Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the profound truth that Christians are called to be the 'salt of the earth,' highlighting the necessity of purity and the inevitability of persecution in the Christian life. He reflects on the importance of living out one's faith authentically, as demonstrated by figures like Stephen, the first martyr, and warns against the dangers of losing one's spiritual flavor. Ravenhill asserts that true discipleship involves a commitment to God's will, a life of prayer, and a deep understanding of Scripture, which together empower believers to impact a decaying world. He challenges the church to recognize its role in preserving righteousness and to seek revival, as the effectiveness of the church directly influences the state of the world.

All right, Matthew 5 again. It's a great sermon. Not mine, but his. Great sermon on the Mount. Last week we meditated a little, at least, on the fact that persecution follows purity. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The other side of the coin is blessed are the persecuted. And that there is no way of living the Christian life without persecution. There was none for Jesus, there was none for the early church, there was none for the martyrs, and there's none for us. And to say that prayer will get us out of every situation is not true at all. As I've said very often, we may sing sweet hour of prayer, but when you've sung it, you go out of the door of the sanctuary and the problem's still there. It isn't always removed. And what the sweet hour of prayer does is not necessarily remove the obstacle, but give us grace to manage the obstacle. Climb over it, to get rounded, to carry the burden. And this has been the way that God has matured his people. We said again that it doesn't matter if you make your mind up, you're going to be the holiest person in this community, or San Anton, or wherever you live. They won't come and ask for your autograph or take your photograph. They'll test you and see if it's really true. If you're for real, they've every right to do this. We gave the classic experience illustration, pardon me, of what I, a person I think is the most perfect example of a spirit-filled believer. And I doubt if he was more than 19 years of age, and that was Stephen in the early church. I think the early church fully expected that he was going to be the grand marshal of their outfit, if you like, to say he was going to be the brigadier general, or the general, whatever you want to call him, the leader of the army at that time. And to their amazement, he was the first martyr. It's amazing how quickly God has taken some men. It's not how long you live that matters, it's how we live that matters. If you have to live till you're 88 like John Wesley to prove your point, well then God isn't just in letting David Brainerd die at 28. If you just get a more reward for living longer, then God gave David Brainerd 60 years less to live than he gave John Wesley. It's not that. I believe the whole secret of living is this, that if you do die consciously, and the odds are against you, there's so many air crashes and folk drive like mad, except me, but the odds are that you may not die conscious. But if we do die conscious, the thing is that we may say like Jesus, I have finished the work thou gave us me to do. Not that somebody else gave you to do. I'm quite sure of this. I know it's not popular to say, but I've never been too popular anyhow, and it's a bit late to start right now. But I believe there are people who kill themselves literally, almost literally in church service, and it doesn't mean a hill of beans to the Lord. It's purely church organized stuff. They've been taught to do it. You do this, you knock on so many doors, you're almost buying your way to heaven like the Roman Catholic system, except the taxes are a bit less. But that's not the way God wants it. It's knowing what God wants me to do, and then having the courage to do it. I believe that's what the will of God is. Knowing, I believe that's what faith is, pardon me, knowing what God's will is, and having the courage to do that thing that he's revealed to me, or he has revealed to you. Now we come to a, I nearly used the word, I will use it, we come to a salty situation here, because Jesus says right here, ye are the salt of the earth. It's not very flattering. Salt isn't very expensive. We don't value it too much. It's very commonplace. An awful lot of things Jesus could have said, that he did not say about this amazing, in this amazing Sermon on the Mount. I looked back in the chapter a little earlier this week, and reminded myself that in the fourth chapter, there are a number of things Jesus did. The one thing, he called for disciples. Before that he had had a ministry of at least three things. It says he'd been teaching, and he'd been preaching, and he'd been healing, and then he went on to calling. And it's as though he takes those four disciples and says, now sit down, I'll tell you what discipleship is all about. As we said last week, part of this wonderful teaching of Jesus is, ye shall, ye shall, it all, they shall, pardon me, they shall, they shall, they shall, they shall inherit, they shall be blessed, and then he pins it right down, he says ye shall. I know men have argued for years about who heard the Sermon on the Mount. Well I'm quite sure that Jesus was speaking directly to his disciples, and I'm equally sure that on the outskirts, there was a crowd of other people that were listening. And you know, we have, I think, established this fact in most of our minds, at least I hope so, that there are only two kingdoms in this world. There may be many levels in the one kingdom of the world. You can talk about the sports kingdom, you can talk about the business kingdom, you can talk about the religious kingdom, you can talk about the political kingdom, but they're all kind of subdivisions, they're branches in the one tree. They're one kingdom. And the other kingdom is the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the scripture is very explicit when it says, one day the kingdoms, all that bunch of kingdoms, shall become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. There's an amazing story, is it in the 18th of Revelation, that talks about the collapse of the world system. Those who buy silk, and buy gold, and do this, that, and the other. And it says, in one hour, the whole thing's going to fall. It doesn't look like it sometimes, at least it didn't, it looks more like it now, than ever it did in history, I suppose. That every underpinning is, is gradually falling away. But one day, these kingdoms, the kingdoms of this world, shall become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. Now, these kingdoms are opposite. They don't run parallel, they're in collision, at least they used to be. I forget who it was, I'm not sure if it was MacArthur, not the General MacArthur, but a man that, he once wrote some great words about this, Sermon on the Mount. I don't have it, I hope to get it, but I think it was MacArthur who said that, if one of those beings from another world, suddenly found himself on this earth, and he could read our English, preferably, and he picked up a New Testament and read it. And he started with the Sermon on the Mount, and then he went and looked for a bunch of people that lived it. He'd say, well, one of two things, either that's wrong, or this is wrong. I mean, they don't just gel, they, they, they don't mesh like cogs that should fit together. The Sermon on the Mount is one level, the spirituality of the average church is entirely different. Now, of course, very often, I've heard that quoted, and people say, well, of course, if people came in our services, they wouldn't see signs and wonders and miracles, are you sure? Do, do signs and wonders and miracles always have to go before these eyes of ours? I can show you people that do signs and wonders and miracles that live immorally. And they live in our church, in our fundamental churches. And I could start at the top and go to the bottom, and, and you'd be staggered by them. You wouldn't have to go too far from here to find some, that fairly recently ditched their wives, but they still carry on with their gifts and their evidences, and they still make money, and they still have a following. What does it prove? Isn't it rather amazing that in this Sermon on the Mount, which is addressed specifically here to the disciples, the immediate disciples, that Jesus never said, blessed are the prophets, blessed are the miracle workers, blessed are the preachers, blessed are the spiritually successful. He didn't say that. Right here, he's after character. Again, he never blessed the material thing. You see, it's easy for us, we've kind of been, what shall I say, we've been kind of toned down, this thing hasn't hit us like a bomb. Supposing you never heard this in your life, and somebody came in and began to say, quote the Beatitudes. Man, you'd sit back and say, just, just a minute, man, that, could you stop, I've got enough to think about for a week, could you give us one a week, these are, these are fantastic. But you see, we've got used to hearing the blesseds, the blesseds, the blesseds, the blesseds. Doesn't mean too much to us. But I'll tell you the effect it had on these people, because it says at the end of the seventh chapter, it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, and remember, the Sermon on the Mount goes through chapters five, six, and seven. And when he got to the end, it says in verse 28, it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at his doctrine. They were dumbfounded. Why? Well, let the next verse explain it, because I could exaggerate. For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. You see, even his enemies said, never man spake like this man. Nobody's going to drop a bombshell on men and women like this. What does it say? He taught them. He taught them what? Well, why didn't he teach them about Socrates? He knew that Socrates had been around 400 years before. Why didn't he teach them from the Greek masters? Why didn't he teach them about Hillel, the greatest interpreter, maybe, of the Old Testament that there was around? Maybe Gamaliel was still, was around at that time, but Paul was taught by, I don't know. Isn't it amazing? Jesus never made any references to the classics. He never made any reference to history. Isn't it rather amazing? He never made any blast against the Roman Empire, and every time he went down the street, people were slaves to the Roman Empire. He never said a thing about slavery. How impractical can you get? Isn't this pie in the sky when you die? No, it's pie on the road to the sky for me, as far as I'm concerned. It'll be pie afterwards, maybe, and I don't know, there'll be ice cream on it, but it's going to be wonderful when we get there anyhow. But what about the journey of life right now? And after all, this is what Jesus is after in giving us this Sermon on the Mount. Now, he says, again, he says a lot of things that, pardon me, he did not say a lot of things that I think he could have said, and I could add a lot more to what I've already said. I'm conscious more and more and more that Jesus is pinning us down to these things. What is the Sermon on the Mount? I'll tell you in a nutshell, as far as I'm concerned. I believe the Sermon on the Mount is a character sketch of Jesus Christ. He was what he said. And if you and I aren't what we say, well, forget it, as far as I'm concerned. You can shout to high heaven and raise the dead. I'm not that much interested in your spiritual life, except to pray for it. Jesus was everything that he said. What does it say? Blessed are the poor. Was anybody poorer? Well, he says, poor in spirit. Luke doesn't say that. He's more raw still. He says, blessed are the poor. Now, in the context is poverty of spirit, sure enough. Blessed are the meek. Who was meeker than Jesus? His own testimony was, I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your soul. Blessed are the merciful. Who was more merciful? I've often thought when they challenged him to do what the perennial challenged to every one of us, till you quit breathing, come down from the cross and save yourself. Why did you decide to do that in a missionary meeting? Because there was so much pressure on you. Why did somebody get you to give away so much money? Are you sorry you did it? Why did you say you wouldn't do this? Or you wouldn't fast so many days a week, or do that? Why did you do it? Come down from the cross, save yourself. You won't save the church, you'll save yourself. I think it's wonderful that Jesus didn't show that he didn't have to come down for the cross. He could have breathed on them and shriveled them all up. He cursed the fig tree and it perished. Even his disciples said, oh master, they said, that's a tree that you withered. You spoke to it withered. He could have done the same thing from the cross and he would have been petrified. He didn't. He was full of mercy. So merciful that right at the end, he said to the man who cried, I well, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. Anyhow, he had some idea about the kingdom, whether we have or not. He said, when thou comest into thy kingdom, remember me. And Jesus said, thou shalt be with me this day in paradise. Again, I say, it's amazing. If you and I had been dying there, we'd be shouting ourselves hoarse to testify, wouldn't we? We'd be telling him how we got saved and filled with the spirit. And Jesus let them both go to hell and didn't say a word to either of them. Why? Well, in this very Sermon on the Mount, he said just before, in that fourth chapter, you don't always cast your pearls before swine. There's a time to speak and there's a time not to speak. There's a time when you'll be a coward if you didn't speak and there's a time when you'd be a fool if you did. You see, one of the things that his judges didn't like about it, don't you answer me? Was it Herod, a pilot that said that? Don't you realize I've got power? Well, it's great when you realize there isn't a person in the world that has any power over you if you're a child of God. Because Jesus said, you won't scare me. You haven't the power to take my life. I have power to lay it down. And what's more, I have power to take it up again. And you see, I think that that's one of the situations in which when you say to people, well, you can be crucified with Christ, and then they say, well, why does the apostle talk about being, uh, uh, I die daily? Why does he do it? He does it for this reason, that there are situations in life where you can die. You can die once to self, but you die many times to choices that come maybe in the week. One, one choice comes and you decide that, uh, well, you'll do this or you won't do that, whatever the thing is, you see. You can't make a decision right now for every situation in life. You can make it as regards yourself. But there are times when again, somebody might say, well, um, do you want to come and fish or something? And you'll say, no, I, uh, nothing wrong in fishing as I often say to preachers, Peter did when he backslid. But, uh, by the same token, fishing's good for you now and again. I, I quite agree. But, but there are times when you say, well, I can't afford the time. I need that time for something else. Somebody says, would you like to buy this? Oh man, you know, it should cost you a hundred dollars. You can have it for 20. It will be wrong if you bought it for 20 cents sometimes. You say no, the Lord just says no. I remember one day we were having what we call tea in England. There wasn't too much to it. We were living on a starvation diet nearly. And, uh, somebody had given us some cookies and we hadn't eaten much more than jam and bread that day. And somebody passed a dish over to a young man and, and, uh, don't you want one? Well, he said, yes, yes, yes, I do. Well, we'll take it. He said, well, I say yes, but the Spirit says no. Some people look down the night. I thought it was very wonderful that he had such control that even though he could have eaten it, maybe eaten it, doesn't matter. He said, no, the Spirit says that's enough. So he obeyed the Lord in that little thing. Again, as Pascal said, perfection is made up of trifles, but perfection itself is no trifle, you see. And if God is going to perfect that which concerneth me, not concerneth you, but concerneth me, he's going to do a little pruning here and a little correcting there. And after all, um, I think so often of that word that says, we are his workmanship. I do a bit of sketching now and again, and sometimes people say, give me a sketch. Sign it. I say, not on your life. Not on your life. Too bad. I wouldn't give it. If you think it's all right, take it. But I wouldn't put my name on it. I don't want to autograph something that I don't think is worth even my poor little name. Well, is God happy to autograph my daily conduct as he turns me out to the world? Am I showing forth the praise of him who's called me out of darkness into his most marvelous light? Now, Jesus says here, the salt of the earth, and this raised a problem in my mind. Uh, what saved Jesus from corrupting? Why didn't he corrupt? He was a man of like passions as we are, and, uh, well, why didn't he get corrupted? Well, I guess your immediate answer is, because he had no sin. And my immediate answer to you is, neither had Adam. But he corrupted. Where is the difference? Well, uh, one school of theology says he, he couldn't be corrupted because he was God. Well, that's, that's one answer if you want it that way. Only to me, it seems to make a kind of burlesque or, uh, a funny show of the 40 days of temptation if he could not be tempted, if he couldn't be, if it wasn't possible for him to fail. Why didn't he fail? Well, I found some answers that satisfied me. Number one is, um, he did have a period of temptation for 40 days and nights. And somewhere in that situation, he decided that whatever it cost and wherever it led, he'd do the will of his Father. In other words, he made up his mind that he would do God's will whatever it cost him. I delight to do thy will, O my God. Number one. Number two is given in, in Luke chapter four, where it says in verse one, and Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost. Wasn't he filled with the Holy Ghost before? Uh, if I say I doubt it, will you think I'm a heretic? He was born of the Spirit. But you see, then he was anointed of the Spirit. And I say this, and I'll still say it, I'm gonna, another month I gotta preach to a hundred preachers and seminarians. And I'll say this to them too. I know nothing more ridiculous than the way that we ordain preachers. Because the questions, I've used the illustration before, if I were to win a national competition as the smartest man in America in answering questions on baseball, does that mean I could phone tomorrow to the Yankees and say to the boss there, well, uh, I want to play shortstop. Well, who are you? Well, I'm Leonard Ravenhill. Oh, oh, did I see you on TV? Yes, I was on TV yesterday and I, I won the national competition. I know more answers to baseball than any other man living. Does that make me eligible to play baseball? Because a man answers 20 questions a professor gives him, does that make him eligible to go and be a shepherd over, over sheep? Does that mean that he passes God's standard? A young man wrote me recently about being ordained, and I said, yes, I believe in ordination. I'll give you the chapter and verse. At least I could give him the chapter, not the verse right off. But chapter 15 of John, I have ordained you that you should go forth and bring forth fruit. That's the ordination I believe in. You see, you get a difference in the, in the, in the New Testament. Again, I had a preacher came down, he took too much time. I think I'm going to put a notice on my office, stay one hour. After that, it's $12 an hour. Why not? You go see a lawyer, he doesn't let you talk. I had a man came the other week, he stayed seven and a half hours in my office, and I couldn't get a word in edgeways, so you can tell how tough it was on me. He stayed seven and a half hours. Now, if he'd gone to a lawyer, it would have cost him a bit more than that, wouldn't it, eh? I guess it would. I don't know what they charge these days, but it cost you $10, maybe $20 an hour. So if you come to my office, you better watch out, I may send you a bill the week after. But his question was this, what is the difference between deacons and elders? Well, in the New Testament, they were told, they were told to go and select deacons. They were never told to go and select elders. Deacons do what? Deacons serve for the church. Elders serve in the church. One is a selection of men, the other is the ordination of God. I have been to churches more than once, where somebody said, well, glad to see you, Brother Raymond, but you know, I wouldn't have cared if you hadn't have come. You know, so-and-so there, I just as soon hear him preach as hear you preach. I have preached in the, I suppose, the most fashionable church in Nassau many times, and there have been celebrities there, millionaires, the Lord Chief Chancellor of the Court, and so forth, but recently they had a wonderful Sunday. The preacher was absent, the usual preacher was absent. And who came? The governor of the colony came, the prime minister of the colony came, the leading ministers of education, and everything else. They all came and packed the church to hear who? To hear a wonderful, colored preacher, one of the smartest and most inspiring preachers I know, and he's never been trained for the ministry, at least not by men. I guess that's why he's so good. Nobody spoiled him. As Dr. Tozer said one day, when a fellow said, well, I've never been to Bible school, Brother, he said, you've an advantage. Well, he sure had. You see, what happened, that man is such an anointing of God that immediately somebody says, I think we need elders in the church. Oh, well, so-and-so, of course, he'd have to be number one and number two. He surfaced himself by the fact that the anointing of God is there. You can't select elders, you can select deacons, you can't select elders, any more than you can give gifts to men. You can't give them, God gives them. And if man, if God hasn't given man the gift of preaching, well, heaven help him, he won't be much good in the church anyhow. I'm glad, and I say this with all honesty, I'm glad that God still has prerogatives. The church thinks she's got them all, she can put in office who she likes, and that's why she's so bankrupt. The Holy Ghost still has some offices that he gives, and you can work it up and do as you like, and try to imitate, but Brother, you'll not get any place at all. I like that word, is it in Exodus? It is, somewhere about 32, I guess, where it tells you how to make ingredients for the anointing of the priests. There are five of them, which are typical, five is the number of grace. And it tells you how to make them, and how to mix them, and it says a number of things about it. It says, number one, there's to be no imitation of it. No imitation. Imitation things are not good, are they? In the war time in England, we didn't have eggs, they gave us something, I don't know what it was made of, but it sure wasn't eggs. George Washington Carver made an egg, I think it was. You could cook it, you could fry it, you could eat it, you could do anything, and nobody could tell the difference between the egg he made and the egg the hen made. There wasn't a man on earth, other scientists could tell the difference. But I'll tell you who knew the difference, the old hen knew the difference. They put some of them under her, and she ignored the whole bunch. So hens must be smarter than scientists, but anyhow, you can cook them, cook with them, cook the eggs, they were just beautiful, but they were not the real thing. By the same token, these gifts and these ministries that God has, you know, I'm a rebel, I like to be a rebel, I'm a bit of a maverick, I guess, but Maverick came from Texas, didn't he? And I still say, I don't know a church where every gift of the spirit operates. There are at least 17, if you put them all in order, and I'd love to be in a church where they did, or where they were all developed, and I don't think that would happen in a weekend. So you see, God still has prerogatives, he still has gifts. And the only way to get to the top of the tree is to start at the bottom. The old Chinese proverb, the man that's going a thousand miles has to take the first step. And it's the same in the spiritual life, we have to be born of the spirit, and we have to be filled with the spirit. Now it says here, and this is one reason I believe that Jesus was, if you like, you can say he's incorruptible. Well I'll say he was uncorrupted. Number one, why? Because he battled it out with Satan. I would love to see every true believer, and I would particularly like to see every young man that's going into ministry, go hide himself for 40 days with God, and come out of it either facing earth and heaven and hell, and say, look I'm going through God's calling, or else quitting somewhere in the 40 days business. Be a tough school, you wouldn't get too many students. But we've had too many of one kind, we better start with another. And if this is a school of Jesus, which it was, it might be good to uh, to copy it. Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned to the Jordan, and was led of the spirit. That's number one reason, number two reason. One, he battled it out, and decided he would do the will of the Father whatever it cost him. Number two, he was full of the Holy Ghost. But number three, the deciding factor to me was this. Was what? That he knew the Word of God. You know at first when I reacted to this, why was Jesus salt? He was salt. He was the salt of the earth. We're the salt of the earth. To me, praying people are the salt of the church. You don't get many of them. I had a letter from England recently, this past week, in which a man said, if I, if I put a bunch of uh, you know, the Bible blues are coming to sing, I can't have it, I don't have enough chairs in the place. But if I announce we're going to have a protracted prayer meeting, you could sit anywhere you like. You get about a half a dozen people. Just about the same everywhere. The answer that was in my mind, as I thought about this, Jesus was pre-eminently a man of prayer. That was another thing. But the thing was, he knew the Word of God. My first reaction was, he didn't have a Bible. Then I, I stopped myself and said, didn't he? Are you sure he didn't? He sure did. It says in Luke 4, 17, that he went to the synagogue, as was his custom. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read. There was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he opened the book, he found the place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. All right. Previously in that same chapter, he had been in the wilderness. And what did he do? When Satan came to him, and remember this, he was a man of like passions. He had feelings, he had emotions, he had nerves and sinews and everything else. What did he do when he was attacked? Every time he was attacked, he did the same thing. He said, it is written, it is written, it is written. So his defense was that he settled that he would do the will of God, number one. Number two, he was filled with the Holy Ghost, put them in what order you like. Number three, he knew the Word of God, it is written. And he held that Word of Satan every time that he came to him. His submission to the Father, his total submission to the Father, that whatever the Father asked, he would do. Well then, isn't that the way we're going to be kept from corrupting? The thing is not, as one preacher is emphasizing a great deal these days, he's making a lot of headway with it too in churches. If you say, how many of you have been filled with the Spirit? You get a forest of hands in certain meetings. Put them down. And then he says now, be careful here, how many of you are filled? You'd be amazing how few put their hands up. They were filled. Are they filled? You see, when we talk about be filled with the Spirit, actually that's not what the Scripture says. The Scripture says, be being filled with the Spirit, stay in the place of submission. And as I say, if you had a faucet here and a pipe, and that pipe went up to the reservoirs with billions and billions of gallons of water in, you turn that faucet on and you hold your vessel there, that water is going to come in and come in. As long as that thing stays there, it's going to be filled. But if you move it out, you're going to lose some. It's got to stay in the place of submission. Then there's an inflow and an overflow and an outflow. And you know the loveliest thing about that to me is this, that when there's an inflow and an overflow, you never see the vessel, all you see is the overflow. See, so many people want to strut gifts because it can be attractive. You know, self will get back in every way it can. We'll even use the Lord to our own ends unless we're careful. But there is an inflow of the Spirit, there is an overflow of the Spirit, and there is an outflow of the Spirit. If I stay in that place of submission to the Spirit, if I keep my prayer life up, if I keep reading the Word of God, I'm safeguarding myself from the attacks of the enemy. I'm defending myself from the power of the enemy. All right, now we come to this statement of Jesus. He was a salt when he was here. He is the salt. Again I say it's, it's, it's, it's not really very flattering is it? Salt's about as cheap as anything you can buy in the store, pity you can't try it. It's about as cheap as it was. Get a great big box for 15, 17 cents. Who values salt? Not very valuable. And yet there are still areas of the world where people trade with salt. It doesn't mean much to us because it's plentiful. But I'm sure in my own mind this is one of the devastating things that Jesus ever said. And he said an awful lot. Number one he said you're the salt. Number two he said salt can lose its flavor. Number three he said if it does you deserve to be trodden on the foot of men. Now if that isn't hard, what is? Do you wonder? They said these are hard sayings. What do you think Jesus is after? A bunch of lollipops? He said one day concerning John Baptist, boy he was rough and rugged wasn't he? He just ignored the whole bunch of them. I said often and I, I often meditate on it myself to, to see the high priest going in the temple one afternoon with his garments that the bible says were of glory and beauty and a, and a thing around his neck with 12 precious stones, the names of the tribes on. He must have looked marvelous. He, he wore a helmet, it's called a crown. They put a crown on the head of Moses. He must have looked wonderful. And you go down the street and see the high priest the same. I tell you what, he's the greatest preacher. I mean he, he's right in the apostolic succession we'd say. I mean he, he, he can trace his authority back to Aaron. He's a great boy around here. And you drive your camel just a few miles down the road and you see a ragged rugged preacher like John the Baptist blasting his head off and blasting the sin of the king on the throne and tearing everybody to bits. Woo-hoo! Quite a difference. Hmm? He has no priestly garments. He, he, he, he doesn't care who's around. He has no sanctuary over his head. He has no ephod. He has no teraphim. He has no altar. He has no sacrifice. What do you mean he's God's anointed? Just as ridiculous as could be. Just as if somebody came along today devastating some of the idols that we have and the shibboleths that we have. He wouldn't be taken very, very comfortably into any, any fellowship, any sanctuary. Now Jesus says you're the salt of the earth. Well as I say again salt doesn't seem to be very valuable. It's very commonplace isn't it? There's some beautiful things about salt. One of them is it never shouts. Doesn't strut. Doesn't shine. Wouldn't it be nicer and more comforting to us if Jesus said now you darling disciples of mine of course I've called you above everybody else. You're the select for all eternity and, and I want to tell you you know you're precious gold. Peter you're a pearl. John you're a jewel. And instead of saying we're beautiful gems or costly stones or pure gold or going to be kings of the earth. He says you're the salt of the earth. That's about as cheap as you can get isn't it? But the next analogy he uses is you're the light of the world. Notice the difference? Salt of the earth, light of the world. One is below, one is above. One works silently. The other is set on display. We'll come to the light next week. I better not get down there. Let's stay with the salt right here. You're the salt of the earth. Well I found two things about salt to my own satisfaction if not to yours. Number one, it has to be pure if it's going to purify. And let me tell you if the church isn't pure she can shout her head off and you can get thousands of people to come and listen. I'm not interested. If they're not pure in doctrine, if they're not pure in manner of life, forget it. It's a holy club. It's a religious club. Salt must be pure if it's going to purify. Secondly, you never put salt on anything living. Before we had refrigerators, oh some of you old people, us nice old people, man, you know. Remember when there were just ice boxes? And before the ice boxes what did you have? You had salt. You're going to take anything anywhere. You put them in barrels. I can remember when they used to get salt, man, they used to stuff herrings in England and and ram salt down the side and put a layer of salt on top and fasten the top of the the old barrel there and roll them on one side and put them aboard ships that were going around the world. And this is how they used to take things around. Salt is a preservative. Again, you don't put salt on anything that's dead, anything that's living. You put it on anything that, on things that are dead. But salt can't make anything that that's dead live. And the church can't make anything that's dead live either. That's why when you start a social program or something like that, it's good, it's good, it's good, but it's not going to make people live. Again, God has prerogatives. When I hear people talking about revival, I almost tremble. I think, do you know what we're talking about? What is the first work of the Holy Spirit? He's never mentioned this day. All you mention today is you get anointing for ministry and gifts and so forth. The first work of the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, when he is come, he will convict. And I don't know a thing that's needed more in America or in England today than a baptism of conviction from the heart of the church, God's house to the White House or any other house. And I mean conviction. I had a man came in the house the other day, very godly, Pentecostal brother too, very precious, one of the most godly men I know. And he said, you know, right up in our country right now there's a, there's a, there's a new craze on. There's always some new craze, some new gimmick even in the churches, isn't there? You know what the new gimmick is? Well, it's been around before, it was around five, ten years ago and it died down, it's coming back. And it's, it's what some of them call a gift of falling backwards. You go to the front when the preacher talks and he touches you and you go down flat. But you're up in about 35 seconds, 36 if you're a long while. Oh and then they say, well of course this happened in the days of Wesley. It didn't. I challenge you to prove it. They didn't fall down in the days of Wesley. Yes they did. Well you said they didn't. Well they didn't. What do you mean they didn't? They didn't. They went down in Wesley's meetings and they stayed down two or three hours. He had to have people stay in the house of God until those people got through, striving in the Spirit. And often they sweat and often they grunted. And often they felt they'd die, they wouldn't get up. And I'll tell you what, when they did get up, not only did they know what had happened, but everybody else knew what had happened. Conviction of sin had made them completely undone. That where the preaching couldn't go and logic couldn't go and sermons couldn't go, the Holy Spirit went and, and he so undid them on the inside. They saw their total worthlessness and helplessness and uselessness and sinfulness that they cried to God in their distress. And they were saved. And that ushers in revival. You see revival actually is the work of the Spirit in the Church and evangelism is the work of the Church in the world. But there can be no effective evangelism without there's revival in the Church. Mr Chadwick used to say to us, Brethren, keep this in mind, you don't put a new-born babe in a refrigerator. I'm afraid often when they've been to crusades and whatnot and they've come through some form of instruction and whatnot, very often they go back into a church which isn't much better than the refrigerator. Now, again, you do not put salt on anything that's living. You, you, you, you put, you, you, pardon me, you don't put salt on anything that's dead. You see, salt cannot cure corruption. All it can do is arrest it. It doesn't cure it. It can stop it. It can counter it. But it can't bring to life anything that's dead. Now this world's pretty rotten, isn't it? I had a letter from one of the most famous preachers in America this week. He's a famous author too, and a man that I esteem very, very highly in God. He's a man whose heart, I believe, is broken over this nation. A very distinguished doctor. And he said, Brother Len, he said, I, I, I never dreamed that I would live to see a world that's gone totally mad after sin. It sure has. Since we don't have enough of it, we teach folk how to do it on TV. Since there isn't enough announcement in the newscast on TV about murders and rapes and filth, we show it for three or four hours at night. The whole world seems to have gone galloping mad. And as he said, if we don't know it, Satan seems to know that his time is short. I think he knows that. I don't think Satan has a lot of foreknowledge. That's, that's God's prerogative. But by the same token, I have an idea that he knows. He sees certain events. After all, he's been watching human history for 6,000 years. And I believe he knows his time is short, but the church hasn't wakened up to that situation yet. Now if the world is as rotten as it is right now, and it sure is rotten, we know that. If, if the, if the world is so rotten, what would it be like if you took the church out of it? I mean the church. Organized religion, you can get rid of that, we wouldn't miss it hardly. I mean the true church, the body, the church which is his body. And I've said again, the scripture says, the Lord knoweth them that are his. Well I'm glad he, he says that because, I'm sure I don't know who that is. I know some, I certainly don't know all, neither do you. But you see, he puts the salt in the earth. We are the salt of the earth. We arrest the progress of decay. Now I say, this to me is one of the most biting, searching things. And after all, if you get a wound in your finger and somebody rubs salt in it, you'll jump, you'll dance, you'll shout. And if you and I are going to be true salt, somebody's going to yell. You see, we're going to interfere with their corruption, we're going to come up like salt against the wound, the raw wound of their sin. We've got to face this, we'll never legislate righteousness. I often wonder why those boys up in Washington think everybody should obey the laws they make, when they don't. Half the guys up there are divorced anyhow. What if we get Reagan, he's divorced anyhow. What about Ford, he's married to a divorced woman. What about Kissinger, he's a divorcee. What about Rockefeller, he's divorced. Well, if the heads of the nation are divorced and corrupt, what do you expect others to be? We'll never legislate righteousness. You can make all the laws that you like. I noticed a newsflash last night of a policeman getting into a, looked like a Texas Ranger, getting in his car and he said, remember 60, what is it, 55 miles an hour. Why? Because it's safe? Because 5,000 people, more people would have been dead if we hadn't have had that law last year? No, he said not because of those things, because it's the law. Because it's the law. Well, people won't even keep those laws. I won't look too close, but uh, we don't always keep those laws. You cannot legislate righteousness. It's something God has to do internally in an individual. And there has to be a hungering and thirsting, Jesus says, after righteousness, and they should be filled. What? I noticed a book written recently where a man quoted this about the spirits in life. And he says, if you're hungry and thirst, you'll be filled with the Holy Ghost. The Bible doesn't say that. What does it say? It says, if you hunger and thirst, you should be filled with what? With righteousness. Now, righteousness, again, as we said last week, holiness is moral rectitude. Righteousness is, um, how we put it, moral, um, holiness is, is, is, uh, rectitude of heart. Righteousness is rectitude of conduct. If the root is right, the fruit should correspond. And holiness is the root, righteousness is the fruit. And Jesus says, a corrupt tree can't bring forth good fruit, and a good tree won't bring forth corrupt fruit. If you get the tree, the root right, you'll get the fruit right. You see, when all our legislation is done, and I'm not saying you shouldn't have it, after all, it's, it's Satan's old world, he's making a mess of it, and he's got some folk trying and put it, correct it. And up to a degree, we need that correction. We need certain laws, because men are so lawless. But it shouldn't be that people who are spirit-filled, or people who are born again of the Spirit of God, if we're children of God, we shouldn't need laws to keep us in certain boundaries. It should be that God has purified the heart, so that those desires are now obsolete, they're done away. And in that place, he has put in his own righteousness in us. Now again, I say this to me, it's devastating. He says, if the salt shall lose its savour. What do you mean, if I lose my, my soul, I'll, I'll, I'll go to hell? I'm not talking about that at all. I'm talking about the salt losing its savour. How does it do it? Well, I suggest you, the salt lost its savour in monasticism, that people thought the only way to be holy was to go live in bunches inside walls of convents and monasteries. And they became one of the most corrupt systems in the world. Wasn't it Cambodia, one of those countries recently, that they, they, I read a statistic on it, where in, even in those, in those places where the priests look so holy, and they sit cross-legged like little living Buddhas, and all the rest of it, they were 90% smitten with VD. Monasticism collapsed in Europe. Why? Because everybody thought if they left their money for the monasteries, they'd buy some special privilege in heaven, and so it became corrupt through wealth too. There's a, a verse in John 15 that says, if, if the branch, every branch that beareth not fruit knowledge, what it says, doesn't say men take it away, doesn't say the devil take, it says he taketh away. He takes away. I've seen a church that's been healthy and spiritual until it got too rich, and you know what, it lost its anointing. In other words, it lost its savour. And why? And it passed out of the sphere it had been in. If the salt loses its savour, Jesus says the only thing for it is to be trodden underfoot of men. Well that's exactly what it says in John 15, that when God has cut the branch off, and it has no life from the true vine, men gather them, not demons, not Satan, not God, but men gather them. That's why again, I believe I'm going to see that Liv, one of the greatest judgments that will come in the last days on the Roman church, because she's put more men to death than all the wars in history. And men will gather that branch that has lost its life, and it's going to be trodden underfoot. A further evidence of that, what about Sodom and Gomorrah? You see, there is a limit to God's patience. There's a limit to grace. And Sodom and sinned and sinned until God says now, just a minute. Now what do you think happened? Do you think God, and I must tell you now, do you think God kind of wound up like you wind a clock up, and you set the alarm and say, well that's going off at six tomorrow morning, and there it is. And the Lord set up the alarm clock of the ages, and said one day Jesus is coming back. And Jesus says, well I don't know what time he set the clock for. I give you some ideas. If you can read the sky, you should read the signs of the times. Well I can't tell you the exact time on the clock. Is it a case of time, or is it temperature that brings the wrath of God? Time or temperature? Does God say, look I'll let you corrupt to a certain point, and then watch out? Because once you get to that point, remember what he said to Lot and his wife? You go to the city, and immediately you cross the boundary. You'll kick the trigger, and judgment will fall on the city. Now I'll let you think over this, but as I said the other week, this startled me. One of the reasons that judgment came on Sodom and Gomorrah, was not only because they were so rotten, but because there were not ten righteous people in the cities either. The salt had lost its savour. And if you want the supreme classical example to me, it's there in the Paul's letter to the, to the seven churches as we call them, the first one Ephesus. And he says to that church, remember this, it was fundamental to the nth degree. You couldn't fault it, theologically I don't believe. They had everything going for them. Except one thing, what was it? They had left, not lost. I hear people quoting, they, oh well they lost that. No they didn't lose it. You lose a thing unconsciously. You leave a thing deliberately. There came a place where they made a choice, that they could live under certain conditions by themselves, without certain anointings of God. And, and God says, you do that, and I'll tell you something, I'll remove your candlestick. Now, I don't get very thrilled when I pick up gospel magazines. Heavens, they were all taking us to Israel. If we'd had as many people gone to Calvary as have gone to Israel in the last 10 years, we'd have had revival. Everybody's going to Israel. Nobody wants to go to Calvary. Now they're going to Scandinavian countries. Now they're going to Japan. Why? Because there's a kick in it. Because if you fill a plane up, with dear sweet Christian people on the pilgrimage to encourage the poor faint-hearted missionaries, you make $25,000 on an airplane. So I know one preacher that's quit preaching. Can't blame him. Takes two trips a year and he makes $50,000. Good going. Good going. What did the Lord say to this church? Go back to it. He says, I'll remove your candlestick. Not Satan removed it, I removed it. You, you, you, you, you refuse to walk in the light, and if you do, that light becomes darkness. And if you go on a trip now, you may go to Israel, you may go in the Christian groups to Scandinavia, somewhere. I don't see anybody going on a trip to the seven churches, do you? Why well, maybe they are. But by the same token, what are you going to see? There's comparatively no testimony. I know what you mean, yes. People talk about going to Rome, they go to St. Paul's Cathedral, they go here, they go there. But on the law of averages, who goes to the seven churches? Most of them go out of sheer curiosity. If you say, we're going to stay there till revival comes, I agree it's worth going. Sightseeing, I'm not interested. I've passed a thousand sites around the world. I wouldn't even go see the Taj Mahal or some of the things in India. You can, I'm not blaming you for that. I just didn't have time. But I'm saying here, here is a classical case in which God said to one of the most outstanding churches. After all, you've got one of the most profound epistles in the, in the Bible, is to the church at Ephesus. To think they left their first love? To think he put their candlestick out? I say respectfully, God in heaven, what are you going to do with America or England? I wrote to Dr. Sherwood Wirth the other day. He's retiring next month as editor of Decision. I said, Doc, why don't you give us a, give us one black page in the paper? Print on it in white. We're calling 1,000 preachers in America for five days of fasting and prayer for the crisis out in American history. Oh, you've no problem getting fortunate on trips, forget it. They want to go. Bring a bit of dust off, take a stone. This is, I took this on, on Mars Hill where Paul gave his famous sermon. They collect souvenirs of where people shed their blood. To me, it's ridiculous, but there it is. But we've been brought up this way. Don't blame the folks. The sheep go where the shepherds lead them anyhow. Even if the grass is poisonous, they'll, they'll go and bite once anyhow. But you see, this crisis hour, this is, this is the hour when we've been, when we're caught out, let's face it, if we're honest. The salt has lost its savour. Wherewith shall it be salted? How can you re-salt that which has lost its savour? Well, in the natural sense, it can't be done. You can't put it back in the sea. You see, Jesus here is talking to, to people and when they got salt, they didn't get it like we get it. You go down in the southern area of the Bahamas there, you'll see them make Morton's salt. It's a beautiful process and the, the lady, I met her once, she's a husband, the president of the thing. She's a dear, spirit-filled believer, but, but the salt is made in a very lovely way. It wasn't made that way with them. They just scraped on the marshes round, around the coast and they got a lot of dirt in with it and they had to, it was a terrific job to purify it and it didn't maintain its stamina very long. And it's no good doing anything with salt if it loses its savour. If you put it on your garden, it'll kill your garden. It not only kills itself, it kills whatever you put it on. The church is like that. She's not only damning herself, she's damning others. I say again, I, I wish I'd wakened up 50 years ago. I sometimes think I'm hardly wakened up now, but I'm, I'm, I'm quite sure of this, that we've never been taught the seriousness of being a believer. It's just a happy thing. Well, thank God we're going to heaven, so what? That's not Christianity. There used to be a preacher, Phil, the stately pulpit of John Wesley. If ever you should go to London, go to City Road and there's John Wesley's old church. John's buried at the back, across the road his mother's buried. She's buried with a lot of celebrities. She's buried at the side of Isaac Watts, who wrote when I surveyed the wondrous cross. John Bunyan is buried there. Bun Hill Fields the place is called. Daniel Defoe is buried there. He wrote the children's classic, Robinson Crusoe. Isaac Watts' tombstone is nearly lying down, but if you've been standing up two year, hundred years, you might be leaning that way too, and it's, it's nearly over, and it's a wonderful old place. But you know when I go there, I look at that place, I think of those amazing men, the Wesleys, and the men of that caliber. They were surely salt in the wounds of the nation. They surely made the nation sit up. They surely put down a solemn obligation of people, if they were going to be children of Jesus Christ, what it really meant. And it was in that same pulpit, Moffat Gorty used to preach. I once had one of his books, and I don't know where in the world it went. It was called The Burning Cataracts of Christ, and it was on the life of, um, it was on the great life of John, of, of, um, John the Baptist. But I remember a phrase of that man. He was one of the most brilliant men, one of the most interesting preachers. He had a, what I call an elastic vocabulary. He could use so many wonderful words. But I remember him saying this. He said, the man that only wants his sins forgiving, is toying with religion. But that's what we've taught people. Come and get saved, get baptized, pay your tithe, go to heaven. That's about as cheap and shallow as you can get. What does God, did Jesus die to save us from hell? No he didn't. I believe that's a fringe benefit. What did he die for? He died to restoring us the image that was lost by sin. He died that we might be his workmanship. He died that we might be emptied of self and filled with all the fullness of God. He died not that we want to save our own lives like salt, but that we want to be used of God as nobody else on earth can be used. Because you see that this is the only area that God has to use. If we're not the salt, there is none in the earth. There is none in the earth. Cheap we may be. Salt isn't fragrant, doesn't fill the house does it? It works silently, it works unseen. You know I'm glad God can see the world. I often sit in my chair and close my eyes and I think of one day flying up from Australia. It was a marvelously clear day and I think the pilot said we were flying at 42,000 feet. I'd never seen the earth look so beautiful. It looked a hundred million miles away from where I was sitting. I could hardly see it, but then I could see the coastline and then I could see part as we came up from Australia, part of the Great Barrier Reef. I could see the colored coral and I looked ahead through the window and it seemed as though I could see hundreds of miles. It was a marvelous sight and it suddenly came to me. God sits on the circle of the earth, the word of God says, and he sees everything at a glance. He knows our thoughts, he knows our ways. You know you talk about making an investment, you say well my boy goes to college, I hope he's going to make it, it's a big investment. Well I hope he makes it too, but that's nothing like the investment God made in you and me. Investing his blood, investing his word, investing his Holy Spirit. Are we coming up good? Are we salt? Have we retained our purity? Is the father the salt in the home? And the mother? Are we salt in our community? You see you can help to keep the children from corrupting, you can by your advice, by your example. I was thinking when Jesus said you're the salt of the earth, I thought of this word where Paul says to the Colossians, let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with pepper. Been there with the truth for a lot of us maybe, yes? Or did you say yes? Oh. May your speech be always with grace. Just this week in a letter, a lady told us she'd been teaching a little child, I think the child's about three, some of the Proverbs which is very good. You help to preserve your children. And she'd been drilling into the child's mind, a soft answer turneth away wrath. And the little girl was tired when she went to bed, and she hadn't been too obedient, and she wasn't obedient when her mummy laid her down. And so her mummy raised her voice and began to shout something. A little girl turned her big eyes up, she said mummy, that's not a soft answer turning away wrath. Hmm? My word, she really picked it up, didn't she? You see, I know, I thought of another couple, Martha and I know and love very much, very godly people. And differences come up as they do sometimes, there's a misunderstanding and the husband comes in upset with a business thing, and she's upset with something else, and so what do you do? Reminds me of the Irishman, anyhow, it reminds me of the man that was going to marry a certain girl, and he said to her, I want to tell you something, just before I, just before we get married, I want to tell you something. Number one, I have a bad temper. And sometimes, well, if I really get mad, I'm rough to live with. But he said, I'll tell you what I'll do, if you see me coming with my hat on one side, pull down at this side, you'll know I'm in a bad temper, so you, you know, be kind, handle me carefully, won't you? She said, all right, Jim, I'll do that, I understand that. She says, well, I want to tell you, I have a pretty hot temper too. And she said, but I'll tell you, if you come in the house and I've tucked my pinafore up at this side into my waistband like this, and you see it's slanting, you know, you'll know I'm mad, so will you be careful? And yes, so it worked for a long while. He'd come in with his hat on one side, oh, she'd be so gracious, and falling over him, you know, and make it easy for him and everything else, and it simmered down. Sometimes he'd come in and she'd have her apron tucked up, oh boy, war department, better get, better be careful here, and okay, she's in a bad mood, I better be careful. Worked all right. One day he came in with his hat down on one side, and her apron was tucked up the other side. Didn't know what to do. It is rough, eh? Let your speech be always with what? With grace, seasoned with, with salt. Do you remember, and just two quotes and I'm through, do you remember the prophet in the Old Testament when they came and said to him, oh master, the, the waters are so bitter, and he said bring me a cruise with salt in it. And he took the water and the cruise, and he tossed it in, and the bitter waters became sweet. And then James, in his practical way, says in the third chapter of James, out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain sent forth at the same place, sweet water and bitter? Can a fig tree bear, brethren, bear olive berries, either of thine figs? So can no fountain be, so can no fountain, both yield salt water and fresh. Out of the same mouth, blessing and cursing. Out of the same well, sweet water, you can't do it. So if there's bitterness there, let's get rid of it. If we're growing grape thorns instead of grapes, let's ask the master to deal with that. But we are the salt of the earth. The world doesn't value us very much. If they were like old Mrs. O'Hare, they'd get rid of us tomorrow, wouldn't they, say, we don't count a hill of beans. Well, thank God we do. It may not count much to governments. And Ed Einstein, at the time when Hitler persecuted, started his persecution, Einstein said, well, was it Einstein or Epstein? It was Einstein, I think, who said, well, as soon as he meets the university man, they'll put a barrier up. He'll run into a wall, they fell down in front of him. Well, as soon as he meets the men that own the banks, the great financial men of the country, they'll put a rope around his neck, they fell down, before him. And he went on and on and on, saying, everybody, oh, well, the next lot, they'll stand up. No, no. And Einstein said, for the first time in my life, I admired Christians, they stood up against him. Neil Muller and others stood up against Hitler, stood up against a wicked regime. They didn't fight it. They didn't take arms, they worked like salt. Leaven is a type of sin, so we don't use the figure of leaven, but work like salt, silently, but strongly, arresting, not necessarily curing everything, but arresting it, stopping it. Purified in itself, kept pure, kept pure again by the word, by the Holy Spirit, by prayer, by obedience. And if we stay in that place of subjection, we'll be kept in a world. He's not going to move every obstacle out of the way, sure he isn't. He isn't going to sweep all the corruption away. You know, if I were God this afternoon, what I'd do, I'd pull the blinds down and blow the lights out and say, go to hell, the rest of you, and I'll take my church out of it. But he doesn't do it that way. As I wrote to a fellow this week, I said, well, brother, have patience. I don't know how, how I could have done it. Remember, Moses wasn't on the back side of the desert 40, wasn't in the desert for 40 years, he was in the desert 80 years. He was in the desert 40 years training, and then 40 years with Israel. And every day that he lived, maybe 10,000 people died in the slave camps of Egypt, and almighty God didn't do a thing about it, let them perish. This week I've been reading the second book on the Gulag archipelago and made me sick. I listened to the broadcast on station 9, 9 channel anyhow, this week on Iran, and they had a discussion in the University of Texas, Texas A&M, one of the universities here this week on Iran. And the Iranian students were terrified. They said there may be some secret police there. Do you know, Iran right now has 60,000 political slaves. Do you know they put men on beds that are hot till the skin comes off their backs to try, it's a worse state camp than Russia had, or a worse, worse camp than Hitler had, and we're trading. Not long ago the Shah of Tehran, of Iran came to Washington and we gave him a, gave him a resection of a king. Now if you cut the world in two like a, like an orange and you saw its rottenness and corruption, do you know what we'd do? I think we'd die of shock on the start. We couldn't take it. He couldn't take it. But God sees it, and he puts up with it, and he still says to his church, ye are the salt of the earth, ye are the light of the world. We're not doing a very good job of it. And as the church goes, so goes the world. Until there is a revival in the church, and I don't mean denominations, I mean in the so-called living body of Christ. Until there is a new conception of God's holiness, of his majesty, of his power, of his love, and of his will. Until that new conception comes to us, I don't see there can be a move outside of the church of God. So if you're hurting somebody, don't get too worried about it, as long as you're the salt, as long as you know the witness, that the spirit's bearing witness with your spirit, that you're doing his will, that's all that matters, isn't it? Somebody's going to get hurt, somebody's going to dislike you, somebody may trample you underfoot, even if you're the salt of the earth. But it's the way the master went. And as the hymn writer said, should not the servant tread it still.