Yes, good evening. And thank you for that music. That was all very appropriate tonight. It's a real joy to hear. So tonight I'm preaching on salt and light as it applies to evangelism. And I am going to start with a song. I was saved in 1973. I was a folk singer all my life as a teenager. My mother and father bought me this guitar when I was 15, and maybe even younger. But a teenage girl, high school girl, actually demonstrated evangelism to me. give her testimony just at the end. She'll be listening to this on sermon audio, I believe, later on. We hear from her and her parents. But you teenagers, pay attention. When I got saved, I was a high school teacher, junior high school teacher, and this girl, Teresa, witnessed to me, and I thought about my own teenage years. I went faithfully to church with my mother primarily. And my mother seemed to love the Lord. She loved the church. And yet, when I got saved, I knew that she didn't have that personal relationship. But as a child, she gave me a babysitter. My mother and dad had this lady we called Grandma Sims come to the house, and she read me from my childhood Bible, which I had most of my life. She taught me Genesis 1 and Matthew 5. And those two passages, she had me memorize those two entire parts of chapters, or Genesis 1 entirety, Matthew 5, the Beatitudes. And so when I got saved, I made a connection between those two. Genesis 1 is talking about our future paradise, home. And the qualifications to enter into that are Matthew 5, the Beatitudes, blessed are the, you know, everything. I'm gonna, poor in spirit, I'm gonna sing in just a minute. So I composed this And I called my mother on the phone long distance, she was across the country, and I sang this to her. And seeing the multitude, he went up onto a mountainside. And when he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, the humble, for they shall inherit Blessed are those who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when all men shall revile you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they all the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth, But if that salt loses its flavor, how can it then be salted? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown and trampled underfoot by men. You are the salt of the earth, and you are the light of the world. A city that's built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a basket, but they place it on a lampstand where it gives light unto all in the room. You are the light of the world, and let your light so shine among men that they will see your good works. Let your light so shine among men that they will glorify your Father who is in heaven. You are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before man. Well, thank you. And if we get to the rest of the story, you'll find out that my mother did get saved. And so we're gonna look at those passages, the salt and earth. I should have had you turn to Matthew 5, some people did. That was in my notes, I just didn't read it. But let's do that here. In Matthew 5, verse 13, it says, 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." So there's a contrast here between, he says, you are the salt of the earth, and then we're going to look at you are the light of the world. And as I've understood this, The idea of salt is how we are made salty by the gospel in our life. It's really in context there, it seems to be, and in context of evangelism, it's talking about our ability to influence people to want and to have a desire to hear the Word of God. And so however we do that, we think about salt imparting desirable flavors. It does other things also. Salt preserves from decay. And salt makes us thirsty, doesn't it? It makes you thirsty. And so, it's a way, if we are salty, then our testimony should, or our life before the unbelievers should have the effect of making them thirsty for the Lord Jesus Christ. And also, I've noticed that salt stings when you put it on a sword, doesn't it? But it helps in the healing. And so in the same way, we see verses that encourage us to, that salt will bring healing. And I want to look at some uses of the word salt in the Old Testament. The first time salt is used is in Genesis 19.26. But Lot's wife behind him looked back and she became a pillar of salt. That's not the kind of salt we need to be. Leviticus 2 13 says you shall season all your grain offerings these are the priests and sacrifices with salt you shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from the grain offering with all your offerings you shall offer salt and so salt is nice taste to the Lord in the meat offerings that would be given and also the the priests would partake in these. It says, Numbers 18-19, all the holy contributions that the people of Israel present to the Lord I give to you. That's his inheritance to the the priests and we are the priests and In our day with the Word of God as a perpetual do the salt offerings It is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord and you for your offspring with you and then he also the Lord also gave a covenant of salt for David and Saying that his kingdom over Israel would be forever David and his sons by a covenant of salt so salt is very important to the gospel and to the person of the gospel, the son of David, Jesus Christ, in his kingdom. God has illustrated three different things that I'm going to look at as we go to light now. There's much more we could talk about salt. By the way, the idea of salt losing its savor, most commentators just comment that salt doesn't True salt does not lose its saltiness, but what Jesus is referring to is their most common kind of salt that they would buy in the market was from the Dead Sea, and we tasted that. Don and I floated in the Dead Sea. No, we didn't. I was, did we? Yes, we did. Yes. I was just thinking if we did, we'd be dead. No, no. You can float on there and you don't sink. And you get it in your mouth. It's just terrible. Because it's not true salt. It's got all kinds of minerals mixed in with it. And so that's basically what can happen to salt. It gets mixed in with these things. And then it's just no good except to be used for, oh, it can be sprinkled on the snow, that they didn't do that much in the Old Testament, or the New Testament, so they didn't mention that. The trampling underfoot, Jesus says, if it loses its saltiness. So there are three things I'm gonna look at. First, in Luke 14, if you wanna look at that, it's just basically the same thing, Luke 14, 33. So therefore, any of you who does not renounce all that he has, cannot be a disciple. Salt is good, Jesus said, But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It's no longer used either for the soil or for a manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear." And so we're going to think about that, that he says this in the context of discipleship. And I believe It's in the context of the Spirit-controlled life. If you don't give up everything, renounce all that you have, you cannot be my disciple. And when Jesus was praying for his disciples at the end of John, he says, before he talks about giving up everything, he says, that you can do nothing without me. Without me you can do nothing. And so then he talks about the importance of the Holy Spirit that he was going to heaven to send back to them and give to them as a gift. And we're going to look at that in just a bit. His pure then secondly Mark 9 discusses the causes for stumbling as purifying and conflict resolution. He says, if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. And he goes on like that, and he says, verse 49, for everyone will be salted with fire. Salted with fire, he says. So this is a serious thing. And he says, salt is good, but if salt loses its saltiness, how shall it be made salty again? And then he says, you have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. In other words, he's talking here about conflict resolution. If there's anything that makes you sin or causes a brother to sin, if your hand or your eye or anything, just cut it off. It's that serious. You are salted with fire. We are all. And God, Christ is going to purify His church, as it were, with salt. He's gonna rub salt in our wounds until we heal. One another and have peace with one another he says so then the last Another thing that he says in in the New Testament is this continues steadfastly in prayer Paul says praying for me for an open door to the word that I may proclaim it clearly as I should and then he says walk in wisdom in The way that you act toward others make the most of every opportunity Let your speech be always full of grace seasoned with what? salt so that you may know how you ought to answer every person. So salt is important in praying for open doors and knowing what to say, having our speech seasoned with salt. So let's go on with light. That's the main thing. I'm going to give some illustrations of all this. First of all, what is the source? Well, let's read In Matthew 5, you are, verse 14, you are the light of the world. A city on a hillside cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on a stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So what is this light? What is the source of light? Well, the source of light in the universe is God himself. In 1 John 1, 5, God is light. In him, there's no darkness at all. And the first thing that God created is light. And I want to tie something in here that I saw as a connection also between Genesis 1 and Matthew 5. In Genesis 1 to 3, God created physical light before anything else. He created physical light before he created the sun, moon, and the stars were all on day four. And then We see in John 1, referring, John 1, verse 1, referring back to creation. Jesus is God in creation. In the beginning was the Word, that's Jesus, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He is the true life, light, verse 9, which gives light to everyone who's coming into the world. And I had read that all before I got saved. I knew that that was in the Bible. And I think I knew that John 8, 12 was in the Bible. Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. So God created light. And then he put that light, he gave that light to the sun, moon and stars to give light on the earth. Jesus was the word of God. And so he is that light, he says. And then he tells us we are the light of the world. So what is the source of our being the light of the world? If Jesus is the light, God is the light of the world, then that means that our light is Jesus. It points people to God. And so I saw that connection between those two passages, Genesis and Matthew 5. And I want to look at Boy, I have five minutes. I just want to, I should go to some examples here. I want to just mention New Testament examples of evangelism in the New Testament. And one of those was in the beginning in Acts chapter one, Jesus said you are wait in Jerusalem I'll look at this first part of Acts he says you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and he had told them and John I'll just summarize all this he had told them that that that Holy Spirit the the gift that he would give would lead them into all truth it would Remind he the Holy Spirit would when he was in them which happened in Acts 1 he would Bring them to remembrance of everything he had said and he would even reveal what is to come and that's the book of Revelation and so in in Acts Chapter 1, the first light was seen there, I believe, and when the Holy Spirit came upon all of them and there were tongues of what? Fire. And so light came into their bodies visibly, or came upon them, and they all spoke in different languages, and then they went out proclaiming the light of God. And Pastor Phil, last week, preached from that great story Acts chapter 8 of the Ethiopian eunuch and a evangelist named Philip. So I hope you are all here Sunday morning. He started out his message with that account of this jogger who came out in the there was this man from the Sudan area or Ethiopia. He's identified in the Bibles and he was he had been to Jerusalem and he'd bought himself a Bible scroll and he was reading Isaiah 53, right? He didn't know who this was talking about, and suddenly this jogger comes running through the desert, and it's Philip. And he comes along, he says, do you understand what you're reading? And the guy says, no, how can I unless somebody explains? And somebody had explained to Philip, the evangelist before that. So he got in and he explained and this Ethiopian official got saved and was baptized there on the road and went away rejoicing back to the queen. And we know that that part of Africa was kind of the seed of Christianity, a strong place in the early days. And now it's very persecuted, but still the work of God is happening there. So I see, I wanted to finish my, a story about my mom and how she came to Christ. But first of all, I just want to mention I did get saved and I went to seminary. My first year, or before seminary, I was at the University in New York studying and I gave out tracts everywhere. And I was studying evangelism and I just gave out tracts. I remember giving out tracts in an elevator and I thought, this is a dumb place to give out tracts, but there were these people there. And one guy in particular, I remembered that he looked at it and he opened it and was looking inside and then he closed it and he just kind of smiled at me as he left. Well, After that, I finished seminary, I became a missionary, and one of our supporting churches was there in New York. We went back, and a guy came to hear me preach. He says, you're Jerry Layton? And he held up this tract that he'd had for years. And he said, I just put this in my drawer, and then my wife and I were having struggles at one time, and I looked at it, and I read it, and I knew I had to get saved, and I got on my knees, and I got saved. And now I'm a deacon in the mother church of this church that was supporting us across the river. And so praise God for that. And so I I want to look at some divine appointments. And one of those was my mom. I'll finish this up. We had come from the East Coast to Seattle, and Tacoma was my seminary, Northwest Baptist Seminary. And my mom came down to live with us nearby and join Temple Baptist Church was our sending church. And she just had always professed to be, she just loved God, she loved the Bible, she loved the Word, she loved Grandma Sims who had taught me the Bible. And Donna said to her one day, we're studying evangelism explosion, and I have to give a presentation. Can I practice it on you?" And my mom said, oh yeah, that sounds interesting. And so my mom listened to her and listened, and as she went on, you know, if you were to die tonight, would you know for sure you're gonna be in heaven? And Donna went on, and my mom looked kind of like she was under conviction. And just toward the end, she started to cry, and then she started to bawl. And my mom, or Donna thought, oh man, I blew it. my first presentation and my mother-in-law's weeping. So then I told her, Mom's got to get saved. So we took her out to dinner and led her to the Lord together. And praise God, after that she struggled with sin, but she did certain things like smoking and things, but she became one of our supporters and now she's with the Lord. And I was able to be, I was on the mission field when she died, but I was the last one to talk with her on the phone and pray with her while she was going into, she had gone into a coma, but she was still responding to my phone call. So praise God for those, what I call divine appointments. And Phil, I got two minutes left, so Phil had requested that I talk about Glenn. And this is a illustration of a divine appointment. God wants us to evangelize. He gives us Bible verses, and the Holy Spirit brings those Bible verses to mind. And Jesus says, don't even worry what you're going to say when you witness to somebody. When it's time, I'll give you the words. Well, I was driving across this bridge, and a car in front of me stopped and it was a two-way, well it was really, cars had to pass this guy and I was right behind him. And then I was going to pass, but everybody was passing. And then I looked him in the rearview mirror, and it was Glenn. Well, this guy I worked with when I was in seminary, and I didn't particularly care for him. He was abrasive. He was kind of rude all the time. And I had had an opportunity the day before to talk to him at work. And I sort of felt this prodding of the Holy Spirit that I needed to share something with him. And he said something that I could have brought the gospel in. And I thought, no, this guy's a creep. And I just didn't say anything. Well, here I am on the bridge. And his car's stopped there. And I got out of my car and had my flashers on. I says, Glenn, what happened? He says, I'm out of gas. He says, I'm so glad to see you. I don't know what to do. I said, well, I happen to have an empty gas can in my trunk. He said, oh, good. And so I helped him, and the two of us got out. I moved my car up first, and then we pushed his car out of the way. And then we walked to the gas station. On the way to the gas station, I just talked to him about different things and the gospel came up and I led him to the Lord. Well, we got back to the car and he's just looking at me. And I shared about Jesus and how he died for your sins and God raised him from the dead and he's alive and he wants to save you and you've heard all this but you need to trust in him that he's alive and he'll make you a child of God. And he just stood there looking at me. And the cars were going by and people were beeping. And I says, well, you need to pray. And he says, yes. And I said, later? He says, no, right now. And so we prayed on the bridge for him to get saved. And then he went off. He had tears in his eyes. And he got in his car and he drove off. When I got to work later that day, the boss came running out to see me. He says, you're Jerry Leighton? And I said, yeah. And I says, well, Glenn's my son. And anyway, he told me, he said all these, he said these strange things. He says, I'd like to hear more about this. And so I didn't get a chance to talk to him right away, but at church, I shared this testimony and the deacons all got excited. They said, we've been praying for that boss of yours for a long time to have an opportunity to share the gospel with him. And wow, he had it. Actually, the reason it was so urgent, and I want to impress the young people on this, a week later Glenn was on his way to college and he was in a car accident and died. And as a result of that, it was so sad, but I got to see his father again, and the deacons went to comfort his father. And as I understand, he became a believer, I'm sure. I don't know all the end of that story, but praise God for that. I do wanna tell you, Teresa Brunk was a young girl, teenager, who was in my class when I was teaching seventh grade in 1973. And she knew that I was troubled by evolution because I knew Genesis 1, what it taught, and that it conflicts with evolution. I knew the Beatitudes, that I didn't fit those characteristics that I just sang. And after I showed an evolution movie and she could tell that I was shaken by it, And I felt under conviction by God every time I thought about evolution. She came and said, Mr. Layton, you don't have to believe evolution. I said, you don't? And she says, no, you can come to our church and learn the gospel and believe in Jesus and learn Genesis, it's true. And I says, yeah, it's really true, I can really believe Genesis? She says, yeah, yeah. And she says, you need to come to our church and hear the preaching and you'll be a better science teacher. And within a few days after that, I fell on my knees and cried out to God, repented, and got saved. And then the first thought on my mind was to put Matthew 5 Beatitudes to music. So with that, young people, remember you can be a great influence on your teachers, but you need to be the salt of the earth, You need to have that flavor in you and you need to be the light of the world. You need to rely on the Holy Spirit to bring verses to mind and to open your mouth when the opportunity is right. Father in heaven, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you for these illustrations of divine appointments. Now just bless us as we finish up tonight. I pray for each one of these young people and if there's any who are not saved that they would remember the gospel as I shared it, that Christ being alive because he died for our sins and you raised him from the dead and he has the power to save and to completely heal and to give peace and joy in our hearts. So we just, I just pray for them to be able to All of us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world in Jesus name. Amen Amen. Thank you