has ever participated, let us say, in a great battle in World War Two, you participated in a great occasion. Something that is written up in history books. It is something that you never forget. It is engraved in your memory. You learn lessons from it that you can pass on to others and it becomes a very valuable experience in your life and of course, it becomes then valuable to others as the lessons learned are passed on.

That is the principle that we are talking about here. Not very many of us ever get to partake in something that was great. When you become publicly persecuted, you are being put into a great situation and that is good because not many people participate in great things.

A fourth thing is that whenever we do become a public spectacle by means of persecution, it almost invariably makes it easier for those who follow after us. We are sitting here this evening in a free country, having freedom of speech, we have greater liberties than any nation maybe has ever known on the face of this earth. We enjoy those things because of the sacrifices of those who went before us.

I have given you bits and pieces of things that I know about those men who signed the Declaration of Independence, 56 of them. Do you know that most of those men had horrible lives after they did that? Because when it became known, they immediately became branded as outlaws by the British government. Most of those men were well-to-do. Only a few of them even survived the Revolutionary War. And of the few who survived, I think something like 12 or 13 out of the 56 survived the Revolutionary War, only two or three came through with portions of their fortune remaining intact. Most of them were hounded almost to death.

Very interesting story. If you can find histories of those people who signed, they knew when they signed that that their lives were not worth a plug nickel. And so they delayed an announcement, the signers, for quite a long time who the people were who declared independence from Britain. But you see, because they were willing to do that, it helped to stir up an entire nation of people. And I am sure it played a part in our breaking away from Britain and we became a free and independent nation. And there have been people like that who have been willing to sacrifice themselves in order that others may enjoy the blessings of liberty, the same principle, as it were, with God's Kingdom as well with His church.

The final thing, this is a spiritual reality and it is something that I think that we all have to experience eventually, personally, and that is that when you suffer, the Bible shows you do not suffer alone. I think that this is one of the major reasons why that story about Shadrack, Meshach, and Abed-Nego is included in the Bible. Now, you have to admit that those men underwent a persecution that was frightening and so real. It would be enough to just about blanch you white to have to experience something like that. And yet God permitted them to actually be thrown in the fire before He rescued them. And then what does the story show? Who was in the middle of the fire with them? He was. And in this case, He protected them so that even the smell of the fire did not come on their clothes or in their hair or anything.

Well, there is a principle that is involved here that is very important to you and me. And that is that when we are involved, when we are bearing the brunt of persecution, that He is with us. He is right there. He said, "I'll never leave you nor forsake you." But He is there with us, helping us to learn great and wonderful things. And so perhaps persecution is the way to the very closest relationship with Christ. I do not know. It is a hard way to go. But even though those words may not appear in God's Word, it seems as though the greatest of His servants were persecuted to death and if not persecuted to death, they were persecuted almost their whole life like the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus Christ Himself. And so it seems to be the way to the closest association or relationship with God.

Matthew 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men."

I do not know whether you ever thought of it this way, you probably have. But to be called the salt of the earth is really a great compliment. Because salt is so important to life. I understand that we cannot live without it. And that almost all of the food that God has created has it in it naturally so even if you did not have the common table salt that we have available to us, there is still a sufficient amount of salt in food that you would be able to survive. But if that food did not have salt in it you would die. It is something that is absolutely essential to life. And there is a great analogy here in that we are the salt of the earth.

He is saying, in effect, that look, you are important and without you life would not be possible. It is pretty hard to give a greater compliment than that. It is so important to life and well being that wars have been fought over it in order to get salt. Even as today, we fight wars over minerals like coal and iron and oil, things of that nature, but in the past, people fought wars over salt. Exceedingly important to us.

Back in Leviticus 2, verse 13, there is the instructions regarding the offerings that were to be made.

Leviticus 2:13 Every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt [that is every one]; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt.

Now, why? Well, there are two factors involved here. The first one is that salt is a preservative. Most of us are familiar with this, at least to some extent. They were far more familiar with it at the time of Christ in that they had no refrigeration, and the only way that they could preserve things from one year to another or from one season to another, was to salt it. They did not have any ice boxes. They did not have any high mountains that they could go to to get ice that would last them all through the summer. And their winters were not cold enough to really preserve things. So they had to have something to preserve and they preserved things by salting them. And so salt is a preservative.

How does it preserve? It keeps things from corrupting. Now, here is a lesson for you and me. This world would be far worse were it not for Christians. It is the Christians that are keeping it from corrupting and going completely berserk. Now, you know what happened in the days of Noah. Finally, we got to the place where there was only one grain of salt on the entire earth and that was Noah. What did God do? He destroyed it. So you see what we are? We are a preserving factor. That is very complimentary. We are keeping this world from being obliterated.

The second factor is that salt enhances and lends flavor to food. This is an interesting thing because oftentimes we maybe overlook this aspect of Christianity. There are certain foods that without salt seem to be in pretty insipid to us. In fact, they seem to be so insipid to us, we really lay the salt on and what we really like is not the food, we like the salt. So we give ourselves hypertension and we are practically pickled on the inside because of all the salt that we use. But you really like it because it enhances things. Ever have to eat an egg without salt on it. Yuck, they are really insipid.

Now, this is directly connected to the other factor, that is, that the earth is being preserved by its salt, that is, by its Christians, so does this world. The two are directly related. Now, it's very interesting because salt is considered as a spice, as a condiment, not in a real sense as being a spice, but we use spices to enhance the flavor of things. We use salt to enhance the flavor of things. What is it that gives life its flavor? Joyful experiences, pleasant things. Well, that is kind of what He is talking about here.

Now, when we apply this principle in a personal sense, you really get down to the nitty gritty of our own personal lives and the way that we conduct them, what kind of a Christian are you? Are you the kind of person who is bright, bubbly, who is positive, who is cheerful, who is up, who is on the ball, who is smiling? Or are you the kind of person that well, somebody says to you, "Isn't it a nice day?" You say, "Yeah, but there's a cloud on the way."

Oliver Wendell Holmes, he was one of our chief justices of the Supreme Court, I read one time where he said that he really wanted to go in the ministry. He finally decided that he would not go in the ministry because almost all the ministers he knew looked like undertakers. They just did not have any life in them!

You need to think about yourself. Do you enhance the area that you are in? Are you a grain of salt? Or are you a piece of egg without any salt on it? And people just kind of "huh?" What is up with that person? Do you brighten up the corner where you are? Are you a joy to have around? That is the way a Christian ought to be. I mean, I am not talking about a Pollyanna attitude. I just mean a person who is up and encouraging and nice to be around.

I will tell you something very important. You may not think that it is a very important quality, but it is very important. Because look what He says, "If the salt has lost its favor," what do you do with it? You throw it out. if salt loses its ability to enhance, you throw it up. Now, how do you lose your ability to enhance? This is what is so important. Because pure salt, pure sodium chloride never loses its flavor. It is impossible. It is chemically impossible for pure sodium chloride to lose its flavor. Emphasis is on the word pure. Salt can become adulterated. But even as salt enhances the flavor of things that it comes in contact with, the thing that salt comes in contact with is able to adulterate the flavor of the salt. In other words, salt has a certain amount of absorbency to it. You pour water on salt, it absorbs it and it weakens it somewhat. Or vinegar on salt, the salt absorbs it.

Now, what is He talking about here? If you are the salt of the earth, as long as you remain pure you are going to enhance your surroundings and make it palatable to the mouth of God. But if you become adulterated, in other words, if you begin to absorb the world around you, then you begin to lose your flavor and you are not fit for anything except to be thrown out. You see the possibility for purity still remains because salt can be redistilled and it is pure once again. And so can Christians repent and become pure again.

He mentioned here that it is trampled under foot. Jews had an interesting use for salt if it became adulterated. And we do the same thing today only in a little bit different way. We use salt that is not adulterated. We use the same principle. The Jews got most of their salt from around the area of the Dead Sea where the natural evaporation processes left beds of salt. As the Dead Sea receded away, they had an abundant supply of salt.

However, there were areas where the salt absorbed the quality of the strata of rock or other minerals that it was lying on. Well, they made a use of that salt that was adulterated. They broke it up and whenever it rained, they threw it on the floor of the courtyard at the Temple because the blocks were very slippery when it rained, so that the people would not slip and slide. And so they walked on it, you see, it was trampled underfoot.

Now up north when it snows, we throw salt on the road. What for? So the cars do not slip and slide around, and of course, the salt and the water combining create a little bit of heat and it melts some of the snow.

But that is what that means in a practical sense. Whenever salt became adulterated, the Jews threw it when it rained on the courtyard in the Temple so people would not slip and fall. Simple, is it not?

Matthew 5:14-16 "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a candle and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

Here is another great compliment, because you are the light of the world. And possibly this is the greatest compliment that a Christian can receive from God, if you are a light. Turn with me back to John the ninth chapter and I will tell you why this is such a great compliment. Jesus said,

John 9:5 "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

When you apply that principle to Christians, people who have Jesus Christ living in them by means of the Spirit of God, if you can be called a light, what He is doing is equating you with Christ. And I will tell you, you cannot be compared to anybody greater than that. And so that is a great compliment if you truly are a light. So what He is saying here is if you are a light, then you are like Me. That is pretty good.

Now a light has properties to it as well. Turn with me back to Isaiah the 43rd chapter, beginning in verse 8. Just as a little bit of background. God says,

Isaiah 43:8 Bring out the blind people who have eyes, and the deaf who have ears.

Obviously, this is the world, this is the way we were before He called us. We had eyes but we could not see spiritually, we had ears, but we could not hear spiritually. He says,

Isaiah 43:9 Let all the nations be gathered together [He is going to put on a big program in a stadium somewhere], and let the people be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us former things? Let them bring out their witnesses, that they may be justified; or let them hear and say. "It is truth."

He is saying here, "Look, you bring out your witnesses. We're going to have a big trial here. You bring out your evidence, you bring out your proof, and I'm going to bring out My witnesses. I'm going to bring out My proof as to who really is God."

Then verse 10 says,

Isaiah 43:10 "You are My witnesses," [Who is He talking about this? He is talking about us.] says the Lord, "and My servant whom I have chosen."

He said to the disciples, you have not chosen Me, I have chosen you. We are the chosen of God. We are His witnesses. Witnesses of what?

Isaiah 43:10-13 . . . that you may know [He said, I chose you that you may know] and believe Me, and understand that I am He. [That is why He chose us, to understand that our God is God. We are His witnesses of that fact.] Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me there is no savior. I have declared and saved, I have proclaimed, and there was no foreign god among you; therefore you are My witnesses," says the Lord, "that I am God. [that is our job] Indeed before the day was, I am He; and there is none who can deliver out of My hand [He is saying there before creation, before there was any light, He existed.]; I will work, and who will reverse it?"

That is, who is going to permit it? Who is going to turn, who is going to give Me permission or who is going to turn Me away in doing what I want to do? Well, obviously, nobody.

Now you can study it out in the life of Elijah as to what his work was. His work was to restore the worship of the true God. And so he kept having confrontations with people, but those confrontations usually led to him making a great big display to show that his God, that is, Elijah's God was God. Now, this is the work of Elijah and this is the work of this era. We are going to show this world that our God is God. Right now the focus of attention is almost entirely in areas of knowledge, of informing people, of giving them reason why there is a great God who is a great Creator and that He is the God of this church.

So we have the Plain Truth. We have the Good News, we have booklets and articles. We have the World Tomorrow program on radio and television, and all those things are focused in on one thing: that our God is God. Whether Mr. Armstrong is preaching on prophecy, he is driving that point home, that God's Word will stand. For who is God? Well, He is the God of the Bible. He is the God of this church. He is the God of Herbert Armstrong. And so Mr. Armstrong keeps trying to give all kinds of proof to point both them and us in that direction—that our God is God.

Let us go back there to Matthew 5 again and just think about some of the properties of light. What He says, first of all, is that to be of any value a light has to be able to be seen. Now, we may think of that as being kind of dumb because it is so obvious. But to them, again, it was not so dumb. We do not put lights under baskets, but they did. And the reason they did is because they did not have electricity, they had oil lamps.

You have probably seen pictures of them. They looked somewhat like a gravy boat where there was a little bowl in which was usually olive oil and at one end of it where the pitcher on the gravy boat would be, there would be a little spout and coming up through that spout was a wick and the wick went down into the oil. And so what they did, they would light the wick and then the wick was constantly fed by the olive oil that was underneath.

Now, they did not have matches either. And so usually once they got the wick lit, they left it lit because the only way it could be lit is usually with a firebrand, a torch, or something that was pulled out of a fire. Their home did not have any glass windows on it and they did not have very many either. So the houses tended to be dark on the inside, but also very drafty. So what they would do is when they left the house, in order to keep the light from burning out, they would put a bushel basket or something similar to that over top of it in order to keep the wind from blowing the wick out. Now when the bushel basket was over it, it of course gave no light. Even though it was lit, nobody could see it because it was under the basket. So whenever they would come home from doing their shopping or whatever it was, and the house needed some light in it, then they take the bushel basket back off.

So, what is the lesson here? Well, covering up your witness destroys the value of the light. That ought to be very plainly seen. But if you are operating in secret, if I can put it that way, and in a sense, trying to hide the fact that you are a Christian, you are actually destroying the very purpose for which God called you. He called you to be His witness that your God is God. And so if you are trying to be quiet and real secretive about your life as a Christian, then it is the same thing as if you pull the basket over your head. And so the light is there, but it is not doing any good because it is covered up. So in order for it to be of any value, then, it has to be seen.

The second factor here is He said that you are the light of the church. No, it does not say that because you are the light of the world. That your witness is intended to be made to the world, not to the church. Certainly fine examples are necessary within the congregation, but your witness is not made on the Sabbath while you are here. The witness that God wants is the one that you make out in the world during the other six days of the week.

This begins to involve, of course, what we do. So what do we do during the week? We work. So your witness involves the way you work. That is, if it is done energetically and fearfully, in good attitude. Or is it done begrudgingly? It involves how we work in the sense of the quality that we produce while we are working. It involves our attitude, whether it be on the job, in the home, or whatever. It involves the way we dress, whether we keep ourselves clean or not. It involves how we keep our house, how we keep our lawns, the way we do our dishes, the witness that your children make, whether it be at school, whether it be around the neighborhood.

It involves the way you keep your car, whether you keep it clean or whether it is dirty, whether it looks like an old rattle trap that is ready to fall apart or whether you are doing the best you can with what you have got. It involves the way you keep your hair. It involves the look on your face. It involves every aspect of life. Every part of that has to do with whether or not your life is changing.

So in order to be a light, we have to be moving towards perfection in every one of those areas because that is the way Christ was. Remember the comparison. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. As long as I'm here, I'm the light of the world." Nobody ever set a better example than He did in every area of life. He never let down once in His witness to God. Now we do of course. He set the highest standard that any man ever did. You see, that is why we have to be moving towards perfection in order for the light to be shining.

Let us go on a little further. Our light reveals and guides. As it is shining, it reveals and guides. And so in your witness in your neighborhood, it should be revealing the character of God. It should be guiding people to the way life was intended to be lived. So you should be then the focus of goodness in your community. Sometimes that takes a great deal of courage. If you are working with a bunch of fellows, you know, in a gang, in a group, and they want to do a quick and dirty job, they want to do it illegally. They want to do the kind of job that like my father-in-law used to say, "What difference does it make? You know, a man galloping past on a horse would never know."

We can take that approach. But can we afford to do that? Not really. If we are going to be a light we are going to have to be an example by doing it the very best we possibly can. We do not all have the same talent and ability. I know in my own experience in the mill, I did try hard to be the best welder they had. No matter how hard I tried, I tried to make the best looking weld that I possibly could, like an artist is putting that on there, I would always see somebody who did the job better than I did. But that was my aim anyway. I just knew that my concentration was not as great or my hand was not as steady or my ability of setting the machine just was not as good as somebody else's or whatever. But at least I was moving in that direction, trying to do the best I possibly could and the most I possibly could. And a lot of times people do not want to do that.

So it is easy to get dragged down by the others in your gang. So that is hard.

A third factor that besides revealing and guiding and being necessary for it to be seen, a light can also be a warning as well. You know, light for you to guide, like harbor light, channel light, and they warn fisherman and whatever where the channel is and if they want to stay from running aground, then they stay in between the lights.

When we apply this analogy into our lives, there are times when we have to stick our neck out and warn somebody that they are going in the wrong direction. The intention is not to hurt a person. It is actually to keep them from harm, because if they keep going in that direction, they are going to run aground. And so a light can also warm that somebody else is going in the wrong direction.

Let us go to a couple of scriptures here.

II Corinthians 4:6 For it is God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

We are the light of the world, but we must always remember that our light is merely a reflection. It is as though God is the sun, we are the moon, and we are reflecting His glory in our lives. Now it has to be that way because of what Paul said here in verse 6. God commanded the light to shine out of darkness. You see, He chose us. We did not choose Him. He revealed Himself to us in order that we might become His witnesses. And so He has shined then in our hearts.

Now, by what means did He do this? Well, he tells you also in the verse "to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God." This is how God gives you light. He preaches it. You remember in the sermon last week, Mr. Armstrong said, "What is the first thing that the Holy Spirit gives you?" And then he answered his own question. It is knowledge. It opens up an area of existence, of life that was heretofore inaccessible to us. That by God's Spirit, He reveals to our spirit spiritual things that were hidden.

Back here in Psalm 119, verse 105 the author wrote this,

Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Now, what God does is this: He teaches us. He teaches us truth. He teaches us the difference between right and wrong. He expands our choices, He opens up areas of choice we really did not understand that they even existed. And then He expects us to use it, and in using them two things are accomplished. Character is built and a witness is produced, and the light [unclear]. It is really a beautifully simple operation. But you see, the effectiveness of it depends on our willingness to yield to His truth by faith or through faith, faith in His Word. And if we will take Him at His word, we will trust Him, do what He says, then character will be built and a witness produced that our God is God.

In verse 16 of Matthew 5, there is a word here that I just want to mention. He says, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works." Well, one would expect in the context there that the work would necessarily have to be good and it almost seems to be a redundancy. But the word "good" here is kind of interesting because it does not just mean of good quality. It means attractive, it means beautiful, it means winsome.

Now, that puts a [unclear] to what he is talking about here that goes right back to the salt analogy. Remember that salt lends its flavor to things, it enhances. You see, it makes things stand out, makes them palatable. And remember I mentioned there that it has to do with a person being uplifting, bubbling, positive. Well, that is exactly what this means too. It has to do with the way works are done.

There are two ways that you can do work and still have them qualify as being "good." The one way is to look upon responsibilities as merely being duties that you are going to carry out because it is required. "I'll do it, it's required, I'll do it." That is not what God wants from you. He wants you to do it with all of your might, joyfully, and to be happy that you have the privilege of doing it. I will tell you, one of the greatest privileges that He can give to a man is to represent Him. How many people have been chosen to represent Him? Not very many people.

What we have here is an application of Ecclesiastes 9:10 where he says, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might." And so what He is saying here is what? When you witness for Me, I want you to be happy in doing it. God is not going to be satisfied with somebody that just grumbles their way through that. I think that is interesting. He wants you to be bubbly, happy, joyous, positive, uplifting. He does not like old grouches even though they do their job.

It says back in Psalm 16 that in God's presence there is fullness of joy. He is always happy. He is always up, and if we are going to be like Him, we are going to have to be that way too. You know, these positive thinkers, they are on the right track. The only thing wrong with it really is it is all carnal. It really does not have the right source and it really does not have the right motivation. They have got a good idea. They have got a good principle there and much of what they feel that they have they have gotten from the Bible. Because they can see these things, that God intends that we be that way. You can generate that yourself. Stir up the Spirit, think about happy and positive things.

Oh, there is one final thing here. He said "and glorify your Father in heaven." What we do must draw attention to God. Now, it may not always draw attention to God, but ultimately, it will. But it will also draw attention to you. And herein lies sometimes a little bit of a conflict in our minds. That in doing good things and doing them the right way, it is going to bring a certain amount of praise to you. Brethren, that is not wrong. God expects you, He wants you to have a good reputation. And the praise and honor that you receive from men, it is not bad unless it is taken by you in the wrong way.

And the right way for you to understand is to recognize that, first of all, the source of that praise and honor is really God because He is the one who revealed Himself and His way to you. And so it has not been generated by you at all. It has been generated only because God gave you the ability. Therefore, the approach for you is not, "Hey, see what I've been able to do," but rather, "Hey, look what God has enabled me to do." That is entirely different. And it is a point of understanding for you.

So even though you may get some glory from it, the real glory really belongs to God because you would not be doing it but for God's mercy.

Well, it has gotten late. I got further than this in Augusta last night! Well, there is no use going on. There is just too much in those next couple of verses. There is just so much meat here. It really is the essence of the teachings of Jesus Christ. I feel good that we just kind of dragged through here.

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