SPEAKER_00: Matthew 5, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: It says this.
SPEAKER_00: You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?
SPEAKER_00: It's no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
SPEAKER_00: You are the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: It is a common refrain, an appeal for Christians to look more like the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that I hear quite often.
SPEAKER_00: It's not said in that way.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think anyone has ever articulated, hey, I wish Christians just looked more like the world.
SPEAKER_00: What is said instead is that Christians should do a better job of articulating the world's values, or we should do a better job of just trying to fit in, or we should do a better job of, you might even say it negatively, not being offensive.
SPEAKER_00: You know, can't you just for the sake of getting along represent the world's values in some way?
SPEAKER_00: Can't you live like the world, affirm what the world affirms, love what the world loves, vote like the world votes, talk like the world talks, watch what the world watches, drink what the world drinks, etc., etc.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you do those things, so the argument goes, the gospel would be more appealing to the world.
SPEAKER_00: There's a genre of person out there in the imagination that says, you know, I would be a Christian if it wasn't for all of the Christians kind of attitude.
SPEAKER_00: If they were s weren't so different.
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is the Christian is not someone who represents the world.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian is someone who represents God.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you how how I hear it the most.
SPEAKER_00: You know, somebody will ask me, say, I'm thinking of bringing your friend to church, but they are living in this kind of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so it'd be important for me to know that if I brought them to church, you wouldn't be preaching against that sin on that day.
SPEAKER_00: Now you laugh.
SPEAKER_00: But tell the truth in your own heart and shame the devil right now.
SPEAKER_00: Have you not thought that?
SPEAKER_00: Like if I want, you know, my neighbor is a Muslim, I'm gonna invite him to church.
SPEAKER_00: And if I roll in and Jesse preaches about how Jesus is the Son of God and Islam is a lie, then that whole thing just got blown up.
SPEAKER_00: And if you just invited a Muslim, I just ruined it right there.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even think that through.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you see how that thought process works?
SPEAKER_00: That's the lie.
SPEAKER_00: And it gets smithed up a little bit by some people that if they only heard what, you know, if they heard enough that represented their worldview, then they would see that this, you know, that this book is reasonable or that preacher is reasonable or that church is reasonable, and then they would believe the rest.
SPEAKER_00: As if the thing that really was keeping them from Jesus is the Bible's, you know, teaching on materialism or parenting or on gender or whatever, whatever the pet issue is.
SPEAKER_00: There's this idea that people would be Christians were it not for that issue.
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is, Christians aren't called to represent the world.
SPEAKER_00: We are called to represent God.
SPEAKER_00: And it is not even a statement of neutrality here that we represent God and don't interfere in the world.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus here puts the church on the offense when he says the church is supposed to represent God by influencing the world.
SPEAKER_00: There's a positive action, there's an output from the church onto the world.
SPEAKER_00: The church is supposed to actually positively impact the world, and the church does not impact the world by looking like the world.
SPEAKER_00: The church impacts the world by convicting the world, by speaking truth to the world.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is that the earth is rotten and dark, and Christians are vibrant and alive.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is that the world festers in sin and festers in sickness, and Christians are sanctified and then glorified.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's hard for you to embrace that difference when it sounds almost prideful.
SPEAKER_00: But I encourage you to lean into that difference.
SPEAKER_00: Lean into the fact that you are spiritually alive and vibrant and have a heart with joy, even though you are called to minister in a world that is dark and decaying and filled with sickness.
SPEAKER_00: Embrace it.
SPEAKER_00: Lean into it, because by leaning into it, you impact the world for good.
SPEAKER_00: Influence is really the key concept in these verses we just read.
SPEAKER_00: The church is called to influence the world.
SPEAKER_00: And when I say the church here, I'm talking about individual Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Together, on this Sunday morning, we're brought together as a church, but you scatter into the world, and you are salt in the world, you are light in the world, each of you.
SPEAKER_00: You're called to influence, to impact the world.
SPEAKER_00: There's three ways that Jesus tells you to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Three ways that Christians are supposed to reshape the world.
SPEAKER_00: And these, you know, the connection here of the salt and light here, the connection is really growing out of the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_00: This is not an arbitrary insertion here.
SPEAKER_00: Everything in the Beatitudes is thrown together in perfect order.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus just walked through the internal change that happens in every believer's life.
SPEAKER_00: You recognize your spiritual poverty, you are spiritually bankrupt, you mourn over that, you surrender your life to God.
SPEAKER_00: After you surrender your life to God, you turn your eyes towards heaven, you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you desire to lead a pure life, you're being sanctified in that process.
SPEAKER_00: You open your mouth to others to appeal to them to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You become a peacemaker.
SPEAKER_00: As you're opening your mouth to others, appealing for them to follow Christ, the world responds negatively.
SPEAKER_00: That's the persecution at the end of the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_00: The world responds with opposition, the world responds by persecution.
SPEAKER_00: It's all listed down in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: People will revile you.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10, they'll persecute you.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11, they'll utter evil things against you, they'll lie about you in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: That's the result of these beatitudes working in your life.
SPEAKER_00: So you're pursuing purity, you're hungering and thirsting for righteousness, you've surrendered to the Lord, you are kind of on your back, so to speak, receiving mercy from God, and you're turning to the side, opening your mouth to others, appealing for them to be made at peace with God, and in that process of appealing to others, for them to be reconciled to God, they turn against you and speak evil things against you and revile you.
SPEAKER_00: And so the temptation there would be for you to just be quiet.
SPEAKER_00: Just to live and let live.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God that I've surrendered.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God that I have been purified by the working of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God that I'm right with God.
SPEAKER_00: But I try talking to others and they resist, they persecute, they lie, or they just don't like it.
SPEAKER_00: So why don't I just mind my own business?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer to that is because if you just mind your own business, you will cease being salt, you will cease being light, you will cease influencing the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus' command is for you to actively influence the world.
SPEAKER_00: To don't take the Beatitudes as just, you know, a period, and then you can move along with your life.
SPEAKER_00: Don't tone down your ethics to avoid persecution.
SPEAKER_00: Don't, you know, believe the lie that you have to look more like the world or they won't respect you.
SPEAKER_00: This idea that if Christians act in a certain way, the world will turn against them is just, I think, confusing cause and effect.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to live differently, you're supposed to stand out, you're supposed to influence the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because not everybody will respond with persecution, is the bottom line.
SPEAKER_00: Some people will, but some people will respond with faith.
SPEAKER_00: Some people will see how different you are and will actually respond with conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Not with hostility, but with introspection and conversion.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the three ways.
SPEAKER_00: First, refine.
SPEAKER_00: The church is supposed to refine the world.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm getting this from the concept of salt, that you are salt of the earth, the salt of the earth, actually.
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget the article, it's important there.
SPEAKER_00: You're the salt of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Salt, of course, does all kinds of things in our world, all kinds of things in the Roman world.
SPEAKER_00: Today salt is so common, it's overlooked.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you get you get the little utensil packet at a fast food restaurant, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And it comes with a spork or whatever, and a knife, and a little bag of salt and pepper.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's you buy a frosty at Wendy's and it comes with salt.
SPEAKER_00: Put salt in the frosty?
SPEAKER_00: Come on now.
SPEAKER_00: It's salt is ubiquitous, it's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: So we can lose sight of how precious it was to the audience to whom Jesus was speaking.
SPEAKER_00: Plato referred to salt as the substance of earth that is most dear to the gods.
SPEAKER_00: Homer called it divine.
SPEAKER_00: Tribes would go to war, other nations, the pagan nations, would go to war against Rome, the Visigoths and whatnot, and they would often sue for peace in exchange for salt.
SPEAKER_00: And for them, Josephus writes that in their negotiations, a bag of salt was worth more than a man.
SPEAKER_00: So you could weigh out salt, the weight of that salt was worth more than a soldier.
SPEAKER_00: That was their form of negotiation.
SPEAKER_00: One missionary about a hundred years ago, a missionary in East Africa, wrote that people were begging her for salt more than for gold.
SPEAKER_00: In Ethiopia, by the way, salt served as currency for hundreds of years.
SPEAKER_00: Even the English word that we used now, salary, it comes from the Roman world, uh, the Roman word, uh salarium, which just comes in English as salary, but the salarium was paid to soldiers.
SPEAKER_00: It was their wage paid to them in salt.
SPEAKER_00: Many soldiers were paid that way.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is speaking to a group of people that value salt as money.
SPEAKER_00: We come across here, the salt of the earth, it's even an idiom in English, like just means like the common people, like the real, you know, gritty, they drive a red pickup kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's the salt of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: That's how we use it.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not how it would have sounded to that when Jesus is using it at all.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean like the authentic people, it means precious treasure, worth more than life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the value of it.
SPEAKER_00: Why is salt so precious?
SPEAKER_00: Because of what it does.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, salt uh purifies, it is a purification effect.
SPEAKER_00: It sanctifies, it has the effect of cleansing, like bacteen on kids.
SPEAKER_00: Vivid memories as a kid is scraping my elbow and foolishly going to my parents, and they would hit me with bacteen, and man, they were like, it stops the bleeding.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, it hurts worse than the bleeding.
SPEAKER_00: They could use it to treat gunshot wounds, except it hurts worse than a gunshot wound.
SPEAKER_00: That was bacteria.
SPEAKER_00: So you learn pretty quickly to disguise your no, I'm not totally okay.
SPEAKER_00: Keep that away from me.
SPEAKER_00: That's the effect of salt, it purifies, it kills the bacteria.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 16 says that newborn babies were washed in the salt.
SPEAKER_00: That was a very, not just for the Jews, that was a very common thing in the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_00: It was the way of fighting off bacteria, fighting off infection, which they didn't even understand, but they understood that giving a child a salt bath cleansed them.
SPEAKER_00: That purification is what's in mind in the Old Testament when it says the sacrifices are supposed to be offered with salt.
SPEAKER_00: Leviticus chapter 2, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: You shall season all of your grain offerings with salt.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering.
SPEAKER_00: With all your offerings you include salt, Leviticus says.
SPEAKER_00: It's verse 13 in Leviticus 2.
SPEAKER_00: All of the offerings require salt.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
SPEAKER_00: It's not because the priest was going to eat the offerings that God likes his food more seasoning, the more seasoned than you might think.
SPEAKER_00: No, the salt represents moral purity, it represents the sanctifying effect.
SPEAKER_00: The salt is included in the offering, not for the taste of the offering, but because God doesn't desire your offering, he desires your life.
SPEAKER_00: So you're salting the offering to represent the purity of your own life that is mixed in with it.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't desire your rams, he desires your heart.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't desire burnt offerings, he desires obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Salt represents that.
SPEAKER_00: Your offering, the best offering you have to give God, is a sanctified life, a life that is being sanctified.
SPEAKER_00: That's a life of salt.
SPEAKER_00: And this is not just Leviticus 2, it's in other passages in the Old Testament as well.
SPEAKER_00: The offerings needed to be presented with salt because it represents your sanctified life.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in that sense, salt points to the greatest command.
SPEAKER_00: The greatest command is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: That's what salt represents, that you are purified, that you are sanctified.
SPEAKER_00: It goes back to the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the pure in heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's salt.
SPEAKER_00: So that's salt in your own life.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea here is that your own purity jumps the banks, it jumps the banks of your own river and flows into the world.
SPEAKER_00: Your purity begins to influence and impact the world by having a sanctifying effect on those around you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had already established that the disciples would lead pure life back in the Beatitude.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's saying that you let your pure life flow into the world.
SPEAKER_00: You're the salt, not of the church, but you're the salt of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Of the whole world, this global language.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Great Commission wrapped up in here.
SPEAKER_00: It's going global.
SPEAKER_00: You will purify the earth through your life.
SPEAKER_00: Second effect of salt is to preserve.
SPEAKER_00: It has a preserving effect.
SPEAKER_00: And we use it this way today.
SPEAKER_00: Growing up in Steamboat, we would often me and my brother would often buy uh fresh beef turkey, as fresh as it could be.
SPEAKER_00: Or uh the guy would, you know, be butchering it in his yard and curing it in his yard and drying it on his fence and selling it to you.
SPEAKER_00: Man, love that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And you would make a salt solution to do that because it pure it makes it last longer, it purifies it.
SPEAKER_00: Curing salt.
SPEAKER_00: Use salt water to rinse out wounds.
SPEAKER_00: You mix salt into in with water, dilute it, and it helps your wounds heal.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus has in mind here as well.
SPEAKER_00: There's a preserving effect.
SPEAKER_00: It fights off bacteria to cleanse it, but then it promotes growth and regeneration.
SPEAKER_00: It preserves, it protects, it makes things flavorful.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: It preserves the earth, it keeps decay at bay.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's an artificial distinction between purify and preserve, of course, by killing bacteria.
SPEAKER_00: That's what makes things last.
SPEAKER_00: The idea is that Christians in the world will have a purifying effect.
SPEAKER_00: This is Abraham begging for Sodom.
SPEAKER_00: If there's ten righteous people there, God says, I'll let the city slide.
SPEAKER_00: There's a preserving effect of it.
SPEAKER_00: And you saw how just foolish that was when you follow, you know, Lot back home, right?
SPEAKER_00: Lot is offering up his daughters to be sexually assaulted.
SPEAKER_00: Lot had no sanctifying effect.
SPEAKER_00: The whole point of the narrative in Judges, I mean, in uh Genesis 19, which is basically repeated in Judges, is that Lot had so compromised himself that there was no sanctifying effect.
SPEAKER_00: He had lost his saltiness.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus' statement here to the church is that you cannot lose your saltiness.
SPEAKER_00: You are supposed to have a sanctifying effect by living a different life.
SPEAKER_00: Inside of your gate, inside of your house is not a house of debauchery, a house of sin, but inside of your house is a house of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Those houses are sprinkled around the world, and that creates a sanctifying and preserving effect.
SPEAKER_00: It wards off judgment from God on a society when Christians are influencing the society through their own sanctified lives.
SPEAKER_00: You are the salt of the earth, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: The article, it is important.
SPEAKER_00: There's no other sanctifying effect in this world apart from the church.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there might be pervenient grace or some form of common grace that God gives the world that makes life livable, but that doesn't sanctify.
SPEAKER_00: Common grace doesn't sanctify, it makes the world go around, but it doesn't purify people's minds and affections.
SPEAKER_00: Only sanctification only comes through faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So the idea of Christians being the salt of the world, it isn't an evangelistic thrust, that you go in the world, your life is different by how you live, and that has an effect on those around you by bringing them to faith in Christ as well.
SPEAKER_00: They see how different you are.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's paired with your words, you proclaim the gospel, and it sanctifies people.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 7.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're married to a non-believer, remember what he says?
SPEAKER_00: Don't divorce a non-believer.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a woman and you have you're married to an unbelieving husband, it can be a very difficult situation.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, stay in the marriage, because how do you know, but you might sanctify your children or your husbands.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know what the Lord's will is.
SPEAKER_00: You have a sanctifying effect on them.
SPEAKER_00: That's salt.
SPEAKER_00: It stings, but it purifies.
SPEAKER_00: There's no other hope for the world than the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: What other hope is there?
SPEAKER_00: That's why it irks me when people use this verse to say, hey, a Christian should go vote because we're the salt of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Voting is not a salt of the earth move.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody can vote.
SPEAKER_00: You can be brain dead and vote.
SPEAKER_00: You can be, I think you have to be alive to vote.
SPEAKER_00: Wait, I think you have to be alive to vote.
SPEAKER_00: I'll grant you that.
SPEAKER_00: But anybody can vote.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a salty kind of move.
SPEAKER_00: If you're thinking you're going to sanctify the world by how you vote, your bar is a little too low.
SPEAKER_00: Raise it up a notch.
SPEAKER_00: Kick it up a notch.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God goes forward through conversions, not through elections.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: So lean into that.
SPEAKER_00: Your sanctifying effect is how you live your life, how you proclaim godliness in your life, how you open your mouth and you speak the gospel to people and invite them to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had something way more distinctly profound and Christian than even democracy.
SPEAKER_00: He has in mind a global transformation that comes from a sanctified heart.
SPEAKER_00: But there are those who lose their saltiness.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he describes in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: If salt loses its saltiness, well, what good is it for?
SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna do with salt that's lost its saltiness?
SPEAKER_00: It's good for nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Salt can't lose its saltiness?
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a strange thing to say.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like a light losing its light, a fire losing its heat, snow losing its cold.
SPEAKER_00: A Christian can't lose his saltiness.
SPEAKER_00: You can't, the point here is that you can't transform the world unless you've been transformed.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be the salt unless you're salty.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a tautology here, but that's what Jesus is after.
SPEAKER_00: For you to impact the world for Christ, you must first be impacted by Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And if you are not impacted by Christ, you can't have a sanctifying effect on the world around you.
SPEAKER_00: If you're living a worldly life while proclaiming with your lips sanctification, that hypocrisy undoes the power of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, your your life, your your house here is a sanctified island in a dark and depraved world.
SPEAKER_00: If your house is not the sanctified islands, then it is not going to have a sanctifying effect.
SPEAKER_00: You can't transform the world while living like the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's nothing to transform it to.
SPEAKER_00: Salt that is worldly, Jesus says, is good for being thrown out.
SPEAKER_00: Which is another way of saying it's good for nothing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what it means.
SPEAKER_00: What's that good for?
SPEAKER_00: It's good for throwing it away.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that means it's good for nothing.
SPEAKER_00: One commentator writes that ruined salt was worth less than manure.
SPEAKER_00: Manure could at least fertilize a field.
SPEAKER_00: Ruined salt can't even do that.
SPEAKER_00: Salt does have a corrosive effect, you know this.
SPEAKER_00: Romans were known for salting the fields of their enemies after a battle.
SPEAKER_00: One, they'd salt their fields, they couldn't grow anything.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews figured out, by the way, that you could salt path.
SPEAKER_00: You could salt a path.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you've got a path that you're walking, put salt on it and it keeps the weeds from growing.
SPEAKER_00: When I read that this again, I'm like, I'm gonna try that in my yard.
SPEAKER_00: No, people are shaking their heads.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I won't.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
SPEAKER_00: That's a good analogy for Christians leading worldly lives.
SPEAKER_00: If you're leading a worldly life, your salt is good for nothing.
SPEAKER_00: It just helps the world continue on their path.
SPEAKER_00: If the world can point to compromise Christians who are hypocrites, it justifies their own sin.
SPEAKER_00: It just facilitates their own ungodliness.
SPEAKER_00: That's what salt without saltiness is like.
SPEAKER_00: It just keeps the world on its current course.
SPEAKER_00: A Christian cannot lose his soul, but he can lose his savor and can lose his influence.
SPEAKER_00: So a Christian life has to be sanctified.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, it reveals.
SPEAKER_00: It reveals.
SPEAKER_00: And right now I'm calculating.
SPEAKER_00: Should I have combined light and salt into one sermon or separated them for two weeks?
SPEAKER_00: But I think our pattern from last week is that I have another hour.
SPEAKER_00: So I should.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: It reveals the Christian life acts like light.
SPEAKER_00: It reveals.
SPEAKER_00: It says in verse 14, you are the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Light of the world is light is found a foundational theme in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Light in the Bible establishes that God is not like his creation.
SPEAKER_00: There's a creature-creator distinction that is so foundational for understanding Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: This is the very beginning of the Bible, the third verse of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, the earth was formless and void, but God created the heavens and the earth.
SPEAKER_00: He did that by separating light from darkness.
SPEAKER_00: God is light.
SPEAKER_00: In him there is no darkness at all.
SPEAKER_00: For you to understand anything about the world or about the Bible, you have to get that light and darkness do not mix.
SPEAKER_00: Light is of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness is from sin.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness is the absence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Light is the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Our whole world revolves, literally revolves around that basic truth.
SPEAKER_00: We have day and night.
SPEAKER_00: Night belongs to the deeds of the deeds of sin happen at night, Paul says in Romans.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just foundational to understanding how God has designed the universe is that light reveals God, darkness obscures sin.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness hides.
SPEAKER_00: People, sinners hide in darkness.
SPEAKER_00: So God separates light from darkness to create.
SPEAKER_00: It's the creature creation distinction.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to be like God, you walk in the light.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to be like sin, you walk in the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: God is light.
SPEAKER_00: In him there is no darkness at all.
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 1.5 says the point is that Christianity reveals the why light works.
SPEAKER_00: It brings light into the world.
SPEAKER_00: God is the light of the world, of course.
SPEAKER_00: He separates light from darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Sin comes in the world.
SPEAKER_00: People love the darkness rather than the light.
SPEAKER_00: They follow sin.
SPEAKER_00: They hide in the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: They hate the light.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the light keeps knocking on the door.
SPEAKER_00: And the light pounds on the door, and the light bursts into human hearts and sanctifies hearts.
SPEAKER_00: That's what light does.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the Bible commands us to walk in the light as He is in the light.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, light symbolized revelation, instruction, law, hope, joy, righteousness, salvation, the radiance of the divine presence in Psalm 89.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much that light represents.
SPEAKER_00: Let's take two.
SPEAKER_00: Light represents illumination.
SPEAKER_00: Light illuminates.
SPEAKER_00: It reveals, in other words.
SPEAKER_00: It shows you what you're supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's instruction, Psalm 119 says.
SPEAKER_00: Later in Psalm 119, the unfolding of your words gives light.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that phrase.
SPEAKER_00: When you open up the Bible, it gives light.
SPEAKER_00: It shows you how to live, where to walk, what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Light reveals.
SPEAKER_00: That's, by the way, what's happening in the Beatitudes, remember?
SPEAKER_00: You are convicted by your spiritual bankruptcy.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have light in you.
SPEAKER_00: You surrender to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You hunger and thirst for righteousness outside of you, and you pursue that.
SPEAKER_00: That light source is not in you, it's in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's what light does.
SPEAKER_00: It exposes your sin and directs you how to live your life.
SPEAKER_00: There's a positive and negative effect on light.
SPEAKER_00: The illumination, it tells you what to do.
SPEAKER_00: The negative effect, it drives out darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Tells you what to do, tells you what not to do.
SPEAKER_00: Shows you what righteousness is, shows you what sin is.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines in the darkness, John says.
SPEAKER_00: The darkness does not understand it.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness hates the light, but for all those who do receive the light, he gives them the right to be called children of God.
SPEAKER_00: So light purifies by revealing to you where your sin is and telling you what to do about it.
SPEAKER_00: It opens your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: The spiritually blind don't see the light because they're blind.
SPEAKER_00: They don't see the light.
SPEAKER_00: But when you come to faith in Christ, the scales fall off your eyes, your eyes are opened, and you can behold right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: When the light shines in the human heart, darkness flees.
SPEAKER_00: That's the power of light.
SPEAKER_00: It illuminates.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, it invites.
SPEAKER_00: Light invites.
SPEAKER_00: The one who walks in the light does not dwell in darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're trapped in darkness, you are looking for a light.
SPEAKER_00: You're looking for a light.
SPEAKER_00: The light that might be obnoxious to the neighbors is a welcome beacon for somebody who's lost in the woods.
SPEAKER_00: You understand that distinction.
SPEAKER_00: Some people are might be bothered by the brightness of a light of a cabin in the woods unless you're lost.
SPEAKER_00: Then light invites you in, it shows you where to go.
SPEAKER_00: There's been more than one occasion hiking in Colorado with my brother, where I wouldn't say we're lost because our attitude as kids was just go downhill and you'll eventually hit water and follow it back to town.
SPEAKER_00: But there's been more than one occasion where my brother and I were skeptical that we might have been pressing that principle a little bit too far.
SPEAKER_00: And then you see a light of a car on the road and it tells you which way to go.
SPEAKER_00: That's what light does.
SPEAKER_00: If you are lost, it invites you home.
SPEAKER_00: And this, I think, is a predominant theme of light in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 9, verse 1 says that the Savior will be a bright light that shines.
SPEAKER_00: And if you remember, we've looked at this passage a few times, shines starting in Naptaly and Zebulun, it's the far off, the northern tribes in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It shines through Galilee to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: So catch that.
SPEAKER_00: It's a light that's coming from beyond the Jordan.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a light that goes beyond the Jordan.
SPEAKER_00: It's a light to the world.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 9, verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: The people who walked in darkness have seen that great light.
SPEAKER_00: That's the implication.
SPEAKER_00: They were stuck in the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines on their hearts and invites them to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 42, verse 6 says the saved will be a light for the world.
SPEAKER_00: He'll be a light to the nations so that the salvation can reach the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea behind light.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to shine to the very ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the Old Testament, that was a massive promise.
SPEAKER_00: Because Israel is isolated by its design.
SPEAKER_00: Israel doesn't speak the language of the nations, doesn't have the currency, the calendar, the food, the customs of the nations around them.
SPEAKER_00: They were isolated by design.
SPEAKER_00: And so the promise is that a Savior will come from heaven to them who will then illuminate, who will be the light to the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, there was no great commission in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews were not supposed to go into all the world to make disciples.
SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to stay in the promised land and be the lights of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how can that happen?
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the mysteries of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And here you get Jesus saying, no, it's going to be you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: He shines through Napptali, through Zebulun, through Galilee, through beyond the Jordan.
SPEAKER_00: He's baptized beyond the Jordan, Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's saying, you will be the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to ascend into heaven after his death, and he's going to send us as the light into all the world.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the mystery.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes to Israel as the true and better Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He, in the real sense, is the light to the world.
SPEAKER_00: He then raises up an army of followers and sends them to all the nations.
SPEAKER_00: It goes global.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 60, verse 1 Arise and shine, your light has come.
SPEAKER_00: The glory of Yahweh has risen upon you.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh will arise upon you.
SPEAKER_00: His glory will be seen in you.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 61, verse 3, and nations will come to the light.
SPEAKER_00: So this is the promise that the Jews understood.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior will come and be a light to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, do you understand how radical this is, what he's saying here in Matthew 5?
SPEAKER_00: Is that you are the light, he says.
SPEAKER_00: You are the light in verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: You are the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's not just a cool phrase, you know.
SPEAKER_00: It's a phrase laden with messianic expectations, Old Testament prophecy, and Jesus here is transferring it to his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: You are the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's a massive change.
SPEAKER_00: How are you the light of the world?
SPEAKER_00: By leading a Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: By leading a transformed life and inviting other people to come to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You're shining your light into a dark place.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine seeing that and being a Christian and saying, I don't think I'm going to open my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm going to invite other people to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's hard.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they'll respond.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, when you buy a really nice light, do you put it under your bed?
SPEAKER_00: That's a silly place for a light.
SPEAKER_00: My girls have night lights, like USB ones that kind of plug in.
SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't hide them under their bed.
SPEAKER_00: They might hang them on their ceiling or above their head, but you wouldn't you don't get a cool light and stick it under your pillow.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a I saw one of you with a really cool Mustang out there.
SPEAKER_00: Nice brand new Mustang.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you shaking your head, you saw that car this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The headlights aren't in the trunk.
SPEAKER_00: Nice car, but I keep the headlights in the trunk for driving.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: How would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: The lights are for seeing.
SPEAKER_00: You want them in the front of the car.
SPEAKER_00: Point it out.
SPEAKER_00: You get a nice light, you put it up on the table, light up the room.
SPEAKER_00: Don't hide it.
SPEAKER_00: That would be a Christian who says, I need to open my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Nice light.
SPEAKER_00: Take it out of your closet.
SPEAKER_00: It works better that way.
SPEAKER_00: So if you love your brother, you are the light.
SPEAKER_00: You're walking the light, John says.
SPEAKER_00: If you love your brother, you open your mouth to your brother.
SPEAKER_00: You tell him the truth about God.
SPEAKER_00: That's a basic New Testament principle of walking the light.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, Christians reshape the world by refining the world, revealing God's truth, and thirdly, by reflecting glory back to God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the end of this verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, let your light shine before others also.
SPEAKER_00: So in the same way here as linking it to what's before, you wouldn't buy a nice lamp and put it under your pillow.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't buy a nice car and put the headlights in the trunk.
SPEAKER_00: In that same way, you wouldn't be a Christian and not do your deeds in front of other people.
SPEAKER_00: And not lead an overtly and outlandishly Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're reflecting the attributes of God in your own life through the deeds that you do.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a really interesting change in Matthew 5.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the Beatitudes that were so internal.
SPEAKER_00: They're all heart attitudes, weren't they?
SPEAKER_00: Inside your heart, you're hungry and thirsting for righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Inside your heart, you surrendered to God.
SPEAKER_00: Inside your heart, you're being purified.
SPEAKER_00: Inside your heart, you have the desire to be a peacemaker.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only kind of external ones you're speaking out.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're fully external right here.
SPEAKER_00: You are doing your deeds so other people see them.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point here.
SPEAKER_00: Don't hide it.
SPEAKER_00: All of that internal stuff goes first, and now you're acting it out on the world stage.
SPEAKER_00: You're acting it out.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means.
SPEAKER_00: You're reflecting, you're showing the attributes of God.
SPEAKER_00: First, you're representing God.
SPEAKER_00: You're representing God.
SPEAKER_00: First, and secondly, you're redirecting praise.
SPEAKER_00: What I mean by representing God is that you are living out in your own deeds what the Scripture commands you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says it this way in verse 16, they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who's in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So your works are fueled in your life from God.
SPEAKER_00: You're living in such a way that people see the attributes, the beauty, the glory of God in your conduct, in your works.
SPEAKER_00: So you're not saved by works, of course.
SPEAKER_00: This is coming after the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_00: This is not before the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_00: You don't do good works so that you can cultivate the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_00: No, you cultivate the Beatitudes and they overflow in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture tells you what you're supposed to be before it tells you what to do.
SPEAKER_00: That's the represent.
SPEAKER_00: You're living out the attributes of God through your conduct.
SPEAKER_00: Then, secondly, you're redirecting the praise to God.
SPEAKER_00: So you're not living in front of other people so they think highly of you.
SPEAKER_00: You're living in front of other people so they think highly of God.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the tension in the human heart, is you want other people to see your deeds and praise you, which isn't not very salty, is it?
SPEAKER_00: You want people to see your deeds and praise God.
SPEAKER_00: That's salty.
SPEAKER_00: And that requires you wrestling praise off of yourself and redirecting it to God.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you don't have a happy family because you read a nice parenting book.
SPEAKER_00: That's someone who read a parenting book right there.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have a happy marriage because you took the right premarital class, you know?
SPEAKER_00: The world is filled with happy marriages for hundreds of years before premarital classes were invented.
SPEAKER_00: You have a happy marriage because of your relationship with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He gets the praise.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you're you're a loser, you understand that.
SPEAKER_00: But by the grace of God, you and your wife have figured out how to love each other, and it's by the grace of God, not because of you two.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you you're raising your kids to love the Lord and to serve others, not because of anything in you.
SPEAKER_00: Just the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: You're a bad parent.
SPEAKER_00: But God gives you grace, so He gets the praise.
SPEAKER_00: You love your neighbors, not because you're some kind of altruistic person running for mayor.
SPEAKER_00: No, you love your neighbors because it's the grace of God in your life who shows you what to live.
SPEAKER_00: You're practically reluctant to do it most of the time.
SPEAKER_00: So God gets praise.
SPEAKER_00: You re- people direct praise to you, you redirect it back to God.
SPEAKER_00: You wrestle it off of you.
SPEAKER_00: You wrestle it back off of you.
SPEAKER_00: You're directing the praise back to God.
SPEAKER_00: This is why people say, hey, this is contradicts what's said in Matthew 6, verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 6 says, don't do your deeds in front of other people, right?
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 6, verse 1, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people.
SPEAKER_00: So here, Jesus says, do your deeds in front of the people.
SPEAKER_00: So what gives?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what gives is the motive.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 6, you're doing it so that you can be seen by them and praised by them.
SPEAKER_00: Wrong?
SPEAKER_00: No, you're doing it so that people see God in you.
SPEAKER_00: And you direct the praise back to Him.
SPEAKER_00: That's the right way to do it.
SPEAKER_00: That seems simple, but understand people don't like the sanctified life.
SPEAKER_00: People hate the light.
SPEAKER_00: People who are in darkness reject the light.
SPEAKER_00: They hate the light.
SPEAKER_00: They run from the light.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's so easy to justify silence.
SPEAKER_00: This is why, again, there's a massive push in the church and in the world for Christians to look more like the world, to act more like the world, to just fit in better with the world.
SPEAKER_00: Massive push.
SPEAKER_00: There's a massive push for you to tone down your Christian ethics for the sake of your Christian witness, to not expose sin, to not confront sin.
SPEAKER_00: But recall that the light is an invitation.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines into a dark world.
SPEAKER_00: If the world wasn't dark, it wouldn't need the light.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines into the dark world, the assault is offensive, it stings, it burns, that's what happens to it.
SPEAKER_00: But when that happens, some respond with persecution, some respond with hating the light, Jesus says in John 3, but others respond with conviction, others respond with introspection, others respond with confession, and some respond with conversion.
SPEAKER_00: That's the effect of the light and the salt.
SPEAKER_00: It's ultimately not going to establish the kingdom of God in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Being salt and light is not going to usher in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is going to establish the kingdom of God in the world.
SPEAKER_00: We're salt here.
SPEAKER_00: We're not the full cake.
SPEAKER_00: We're not baking a cake.
SPEAKER_00: We're salt.
SPEAKER_00: We're purifying, confronting.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel goes forth through light to the nations through our words, drawing people to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God, we're grateful that you have called us to be a light to the world.
SPEAKER_00: We know the night is darkest, the light shines brightest.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for our congregation.
SPEAKER_00: I pray we would be a congregation marked by light.
SPEAKER_00: We would not be apathetic.
SPEAKER_00: We would turn towards you in faith.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here this morning who's never given you their life.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that today they would surrender their life to you.
SPEAKER_00: They would be convicted by their sin and turn their hearts in faith towards you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, the word world hated you.
SPEAKER_00: You were the light of the world and they crucified you.
SPEAKER_00: They crucified the Lord of glory.
SPEAKER_00: You were salt on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And they responded by arresting you and lying and giving false accusations and nailing you to a tree.
SPEAKER_00: You conquered death.
SPEAKER_00: Because you conquered death, we have confidence that the light will indeed continue to shine in this earth.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that we would be that light.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.