Who Are You?
Notes
Transcript
Announcements:
1. Thank you to all who were able to donate items for the Back to School Bash on Wednesday. And also for those who were able to come out last Wednesday and help with inventory and planning for the outreach.
2. We will be having our Back to School Bash this Wednesday, August 24th from 6:30PM-7:45PM. For more info, please see Pastor Charity.
3. We will be starting up our next Bible study on Wednesday, September 7th at 6:30PM and here’s a preview (show video during offering)
Worship:
Here I Am to Worship
Revelation Song
Nothing But the Blood of Jesus (chorus only)
Introduction:
“Who Are You?”
This morning we will be in Matthew 5. Jesus sees a bunch of people, so he goes up on the mountain and sits down. Once his disciples come to him, he begins teaching them by going through the Beatitudes. Right after the Beatitudes, Jesus tells the disciples why they, and other followers of Jesus, will find themselves to: be poor in spirit, mourn, humble, hunger and thirst for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers and persecuted. It is because of who they are and how the world will treat them as as result!
Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 5:13-16 as we talk about who Jesus said the disciples were and who we are!
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.
15 No 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.
16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
Body:
I. Salt of the Earth (v13)
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.
A. Why salt?
1. it was associated with life and it was a preservative (keep things fresh) this was before refrigeration
2. it was a purifying agent: ancient peoples rubbed babies with salt at birth (Ezek 16:4), and the prophet Elisha used salt to purify a polluted spring (2 Kgs 2:19–22)
4 On the day you were born, no one cared about you. Your umbilical cord was not cut, and you were never washed, rubbed with salt, and wrapped in cloth.
19 One day the leaders of the town of Jericho visited Elisha. “We have a problem, my lord,” they told him. “This town is located in pleasant surroundings, as you can see. But the water is bad, and the land is unproductive.”
20 Elisha said, “Bring me a new bowl with salt in it.” So they brought it to him. 21 Then he went out to the spring that supplied the town with water and threw the salt into it. And he said, “This is what the Lord says: I have purified this water. It will no longer cause death or infertility.*” 22 And the water has remained pure ever since, just as Elisha said.
3. it was used as a seasoning for food (Job 6:6-7)
6 Is bland food eaten without salt?
Is there flavor in an egg white?
7 I refuse to touch them;
they are like contaminated food.
4. a symbol of provision
5. fertilizer
6. facilitator for the burning of dung (used for heat and help with cooking)
7. an irritant
8. to kill plant life
B. It was considered a necessity of life
C. It never lost its saltiness unless it was mixed with impurities (watered down and diluted with other minerals)
II. Light of the World (vv14-15)
14 “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.
15 No 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.
A. Why light?
1. it is illuminating
2. it shines/eliminates the darkness
3. it provides growth
4. makes the invisible visible
5. reveals obstacles
6. gives life
B. True light cannot be hidden
C. If you have true light you don’t want to hide it!
Illustration: putting on a lamp/light for kids when they go to bed only to put it in a drawer?
III. What does that have to do with me? (v16)
16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
A. Jesus told the disciples and tells us that we ARE the salt of the earth and the light of the world! We aren’t going to be or working our way to be but we ARE!
B. Salt and light are both indispensable and change agents. Anytime light encounters darkness. . . .it shines. Anytime salt encounters some sort of meat or some sort of meal, it changes it, doesn’t it? It changes it irreversibly. You can’t go and get that salt off of there; it’s definitively different.
C. How are we salt?
1. Exhibit preserving and flavoring properties (spice up life and make others thirsty for God)
2. to have the Word within us and live at peace
12 For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.
3. with our speech Colossians 4:6 (good and flavored)
6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.
4. be careful not to get watered down with the things of this world and as a result lose your saltiness/influence through compromise with the world and/or isolation from the world (romans 12:2)
2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
15 But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.
16 For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”
Illustration: We are called to be different, to be holy, set apart in the love that we give as followers of the way of Jesus. We’re called to be different in the love that we give, from the very get-go. The church was shaped, formed and grew in the Roman Empire, not because it had the political voting block, not because it had any sort of power, it grew because they showed an extravagant, ridiculous, dangerous love. When the plague broke out and everybody left their own family members, literally, in the gutter, it was followers of Jesus who came and brought strangers into their home and showed them the love of Christ. It was the love that was displayed that caused the church to flourish. That’s salt.
Question I have for us this morning is: What do we do as far as being salt in this community? Have lost our saltiness and have been watered down by compromise?
D. How are we light?
1. illuminating in the darkness through evangelism
6 “I, the Lord, have called you to demonstrate my righteousness. I will take you by the hand and guard you, and I will give you to my people, Israel, as a symbol of my covenant with them. And you will be a light to guide the nations.
It is shining the goodness of God to those who haven’t heard it
Illustration: It’s not just the love that early followers of Jesus gave, it was the lives that they lived (counter culturally). It was the lifestyle ethic that they had, that was built around monogamy and fidelity. It wasn’t something that they imposed on the rest of the world and said you’ve got to live this way too.
They said, “listen, because of the teaching of Jesus, because of the words of Jesus, we’re convinced that this is the best way to live and let us show you what a world like this might look like.”
It wasn’t “you’ve got it wrong”, it was “let us show you”.
So Paul will write in 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, listen, it’s not our job as followers of Jesus to judge the world. It’s our job to make sure OUR house is in order. To be that light. So their light shined. Their integrity in business dealings —- one of the things early non-followers of Christ noticed about the church was that they weren’t shady. What they say goes in business dealings. They don’t try to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. They’re just: “what you see is what you get”. It was SO different. It was them saying, “listen, we’re going to be distinct, we’re going to be different, and we’re going to shine”.
Another question I have for us this morning:
Do you treat shining your light like being in a movie theater?
In a movie theater you can get in trouble for being on your phone because of the light that disrupts and illuminates in the darkness of the theater. So the brightness may need to be really low so it isn’t easy to spot or you just leave it in your pocket (under a basket).
I love the way that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great theologian, put it:
“Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call. A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.”
Are we hiding our light and trying to blend in with our surroundings? At church? At work? At play?
Conclusion:
We are called to be influential and to be agents of change.
Illustration: In 1855 Edward Kimball, a Sunday school teacher in Chicago, led a 19-year old shoe-clerk to Christ. The shoe-clerk eventually became a world-famous evangelist who led thousands of people to Christ. His name was Dwight L. Moody. Moody Bible Institute just down the street is named for him. In 1879 Moody influenced the well-educated and cultured British theologian Frederick B. Meyer to change his preaching style and emphasis. Later on a preaching trip to America, Meyer influenced a discouraged young preacher named Wilbur Chapman to become an effective evangelist. As his work grew, he needed an assistant and hired a former baseball player with a high school education to help him. His name was Billy Sunday, and he eventually led more than a million people to Christ. In 1924, while Sunday was preaching in Charlotte, North Carolina, a prayer group was formed, that later invited another evangelist by the name of Mordecai Hamm to preach. It was while Hamm was preaching that a teenager named Billy Graham gave his life to Jesus. And Billy Graham has told more people about Jesus than anyone in history! It all started Edward Kimball, a Sunday school teacher who led a young man to Christ. (Of course, it really started before Edward Kimball—some unknown person led him to Christ.)
I want to ask you a question just between you and Jesus.
Are there people in your life who aren’t followers of Jesus that you have meaningful relationships with? Not that are projects, but that you love, and whose lives you’re invested in. Are you light? Do people know you follow Jesus?
We need to be engaged in this world and to love well this world that God has placed us in. Jesus did this, didn’t he?
The woman at the well comes to him. She’s broken, her life’s a mess, he makes room for her in a place and time where he should not have done that.
A woman who has been bleeding for twelve years. . . . .Jesus is on his way, he’s got his task list. He’s on the move and he stops in order to love her.
Salt and light.
Jesus sees a woman who’s caught in the act of adultery. There’s Pharisees that want to stone her, and Jesus gets in between the Pharisees and this woman. He starts to write in the sand—we have no idea what he writes, but we do know this. . . .what’s he being? Salt and light. He’s bringing hope. He’s breathing hope.
He’s engaged with the world around him. I believe he’s inviting you and I to be the same.
Look at verse 16:
16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
Notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say people will hear your good words. He doesn’t say people will hear your great theology.
The reality is that even though it’s there, they may not hear it. But what they will not be able to ignore is your life. What they will not be able to ignore is the way that your life, salt and light, points to his kingdom. I’m convinced that people must see God on display through us BEFORE they hear the words of God through us.
Illustration: Matt B from when he came into the program (not sure about Christianity and God) to graduation yesterday (thanking Jesus as His Lord and Savior) and we could see the change because of the way he lived changed.
12 They were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you. And now this Good News has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen.
Angels are wagering watching you!
I am assuming that each person here this morning are people who represent the kingdom of God and are living for Jesus.
It’s like an employee who shows up to represent their company for a business deal. They’re wearing the shirt; they’ve got the hat on. They’re trying to sell whatever they’re selling. You and I aren’t trying to pedal anything, but we represent the kingdom of God.
The question is:
When people see our lives, what do they see?
What do they experience?
Do they experience people who are moving towards a freedom from anger? A fidelity in relationships? Honoring of marriage?
A confidence that they can believe our words?
A love that’s displayed that goes beyond what the rest of the world sees? Is that what they see in us?
Do they see salt and light?
My prayer is this community that is represented here in this room will be turned upside down because we choose to be salt and light and not compromise with our surroundings.