Matthew 5:13-16

Chapter 16

The Character of the Disciples The Effect of Encouragement influence May Be Lost the Need of Caution

Prayer

Almighty God, thy way concerning us we do not understand: it is enough for us to know that it is thy way. Help us to walk in it step by step, with all patience and hopefulness, knowing that thou wilt bring us at last into a large and quiet place. Thou dost astonish the upright and turn the innocent pale by thy judgments and mysteries, so that we cannot tell what thou doest in the heavens or upon the earth, and when men question us about thee there is no reply upon our lips: we can but say, This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. He setteth the mighty upon their heads, and turneth their mansions upside down; yea, he changeth the channels of the sea and turneth the rivers into a wilderness; he taketh up the isles as a very little thing, and from his seat upon the circle of the earth the populations are as grasshoppers. This is the Lord's rule; yea, it is our Father's reign and sovereignty, and we rest in that, and find ourselves at peace.

We are of yesterday, and know nothing; we close our eyelids and behold we are blind in a moment, we cannot stretch beyond the length of our arms, we are barred and caged in like lives that are watched; tomorrow we die, and the third day are we forgotten as if we had never been. It well becometh us, therefore, to hold our peace, to look on in silence, and with religious wonder, and to wait hopefully for the grand last revelation. Make of us what thou wilt. We would be busier, but that comes from our impatience; we would be more famous and influential, but that is the mischief of our ambition; so we will withdraw wholly our own counsel and purpose, and we will wait as slaves wait upon their masters, asking thee to give us the liberty of thine own love, and to bind us fast with the loyalty of a love created in our hearts by thyself.

The days flee away ere we can count them one by one; they cease to be days, they are like flashes in the darkness and are gone instantly. O that we might number them as best we may, with some view of finding the way in wisdom, and making the reckoning as becometh men of understanding. Help us to know the measure of our life, how little it is, a child's tiny span, and our time is as a flying shuttle, as a post hastening on its way, as a shadow that continueth not. So teach us, therefore, in our joys to remember how speedily they fall. May the young be wise as the aged, and the aged be as those who have obtained the venerableness of great experience.

The Lord help us to do our work with both hands, and with our whole head and heart, as if everything depended upon us, and then to leave it as if we did nothing at all. Feed us with thy grace, enrich and nourish us with thy most gracious word; may thy doctrine distil as the dew, and thy gospel sing to us as an angel, and charm us out of ourselves into thy great service. May thy promises become exhortations, and in the midst of thine exhortations may we hear the voice of benediction.

Let the Lord's pity be poured out upon us as from the very fountain of his heart, and may we know that our life is the object of thy compassion, that thou dost not revile us in the heavens or laugh at us in the distant skies; but with all mercifulness and pitifulness of heart dost look upon us as those whose days are as a shadow fast fleeing away; yea, thou hast set up for us the cross the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, our one Priest, our only Saviour, our infinite, our atoning sacrifice; in him we. see how great we are in thy purpose. Help us to behold his priesthood and to avail ourselves of his loving ministry; in all our sin and sorrow, in all our daily vexation and passing trouble, may we enter into his heart as men enter into a sanctuary which cannot be violated.

The Lord hear the prayers we cannot speak, the uprisings and motionings of our dumb hearts; multiply our few words into a great intercession, and let all our utterances be repronounced by our Priest in heaven.

The Lord send messages from his great house to the dwelling-places of those who are ailing, sick, dying, wearying to die, waiting for the angel, longing for some sound of the coming chariot wheels. The Lord send messages to those who are sitting in the gloom of despair, who say they have tried every key upon their girdle and none will fit, who sit down beside barred gates and walls too high to be scaled. The Lord speak his own comforting word to hearts to whom the darkness is a burden, and to whom the night has no star. Preserver of the strangers, take away the loneliness of the stranger's heart, give him to feel in thine house that he is at his Father's table and under his Father's blessing. And grant unto the widow and the orphan, the poor, the lonely, the comfortless, and them that have no helper, some message and assurance that shall recover their heart's hope, and re-establish them in a wise confidence.

The Lord hold us all as if we belonged to him, and draw us nearer his heart the more the tempter assails. Amen.

Matthew 5:13-16 .

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 he world. A city that is set on a 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.

There are two ways of looking at this portion of the Lord's address He is speaking to the disciples that may be inferred from the first verse of the chapter, wherein it says, "When he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth and taught them." Are we to suppose that these disciples referred to were the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and a city set upon a high hill? Surely not in their merely personal capacity, and in their then condition. Let us take the first view, therefore; namely, that Jesus Christ is speaking of the Jews, and speaking of them he hesitates not to describe them as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city set upon a hill. And yet in a very gentle way, but so broad as to admit of no misapprehension, he intimates that the salt has lost its savour, the light has been put under a bushel, and the conspicuousness of the city has become but the greater shame. The effect of this teaching is to remind men of great calling and election, and of great and appalling declension, and to prepare the way for such remedial and reclaiming measures as were in the purpose and counsel of the Eternal. This was not dust that had become drier, it was not clay that had become harder, it was salt that had lost its savour, light that was in danger of being wholly extinguished. Jesus Christ, therefore, recognising the greatness and the grandeur of the call in which the Jews stood, proceeded in this most gracious and gentle manner to indicate the declension into which they had fallen. That is one view.

Take the other view. Jesus Christ sees in those disciples what his church is to be. Not addressing them in their then intellectual and spiritual condition, but looking forward as men look from the germ to the full fruition, he regarded them as the beginning of his own divine kingdom, and addressing them as such, he described them as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and a city set upon a hill. Both views are, in my opinion, correct. There is enough in each of them to awaken the most solemn reflection, to affect the soul with all the pain of the bitterest humiliation, and to inspire it with all that is most animating in the sacred word. I will take the second view and set it with some breadth before you.

Christ sees the greatest side of our nature, and he addresses that side, because we are more easily and effectually moved by encouragement than by any other influence. Tell a man he is a fool and you cast him into despair. Tell him that he has lost every chance, spoiled every opportunity, neglected all the counsel of heaven, and is no longer worthy of being counted a living creature in God's universe, and possibly you may burden him with all the distress of absolute despair. The effect will be according to the nature of the particular man who is addressed. Jesus Christ never gave us a discouraging view of ourselves whenever he saw us set in any relation to himself, of earnest listening or religious expectation or incipient desire to be wiser and better men. When we stood before him in the full erectness of our own purity, and came before him with a certificate of our own integrity, and requested to be heard upon the basis of our righteousness, he turned upon us the fury of the east wind, and banished us from his presence as men to whom he had nothing to say. Whenever we grouped ourselves around him and said we would listen with reverence and with religious expectation to what he had to say, then he opened the kingdom of heaven, and not until our capacity was surcharged did he withdraw his gracious and redeeming revelations of truth.

This is the great law of human teaching. If you want your boy to be a gentleman, do not begin by treating him as an invincible and incurable boor. I wait until that lesson gets right down into your apprehension. If you want to encourage your scholars in your Sunday-school or your scholastic establishment, begin by treating them as young philosophers. Give them credit for as much as you possibly can by so doing you will cast them upon themselves in serious reflection, and with some anxiety they will endeavour to respond to the breadth, the sympathy, and the nobleness of your estimation of their capacity and diligence. If you want any man to do his best, trust him with considerable responsibility. Who could do his best if he knew he was watched, suspected, distrusted, and that the object of the vigilant criticism was to entrap him, to find out his defects, and to convince him by multitudinous arguments that he was wholly unfit for his position? Many of us could not work at all under such circumstances; we should simply succumb under their distressing weight if we did not resent them as intolerable humiliations.

Jesus Christ comes to us and says, "Ye are the salt of the earth" says to a man who thought himself useless in the world, "Thou art as pungent salt in the midst of a putrid age," or, "Thou art as salt cast upon that which is already good, to preserve it from decay." Jesus Christ adds, "Ye are the light of the world" tells a man who never suspected himself of having any light at all, that it is in him to throw a circle of radiance around his family, his neighbourhood, or it may be his country. Let us learn to follow this example in some degree. We get from men in many cases just what we tell them we expect from them; there is something in. human nature that likes to be trusted with responsibility, something in us that responds to great occasions. Jesus Christ always supplied a grand occasion to his hearers, and he opened the broad and sunny road of hope. He did not point to the low and dank caverns of despair.

Jesus Christ recognises the true influence of good men. He called them salt which is pungent, light which is lustrous, a city set on a hill which is conspicuous, and may be seen afar by travellers and by those who long for home. Some influences are active salt and light; some influences passive a city set on a hill. We must not judge one another's influence by our own, and condemn any man's influence in the church because it does not take its tone and range from our own method of doing things. Some clocks do not strike. They have to be looked at if from them we would know the time of day. Some clocks do strike, and they strike in the darkness as well as in the light, and it is pleasant to the weary, sleepless one now and again to catch the tone which tells him that the darkness is going and the light is coming. Do not undervalue me because I am a man of but passive influence. Do not charge me with ambition and madness because I am a man of energetic influence. Let each be what the great, loving, wise Father meant him to be. There is room in his heart for all. The brain makes no noise; the tongue no man can tame is the tongue, therefore, not a divine creation? Yea, verily, God taught it its trick of speech and its wizardry of music. Is the brain not of divine formation because it makes no noise? Yea, verily, it is as the inmost church of the Lord wherein God shows the fullest of his heavenly and immortal splendour.

George Gilfillan, in his most energetic and inspiriting book called "Bards of the Bible," has some observations upon this matter of silence as contrasted with noise. As a boy I used to be very fond of that rhetorical writer, and as a man I do not renounce him. I have not seen the sentence for twenty years, but I think I can quote it even now in substance. He says, "The greatest objects in nature are the stillest: the ocean has a voice, the sun is dumb in his courts of praise. The forests murmur, the constellations speak not. Aaron spoke; Moses' face but shone. Sweetly might the High Priest discourse, but the Urim and the Thummim, the blazing stones upon his breast, flash forth a meaning deeper and diviner far." Young men, store your memory with such words as these, and you will never want to run away from your own society. The chairs may be vacant, but the air will be full of angels.

Yet whatever our influence may be, we may lose it. The salt may lose its savour, the light may be put under a bushel, and a city set upon a hill may turn its lights out, or build its walls against the sun and turn its windows otherwhere. The foolish discussion has been sometimes raised as to whether salt could lose its pungency raised by people who wanted to catch the Saviour tripping in his speech. But in proportion to the difficulty is the solemnity. He who made the salt knows more about it than we do, and whatever may become of the salt, taking the mere letter as the limit of our criticism, we all know as the saddest and most tragical fact in life that some of the grandest intellects have lost their glory, and some right hands always lifted in defence of the right have lost their cunning. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. What I say unto one I say unto all watch.

Every man sheds a light peculiar to himself. No man has all the light; no one star holds in its little cup all the glory of the universe. One star differeth from another star in glory. Suppose one of the least of the stars should say, "I am going to withdraw from the firmament because I see a great flame, compared with whose splendour I am but as a glowworm in the presence of the sun." Better for that little foolish star to say, "The God that made yonder great flame trims my lamp, gives me my little sparkle of light."

There is a right way of using influence. Observe how Jesus Christ puts the matter when he says, "Let your light SO shine before men"; the word so should be emphasized as indicating the manner of the shining. Light may be so held in the hand as to dazzle the observer; light may be brought too near the eyes, light may be set at a wrong angle, light may be wasted, its beams be displayed so as to be of no use to the man who would read or work. Hence it is not enough to be luminous, but so to use our luminousness as to be of use to other people. There are men who, from my point of view, are luminous enough to light a whole country who do not light their own little house. There are men who need to be focalised, all but immeasurable men, with a kind of infinite capacity for anything, and who yet, for want of right setting and bringing together and focalising, live as splendid nothings and die as bubbles die upon the troubled wave. It is not enough, therefore, for us to have light and to be luminous; we must study the great economic laws by which even a little light may sometimes go a long way, and a great light may throw its timely splendour upon the road of him who is in perplexity and doubt.

Our Saviour further teaches us that our light is so to shine that our good works may be seen. He does not say that the worker may be made visible, but that the works may be observed, admired, imitated, may induce men to give glory to the Father which is in heaven. It is thus that his own sun works daily in the heavens: who dares look at the sun when he so shines as to fill the earth with all the beauty of summer? We turn our eyes up to him and he rebukes us with darts of fire; he says, "Look down, not up; look at the works, not the worker." So we may feast our eyes upon a paradise of flowers, and get much of heaven out of it, but the moment we venture to say, "Who did this where is he?" "Show me the worker," the sun answers us with a rebuke of intolerable light. So no man hath seen God at any time, but we see his son Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time, yet we count his stars when the great daylight is away; we wonder how they were hung upon nothing, and how they shine without wasting, and what they are porch lamps of a King's palace, street lamps on a heavenly way who can tell? None, yet the bare question-asking stirs the mind and the heart with a noble wonder that is almost religious. What wonder, then, if you cannot look at the sun, that you cannot look at the God that made the sun? If he is invisible in himself, he is not invisible in his ministry. We also are his offspring. In every little child I see his work, in the meanest human life I see the infinitude of his wisdom and the beneficence of his purpose. In myself I see the divinity of God.

Thus our lesson stands in the meantime. A kind word of encouragement has been spoken to us: we are hot regarded as little, insignificant, contemptible, not worth gathering up: we are spoken of as salt, light, and a city set on a hill. Let us answer the grandeur of the challenge. We have been told that the best influence may decline and die: salt may lose its savour, the light may be extinguished. Let us hear the solemn exhortation, and exercise a spirit of vigilant caution. We have been called to a certain manner of life; let us take heed unto the call, lest having magnificent powers we waste them as rain would be wasted upon the unanswering and barren sand.