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Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing
servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of Me, saith the Lord.”
Isaiah 54:17
.
It was this joy that filled the hearts of Paul and Silas when they
prayed and sang praises to God at midnight in the Philippian dungeon.
Christ was beside them there, and the light of His presence irradiated
the gloom with the glory of the courts above. From Rome, Paul wrote,
unmindful of his fetters as he saw the spread of the gospel, “I therein
do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.”
Philippians 1:18
. And the very
words of Christ upon the mount are re-echoed in Paul’s message to the
Philippian church, in the midst of their persecutions, “Rejoice in the
Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.”
Philippians 4:4
.
“Ye are the salt of the earth.”—Matthew 5:13.
Salt is valued for its preservative properties; and when God calls
His children salt, He would teach them that His purpose in making
them the subjects of His grace is that they may become agents in
saving others. The object of God in choosing a people before all
the world was not only that He might adopt them as His sons and
daughters, but that through them the world might receive the grace
that bringeth salvation.
Titus 2:11
. When the Lord chose Abraham,
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it was not simply to be the special friend of God, but to be a medium
of the peculiar privileges the Lord desired to bestow upon the nations.
Jesus, in that last prayer with His disciples before His crucifixion, said,
“For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified
through the truth.”
John 17:19
. In like manner Christians who are
purified through the truth will possess saving qualities that preserve
the world from utter moral corruption.
Salt must be mingled with the substance to which it is added; it
must penetrate and infuse in order to preserve. So it is through personal
contact and association that men are reached by the saving power of
the gospel. They are not saved in masses, but as individuals. Personal
influence is a power. We must come close to those whom we desire to
benefit.
The savor of the salt represents the vital power of the Christian—
the love of Jesus in the heart, the righteousness of Christ pervading
the life. The love of Christ is diffusive and aggressive. If it is dwelling
in us, it will flow out to others. We shall come close to them till their