Matthew 5:13-16 | How to Flourish when the World is against you

Sunday Morning | August 30, 2026 | John C. Majors | Louisville, KY

In this week’s sermon on the Sermon on the Mount, Pastor John examines Matthew 5:13-16 and Jesus’ call for His followers to flourish even when the world is against them. Jesus gives us a picture of what it looks like to live faithfully through two powerful images: salt and light. As salt, believers are called to preserve what is good, influence the world around them, and live as people of covenant; as light, we are called to shine in the darkness and point others toward the hope found in Christ. When salt and light are combined, our faith cannot remain hidden—we are called to live visibly and intentionally as God’s people. Pastor John reminds us that this calling fulfills a purpose God established long ago: that His people would be a blessing to the nations. In response, we are challenged to take a step of faith by being intentional about sharing the Gospel, including reading the tract, and by praying daily for God to provide an open door to share our faith with others.

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Thank you. Thank you, worship team. It's great to be with you all this morning as we're continuing in our study of the Sermon on the Mount. Hopefully you had a chance to grab a copy of the notes on your way in. If not, and you want to follow along, you might slip out and grab a copy because we're going to build on what we talked about last week, last week's message into the Beatitudes, a very famous section of Scripture. And it ended with this note. I think many of us would see a note of discouragement. Be ready to be persecuted. If you want to be blessed in the Kingdom. If you want to follow Jesus, part of that means persecution, not the message. We always come to church and want to hear, not the great hope of encouragement for most of us. In fact, how do you respond to the news of danger? If I told you right now there was danger outside, you're going to leave and encounter danger. I read a story recently of a guy this was in the Middle East. Warhead started and they said, we're going to come around and gather up eligible young males and they're going to fight in the army. And this guy, young teenage male was eligible. But he said, I don't want to go fight in this dumb war. I don't want to go die. So he hid in between the walls in his house and they come around looking for him there, shouting, making a noise, screaming, we're going to find you. You're going to fight. But they couldn't find him. He stayed hidden. Every day they'd come around looking for him, and he knew. There came a point that if he came out, there was no longer going to serve. They would just kill him. And so for three years, he hid in between the walls in his house until finally everything was clear. He could come out. He'd come out at night, his mom would feed him. He'd go back when there's danger outside. How do you react? As Christians, we know there's danger outside. How do we react? Do we hide in between the walls? What do we do? What's your response? How do you live? We're going to look today in Matthew chapter five. So if you have a Bible you want to turn there. If you don't have a Bible, our church Bibles are out in the lobby as well. We'd love for you to be able to follow along as we read and study Scripture. We'll be on page 769. Matthew five today is going to talk about. In fact, we're going to see in there for ingredients, for the recipe, for how you are to live in light of the danger outside. How are we called to live knowing that the whole world doesn't want to hear the message and will be many will be opposed to the message of Jesus? Do we just stay hidden? Do we cower in fear? What do we do? We're going to see that today in Matthew five. So if you would just stand as I read our section today as just a picture of respect for God's Word, I'm going to read verses 13 through 16. In Matthew chapter five, you. And this is Jesus speaking, speaking to his disciples who had gathered, you are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall it saltiness be restored? Is it no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet? You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand. And it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. God, we thank you for this word that we are going to study today and look at. Give us divine understanding. Open our eyes to what you want us to hear. May we have ears to hear. We love you. Amen. You can be seated for ingredients. We're going to see about how we are to live, how we are to approach life. What's our mindset? What is this recipe made of? Of. And we get a couple that are pretty obvious here. The first being the first picture he gives of what it means to be a member of the Kingdom of Heaven. The mindset we're to have in light of the persecution that may come. And the first is to see yourself as salt. Now, there's an important Bible study principle that I want to reiterate before we dive into this, that it's really important for us to consider any time you're approaching Scripture. And I think most of us, when we approach Scripture, we often ask the question, what does this mean for me? And by the way, really important question to ask. If it doesn't mean anything for you, then what's the point? But that's not the starting point. We usually start with what does this mean for me? What can I get out of it right now? What does it have for me today? Great question, but we need to start with not what does it mean for me? Start with what did it mean to them? What has it meant? How did the people who the Scripture was written to when they first heard it, when they first encountered it, what did it mean to them? First and foremost, if we don't understand that, then we can't understand what it means to us today. We've got to understand what did the author mean to them at that time, in that place, in that setting, in that period, in history and that culture, all that plays. That's the starting point. What did it mean then? And so that's an important starting point, because if you don't start there, you might end up somewhere very different, because words that meant something then may mean something different. Now we encounter that just even in a few years, words can change meaning. And in our culture today. So when we think about the word salt, what salt means to us is different. In some ways there are similarities, but there are differences in terms of what it meant to them. There are things they emphasize more than us, even just in regular language. If I call someone salty, that person is kind of salty. That's not a compliment, right? So when Jesus says, you are the salt of the of the earth and you think, what is he? What's he calling them? Salty. Like I might call someone salty. No. Or even the phrase you're salt of the earth. I mean, if I say, man, those are salt of the earth kind of people, that's just not what that is talking about, I mean, man. Those are just good, down to earth, honest folks. Just trying to get by, not putting on airs, just regular, good old folks. Is that what he means by this? Now? He might mean part of that, but that's not the main meeting we got to understand. What did he mean to them in that culture at that time to those people. And so I'm going to talk about three understandings of salt that would have come to mind for them, first and foremost. The third being most important for us today in a spiritual sermon, Jesus teaching context, the first that would have come to mind for them and it's relevant for us, is just that salt has a preservation element to it. When I worked at Melton's Food Mart, hanging back by the meat department were these decorations that look like hams? They just hung above the counter and I thought, why are we decorating with hams? I don't understand these old brown, dirty looking things that hung there. And then one day somebody bought one and the meat cutter started slicing it up. It was actually a country ham. I thought, why would anybody buy that? The good meat is in the refrigeration. It's being cared for. Why are you buying that old, nasty, dried up, ugly ham that's been hanging there for generations? Who knows how long it's been there? Well, then the meat cutter had to explain. We know, John, that's a country ham. It's been cured by salt. You can use salt to preserve meat. Back before refrigeration. That's how they did it. Oh, okay. That's interesting. I still am not going to eat it. Of course you go to Cracker Barrel. I'm ordering country ham, and it's very salty. You understand? This is something to them. It would have been really critical. They didn't have refrigerators. And in Israel they probably didn't have much access to ice that they could store all the time and have it ready to refrigerate their food. So preserving your food with salt would have been critical. And they would understand this element in terms of what he's saying to them. You have a and as Christians, you have an element that helps keep the culture from decaying. Christian influence in the culture is significant, and it's hard for us to see it. And in fact, when you hear atheists talking about morality, they're usually leaning heavily on Christian morality, Christian moral standards. They don't even realize it because it's so saturated our culture. One of our Wednesday night groups is going through a book about why does God allow evil? Really good book. Lots of good conversation happening in that group on Wednesday nights. But I think there's this assumption most people have that people are they're just basically good. If you leave people themselves, they'll in general do the right thing. And if you just study a small sliver of human history, they just there's a chapter in that book that just goes through about a hundred years, sliver leading up to today. You'll see the exact opposite is true, that in general, people are murderous tyrants if they're left to themselves. If you study human history and of course, in your certain contexts right now, you might think that that's different. But historically people are pretty bad. And so there's this element of you are salt of the earth. You have a preservation nature. The Christian morality comes into the culture and helps prevent greater moral decay, which is good for all of humans to have less suffering, less pain, less evil. That's one layer. That's one way to understand it. Second, so first is perseverance or preservation. Second, way to understand salt would be influence, we might say. Enhancement okay, so salt can prevent decay but it can also improve flavor. I think that's probably the way most of us use it. In fact, probably most of us view salt in general is bad. My doctor keeps telling me you have too much. Not my doctor, but I hear this over and over again. You got too much salt. You're eating too much salt. Eat less salt. It's causing all kinds of problems in your life. And probably many people do eat too much salt in our modern diet, the way we approach food. But you could not survive without it. You. Your body has to have it to continue it. When it comes to eating food, try eating food that ever has zero salt in it. When we would go overseas, and especially into very poor places in Africa and they had very little salt or flavorings, man, the food was so bland and it, you know, it'd be normal food that we might eat here. Greens, beans, maybe a little bit of meat, some rice. And you almost. It was so bland you thought, why am I having to eat this? Because it was missing the salt, the enhancement, the spice. And so if one part of who we are as Christians is to prevent moral decay, the other part is also not just to say, don't do this, but the other part is to model to people what real life looks like, what the best version of life looks like, what it looks like to live life to its fullest. That's the other side of it. We want to be models of that. We want people to see that, he says. See your good works. Give glory. Your father in heaven. We want people to see your life and go, I want that. So there's the preservation element. There's the enhancement element, the improvement element. But I think probably in this context, the main understanding that is important for us today and understanding this passage is the spiritual context. Because this Sermon on the Mount, this is Jesus giving a sermon to a Jewish audience, and much of the sermon is going to address the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who have twisted the understanding of the Old Testament. And they had caused misunderstanding, and Jesus is correcting much of that. So this is the setting in which he's teaching. And so when you hear salt in a spiritual setting, you're going to think of salt in a spiritual use. If I say to you right now, let's take the cup together, you don't think that I mean, the U of L, UK game, someone needs to go steal the Governor's Cup. You don't immediately think that because that's a whole different context. When I say, let's take the cup together at church, you think let's take communion, because that's the context. That's the phrasing we use here. You always find meaning from the immediate context. And so when he says salt, you are the salt of the earth. There's a really important context. And it's all around the idea of the word covenant. In fact, here in your notes, it's a sign of God's covenant to his people. If you look, there's a verse

in particular Leviticus 2: 12:48

13. He says this, and this is in the setting. And you remember there was this whole sacrificial system tied around the temple where you were required for certain sins to give sacrifices and certain types of sacrifices. But over and over again we see that salt is added to sacrifices. You see this over and over again. It's not talked about a whole lot. Why is salt added? Salt had this symbolic aspect to it. Leviticus talks about this. You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. Here's the phrase you shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offerings. With all your offerings you shall offer salt. We see that in a couple of other key verses where salt is seen as a symbol, the salt sprinkled across the sacrifice is a symbol of God's covenant commitment to his people. We're sprinkling the salt and we're saying, God, God is faithful. God is committed to us. God doesn't give up on us always. That's the picture. That's the symbolism. And so when the disciples are to go into the world, they go into the world as a reminder to people of God's covenant faithfulness to his people. How they live, how they act, what they do. There's a picture to the world of the reality that God is faithful to his people. God is committed to his people. All right, so that's the salt element. I'm going to talk more about the latter part of that verse. That's kind of confusing about salt losing its saltiness. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. We're going to get to that. But first I want next I want to talk about light. First ingredient was salt. You are the salt of the earth. Second, you are the light of the world. Let's talk about what light means. If you're to view yourself, and the disciples are to view themselves as light, how would they view that? And of course, light is all over Scripture. Light shows up over and over again. It can mean a lot of different things. Of course, can mean literal light. But of course, the symbolic elements, the symbolic teaching, it can be taken a lot of different ways here. We're going to come back to that Bible study principle. I just talked about the context. What's the immediate context around it? If if I say to you. We're working in the garage on something, trying to repair something, and I say, hey, go over to the trunk and get a wrench, you don't suddenly start looking around for an elephant, an elephant's trunk. No. You immediately go to the car because that's right there. You immediately understand that's the closest context to what we're talking about. When we talk about light, there's an immediate context with light that just happened. We're going to look back at Matthew chapter four, because when Jesus launched his ministry, Jesus quotes from the book of Isaiah when he starts his ministry here in Matthew four, just prior to the Sermon on the Mount, he quotes from the book of Isaiah for a very important reason. But I want you to see first what he says. Just flip back a page or look over to chapter four. Look at verse 12. Jesus begins his ministry. Now when he heard that John had been arrested, John the Baptist, he--- we withdrew into Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea and the territory of Zebulon and Naphtali, so that what was spoken-- So we kind of get a picture of his movements, but then we get an explanation. Here's why he moved around the way he did. He moved around this way so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. And so here's the quote in Isaiah chapter nine. Here's what it says, the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, in Galilee of the Gentiles, the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light. Here's that word light. So the people in these areas, they've been under darkness. Now they see, they see a light. They see a great light. And for those dwelling in the region in the shadow of death on them a light has dawned. All right. So bear with me for a second here. We gotta unpack this. This is Isaiah chapter nine that he's quoting from Isaiah chapter nine. He talks about a light coming into the world. Isaiah chapter nine is what's called a heavily messianic passage, meaning it's pointing towards the Messiah. Here's what you should look for when you're looking for the Messiah to come. All of Israel was hoping for and looking for a messiah to come, a Savior, someone who would rescue them. And so he says, A light has dawned. The Messiah has come. Isaiah nine also talks about how the baby will be born of a virgin. You will call him Emmanuel, and on his shoulders the government will rest. So you get all these pictures. What should we be looking for in a messiah to come? And Jesus quotes from that. He also quotes from Isaiah, in fact, this is important to understand. When we were looking at the Beatitudes last week, we saw how the Psalms serves as a backdrop. We saw how they were quoted individually, specifically, but also Isaiah serves as a backdrop for the whole sermon. It's almost maybe like the tortilla shell wrapping up all the ingredients. Isaiah really serves as an important backdrop for understanding this passage. He quotes from Isaiah nine in Luke when he launches his ministry, he quotes from Isaiah 61, you remember, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. I came to bring hope to the poor. Blessed are the poor in spirit. I came to comfort those who have mourned. Blessed are those who mourn to bring liberty to the captives and the favorable day of our Lord. So he's quoting from heavily messianic passages. And then he says in Luke today, this has been fulfilled in your presence. And he's saying, I am the Messiah. I am the one you have been looking for. All those passages have been reading in Isaiah. They're all pointing to me. Jesus is saying that. So come back here to this idea of light. Let's bring it all back here when we see you are the light of the world. I just told you a light has dawned. The Messiah has come, and now you also act to the world as a representative of the Messiah. You come bringing his ministry to the world. That's a powerful picture of what it means to be light, to carry on the work that Jesus came to do. So that's salt covenant. That's light. Now, when you are dealing with any recipe, you know that when ingredients come together, sometimes they can take on an additional meaning they can change. So we're going to look at this third category of salt and light combined. This third ingredient when you combine salt and light what is the meaning. How do those shift form improve combined, come together to give us another understanding. What other element do we need to understand in terms of what it means to live in light of being members of the Kingdom of Heaven? How do we understand salt and light combined? Well, first let me just say, if you do a search through Scripture and you look for all the instances where salt and light are talked about together just like they are here, you won't find any other examples. You won’t, it's not clear, how do we look at salt and light together? Instead, we've got to look at another layer, a little deeper layer, which by the way, does anybody find that frustrating about the Bible where everything's not super clear that you've got to dig in and look for stuff? Have you ever been frustrated by that? Colby and I were talking about that as we were looking at the whole Sermon on the Mount. Why isn't everything, why is it that some places are so hard to unpack to get your mind around? I think at one level that's just understanding human nature. I mean, the things that are super obvious to you are boring. If I tell you a joke and you see it coming a mile off, you don't laugh. It's not funny. I got it, John. We got it. It's the super obvious stuff that you you don't hang on to, you don't grasp onto. But the stuff you got to work for, the stuff you have to pry into and think about and you feel like you've unlocked somehow. Man, that stuff tends to hold deep meaning. And so it's not like God's just trying to be mean and make life harder. But he also understands things you have struggled with and worked for are going to carry a deeper weight. And you know how that has been in life. The things that are most significant to you cost you something. How are salt and light combined together to be understood? If you understand salt in terms of covenant, there is a passage in Isaiah specifically that speaks of covenant and light together.

It's in Isaiah 42: 21:44

6 I'm going to flip over there and read that passage, because it's an important passage for us to understand.

Isaiah 42: 21:53

6 says this, and this is Isaiah speaking about God's chosen servant, speaking about the Messiah. 6 says, I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness. So many hints to the Beatitudes. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. I've called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you. I will give you. And here's that word, covenant I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations. I will give you as a covenant for the people. I will give you as a light for the nations. And so when we combined covenant and light, salt and light here, we see these ideas coming together that Jesus disciples are called to carry out, continue the mission that Jesus brought. Now, before we continue, I want to take a step back and just pause and address these difficult sayings about salt. Right. Because you saw in this verse you are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? Who else finds that confusing? Anybody. Anybody else here studied any chemistry? I know at least one of us have. So there we go. There's another. You know that something can't become something it's not. I mean, things can combine and form and shape, but salt can't become not salt. It's. It just is what it is. It's either salt or not. Part of the hard part is, is that word salt has lost its taste, that word translated every other way. It's translated in all of Scripture and in all of Greek literature. It's never translated this way in any other instance. It's always translated something more like to become foolish. In fact, it sounds like our word for moron, Moreno. If you've become a moron, if you've become foolish, if you've become useless, it's often translated that way. And so many have taken this to see if salt is no longer of use. If salt. In fact, many times when salt was mined, it was contaminated with other materials, especially around the Dead Sea in this culture. So if it's if it's no good for eating, if it's no good for preserving, what do you do with it? You just got to get rid of it. Just throw it on the road to be trampled. We put salt like that on the roads too. We use it. You understand. What it means though ultimately is this both salt and this picture of light. a city on a hill cannot be hidden. You can't hide a city that's lit up. You can't do anything to hide it. You see it from miles and miles away. Here's the point. And I want you to write down this one word whether something is tasteless or if you tried to hide it under a bushel. The one word is it's impossible. Salt can't not be salt. The city light can't not be light. It's impossible. Here's what this means for us, for the Christian, what we're going to see with this last point. The calling we have. It is impossible for the Christian to not be this. The calling to be a picture of Christ's work on this earth, the calling to live out the picture of his covenant to the world, the calling to be a light to the world. It's impossible for the Christian to not do that. Just as it's impossible for salt to not be salt, just as it's impossible for light to not be light, for light to not shine. It is impossible for the Christian to not tell the world about who Jesus is. Look at number four. This is the last ingredient here that helps give us direction and how we are called to live. Number four Jesus is showing them by doing all this. Here's the point. He's showing them that this is the fulfillment of a forgotten purpose. He's showing them that he is fulfilling a forgotten purpose. Jesus, by talking about salt and light here, he's pointing forward to the end of Matthew and the last three verses of Matthew. We've talked about this passage a lot. Who knows what it's called? The Great Commission. Everyone should know. If I ask you where the Great Commission is, you should know the end of Matthew, the last few verses, the Great Commission. It's the last few words he tells to his disciples. And when someone gives you their last few words, you know they're really important and they shape up the way we approach everything, go into all the world, make disciples, teach them what I have commanded you, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The key word there is go make disciples. Go. And that is the primary task of the church. And I don't just mean the staff or me or the elders. That is the primary task of Christians. Go make disciples, go into the world. That's what we've been called to do. Go tell others about what Jesus has done in your life. And the problem with the Jews at this time is they had forgotten that Jesus is just reminding them of what they had been told. I've listed in your notes Genesis 12 one through two. This is God's initial covenant with Abraham and the key word Genesis 12 one through two I have blessed you. Sermon on the Mount comes to mind. Beatitudes come to mind. You are blessed, I blessed you, I will bless you, and I will make your name great so that you will bless the world. You will bless the nations. I bless you to be a blessing. I've blessed you so that you'll pour out that blessing to the world. This is a forgotten purpose. We're not to be insular. And so when it comes to the church, when it comes to us, there's a lot of misconceptions about church, the way we think about ourselves. Okay, we're not a country club. Now, look, of course there's a gathering. Of course we're gathering now. There's a social element. I mean, we're going to gather for a worship night tonight. We love a good potluck. We love to connect. Okay? We're Baptist. We like to eat. That's okay. That's an important part of it. But that's not our main purpose. We don't gather just for social sake. We're also not a hospital. You know, many people talk about the church as a hospital. It's a place to come and get healing. And by the way, that's true. We do have to serve in that capacity at times. I mean, there are people I've talked with a number of you who have been through seasons of spiritual abuse, and you're still trying to recover. You're still not fully sure how to get fully engaged in church because you're still struggling, because it's such a deep injury to be spiritually abused. It takes a long time, and that's okay. Take your time. It takes a long time to get over that. And for that person, we are a hospital. We are a healing place. But anybody who's been in a hospital knows you don't want to stay in the hospital. That's the last place you want to stay. You want to get healthy and get out and get out and start helping other people. That's where you start feeling alive again. I get back to the way I used to be. I can help others out. So we're not first and foremost the hospital. We serve in that function. Here's what we are. We're flashlight shining, salt spreaders. We're people who are getting out, serving, telling others about what Jesus has done in your life. If you're a Christian, you can't not do that. You can't not. It's impossible for you to not do that. And so here's what I want to do today. I want to give us all a challenge today. This is going to be uncomfortable, okay? It's going to be uncomfortable. Just be ready. It will be uncomfortable. That's okay. It's okay for us to be uncomfortable. I mean, look, you're Jesus said you're going to be uncomfortable out there. We should start by learning to be uncomfortable in here. Here's the call. Today we're going to take a step of faith. This week, I'm going to call you to take a step of faith this week. And if you have those boxes, if you could go ahead and bring those down front, because in just a minute I'm going to ask you to do something. I'm going to ask you to take a step of faith and come down front. And I want you to grab a small gospel tract. I was in the seminary library recently, and I was looking at this book on evangelism, and I was standing there looking at it, thinking about, do I have time to read this? I've got some other things I want to read. Should I get this or not? And I hear a guy behind me, he goes, that is a great book. You should really get that book. I said, really, tell me more. What makes it so great? He said, well, I wrote it. Okay, I see where this is going. You wrote it, tell me more. And we had a good laugh over it and but I bought it, I read it, it was good. We met. He's a professor at the seminary around evangelism. We met this week. We just so happened we scheduled it for this week to talk about the book. Hey, I want to ask you about the book. I want to discuss some things in it. I want to learn. You're a professor of evangelism. I want to talk more about what evangelism means to you. And while we met, he told me the story. There was this 80 year old man in his church, been a Christian for decades, and he had met with this same group of three guys to golf every Friday for 20 years, and he had been burdened recently. I've never told these guys about my hope in Jesus, pastor, will you help me? And he said, look, here's a booklet read over this. Be ready. You never know where God will open the door. You never know. So he took the booklet. He read it. He was waiting. He was ready. One day they finished golfing. They stop in the clubhouse, they’re having lunch, and one of the guys goes, guys, I've been having the weirdest dreams. I have been dreaming about God all the time. Do you think he's trying to get my attention? And you know, this 80 year old guy was like, maybe. Yeah, there's a chance. Well, how do I learn more about him? Didn't you guys know anything about him? And the 80 year old guy goes wait right here. I got something in my truck I'm going to get. He runs out, he grabs the booklets, he hands them out to his friends. Guys, look, I don't know all the answers. I think maybe my pastor should be here talking to you, but let's just look at what this says. Are you open to that? Yes. Please tell me. And he walks through those booklets with them. And those guys come to know Christ and this 80 year old guy comes back to his pastor and he says, I'm so sad that I've missed so many opportunities. All my friends are dying right now. They're all friends from high school, friends from growing up. My wife's friends are all dying, and I've missed out on opportunities to tell them about Jesus. What do I do? So he and his wife sat down, and they mapped out, they're going to travel around the country for the next six months going from person to person. We're going to try to get to them all before they die and tell them about Jesus. Give them the hope in Jesus. That's his next six months of his life is given to that. So here's what I want us to do today. I want you to take a step of faith. In just a second. I'm gonna ask you to come up, and all I want you to do is just take a tract, and your first step is just going to be to read it. And by the way, the guy I met with, he he's the one who wrote the tract, too, he’s a professor of evangelism, wrote the tract that was published by the seminary. And by the way, if this tool doesn't work for you, that's fine. If you've got one you love and use all the time. If you got a way you go about talking with people about the gospel. Great use that. I don't, I don't care, but if you don't, maybe try this. The first step is just read it. That's your first task this week. Just read it. It's like just read it. And then second is to pray every day this week for an open door. Every day. Leave this out where you do your Bible study, or leave it on your dashboard or wherever you're going to see it, and pray every day for God to open a door. Because he will. And if again, if this doesn't work, if you feel like this isn't the tool for me to use right now, that's okay. But he might he might just use this. All you got to do is just read it to someone. Can I tell you about what Jesus did in my life? So what we're going to do now, Isaac's going to play, and I just want you to come as he plays, grab a tract during this song, pause here and pray. Even now, God, would you open the door? Would you open a door this week for me to talk about my hope in you? For me to be salt and light. Because we're not going to hide between the walls just because it's scary outside. We're going to go. And so come get a tract, pause and pray, and then go back to your seat. Because I got one other thing to tell you, one other thing to tell you about how this is going to work next week as I go ahead and lead us, go ahead and come. Come on, now's the time. Come get a tract.(00.35.23.09-00.38.59.09 is music) If you're still gathering those, that's okay. Go ahead and grab pause and pray. Here's the thing we're going to do next week. I want to hear how God worked this week. So we're going to have a time in next week's service for people to share. Here's how God moved this week when I went by faith, when I prayed for him to open the door for me to share. Because that's our primary focus as a church is is outward. There's an inward factor. Without a doubt. We're here today focused on equipping one another, building one another up, focused on growing in Christ so that we can go. So next week we're going to have a part of the service or I just give you an opportunity, opportunity to share. Now let me say on the front end, some of you want to turn that into a personal sermon. That's not what we're talking about. Right? We'll shut you down. No, share what God did, give a short sentence or two, paragraph or so. Here's how God opened the door this week. Here's what God did. I promise you, if you are praying daily for him to open a door and you're thinking about the gospel and sharing that with others, he will. I think too many times we fall into this pattern of just going through the motions of life and forgetting that that's our purpose. That's a big part of what we're called to do. And by the way, it's the most exciting way to live. There's nothing more exciting that you will do than to share your faith with someone else, to share your hope in Jesus. So be praying for that all week. And if you want more copies of these, there's there's two different covers on these. They have the same content. They look a little different. We had a bunch of old ones we wanted you to use up. It's the same material. Come grab more if one's not enough for you, if you're like, I could use 100. Come get what you want. We got extra. Now I want to make sure everybody got one. But that's our mission. That's our focus. I’m going to close us in prayer. Let me just mention reminder tonight.