SPEAKER_00: Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you're all warm and well.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to you as you join us on this live stream, wherever it is you are uh tuning in from.
SPEAKER_00: This is our second week in our new series uh looking at the the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we are looking at that passage that Jung just read for us in Matthew chapter five.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be really good if you had a Bible to uh to have that in front of you or to pull up the app uh on your on your phone so that you can uh check what I'm saying uh against what the the text of uh the Bible is saying, uh what God's word says and uh and follow along with us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh why don't I uh pray as we begin?
SPEAKER_00: Uh our Father, we do thank you uh that although this season is strange, uh that we are still able to uh to gather in a sense uh around your word together uh to uh to share uh this uh this common uh this common instruction, this common teaching uh together.
SPEAKER_00: And so we pray that you would be uh with us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you are by your spirit, and uh we pray that he would be doing a work, that good work uh in us, and that you would make us uh salty and light-like uh in our in our lives and in our witness.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we uh ask these things uh in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is a strange Sunday because normally this Sunday is uh is student welcome Sunday, uh where that is where uh all of the universities are back and we normally have a bit of a uh to do, maybe food after the service.
SPEAKER_00: We give away free resources, and yet here we are, we've got the ironing board uh out again.
SPEAKER_00: But uh one of the things that I'm excited for, and you'll be getting more information about that uh later on, is if you are thinking of joining City or you've joined City in recent months, uh we will be uh meeting together on a Zoom call for uh uh for new members uh on uh tonight at 7:30.
SPEAKER_00: And so there'll be more information about how you can sign up for that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not too late, and so it'd still be good to uh to meet some uh some new folks uh there.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the world has always needed Christians uh to be uh salt and light.
SPEAKER_00: That's the the chief metaphor of the passage.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the world has always needed Christians to act in those ways, and we'll see what they are uh in just a second.
SPEAKER_00: It was true in Jesus' day.
SPEAKER_00: He asked his disciples, those who are listening to him, he says, uh, you are salt, so be salt, you are light.
SPEAKER_00: So so be light.
SPEAKER_00: It's always been true, been true on down the centuries.
SPEAKER_00: Christians have been salt and light on different continents through different times of tragedy, through different diseases, through the dark ages and the Black Death.
SPEAKER_00: And Christians have always been salt and light.
SPEAKER_00: And that is no different now.
SPEAKER_00: You look at our culture in the West, with all that we are uh dealing with and navigating our way through.
SPEAKER_00: Think of the the fear and anxiety over COVID, the division that it causes between to mask, not to mask, you know, uh you know, it's it's the plague, it's a Chinese conspiracy, and then you've got all the people in the middle who are just like, let's be cautious and wise and loving towards one another.
SPEAKER_00: It uh it can just make your head spin to say nothing of the uh the news feeds that are filled with political division, racial tension and division, injustices and inequalities, the the the cultural challenges just seem to be myriad, they just seem to be mounting up.
SPEAKER_00: They've been true of every generation.
SPEAKER_00: My generation uh had its own questions that uh that we were wrestling through.
SPEAKER_00: I think probably uh the the millennials, if you kind of sum up the kind of questions that we were asking, we wanted to know how we could be most free.
SPEAKER_00: That's the question that I uh that I used to have to what am I great?
SPEAKER_00: We're live.
SPEAKER_00: You can stop look, I'll put my phone down now.
SPEAKER_00: We've got it, we're good, we're there.
SPEAKER_00: Um that'll be the uh that'll be the weather, I would have thought, uh affecting the affecting the connection.
SPEAKER_00: Different cultural challenges, that's what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question is how do we navigate all of those things?
SPEAKER_00: Uh what is the Christian response?
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh historically Christians have done several things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Christians have either uh hidden away, you know, you pull up the pull up the drawbridge, you put a call out to uh to fellow Christians, uh, let's go to city church, it's a safe place, don't we get tainted by the world?
SPEAKER_00: Come on in, we'll shut the doors, uh, we'll we'll keep everybody safe from the uh from the outside and from sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's out there.
SPEAKER_00: And so we need to hide away from all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: Or another response to to the cultural challenges is that uh is that Christians uh go on a go on a charm offensive.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we want to affirm everything that the culture is doing, affirm everything that uh that everybody else around us believe.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we want to be seen cool uh by the world around us, by the political class, by the entertainment class.
SPEAKER_00: Oh look, they say they follow Jesus, but actually, look, they're really cool.
SPEAKER_00: Uh who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: And neither of those is is true, is the way to go.
SPEAKER_00: No, the answer is neither of those approaches, because neither of those approaches is in the way of obedience.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be constantly hiding ourselves away or constantly confronting the culture in an antagonistic way, but nor do we just simply receive everything that the culture is making and throws at us and believes wholesale.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we do a mixture, we are called rather to be a different culture or a counterculture, but not just a counterculture for our own sake.
SPEAKER_00: We are called by Jesus to be a counterculture for the common good.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to don't only do sermon titles, but if you want a title of the sermon of this passage or the big idea is that Christians are a counterculture for the common good.
SPEAKER_00: Great, we're here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the flow from the beatitudes into this passage teaches us one thing that if we are living out the beatitudes, that is, uh, meekness, spiritual poverty, uh, mercifulness, peacemaker uh attitude in our relationships, one of the things that becomes clear is if if that is the culture of the church, if that's the culture of the Christian community, you cannot help but be salt in the culture.
SPEAKER_00: You you will inevitably be a light that cannot be hidden.
SPEAKER_00: We are to practice, therefore, and to cultivate the beatitudes in our individual lives and in our lives as a as a community of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we noted that the beatitudes are all of grace.
SPEAKER_00: And you might think, well, it's all of grace, I can't do anything about it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've got I've got nothing in myself.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, that's a that would be a misunderstanding because you have the Holy Spirit now if you are trusting in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That means that by his grace, God has poured himself into you to enable you to cultivate these sorts of meekness, a hunger and say, Well, I've got no health and no strength in and not myself, so I can't do anything, so I'm just gonna let God do it.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: He's given us the spirit, and so we strive to be these things, and when we are those things, we will be salt and light in the world.
SPEAKER_00: In this section, Jesus uses these two main metaphors, and so we're gonna look at the two metaphors of salt and light in turn.
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient world, salt uh and today salt was used as a seasoning, uh, and that teaches us something about what it means to be salt in the world.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be kind of a flavor enhancement in terms of our in terms of our relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they want to be interesting in our in our interactions with people.
SPEAKER_00: But uh the chief use of salt in the ancient world was as a preservative, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh they didn't have refrigeration, so instead of uh going to the fridge uh for their meat, they would uh pack it with salt, they would put salt on it, and the salt preserved the meat, it prevented the decay of the meat, and that I think is what Jesus is drawing on.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus says that the Christians are the salt of the earth, he is identifying two things for us.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that Jesus is pointing out is that there is a moral decay that happened that is happening in the world that always happens in every generation, in every culture, there is a moral downward spiral that happens, a moral degradation.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing that he is identifying by inference.
SPEAKER_00: And the second thing that Jesus is therefore saying is that Christians, as they go about their lives, as they go out into the world, that they help to stop and to stem that moral putrefacation, that moral decay and degradation.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying that that we are to go into the world and to live in a way that preserves and accentuates the good that is there, that puts more good into, it draws more good out of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so we don't want to be just Christians that are uh that are that are there in our in our churchy cupboard, uh in our little salt cellar, all packed together.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be uh shaken out all over the world, in our in our families, in our classmates, in our work relationships.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be everywhere so that we bring this this seasoning, this preserving quality to to the world, to our relationships.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: Let's think a little bit more about how we might do that.
SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like a grand task.
SPEAKER_00: And how do we go about kind of stemming moral decay?
SPEAKER_00: Like I think that might seem kind of fairly overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe some of us will be involved in uh in corridors of power, maybe some of us will uh will be involved in uh in great philanthropic and charitable and uh and and justice-oriented endeavors, and and that is absolutely what it means to be salt in the world.
SPEAKER_00: But what about uh for for the rest of us?
SPEAKER_00: How can we all be salt?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's think about uh let's think about one way.
SPEAKER_00: Human relationships are always blowing up.
SPEAKER_00: Have you experienced that?
SPEAKER_00: Have you experienced a human relationship that has in the past blown up or is in the process of blowing up, or you've observed it?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this kind of detonation of a uh of a relationship in a family or uh between friends, human relationships are always blowing up.
SPEAKER_00: People get upset, they fire off a nasty, ill-conceived, not well thought through text or email, and it's received badly.
SPEAKER_00: People get into an argument, they walk away from from one another.
SPEAKER_00: Christians Christians don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: To be sold is that we don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: We don't detonate relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well because the the Christian isn't turf conscious.
SPEAKER_00: At least we shouldn't be.
SPEAKER_00: Because we know the mercy that we've received, we overlook slights.
SPEAKER_00: We read people with a bit of generosity, a bit of compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Try and think, well, what's kind of gone on to make them say that, act like that?
SPEAKER_00: We show a bit of mercy.
SPEAKER_00: We are to be entitled.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we've got poverty of spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We know that we've got nothing to be entitled about.
SPEAKER_00: And so we become we become in our relationships those people who instinctively lower the temperature but not raise it.
SPEAKER_00: That hold back uh from the uh the vengeful message or the or the backbiting bitchy slight.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone else kind of feeling convicted?
SPEAKER_00: Uh misery loves company.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so I just want you to join me uh in feeling the need of that and wanting to press into that together.
SPEAKER_00: It's all about embodying the beatitudes in our demeanor, in our speech, in our conduct.
SPEAKER_00: To be just like the world is to lose our saltiness.
SPEAKER_00: We lose any sort of distinctive quality.
SPEAKER_00: You know that salt is is in food, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, it's salty's kind of accentuated things.
SPEAKER_00: We lose our saltiness, it we just taste completely like the culture.
SPEAKER_00: There's no distinctive at all.
SPEAKER_00: Now, those of you who are kind of uh sciencing uh by bint will might have uh questions around what Jesus is saying about uh salt losing its saltiness.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you might well remember from your country lessons that uh sodium chloride NICL is a particular particularly stable compound.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really lose itself, it doesn't really lose uh saltiness.
SPEAKER_00: So what does it what does it mean?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to lose salt?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's true that sodium chloride cannot be anything but sodium chloride.
SPEAKER_00: You could mix it with a bucket of sand.
SPEAKER_00: You can mix it with a but a bucket of sand and then it would be useless.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to put that on your meat, it would be indistinguishable.
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't pick out the salt grains from the sand grains.
SPEAKER_00: If you wanted to kind of uh further uh understanding, one of the things that maybe Jesus is getting at is the idea that uh is that that salt in the ancient world was actually impure, it was kind of a mixture of kind of uh kind of rock and salt, or kind of sandy things and salt, and the salt might kind of leach out from it, and therefore it loses its saltiness.
SPEAKER_00: That might be what it what he's getting at.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is clear is that the if we become indistinguishable from the world around us, if we that is, if we act in a non-beatitudes way, we're proud and haughty rather than poor in spirit, we're we're entitled and arrogant rather than mimick, we're a temperature raiser rather than a peacemaker, we sow division rather than hunger hungering and thirsting for righteousness, then although we profess the name of Jesus, we are not living like his followers, we are not living like salt in the world, we are not being a Christian counterculture for the common good.
SPEAKER_00: The second metaphor that he uses is that of light.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 14, you are the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: I just pause there.
SPEAKER_00: He says in both 13 and 14, you are.
SPEAKER_00: You are this is not, this is not try harder, Christian, work harder.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, Jesus is saying, you are this, so be this, you are light, so let your light shine before men.
SPEAKER_00: You are salt, so get out into the into the world and be preservative.
SPEAKER_00: That is your identity as a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, Jesus, you are salt, you are light.
SPEAKER_00: God has made you that by faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You are the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: He says, verse 14, a city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, put on a stand, and it gives light to the whole house.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that the world needs salty Christians because the world is morally decaying, so too, in the same way, it needs Christians who are light.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the world is dark, there is darkness in our world.
SPEAKER_00: We see that, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: That's not a surprise.
SPEAKER_00: We see the ways in which uh people treat one another.
SPEAKER_00: We see in our news apps and on websites, maybe even read it in a newspaper if that's the kind of thing that you do.
SPEAKER_00: That the world is a dark place, and Jesus says you are the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And think about how amazing that is because one of the I am sayings in John's gospel is that Jesus says, I am the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a there's a family resemblance there.
SPEAKER_00: We are light because we uh we radiate his light.
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's almost as though he is the sun and we're the we're the moon.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we are reflecting his light into into the world.
SPEAKER_00: He then goes on to say that a city on a hill cannot be hidden.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus here is not mixing his metaphors, he's actually pointing out something really important, and that is to be the light of the world is not something that we do in splendid isolation, it's something that we do as a community.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine pitch darkness, and you light a single candle, and and it will give a surprising amount of light for those who are near it, for those who are up close.
SPEAKER_00: But imagine being outside in that pitch darkness, and there is a city a hundred miles away, and it can still be seen because you can see its light projected upwards, reflecting off the clouds.
SPEAKER_00: You know that it's there, and it just pushes back the darkness just enough that you can make your way clear to that city.
SPEAKER_00: To be the light of the world is to be part of the city.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be the light of the world on your own because you cannot be a city on your own.
SPEAKER_00: We are the light of the world because we are part of a community.
SPEAKER_00: That is what the gospel creates.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel creates a light like community, a community of believers that sheds its light into a dark world.
SPEAKER_00: How does it do that?
SPEAKER_00: How do we do that as a community of believers together?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's like this.
SPEAKER_00: It's because at the core of the gospel there is that this idea of reconciliation and the restoration of relationships.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel as its core is about healing relationships.
SPEAKER_00: First and foremost, in that vertical dimension of healing the relationship between humanity and God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus came to do.
SPEAKER_00: He came to remove the sin that we all have, that self-love, so that we might be brought back into relationship with the God who made us, the God who loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus on the cross takes our sin, he gives us his perfect righteousness and reconciles us, brings us back into right relationship with our God.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel has as its core the healing of relationship.
SPEAKER_00: But as a consequence of that vertical relationship being healed and restored, as a consequence of that, we then are able to bring healing and reconciliation and restoration and harmony to every other relationship that we find ourselves in.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second the solar system.
SPEAKER_00: This is uh my uh second uh celestial illustration today.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second the the solar system.
SPEAKER_00: You got all the the planets and all of the planets are orbiting in harmony.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they are moving around a common center.
SPEAKER_00: All of the systems, all the planets rather, are in orbit because they are all moving around the sun at its center.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second that each planet in the solar system insisted on being the center.
SPEAKER_00: That Mars said, nope, you all got to orbit around me.
SPEAKER_00: And Jupiter was like, Ah, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: You all got to orbit around me.
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen my mass?
SPEAKER_00: No, you're gonna orbit around me.
SPEAKER_00: What would happen?
SPEAKER_00: It would be chaos, it would be chaos if every planet insisted on orbiting around itself.
SPEAKER_00: Human beings by nature, like everybody else, to orbit around them.
SPEAKER_00: Have you met small children?
SPEAKER_00: Have you met little people?
SPEAKER_00: They they do this instinctively, they don't need to be taught that.
SPEAKER_00: Everything orbits around them, right?
SPEAKER_00: All of the parents right now are nodding exhaustedly.
SPEAKER_00: In the gospel, though, in the gospel, human relationships are given a new center, they're given a new sun, and not to extend the metaphor into uh into something kind of twee and crass, but you get the idea.
SPEAKER_00: The new center around which we orbit is not ourselves, but it's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Each individual Christian orbits around him and not ourselves, and that means that we are able to pour ourselves out for others.
SPEAKER_00: That fundamentally changes the human relationships that we find ourselves in because it's not all about us.
SPEAKER_00: This is utterly different to the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is how we are a counterculture, because the culture of the world says me first, not so the culture of the kingdom, and this completely changes how we approach other relationships, it changes how we approach those different spheres of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Let me run through just a few of them.
SPEAKER_00: It changes how we work because your work is no longer simply for your own gain, for your own advancement, or to skim off your boss and to steal time.
SPEAKER_00: It's about maximizing your God-given skills, seeking the flourishing of the company that you work for as an act of worship, because God has endowed you with talents to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And so you pour yourself out for the good of your colleagues, you pour yourself out for the good of the project that you're working on, you pour yourself out so that your company will uh will be commended and thought well of, and that will reflect that will reflect back on you in a sense, but because you are a uh a mirror, a reflection of Jesus, they will, Lord willing, see him or wonder why it is.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you work with such integrity?
SPEAKER_00: Why do you work with such honesty?
SPEAKER_00: Why do you work with such diligence?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because I'm a counterculture.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying me first, I'm saying team first, I'm saying company first, saying project first.
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking to work out of the best of my ability to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_00: That's my motivation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not orbiting around myself, I'm orbiting around you all.
SPEAKER_00: I'm orbiting around Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Think about disagreements, completely changes.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the when we get into relationship tension, it means that we absorb hearts, that we absorb hearts even at great cost to ourselves because we we have as the center of our lives the one who showed us mercy, and so we seek to show mercy and not vengeance.
SPEAKER_00: What about race?
SPEAKER_00: So many people are thinking, how on earth can races be brought back together?
SPEAKER_00: The division between people in the societies of our western world Christianity offers something different.
SPEAKER_00: It says that that we are all equal because we are image bearers, created in God's image, male and female, black and white, Asian and Hispanic.
SPEAKER_00: We're all made in his image, and so all have dignity, value, and worth.
SPEAKER_00: Means that we can together lament and weep at injustices, that we can strive to cultivate a community that celebrates cultural diversity in the context of the gospel unity that we share.
SPEAKER_00: We have a new center.
SPEAKER_00: The center of your identity is not the color of your skin, it's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean that the color of your skin now becomes irrelevant, but it does become relativized.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus becomes our primary identity, the sun around which we orbit.
SPEAKER_00: Think about sex and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Sex and relationships no longer become all about you and your fulfillment and your satisfaction, they become about generous self-giving.
SPEAKER_00: Your relationship with money changes because money no longer is the source of your comfort, it's no longer the source of your security, rather, it is another tool that you have been given by God to worship Him and to serve others.
SPEAKER_00: So it makes you generous.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the generosity of God and the gospel, and you say, with the means that I have, I want to reflect that to the world.
SPEAKER_00: You can do that without having all that much.
SPEAKER_00: You know that if you've ever been to a country where people are tend to be uh more impoverished than we are in the West, you see just such stunning, moving generosity.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about having lots, it's about your heart attitude to what you have at all.
SPEAKER_00: It changes your view on power or your position within a company, within a friendship group, or even within a family.
SPEAKER_00: The power that you have is being given to you by God, and it's not an end in itself, in order to get people to respect you, admire you, like you, fear you, it's a way to serve others.
SPEAKER_00: You mean like there are there are business leaders and business consultants.
SPEAKER_00: You look at Simon Sinek, whose videos are there on Facebook and YouTube.
SPEAKER_00: It's all about the great leaders.
SPEAKER_00: The great leaders are servant leaders who come to the team and say, How can I maximize your talents and your gifts?
SPEAKER_00: Those are the leaders that people want to follow.
SPEAKER_00: And it's right here in being salt and light in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're not saying that everything needs to orbit around you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you hate those bosses?
SPEAKER_00: Not that you I use hate in a majority of way, but don't you not want to follow those bosses, those team leaders who make it all about them, who take all of the credit and none of the blame?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's all orbiting around them.
SPEAKER_00: And do you see how to be light in the world, to live out these beatitude-like characteristics in all of these different ways, you will begin to shine the light of the generosity of the gospel that it's not all about me and what I can get and me first, because Jesus was not about me first, he was about you, he was about us, he was about service and generosity and self-sacrifice, and he calls you to that.
SPEAKER_00: And as you do that, as you live that out in your life, and as we live that out in a community, we will drive the darkness back, the darkness of injustice and relationship breakdown and miserliness and power grabbing.
SPEAKER_00: We'll create a different culture and we'll do it one heart at a time.
SPEAKER_00: People have been here, and I've been in America, and I might have even said, Can I get an amen?
SPEAKER_00: The result?
SPEAKER_00: What's the result of all of this?
SPEAKER_00: And this is the the final point that we're going to consider just by way of some of the reflection.
SPEAKER_00: So, what's the result of living uh saltily, light-like in the world?
SPEAKER_00: Two things it will both be attractive and arouse animosity.
SPEAKER_00: It will be compelling to some and repulsive to others, exposing of others.
SPEAKER_00: Light in the Bible has always been associated with the idea of truth, God's truth shining forward.
SPEAKER_00: And some people find that find that inviting, find that compelling, and others they run away from that because it's too exposing.
SPEAKER_00: Some people resist the call to submit to Jesus, to become a Christian, to put their faith and trust in Him because they they don't like the areas, they don't want the areas of uh their lives that they are ashamed of, or those sins that they actually quite still like indulging in, being brought out into the light and being exposed by the light of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is why this section flows on immediately from the final beatitude.
SPEAKER_00: The final beatitude is there in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read it for you.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus says, Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
SPEAKER_00: Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is already teeing us up, he's already saying that if you live like this, some people won't like it.
SPEAKER_00: Some people will find it off-putting.
SPEAKER_00: Thought badly of because of our following of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so, one of the things that you need to know is that if you are living like salt, if you are living like light in the world, you will be insulted.
SPEAKER_00: Some people will be turned off by it, some people will walk away because they quite like the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, You're in good company, because that's exactly what the prophets were like.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what happened then.
SPEAKER_00: Rejoice and be glad, your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
SPEAKER_00: And here Jesus said, it's as though Jesus is saying, You disciples, you think I'm no great prophet, like I'm not like Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be like Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was a bit strange.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm not like those guys, I'm not, you know, a uh a great order calling people back to uh to covenant fidelity to following God's laws.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus saying, you know, my disciple, my disciple sitting in your home watching this, the button of the kingdom has passed from them to you.
SPEAKER_00: For good and ill.
SPEAKER_00: We pick up the torch that flaming fell from the hands of those who gave their life proclaiming that Jesus died and rose.
SPEAKER_00: The torch is passed to you, Christian.
SPEAKER_00: The torch is passed to me.
SPEAKER_00: We are salt, we are light, we run our race, and some will follow, and some will insult and reject us.
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus would give us another caution.
SPEAKER_00: So he says uh in verse 11 Blessed are those who revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
SPEAKER_00: This is that we are uh persecuted and reviled for professing Jesus on his account because we're seeking to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a slight corrective here because it is possible, believe it or not, to profess to be a follower of Jesus and still just be a jerk in the relationships that you find yourself in.
SPEAKER_00: And it would also be easy, uh, and indeed common, and people have seen it happen, is that people are just they're a bit they're a bit angular, they're a bit of a jerk, uh, but they're following Jesus, and as soon as they get any sort of insulting or reviling, people uh walk away from them and say, Oh, I'm being persecuted for Jesus' sake.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're being persecuted for being a jerk.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So let's make sure that it's on the count of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
SPEAKER_00: By embodling it, by embodling, embodying and living out of the characteristics of the Beatitudes, of seeking to be soft, preservative, light.
SPEAKER_00: To seek the good of others, your colleagues, your classmates, your housemates, your friends, your family.
SPEAKER_00: That is to be a counterculture for the common good.
SPEAKER_00: It will attract some, it may repulse many.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says that when you are reviled, you are to rejoice and be glad.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because your reward is great in heaven, so don't shrink back, don't slip back into self-pity, but rejoice and be glad, just like the disciples did when they were reviled for the first time, when they were persecuted for the first time in the book of Acts, that they rejoiced to be counted worthy to suffer for the name.
SPEAKER_00: For although some will hate you, others will see your good works.
SPEAKER_00: That's where Jesus concludes in verse 16, that they will see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: They will see your good works, some will, and they'll think, what kind of what kind of belief system makes a person like that?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of things do you need to believe in order to endure the sufferings that this person has and still have so much joy?
SPEAKER_00: To still not just hate the world and everything in it?
SPEAKER_00: What does this person have to believe in order to to work in such a way, to love in such a generous manner?
SPEAKER_00: And they will be drawn to it and they will give glory to the Father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That is, that they themselves will bow the knee and become part of that new kingdom community, that they will give glory to God by submission to Jesus, by following him and becoming salt and light with you.
SPEAKER_00: They will give glory to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: That is, we go out into the world and we are salt.
SPEAKER_00: We as a community are light in the world, and God does his part of drawing some to that, and he gets the glory, he gets the glory because he's made us salt, he gets the glory because he's made us light, he gets the glory because he has done all of the things by his Holy Spirit to make us poor in spirit, meet, hunger for righteousness, all of those things peaceable.
SPEAKER_00: It's all him from beginning to end.
SPEAKER_00: He began that good work in you, and he will bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: And so let us, friends, brothers, sisters, seek to be salt, preserving relationships, stemming the flow of moral decay, striving to embody the beatitudes more, and being part of a community, that city that cannot be hidden, to commit again, even as strange as it is, to commit again to city church, to being part of our community, if it is that you are in Dublin, to being part of our family life, so that our individual lights will be maximized and accentuated by our life, light-like life together.
SPEAKER_00: Will you join us to that end and to the glory of God the Father, just as Jesus promised?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Our Father, we do pray and thank you that Jesus has made us his followers salt, that he has made us, his followers, light.
SPEAKER_00: May our saltiness be evident in the world.
SPEAKER_00: May our light shine all the brighter.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to think through the ways, the relationships, the spheres of life in which we need to be salty, preservative, in which we need to be light-like, shining the truth of the gospel into dark places.
SPEAKER_00: Help us, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: And would you glorify yourself through our life individually and together?
SPEAKER_00: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.