Twisted: A Warped World Window
Twisted
A Warped World Window
Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor
September 14/16, 2007
I have a very important announcement to make, so I want everyone to listen carefully. When you came in, I am sure you noticed the quarantine, thick plastic over the doorways. We are going to ask all of you to please stay in within this room, because the world outside those doorways in contaminated. If you need to go the restroom, please just hold it. If you really just have to go, ask the person next to you to hold your hand and pray for you to be able to persevere. And please don’t worry about your children, the Kidzone areas are also well insulated from the contaminants outside. So, if your kid’s number should come up on the screens, please disregard. It isn’t worth risking your Christian life to get through the hallways back into Kidzone until the whole place can be secured. I know this raises a lot of questions about how we will live within a virtual bubble, but plans are well underway. This may sound crazy, but we have plans to have Christian restaurants, coffee houses, bookstores, book clubs, radio and tv stations, sports leagues—anything you might want, well within the bubble. Oh, wait a minute, we already have all those things, don’t we. How did that happen?!
Now, let’s leave the twist in this twisted series and get back into the real world. The twist is the twist of the Christian bubble, and it is so easy to become bubble people. We hardly even know it is happening. Some of you are tire-kickers as it relates to Christianity and you may not see it quite yet, but once someone becomes a Christian and then engages Christian community and church, it is very easy to join the bubble, to look around after a year or two and realize that hardly any of your friends are outside the bubble of your Christian world. We create our own parallel universe.
When Jesus came to the planet, the religious people of his day liked it that way. The word “Pharisee” means “separated one,” and they were. They looked at a Roman culture that was ungodly and affected by values that were contrary to the way they wanted to live and raise their kids, so they very happily created their own bubble existence. The key to holiness to them was insulating themselves, playing it safe, from the real world around them. Jesus came and vomited all over that with the way he lived his life and by the content of his teaching. To Jesus, true growth in our relationship with God can never happen in a bubble. The air in the bubble is too stagnant for real growth. Growth happens in the context of the real world, where we are called not to be safe but dangerous…dangerous in the sense of impacting people around us, seeing lives changed forever…and not isolated but integrated, not scared but bold, not indifferent but loving.
Do you ever find yourself looking at the world out there, glad that you have been reached and have a relationship with God, and yet wondering why God doesn’t do something about what is going on out there in our crazy world? This week is the anniversary of 9/11, a reminder of how dark the world can be. You look at our culture and see the drift away from God, away from solid values, as the culture seems to be going down the drain and we wonder why God isn’t doing something.
Here is the divine twist on all this. God has done something. That’s why you and I are here. He has sent you and me. If you have a relationship with God, he has sent you into the world because he does care about this crazy world. That’s why you are there. In
Slide: ______________) John 17: 15-16, 18
Jesus is praying to God the Father, and he says, My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it…As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. Jesus says the same thing in
Slide: ______________) John 20:21
As the Father has sent me, so send I you. You and I have been sent into the world because God cares about the world. Your greatest ministry is not what happens within these walls, as good and as important as it is. Your greatest ministry is what happens outside these walls, and it is that opportunity that we are looking at today. God has you in the world where he has you not by accident but on purpose. Because he cares about this world, he has placed you in your school, neighborhood, job, team, league, wherever he has you. We are not called to be bubble people but missional people, and today in Matthew 5:13, one little powerful verse, we are going to see what Jesus means by that, how he wants to impact this world through you. Here is what Jesus says in that verse:
Slide: ______________) Matthew 5:13
"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 by men.”
“You are the salt of the earth…” Let’s talk about what that means. For one thing, the Jesus-followers hearing it 2000 years ago would have regarded it has a huge compliment, because salt was a very valuable commodity. Today, it is so cheap that we hardly think about it. We take it for granted (pour it out). But then, it was both rare and valuable. The Romans regarded salt as the most valuable thing in the universe, second only to the sun. Roman soldiers were often paid with salt, which is where the phrase, “not worth his salt” comes from. When Jesus said this, the hearers knew that he was saying that they were both rare and valuable, and had a very important function in the world to play. What is our function? Why was salt such a big deal? Why are we such a big deal in this world? Two big reasons, or Two big functions as salt in this world.
Slide: ______________) How are we to function as salt in this world?
The first is…
Slide: ______________) Preservation
In Jesus’ day, refrigeration was non-existent, so salt was absolutely crucial. Without salt to cure meat, it would quickly rot. Salt was used to prevent rot, to prevent decay, and that is why it was so valuable. What Jesus is saying is that you and I are the preservative for this planet, that our presence prevents the decay and rot of our world. Just our presence in this world changes the world, it halts decay and opens up opportunity for God to work in the world through us.
That’s why when we become Christians it is so important not to isolate ourselves, because God has us in key places for a reason. In 1 Corinthians, Paul has to command the Christians to remain in the situations that they were in when they became Christians, because God had placed them there. Even just our presence has impact. Some of you have seen that in small ways, like when people find out you are a Christian, and it affects their behavior. That happens to me all the time on the golf course, when I get paired up with people I don’t know. For the first 8 or 9 holes, their language is quite colorful and they make crude jokes, but on about hole 10, they inevitably ask, “So, what do you do?” I always feel cruel answering the question, because when I say, “I’m a pastor,” they start back-peddling really quickly…letting me know that they normally don’t talk that way.
You can also see the impact of Christians in a very big way by looking at America as a culture. Though we may be sliding away from our beginnings, this culture is one very deeply influenced by Christians and Christian values. Most of the founding fathers were Christians, and many of them were also pastors. Because of their theology, certain values were very important—such as the value of every life and the equality of all people. We not take those values for granted, as if all people believe that…but they don’t. All you have to do is travel to other cultures not influenced by those ideas, and you realize how ugly a culture can be without the values of equality and the value of every human life.
God uses us as preservatives and influencers in every area we as Christians live and work. I’m not saying that we get a whistle and get obnoxious about it, setting ourselves up as values police and imposing our values on everyone else. (use whistle and play a little bit). I’m talking about being people who are humble and respectable and influencing where we are because they respect our lives. Our job is to just to do the right thing and stick up for the right thing, doing so in a non-obnoxious, non-pushy way.
The Christians I am most impressed with are not the bubble Christians, that know how to be good Christians in the bubble. The ones I am impressed with are those that see their greatest mission and opportunity outside the bubble and who do it well, who love and serve and represent God and influence the organizations and people they work with.
A number of years ago now I went to a week long leadership training opportunity the Disney Corporation. An organization brought together about 50 pastors around the country to meet with their executive team and some others to create a very unique dialogue and learning experience. At the end of the week, we had a general debriefing session with the lady who was our host who was a member of the executive team at Disney. One of the pastors asked a question. He said, “We haven’t mentioned this all week, but I’ve got to ask this. You of course know we are Christians and I know that some other Christians get very passionate about boycotting and campaigning against some of the decisions your company makes. How do you all view that? How does it impact you?”
She said, “Well, it is interesting that you ask that question right now, because this week we faced one of those unique challenges in the park here at Disneyworld. This past week was designated gay week by some organizations, so a large number of gay people filled the parks this week. Please understand, Disney didn’t designate it gay week, but we certainly do welcome gay people who want to come, just as we would Christians or anyone else. Any group of guests can choose to all come together and we will welcome them, as long as they don’t do things that disrupt the Disney experience for our other guests. Because it was gay week, it also brought a number of protestors in to our parking lots. We had several hundred people identifying themselves as Christians who were protesting us for allowing gay week and I guess protesting the whole gay lifestyle. They yelled at people as they went through the gates and walked around with signs. As an executive team, we did talk about how to handle this large number of protestors right at our gates as people walked in. Here’s what we decided. We realized that these people are on our property, though they are not paid guests they are in our parking lot. So, that means that they are our guests. So our question became, “How should we treat our guests?” We decided that what was best was to take care of them and help them have a good experience. It was about 100 degrees outside, so we had some of our people bring out cold drinks, ice cream, and other refreshments that we handed out for free, because we wanted our guests to be well taken care of.” When she said that, it was like a knife going into my heart. How backwards. It should be the other way around. She then said something else that I won’t ever forget. You can agree with her or not, but listen to what she said. She said, “I happen to be a Christian on our executive team.” She told us the church she attended, a very good church in that area, and then said, “As a Christian in the organization, fellow Christians with good intentions really make it hard for people like me. The boycotts and name-calling and protesting makes my job of representing Christ here at Disney very difficult.”
No wonder Jesus didn’t tell us to go out and protest and yell and scream and stomp our feet to get our way. He just told us to be salt…to be people of influence in the neighborhoods and schools and organizations and businesses where God has placed us. That’s his way, and therefore we have a huge and important function where we are, to be people who represent Christ well and with a humble attitude be a preserving influence. God has you where he has you for a reason. Ultimately though, being salt is not just about being preservative. Salt serves another very important function as well:
High School example?
Slide: ______________) Flavor
Salt was valued as a preservative, but also as a way to make food taste good. Salt preserves, and salt also makes food attractive. We are told elsewhere in the Bible to
Slide: ______________) 1 Peter 2:12
Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. Or, as we saw last week, we are to “adorn the gospel,” meaning make the teaching about Jesus attractive by the way we live our lives.
People will either be turned off or turned on to God by the Christians that they know. Notice with Jesus who was turned off by him. It was the religious people, the bubble people, but not the irreligious people. They loved him, and they knew that he loved them. The core passage that we are looking at today is from the book of Matthew. He was one of those irreligious people whom Jesus befriended, and he ended up becoming a God-follower and one of Jesus’ 12 disciples. He wrote this book in the Bible. Jesus didn’t stay in a bubble, and instead befriended real people in the real world, people like Matthew, whose lives were changed forever as a result.
Chances are, you are here today perhaps as a Christian because of someone who was a salty Christian, a person who made the teaching about Jesus attractive. There was something about them that stood out to you, so when they invited you to church or said that they would pray for you in a difficult time or when they shared their faith story, it meant something to you. Because of them, you are here today. That’s most likely true for those of you here who are investigating Christianity as well. You are probably here because of the presence of a salty Christian in your life, some Christian friend who invited you. Almost a hundred percent of our guests come because people invite them, and for many of those people they will encounter God and be transformed forever.
And as life-changing as coming to know Jesus is for you and as appreciative you are for that person in your life who was the salty Christian who invited you or cared about you, if you talk to them they would probably say that they didn’t do anything. They were just there and were being themselves and just being a friend. Yet, you see them as a gift of God that he used to change your life. You see, just by being present and living as an authentic Christian, just living our life, we make an impact. That’s what salt does. Salt is present, but it does something. When it is present, it preserves and it make Christianity taste good, causing people to be thirsty for more, for God.
So, salt is valuable with a valuable function, to preserve and flavor. That is why God has you where he has you, not in a bubble, but in the real world because you are the salt of the earth. Most of us love God and want to do that well. We don’t want to just be bubble people who just frustrate God like the Pharisees frustrated Jesus. So, what do we need to do to be good salt?
Slide:_________________ ) How can we be “good” salt?
What are the success factors for this salt thing to really work and be effective? There are two. Without either one of these two, you will never make an impact for God in this world.
Slide:_________________ ) Distinctiveness
The rest of the verse says,
Slide:_________________ ) Matthew 5:13
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 by men. Salt was sometimes not salty, either because it got wet or in many cases people would rip people off. Salt was so valuable, that salespeople sometimes mixed it with gypsum powder, so it looked like salt but had so little salt in it, it wasn’t salty. It was just one big disappointment. So, all people could do was throw it out.
Have you ever met a non-salty Christian? A disappointment? Claimed to be the real thing, but mostly gypsum, mostly fake and hypocritical? This is why it is so important to be growing in your relationship with God, so that your faith is vibrant and real—not perfect, but real and authentic. A salty Christian is a very powerfully positive witness to the truth about Jesus, and a non-salty Christian is a disappointment that makes people throw out the whole thing about Jesus.
Honestly think about this question: How salty are you? How vibrant is your faith? Are you the real thing, or just a hypocrite…because you will do more harm than good if your faith is not authentically growing. That lady I talked about at Disney had significant impact there, because she was a salty Christian. She was the real deal.
Slide:_________________ ) Contact
Salt is a wonderful thing…power to preserve and flavor, but it is useless sitting in the salt shaker. For salt to work, it has to be on the meat. It can’t be just near the meat, it has to be right on the meat. For salt to do its function, there has to be contact.
Don’t allow what seems to naturally happen to a lot of Christians, to wake up one day and find themselves largely isolated from the world that God called them to reach. It happens all the time, and for years I allowed it to happen to me. I just got really busy being a Christian spending time with other Christians doing the things Christians do. It’s not like I didn’t have non-Christian acquaintances and shallow relationships, but my real friends were all people just like me, Christians in the bubble. I had to change that, and I’m so glad I did. Life outside the bubble is where life really is. Sometimes people tell me that they are called to the ministry, which for them means that they want to work in our church. I always tell them, “You are called to the ministry, and it is already right in front of you. Your greatest ministry is right where you are. God has placed you there because he loves those people. So, be faithful to the ministry right in front of you.”
Here’s an idea. Resist the bubble and choose to be the salt of the earth. If sports are your thing, don’t start or join a Christian softball league. Join a normal one. Don’t start a Christian book club, join a regular one that already exists and bring the Christian worldview to the conversation. Don’t just throw parties and host gatherings for church people. Do it for your block or your work group. If you are a musician, don’t just play Christian stuff for Christian people, get out there in the world of music and be a Christian there. If you are in a company and feel like the only Christian there, rejoice in that. Don’t try to find some Christian organization to work in. You get the idea? Avoid the bubble. God doesn’t hang out in bubbles. He is at work in the world and wants us to join him there.
The bubble is comfortable and feels safer, but God doesn’t call us to be comfortable or safe. He calls us to something so much bigger than that. He calls us to mission. To challenge one step further, I’ll share with you a story I read a few months ago by Erwin Macmanus, a pastor and author who lives out in L.A. and does a really great job living as the salt of the earth. It is a story about his little boy, Aaron, and I’ll read it in his words:
One summer Aaron went to a youth camp. He was just a little guy, and I was kind of glad because it was a church camp. I figured he wasn't going to hear all those ghost stories, because ghost stories can really cause a kid to have nightmares. But unfortunately, since it was a Christian camp and they didn't tell ghost stories (because we don't believe in ghosts), they told demon and Satan stories instead. And so when Aaron got home, he was terrified.
"Dad, don't turn off the light!" he said before going to bed. "No, Daddy, could you stay here with me? Daddy, I'm afraid. They told all these stories about demons."
And I wanted to say, "They're not real." But I couldn’t, because they are real.
He goes, "Daddy, Daddy, would you pray for me that I would be safe?" I could feel it. I could feel warm-blanket Christianity beginning to wrap around him, a life of safety, safety, safety.
I said, "Aaron, I will not pray for you to be safe. I will pray that God will make you dangerous, so dangerous that demons will flee when you enter the room."
And he goes, "All right. But pray I would be really, really dangerous, Daddy."
Erwin then asks, “Have you come to that place in your own life where you stop asking God to give you a safe life, and make you a dangerous follower of Jesus Christ? God doesn’t call us to be safe, but to be dangerous. We look at the world and think, my goodness, when is God going to do something about this. It is going downhill so fast. Let’s pray for God to do something. So we gather in the bubble and pray about the world out there. But God has done something. He has sent you and me here, not to observe the world through the bubble, but to avoid the bubble and be God’s people in the world…to be salt…to be people who are distinctive and present, who serve as preservative and flavor causing people to desire relationship with God.
God has given you a great ministry, and it is right in front of you, where you are in the world. Think about your family, your neighborhood, your job, your school, your civic group. Do you think you are there by accident? Of course not! You are there because God has sent you there…sent you to make a difference in people’s lives. How salty are you? How present are you? Let’s commit to avoid the bubble, to not be bubble people, but to be the missional people that God calls all believers to be. Real growth, real life never happens in the stagnant air of the Christian bubble, but out in the fresh air of the real world. Let’s join God out there.
Pray.
There is a great story in the Old Testament that illustrates that. Ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah? Sodom was a very evil place, not only from a moral standpoint but even more so from a social justice standpoint. Sodom was a wealthy city who didn’t want poor people to ruin their party. When visitors came to the city, the citizens were allowed to harass and kill them, and everyone knew that unless you were wealthy that you were not welcome to live there. It was so bad, that God was going to wipe it out. Abraham’s nephew, Lot, lived there. One day, some divine messengers, which probably included Jesus, came down to talk to Abraham and in that conversation they let Abe know that they are going to wipe out Sodom, because it is so evil. Abe has family there, so he pleads for the city to be spared. He says, “There has to be righteous, godly people there, too. So, if you can find 50, will you do it?” Jesus says, “Sure.” Then Abe starts to bargain. He says, “How about 45?” Ok. 40? “I’ll go with 40.” I don’t want to push things here, but how about 30? Then 20, then down to 10, and God agrees. There we about 1000 people in Sodom, so Abe got it down to 1%, and God agrees to spare the city if 1% are people who know God. Why? Because there is hope there. God knows that if there are some people in that dark place that have light, there is hope. If he knows that there is salt there, then he knows that there is hope of preservation, of people coming to God