Is that better? All right, Matthew chapter number five. And we're gonna read, I'm just gonna go ahead and read the passage again because I like to read the context of what is taking place here. And so we know the Lord is speaking to his disciples. There's a multitude that is there with him, but he is focusing on his disciples because we have to have disciples if we're going to reach the multitude. So seeing the multitudes, he went, and when he was said, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth, and he taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." And he's speaking there, of course, about humility and about relying upon the Lord, not knowing that it is not us, but it is He that works through us. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Here he is speaking about those who mourn over sin, and he tells them that if you're gonna be comforted, it's going to be because of mourning over your sin. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the herd. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Some of these you read and you go, I don't understand exactly what that means. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And by the way, Jesus Christ preached all these, but here's the most amazing, here's the one thing we have to also understand, He lived these things. Every one of these, He preached to His disciples, but then He was the example. And he lived these out. And I think about that and of course in verse 10 and 11. Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad For great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Now in verse number 13, this is what I believe is taking place, especially verse 13 and 14, but I'm only going to focus on verse 13 tonight. After Jesus Christ preaches the Beatitudes to His disciples, He makes an application. Any man that stands up and preaches the Word of God, we give the sense of the text, we preach the text. I've always said, these preachers who say, I just don't know what to preach, here's what I tell them, preach the next verse! because the Bible is full. Just continue on in the Word of God. The way churches are built up is by preaching the Bible. We'll preach the whole Bible. Preach the next verse. And so when Jesus Christ preached the Beatitudes, he now makes an application of the message that he just preached. And here's his application. Ye are the salt of the earth. But if the salt shall have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men." Then he goes on to apply not only them being the salt of the earth, but he also says, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick. and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. So let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, that they may see you live out your life according to the Beatitudes and glorify your Father, which is in heaven. Lord, I need your help again tonight. to bring across the message of application that I believe that you were giving based upon the Beatitudes that you just preached. And I know that we've kind of looked at it as an overall text and we've looked at two primarily of humility and mourning over sin. And I also think of meekness and I think of being a peacemaker and merciful. And Lord, all of these are 45 to 50 minute message But I pray that we would just get an understanding that when we live our life in the dictates of the Beatitudes, then we're going to live a life of light and salt. And I pray we might understand that tonight as you continue in this spiritual recharge time for this body of believers. Help me, Lord, to communicate the truth in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Now I want to go back and remind you with the world that we live in, what you have is so important to those that are around you. You are judged by the house you live in. You are judged by the neighborhood that you live in. You are looked upon by your profession. People want to know where you live, what kind of car do you drive, where do you buy your clothes. And whether we like it or not, that's the way people look at us, but with Jesus it does not matter. I'm not saying that God cannot bless us. I praise God for the blessings of life. I am amazed by God's goodness and God's grace and God's mercy. And me and my wife, we talk about this. We are overwhelmed by the goodness of God. But the bottom line is, when Jesus Christ is looking to make disciples, he's looking at who you are. He's looking at your heart. He's looking at your character. Listen, you can fool a lot of people, but you cannot fool the Lord. He knows everything about us. And we can't just stop at the Beatitudes because there are attitudes and characteristics that will allow us to move to where Jesus would have us to be in the world in which we live. Now I would challenge you to study Matthew chapter 5 and chapter 6 and chapter 7 and you will begin to understand that Jesus Christ will tell you how to live. Now the pastor said it right tonight. It's easy to say, and look at, and to obey, and yet sometimes it's not so easy. And the reason is, is because of the flesh that we live in, and the world that we live in, or the culture that we live in, and of course the attacks of Satan all around. If you just look at the political climate that we're in right now, you can understand that we live in a weird culture, and a culture that tries to draw us in to things, and we've gotta let the noise go aside, and we need to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Why? Because the world is looking at us as salt and as light. And I'm telling you the reason that God has not completely brought judgment upon this nation because there is still in this world God's people who are salt and who are light. You think about when the rapture takes place and those that are dead in Christ shall rise and then we which remain and shall be caught up together to be with the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord and comfort ye one another with these words. Can you imagine when the element of God's people and the Spirit of God that is in God's people is taken out of this world? Well, it is described in chapters 5 and on in the Revelation, and it is a wicked place. And I'm just telling you, where there is less light, and where there is less salt, there is more darkness. And that's why it is so important. I just want to beat the pulpit tonight and try to get it into our hearts that it is so imperative that God's people on the job, in school, in everyday life, live out their life the application that Jesus Christ gives of living out the Beatitudes. And you can't just stop there because there's so much more. You need to be poor in spirit, which is humility, which by the way, poor in spirit and humility is the very opposite of self-promotion. So much that people want to promote themselves and tell us how awesome they are and all of that. God says live a humble, simple life. He will direct your paths. He will exalt you in due time. You don't need to do it by yourself. To mourn over sin is more important than ignoring sin. And we looked at that last night. And listen, to mourn over sin is much more important than to be accepted socially and culturally. I got past that a long time ago. And it's not that I don't care what people think, but I'm more concerned about what the Savior thinks than I am about what people think. And I'm not trying to be crass or I'm not trying to be offensive. I'm not trying to do that at all. But I am not going to apologize for taking a stand that's based upon the Word of God, even if I'm misunderstood. because I realize in the end it is the salt and the light that people are going to gravitate to. Jesus said that we need to hunger and thirst for righteousness rather than being so concerned about feeding the appetite of the flesh. I'm telling you, we can pack stadiums in Houston, Texas of thousands and thousands of people, but people don't want to come to the house of God and listen to the Word of God so that God can do something in their life. Being merciful is more important than you being able to ignore the suffering of others to achieve your own goals. Listen, we need to show mercy because God has showed mercy to us. That in your heart is pure and unmixed with the things of the world which would cause you to serve half-heartedly. That you are a peacemaker, bringing people to Jesus Christ so that they can know what it truly means to have peace with God, that you learn to suffer persecution with joy and gladness rather than compromising the truth to maintain a comfortable status. All these things have to do with who you are and not what you have. All of these things, and again, I've just given a snapshot of the Beatitudes in the last two nights. But all of these things have to be about who you are and not about what you have. And when we are a Beatitude disciple, Jesus said that we would be of the proper character and quality to do this, to be the salt and to be the light. And therefore, that is why I believe that Jesus Christ is making an application to the message that he just preached. At the time that Jesus spoke these words about salt, we have to understand a few things, that salt had a more greater value than it does today. Now, when I sat down and I have green beans before me, mashed potatoes and carrots, I put salt on it. And I know some people say, well, you should taste it before. Well, okay, but in my opinion, they never put enough on it anyway, and I already know that. Because it always needs a little bit more than what is there. And I'm telling you, salt is good. It is. God said it. And I'm gonna take, I'm gonna believe the Bible. You know, in the old, in the days of Jesus was writing this passage of scripture and talking about all these beatitudes and how that we could be blessed in our Christian life, he understood, they understood what he said, that you are the salt of the earth. He understood the importance of salt. And I'm gonna try to bring that out tonight. In fact, many times a soldier, a Roman soldier in the army was paid with salt. And if a soldier in the Roman army was negligent in his duties, it was said of him, he was not worthy of his salt. And that's where that comes from. That comes from that idea that he's not worthy of his salt. Now I just can't imagine today that if I showed up for my job and I worked in some kind of, like I worked for 10 years for Federal Express, I was a courier. I just can't imagine at the end of the week that I got two blocks of salt instead of one block because I worked overtime. But yeah, that's how important it was to them. And you need to understand, we even get our word, listen to this, when we go to work, and we get paid, we usually call that, this is our salary. Well, guess what? The word salary comes from the idea of being paid in salt. Isn't that amazing? So Jesus Christ is telling us that we need to be the salt, we need to be worthy of who we are as God's people. So Jesus told his disciples that they were, and here's another thing, you are the salt of the earth. You are the salt of the earth. But he also gave the positive side of what salt is about, but there's also the negative part of salt. Because I'm telling you, if you're not salty, if you're not worthy of your salt, then you're not savored. There's no savor to it. And if there's no savor to it, the only thing that can be done with salt is to throw it out. Now, the same idea is in our society, and I know that you don't have any idea what it has to do down here with salt when it goes on the road because of snow or ice, and I'm saying I would like to live where there is none of that. But up in the Missouri, when it ices and it snows, and many of you know this from the parts of the earth, parts of the earth, the parts of where you've lived, that they put salt on the earth, they put salt, they put unsalty salt on the roads because there's no good in it if it doesn't have that distinctness about it that causes the savoriness that it does. So we can understand that. You go over here, you go to Cracker Barrel or you go somewhere to eat, And you gotta put the salt on it, oh, because it makes it better. You make biscuits and gravy, you need salt and pepper, son. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I can't help you, I ain't got time. But I want you to understand, there's several things about salt that Jesus is applying to the Beatitude Christian. The first thing is, there's the worth of salt. In other words, the worth of salt is very important. The Bible says salt is good. Now it doesn't say it in our text here, I understand that. But it does say it in other places. And the context of this is, if you're the salt of the earth, God needs the salt to be good. So number one, let me give you a couple of things about the worth of salt. One is because salt seasons, it enhances. Do you understand that beatitude disciples enhance the job where they work? Seasoned, seasoned Christians or disciples, they make things better at the workplace. And I'm telling you, at your job, whatever it is, or at your school, or whatever it is, you should be the very best worker that they have. You should be the best employee. You should be the best brother. Listen, we gotta talk to the homeschoolers, because we have homeschoolers. You should be the best sister, and you should be the best brother. You should be salty because salt is good. Salt always enhances. The flavor of food is enhanced by salt, and those who conspire to take away salt from our diet ain't right with God. If I ever go to the doctor and say, well, you need to do away with your salt. Listen, that's like them telling me other things I need to do. I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not, they say, well, you know, coffee's not good for you. It is if you want to live with me. If you want to live with me, it's good. In fact, I don't even, I'm being, this is hyperbole. If you don't know what that means, look it up. I don't know how people read their Bible without their coffee. And it's not that I need it. But that first cup just kind of helps me. You know what I'm saying? But isn't it amazing that there's a conspiracy to take away salt? Now the application for disciples is this, our life, listen to this, our lives should enhance those we're around. And it will if we're Beatitude Christians. Our life will enhance, be an enhancement to those that are around. I go back to when I got saved back in 1984. I told you I was working in a contracting center and I was a buyer for the government and some general got the great idea that we should make one giant contracting center And that we should do all the contracts from Brooks Air Force Base, Randolph Air Force Base, Kelly Air Force Base, Lackland Air Force Base, Fort Sam Houston, and there might have been one more base there, I can't remember. So forgive me, Lackland. And so they brought all of the contracts and the supply buying in this one big contracting center. And they had supply buyers, you know, like 50 of them over here and service buyers. And I was in that when I bought services. I bought all kinds of stuff that was services and all this kind of stuff. And so they did that. And the reason that I think that it didn't work is because every base thought their mission was the most important. And we were given contracts that were just lined up. And so I might have number one might be Lackland Air Force Base, and I got to work on this contract. Number two was Brooks and number three was Randolph. And I'd get some call from Randolph saying, I need you to move the contract to the number one. I'm like, we can't do that. So eventually they moved them all back to the bases and let everybody do it that way. But God in that timeframe, in that contracting center, I sat at a desk, there was a guy that sat behind me, there was a girl that sat over here, and there was another one that sat over here. And they were all from independent Baptist churches. And I was not. That's all I have to say about that. And I would listen to my music, and they would listen to their music, and we had to come to a compromise. And the man that sat right behind me became a great influence for me to be saved. The man was salt. The man enhanced. His life convicted me of my life, and I didn't even like it that this was going on. And just through a series of events, and he invited me to church, I said, quit inviting me to church, I'm not coming to church. And then they were gonna have this revival that was several months out, and he comes to me and he says, you know, I will leave you alone if you'll come to this meeting in three months. And I'm thinking, okay, I'll agree to that, because who remembers anything that's gonna happen in three months? Except I fail to understand that an independent Baptist don't forget anything like that. They're just like cats in the waiting, you know. And so he was just waiting. And so at least I was a man that would keep my word and I went. And I'm telling you, but more than the first time I really heard preaching like it should be from the Bible is I saw it lived out in a man's life. Is everybody understanding this? Do you see the importance of spiritual recharge and obedience to the word of God? Because whether you realize it or not, there is somebody that is watching your life. There is somebody that you may be enhancing their ability to be saved by the grace of God. And so the application for disciples is that our lives should enhance those that we're around. We as the salt are to enhance or to make things better. And listen, you understand that salt makes gravy better. You understand that salt makes carrots better and butter, lots of it. Butter's good with everything. And bacon is good with everything. I like bacon on top of bacon, inside of bacon, cooked with bacon, and bacon wrapped around it. And you know, bacon is very salty. Oh yeah, it's salty. Don't argue with the preacher, I know it's salty. Therefore, it is good. That is why the disciples should be, listen, here's the idea. God's people and a disciple that lives a beatitude life should be a joy to be around. You know, some people, you ask them how they're doing, they actually tell you. But it should be that we make things better. We should be the hardest and best respected workers on the job. We should be a joy to be around and not drag people down or be the hard pill to swallow. If someone says you're a pill, it's probably not said as a good thing. Has anybody ever called you a pill? Amen. Number two, so number one, listen, number one, salt is good because it's seasoned or enhances. Number two, salt is good because it is a symbol of purity. Salt is a symbol of purity. In Leviticus chapter two and verse 13, the Bible tells us that the offerings offered to the Lord were offered with and seasoned with salt, because salt is a symbol of purity and wellness. We are to be the agent of purity in the world in which we live. I'm telling you right now, our life is looked upon as something that should be pure. And when we have actions, attitudes, or characteristics in our life that don't show forth holiness, then that is also, listen, not only can a child of God, a disciple, a beatitude disciple child of God enhance people, but carnal Christians can cause people not to, why would you want to be saved? Why would you want to live that life? You know, one of my deacons, just, I mean, every time I think about it, it just tears me up, but he was one of the deacons when I became the pastor. Just, he was a businessman and well-respected in his field of service. He was, he ended up being a, He ended up being court cases. He was an expert witness. He was an environmental engineer, and he worked on projects that people would know if I said them. Famous contracts. And anyhow, he used to be a He used to be an expert witness for the Justice Department, but also other big companies. And so he was around lawyers, and he was around high-ended businessmen. I'm talking about, you know, we're talking about oil companies, Shell oil companies, and ExxonMobil companies, and things like that. And so he was around high-powered lawyer, Justice Department lawyers. And listen, and when he died, He died of cancer in 2017. My very, I mean, just the right hand man of the church, very well respected in the community. And at his funeral, I could not believe the number of lawyers, engineers, soil scientists, people from the Justice Department showed up. And as I preached the message, I preached the word of God, and every one of them came by and said, Pastor, I just want you to, and they said this to his wife, and his wife was, got several people wrote letters to her with this same thing and said, you know what? And they talked about him and they said, everybody knew that was around him that something was totally different than him and everybody else. And they said, he always enhanced. He was always wanted to, he was the first person that somebody wanted to be their expert witness. And when he would read through the depositions, when he would read through all of the paper, listen to this, his reputation was if the person was in fault, he would not represent them. But if the person was in the right, he would represent them. And there were judges. that knew this, and there was all of these people that knew that, and these people came by, and I'm like, and there's like this, he goes, my name is so-and-so, I'm a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and I'm just telling you, this man was well-respected, and they said, you know, we knew he was a man of faith, we knew that he was a Christian, but the way that you explained it today puts it all in perspective. You know what that means? The man was salt. He enhanced those that he was around. And I miss him greatly even to this day. And I told the Lord a couple of times, I can trade you, no. You see, here's what I'm saying. We are expected to be clean, and we're expected to be pure, and we're expected to be moral. So when somebody goes off in immorality, especially like a preacher, it just puts a blight on the name of Jesus Christ. But it's just not preachers, it's everybody. Amen, preacher? Does everybody begin to understand what the importance of living a life that is pleasing to God, that is a, Jesus, and by the way, Jesus is our greatest example. He lived all of these out himself. We are to be pure in our dealings, in our motives, in our morals, in our culture, because the world has lost its way, and it has to be able to look inside of an independent, fundamental, Bible-believing Baptist church, and it should be that the people say, where do you go to church? And number three, and the third thing is salt creates a thirst. It creates a thirst. You remember when you're back in the days when you're playing football, and well, I mean, I go way back, but they would give us salt tablets. And the reason they, I know they're trying to keep us from dehydration and all that, but salt actually makes you wanna drink more water because salt creates a thirst. And go home and eat a big ham dinner, and then you'll find yourself drinking a gallon of water trying to quench the thirst of the salty ham. Amen! Well, that's what salt is supposed to do. We're supposed to cause people to thirst and to hunger after the things that we have. Sometimes in the Arab world at this time, at the time that Jesus is speaking, they would eat salt just to create a thirst so that they would drink enough water and not become dehydrated. Because as you know, probably, if you ever go to the desert or a desert region, The sun and the temperature suck the water right out of your body faster than you could even think. I remember my friend Terry Randolph telling me that the first time he left Michigan and he left to go and start a church in Arizona, he said he wasn't there a week and he was in the emergency room because he was so dehydrated and they had to tell him, listen, you have to drink water. You have to drink a lot of water, not just a little water. One year I was at youth camp and I got dehydrated. and I got home and I thought I was having a heart attack, and they put about two bags of salt water into my body to get me back to where I needed to be. And here's the idea, we need to understand that people, when they see our life, they need to thirst for something that they don't have, that we have. That is why carnality in Christians is causing people to die and go to hell. There's no recharging that. The life of a disciple should be such a life that creates thirst in the hearts and the minds of unbelievers. It should be said of our life that people want what we have, that they should thirst for us. Number four, salt is good because it preserves. Now again, I wanna praise the Lord that I have a refrigerator in my home and in my motel room. And my wife has a Yeti, and if we travel, we put stuff in there so that we can put the things that we like to have, because we have refrigeration. But I believe when you look at verse number 13, now listen, I've said some things. about salt, it's good, it enhances, it thirsts, but the primary, listen to me, the primary application that we see in verse number 13 is Jesus Christ trying to get us to understand that salt is a preservative, and that's the main application here. Some of those disciples that were sitting there listening to Jesus were fishermen. And they understood that they didn't have the ice packs like we do, and they would put that fish in salt. And then if you go back to the old timers, when I say that, back to the 1900s, and people had a smokehouse. and they would use salt to preserve their meat. They'd kill a deer or kill a moose or whatever it was. They put it in a smokehouse and they would pack it in salt to preserve it because they didn't have refrigeration. Well, they didn't have refrigerators when Jesus was speaking either. And they would use the salt, those disciples like Peter and James and John, they would use salt to preserve that fish. Why? Because they wanted it to be sold at the market. Today we would use ice or refrigeration to use that, but salt applied prevents decay. There's the deal right there. The world is in decay. And we're the only hope they have. We're it. You think that they're going to get the gospel at the public school setting? You think they're gonna get the gospel at the theaters? You think they're gonna get the gospel, you think they're gonna learn how to be saved at the football stadium, at the basketball stadium? Come on now, let's be honest. No, people are gonna be preserved only because of disciples who are living out Beatitude Christianity. So salt is worth a lot. I mean, there's a lot of worth when it comes to salt. But there's also what I would call the work of salt. If Jesus is speaking of preservation, and I believe he is in the primary sense of verse 13, that means the effect of salt needs to do its work. The world in which we live in, listen, it's decaying, it's sinful. And sin has an effect of decay. I don't know if you know this, none of us are getting younger. and our bodies are decaying. And what you could do at 30, you don't do so well at 60. I didn't know it was gonna be that difficult just to get out of bed. You know, it's like, I need an oil can, a little here, a little here, a little here in the back. Well, here's the idea. uh, the world is in decay. We're, our bodies are in decay. And the world, and listen, I hate to tell you, I hate to tell you, but don't let some Jehovah witness come knock on your door and say, aren't things getting better? No, they're not getting better. In fact, they're getting a lot worse. The world is in decay, the world is not getting better, it's getting worse. Human civilization is in decline according to the Bible. I won't do it, but read Romans chapter one. And read verses 18 through 32, and it makes it very clear that the world is in decline. And if you go to Romans eight, you'll find out that the creation is in groaning, waiting for redemption. So secular humanistic, that's what I'm trying to say, education will not save the human race. Science without God will not preserve anything. Politics, whether it be conservative or liberal, will not preserve humanity. Ye, Jesus said, ye, Jesus said, ye are the salt of the earth. Not education, not more money, Noah walked with God. Listen to this. Noah walked with God and preserved the human race. Abraham was a friend of God in a wicked world and God used him to bring around a race of people that would be used to deliver the Savior of the world. Even Lot, who vexed his soul, was salt to Sodom until he was removed from the city and it was completely destroyed. He was a carnal Saved man. But the whole city went down in flames and there was no preservation. But as soon as light was taken from the city and the salt was completely gone, God destroyed the city. Moses was sold to Israel as he led the children of Israel. At one point, God was going to destroy Israel, but Moses was the salt that preserved Israel. Isn't that amazing? Well, here's the idea. You have to live a beatitude Christian life because you may be the one salt pebble, salt block on your job, in your school, in your location, in your neighborhood that preserves. That's what Jesus Christ is saying. So you can't just take verse 13 without verses 1 through 12 interacting in it, because we're to be the influence in a society that is decaying, and we're to be the salt that prevents a society from wholesale decay. You know, it's amazing. I worked for FedEx for almost 10 years. And there was a lot of wickedness in that group of people. And I'm just saying, but I'm just telling you, every time one of them, and like where I worked in Springfield, we probably had, I'm going to guess, 50 to 75 couriers that would be out the door every day by 8 o'clock in the morning and deliver packages to 1030 and then Another set of packages, still three, and then pick up and all that kind of stuff. And so everybody was on that belt in the morning getting their trucks ready, you know, and they're coming down, that plane comes in. I mean, to me, FedEx is an amazing corporation. And I loved working for them because they're fast-paced and they're 90 miles an hour, and it fits my personality. If you're at ADHD, you can work at FedEx. If you're some laid-back dude, no, don't go there, man. You'll get eat up. But here's what I found out. Every time somebody got in trouble, they could be nasty and tell their dirty jokes and do all that kind of stuff. But when somebody got cancer, when somebody's mother got sick, it wasn't the rest of their buddies that had no salt that they came to, it was the person who had a testimony that was different than everybody else. And I never realized how much influence that I had personally until I actually left the company and all the people that sent me things and talked to me. And they didn't know that they were saying it. And I'm not, listen, I am not, I am not the, poster boy or anything like that. I was just trying to, listen, I was just trying to go through college and get my pastoral theology degree and try to be a good testimony and witness to people when I could. I was not no super Christian, still am not. I'm just doing the best that I can with who I am. And I'm not perfect. But you don't have to be. Like I've taught my grandkids, if you just have a good work ethic, you'll always have a job. Because nobody wants to work anymore. But with a Christian, it has to go one step further. We need to have the moral character that preserves our society. It's up to you. It's up to me. And when I left, when I left Springfield to go to pastor a church, I got all these notes and different things. I was like, you just don't have any idea. You have no idea the influence that you're making right now. or bad, and I'll get to that in just a minute. This is the reason the disciples need to live a distinctly different, savory, and in a salty way in which Jesus describes. Just like this theme up here, Be Ye Holy. That is far from the world's attitude today at all. We are not to be influenced and to blend rather than we are to be influenced and preserved. One of the things, and I'll just throw this out here, is one of the things that is so prevalent in our society right now is the blending of the genders. And people, it's like the society wants to blend the genders and it's not really, no, no, no. Boys should be distinct from girls. Somebody say amen, give me something tonight. And so when you are distinct in your gender and you live your life out like that, people are gonna take notice. And I'm not talking about being weird. I'm talking about being holy and there's a difference. Amen. because salt preserves. We are not to be influenced and to blend, but rather we're to influence and preserve. That is why we need to live and speak, listen, and dress salty. Our music is to be salty. Our friendships are to be salty. Our work in the workplace is to be salty. Our character is to be salty. Why? Because the world needs preservation. And this sermon on the mount with the Beatitudes preach will give you a salty distinct characteristics. So there's a worth of salt. And I gave you about four or five things, but I believe the main thing that Jesus is getting across here is preservation. But here's the one that's the negative. There's a warning for salt. Because while there is a worth for salt and there is a work that salt does, there is also a warning for salt and that is it can lose its distinct, it can lose its savor. It can lose its distinctness. It can lose the savor that gives it the ability to preserve. If measures are not taken to preserve that savor, then the salt is influenced. and will become impure and it will lose its ability to preserve and therefore to influence. Have you ever had salt that the lid got left open and somebody deceivingly came back by and closed it up and you used it and you're like, and it's a little chunky or whatever and you're like, shake it like that and talk to it a little bit. And then you kind of put it in your hand and do that and go like that. You know what, that's the idea when Jesus said with lukewarmness, he spewed them out of his mouth. It's kind of the same application we can make that, well, this ain't no good. Well, what do you want me to do with it? Throw it outside, throw it on the road because there's nothing. You know, the Apostle Paul said it like this, he said, he basically said that his greatest, the thing that he was most nervous about and the thing that he was most concerned about was that when he preached to others, he himself would become a castaway. You know what I believe we can apply that to? Salt. You know, Paul was saying, I don't ever want to lose my saltiness. I don't want to ever lose my preservation power. I don't want to lose my preservation ability. We have been placed in a world, but we don't have to be of the world. You have to live in the world. And people who want to be hermits and go live on a mountain or whatever, That, I'm just saying, that's not reality. And so we're, you don't go live, you live in the world. You interact with people every day. And the miracle of salvation has made us partakers of the divine nature and we become distinct and separate and unlike the world, but we're still in the world. The popular philosophy of many so-called Christians today is if we wanna win the world, we have to become like the world. That is a lie of the devil. People are looking for distinctness. They're looking for difference. They're looking for something that causes them to thirst. That's salt. That's the application of the Beatitudes. If we taste like the world, how are we gonna be salty? I go back to Abraham and Lot. Lot was in Sodom, Abraham stayed out of Sodom. Which did more to preserve Sodom? Abraham or Lot? Abraham. By the way, you don't need five pounds of salt for five pounds of potatoes. You just need a little salt and it savors. Look at verse number 13 again. ye are the salt of the earth. But if the salt hath lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? What is unsavory salt good for? Here's what the Bible says. It's good for nothing. I think you should underline that in your Bible. Good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden underfoot of men. The only thing bad salt is good for is nothing. Throw out the door. And again, in our society, we can use it for, we don't buy the good salt to throw out on the driveway to get the ice off of it. We just throw the unsavory, no good salt. But that good salt, we want that to preserve and to enhance. Here's the way I'd like to say it tonight. Don't lose your savor and get caught in the traffic of the world. Salt is good and it has great worth in the world in which we live, but it must do its work of being salty. Salty ain't no good unless it's, I got a friend that I play golf with, and he'll say, we'll get ready, we're gonna play a little competition, and he'll say, our competition, he's salty. You know, I understand what he's saying. We better bear down. You know what people need? They need salty Christians. Don't lose your saltiness. Walk with God in the Word and in prayer and keep the Beatitudes in your heart and life. And you will keep, and when you do, you'll be distinct and savory. And here's the difference, here's the deal. You will make a difference. And that's what needs to be applied to every child of God's life. If there's anything that we can get out of a recharge, a revival meeting, it's this. I wanna make a difference. But guess what? If you're gonna make a difference, you're gonna have to be different. you're gonna have to be disciplined, a disciple, a beatitude disciple. Now the second thing he talks, and I don't have time to go into it, but he also talks about you're the light. And a light doesn't hide itself, it sets it up on a hill so it can shine forth. When you fly over, when you're on a plane and you're flying in at night, Like when I'm flying from Dallas, Texas, and I take that flight a lot from Dallas to Springfield, because you can't get to Springfield unless you go through Dallas or Chicago. But Dallas, when we go the right direction, we go over Joplin, I go, oh, we're only 60 miles away from home. And in flying time, that's only about 15 minutes. And then after you get past Joplin, it's dark, but you see the little flicker lights out there, little farmhouses and stuff like that. And then you get into Springfield and you're almost home. People don't go outside and cover up their light. They let it shine. They're salty. They preserve. Let's stand tonight, every head bowed.