Matthew 5:13 - 16 (NLT) - Teaching about Salt and Light

¹³“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.

¹⁴“You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.

¹⁵No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house.

¹⁶In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Please don’t hide or dim your “light” by:

• blending in with world
• going along with the crowd
• denying the truth of God’s Word
• letting sin dim our witness for Jesus
• not being like the Bereans (Acts 17:11)
• ignoring the needs of others

Be a beacon of truth—don’t shut off your light from the rest of the world.

John 17:15 - 19 (ESV)

¹⁵I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.

¹⁶They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

¹⁸As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

¹⁹And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

“Do not love the world, nor the things in the world” (1 John 2:15).

2 Corinthians 2:14 - 16 (ESV)

¹⁴But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.

¹⁵For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,

¹⁶to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient^£ for these things?

1 Peter 2:9 (ESV)

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.