A City on a Hill

READ (MATTHEW 5:1-16)

For several weeks, we will learn from the following verses with a focus on verse 14.

“You are the light of the world. A city situatied on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Jesus gathered people together (4:22-24) and delivered his “Sermon on the Mount” from a mountain retreat.

He started with the Beatitudes. In this sermon, Jesus revealed what God’s kingdom is, how it works, and what it ought to be.

My interview.... “What do you invision GBC looking like for the next decade? The Lord revealed one word… “Light.”

Georgetown Baptist Church is a city on a hill, set apart to revive, equip, and empower.

“You are the light of the world...”

Light (phos) 72 - light, daylight, people of God.

READ (ISAIAH 42:1-8)

The Jews of old would read passages like these and intepret this mean a Savior would come to redeem the Jewish people from bondage and injustice.

They struggled to identify the messiah as a suffering servant.

The Jews saw themselves as a “light to the nations.”

“Then Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never live in darkness but will have the light of life.” - (John 8:12)

Jesus came to “radiate” the glory of God. (Heb.1:1-4) Before Jesus, even the highest of prophets couldn’t claim to be the light of the world.

The message of Jesus in (Matt 5:14) was unheard of before. No human had ever spoken with this much authority.

World (kosmos) - world, ornament, world system.

The world is a dark sphere or ornament where evil exists.

“This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather then the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.” - (John 3:19-21)

Jesus basically said, “You are shining my light into this dark and sinful world.”

Disciples shine His light into the world. The Holy Spirit dwells in every believer.

Light has only one job: To Shine. We are the ones that bring light into this world.

“A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Often built of limestone, ancient towns gleamed in the sun and could not be easily hidden. At night, people would light oil lames that would glow over the surrounding area.

READ (ISAIAH 2:2-5)

Isaiah prophesied of a time when Jerusalem or Zion would be lifted up before the Lord with the nations streaming to it.

Disciples of Jesus are the true people of God. Faithful, available, and teachable men and women. f

As the world continues to darken, the church is an outpost that displays God’s consumated kingdom. The church is God’s witness to the world.

Checking on homes during the snow storm.

There is an urgency that i feel as we prapre to shine a light in Grayson County.

Our culture is getting dark and we desperately need an outpost situated in an area for people who need Jesus.

John Winthrop, Sermon from 1630 delievered to fellow settlers before Massachusetts was founded.

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. “Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,” in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity.

Georgetown Baptist Church is a city on a hill, set apart to revive, equip, and empower.