DIVINE DISADVANTAGE - Oswald Chambers
The disadvantage of a saint in the present order of things is that he has to make his confession of Jesus not in secret, but glaringly public. It would doubtless be to our advantage from the self-realization standpoint to keep quiet, and nowadays the tendency is growing stronger to say Be a Christian, live a holy life, but don t talk about it. Our Lord uses as illustrations the most conspicuous things known to men, e.g., salt, light, and a city set on a hill, and He says Be like that in your home, in your business, in your church; be conspicuously a Christian for ridicule or for respect according to the mood of the people you are with. Again in Matthew X. Our Lord taught the need to be conspicuous proclaimers of the truth and not to cover it up for fear of wolfish men.
Concentrated Service, v. 13.
Not consecrated service but concentrated. Consecration would soon be changed into sanctification if we would only concentrate on what God wants. Concentration means pinning down the four corners of the mind until it is settled on what God wants. The literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is child s play; the interpretation by the Holy Spirit is the stern work of a saint, and it requires spiritual concentration.
Ye are the salt of the earth.” Some modern teachers seem to think Our Lord said ” Ye are the sugar of the earth,” meaning that gentleness and winsomeness without curativeness is the ideal of the Christian. Our Lord’s illustration of a Christian is salt, and salt is the most concentrated thing known. Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. It is a disadvantage to be salt. Think of the action of salt in a wound and you realize that. If you get salt into a wound, it hurts, and if God s children get amongst those who are ” raw ” towards God, their presence hurts. The man who is wrong with God is like an open wound, and when salt gets in it causes annoyance and distress and he is spiteful and bitter. The disciples of Jesus in the present dispensation preserve society from corruption. The ” salt ” causes excessive irritation which spells persecution for the saint.
How are we to maintain the healthy salty tang of saint-lines? By remaining rightly related to God through Jesus Christ. In the present dispensation, Jesus says, the kingdom of God is within you without observation, men are called on to live out His teaching in an age that will not recognize Him, and that spells limitation and very often persecution. This is the day of the humiliation of the saints; in the next dispensation it will be the glory fiction of the saints, and the Kingdom of God will be outside as well as inside men.
Conspicuous Setting, vv. 14-16.
The illustrations Our Lord uses are all conspicuous viz., salt, light and a city set on a hill. There is no possibility of mistaking them. Salt to preserve from corruption has to be placed in the midst of it, and before it can do its work it causes excessive irritation which spells persecution. Light attracts bats and night moths, and points out the way for burglars as well as for honest people: Jesus would have us remember that men will certainly defraud us. A city is the gathering place for all the human driftwood that will not work for its own living, and the Christian will have any number of parasites and ungrateful hangers-on. All these considerations form a powerful temptation to pretend we are not salt, to put our light under a bushel, and to cover our city with a fog. But Jesus will have nothing in the nature of a covert disciple.
Ye are the light of the world.” You cannot soil light; you may try to grasp a beam of light with the sootiest hand, but you leave no mark on the light. A sunbeam may shine into the filthiest hovel in the slums of a city but it cannot be soiled. A merely moral man or an innocent man may be soiled in spite of his integrity, but the man who is made pure by the Holy Ghost cannot be soiled, he is as light. Thank God for the men and women who are spending their lives in the slums of the earth, not as social reformers to lift their brother men to cleaner styes, but as the light of God, revealing a way back to God. God keeps them as the light, unsullied. If you have been covering your light, uncover it! Walk as children of light. The light always reveals and guides, and men dislike it and prefer darkness when their deeds are evil. (John III. 19-20.) Are we the salt of the earth? Are we the light of the world? Are we allowing God to exhibit in our lives the truth of these startling statements of Jesus?