Summer on the Mount: Salt and Light | Matthew 5:13-16 | Jarryd Cole

Pastor Jarryd continues with our series, Summer on the Mount, going through Jesus' instruction on being Salt and Light.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side. We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Hey, you guys can go ahead and find your seats. Take your seat, take your seat. And again, hey, welcome to Ambassador Church. If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and get those out. We're gonna be jumping back into our sermon series in the Gospel of Matthew on the Summer on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5. You can meet me there. We're gonna be starting in verse 13 today. We're continuing this series that we're calling affectionately Summer on the Mount. We're excited to continue to go in this. Okay, last week we kicked this off and we were in the Beatitudes in the first 12 verses of Matthew chapter 5. And I kind of want to just remind us of what Jesus is doing in this in this part of the text, okay? His Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon by Jesus ever recorded. Okay, what he's doing, like he's not kind of offering us this kind of rule book to the Christian faith. We have to understand the Sermon on the Mount, we said this last week, it's not some kind of checklist. It's not like you go through the Sermon on the Mount and you check all the things here, like, yep, that's me, that's me, that's me. I got it all good. It's not about that, right? It's not about what you're doing to be a better Christian, but what it's doing is it's revealing your deep need that you have for Jesus. And so we can come to a place where we read the Sermon on the Mount and we read through it, Matthew chapter five through Matthew chapter seven, and we get to the end of it, and we're like, okay, my goal now is to become a better Christian. My goal now is to try to live this kind of perfect life. But here's what's true about Jesus is that he's not trying to press you into a perfect life, but what he's trying to do is show us what life in the kingdom of God looks like. And I want to remind us that, hey, life in the kingdom of God is this it's not primarily about doing, it's primarily about becoming. And so this theme that we're gonna try to carry out throughout these next 11 weeks is this. We presented this last week as well, that the kingdom life doesn't press you into harder religion. The kingdom life presses you into deeper dependence. And this is the entire point of the Sermon on the Mount. So as we go through this series, here's my prayer, okay? It's that we become people, yes, that desire to do things that God calls us to do. We want to be filled with the Holy Spirit to walk in obedience to God, yes. But primarily we want to become people who grow in a deeper dependence on Jesus. And I love how last week we went through this in the Beatitudes, and it was a sequence of eight blessed remarks, if you remember that. Jesus says these things are true about the people who follow him. And remember, it's not that we go and look for these things. You saw things in there like people who are poor in spirit, people who mourn, people who are humble, people who are even persecuted. Right? How many of you know that you don't have to go looking for those things in your life? Sometimes those things just come and find you. And this is the reality that God wants us to know that when those things happen, we don't look at those things and try to sidestep them the best we can to try to shirk back or do all the things that we can and not experience those things. But what we do is we lean into them and we say, Hey, God, we believe you and we believe what you're saying, that it's actually blessed to experience these things. Why? Because our greatest reward isn't here on earth, our greatest reward is what we receive at the end of this life. And so Jesus is in the business of not necessarily giving you your best life now, but he's in the business of flipping your values upside down to help you see life, how he sees life, to help you see life right here and right now, in context of the kingdom of God, not in the kingdom of this world. And the most beautiful part is this Jesus, our Savior, he even modeled this for us beautifully. We said last week that Jesus is literally the Beatitudes personified. Jesus was the one who was poor in spirit, he was the one who was humble, he was the one who mourned, he was merciful, he hungered and thirst for righteousness, he's pure in heart, he's the ultimate peacemaker, and he was persecuted. This is the gospel. He lived the life that we couldn't live, he died the death that we should have died, and he rose three days later to conquer sin, death, hell, and the grave and prove that if you put your faith in him, the same can happen for you. He didn't even deserve it. He was an innocent man who was dying for guilty people, and he says, You, the guilty one, I've done this for you so that you can have righteousness through me. Jesus embodies these to his core. And so, what Jesus is saying by his life, death, and resurrection is that the most blessed life is the life that he has modeled for us. So the Beatitudes, verses 1 through 12 in chapter 5, these are basically telling us, hey, this is who kingdom people are. Anyone want to be a kingdom person in this room? I want to be a kingdom person. And it's important that we understand this and get that context, especially for what we're gonna hear from him today, because he's gonna move from who kingdom people are from the Beatitudes now to what kingdom people do. And he's gonna say some of the most memorable words that he's probably gonna say uh throughout this, throughout this sermon. And many of you probably heard these words before, okay? Even back into your days in youth camp, if you're a church person that came up in church your whole life, he's gonna say these words, hey, to the believer in the room, you are the salt of the earth, and you are what? The light of the world. You are the salt of the earth, and you are the light of the world. And we're gonna see this as we jump right into Matthew chapter 5. You have your Bibles, gonna be starting in verse 13. I'm gonna read for us here. And here's what it says. Jesus continues, he says, You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It's no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. Okay, this is what Jesus says. It says, You are the salt of the world, but and we'll get to this in just a moment, he says, the salt loses its taste, how can it be made salty? He's saying saltless salt is no good. And it's only good for being thrown out and trampled under feet. Before I jump in, I want us to know um, this is the verse. I don't know if you guys know this, we have a college ministry here that we call the Salt Company. And this is the title verse that we get that name from Salt Company. We want our people who are 18 to 22 years old to know, hey, that like you are the salt of the earth. The time that you're spending in your college years, maybe you're in college, maybe you have a job or something like that, but these are super formidable years for you. And I want you to know off top that like Ambassador Church is a church for you. Like, we desire for you to be in these pews, not only on our Tuesday nights for our salt company services, but on Sunday mornings, okay, so that we can minister to you. We believe that you don't only need peers to walk this life of faith with, but you also need spiritual moms and dads. You also need spiritual aunties and uncles. You also need spiritual grandmas and grandpas. And so we believe in the local church, but we also believe in ministering to you in your time and place that you are as 18 to 22-year-olds. And we want you to know that the thing that you can be tempted to live for in this life during that time frame, listen, those things will leave you empty. And if you call yourself a child of God, if you believe in Jesus, we want to present to you something else, and Jesus actually has a purpose for you. And that purpose is not that you live for yourself, but that you live as salt of the earth. You live as salt of Jesus. A difficult thing for you to do in the time that you're in, but a high calling for you to attain to, to live your life not for yourself, but for the kingdom of God. This is our desire. And if you're asking the question how we do that, Jesus is going to get us into that right now. Basically, what it means to be salt and light is this it is to be in the world, but not of the world. It's to be in the culture, but distinctly separate from the culture. And maybe you're in the room, you're asking this question how does God view culture? You ever asked this question before? Like, how does God view the way that we experience this life? I want to kind of give us a framework for this because it can be kind of tricky to understand. And the first is going to be a definition of culture that's going to pop up here on the screen. Here's how we can understand culture culture is the shared world of language, ideas, beliefs, and customs and values that we all swim in. Okay, culture is kind of that like unnamed, that thing that you can't really put your finger on, but it's the thing that you experience. Culture isn't the thing that you experience when you walk into these doors of ambassador church and nobody's saying a word about it, but you just got that feeling about it. Whatever that is, we don't get to name that. You get to feel it. Okay. That is that that's what culture is. A lot of it is unnamed. But there are ideas and values and languages, customs, right? That we all swim in, we all get to experience this. But there's not only cultures, there's also subcultures, right? You you know that there's also subcultures. These are like all those things as well, but they're within unique people groups. This was past week, uh, Summerfest was doing its thing. Anybody go to Summerfest last week by chance? Um, me and my wife, we were downtown, we're on a date this last Thursday night, and you know, we're driving around, we're looking around, and all of a sudden you just see people popping out, and it's just like these young women, older women, and they all have the same uniform on. It's like the pink top and the denim bottoms, you know, and it was either, I don't know, a skirt, pants, jeans, whatever it might be, tank top, but it was it was all the same, like pink and then denim, right? And you're like, you know exactly where these people are going. There's only one place where they could possibly go. Okay, that's kind of like what subculture is. They were likely all Americans, but they're in a subculture. They're about to go to this summerfest thing, enjoy this music, and you know what kind of music they're gonna be enjoying? Country music. Okay, you already know. You already know. Like, this is how subcultures are. Okay, those of you who are sports fans, it also works there, okay. When you go to Pfizer Forum, you're gonna go there, you're gonna leave all your Chicago Bull stuff at home. You're gonna leave all your whatever, Boston Celtics stuff at the crib, and you're gonna walk in that thing, you're gonna deck yourself out in bucks gear. Why? Because that's the culture when you walk into Foser form. That's the culture when you walk in there, okay? This is what it means to understand culture, and so many of these things can fit in here, right? The way we dress, even the way that we vote, the way that we talk, so much of this is influenced by the culture, and we influence culture by it. But there's three typical ways that scholars try to process how God kind of interacts into the cultures that we experience. I want to give us three kind of frameworks for this. The first one is this um, some scholars say God is against culture. Where literally the idea is that God is the enemy of culture, like culture is the enemy. And so by association, they would think that believers, people who follow God, would say, hey, we're also against culture. We have to do all that we can to pull ourselves out. Culture is something that we don't need to engage in or be in, but it's something we need to avoid and escape. You need to build the walls to defend yourself from the culture instead of building bridges to go into culture. Okay, and here's what I want us to know: this is a false view. This is actually not the way that God views culture. But the second way that scholars think is this like God in culture. If the first one is God against culture, the next one is God in culture, and the idea here is to think like this culture is king, culture is everything. And this one's kind of tricky, okay? Because this kind of nods to the God-given idea that, hey, I'm created as an image bearer of God in a certain place and a certain time to a certain people with a certain skin tone, with a certain background. And you're just like, yeah, like culture. And it's culture or bust, like God in culture. God just cosigns to all things that any culture ever presents. This is what it means for God to be in culture. And what I want us to know is that this isn't completely wrong, it's actually getting closer to what's actually right about God. But here's where this one kind of falls short. Culture isn't inherently evil, but the problem is when it's taken too far. And when it's taken too far, the gospel collapses into culture, and it becomes hard to tell the difference between, hey, what's gospel and what's not. That's where the line has to be drawn. The gospel ends up becoming a mascot for whatever cultural ideology you're wanting to affirm, and you actually let it reign over the true gospel. This is what it means when you see God is in culture, affirming of everything. But the third one, and I believe this is the right way, it's God above culture. And I want to define this for us a little bit because it can be a little misleading, but it's God above culture, and the idea is this is that culture is transformed. God seeks to transform culture. And this is what I think we have to get into our minds this morning, right? God is above culture, but he's not above it to be outside of it forever. No, not even outside of it at all. God like loves culture, actually in culture. That's why the other one is partially correct, but there's a distinct difference in that God doesn't assimilate to the culture around it, God tends to transform the culture around it. This is what it means to be God above culture. See, God tends to send people into culture while standing over culture as Lord in order to seek the transformation of it. In other words, all things have to bow to Jesus. See, I'm gonna talk about this more in just a little bit, but we need to know that as Christians, we don't just run from culture like it's against us. Like you don't have to be fearful of the culture around you. I don't know what comes to your mind when you think about that. Maybe it's the big, scary, bad things that you hear on the news or whatever it might be. Like, you don't have to be fearful of that. I remember we were moving to Milwaukee, and people from other places, not to be named, were like, are you sure, Milwaukee? Do you know what Milwaukee is like? Do you know all the stuff going on? And listen, I was at the like we were doing the Duneship Parade, we were all out, you know, Friday or whatever. I'm coming home with my kids, and like you see some stuff happening, but you want to know what I'm not? I'm not afraid of what the culture has to offer. I'm not fearful, and I don't believe God's fearful either. He's not looking at culture, shaking in his boots, he is Lord over it. And what we as people who love God need to do is just recognize culture, but we also have to recognize God is above culture and we serve him. And so as we live in culture, here's what we do: we seek to live in a way where culture can be transformed, not where culture is transforming us. Amen. And so rather, we don't run from it, we live intentionally inside of it as salt in the world, but not of the world. But how do you live as salt? This is the question. A couple things I want to show us. Um, this is how we can live as salt in our day, okay? One, there's a few different properties to salt. Salt prevents decay. So, as people who are transformed by Jesus, who are living in a world and culture, one of the things that we can do to live as salt in a dying world is to stop the decay of the world. Like the church, this is part of our role to live as transformed people by Jesus, and our actions and our attitudes should re resemble that. So as we engage in our places of work, as we engage in our grocery stores, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, all the places that we go, like we tend to live as if, hey, the beatitudes are true and we walk around in a different way. We carry a different kind of culture with us, and by doing that, what you end up doing is slowing the fast-moving decay that is actually coming against the thing that you tend to represent. And I know I don't gotta do a lot of convincing to let you know that our world is actually going in decay. You can look at the way relationships are happening these days, marriages, divorce rates. You look at morals, what things, what what things people allow, what things people are okay with. You look at families, family structures, yours, mine included. You're just looking like, yo, these things shouldn't be however they are. Like, man, that's not right. But we need to know, Christians, that when you become a follower of Jesus, you become indwelled by the Holy Spirit. You have something else entirely inside of you that not only saves you, but empowers you to live a different life that actually helps you begin to live in places and ways and where you tend to stop the decay of a dying world. This is one of the properties of salt, and we can be like this too. We tend to fight for the least of these, including the elderly and the disabled and the unseen and the unborn and the foreigner and the immigrant. Like when we carry ourselves in this way, where we carry ourselves with love, like the beatitudes are true, and we pursue people as if every single person made is made in the image of God. This is ways that we can prevent decay in the world. But salt also adds flavor. Okay. Literally, this just means Christians can live in a world in a way where we just make things more appetizing. All right? Like, how many of you know that food without salt is really bland? Okay. I don't know. Maybe just a few of you in the room know that. I don't know. Right? Like, you gotta put salt on them French fries, you gotta put salt on everything, man. Salt your meat, salt your chicken, all right, man. Don't be don't don't be putting that stuff in a crock pot, just letting it thank you, Donovan. Ah, soapbox, salt your meats, okay. No, but part of living as a Christian is literally just making things more appetizing to the world. Out of what you do, whatever that might be, make it make it appealing. Do the best that you can do. A lot of young people I talk to, like they tend to ask me, um, they're giving lives of Christ. They're like, man, what do I do with my life now? I'm like, do what's your major? What are you studying at? What are you good at? What do you want to do? And they're like, this, that, and the other. I'm like, hey, whatever that is, do that for the glory of God. Are you a Christian doctor? Then be the best doctor there ever is. Are you a Christian DJ? You just love music, then you better turn the tape to the glory of God, man. We want you at the weddings. We got a lot of young people in here getting married. We want to have that thing popping off, okay? Use the turntables to the glory of God, whatever it might be. You can add flavor to the things around you. Maybe you're more into tech, right? And AI. AI is the enemy's playground nowadays. I know, okay. Enemy needs Jesus, or AI needs Jesus. So if you're that person, we need you in the AI space, okay? Um, help us out there, please. We're begging you. But lastly, salt only doesn't only prevent decay, it doesn't only add flavor, but lastly, it also creates thirst. When we live our lives the way that Jesus has to live our lives, what should happen is that people should literally thirst for the thing that we have inside of us. When we show up to places and we walk and we live and we go places, people should be thirsting and hungering for this reality of like, man, there's something about you, there's something different. I can't really name it, I can't really put my finger on it. I don't know what it is, but you should be living in such a way where people see your life and they begin thirsting for God. And what a way to evangelize. What a way to share the hope that you have, what a way to enter into a gospel conversation to tell them about the only hope that they can have in life and death. It's in Jesus Christ. See, people around should be able to identify a distinction between you and the culture. So this is what Jesus means when he's saying, You are the salt of the earth. But do you see the warning in this text? Jesus brings us back, he doesn't only say, Hey, you are the salt of the earth, but he reminds us what salt is like if it loses its saltiness. Okay, look at this back in verse 13 at the end of it. He says, But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It's no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. So the question is, how does salt become saltless? Have you ever tasted saltless salt before? I've never I've never had saltless salt, okay? Like anytime I put salt, it's salty every time, okay? Like I don't this is hard for me to understand. But here's what I think Jesus is getting at. I don't think salt can actually lose its saltiness, but what salt can do is it can assimilate to the things around it. This is the way salt can lose its saltiness. Back in the day, um, back in this day, uh the they would get salt mainly from a couple different places. The the the the Dead Sea, which was one of the saltiest places on earth, or maybe some of the salt flats around it. And what happens is sometimes they would store this salt. And when you store salt, you don't store salt proper, but you so but but but but you but you store it with other minerals and compounds and all these different kinds of things. And what happens when you don't use the salt, when you don't use the literal sodium chloride, what happens is it just begins to leach out into all the other minerals and elements that it's with. And so what Jesus is basically saying the way that you use your lose your saltiness is that you become an inactive and an ineffective Christian. You lose your saltiness. Saltiness, not because you like lose your salvation, no, but because you lose your influence. He's saying you're not seeing me as God above culture, you're seeing me as God in culture or God against culture. You're not seeing yourself as a transformer, you're not seeing yourself filled with the Holy Spirit to go and do and be salt and light. He says the greatest thing that comes against a Christian isn't the fear that you might not be saved, but it's the fear that you might just be too much like the world around you. We were at the Juneteenth parade on Friday. I mentioned this. And uh this lady walks up, this older woman, she lives in a neighborhood. We found that out, that's great. And we were talking to her about ambassador church. She wanted to know who we were, what we're doing. Hey, we're a church on the east side of Milwaukee. You should come check us out, all this uh kind of stuff. And the question she asked me is okay, well, what kind of denomination are you? Anybody else have that question in the room? What denomination are you? If you want to know, come to Next F class next Sunday, 12 45 p.m. We'll let you we'll let you guys know. No, so I say, I tell her, I say, Well, we're Southern Baptist-ish. We're Southern Baptist-ish, which is true. Okay, but you come to our church and you recognize really quick there's not much Southern about us and not much Baptist about us, other than we want you baptized in this water, amen. That's about it. But she asked me, hey, what denomination are you here? We're Southern Baptist-ish. And she goes, Oh, well, I can't come to your church then. And I said, Oh, well, why not? She said, Well, that tells me everything I need to know about you. You're that kind of conservative church. I said, Oh, well, that might not be exactly true, but but she makes a snap judgment about who we are because of the denomination that we have a tie to. And she says, Well, I voted for Mandela Barnes, and so I don't think I would be welcome in that church. Snap judgment after snap judgment. I said, Well, hey, I don't know if that's exactly true about it. So she goes, Well, who's your pastor? And I said, I am. And she goes, Oh, well, in that case, I'm I might, I might, I might show up. True story, that's Mac, Emily McKinster, whenever you see it. It was incredible. But another Snap Judgment, she's a tall, big black dude, tattoos, all that, had to fit a cap on to the back, right? She was just like, Ah, well, maybe. Maybe I maybe I could. She was confused. Snap judgment after Snap Judgment. And listen, I don't blame her because I might be a little bit confused too. But I also want you to know, hey, this is exactly the point. If someone can pinpoint you as someone who follows Jesus, as someone who fits wholesale in any other cultural category, I want to submit to you that you're following a Christianity that's probably not Christianity. And I'm not demonizing any culture, I'm not demonizing any political side. Please hear that. But I do want you to know from the pulpit, first and foremost, Ambassador Church is not a political church on either side of the aisle. Ambassador Church is a Bible church that believes in Jesus Christ and the risen Lord. Like this is simply it. And any Christian who says or acts differently, I want you to hear this. It's a stern warning. Jesus says is a saltless salt. You're actually worthless. And Jesus says, you know what you do with worthless salt. You throw it on the ground for it to be trampled over. The greatest danger for the Christian isn't whether you're liked. It's not whether your favorite political candidate is in office or not. It's not whether your beloved cultural values are upheld or stripped away or trampled over. Jesus says the greatest danger for the Christian is when your salt loses its saltiness. It's when your faith is indistinguishable from the world and your bold witness turns into a relevant assimilation. So for the room today, here's a question: Are you salt? Or do you just look like salt? Are you salt? Or do you just look like salt? Take inventory. Would the people around you be able to look at your life and describe it as a Christian as someone who lives in a way that prevents the decaying of the world, that adds flavor to the world around you for the benefit of the lives around you and creates a thirst for people, no matter who they are, no matter where they are, no matter where they find themselves, on any kind of social or cultural spectrum, whatever it might be, would they see your life and actually thirst for the God that you say that you follow and serve? Jesus doesn't just stop there. He doesn't just leave it with salt. He says, You are the salt of the earth, but he also says, You are the light of the world. Look at the rest of the text. Matthew 5, verse 14. Jesus continues, He says, You are the light of the world. You are a city situated on a hill, and it cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are 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 in heaven. So if you want to know what Jesus is saying, Christians are like, he's saying Christians are the salt of the earth, and Christians are the light of the world. And I love this title specifically because you know who else the Bible says is the light of the world? Jesus. And so when Jesus is saying you are the light of the world, he's saying you're like little me's. When you place your faith in me, you become little, little me's that live the life that you're living and the places that you're going, and the thing that you should be doing is lighting up the places around you that let people know, hey, you serve a different kingdom. You are not a part of the kingdom of this world, but you are part of the kingdom of God. I love it. In John 8, Jesus says literally, I am the light of the world. And then here in Matthew chapter 5, he says, You are the light of the world. But I want us to hear this, I don't want us to get this twisted because there's some persuasions who would say that, like, hey, they would come to you, they're spiritual people, religious people, and they say, Hey, we're all gods. And they might even point to something like this and be like, Well, Jesus says he's the light of the world. And here he says, Hey, you're the light of the world. Like, they would misconstrue scripture like that. But here's what I want us to know. This isn't what's true. What's true is that Jesus is saying he is the source of all light. So he's saying, I am the light of the world. I am the light source, and you, you are light reflectors. I give the light, and what you do is you reflect the light. And reflecting the light means that the values of the kingdom of God and the character of Jesus that is being built up in you, it begins to pour out of you. This is what it means. Think about a light radiating. Think about a city on a hill that has lights, lampposts that are lighting up the entire city. Think about that. Jesus is saying, you're like that, shining bright for all to see, so the world can know that you are radically transformed. This is the greatest truth for the Christian. You are entirely a new person. Something that wasn't true about you before is now true about you. And what Jesus is saying is that a light that wasn't in you before is now in you. And it's a God light. It's not just any light, right? Because we know we can be filled up with lesser lights, like passions, things like that, hobbies, things that we want to do. And those things we all know, they come and they go. They light for a minute and then they dwindle in a moment. They're here today and gone tomorrow. But the light that Jesus gives us isn't only a bright light for us to shine and show, but it's an everlasting light that he also gives us and never goes anywhere. He says, You are the light of the world. It's an identity that Jesus has given you. And he's not saying, hey, you can be light. He's not saying you're sometimes a light. He's not saying you have to somehow turn this light on. No, he's giving you an identity marker. He says, This is what's true of you. When you place your faith in me, you have no other option. You're a light. You're a light. You have a God light in you, and your responsibility now is to shine. You are the light of the world. And I love that he says the world. Because in Christian spaces like this, what we can be tempted to do is just be like, man, I just want a lot of the spaces I like to go. I just want a lot at the space that I frequent and hang out with the people who are like me. I want to be a light in those spaces. He's not saying you're the light of other believers or the people you like to hang out with and have things in common with. He's not saying that. He's saying you are the light of the world. And what you do as a lot of the world is you tend to turn it outward, not inward. Why? So that people who need to see it can see and the darkness can be pushed back. So it's why you are the light of the world. Anybody ever try to shine your phone flashlight in a dark room before? Maybe you turn the lights off before you're too ready to turn the lights off, and now you gotta try to walk and find your way in your own house. You ever done that before? And sometimes, like maybe you're like me and your wife goes to bed like an hour before you go to bed sometimes, and you gotta walk into your bedroom and you gotta find your way in your bedroom now in this dark room, and like you gotta turn on the light, but you don't want to turn on the light in a way that's gonna wake her up whenever you get in there, right? So you're walking in and you got the flashlight and you're like you have it turned here, and you and you're and you're trying to walk, you're stubbing your toes on stuff, you're stepping on toys that you didn't know happen to be in your room. You're banging your knee on the footboard of the bed, all this kind of stuff. You want to know why? Because yes, you might have a light on, but the light isn't shining in the place where you need it to shine. Like you shine the light, but you have it turned here. What you need to do is turn the light outward, and yes, it might disrupt a little bit in the room. But the light has a purpose, and it's not to shine on you. The light has a purpose to shine outward. Why? So that you can see and direct the way that you're going, but also so that other people can see it. It actually lights a path. Light has to be shown outward, not inward. It has to be faced out. Jesus says, You're like a city lit up on a hill. You're like a lamp.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

You guys know that old song? This little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine. Hey, this little light of mine. Come on, Seven. Hey, I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Hey, right.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Don't hide it under a bushel. No. I'm gonna let it shine. Don't hide it under a bushel. No, I'm gonna let it shine. You are the light of the world. You didn't give it to yourself. This is an identity marker for you. It's not like some activity you have to muster up. It's yours. This is what's true of you. And you were designed to shine, but not for your own sake, but you were designed to have light for all to see. Jesus says the light lamps to give light to the entire house. A city shines, a light to give light to the entire city. You shine outward, not inward. And y'all, we want to be a people at Ambassador Church who embodies that. That yes, we love to come here and gather on Sunday mornings. We love in the fall, we're rolling out city groups, small groups, where you're gonna meet together in homes throughout the week and do discipleship. Yes, we love that. But we want that to be like a heartbeat. And that when you come, you pulse in and you pulse out and you pulse in and you pulse out the rhythm of breathing, the inhaling and exhaling that happens in the life of your Christian faith that yes, you come to be filled and restored, get reclaimed your identity. You are the light and you are the salt of the world on the earth. And then you go out, you shine your light outward, you push back decay, you add flavor, and you do these things as someone who's salt and light of the world. This is literally our mission statement, y'all. We did a whole sermon series at the beginning of launching this church on our mission statement, and you've probably seen it on some things around here. We have it right back here in the back of the room. Our mission statement is this: that we exist to unleash transformed people to represent Jesus to a watching world. You know what we mean by that? We mean that when you become a Christian, you become a transformed person. You are not the same person that you once were before. There's something that is entirely different about you. Innately from the inside out, you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. And because of that, we want to live on mission unleashed. Why? To represent Jesus to a watching world. Listen, we don't want to do anything novel here at Ambassador Church. All we're saying is that we want to be a Jesus people, a Bible people who are faithful to what Jesus in the Bible tells us to do. Simply that. And I want us to know this isn't some like theoretical high vision thing that we just wanted to like slap on some merch and some cool signs around the building. Being a transformed person who's unleashed to represent Jesus to a watching world, like this can be very practical. And trust me, this can be into your week, this week coming up. Here's how. Don't argue. Don't complain. Don't gossip. I was looking like that too, okay? And I'm gonna I'm not making this up. I'll fight for it, I promise. Listen, Philippians chapter two, it's gonna pop up here on the screen. Philippians chapter two, verses 14 through 15. Here's what Paul is saying to this church. This reading is actually gonna pop up in your guys' extra reading this week throughout your summer workout plan. But here's what Paul says he says, do everything without grumbling and arguing. Why? So that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in what? A crooked and perverted generation among whom, look at this, you shine like stars in the world. Paul is saying one of the main ways, and arguably the main ways in our life in our today and age, especially with how much access we have to the people around us, and how much access we have to all the um ways that we can communicate and all the ways that we receive information and give information. He says, Do you want to be a light in the world? Be someone who guards your mouth and guards your speech. Don't complain, don't argue, don't gossip. Not doing these things will allow you to shine, to shine like light, to shine like bright stars for all to see. You want to know why? Because the culture is not doing this. You don't have to go super far to be like, yep, there's an argument. Yep, there's gossip. You want to know where else it's at? It's right here. And if I'm a betting man, I would bet it's right here, too. So the challenge this week is yo, we don't need a high, lofty goal of what it means to be salt and light in the world. You know where we can begin? Our speech. The thing that you're going to do anyway. Like when people come up to you at work, and you know these people because they always come up to you at work and they're like, hey, man, Tammy's at it again. What what if you didn't oblige? What if you didn't engage in this now slander and gossip on Tammy? Listen, listen. You don't gotta, you don't gotta like disagree with them. Like, this is Tammy we're talking about. You know Tammy, okay? But you don't gotta disagree with them. But you don't have to partake in it, okay? Like you can actually be a person who guards your mouth. And listen, I guarantee you this and promise you this, and I'm on good ground because Paul agrees with me. He says, when you guard your mouth, you're not a person who argues and complains and gossips. He's saying, Man, that is like standing out like a bright light in a dark world. And I want to submit that that may be one of the most profound ways that we can do it in our day and age. Don't complain, don't argue, don't gossip. But seriously, in the grand scheme of things, this is a small way to be a light in a dark place, but it can have a deep impact over time. The apostle Paul is saying that watching what you say is one of the primary ways to shine your light. So here's my hope for the room today that we be people who actually believe this. That we look at what Jesus is saying in this message in its entirety. We look at what it means to be the salt of the earth, what it means to be the light of the world, and we actually desire this to be true of us. For the Christians in the room, you need to know that Jesus doesn't only save you, but he also purposes you. He takes away your sin, he marks your life for eternity, but then he also gives you a life to live. And here's the key takeaway from the morning I want us to see. Jesus saves you from the world to be in the world, but not of the world. This is what's true of the Christian. And when you do this, Jesus even says, look back at verse 16. He says, You don't take credit for this. You don't take credit. Why? Because it gives glory to God. When you live like Solomon Light, it gives glory to your heavenly father. Listen, I know as I'm saying this, like this is easy to do when things are going well in your life, right? Like when you have it all figured out, you have it all packaged up, you don't have any disagreements with the people around you, you don't have any lingering tensions and all that kind of thing, you have all the bills paid off, right? It's easy to be salt and light in the world. But I want to remind us of some of the context that Jesus is giving this to us in. Remember the beatitudes. Like I hope you know that, like, chapter and verse in your Bible, this was added much later. And so when you think about the beatitudes bleeding into what Jesus is saying about salt and light, there is no gap there. And I want to remind you what Jesus says at the end of the Beatitudes. He says all these things about what it means to be blessed, and then he lands on, hey, you are blessed when you are being persecuted. He says, You are blessed when they insult you, you are blessed when they persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. He says, Be glad and rejoice. Why? Because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you. See, the greatest challenge isn't that you just be salt and light to a world around you, but the challenge is that you answer the call to be salt and light even when the world is pressing against you. What a high, high call. So, what do you do when being salt and light isn't just some adventure you go on? It's not just something you press the button on, you click the button on, and be like, Yep, let's do it, salt and light. But what happens when it's difficult? What happens when you have to press into something deeper? Here's what you do: you tap into Jesus. You remember that salt and light is your identity before it's your function. You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. This is the gospel. When you place your faith in Jesus Christ, you are saved. When you believe that He died for you, He rose for you, you believe that in your heart and you confess that with your mouth, salvation is yours, and there's something that becomes functionally different about you. Your identity changes, you are something entirely different, you are someone else, you are salt, and you are light. Identity always precedes activity. But as these new people that we are, here's the challenge Jesus is saying, Hey, would you press in? And would you live out the identity that I have now given you? Like we need to know there's no amount of being salt and light that can save you. You're not saved by your good works. You're not saved. A lot of people everywhere are doing great things. Christians do great things too, but we don't do great things for our own glory. We do great things for God's glory. We say, Thank you, Jesus, for changing me. Thank you, Jesus, for saving me. Thank you, Jesus, for making me salt. Thank you, Jesus, for making me light. And what I now desire most to do with my life is not live for myself, but I live open-handed, surrendering, laying my life down to you, and ask you, what would you have me do? Who would you have me be? Mark my life, and I desire to walk the path that you've given me. You want to know the path for all Christians. Set your salt and light to the world around you. Your salt and light. Would people look at you and give glory to your heavenly father? Let's play this with two of us. Father, we love you. And we're grateful for you this morning. And we love you. And on a day like Father's Day, it is so fitting to be calling you Father. Because I believe some people in here need a Heavenly Father today. They need a Heavenly Father. Someone who loves them, someone who desires them, someone who can be with them, someone who can hold them, someone who can direct them, someone who can show them the way to be. And God, there's no one better to follow than you. There is no greater father. You are the great rescuer, you are the great provider, you are the great sustainer. It is you, it is you and only you. Would we be people who love you, who call on you, who have our lives changed by you, who have our eternities secured by you, but also live lives marked by you. We be people who grow deeper in you, deeper independence, trusting that it's not the way we grit in our lives, not the way we pull ourselves by our bootstraps, but it's by the way that we lean in and depend on you, that you will help us be salt and light. We lean into our identity. God, it's you that produces the fruit. It is you that marks our path. It is you that moves our feet. And we ask you, God, would you do it? Would you help us in this room receive you to be salt and light to the world around us? We love you. We praise you. We pray this in your mighty son Jesus' name. Amen and amen.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast. To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at AmbassadorMKE. And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m. at 2308 East Bellevue Place. Grace and peace.