Matthew 5:13-16

It's so good for us to sit and listen to the Good Teacher, Jesus.  In my own quiet time, I was struck by the importance of our substance and how that leads us into our purpose.  Time with the Lord is time well spent. 

Transcript

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Go ahead and take a moment and think about the different lights that you have in your life. What do they tell you? What are they communicating? You know, I was doing this sort of as a fun little exercise for myself, and I realized that a lot of the lights that pop on in my life are telling me something something is wrong. Warning lights. You get in your car. Most of the lights on your dashboard you don't want to see. You don't really want to see that check engine light or your oil pressure is low or whatever that might be. I mean, you're glad that it's letting you know something is wrong, but you don't like that the thing is wrong. There are other lights though that communicate different things. Maybe that the power is on on a particular device. I'm looking at the camera right now, and I can see two lights. One, the red one lets me know that power is coming to the camera. The second one is a is a smaller one, it's a little blue one, and it lets me know that I'm recording right now. And so I probably shouldn't do anything dumb. And you're probably glad I'm not doing that either. Uh I like there's uh the a green light that I really, really like. It it lets me know that my waffles are done. That's probably my favorite one. Hey, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. Whether you're just checking this out or you've been following for a while, I'm glad that you're here. And if you appreciate our time together, go ahead and take a moment to subscribe. Uh that would be amazing. Thank you for doing that. And if you're looking for ways to support this ministry beyond that, there are uh ways you can do that. Just check the show's description and and you can uh discover that. Today, we're getting back to the light thing. Today we're looking at the purpose of our own God-given light, what it means for us and the people who see it. We're in Matthew chapter five, verses thirteen through sixteen, just four short little verses, uh they're all the words of the teacher, they're the words of Jesus. So if you have your uh your your scripture handy, go ahead and open that on up. I'll pray, and then we'll get to the text together. Jesus, thank you for today. God, thank you that you enter into our lives, Lord, that you've not only shone the light into us, but you've called us out of darkness and into purpose. God, we're here to know you better, and we want to meet with you. Amen. All right. Matthew five, starting at verse thirteen. You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Go ahead and take a moment to listen to the Spirit. If you need to pause, go ahead and do that, and then we'll continue together. Let's make a few observations here. What is Jesus getting at with these two metaphors? And I'll just let you know that I have read this little passage a lot, right? Over the course of my lifetime and in the course of teaching and preaching it, I've looked at it a whole bunch. It's important. It's part of the Sermon on the Mount, which is a really central text in the context of the New Testament and scripture overall. So it's it's a frequented one in my life. And you know, at different points along the way, I've been like, yeah, Jesus is kind of making some obvious points here. They're not too difficult. And others, I'm like, well, hang on a second. What what precisely is he getting at? And uh this morning as I was reading it and just taking a a moment for myself to to pray and to think this through, I really felt like there's some clarity here for us to understand. The the first bit, the the metaphor about salt, all of that is there in in verse 13. I understand that to really just drive home at this idea of substance. What are you made up of? What constitutes you? And there's a bit here that's a little bit like informational that hopefully you can appreciate. Uh common salt in the Roman world often had impurities. It's not that they didn't have salt that was kind of close to what we have today. They did, but that was an extended process, and usually people who had wealth, you know what I mean, they would have they would have had that kind of thing uh available to them. But because there were impurities in common salt, and it would have even looked a little bit different than our regular table salt today, salt could lose its saltiness simply by dilution and and just different things that were that were going on. It's not that the NACL was changing, it was just that it was kind of mixed in with all these different things. So Jesus is using a metaphor here that that his listeners, I think, would have readily understood and and connected with. And I think he really is asking them, and thereby us, to think about their own personal makeup. So if they had moved away from God and toward human thinking, they would lose their distinctiveness. And that distinctiveness is a really helpful word for me. What is it that makes me unique? What is it makes what is it that makes you unique? What is the thing that makes you salty, not in a bad way, in a good way? Their usefulness, right? Their ability to change the world around them, to have an impact. What are they bringing to the table, so to speak? If if they had denied that or allowed their distinctiveness, their constitution to be diluted in that sense, for them to lose that distinction, that saltiness, then their usefulness was depleted. And Jesus says, well, if the salt loses its saltiness, if you stop being who you're supposed to be, if you lose that sense of personal integrity, then your usefulness is just to kind of be thrown on the path. And yeah, there's some benefit to that, but not very much, right? Like salt is intended to bring flavor and to preserve things, and it it has all of those really wonderful uh attributes to it, and and you've denied that. And so now we're just gonna toss that out on the path, and and you can serve us by uh making the ground maybe a little bit better. The second bit there in verses 14 through 16 has to do with the thing that you were made to do. Are you doing the thing that you were made to do? It's talking about purpose, right? Uh we are the light of the world. Jesus says, You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Like this is who you are, and then who you are speaks to what you're created to do. Again, Jesus starts with this idea. You are the light of the world. Essentially, your purpose is to shine, right? And he makes kind of an obvious statement. Nobody lights a lamp in their house and covers it up. They don't set it in an obscure place. No, they put it on its stand, right? It's elevated, and and in today's world, we we have a lot of our lights that are mounted on the ceiling, right? Why why is that there? So that it brings light to a large area inside our homes. Your purpose is to shine. If you hide that, if you cover it, um you you don't fulfill your intended purpose. Uh verse 16 really brings that whole idea home. Shine bright, let your actions speak for themselves, and do it in such a way that God receives glory. I'll read verse 16 just to remind us. In the same way, right, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. As Jesus followers, we have this really unique, distinctive purpose that we're called to live into. Let's take a moment and reflect on this and ask that question and hopefully answer it as well. How do we let this move into our own lives? What is it that makes me distinct as a Jesus follower? I'm asking that salt question. What is it that makes me me? What is it that I get to bring to the people who are in my life? And that does include my my wife and my kids and you know my family, those those sorts of things. But just in general, as I interact with the world, uh what goodness am I bringing? What's happening there? Many of you know, and I've brought this up before, I'm going through this really unique season of life where I've concluded 24 years of pastoral ministry and I'm moving into the next thing, and and some of that feels clear to me, and some of it is a little still kind of a question mark. And I've been meeting with a good friend, Steve Welling, and he gives me these great questions to kind of ponder kind of where I'm at and to prompt me into maybe more productive or creative thinking. And the question he left with me, and this is a while ago, was who am I without the job? Again, I've been a pastor essentially for my whole adult life. And in some ways, and these aren't even bad things, but it is a part of who I am. And some of that I want to take with me. I have that desire to help others in their faith. But it can become more and more of my identity, and yet, who am I as a person? It's coming back to that salt question. Am I filled with the goodness of God or have I let myself become distracted? Have I included other things into my life that dilute the effectiveness of God's presence in me? So there are things that are specific to me in that whole conversation, but there are also things that are specific to you. Who are you, you know, beyond the different roles that you carry along the way? Right now for me, I'm learning how to be this guy who loves Jesus and wants to do the next faithful thing that may or may not look like the thing I was doing up to this point in my life. It's not a question of what to do, but who am I? And that's an important question for all of us. So what is it that makes you distinct as a Jesus follower? What's the salt in your life? And by the way, we can all rightly say, yeah, Jesus is that salt, right? The presence of the Spirit of God is that salt. It's that goodness, it's the transformation that's changed in us, and then I believe that there are also things that are unique to us because God made each and every one of us unique. The second question is a light question. How am I bearing witness to God's goodness? How am I wearing or sorry, wearing, bearing witness to God's goodness? By the way, this is a God-given purpose. What I mean by that, there is no negotiation here on whether or not we should be light. Jesus says, You are, you are the light of the world. If you're a follower of Christ, then that's who you are. And so that light bears witness. Well, what kind of witness is that? Pray, right? Pray and ask God to show you opportunities to do this. If you're in those spots where you're like, well, how do I really do this well? And you know, sometimes we're not fair to ourselves. We have this idea that, well, if I just live life good enough, people will ask. You know, sometimes that does happen, but for the most part, uh, there's a little more intentionality required. This is more than just being good. It's letting the light of the world shine through you. The light of the world, of course, is Jesus. He stepped down into the darkness and illuminated what needed to be illuminated. It's also doing these good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. That's from Ephesians 2 10. It's not just being nice or even being kind. Both of those things are good, but it's doing the good things that God has called us to do, to be faithful in the midst of all of those different things. I can't tell you fully what that means for you and your life, but God can. So take time today. Grab a pencil or a pen even and just ask God, what do you desire from me? I hope that today has encouraged you. Let's pray. Jesus in heaven, thank you. Thank you. Thank you that you continue to do this life-changing work in us. God, in light of today's passage, we ask that you would show us what it looks like to be people of substance. And God, if we find that we're lacking, would you make us whole again? Would you restore us in that way? Would you take away those impurities and make us good again? God, we also ask that you would show us our purpose. Show us what it looks like to be light in the world around us and to receive all that you have for us. We love you, Lord. Amen.