Sermon in Minneapolis 05.11.2006

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, let us begin our services with opening prayer.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

According to our calendar, it's the 21st Sunday after Trinity. The finished calendar, which we will be switching to very shortly, perhaps next year, it's the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. So we won't begin counting from Trinity Sunday, but we'll begin counting from the previous Sunday, which is Pentecost.

A text I'll read for this evening is a gospel text assigned for this Sunday, the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, according to the finished calendar. And it is a text that earlier used to be assigned to All Saints Day. We know that last Wednesday, November 1st, was All Saints Day, but typically it's the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. It's celebrated on the weekend, and most often on Saturday. But it has now been switched to the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost.

And it is from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, and I will read verses 13 through 16.

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under the foot of men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father, which is in heaven. Amen.

Here Jesus is using two very familiar pictures or metaphors in this brief Sermon on the Mount. Namely, they are salt and light. We know what salt is. It is something that we use daily, and most often we use it for giving flavor to our food. It is a white, granular substance that enhances the flavor of our food. Amen.

And so, in the years back, when they didn't have salt, they didn't have a lot of salt. When they didn't have refrigerators or freezers, they would preserve meat, for example, by salting it. Salt also has, or has had, and perhaps still does have, a healing characteristic. Years ago, newborn babies, in Biblical times, were rubbed with salt. And for those people who know human anatomy and physiology, they know that the heart needs salt for it to function or work correctly.

So we can see that salt is very important in many different ways, and for many different reasons in our life. Not only today, but also in years back. In Bible times, salt was used in many more ways than we use it today. Salt was either modified or used in a different way. It was mined from the earth.

There was a city in the area of the Dead Sea known as the Salt City, or the City of Salt. There was also a valley known as the Valley of Salt, which was along the border between the country of Edom and Judah, in the vicinity of Jerusalem. And it was a very important city. It was the city of the Dead Sea. And in this Valley of Salt, many battles were fought, several led by King David, the King of Judah.

Salt was used in Old Testament times when they were offering sacrifices. So any food offering, and I think sin offerings as well, were sprinkled with salt before the offering was presented at the altar unto God. Also, when covenants were made, they often used salt in connection with making that covenant.

The Bible also mentions that when some city, in connection with some war, was destroyed, then in order to seal that victory, that destroyed city was sprinkled with salt. So we can see how salt was used in many, many different ways.

In the Old Testament, it was used as a metaphor of the Law of Moses. And the Law of Moses was called the Light and the Salt of the World. But we can see what happened in New Testament times. Jesus gives it a new meaning, new significance. And now he is speaking here, when delivering the Sermon on the Mount, when speaking to his own followers, his own disciples, he says, you are the salt of the earth.

So what then does Jesus mean by this, that you are the salt of the earth? We know that we are in the world, but we are not of the world. As Jesus says in another parable, that you are like wheat, sown in the world, and tares grow up alongside the wheat.

One meaning for this is that we are in the world as wheat plants. And alongside of us, in our everyday life, in our neighborhoods, in school and at work, we are surrounded by those who are in unbelief. They are the tares that Jesus is referring to. They are like the weeds that grow up in a garden, a plot of land, where we have planted the good seed.

So God has a purpose for us, to be in the world. We are not establishing monasteries, separated, trying to separate ourselves from the world, way out there in the wilderness, like the Essenes, during the time of the Bible, tried to do. They established their own communities excluded or secularized, or separated from the world. And they considered themselves the true light of the world.

So Jesus says, when he is sending out his disciples, 70 of them, two by two, out into the mission field, he says that I am giving you words, I will put words into your mouth, what you shall speak. And you shall fulfill what I wish for you to do. But the task won't always be an easy one. For I am sending you out as sheep into the midst of a pack of ravenous wolves.

We can imagine the picture of what would happen if a stray sheep would end up into a pack of hungry, ravenous wolves. It wouldn't be a very pretty sight. But Jesus says that you are in the world, but not of the world. Father, it is not my wish that you would take them out of the world, but that you would protect them and preserve them from all evil.

So what is the purpose for believers to be in the midst of this world, a world we could say is rotting in sin? We know what happens if we would have an open wound, and we would sprinkle salt on that open wound, wouldn't it sting?

So we can say, or we can imagine that we as believers are like salt in the midst of this rotting and decaying world, a world that is decaying in sin. And it is God's hope and wish that it would in some way sting the old man or prick the hearts of those who are godless. Touch the hearts and awaken them who are in the state of self-righteousness.

But not only that, also for those who are in faith but have sin. So, we have, in one way or another, fallen in sin. We remember when God came unto Abraham, and he threatened to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham pleaded unto God that if he would find fifty righteous people in that city, would you spare the city? God said sure, I will spare those cities if you can find fifty.

Abraham couldn't find fifty righteous people, believers, in those cities. So Abraham kept on lowering the number until finally, Abraham lowered the number down to ten. If I would find ten righteous souls in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, would you spare them? God said sure.

But Abraham wasn't able to find even ten believers, righteous souls, in those two cities. God would have wished that he could have spared the cities. He would have, but finally, it came to this point that he was going to destroy them.

So he told Lot to go, and to go, and to go, and to go. And Dylan Krause and Fenny Katz were all rollers, and light disease, they were burning, and they were burning like some of the heavenly treasures at the life which she was sorrowfully leaving behind, and she was turned into a pillar of salt.

When speaking about salt, the metaphor of salt, we could speak about the salt of doctrine. It is important that we as believers keep the borders of God's kingdom very clear. God has established these borders.

Already from that point in time when there was that fall in paradise, then God put that curse upon the serpent, and he said, when giving the first promise of the coming Messiah to Adam and Eve, he said to the serpent, of the seed of the woman, who will be born, he who will crush the head of the serpent, but the serpent shall sting you in the heel.

So we can see that there was the border between Christ, the promised Messiah, and the enemy of souls, and their two kingdoms. This border stands yet today. And it is the most restless border of all times in the history of mankind.

Many wars have been fought. Many peace treaties have been drawn up between nations. But this is one border between these two kingdoms where there will never be a peace treaty until the end of the world.

So millions, millions of former saints and martyrs have stood on this border, keeping faith in a good conscience, and have even given their lives on behalf of the testimony of their faith.

But it is important that this boundary would remain clear, as it hasn't been kept clear at times. I will tell you, there is a great deal of truth to be found in this.

I remember a friend of mine had recently moved from the old country, and as a single man, perhaps yet without a job in this country, traveled on a mission trip with him. A speaker brother was yet at that time single, and that single man and preacher brother wished to have a companion.

So they traveled, the two of them, throughout the West Coast. They came. The service was continued for a year, when they arrived in a town called San Francisco, at the end of the weapon dangerous border, and on a bypass near Onedale Niye, posición because it's a major political area.

When they arrived at the home they stepped. This is the dining room, where Don Quatre used to watch all the live empowery of Christian supports in The Chillow as a vehicle to income them to believe.

Attend the services, the speaker brother who was traveling from Minnesota and there in California noticed that there are those who are coming who are not believers. They are heretics. They are people who belong to an old heresy that has long since departed from God's kingdom.

And that local speaker brother in whose home services were being held and kept greeted all the people, even these who were in heresy, with God's peace. This is not keeping the borders of God's kingdom.

And lo and behold when that heresy of 72, 73 came, that minister in that large city in California, lo and behold went with that heresy. Old man, fun pretty.

And so we also talk about the salt of life. And the salt of life is the salt of the soul. It is important that we would travel keeping faith in a good conscience.

That not only would we know what the correct doctrine of the Bible is, the doctrine of Christ is, but that our life as well would be in harmony with the doctrine.

So life, our life that we live and the doctrine of the Bible, the doctrine of Christ must be in harmony with one another.

We can speak about the issue of sobriety. The use of alcoholic beverages. We remember when the friends of Daniel were there in that foreign country in Babylon in captivity.

And the king of Babylon, there in his palace, wished to offer these three young boys certain foods and also drinks, most likely alcoholic beverages. But we remember that these boys refused to drink these alcoholic beverages.

They wished to be sober, not only in doctrine, but in their life as well. So we wish to travel keeping faith and a good conscience.

Also we wish to keep the love, keep the love amongst ourselves as brothers and sisters in faith. But also as much as it is dependent upon us that we would keep love with all of those around us.

Not to become like the metaphor of the Dead Sea. We know what the Dead Sea is like. It has such a high salt content that nothing grows in that sea.

And so if we use the Dead Sea as a metaphor, it is a picture of a person who lives a selfish life and a life without love or a loveless life. Thus our life would not be as the metaphor of the Dead Sea. Selfish and one without love.

If we think of salt in the natural sense, it is important that salt would be used in the right amount. What would happen if we would put too much salt into our food?

One young girl was going to eat some sort of dessert. Some sort of sweet dish that her mother had put on the table for dessert. And she took a bottle that had a white substance in it and started shaking it upon that dessert to make it even more sweet.

She tasted it and spat it out. It wasn't sugar in the container. But it was salt.

I remember as a young boy, my mom was an excellent cook. And sometimes it was so that when she made bread, sometimes she put too much salt. Perhaps she was not counting correctly and put way too much because she forgot that she had already put in salt.

But she put salt into the mixture. And a person tasting that bread, it was completely inedible.

So we can see that if there is too much salt on our food, or in our food, we can't eat it. It's no good.

So what does this metaphor mean for us as believers, as children of God? That we would not have too much salt in our life?

We remember when Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane. And he was captured by the servants of the high priest. Peter, who was in many ways a slave. Peter, who was in many ways a very zealous person and quick acting person, took his sword.

And in his zealousness, cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest. Jesus didn't approve of this. He stooped down to the ground. He picked up that bloody earlobe off the ground. Put it back in its correct location on the head of the servant of the high priest. And it became healed.

Then Jesus turned to Peter and he said, Put that sword back where it belongs, back in its sheath. Who lives by the sword shall also die by the sword.

So too much salt in our life would be a life or a sermon that we preach that is only a sermon of harsh judgments and the curses of God.

And if our life is a life of constant strife and one of constant quarreling, we could say that it is a life where there is too much salt.

I remember an old preacher brother in Helsinki telling of an experience that he had in speaking to this matter of having too much salt.

The old RY in Helsinki used to be in downtown. And many people used to come to the service.

On the trolleys or the trams. And he said, Nilo Mäki said that one evening after services he ventured down to the tram and was going to hit Rome.

And once he got on the tram, a younger Christian lady got on the same tram and as the doors were about to close, the young Christian lady cried out in a loud voice and shouted, "You're all going to hell."

Nilo Mäki says he covered his head and in embarrassment he jumped off the tram and as if he didn't even recognize or know that woman. She was a little bit mentally unstable.

But he said that here was an illustration of too much salt in a person's life.

And so there could be the other extreme as well, that there would be too little salt or no salt at all.

I'm sure we've tasted food at times that are not as good as the ones we're eating. But I'm sure we've tasted food that seems to be tasteless because of the lack of salt or too little salt.

What does this mean? For example, if a person preaches in a lenient manner, preaching one-sidedly the word of God, only of God's grace and the love of God, but not the truth of God's word as well.

Also, we could say that this could be referring to a lenient lifestyle in our own life. As I mentioned earlier, that our life that we live as believers must be in harmony with the teachings of the Bible, with the doctrine of Christ.

The Bible mentions in the Old Testament how at times the swords of the soldiers of the armies of Judah became dull. And they had to go into the camp of the Philistines. The Philistines were their enemies.

So they had to go into the camps of the Philistines to sharpen their swords. They're in the camp of the Philistines. And then after this they could continue their battle in warfare.

So what does this mean for us today? What is this an example of? If, for example, we have offended or wronged someone in the world, it is important that we would go into the camp of the Philistines even to those who are in the world to sharpen our swords, that we would take care of our offenses even with those in the world in unbelief that we have offended.

And say that we are sorry, what we did was wrong and incorrect. In this way then our swords become sharpened again and we can continue the battle of faith.

So then here Jesus says you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savor, actually the salt can't. I've read when professionals or those who are knowledgeable about salt say that the salt can't actually lose its savor, but what happens is it gets mixed with impurities.

And so it's not able to do its task in a correct, efficient form any longer.

So Jesus says you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its savor or its effectiveness, what can it do? Is it able to salt it? How is it able to salt something?

It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under the foot of men.

So salt that was worthless wouldn't even be used any longer as fertilizer, but it would be cast into a dung pile, or a rubbish pile, and it was typical in the olden days that the dung piles were often a pile of rubbish right in the middle of the roads.

And literally then it was there to be trampled on.

So therefore that the impurities that would come into our life, that they could be removed when we err, fall into sin, that we can go to the throne of grace and there have these burdens of the way put away, washed and drowned into the bottomless legacy of grace.

So herein is the first metaphor.

But then Jesus says you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

There are many ways in which light is used. If we can think of the light of a flashlight, for example, yesterday evening I was out hunting and I shot a deer, I hit a deer, and so I went home and got a flashlight and after dark I went stomping through the swamp and the marshes trying to track down my deer.

Or if, for example, sailors are crossing a large body of water, an ocean or a sea, there is the use of a flashlight. There is the use of lighthouses which are twinkling out there on the horizon, giving direction to the sailors so they could stay away from the sunken reefs, rocks and dangerous areas that could sink their ship.

So Jesus says of himself that I am the light of the world. So he is the source of light. No human being has this source of light of themselves. We would be like a flashlight with dead batteries.

But the source of the light is Christ Jesus. And Jesus says I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not travel in darkness, but will have everlasting light.

And so when by faith we have Christ Jesus in our hearts, then Jesus can say of us that you are the light of the world. And it is like a city that is set on a hill, a lit up city during the dark of the night, which cannot be hid.

But Jesus talks about the condemnation of the world. He says that those in unbelief, those in the kingdom of the enemy of souls, have loved darkness more than they have loved the light.

One type of light that they had during the Old Testament times was an oil lamp. And we remember that Jesus talked in his parable of the ten virgins. There were five who were wise and five who were foolish.

They all had lamps. And they all were dressed in the same manner. And in this way none could be distinguished from another. There was only one difference.

And that difference became clear when the shout was heard, as it says, at midnight, or at a certain moment in the night, that the bridegroom is coming to gather the bride for the wedding.

And only those, and the bridegroom is Christ Jesus, who will come one day at the end of the world to gather his brides. And each child of God is a picture of a bride.

And we are now living in the time of engagement. And we are waiting for the consummation of that wedding, at that final wedding and celebration, there in heaven.

But when Jesus, the bridegroom, comes, and the shout is heard that he is now arriving, all of them tried to light that lamp so there would be a flame in the lantern.

The five that were foolish didn't have any oil, no oil of the Holy Spirit. And so there was no flame. There was no flame of faith.

Only the wise had oil in their lamps, and so there was a flame flickering, even though it was small and seemingly insignificant in comparison to the light of the sun during the day.

But here in this room, turn out all the lights, and with darkness outside, we would clearly see, even from the farthest corners of this sanctuary and church, see two flickering candles.

And so we are like two little candles in the middle of the dark room. We are like small flickering candles surrounded by darkness, the darkness of the world in unbelief.

The enemy of souls wishes to blow upon those flickering candles, and its intention is to snuff out those small flickering flames.

And if the flames go out, there is no difference between darkness and that candle, or that lantern, any longer. They are in harmony with each other, and there is nothing but cold and darkness everywhere.

So we are like flickering candles or lamps in the middle of the dark room, cold and evil world.

Here, like a flickering candle, has been my life of faith. So oft my feet so stumbling waver upon the way. But from the open fountains, which freely flow in Zion, new strength I here receive.

So that we would be like the fire, like the wise virgins, always having a lantern, a candle in our hand.

As the old preacher brother, Lenna Bellica, used to say, it has no benefit to you or I or anyone else that we would have an armful of lanterns or candles if our own individual, personal candle does not have a flame of faith burning on its wick.

It doesn't matter if we have other people's candles in our possession, they don't benefit us anything. It's that our own personal lamp or candle would be burning. That we would be departure ready at any moment when the call would come.

And so we have no light of ourselves, but the light is of Christ Jesus.

As Paul writes to the Corinthians, that God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, this light shines from the face of Christ as the light of conscience in our hearts.

So if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with the light, and if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse us from all sins.

So we need this light, we have this light, and it is like a flashlight. When I was out in the swamps last night, after dark, that light of the flashlight didn't light up the entire surroundings, but only a little piece of the path, a little bit at a time, so I could take one footstep after another.

And so it is. It is like a flashlight, or it is like a lighthouse out on the horizon, showing us where is that peaceful harbor that we would direct our path, we would direct our footsteps toward that final destination, to that peaceful harbor on the peaceful shores of the glory of heaven.

Walking in the footsteps of Christ Jesus, who has blazed the path before us.

It is so that when we walk, when we one day and moment reach that final destination, there it will be always day. There will be no longer the need for sun. There will no longer be the need for candles or any other means of giving us light, for Christ Jesus himself, our sun of victory, will be there with us.

It will be always day and we can be with him, see him as he is face to face, and be with those other saints who have gone before us. They are in our goal of faith.

So it pays to believe, brothers and sisters, that we will see him as he is face to face, feel how it may seem, feel how it may feel.

Let us cling to the grace promises of Christ Jesus. The power of the gospel will lift us. It will carry us, and it will bring us to the final destination one day.

So, even now, uplift your hearts to believe. Sins, cares, and faults forgiven. In Jesus' name and precious atonement blood. In Jesus' name, Amen.