Sermon Tone Analysis

class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>*Salt and Light**Read: Mt 5:13-16*

*Looking back*

Time in Jesus’ ministry when he looked back and commented on what had happened and what would happen.

‘You are those who have stood by me in my trials.

And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Lk 22:28-30).

I want us to stop and look back and then look forward.

‘You are those who have stood by me in my trials.’

You have hung in there – sometimes heard things you would rather not – come back, listened.

Work through relationships – sometimes battles – that was how it was with disciples.

I wonder how many times they felt like quitting!

Last weekend people were in – not just the talks but whole thing that people experienced.

Not just School Farm but what happens here on a Sunday morning.

And it is more than just what happens here – it is about everything that has happened.

You have become the living demonstration of the truth of the gospel – and its ability to affect us deeply – to make a difference in the innermost parts.

*Looking forward*

And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Lk 22:28-30).

We can look forward

If we keep letting God do his work in our lives there is no limit to what he can do in and through us.

‘The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.

I will try my utmost to be that man.’ -D.L. Moody.

Originally from a Mr Varley.

·         Another weekend.

·         Six next year

·         Plans to take them out

Not just weekends.

(general)

·         The order in our families

·         the quality of who we are – the sheer beauty of our lives

·         our wisdom

·         our availability to make a difference

·         In our work

·         Our leisure

specific

·         visiting in Beech House

·         encouraging family

·         neighbour

·         sharing on a Sunday morning

·         making a phone call

·         smiling at someone

Put this into a biblical context

Mt 5:13

!! Salt

In the ancient world salt was highly valued.

The Greeks called salt divine (theion).

In a phrase, which in Latin is a kind of jingle, the Romans said, “There is nothing more useful than sun and salt.”

Salt, a valuable commodity in the dry Middle East, was used in the biblical period for barter.

In fact the word “salary” comes from the Latin /salarius/ (“salt”).

A person lacking integrity might have mixed white sand with the salt and then had more for trade.

But salt mixed with sand lost some of its salty quality and became useless.

A good title would be ‘the distinctiveness of the disciples.

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?

Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

Mark 9:50

Many uses of salt but Jesus gives us a clue here:

‘Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?

It is fit neither for the *soil *nor for the *manure heap*; it is thrown out.’

Luke 14:34-35

*Soil*

fertilizer – makes good things grow.

In many places in the Middle East land is quite acidic.

The only way this land could become productive was by spreading a little bit of salt on it.

In this way the salt acted like a fertilizer and promoted life and growth.

*Manure heap*

Disinfectant – stops bad things from growing

 

Is it easy to be good in your company?

Are people’s standards and attitudes lifted?

Are they unlikely to tell you of their exploits the night before or of how they lied or cheated on someone else?

Is it easy for standards to be relaxed?

Are they likely to tell that dirty story?

One of the things which this world needs more than anything else is people who are prepared to be foci of goodness.. Suppose there is a group of people, and suppose it is suggested that some questionable thing should be done.

Unless someone makes his protest the thing will be done.

But if someone rises and says, “I will not be a party to that,” another and another and another will rise to say, “Neither will I.” But, had they not been given the lead, they would have remained silent.

There are many people in this world who have not the moral strength and courage to take a stand by themselves, but if someone gives them a lead, they will follow; if they have someone strong enough to lean on, they will do the right thing.

It is the Christian’s duty to take the stand which the weaker brother will support, to give the lead which those with less courage will follow.

The world needs its guiding lights; there are people waiting and longing for a lead to take the stand and to do the thing which they do not dare by themselves

*Look more closely at what it means to be salt in the sense of fertilizer*

* *

*Note - *Must have that connection – not contamination.

It can be mucky, painful, heart-breaking, detailed but that is how it works.

There is no shortcut!

It retains its distinctiveness.

Links closely with the thought of adding flavour – bring out the best.

*Making good things grow* – i.e.

God made everything and said it was good.

He gave us so much and made us to be such incredible people – and told us to live life to the full.

Surely the best way of showing our appreciation is to use to the full what he has entrusted to us.

Bring out the best in life – to do that we have to start with ourselves – bring out the whole of who we are – both temperaments – and then use them to the full – expand into the whole of life – the third room.

The tragedy is that so often people have connected Christianity with precisely the opposite.

They have connected Christianity with that which takes the flavour out of life.

Swinburne had it:

“Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray from Thy breath.”

Even after Constantine had made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, there came to the throne another Emperor called Julian, who wished to put the clock back and to bring back the old gods.

His complaint, as Ibsen puts it, was:

“Have you looked at these Christians closely?

Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat-breasted all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition: the sun shines for them, but they do not see it: the earth offers them its fullness, but they desire it not; all their desire is to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die.”

As Julian saw it, Christianity took the vividness out of life.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”

Robert Louis Stevenson once entered in his diary, as if he was recording an extraordinary phenomenon, “I have been to Church to-day, and am not depressed.”

Men need to discover the lost radiance of the Christian faith.

In a worried world, the Christian should be the only man who remains serene.

In a depressed world, the Christian should be the only man who remains full of the joy of life.