Scripture: Matthew 5:13-20

Matthew 5:13–20 NIV

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

2/1/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Communion

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 1: Communion

Scout Sunday - Presentation after Opening Worship?

Opening Prayer:

Gracious God, we confess that we have dimmed the light You’ve placed within us. We have withheld compassion, ignored injustice, and kept silent when You called us to speak. We’ve chosen comfort over courage and performance over true righteousness. Forgive us, Lord. Cleanse our hearts and kindle our witness, that we may be salt that preserves and light that shines for Your glory. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Call to Worship

Leader: Come, people of God—rejoice in the Lord, who delights in those who live with compassion and integrity.

People: We come to worship the one who calls us to be salt of the earth and light for the world.

Leader: God’s righteousness endures forever, and His light rises in the darkness.

All: Let us praise the Lord and reflect His light in all we say and do!

Living the Law

Introduction: Why Does Scouting Have a Law?

It's wonderful to celebrate our Scouts today on Scout Sunday 2026. Some of you have a long history with the Scouts and have seen it transition over the years, incorporating new elements and skills to train our young people to succeed in life. Perhaps for some of you, it's your first year, either as a scout or as a parent of a scout, and everything's new.

Yet there are some parts of scouting that have been there since the beginning, and maybe even before there officially was Scouts. I think these are the characteristics that were shared with us today from the Scout Law. Scouts are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent… as they have shared with us this morning, along with some examples of what each of those words means. The words don't really mean anything until they're given a body to live them out. That's what the Scout Law does.

Most people that I know don't join the Scouts because they don't have enough rules in their lives, at least not willingly. Most of us don't want more rules in our lives to restrict what we can and can't do. Most people instead join because they've heard it's fun. You get to do a lot of exciting activities. You get to learn a lot of really neat things.

Scout Law is not there to restrict us from having fun. Instead, it's there to be a guide, and maybe in some ways, even more than a guide. It's there to shape who we can become. It does that by painting a picture of those words, or at least an outline of a picture.

Trustworthy. Loyal. Helpful. Friendly. Courteous. Kind. Obedient. Cheerful. Thrifty. Brave. Clean. And reverent. You can be all of those things and look different ways, act in a number of different ways. There's still plenty of room for freedom and flexibility, but it gives you boundaries. It gives you a form to fill.

As these young people and the mentors who lead and guide them pour themselves into that form, it shapes them according to that law and those characteristics. They grow into the very ideals they set before themselves.

God's law works the same way. In our series called "God's Ways," we're looking at how God works in our lives. This week and next, we're in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. I believe the whole sermon culminates in this idea of fulfilling the law. God sets before us a picture of character, behaviors, and ideals, and we pour our lives into it to live it out, growing into the image he created us to be.

★ So the law isn't a burden to carry. It's a shape to grow into. When we're shaped by God's law, we become who we were created to be and fulfill our purpose as children of God.

Movement 1: Jesus Fulfills the Law (Matthew 5:17-20)

Last month, we learned a lot about scripture and prophecy, and how Jesus fulfilled that prophecy in a way that was more than just checking boxes—about things that were supposed to happen in the future or tasks that he had to do. Those prophecies were kind of like big-picture plans God had as he worked through generations across history.

The law is scripture too, and it is also meant to be fulfilled. But rather than something that takes hundreds of years to come to pass, the law is something that fills up every moment of every day. There are many small moments in which we follow God's law that grow into a way of living as we fulfill them.

Here we are talking about Matthew's favorite word again: fulfill. In the context of scripture, and specifically the law, it means to fill up, to complete, to live out fully—not just check boxes or do the bare minimum. See, that's what living the law had become for most people. Avoid most of the bad things, do a few of the good things, and hope nobody notices.

But Jesus raises the bar. He says that our righteousness must exceed or go beyond the scribes and the Pharisees, those who taught the law. They were experts at external obedience, but that wasn't enough because God's law isn't just about what you do. It's about who you become. ★ It's the difference between wearing the uniform and living the life. Anyone can look the part. Jesus wants us transformed so deeply that it shows even when no one is watching.

Movement 2: The Law Shapes Us

God gives us the law for the same reason that scouting has a law. It's meant to shape us into the people that he has created us to be. We need the law. Without it, there is no hope of realizing that purpose in our lives. We don't know what we don't know.

We could be born with just the right body reflexes and mental prowess to be the world's greatest baseball player, ping pong player, or rocket scientist. But if we were born and lived in a place that didn't have baseball, ping pong, or rockets, we could never live into that potential. We'd never even know what we were missing. We can only see what's in front of us. God, however, can see the bigger picture.

In Isaiah 55:8-9, the prophet Isaiah tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways. He sees what we cannot see. So to grow into our potential, especially in the things we haven't discovered yet, we have to be obedient before we understand why. That's frustrating at times because we like to know why we're doing the things that other people ask us to do.

But it's like learning to ride a bike. Your arms, your legs, and your internal sense of balance figure out how to ride a bike before your mind does. If you wait till you're old enough to understand the physics that go on in your muscles and bones and your sense of equilibrium, you'll never get on the bike in the first place.

Whoever invented the bicycle and then taught themselves to ride it must have been an absolute genius. Yet many children ride them around every day, all over the world. They don't understand how it works. They just do it, and in the doing, they learn.

Our faith works the same way. Often, we have to just do what Jesus asks us to do before we fully understand it. That act of obedience shapes us. Then, afterwards, after we've seen what he has done and what we have done with him, we begin to see everything more clearly.

In Galatians 3:24-25, Paul calls the law our guardian or tutor, the one that prepares us for Christ. That's not meant to say that we don't need or can't receive Jesus when we're younger. It's to say that the more we obey, the more we see the need for him and the opportunities to receive him. The more we obey in faith, the more we're able to grow and obey even more in faith. Having that law that calls us to live and act in certain ways shows us our growing edge and helps us to know where to take the next step.

We won't grow into those greater acts of faith that God calls us to if we refuse the lesser ones. You can't jump 15 feet if you've refused to even try to jump 10 feet. The law shows us how much more we have to grow and how much more grace is waiting for us to receive.

But there's something that works against that growth.

If the law shapes us into those people that God is creating us to be, sin misshapes us. It bends and twists and pulls us out of joint with ourselves, with each other, and with God. There are many, many wrong ways to be, many ways that sin misshapes us that are not what God desires, that do not fulfill our purpose, and do not help us become the people that we could be with him.

There's only one true right way for each one of us to be, made in God's image, the way he always intended, and living into that potential that he created us with. God's law is the pattern that helps shape us toward that one true way.

Movement 3A: Salt and Light - The Warning (Matthew 5:13-16)

So now we know what a Christian, a follower of Jesus, does. They fulfill the law of God, just like a scout fulfills the scout law, and allow that law to shape who they are becoming. But how do you know if it's working?

Jesus tells us, "You are the salt of the earth." You are the light of the world.

Salt has many properties. It preserves, adds flavor, and can help with healing. Light also reveals things, guides us, and can bring us warmth. These are functions of both salt and light. They go beyond those objects themselves; they affect the world around them. When we're shaped by God's law, following Jesus as he fills it out, we don't just change inside. That work that God is doing in us begins to spill over and change the world around us.

But Jesus warns us: salt can lose its saltiness. Light can be hidden.

I was only in Scouts for about two years . I didn't get very far, but I saw enough. I know that scouts don't just act like everyone else. When I grew up and became an adult, I went out into the world to work, where people don't wear their scout uniforms anymore because they've grown out of them or because they work in jobs that require different uniforms. I can still sometimes tell when I'm around people who've been scouts because, even without their uniform, they act differently than other people.

But what if they didn't?

What if there was a scout who kept earning badges and wearing their uniform, but they stopped living the Scout Law? They know the words trustworthy, loyal, helpful, but they stopped practicing them at home, then at school, and then around their friends. That Scout Law just became memorized words, not a shape that they're living into. They could still wear the uniform so that people looking at them from a distance would think they were a scout, but without living out that Scout Law, something essential begins to fade away. If you got up close enough to see how they acted, how they talked, who they really were becoming, you would know something was off. That scout had lost their scoutiness.

In Jesus' day, salt was very important for many purposes, but dishonest sellers sometimes mixed it with dirt or sand to stretch their supply. Sometimes, mean people even contaminated others' salt. Either way, the result was the same: the less actual salt in your supply compared with the sand, dirt, and small rocks that had gotten in, the more it might still look like salt, but it loses its power to flavor and preserve. If it gets too contaminated, it's just white dirt, not good for anything other than being thrown out on the road.

Sin contaminates our souls. It covers up our light. Instead of forming us into the image of Jesus, it slowly takes away our ability to do what we were made to do. What does it feel like to lose your salt, to lose your light? Sometimes it feels like just going through the motions. Sometimes it's showing up but just feeling empty, knowing the right words but not living them out. It's like being a scout in uniform but not in heart. That's not what Jesus wants for us. When we come face to face with the law of God, it shows us where those places of emptiness are, those places where we might even know better, but we're choosing not to do better, where we hear God's voice calling us to follow him in faith, but we're turning away.

Movement 3B: Salt and Light - The Return

The process of coming back begins immediately. Jesus called it repenting, as we talked about last week. Turning around and instead of walking away from Jesus, walking toward him. Instead of rebelling against the law, walk obediently toward it. Fulfilling it. Allowing God to shape you through that process. It can begin now. God can begin changing us right this second. It's also a long process. It's like taking our pile of contaminated salt and sifting out the dirt.

We can start by learning some of those basics that God gives us, things like the Ten Commandments, some of which Jesus refers to in the Sermon on the Mount, and using those Ten Commandments like a big filter to get the large pebbles out. That often doesn't take much time, because those sins are sometimes big and obvious. So we can start with the larger chunks of rock, then work our way down to the larger clumps of dirt, looking not only at what the Ten Commandments are but also at how Jesus interpreted them. Dirt can be sticky and hide among the salt in clumps, but as we press into it, we can begin to work out some of that dirt from our salt pile as well through that filter.

The more we obey God's law, the more we see what our next step in learning it is. We can pick up a finer filter and work out more of those contaminants, until the very end, the rocks and the dirt are gone, and we're left with salt and sand, the grains of which might be the same size. At that point, it's going to take more than a filter. It's going to take painstaking work to go through that pile of salt and pick out the sand by hand. At that level, sometimes you have to do more than just look. You have to test it. Does this grain dissolve ice? Does it have flavor? So you're examining not just how it looks on its surface, but how it functions. Does it actually do the things Jesus wants us to do?

That's what Jesus meant when he said our righteousness needed to exceed that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. We have to do more than just look like we're doing the right thing. We have to examine not just our actions but our hearts, the reasons why we do things, and see if that matches Jesus and the person that he's calling us to be as we fulfill the law with him.

It takes a long time. It's not easy work. It's a lot like physical therapy. When we get injured or bent out of shape, physical therapy starts with the big parts. "Can you move your arms? Can you move your legs? Can you stand up? Can you move this joint?" Then, as you heal, the work you do gets finer. Smaller misalignments are corrected. Hidden weaknesses are brought out. The work doesn't get easier over time; it just gets more precise. That precision restores full function, so it does more than just look right; it works right.

★ But we're not sifting through our salt alone. God's law is the sieve that we're using. The Holy Spirit is right there, showing us how to use it and pointing out what doesn't belong. We don't have to be experts at sifting salt. Our job is to stay in the process, to keep bringing our salt pile to God, to keep saying "Yes" to Jesus.

Conclusion

The law of God is not a weight to carry. It's a way to walk. The Scout Law shapes Scouts into people of character. God's law shapes us into the image of Christ. Shaped rightly, we become those people we were created to be. Salt that flavors, light that shines. People who are vessels of God's grace that change the world as he works through us by truly growing into the people God is making us to be.

What part of God's law is he bringing to your mind today? Where is his law calling you to grow? What is one way that you can say yes to his shaping work? It starts with one step of obedience. Then another. And another. As you move into the framework God has set before you with his law, allow his Spirit of grace to fill it with you.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we thank you for your law. We thank you that your commands are not burdensome. We find strength in them. Your law is like salt, giving our lives flavor, meaning, and purpose. It preserves our lives, keeping us safe and close to you. Your law is like light, giving us wisdom. It helps us know where our next step is on the path we're following. It allows us to see things as they truly are.

For those places where we have lost our saltiness, give us your law so that we can sift through our lives and remove the things that should not be there. For the places where we are in darkness, give us your law to be a light, to show us what is right and true, and to give our eyes a place to focus as we follow you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name. Amen.