There is a verse of scripture which says,
be sure your sins will find you out,
and mine have found me out.
In attempting to expound the Sermon on the
Mount, or the early part of it, we
have been going through different passages, and unwittingly,
I believe, I omitted something which has been
of concern to two or three people in
the congregation, and I have been called to
books, and have been asked why I missed
a certain part, a certain section of a
passage, and I have been requested to address
myself to a very challenging text.
Now, I ought to say that I did
not omit this purposely, but it must have
been one of those mornings when the clock
went faster than it should, and the earth
did not stand still.
So, I covet your prayerful help tonight as
we turn to a passage of scripture which,
indeed, is very challenging.
You find it in Matthew chapter 5, and
it's verse 13, part of which we have
considered, but the problem, the heart of it,
we must have omitted.
You are the salt of the earth, 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.
Now, we have certainly considered that major statement
with which the verse begins, indicating that members
of the kingdom, citizens of the kingdom of
our Lord, are salt, and, as the following
verse says, are light as well.
But it's this question of the salt losing
its savour and the question of our Lord,
which he does not answer.
If the salt loses its saltiness or its
savour, is there any means whereby that salt
can retrieve its character?
Or is it true to say here, and
is this the final word, when our Lord
says, according to one of the translations, that
it is good for nothing anymore.
Now, let's look at this straight in the
eye tonight.
Let's come to it by way of reason
and a little bit of wisdom, I trust.
First of all, we look at the possible
deterioration that is here envisaged.
If the salt loses its saltiness, how can
it be made salty again?
Or loses its savour, as the King James
Version puts it.
Now, the implication of these words are fairly
obvious.
Though all Christians are, by their very nature
and constitution, capable of acting as salt in
the society, it is possible for any and
for every believer, temporarily at least, to lose
something of that saline characteristic.
I suppose you would say that this is
what is implied by the word backsliding, which
is used, of course, in the Old Testament.
It is possible for us to lose this
quality of salt or this quality of holiness
or of sanctity.
People who have served their God as moral
antiseptic barriers, standing against the encroachments of evil
and of sin, at one stage in their
lives, have been known, either for a period
or for the rest of their lives here
upon earth, to have succumbed, to have given
way to the kind of evil they once
stood against.
And not only that, they have, in the
process, become, as far as human eyes could
see, utterly useless as witness to the saving
grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, that is the problem.
That is the implication of these words.
That is the kind of deterioration that is
here envisaged.
And so you find, everywhere in the New
Testament, really, you will find the clarion call
for the people of God in every age
and in every circumstance and situation to give
due consideration to the building up of their
Christian life.
To that which is spoken of as holiness
or sanctity or sanctification.
And you find the Apostle Paul and the
Apostle Peter, in one way or another, not
using the same terminology, but expounding the same
basic truth as our Lord Jesus Christ here.
They warn us and they woo us at
one and the same time.
They warn us against walking in certain ways
which, if we will take them, we shall
lose our sanctity, our purity, our capacity to
influence the world for God.
On the other hand, they encourage us and
they woo us to take that path in
life along which we can discover the grace
of God and the inspiration to live in
a manner that we can influence the world
for God rather than be influenced by the
world against God.
Illustrative of the way in which the rest
of the New Testament does this, for example,
is the summons of the Apostle Paul to
the Corinthians.
If you think you're standing firm, he says,
be careful that you don't fall.
And again he bids them examine themselves and
see where they stand in the face.
If they are standing at all.
And all this is with a view to
making sure that they maintain what moral and
spiritual pungency they have.
Or if they've lost it, that they should
seek to regain it.
The Apostle Peter likewise writes, Therefore, dear friends,
he says, since you already know this, be
on your guard so that you may not
be carried away by the error of lawless
men and fall from your secure position.
These are purely illustrative of the way in
which the rest of the New Testament comes
and teaches us the same basic principles as
here underlie our Lord's words.
This kind of deterioration then takes place when
instead of rendering implicit obedience to God and
His Word, a believer rebels.
Becomes self-willed, goes his own way and
moves out of intimate, transforming fellowship with God.
A believer maintains his saltiness, to use the
NIV language, a believer maintains his saltiness only
insofar as he's living in real fellowship with
God.
Take a man or a woman out of
fellowship with God and anything can take place.
Without me, apart from me literally, Jesus said,
severed from me with the least space between
you and me, you can do nothing.
And that is true.
If a branch is severed from the vine,
it cannot bear the fruit of the vine.
And if we are severed from our Lord
Jesus Christ and anything comes in between, then
we cease to draw upon His life and
His fruit is not seen in us.
To come back to the language here, the
salt thus loses its pungency, its strength and
is liable to degenerate to an extent that
instead of frustrating the evil in the surrounding
world, it even aids the spread of evil.
Now, perhaps it is better to illustrate this
rather than simply to confine ourselves to exposition
of the principles.
There are a number of very tragic incidents
recorded in Scripture where this kind of thing
took place.
We were referring to some this morning on
a different level, slightly different.
In a sense, the theme this evening runs
exactly parallel with that which occupied us this
morning.
Have you noticed how there are in Scripture
a number of men who really occupied most
strategic places for God, who nevertheless at some
time in their lives slipped in this way?
And they lost for a moment at any
rate this pungency, this saline property and they
ceased to be able to influence men and
women for God.
Take Abraham, for example.
Even the godly Abraham, man of faith and
man of good works that he was, on
two different occasions in his life, separated by
a number of years, on two different occasions,
tried to save his skin by persuading his
wife to lie.
Now, this may appear to some people as
something very trivial.
But in a man of Abraham's stature, in
a man of Abraham's spiritual understanding and capacity,
it's something quite serious.
On two occasions, the one in Egypt and
the other in Gerar, the one recorded in
Genesis 13 and the other in Genesis 20,
he had a beautiful wife and he was
afraid that if he went into certain territory,
people would eye his wife and they'd not
only steal his wife from him, but possibly
get rid of Abraham in order to have
Sarah for themselves.
And so, going into these two places, he
tried to persuade Sarah to save his own
skin by lying about it.
Now, you see, something's gone wrong there.
He has lost his saline properties, he's lost
his sanctity, he's lost the pungency of the
new life of faith.
That's not the last word about Abraham, by
the way, but that is an incident.
The salt lost his savor and Abraham could
not witness for the great God who brought
him a thousand miles along the Euphrates Valley.
What could he say about a God like
that to the Egyptians or to those in
Gerar when he himself is so doubting God?
Nothing at all, see.
It crippled him.
Classical Old Testament illustration probably is that of
King David, of course.
David's tragic lapses are even more familiar, I
suppose, than those of Abraham.
You remember the story, allowing his eyes to
be attracted by the spectacle of a woman
bathing on the housetop.
He let down the defenses, the defenses of
his soul, and he sinned, first of all,
in his mind, in his heart.
But not only in his mind and in
his heart, then he planned and he schemed
and he got the woman over to him.
You remember what happened.
I don't need to go into the sordid
details of David, King of Israel's great sin
of adultery.
And then he tried to cover that up
and he lied and he planned someone else's
murder and he tried to cover that up
again and he lied and lied again over
and over again and it snowballs until the
poor man doesn't know what to do next.
He lost his saline properties.
He ceased to be salt and the tragedy,
of course, in the life of David is
to be seen in his own family.
And I don't mean to go into this
in any detail tonight, but I would suggest
to you, if you really want to see
what happens in the wake of a slip
like this, if slip it was, then you
read the story.
Because this man found that he simply could
not control his family sexually from that day
forward.
Morally, they were out of control and you
see the poor man couldn't say anything to
them because he'd set such a bad example.
God forgave the penitent soul so that even
though his sins were a scarlet, they were
as wool in the sight of God.
But sin leaves its mark.
The salt had gone and the corruption of
the world around moved into the soul of
the great man.
And during that brief time, however brief, however
long it was, it was comparatively brief, it
set a going, a whole tide of events
that David ruled until the day he died.
A salt had lost its savor.
When you move to the New Testament, I
suppose the outstanding illustration is Simon Peter.
Not morally in the same sense as David,
of course.
We have no reason to believe that of
Peter.
But were it not for the presence with
him of one who was sufficiently caring and
kind to challenge him and courageous, of course,
to challenge him when he said the wrong
thing or where he wanted to go in
the wrong direction and then to extricate him
after he had gone in the wrong way,
I don't think we would ever have had
in our New Testament two letters that bear
the name of Simon Peter.
You remember our Lord Jesus had to tell
him one day or was glad to tell
him on one occasion, delighted to tell him,
Simon, Simon, it's not flesh and blood has
revealed this to you now, but my Father
in heaven and upon this rock I will
build my church and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it.
But the next day or two days later,
not very long after, couldn't have been, Jesus
has to speak to him and says, get
behind me, Satan, for you're no longer in
tune with the things of God but with
the things of men.
Satan, get behind me.
This is the man who denied his Lord
with oaths and with curses and said, I
never knew the man, don't know anything about
him.
Peter, how on earth can you do that?
Well, you see, all the salt has lost
its savor.
Brothers and sisters, this can happen to churches
and it can happen to individuals.
There are communities of God's people that can
lose their savor.
There are two churches, especially in the New
Testament, that lost this and they lost the
ability to influence the world outside morally and
spiritually.
There is Corinth and there is Laodicea.
There may be others.
In other words, whatever happened thereafter, at least
over a period, they knew nothing of the
power and the pungency of a holy life
to influence men and women for a holy
God.
Now, how does this happen?
Well, a number of explanations are suggested.
I'll just mention two or three things as
we pass.
Perhaps, it is in some measure due to
a defective evaluation.
I'm sure this has got something to do
with it.
Let me refer particularly to a defective evaluation
of the weakness of one's own soul on
the one hand and of the subtlety and
the strength of sin and Satan on the
other.
And you see, we are all prone to
this.
We are all prone to think better of
ourselves than God does very often.
And we are all prone to think that
we can cope when God, in His Word,
says we cannot cope alone.
But we think we can.
And we are all prone to believe that
Satan is a figment of the imagination, that
there is no malign, evil, supernatural power arrayed
against us.
And so we think we can cope again.
We can go into evil situations with our
eyes open and we go in, and we
say like Simon Peter, oh, we can cope.
We are wiser than God.
And so the manner in which we evaluate
ourselves and the manner in which we evaluate
circumstances is superficial.
Therefore we run into unnecessary risks.
We play with sin.
In Paul's words, we make provision to the
flesh or for the flesh to fulfill its
lusts.
And you make provision for the flesh.
You get the kind of book on your
table or by the side of your bed
that will feed the flesh, the beast in
you and you will sin sooner or later.
You get involved in the kind of music
that will arouse your passions and don't be
surprised if your passions run amok with you.
Let us be sure that if an Abraham
a David and a Simon Peter can be
seduced to sin in the manner in which
Scripture affirms and thus lose their salient pungency
for however brief a period, then we are
not immune.
Let him that standeth take heed lest he
fall.
We do well to remember Paul's words that
we were thinking of this morning in part.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into
strict training.
They do it to get a crown that
will not last but we do it to
get a crown that will last forever.
I do not run like a man running
aimlessly.
I do not fight like a man beating
the air.
No, no.
I beat my body and I make it
my slave so that after I have preached
to others I myself will not be disqualified.
Defective evaluation.
Defective separation.
Followers.
Moral decline and spiritual disasters are almost if
not invariably traced to a defective separation from
what we know from the word of God
to be wrong, to be sin.
Now it is true of course that worldliness
is essentially a matter of the heart.
It's a quality of spirit.
It's a way of judging things.
It's a spirit.
It's an attitude.
But the fact is you see that that
worldliness in the heart as a spirit as
an attitude can be quickened, can be fanned
to a blazing fire by people I talk
to, by the things I look at, by
the programs I watch, by so many things.
And therefore I have to be wise not
to indulge, not to get near to the
things that can fan the flames of passion
until they blaze in my soul and master
me.
We have to be careful there.
Going into the zoo you have seen as
I have seen many a time don't feed
the beasts or don't feed the lions or
don't feed the bears.
Well the poor bears have to get something
to eat don't they?
Of course they get their food.
Why not feed the bears?
Well you see you give the bear a
biscuit and he may want the hand that
gives the biscuit.
That's the point isn't it?
And he may want the hand the arm
behind the hand.
You give the bear a little and he'll
want more than you're prepared to give.
Do you know our passions are just like
that.
You start giving here and there and your
lusts and mine are still so powerful they
may say I want more and you're under
control.
Brothers and sisters that is the story of
a myriad moral lapses in this city tonight
as well as elsewhere.
You know the psalmist had the secret we
think that he lived so long ago that
he wasn't in fashion but he knew it
all.
Blessed is the man who does not walk
in the counsel of the wicked nor stand
in the way of sinners or sit in
the seat of the scornful there has to
be a wall of separation between the man
of God and the person who is against
God.
And if you and I if you and
I don't maintain that for the glory of
God and the well being of our soul
we shall lose something that will make us
incapable of influencing the world for God.
Now let me distinguish here.
Very often you can win members of the
society for yourself when you cannot win them
for God.
Anybody who is a winner a seeker for
the souls of men anyone who is a
fisher of men will long have discovered that
it is possible to make friends of people
and make them think very much of you
without thinking without making them think much of
God.
This is one of the danger of preaching
and of evangelizing especially on the personal level.
It is possible to leave an impression and
to draw the gaze of men and women
upon you and you may become acceptable.
You may you may you may be able
to sell yourself.
But what's the use of selling yourself if
you if they do not receive the God
you represent.
And the Bible makes it abundantly clear that
unless you and I have these characteristics of
holiness we cannot properly represent the God of
the Bible.
We must share in his holy character.
This is not all there is to be
known about God.
This is not all there is to be
expressed of God of course.
But this is something this is basic.
And in a world such as that in
which you and I live tonight this is
cardinal.
A defective evaluation a defective separation and a
defective consecration of course.
That brings me to the second main thing.
The imponderable devaluation involved here.
Let me give you the King James translation
which I like very much.
It is therefore good for nothing but to
be cast out and trodden under foot of
men.
Those are strong words aren't they?
The incalculable tragedy involved in moral and spiritual
deterioration is forcefully exposed in these arresting words.
And their echo is all the more terrifying
when we remember that these very words good
for nothing came from the lips of one
who was not given to exaggerations.
Now if I heard some people say that
I don't think I'd worry all that much
because they're given to exaggerations.
But when I hear those words coming from
the Son of God when I read the
mode and the method of his teaching and
the way he was so accurate in his
description of things and of people when I
read that and I hear him say this
I must say to myself you've got to
take this seriously.
Now what does this mean?
Well first of all I think it points
to a functional deterioration.
The salt can become incapable of functioning as
salt if it is right to speak in
that way.
The functional deterioration of salt demands our attention
then in the first place.
Salt that has lost its character has lost
its distinctive purpose and meaning in life.
Salt was meant to perform its distinctive function
by just being itself.
Getting into touch with people rubbing into things
and just being what it was.
A salt doesn't make a lot of noise.
If you put it in the right place
and it works it does something.
And its presence becomes felt.
You see people wince.
There's salt in the wound.
By just being itself it performs its work.
It is as simple as that.
Without its distinctive character however it becomes literally
good for nothing.
God's word assures us that without holiness without
the quality of salt in our moral character
we are actually in the same category ourselves.
We become good for nothing.
In the absence of this our service whatever
its nature will be in vain as far
as God is concerned.
It will not influence the world against sin
nor for God.
Now the potential destination of such savourless salt
is given in this verse again.
What do you do with salt like that
when it loses its savour loses its saltiness?
What can you do with salt like that?
Its potential destination is described in terms of
this challenging word.
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.
Now behind that there is a social usage
which I think helps bring out the truth.
Now behind that there is a social usage
which I think helps bring out the truth.
Palestinian bakers used ovens in the open air.
They did their baking out in the fresh
air in New Testament times.
In order to retain the heat in their
stoves and to stop any coldness from the
earth beneath coming up and taking the heat
out of the stoves between the tiles on
which the stoves stood and the earth beneath
they placed a fairly thick layer of salt.
Now I can't explain the chemistry of it
because somebody else will have to do that.
But I know for a fact that this
is what happened.
And they had this thick layer of salt
between the tiles on which the oven would
stand and the earth beneath.
And apparently the coldness of the earth was
not transmitted then to the ovens.
But now when the salt had been between
the tiles and the earth beneath for some
time it became completely insipid.
Absolutely insipid.
If you damped your finger and put it
in the salt and put the salt to
your tongue you just wouldn't know that it
had been salt.
There was no saltiness to it at all.
No savour.
It was without savour without taste at all.
There was nothing to it.
Now what do you do with salt like
that?
Well, says our Lord Jesus and he's quoting
what was absolutely true to fact.
There's only one thing to do with it.
Throw it out on the path where people
walk.
It's no good.
There is nothing at all.
No positive use.
No value to it.
You can do nothing with it.
Just let people trample on it.
It may help make a path.
You can walk over it.
It is the very Son of God who
applies this usage to Christian people who lose
their saltiness.
They thereby become functionally useless and potentially
valueless.
Men just walk over them and trample them
to a powdery pulp.
They have lost totally lost the capacity to
influence men and women for God.
That's what he's saying.
I think of Lot in Sodom.
He was promoted there.
We're told that he sat at the gate.
He was a kind of city councillor or
town councillor or whatever it means.
That's the equivalent.
And he sat with the wise people at
the gate.
Lot, a man from abroad, a man from
a distant place.
But here he was in Sodom.
He's got on so well and he's so
rich now.
He's got a home of his own and
he's got children and he's got a wife
from Sodom.
Ah, yeah.
But at what cost, Lot?
You read the story.
I won't tell you what it says.
But you read the story and you will
see that Lot had become just like salt
without savor.
Totally incapable of saying or doing anything that
would stem the tide or influence even those
who'd married his daughters.
He had no influence at all on the
whole Sodomite community.
Were it not for the infinite mercy of
God he would have been judged with them.
And that brings me to the most important
thing with which we shall come to a
close.
The practical consideration that is stressed here.
The question that is asked by our Lord.
How can it be made salty again then?
How shall its saltness or saltiness be restored?
Now you notice that our Lord's asking the
question implies the difficulty of restoration.
He who was able, I wonder, can we
really get this in perspective?
You see, our Lord never found great difficulty
in doing anything he did.
He was never short of resources.
When he spoke the word, it was done.
When he touched a diseased body, it responded.
When he spoke to the waves, they were
stilled.
When he touched the leper, he lost his
leprosy.
When he put his finger on the tongue
of a man who was incapable of speech,
his tongue was loosened.
When he called Lazarus from his grave where
he had been for over three days, the
dead came forth to life.
But the sovereign Son of God here asks
a question and implies the difficulty of restoring
its saline properties to salt that has lost
its savour.
He doesn't answer it.
He wants to convey the impression this is
a very difficult thing to do.
And my friends, if the Son of God
thinks thus, you and I should take that
very seriously.
He does not answer the question here at
any rate.
I'm not sure that it would be correct
to say that our Lord Jesus Christ doesn't
answer the question in the rest of His
teaching.
But here He does not answer it.
He poses the question and He says it
is exceedingly difficult.
How can it be done?
And He leaves the question unanswered.
You see, the point is it is a
human impossibility.
A human impossibility.
Now, the Word of God nevertheless announces the
possibility of restoration for Christian people who have
lost their saltness, the saltiness in their character.
The Word of God in the Old Testament
and in the New does announce good news
for the backslider.
And of course, it is to this we've
got to come.
But we've got to see it in context.
Our Lord wants us to see the difficulty
of this.
And we must not take it for granted.
We must not presume upon the grace of
God nor the wisdom of God nor the
power of God that can effect the change
again.
But it is possible.
And I cannot close without coming to that.
The Bible is full of it in one
way or another.
Let me just illustrate that.
As, for example, when in the Old Testament
some of the writers speak of how to
deal with national decline on a moral and
spiritual level.
Or in the New Testament when John tells
us what to do with the sin that
we become conscious of individually in our lives.
Take the first.
Who is it among us who doesn't, who
hasn't tried to memorize and doesn't remember those
great words of 2 Chronicles 7, 14 and
15?
What shall we do when the judgment of
God is upon the land?
Upon the soil?
Upon the seasons?
Upon the harvest?
Or what should have been a harvest?
What do we do when the judgments of
God are abroad upon the land?
Well, says the Old Testament, there's a way
out of that too.
When I shut up the heavens so that
there is no rain or command locusts to
devour the land or send a plague among
my people, if my people who are called
by my name will humble themselves and pray
and seek my face and turn from their
wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven
and will forgive their sin and will heal
their land.
So there is a way on a national
level of seeing the tide turn again.
There is a way of coming back from
the borders of disaster as it were and
to be retrieved and redeemed.
Or come to John's great classical words to
individuals and to churches, but churches even as
individual members of them in 1 John 1,
9.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
There is a way of cleansing.
There is a way of pardon.
There is a way of renewal.
Yes, thank God, his word announces such a
possibility for men and women who have lost
the purity and the sanctity they once possessed.
Moreover, it does so illustratively as well as
didactically.
We have referred to Abram and to David
and to Peter.
And we didn't say the last word about
any of them.
The last word concerning Abram, David and Peter
is not concerning their sin and their waywardness
and savourless moral character, not on your life.
They were brought back into fellowship with God.
The moral qualities they lost were regained again.
The pungency, the moral strength, the purity, the
grace, the sanctity, it all came back again
and made them strong in the God they
served.
That's the story of the three of them.
How did it happen?
Well, my friends, let me repeat.
What is humanly impossible is possible with God.
The God who begins a saving work in
our hearts is not nonplussed when the devil
comes in and makes a mess of it.
The God who comes down to the gutter
of sin and lifts us up from the
mire and from the clay and purges our
sin away and transforms our heart, he is
a God who is well able to deal
with things when the devil comes in like
a flood and mars the vessel again.
And in the potter's hand there's something hard
and unyielding and the potter has to break
it again and make it into a new
vessel.
But he's able to do that.
See?
It is impossible with man, but what is
impossible with man is possible with God.
He can reclaim that pungency.
He can give back that saline quality.
He can make you holy and wholesome again.
He can make you win what you've lost.
Scripture is full of encouragement in this respect,
though not without other incidents and passages that
point to the sheer difficulty of renewal.
And we've got to remember that.
I repeat, we must not presume upon the
grace nor the wisdom nor the power of
God, but there is no way back apart
from God.
But he's able.
The truth is then that the God who
began a good work of grace in our
hearts and in our lives is well able
to perform it, to perform the purpose he
had when he began that work.
And though all hell obstruct the way, our
God is able to bring out of the
most unyielding clay and crude the kind of
vessel that he originally planned.
And in due course, he will.
But what then is the way back for
us if we have wandered and gone this
way and we're conscious that really we've lost
this pungency, we've lost this saltiness from our
lives?
What is the way back?
Well, the way back is signposted everywhere in
Scripture.
First of all, there must be repentance.
Now, repentance is not something that you shout
about.
It's more likely something that you sob about.
And it's something that you do more in
a corner than before the public eye.
And repentance is always there's more of it
out of sight than there is in sight.
It's not what you say that is all
that important.
It's what you do in your heart, how
you feel about it before God.
Repentance is a change of mind.
And when the mind changes, when the attitude
changes, when you begin to hate what you
previously loved, you're on the way back.
You now return spiritually into that place of
fellowship with God where you want to be
conformed to His image.
And if repentance is genuine, you will want
to yield fully and completely to Him as
He brings you back and embosses upon your
life afresh the image that has become marred
and indistinct.
But we must return.
We must repent.
And we must rededicate ourselves anew to Him
and say, Oh, Lord, I don't want to
go this way again.
And by Your grace, I shall not go
this way.
But it must be Your grace.
It must be Your power.
Lead me by Your word.
Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me
from evil and from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power
and the glory forever.
I can't do it, but You can.
And brothers and sisters all around us in
this service tonight and in this church, there
are men and women who are doing just
that.
This is the thing that brings joy to
any pastor.
What else is there in a world such
as this but to see the God of
all grace stepping into situations and making the
weak strong in Christ?
I'm reminded as I close of one of
the noble lords of the United Kingdom who
found the Savior and had the great capacity
for speaking about his Lord to all and
sundry.
And there were people who used to run
after him because he was such a renowned
figure and ask him questions about his faith.
It meant such a transformation.
One day he was going into a railway
station.
He was going by train somewhere.
And someone that he had known in business
had heard of this great transformation in his
life and he just caught up with him
as he was going into the station.
A whistle was going, meaning the train was
going out.
And the fellow asked him, Look, look, Lord
so and so.
He says, What is there in life that
can make me strong where I am weak?
And he took his pencil out of his
pocket and he put it on the window
of the train.
You see this pencil standing upright, he said.
Stupid, said the man, you're holding it.
That's the secret, he said.
I can do no more than this pencil
to stand on my own two feet.
But whether the train is going or whether
the train is stopping, whether the wind is
blowing or whether the rain is coming, he
says, I'm holding it and it can stand
because I'm holding it.
My God holds me.
If the salt has lost its savor, it's
a very sad day.
It's a day for mourning.
It's a day for tears.
It's a day for sorrow.
But it's not a day to lose hope.
For the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ
is such that when God sets about to
do a saving work, there is nothing that
can frustrate Him and we have only to
turn to Him and cry to Him and
He will come and He will finish what
He has begun.
It may be a very delicate operation and
it may even be a painful one, but
He is able to save to the uttermost.
Let us pray.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your
Word.
We thank You for this very challenging Word
from the Gospels, from the sermon of our
Lord on the mountainside and we pray, O
Lord, that You will make it speak to
our consciences and to our lives to discourage
us to sin, but nevertheless to encourage us
with the knowledge that You are able to
do what was humanly impossible as far as
common salt was concerned.
We need not become the trampling ground for
human feet.
You can lift us up again and You
can give us the capacity to influence men
and women for Yourself.
O God, grant to each of us and
grant to all of us in concert, in
communion, in fellowship that we may be able
to do this increasingly.
Lord, purify Your church to meet the need
of this hour.
In a very dirty world, we pray, in
Jesus' name, Amen.