Sermon On The Mount

Salt, Light, and Law

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 06- 25

Genre:

Track: 06

Dictation Name: Sermon on the Mount - 06

Location/Venue:

Year: 1980

Almighty God our Heavenly Father as we face a world of evil and of turmoil we rejoice that the government is upon Thy shoulders and that it is Thy judgment and not the judgment of evil judges and bureaucrats which shall prevail. Give us grace to walk in this faith and with a holy boldness knowing that greater is he that is with us and in us then he that is in the world. Strengthen us now by Thy word and by Thy spirit and make us zealous in Thy service. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This morning we shall continue with our study of the Sermon on the Mount and we’ll read through what we studied the last time, Matthew 5:1-20. Matthew 5:1-20.

“And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

15 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.

16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Our Lord is talking about the kingdom of God. What is the kingdom? What does membership in it mean? Now the term that is used here is the kingdom of heaven, there is a reason why it is so given, this reflects the Hebraic or Aramaic usage. The Hebrews had a very strong feeling about taking the name of the Lord in vain. Now of course the commandment when it says thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain means that we are not to use the name of God profanely and needlessly. Well, very quickly among the Hebrews the feeling developed it was better not to use the name of the Lord at all, so instead of saying Jehovah or Yahweh they said instead the Lord. They used a circumculation or they would say heaven declares thus and so. As a result instead of saying the kingdom of Jehovah or of Yahweh they would say the kingdom of heaven. Matthew writing out of a strongly Hebrew background and writing especially with a Hebrew or Jewish audience does not use the word God. Now elsewhere in the New Testament where what is written is aimed more at Gentiles or Jews and Gentiles alike we read kingdom of God but here for this particular reason Matthew says the kingdom of heaven. He’s not talking about what is in the other world but about what is God’s realm here or anywhere. Now, we saw last time that our Lord began by saying blessed are the poor in spirit, or in modern terminology, the idiom means blessed are they that feel their spiritual need for theirs is the kingdom of God.

When you feel your spiritual need then you’ve taken the first step and you are the Lords, and He will lead you into the faith, He will lead you into citizenship in Him. Then we are indeed the blessed meek and you remember, I pointed out that meek in its original, the Greek word that is used here, means in its origin broken to harness, it doesn’t mean mousy, it means strong but broken to harness, useful and that’s the difference that Christ makes. We are no less strong the day after our conversion but now we are the meek, we are the broken to harness. So that our strength now is better, it has a focus, a function, and we can accomplish that which the Lord ordains. Now having in the beatitudes laid down the condition of blessing or happiness or prosperity our Lord goes on to say ye are the salt of the earth. Now salt is a very important thing in any culture but never more important than it was a century or so ago. Salt was used to preserve foods. Now I lived in California on a farm before electricity. I was living thus in the same kind of world that our Lord was talking about and talking in. Now in the summer and those were horse and buggy days, cars were new and farmers very few had them, it was a big event when a neighboring farmer had a car. Farmers hitched up their horse and buggy and came from miles around to see that big blue Studebaker. Well what did you do in those days, did you hitch up every day to go and buy fresh meat, no you went to the store in town once a week, how then did you get along, how did you have meat? If you had chickens, you killed them, but apart from that how did you have meat, well you depended on salt. Salted meat in a barrel or you bought salted herrings which in those days were very cheap food. You had a barrel of it in the cellar and you took it out and you soaked it in fresh water overnight and then most of the salt would be gone and you could use it.

So salt was comparable in its utility to refrigeration today. Now that’s the meaning of salt that our lord has reference to, you are the salt of the earth. Without salt the meat that people had to eat in the Mediterranean world, a hot area, would corrupt, it would become unfit to use. Salt thus is in its historic function a preservative and the Lord is saying alright, you my people, you are the blessed meek, the tamed of God, you are the salt of the earth and you are what keeps the world from becoming corrupt. If you become corrupt the whole world becomes corrupt and the world will decay, it will take its logical course. I have often used as an illustration because I think it is so apt, the submersion in this country during Washington’s and Adams administration. Our army then was very small and the entire federal government apart from Congress which was just a handful at that time would have fitted into two rooms with space left over. The army was next to nothing, I know that at one time the U.S. army was actually down to five hundred men. The number of subversives in this country sent over by the French revolution was enormous. The amount of money they had was probably equal or greater than the federal budget. If ever a country should have been subverted and overthrown, it should have been then, this country. But it wasn’t. Why? It wasn’t the number of subversives that made the difference or the amount of funds they had, the fact was that most people then in this country were God-fearing men and all those subversives couldn’t do a thing. It was useless. Today supposedly fifty five or sixty million people are born again Christians, fifty five to sixty million, eighteen years old and older and yet we see the situation in our country today, what’s the difference?

Our Lord tells us: ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt has lost its savor, where which shall it be salted? How can you salt salt? That is make salt become salty again? Now what our Lord is speaking about here is corruption, the salt is to prevent corruption but the salt has become corrupted by pollution. Salt by the way is like gold, gold doesn’t rust or decay, there is one acid in all the world that can eat gold: salt can become polluted and corrupted but it is always salt. But what happens when it’s polluted and you can no longer use it? Well, when I was on the Indian reservation we would salt our meat down and what happened when after a while there were all kinds of things from the fish we salted and what not so the brine was no longer useful? It would affect with a different flavor anything else you put in it, you took it out and you put it on the pathway. The salt brine, too heavy a concentration, would kill the gardens so you put it on a path. It was thenceforth good for nothing, to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men. At the temple what they would do was to put the old salt, the useless salt, the polluted salt or brine on the pathway up to the temple because the temple was on a hill. And it was both to prevent icing there and also to get rid of it where it would do the least amount of harm.

So what is our Lord saying? He is saying Christians have a function, their function is to prevent this world from taking the natural course of sin, to go downhill into total corruption. But if they fail to do that than what I as the Lord will do is to cast them out, to be trodden under foot of men. And our Lord subsequently predicted that Jerusalem would be trodden underfoot by the Gentiles because they had lost their savor.

So our Lord first compares the church and Christians to salt, to be the preserving agency. Then next:

“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

15 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.”

Thus the next comparison our Lord makes is that Christians have a purpose: to give light, to banish darkness, not to be darkness. They are to be seen and what light does is to penetrate into the dark corners, you use light where there is darkness, you carry a light with you when you go out into the dark so that you might see. And what light brings is sight; where there is no light you cannot see. And so we are to bring sight to men in this world so that they might see and know God, might know their sin, might know their duty to God and to their fellow men. And when men light a light, our Lord said, they don’t put it under a bushel but on a candlestick to lighten the house. And so Christians are not saved to go into a closet or saved for their own purposes, you see. A lot of people think well this is it, I’ve got life insurance and fire insurance now that I’ve accepted Jesus, so what have I got to do but to wait for the rapture. What our Lord says is light must give light and so our purpose is not to be saved for our sakes but for the kingdom of God, to serve the functions of that kingdom. It is very interesting that our Lord uses two images, salt and light, but in the modern world we have since the days of Matthew Arnold and about a hundred and so years ago another expression that was very popular until recent years as an expression of what people are to be like: sweetness and light.

In other words, a very different concept, a sugar coated idea. As someone once told me a Christian is someone who never hurts anybody’s feelings which was a way of telling me I was not a Christian, that was the whole point of a remark. That person by the way was not a Christian, they wanted Christians to sit still while they went ahead with all their depravities. Now, we’re not called to sweetness and light, we’re called to be salt and light, salt and light; a very different concept. By the grace of God we’re beginning to see Christians as salt and light, the Christian school movement that is shaking the world, this country at least. Later this year or perhaps the first week of next year I will be speaking at one state to a large number of the ministers of that state as to how the church can be again the light of the world and the salt of the earth and I’m going to go into many, many things such as the Christian schools. Another thing I’m going to suggest and I hope by the grace of God when we have a church here we can start such a thing, one of the things the bible speaks about is that we are to make loans to fellow believers who are in need and without interest. Well, we should have a deacon’s fund, to set up a loan fund that members of Christ’s body can draw on in times of need and repay without interest. One church, the Chalcedon Presbyterian Church of Atlanta where I may be speaking in two, three weeks again has already set up such a fund, and it has functioned beautifully and more than one young couple in the congregation has made use of it and more than one older couple and they’ve never had anyone fail to repay it in time, it’s been a real blessing. And people have donated as they’re able to that fund and it’s becoming slowly but steadily a growing fund and a growing help to the members of that church.

Now that’s what it means to be the salt of the earth and to be a light. There is much more, care for the young and care for the old who are members of the group, mutual forbearance and patience, a hundred and one ways whereby these things can be accomplished. We don’t have time to go into it today but I’ve mentioned gives you an idea of what the Lord requires of us and Christians have forgotten about. That is in the Old Testament we don’t have to pay attention to that, this matter of the loans and helping one another, but that is nonsense. God is the same, yesterday, today and forever and our Lord speaks to that. Think not that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets, I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. I have not come to wipe out the laws that I gave through Moses or what I said through the prophets, I have come not to destroy but to fulfill. Now our English word fulfill sometimes tend to mean to put an end to, but in its original meaning it didn’t have quite that connotation and the Greek word that is translated as fulfill means to enforce, I did not come to destroy but to enforce the law. Whosever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so ye shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. Now, interesting here because when our Lord speaks there is a progression of intensity throughout all His statements. So He says breaking one of the commandments of the Bible is not as serious as teaching men that they don’t have to obey them. So He places a burden on all who teach, all who preach. But if they teach men its worse than breaking the law, if they teach men that they don’t have to pay attention to that. The law of loans by Christians one to another without interest to help them in their time of need, these are loans that are not business loans, they are loans to help someone who has a problem. You teach men that it’s just a part of the old Hebrew commonwealth and not applicable today, well you’ve not only broken the law, you’ve taught men to break God’s law.

That’s a fearful sin.

“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

Put into force!

“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Now one of the most important words in the Bible is righteousness. What does righteousness mean? Well the word righteousness can be translated, the Greek word and the Hebrew word, both words can be translated either as righteousness, being right, or justice. They are the same word! So our Lord says here is justice, my word from beginning to end, this is righteousness, this is justice. Do you want to be just, do you want to be righteous, all right. Fulfill what I say, put it into force in your life and around you. It’s that simple. In our time we’ve seen a lot of nonsense which in a sense goes back to some of the unhappy aspects of the Middle Ages, of false spirituality. I mentioned on other occasions a prominent doctor in Los Angeles who was supposed to be one of the fine Christians down there. I think he is a perfectly useless one, if he is one. He is certainly least in the kingdom, and what is his idea of being a Christian and being righteous? It is starting at, he gets up at 5 a.m. and gets ready for the office and has his breakfast and he is there at the office or some nearby place with a group of others at 6 a.m. and from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. he and they kneel in prayer, steadily, each of them praying silently usually for two hours.

Now he has admitted that sometimes he runs out of things to think of but he somehow seems to feel when our Lord said of the Pharisees they think they shall be heard for their much praying and yet he feels that this is righteousness. But I know of one church where he was an officer before he moved to the particular place where he know is and there was no end of unrighteousness going on in that church and in the pulpit and all he ever said when anyone said let’s do something about it was well, let’s pray about it. No, if we want righteousness, if we are the blessed meek, those who are harnessed by God, than we obey His word. God’s commandments are the guidelines for our life. We had someone here recently, a very dear friend, they came in part to celebrate with their children and went out to dinner, I had presided at their marriage service and baptized all three of their children so he went to Columbia to the city hotel and celebrated. And he was telling us of the church where he is a member, a very large church, with a whole staff of pastors, and he said the sad fact is is that the main assistant pastor, when he gets up, will speak very bluntly about what God requires and he will speak about sins specifically in terms of scripture and he said if the people know he’s going to preach at least a fourth of them will not be present. The attendance will drop dramatically. Why? Because all they want to hear is about being raptured and about a vague spirituality without any foundation in the righteousness, in the justice of God. He illustrated that by citing the fact that one prominent member went into a business deal with four other members and when it was finished the four other members were out of twenty thousand dollars each which the fifth man had pocketed. And the only thing they could do was to take it, because if they went to court it would be two years before the case would be heard and the property would be lost in the meantime.

That is not righteousness. He might be good at a prayer meeting, that man, but he is not righteous. I say unto you, but accept your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven, into the kingdom of God. Our Lord is not creating here in the Sermon on the Mount another way of life from what the bible taught from the beginning, He is not giving, as some have tried to say and I’ve heard them say it, a pacifist manifesto. We’ll come to that at another meeting. Rather He is saying the justice that God required from the very beginning is the same justice or righteousness that I have come to declare. And those who I save are those who fulfill these things, who put them into force, for the blessed meek, those who are broken to harness are those now who move naturally in terms of my word. Even as once sin governed them and they were harnessed to sin it directed them. Now it is my word and my spirit which are within them and guide them in the way that they should go. These are the blessed meek. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we thank Thee that Thou hast broken us, made us a new creation in Jesus Christ and given us in Thy word the way to walk and commanded us to walk therein. We thank Thee that by Thy grace we can be salt and light. Make of us oh Lord a beacon light of grace unto all the world and all those around us and to our loved ones and make us a means of preserving this world from the evil and the reprobation for which it is destined, unless it repent. Make us strong, oh Lord, by Thy word and by Thy spirit, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] The question is, with regard to our discussion before the meeting, about the bureaucratic dictatorship that we are moving into and the question was ‘are there any congressman that are ready to stand up to this’. Yes there are some and a growing number in both parties. I would say if we get the same men back into office and about thirty five more good men into the house we can control the House of Representatives. We are seeing some of these congressmen really take a stand and it is encouraging and I’m heartened by the position of some of them.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] The question ‘what can specifically done with this godless bureaucracy’ and it is godless to the core. The thing that can be done most effectively is to cut off the appropriations of not one, but every group. Because when you cut off appropriations or limit them in one area others bail them out. Some of us know Dick Deemer who was with our group in Westwood for a few years and his work was with the needy in the Pentagon. At the time Dick was at Fort [unknown], the naval base, and it was closed down by cutbacks and economy moves but it continued to function. Why? Because it was merely quietly transferred to another division and operated there, this is the way the bureaucracy works. They may be competing with each other when they have the funds but if there is a threat from Congress they work out all kinds of legal dodges technically closing down one thing so the economy move is supposedly ineffective, but another agency who has the funds or reserved funds will take it over.

So it’s going to take a very thorough root and branch operation to do it, it isn’t going to be done quickly. It’s going to take a lot of work but it will take men who believe that salvation is not by the state but by the Lord. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Californians for Biblical Morality is progressing very well and the amount of letters they have been able to engender on, for example, these two measures has been excellent. They haven’t had a recent report out so they haven’t been able to get mailing to the governor but they are growing and their influence will become stronger with each passing year. Any other questions or comments? Well if not we will meet again and continue our studies at our next meeting.