How can you live a new life that becomes identified as good and joyful by those around you? When you know that a burden of guilt and shame can no longer hang on your shoulders. When you aren't living to measure up to a perfect standard, but you live in the joyful understanding that that standard has been met for you by Jesus Christ. Then you are free - free to be a light shining that same grace to those around you.
How can you live a new life that becomes identified as good and joyful by those around you? When you know that a burden of guilt and shame can no longer hang on your shoulders. When you aren't living to measure up to a perfect standard, but you live in the joyful understanding that that standard has been met for you by Jesus Christ. Then you are free - free to be a light shining that same grace to those around you.
In the Lehmann home, hide and seek is a pretty big deal. It’s crazy fun to see how Ellie and Hallie really get into it, finding all sorts of creative places to hide. Kids love hide and seek! Have you ever thought about why hide-and-go-seek is so fun? From the moment you play peek-a-boo as a baby to when you’re cramming yourself into a crawl space covered in cobwebs, why is it a near-universally fun game for kids? Psychologist Shirah Vollmer’s idea is that kids enjoy the sense of autonomy but she noted that soon “after the child feels the joy of exploring, he gets lonely and so he wants to be reassured that his friend wants to find him…to be pursued is to be loved.” Even in a simple game, we find humans searching below the surface for the element of life we cannot live without: love. Have you ever found yourself as a Christian playing a far different game of hide and seek? In this version, you find yourself hiding the full picture of your Christian identity. You want people to seek Jesus, but you feel trapped. Trapped in a society far removed from what the Bible teaches, trapped by your own feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthiness to be a light of Jesus, trapped by nervousness over what will happen in your relationships if you add the flavor of Jesus to your conversations. This is a game of hide and seek we often feel trapped in, so how can we be set free? How can we freely be salt and light to a world that is hiding in darkness?
That’s the question Jesus needed to answer next. Last week, we felt the grass underneath our hands as we sat on the mountainside with Jesus as he taught us what the blessed life is all about. It’s about the new life he’s given to us through his grace, the new identity we have through faith. Now, Jesus transitions to how this blessed identity and existence influences the people breathing the same air as us. He looks at this huge crowd of “ordinary” people, people who were not in positions of influence or authority, a minority in every sense, and he tells them that their purpose is a worldwide one. Because they have the blessed life in Jesus, “You are the salt of the earth.” What does that mean? Like salt, God’s people are called to be a preservative in a constantly decaying world. Like salt, Christians are flavor-givers, chosen by God to add the sensation of Jesus and the Word to the lives of the people around them seeking God, whether they realize it or not. God’s people are not to hole themselves up, but to fearlessly make a gospel impact! Exciting stuff! But then, Jesus says something scary. He says, “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.” You start to hear the whispers echoing down the mountain, “How do I avoid losing my saltiness?” Do you find yourself asking the same thing?
I struggle with hiding my salt, do you? As sinners, often we struggle with diluting who we are in Jesus. We don’t want to look out of place, so we hide who we are. We’ve been chosen to live as a preservative, to preserve the truth the Holy Spirit has revealed to us. We’re called to not only preserve this Word but to share the delicious and freeing news of what Jesus has done for us. But sadly, we’re prone to compromise, or hide and leave the world seeking life to stay lost. We clam up when a friend is living in a way that’s leading them away from God. We justify sins as being “a white lie” or “not a big deal.” We struggle with picking and choosing which parts of the Bible we like or don’t like, instead of humbly submitting to it all.
One question I get a lot from people, especially those who are new to Christianity, and maybe it’s one you’ve wrestled with too, is “Why are there so many different brands of Christianity?” Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, and Non-denominational to name a few. It’s because the salt lost its saltiness to gain compromise. This doesn’t just happen between church denominations. It’s a personal battle. Do we hide our faith by compromising our Christian life? Are we afraid to sprinkle that salt of Jesus into conversation? Do we hide our freedom to save face, or to people-please? Do we doubt that God’s Word is enough to change lives, including our own? Jesus is clear about what the salt of the Christian life is good for. A Christian who hides who they are misses the whole purpose for why we have been chosen, to preserve the Word and add its life-changing flavor to the people stuck in an endless game of “seek and get more lost,” grasping in the darkness this world will always be, no matter how enlightened or woke we claim to be. It can seem unimportant to dismiss so-called “small” things in the Bible, maybe even with noble intentions to make Christianity a little more palatable to the spiritual taste of a loved one or friend. But this is crucial! Instead of boldly sharing the only taste of lasting life people have ever experienced, you and I often dilute it. We don’t make it more palatable, we take the life out of it. Every single verse of the Bible matters. But that’s what the darkness of sin does. It conceals, it distorts, and it makes shadows cover the page. Jesus knows that darkness well, and in his grace, he sent light into this world.
Jesus told that crowd and you and me today that we are “the light of the world.” This metaphor as with the salt tells us something huge: the world and believers are two distinct communities, but believers are not called to isolate themselves, but to shed light. This isn’t “us versus them.” It’s “us calling out to them.” In fact, the word “church” comes from a Greek word (ekklesia)which means “called out.” The church is made up of people who are ex-darkness! We are ex-darkness and pro-light, and we reflect the light given to us by the grace of God. Our purpose is to glorify God and lead others to do the same! But that’s the rub, right?
Sometimes we hide our light by shining it for the wrong reasons. Not only do we hide light by intentionally or even unintentionally avoiding living the Christian identity, we hide it when we shine not so people will glorify God, but glorify “me.” We long for recognition and we find ourselves driven to people-please, another basket placed over our light. We conceal the light by trying to be the source of light for others, instead of living to reflect the only true brightness in a world overshadowed by sin and death. We hide our God-given gifts to avoid awkwardness, stress, conflict, or difficulty. We’re scared to live in the freedom Jesus has given us, and we hide in the familiar crawlspaces of self, sin, and seclusion.
This is where we uncover the core struggle we’re wrestling with today: Satan and your and my sinful flesh tempt us constantly to hide our Christian identity. He knows what the church in action can do. He knows what happens when we live free by grace to live the blessed life, influencing the people God has placed around us with his salt and his light. He knows what God’s Word can do. He wants darkness to reign, even in a world thinking it’s found light. He wants you to feel trapped, stuck in an endless game of hiding the Christian you are, so that we blindly and often without realizing it, plunge further and further into the endless dark corners of life. But our hiding, trapping ourselves in sin, none of it would hold Jesus back. He doesn’t hide who is. He came to accomplish what we never could never find on our own: Freedom to love God and to love others.
Jesus could sense what some in that crowd may have thought. Jesus is a new teacher. He clearly speaks with authority, and he can heal diseases, maybe we don’t need the Scriptures anymore, or all those expensive trips to the Temple for Passover, and Jesus nips that in the bud. He tells us why he came from outside of time itself. He came “to fulfill” the law and the prophets. He didn’t come to make the Scriptures irrelevant, instead, he talks about their enduring legacy, that until the universe ends as we know it on the last day, God’s Word will not disappear. Its truth remains powerful, unchanged, and unfazed. Every verse matters. Jesus never shied away from that. He never hesitated to glorify God’s Word and let me tell you, that gives us goosebumps. All those 613 laws we find in the Old Testament, Jesus didn’t rationalize some as being unimportant, he kept them all. I’m so excited to tell you why! Because he wanted you to be free. He never hid parts of God’s Word to avoid conflict, he never lived a way to people-please, he crossed every “t” and dotted every “i” of every law and prophecy ever given, because only then could he find you. Here’s the core gospel: Jesus has never hid who he is, or what he came to do. He came to fulfill the Scriptures…for you.
When he came into this world, he thought of you stumbling in the darkness, feeling like a child does when no one finds her: fear, being trapped, being unloved, and being unpursued. He found you by fulfilling what you could never do. He opened your closed eyes, squinting into the darkness of shame, shame that we couldn’t keep any of these commandments perfectly, guilt for all the times you and I have diluted Jesus’ salt, covering the light he longs for us to reflect. He calls you “great in the kingdom of heaven,” because you stand with him. He has forgiven you. His righteousness is yours. His 100% law-keeping rate belongs to you through faith. Because of that gift-giving grace, as a child of God, a light of Jesus, a grain of gospel salt in a world so devoid of the flavor of Jesus, you have been given the right to imagine the day you walk into the banquet hall of heaven and receive a standing ovation from millions as you take your seat at the place of honor. You take your seat because by faith you stand at Jesus’ side and you consider every word of the Bible to be God’s holy conversation with us. You have honor not because you look the part. You’re honored because God in his love chose to live for you, die for you, and rise again for you. It’s all grace. You stand free, forgiven. I love how Jesus makes that point clear here!
He says, “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.” The teachers of the law not being enough for heaven shocked the crowd that day. They were stunned with feelings of impossibility, but the righteousness that surpasses them is the perfect righteousness of Jesus given to us by faith. The Pharisees were about other people noticing how righteous they were, Jesus has a far deeper, more meaningful, and richer life for you.
Here’s the life Jesus has won for you, salt and light of the world. It’s a life of total clarity, knowing what life is about, knowing why you’re here, knowing you’re forgiven and set free, things so many wish they could have! How can we even think about playing “hide and hope they don’t seek!” We have that light of Jesus now, because like we celebrate in Epiphany, Jesus appeared, he opened our eyes, and now we cannot help but want to shine his light for all to see!
But notice the audience Jesus wants you to think of first and foremost: Your Heavenly Father. Of course the people you love and serve by faith matter, but when you face a situation where it will be clear to all that light of Christ is everything to you, Jesus says, “Don’t think about the reaction, the counter-point, or the rejection. Forget the stress, the fear, or the chaos. Picture your Father in heaven with the widest grin, imagine him saying, “I’m proud of you.” Hear his voice in the Scripture, “You are chosen. You are royal. You are set free.” You live for the audience of One. So what does this freedom of being found give you? By faith, set free by the grace of God, you love the law of God! You treasure the mirror that it is, revealing more and more as the years go by of all the sins you struggle with, because that mirror leads you back to the light of Jesus, his perfect life for you, and with joy, you set out to add flavor to a tasteless world, to shed light to a world of dark illusions. You are set free to seek the lost, and watch as the Lord wraps his arms around them. You are free to reflect Jesus’ light! Like a city on a hill at night cannot help but be seen, so too as a Christian you naturally reflect the light of God’s grace in a world surrounded by darkness.
This is where true freedom is found. Not survival, hiding flaws, or seeking recognition. It’s found in the truest Emancipation Proclamation, the Holy Scriptures that will endure, never fade, and always be true. God’s Word says to you through it all, “You are free. You are chosen. You are light. You are the people of God.” God will never stop seeking the lost, and now, we have the adventure before us to run at his side, as salt and light, watching him find more and more lost in darkness, bringing them into his life-changing light. It doesn’t get better than that. And all God’s people said, “Amen.”