Light and Salt of the Earth

Speaker: Archbishop Loren Thomas Hines

February 07, 2023

in Spritual Growth

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5th Sunday of Epiphany:
Readings: Habakkuk 3:2-6, 17-19
1 Corinthians 2:1-11
Matthew 5: 13-20

Christ has given us all things and yet many times we still doubt. He has done a tremendous work for us, having faced with every temptation that man goes through. Yet He knew the things of God because He was trained well by His earthly father Joseph. Christ, being obedient to God the Father, was willing to come and be flesh in order to identify with us. His perfect sacrifice was for all mankind. He gave us new life by dying on the cross.

In the Gospel today, He tells us, “you are the salt of the earth.” Salt during the time of Jesus was considered holy, because it came from the sea mixed with the sun. Salt was a preservative. It preserved food, it was valuable and maintained man’s existence. As followers of Christ, we are to preserve the earth. However, we have compromised and taken the things of the world as the acceptable norm. We are to preserve the things of God. This should be our stand and we are to keep the standards of God. The world is our responsibility and we are to purify it. It’s our task to preserve God’s standards.

James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

John 18:36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

Have we absorbed the things of God in our lives? Is it just Sunday when we go to church? Shouldn’t Tuesdays to Saturdays be like Sunday? We are letting the world’s system dictate to us instead of God.

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

We are in the world but not of the world. Man today has violated the standards of God. We are to be the “light of the world,” living out our Christianity in the world. The Lord says we can do it. To think or say otherwise is a mockery to Him. We are lacking in no good thing. The beauty of God is that we can do all things if only we believe. We are to live His new law of life, not the law of sin and death. We have much to be thankful for. We need to put on truth. John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

1 John 3:8 He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.

The devil deals with us in deception because he is a leech. We are to display a life of peace, a life of hope.

Colossians 1:13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.

God put Adam in charge from the beginning. It is our task to cultivate the earth and keep it, and to multiply. May the grace and mercy of God dwell in us. We are the light and salt of the earth.