Telling the Truth

Guest (Female): Welcome to Telling the Truth, the ministry of Stuart and Jill Briscoe. Today, guest speaker Charles Price wraps up a teaching on how you as a Christian are to be salt and light in our world in his message "Christians and Society." He'll get started in just a moment.

But before he does, we want to help you grow strong in your faith as you conquer temptation by sending you *Triumph Over Temptation*, a powerful four-message series by Stuart and Jill Briscoe. We'll send you a copy of *Triumph Over Temptation* as thanks for your gift today to help continue Stuart and Jill's legacy of helping others experience life in Christ. So call today to request your copy of *Triumph Over Temptation* at 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Here's Charles Price with the teaching for today.

Charles Price: I remember two or three Christmases ago now, I was at a mall and there was a display concerning the impact of HIV/AIDS. I gave one of these young men some money and I took his literature and I began to talk to him. I said, "I, too, am very concerned about the huge impact of HIV/AIDS. In fact, I'm involved in helping send people to places, particularly in Africa, where this has had such a huge impact and in raising money." This young man was very warm and very pleased.

He said to me, "What do you do?" I said, "I'm a pastor." Suddenly his face changed. He physically turned his body away from me, began to walk away with his back to me, and when I spoke to him, he gestured. The moment I told him I was a pastor, the moment he understood I was a Christian—he was probably a gay young man—his idea is: "All I know of Christians is rejection and condemnation."

You see, Jesus had a reputation. It was this: He was a friend of sinners. His reputation was not that he was an exposer of sin. It is true Jesus exposed the religious hypocrisy of those who should have known better, and he talked a lot about spiritual superficiality, external preoccupation rather than internal godliness. That's where he brought his exposure of sin.

But he didn't rant and rave against the evils of society, and he tells us why in John 12:47. In case we don't know why he didn't do this, this is why he didn't do it. John 12:47: "As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him." As for the person who turns their back on me and does not do the words that they hear from me, I don't judge him. Then he tells us why: "For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it."

By implication, judging it may not be conducive to saving it because your judging of it can build such barriers in advance that we don't get through. I don't think the church of Jesus Christ has the reputation of Jesus Christ. I don't think the church of Jesus Christ has the reputation: "Wow, these are the friends of sinners."

Being salt is being willing to swallow the fact that the couple who live next door to you may not be married, and you think that's not right. Or they may be gay—that's not right. Or somebody in the workplace is living in a way that is wrong because your purpose is to love them and win them as Jesus did. Of course, there are things that are right and things that are wrong. Of course, God is going to judge the world.

As Romans 2:16 says, there will come a day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ. As always, of course, God goes beyond the externals. We can judge what we see on the external, but he's going to go right beyond that to the secrets as well. There's going to come a judgment day. Yes, there is. Sin is going to be reckoned with.

But as I understand Scripture, being salt is not having campaigns against people who do not obey the words of Jesus because Jesus himself said, "I don't judge people like that because that isn't why I came. I came to save them." So there's that corporate sense. I don't think that's what Jesus means here.

Rather, he's saying individually, "You are the salt of the earth." You, Peter. You, Mary. You, James. You, Martha. You, George. You, Sally. Forget about everybody else. Forget whether you're part of some mass movement. You are the salt of the earth. That actually is the context of Matthew 5.

When Jesus talks about instead of murder, it's anger—that's not a corporate thing. You can say as a society, "Murder is wrong and we will punish murder." You can do that as a society, but you cannot do that about anger. This is all internal. This is an individual thing. This is something you have to deal with in your heart.

Adultery, you can make laws about. It's a ground for divorce. You cannot legislate about lust. That is something that goes on in the heart of an individual, and it's in the heart alone that you can deal with it. I can't help you with your lust problem; only you alone before God. You see, the whole context of Matthew 5, although we are together as a church—that's a different message, a different truth, an important truth—but this here is talking about you individually.

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. It is about the kind of husband you are or I am. I hesitate saying this; my wife's on the front row. I'm more like pepper than salt sometimes, I'm afraid. Stings a bit. The kind of parent you are. The kind of person you are at work. You are the salt, says Jesus. You're the salt.

I have no other strategy in your workplace except putting you there. You are the light. It may be dark; just shine. That's what you've got to do. You're salt; just be there. Just be there. Salt doesn't land on the meat and say, "What do I do now?" Just be there and the salt has its effect. Like grains of salt in a putrid environment, we have our influence and we do have influence.

Historians tell us 18th-century Britain was saved from the equivalent of the French Revolution by the fact that thousands upon thousands had been converted to Jesus Christ through what is called the Great Evangelical Awakening through the preaching of men like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and others in the 18th century.

It wasn't that they organized any kind of political movement. They didn't. It wasn't that they tried to impact legislation. They simply saw men and women, boys and girls, changed. And the impact on the society was marked. After the Welsh Revival of 1904—which sadly did not have a long-term impact on that nation, but had an immediate impact that was significant in all kinds of ways—crime decreased significantly.

They say that the pit ponies in the mines didn't understand the instructions given them by their masters because they used to curse and swear, and when they spoke politely, the pit ponies didn't know what they were talking about. They didn't know how to respond. In fact, every great spiritual revival, real spiritual revival, has always had its social impact—not because it was organized, that was an agenda, it was simply because people were changed.

I could tell you about two elderly ladies in their mid-80s who used to go down to the center of their town on a Friday night because young people would pour out of the clubs and the pubs, and these two ladies had a burden for those young people in their 80s. They would go down there and they'd spend Friday night after Friday night, week after week, month after month.

Some of those kids were on drugs. Some of those kids were drunk. Some of those kids were abusive. But they would talk to them. They would write down their names so they could pray for them. One of them was an aunt of mine. She'd been a missionary for 50 years in Africa. And when she died and I conducted her funeral, her friend who was there gave me a letter in which she had told me about what my aunt used to do with her. People didn't know they were doing this.

And she told how that after weeks and weeks, some of these young people began to soften and some began to seek them out. One young person—I quote from her letter which I just read a few days ago, found it a few days ago—she said, "You wouldn't be here unless this was important."

The only link possibly between Jesus and those young people were these two women in their mid-80s who weren't doing an outreach on a Friday night; they were just being salt, just being Christians in a putrid, decaying, perishing environment that they recognized. Let's go down and be salt, serve the Lord Jesus.

Guest (Female): That's Charles Price with his message "Christians and Society" here on Telling the Truth. He'll be right back. Temptation is nothing new. It's been around since the dawn of mankind and it's not going anywhere as long as we're on this earth. You'll face temptation every day, but sometimes moment by moment.

So we want to send you a special resource to help you stand strong in God's word when temptation does come along. It's a four-message series from Stuart and Jill Briscoe called *Triumph Over Temptation*, and they created it to help you not only conquer temptation but to grow stronger in your faith as you do. This series will give you powerful biblical tools to defeat sinful desires and encourage you with the truth that every temptation to do wrong is also an opportunity to do right.

We'll send you *Triumph Over Temptation* as our thanks for your gift today to help continue Stuart and Jill's legacy of helping others experience life in Christ and find strength to carry on with courage. So if you haven't given before, consider a gift today to help keep God's word going out around the world to you and many others. And remember to request your copy of *Triumph Over Temptation* when you call and give. Just call 1-800-889-5388. 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Let's return now to Charles Price.

Charles Price: I heard about another mother who took her little boy to the supermarket and they spent an hour or so picking up stuff. As they were leaving, the lady at the checkout gave the little boy a lollipop. And his mother said, "What do you say?" Little boy said, "Put it on my credit card." His mother had influence, you see. That's all he'd heard; that's what you say when you take something.

Sorry for that lighthearted moment, but this is serious business. You see, here's the problem in verse 13. Although this is a promise—"you are the salt of the earth"—but... I have a mark in this in my Bible. I have one color for the little word "but" and link words and words that change everything. "But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men," he says there in verse 13.

Now, technically, salt cannot lose its saltiness because sodium chloride is a stable compound. But the salt where Jesus lived was normally collected from around the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, where all kinds of crystals and minerals get swept down there, including salt. And the real salt was often mixed and contaminated by these other minerals and crystals.

And the rain, because salt is soluble, the rain might wash it away until what is left is only the impurities. And so then what they considered salt has lost its saltiness. It was good for nothing, except, said Jesus, to be thrown out and trampled by men. And there's probably little that this world despises more than people who claim quality of life but do not live it.

Mahatma Gandhi, the father of modern India, was asked by some missionaries, "What is the greatest hindrance to Christianity in India?" Mahatma Gandhi said, "Christians." I'm delighted to say that 60 years later, I think the reverse is true now. What's the greatest asset to the Christian church in India? It's actually Christians who are shining as lights.

Phillip Keller, a writer some of you are familiar with, wrote an article called "Salt for Society." I quote part of it. He says, "Either our lives are counting for good and for God, or they are making an impact for evil and the enemy. The way we live, the things we say, the attitudes we entertain, the lifestyle we adopt are continuously producing either positive or negative results in society."

Our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, either count for God or against God. There simply is no middle ground, says Phillip Keller. Are you functioning? Or are you fooling around? Is your environment different because you're there? Or are you simply fooling around? That's the challenge that Jesus gives here. You are the salt. But if you lose the savor, you're good for nothing. You're fooling around.

And very quickly and very briefly, only for a minute or so, "Then you are the light of the world." I find this intriguing because twice elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus said, "I am the light of the world." But he qualified it in John 8. He said, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

But now he says to these disciples, "You are the light of the world." That what I am in the world while I am in the world, you are to be in the world when I'm no longer in the world. Well, if Jesus was the light of the world, what was the light? John 1:4 tells us. John 1:4 says of Jesus: "In him was life—that is, spiritual life, the life of God—in him was life, and the life was the light of men."

What was the light of the world in Jesus? It was the life of his father within him. What is the light of the world in us? It is the life of God within us that shines through us. You see, we are no more light in ourselves than a light bulb is light in itself. I could hold up a light bulb here that is perfectly made; nothing wrong with it, but it'll never produce light in itself.

It won't produce light any more than a boiled egg would produce light. It will only produce light as it is connected to the electricity supply. Then it will produce light. You and I in ourselves are not intrinsically the light, any more than Jesus was. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. It's the life of God operating in us.

That's why, as I pointed out before, there are two alternatives: there's the position of perishing, or the position of living eternal life. The eternal life is divine life. It's God indwelling us. That's why in verse 16, Jesus said, "In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

Well, if they see your good deeds, why not praise you? Because you see, if you're the light of the world and you let your light shine before men, they will see your good deeds, but they recognize this is not the light bulb doing its trick, doing its thing. This is the light bulb connected to an electrical source. This is God at work in you. They'll praise your Father who is in heaven.

And that's why the true evidence of spiritual life is not that people get excited about you. They actually forget about you because what is grabbing their attention is God himself at work in and through you.

Guest (Female): Charles Price will be back in a moment to offer some concluding thoughts for today's message "Christians and Society." Stay with us. We all struggle at times with sinful desires and selfish motives. And when you do, you must remember that every temptation to do wrong is also an opportunity to do right.

That's the empowering truth Stuart and Jill Briscoe wanted to help you grasp when they created their four-message series *Triumph Over Temptation*. This series will equip you with powerful biblical truth to help you triumph over temptation and grow your faith in the process. *Triumph Over Temptation* is our thanks for your gift today to help continue Stuart and Jill's legacy of helping others experience life in Christ and find strength to carry on with courage.

So if you haven't given before, consider a gift today to help keep God's word going out around the world to you and many others. And remember to request your copy of *Triumph Over Temptation* when you call and give. Just call 1-800-889-5388. 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Here's Charles Price now to wrap up his message.

Charles Price: And so said the Lord Jesus to these people he described in the Beatitudes in the first part of Matthew 5. And then he describes in the second part who have a righteousness that is internalized, one where Christ within us fulfills the law and deals with the anger and the lust and the lack of truthfulness and integrity and the failure to love our enemies, etc., all those things that he talks about here.

He says of these people, "I want you to know, you disciples, you are the salt of the earth." And yes, it's a perishing world. And yes, it is rotting and it can be a putrid place. We don't like to be amongst the maggots. But you know, that's where salt needs to be. You're the salt. Be the antiseptic that you are. Have the influence that you will have.

And you are the light in an environment of darkness. There are people who will just see you at work, who will just see you maybe on your street, and they're lost and they're confused, but they see in you that you somehow seem to know the way home. And by the light that shines in you, you'll have the privilege of leading them home as you let your light shine before men.

Don't look over your shoulder and try to measure it. Don't keep a record of how brightly you're shining or how salty you're being. Just be a Christian. That's what this is. This is just being a Christian that is stripped of all that superficiality, all that external stuff. He talks more in Matthew 6 about doing things before men to be seen by men. None of that.

But alone in secret before God, what you are before God is what you'll be in the world. What you really are is what you really are alone before God. Are you fooling around? Or is actually your world and your environment better because you're there? If you're in a tough situation at work, don't leave it because it's tough. That may be the very place you're supposed to be.

If your home is tough, don't walk out. That's the very place the antiseptic needs to function. If your marriage is difficult, be the antiseptic it needs. Say, "Lord Jesus, as you live in me and work in me and work through me, help me to be salt that does not lose its saltiness, that actually makes a difference." That's the joy of the Christian life. Let's pray and ask God to make this real in our own lives and experience.

Father, we thank you that you have incredibly privileged us by investing in us your only means of reaching our world. You have chosen to work by the Holy Spirit through your people, that we in a dark world may be lights. In a decaying, putrid, perishing environment, we might be the antiseptic, the preservative.

And I pray, Lord Jesus, that as each of us lives this week at home, at work, maybe on vacation, in our streets, help us we pray to be what you redeemed us to become: salt and a light that makes other people better because of us. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for that encouragement today, Charles. Before we go, we want to remind you, when you give to continue Stuart and Jill's legacy of sharing God's word through Telling the Truth broadcasts like this one, we'll say thanks with the Briscoes' four-message series *Triumph Over Temptation*. These encouraging messages will help you defeat temptation and grow in your faith as you do.

So please request your copy when you call 1-800-889-5388. 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for being with us today. Tomorrow on Telling the Truth, we'll begin a message from Jill Briscoe about temptation that you won't want to miss. See you then.