All right, I wanna start this morning
in our sermon, our time together in God's word
with a, I'm gonna poll the audience here.
This is, who wants to be a millionaire, all right?
And we're gonna poll the audience.
How many of you, yeah, Mr. Bingo Man over here.
How many of you have heard a sermon preached
on this passage of scripture at least once before?
If you've heard at least once before
on this passage of scripture, go ahead and raise your hand.
All right, how about twice, at least twice, yeah?
Okay, how many of you think you've probably heard
a sermon on Matthew five, 13 through 16,
maybe 10 times or more?
Yeah, that's what I figured, right?
Some of you, you've grown up in and around the church
and you'll immediately hear in your head
as we're reading this, especially verses 14 through 16,
a child's Sunday school song, anyone hear it?
This little light of mine.
Yeah, I'm gonna let it shine, I don't even remember
how it goes, but yeah.
This little light of mine, right, hide it under a bushel.
No, right?
So anyone who grew up in and around the church culture
or in Sunday school, these words are very familiar.
And for you and for me as well,
having been raised in the church,
we particularly run the risk of knowing the word of God,
in this case, this scripture, right?
Oh, oh, I know this one, right?
All right, man, I'm gonna get a chance
to catch up on my Zs today, pastor's gonna preach,
I'm gonna doze off, I've heard this passage before.
We run the risk of knowing the word of God,
but maybe not always doing it.
Maybe not always living it.
You ever heard the phrase, begin with the end in mind?
It's a good phrase and I use it oftentimes
as I'm thinking about whether it's vision
or something I want to do, what do I want to get to,
what's the goal here?
Well, Jesus ended the greatest sermon ever preached,
the Sermon on the Mount, with these words
over in Matthew seven, just listen as I read them.
Therefore, this is the final conclusion
of the greatest sermon ever preached by Jesus.
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine
and acts on them will be like a wise man
who builds his house on the rock.
The rainfall fell, the rivers rose and the wind blew
and pounded that house, yet it did not collapse
because it had a foundation that was on the rock.
But everyone who hears these words of mine
and doesn't act on them will be like a foolish man
who built his house on the sand.
The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew
and pounded the house and it collapsed.
It collapsed with a great crash.
What's the end of the greatest sermon?
Hear and act, right there he says it.
We just finished the section on the Beatitudes, right?
It's a person whose life is blessed,
whose flourishing, a person who is fully satisfying
because of God and here in Matthew seven,
we have a person, what do we have?
We have a person who's flourishing
and we have a person who's not flourishing.
A person who builds on the rock and a person who doesn't
and one has a life that is secure and firm
and one has a life that falls apart and crumbles.
See that illustration again.
The flourishing, fully satisfied life because of God.
The other.
One hears and acts according to Jesus' words.
One hears and doesn't act according to Jesus' word.
Another risk that we have when we approach scriptures
like this where we have some familiarity with it
or maybe for you, you have no familiarity with it
and your first question is, what's he talking about?
What is he really talking about
or I don't know if I really understand that
and I think that there is some genuineness
and there's definitely a sincere place
that sometimes we come from
but some Christians will use those same excuses.
Oh, I don't understand that.
I don't know what that means.
I don't know how that's supposed to look
and Soren Kierkegaard, he was a 19th century scholar
and philosopher, a theologian, he made this observation.
I love this, we have a quote,
we can put it up on the board.
The Bible is very easy to understand
but we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers.
We pretend to be unaware or unable to understand it
because we know well that the minute we understand it,
we are obligated to act accordingly.
Oh, I don't understand, what does that mean?
What's salt?
What's lie?
I don't understand the metaphor.
The beatitudes, I'm playing a little bit
but there's some truth here, right?
The beatitudes lead to this verse.
So we can't separate them out and say
that list that we covered the last few weeks is separate.
They lead to this verse right here.
And why is that important?
Because we are promised as we look,
persecution will come to the believer.
It's going to come and when it comes,
guess what you and I are tempted to do?
We are tempted to take our mission
and take our calling and take our citizenship
and go away to a monastery somewhere
where we can shut the doors, hunker down
and live a life of contemplative religious practice
until Jesus comes back.
And right on the heels of you will be persecuted
or what we talked about, blessed persecution,
blessed accusation, Jesus says,
you are the light of the world.
Jesus will not have us running off somewhere
and hiding it under a bushel, no.
Why?
Because Jesus made us salt and light.
We didn't make ourselves, Jesus made us salt and light.
And verse 13 begins with that,
you are the salt of the earth.
So let's spend a little bit of time this morning
talking about salts, that's why you came to church, right?
So I probably get plenty of that with the doctor, right?
Constantly bringing up salt.
It's funny because of how abundantly we have access
to salt in our day and age, we probably don't give it
much thought until it's not there, right?
We are told that salt isn't good for us in high quantities,
that's for sure.
Have you ever seen those people who salt their food
before even trying it?
Anyone guilty out there?
Okay, there's one worse than that.
I won't name names, I'll just look to the side over here.
You ever met anyone who goes to a Mexican food restaurant,
gets chips and salsa and salts each individual chip?
I have.
If we were to rewind 2,000 years from now,
salt had definitely a bit of a different place in society
at that point in time.
For starters, it was much more rare because they didn't have
this large scale mining that we have, this is obvious, right?
One of the interesting facts that I learned as I was looking
at this scripture, and maybe you've heard this before,
but Roman soldiers were often paid in salt
for their service to the empire, they were paid in salt.
In fact, the Latin word solarium meant to barter with salt
in the marketplace, solarium, and it's actually
the root word from which we get the word salary.
Our salary comes from salt bartering
in the empire of this time.
And so salt had definitely a different place.
Salt was like money, salt was valuable,
salt was significant and rare.
So why would Jesus say that we, those who are in Christ,
are the salt of the earth?
Well, let's begin with the obvious, it's a metaphor.
If we're trying to pawn off and say we don't understand it,
it is a metaphor, and we have to begin there.
Salt, let's look at what salt does though.
What does salt do?
It enhances flavor, right?
Salt enhances flavor.
They say that oftentimes it takes the flavors
that are already there, if you've ever had a great steak
that's salted, it takes the flavors that are already there
and it enhances them to a new level.
Everything is better with salt, right?
Even if they tell us it's not good, I mean think about it.
Salted caramel, like we even salt sweet things, right?
There's a place, if you ever get on the road
and you ever head down south into the coast,
there's a small town called Cayucas on the beach.
It's between Cambria and Morro Bay.
And in Cayucas is the brown butter cookie factory.
And they have amazing cookies, the kind of cookies
where you contemplate some days getting in the car
and driving four and a half hours to get a cookie.
Now they ship nowadays, but they charge a lot for shipping
and I'd rather go on the drive.
But they have amazing cookies and what makes them amazing?
It's sweet, you can get sweet anywhere.
But the way that they salt them draws out the flavors
of these brown butter cookies and they're worth the trip.
The presence of salt makes everything better.
Anyone like beef jerky out here?
Any beef jerky out here?
Any beef jerky lovers?
Yeah, I love beef jerky.
Well, what else does salt do?
It preserves meat as well, right?
It preserves meat.
This was really useful in the first century,
long before freezers and refrigerators were invented.
Meat packed in salt, the salt preserves the meat
and keeps it from turning bad, right?
Another quality of salt is that salt makes you thirsty.
It makes you thirsty.
You don't dig into a bag of beef jerky
without also having a drink right next to you.
You need the drink to offset all the salt in there.
So its presence makes everything better.
It preserves and it is an enemy of decay
and it causes thirst.
And one last thing, we have writings
from the end of the first century,
going into the second century from Jewish rabbis
and they used to use salt as a metaphor
for the idea of wisdom.
Salt was like wisdom.
And so think about wisdom, think about its presence
making things better, its preserving qualities
and its ability to make us thirst.
And let's get back to the statement in verse 13.
You are the salt of the earth.
Well, the first observation there is you are.
It's not a promise, it's a statement.
If you are in Christ, if you have made it
through those beatitudes, you are the salt of the earth.
If you are the kingdom citizen,
you are the salt of the earth.
You, the disciple and kingdom citizen,
you are the salt of the earth.
The earth isn't about the physical dirt and rock.
It's really more like saying you are the salt
sprinkled among the people of the earth.
You are the salt sprinkled among the people of the earth.
Your presence among the people is to make them better.
Jesus says, I have made you the active agent
among the peoples of this earth against natural decay.
The natural decay of morality,
the natural decay of righteousness,
perversion and sin and death.
I have sprinkled you among the people
to restrain evil by doing good.
I have sprinkled you among the earth.
I have made you and placed you among the peoples
of the earth so that you can cause them to thirst for me.
When they look at your life and they see
what ultimately satisfies you,
a thirst will rise in them that is unquenchable,
having been in your presence and seen the way that you live,
that they will reach out and want the one who satisfies.
You are the salt of the earth.
You are the wisdom of God in Christ Jesus
among the people of the earth.
But if that salt should lose its taste,
how can it be made salty?
It is no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
This is a hard, hard saying.
A saltless saint is a worthless disciple.
Remember in Matthew seven,
who hears Jesus' words and acts accordingly?
The wise builder.
Who hears Jesus' words and does not act accordingly?
The foolish builder.
And that's what's so interesting about,
I love the scripture and I love
when there's little nuggets in it.
But if the salt should lose its taste,
the word taste there in the Greek,
it actually means to become foolish.
It means to become foolish or to be convicted of folly.
If anyone, if salt should become foolish,
if salt should become convicted of folly,
how can it be made salty anymore?
Wise and foolish builder.
If you become foolish, how do you become foolish
in Jesus' illustration in chapter seven?
You become foolish when you hear God's word
and you don't act accordingly.
How can you be made salty again?
A saltless saint is a worthless disciple.
If the once wise becomes foolish,
they cannot again become wise.
If the once foolish, they cannot again become wise.
There is a rabbinic saying from this time
that I just got a crack out of
and I really hope that it doesn't offend too much.
Ha ha.
Gear up.
Any kids in, oh yeah, they won't know.
Ha ha.
The rabbinic saying begins with a question.
What do you salt tasteless salt with?
And the answer?
The afterbirth of a mule.
Yeah, disgusting, right?
And I think that's part of the point.
The afterbirth of the mule.
Who's gonna wanna eat that stuff after that?
Well, that's pretty gross, right?
I mean, not only that, there's a feature about mules
that's unique.
Some of you probably know this.
I didn't know this until I was looking into it.
But mules are sterile or infertile.
They're a cross between a horse and a donkey
and they don't give birth, right?
That makes the saying all the more ridiculous.
Mules don't give birth.
So what is the great wisdom of this rabbinic saying?
It's something like this.
Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers.
You can't make tasteless salt salty again.
You can't salt salt.
When it's lost, it's taste, it's gone.
Now, I mean, obviously you can get into the science
of salt and the fact that it's a very stable compound
and it can't lose its saltiness.
But in the first century, they were dealing with
kinds of salts that came from near the Dead Sea,
which oftentimes had other compounds mixed in with it.
And you could definitely get a batch of bad salt,
dirt and other compounds.
You can't make salt salty again.
You can't salt tasteless salt.
And we are told you are the salt of the earth.
Are the relationships in your life better
because you are there?
Are you an enhancement, a flavor,
a peculiar flavor of heaven in your relationship?
Are you a flavor of the earth?
Are you a flavor of heaven in your relationships?
How about the conversations that you and I engage in?
Are they, as Colossians 4.6 says,
gracious, seasoned with salt?
Are our conversations gracious, seasoned with salt?
Are you an active agent, an enemy of decay
in a culture bent on corruption, sin and chaos?
Or have you run to the monastery
to separate yourself from this life and its corruption
and hide away till Jesus comes back?
No, go, you are the salt of the earth.
Do the people around you see the life that you have
in Christ in hunger and thirst for righteousness
in their own lives?
Or are you a saltless saint?
Verse 14, you are the light of the world.
You are the light of the world.
Remember that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity
or the triune God by whom and through whom
everything was made.
And what was written on the first pages of the Bible?
Where are we first exposed to light
when God himself says, let there be light
and there was light.
And what does Jesus say to his kingdom people
in the first sermon he preaches?
He says, you are light.
Be light.
You are my kingdom people, you are the light of the world.
In fact, 2 Corinthians chapter four, verse six,
Paul connects the God of Genesis and his work there
with this work of Christ in us.
He says, for God who said, let light shine out of darkness
has shown in our hearts the light of the world.
Has shown in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
In the book of James, we are told that every good
and perfect gift comes from who?
The father of lights who doesn't change
like shifting shadows.
In John chapter eight, verse 12, Jesus says
the very same thing of himself that he says of us
here in 14, I am the light of the world.
You who follows me will never walk in the darkness
but will have the light of life.
The prologue to John's book, John's gospel,
we are told that in Jesus was life
and that life was the light of men.
That light shines in the darkness
and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
Finally, in this survey of scripture,
in Revelation, we are told that a heavenly city
comes down, the new Jerusalem.
And what is one of those peculiar features
of this new heavenly city?
Oh, that city, it doesn't need the sun.
That city doesn't need the sun.
That city doesn't need the moon to shine on it.
Why?
Because the glory of God illuminates it
and its lamp is the lamb, Jesus.
My friends, we are children of the glory of God.
We are children of God.
If Christ is alive in us, then he is the undemiable
nuclear power source within us,
shining in and through us.
I've heard a lot of people use the idea of reflection
in relation to this scripture.
And I had a little bit of a problem with it
because Christ is alive in me.
Christ is alive in me.
He's not outside.
He's in me alive, shining out forth through me.
He is the undemiable power source.
It is impossible for light not to illuminate.
In fact, light gets a little bit of a bad rap nowadays.
I don't know if you guys have heard of light pollution.
But light pollution is the unspoken, you know,
I guess, threat to humanity.
I was reading an article earlier about the effects
of light pollution on human health and so on and so forth.
And some of it has to do with unwanted light
flooding in to places you don't want it
and not being able to sleep.
And why?
Because light, it is impossible for it to not illuminate.
It can't be, light is by any very nature
piercing darkness and spreading it.
I'm obviously not being scientific here.
But light, you can't hide light
unless you put something over it.
You put something in its way.
Light will illuminate.
And we are told that we are a chosen people,
a royal priesthood, a people belonging to God,
that we may proclaim the praises of the one
who called us out of what?
Darkness into his marvelous light,
into his marvelous light, for you were once darkness.
Ephesians 5, 8 tells us, you were once darkness.
But now you are light in the Lord.
And then he gives a command, walk as children of light.
So I wanna give you this morning three places
that we are to shine according to Matthew 5.
The first place is we're to shine in the world.
To shine in the world.
And we don't necessarily shine in the world
as individuals very well.
However, the collective light of believers
is a powerful light in the dark world.
You guys ever own a large spotlight LED?
Like a LED lamp, right?
If you took out, maybe it has 100,
maybe it has 200 little LEDs in there.
If you took out all of them but one,
how bright would that be?
Not very bright.
But together all of those LED lamps side by side
can make a stream of light pierce.
We have an awesome little spotlight at home
that we use whenever we hear something crazy
going on in the woods.
We'll pull out that spotlight and we can shoot that thing,
clear beam all the way into the force
and see what's going on.
It's an LED, it lights up,
but it takes lots of little LEDs to make it bright.
In this world, we may seem like we're one tiny little light.
What can we do but together,
collectively, believers, both here and across the world,
we are a force because of the light of Christ.
And that is why it's so important to be connected
to the people of God in the body of Christ.
Our light shines in the world when we shine together.
When we're on mission together,
when we're in the world together, our light shines.
Even Jesus, when he sent his apostles out
to go and teach and evangelize and heal,
did he send them alone?
No, he sent them two by two.
Don't go it alone.
Go out, strengthen that light, let it shine brighter.
We are to reach the world.
Individual lights spread out and apart from one another
will have very little impact on a global scale,
but together we shine.
And together, we shine bright.
The second place that we are to shine is in the city.
He began by saying, let your light shine, right?
To the world.
And then he said, but a city on a hill,
a city on a hill can't be hidden, right?
We're to shine our light in the city
because in the city, you can be known.
You can be known individually.
In your job and in your neighborhoods,
people will know you and know who you are.
Do they see the light of God shining through you
in your neighborhood, at work, at the local coffee shop?
Do they discern that you are a child of light?
Do they have to metaphorically shield their eyes
if they don't want to see light when they are around you?
This is an interesting stat
related to our light shining in our city.
Did you know that 82% of people who were surveyed
in a large survey done by a Christian organization,
82% of the people who surveyed said that
they would come to church if a friend invited them.
82% of people said, I'm gonna say that again,
82% of people surveyed said we would go to church
if a friend invited us to go.
And in that same survey, they found that only 2%
of Christians said, I invite my friends to church.
82%, just waiting for the invitation,
it hasn't arrived yet.
I don't wanna go alone, I don't wanna go through
those doors alone, it's weird, it's scary,
I don't know what it's like, but I'm waiting
for that invitation to arrive from my friends.
And 2% of Christians saying, yeah, I'm gonna go to church.
And 2% of Christians saying, yeah, I invite my friends.
That's crazy.
Let your light shine, you are the light of the world.
That 82% doesn't just mean, wow, look at them,
they're just on the edge, that means that the light
is shining out there and they're interested,
they just need someone to bridge the gap,
to pull them in, they wanna know what's going on in here.
They just need an invitation.
Only 2% of Christians invite their friends.
But 82% of people said they would go.
That also tells us that we need more friends.
Because they didn't say just anyone inviting them,
they said friends, and if you go, well,
I've already invited all my friends.
Make more friends.
Chances are you're gonna run into someone
who wants to go to church.
You can build a kingdom that way.
Be a friend factory and an inviting person,
a person who just puts out the invites to more friends.
Maybe be friendly.
I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but be friendly.
Open the doors to friendship with you
and through that friendship, there is an obvious,
clear doorway to reach the lost.
I'm so off script here, sorry.
But it's one of those things that I'm really passionate
about because one of the dangers that a small church
always has is that I'm comfortable with where we're at now.
Oh, I like our size, I like to know everyone.
But the truth is studies show us over and over again,
you actually don't know everyone in this room.
You know maybe five to 10 people.
And most of the people in this room
have never sat at your dinner table.
Most of them haven't.
But there are people out there who wanna be in here
if a friend would invite them, and all we have to do
is open our heart and our life to them, make friends,
and then say, hey, come with me.
And we'll go out to lunch afterward.
And they'd say, okay, I was waiting.
There's so much we can do.
I've been thinking about this in relation to church
and what the Lord is doing here at Village
and where we might be going and what we should hope for
and what we should pray for.
And we're always gonna push against that,
oh, but I like it the way that it is,
or the way that it was, or the way that I wish it was
before, back when.
But I'll ask you this question.
How many people does God want us to reach?
How many does he want us to reach?
Are you willing to put a number on that?
Oh, I think he only wants me to reach five.
Like, he created me, he made,
I think he only wants me at five.
That's my limit.
I'm gonna reach five.
In fact, I reached those five in 1975, and I'm done.
You really wanna put that number and that limit on Jesus
and what he's doing here in this world?
I don't wanna do that.
And anytime we say, oh, I like it the way it is,
one, two, three, four, I like this right here,
what we're saying is, that's enough, Jesus.
Calm down.
Calm down on that reaching thing.
And I say, no, let's blow the doors open.
Let's make friends, more friends and more friends,
so that we can invite those friends
to come and join the kingdom of God
and be a part of what God is doing.
You are the light of the world to the city.
I'm back on script, here we go.
Number three.
The third place you are to shine.
You are to shine in your house.
You don't light a lamp and hide it under a bushel
or hide it under your bed, but you put a lamp on its stand
so that it illuminates the whole house.
You are to light and be the light of the world
in your house.
And here truly is where it all starts, really.
And this can, for some folks,
be the place where it's most difficult to shine.
Does your household experience
the illuminating light of God because of you?
Do you fill the house with the light
of the knowledge of Christ?
Is the word of God described in the Psalms
as a light unto our feet and a lamp to our path?
Is the word of God regularly read,
regularly taught, discussed and meditated on
in your house because of you?
Do you talk about the word?
Do you talk about the word as it relates
to decisions you need to make?
How does the word inform what I should do
in any given situation?
What does the word tell me about taking on this debt?
What does the word of God, the wisdom of God,
tell me about whether I should invest
in this relationship or that relationship?
What does the word of God tell me about maintaining those
connections with that relative over here or visiting here?
What does the word of God tell me about whether
I should give my kid a cell phone
or whether I should marry this person
or whether I should go to church today?
What does the word of God tell me?
Bring the word of God to me.
Bring the word of God, the light of God,
to our houses and from there reach our cities
and from there together we reach the world.
It's often been said that integrity,
integrity is what you do when no one's watching, right?
Those doors close to your home, do you let it down?
Is that hallelujah and amen all gone at home
or does it have a place in your four walls?
What about though, when it comes to our enemies?
What about shining our light,
the light of the world to our enemies?
And if you remember, this particular passage
was right on the heels of that beatitude
where it culminated with blessed, blessed persecution,
blessed accusation for ours is the kingdom of heaven.
And our tendency is that when someone takes something
from us, be it our emotional well-being
or something that we own or our status
or someone takes our job or whatever it is
that they take from us, we want to withhold
something from them.
We all have that tendency.
You took from me, I'm not giving to you.
But what's one of the properties of light?
Light shines, light cannot not illuminate.
Light shines where?
In the darkness, in the darkness.
Light does not shine into light,
light shines in the darkness.
And 1 Peter chapter three, verse 13,
this is a great companion verse to that last beatitude
we studied last week.
Who then will harm you if you are devoted
to doing what is good?
That's a good question, who's gonna harm you
if you're doing what is good?
But even if you should suffer for righteousness,
you are blessed.
Do not fear them or be intimidated,
but in your hearts, regard Christ the Lord as holy,
ready at any time to give a defense to anyone
who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have.
Yet even when you do this, do it with gentleness
and reverence, keeping a clear conscience
so that when you are accused, those who disparage
your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame.
For it is better to suffer for doing good
if that be God's will than for doing evil.
Who are you to be giving to God
to be giving a gentle, reverent defense
of the hope that you have to,
to those who are making you suffer?
Those who are making you suffer,
you are to be giving a reverent, gentle defense
for why you have hope.
That means as they're making you suffer
and causing suffering in your life,
and they see, wow, what I'm inflicting on them
will not break them, they still have hope.
We still have to be prepared to give the reason
for that hope, even to the person
who's causing the suffering.
Yes, even to them, the light of Christ in you
is to shine through.
Jesus says that if they take from over here in my life,
my physical body, my money, my physical well-being,
my security, if they damage my emotional,
no matter, if they take from over here,
I still have something to give to them over here
out of the light within my heart to show them
this is the hope that I have.
And it's not like, well, I'm a Jesus follower, brr, right?
With gentle and reverence, right?
Why, because you're trying to win the lost.
You're trying to win them over.
You're trying to show the light of Christ
and allow it to shine through you.
You still have something that he wants you to give them.
Even when they're taking everything from you.
But how can we shine in the darkness of suffering?
I'll close with these two points.
First, we pray.
Pray for your enemies.
Pray for their well-being,
even as they negatively affect yours.
Pray for their prosperity, even as they steal yours.
Pray for their peace, even as they intimidate
and terrorize you.
Pray for their salvation,
that they may be made right with God.
Something powerful happens when we see people,
even our enemies, in their relationship to God.
When we see people and how they are in relation to God.
When we see their darkness,
when we see the darkness within their heart
is due to the separation that they have
from the light of God, it does something in us.
Their actions are just symptoms of a root problem.
They're enemies of God.
They're ruthless and unsettled in their life.
The truth is, they're half human.
They're living half lives.
They're not embracing the glory for which they were created,
but instead, they're tools in the hands of Satan
to destroy God's good work.
We can see that so clearly,
but can we also see that God loves them?
God loves them.
And he has not, this is killing me.
As I was preparing, he has not yet returned to take me home
because he's waiting on them to come to the knowledge
of the light of Christ through me.
There's days I wanna go home.
I know I'm young and all that,
but there's days I wanna be in the presence of God
for eternity and I wanna be with my Lord and Savior
and I wanna be in the new heavens.
I want it all.
He ain't coming for me yet.
Because that person who's at enmity with God,
who's in rebellion with God,
who does sinful things that I don't like,
he's waiting on them to come to him.
His patience for them is why we're all waiting.
When we see it in relation, their relation to God,
it does something to our prayers.
Pray, awaken them, show them your light.
May they experience peace and prosperity in their life
that it might awaken them and if suffering is necessary
as well, but whatever it takes, as they take from me,
if this will do it, if they can see in me
the light of Christ as they take everything from me
and they go, why the heck can I not break this guy?
If that's what it takes, I'm gonna break this guy.
I'm gonna break this guy.
If that's what it takes to get them over the line,
do it, Lord, do it.
His patience is for their good
and his light that is in you and me is there
so that you and I can shine.
Second and final, we first pray and then we forgive.
And then we forgive.
How do we shine in the darkness of suffering?
We forgive.
What did Jesus pray for his enemies while on the cross?
It was the same thing, the same idea that Stephen prayed
as the crowd is pelting him with stones
and he is dying right before their eyes.
They both prayed the same thing.
Forgive them.
Do not hold this sin against them.
This is truly the ministry of reconciliation.
You want to see light pour out of you
in volumes that you can't imagine, forgive.
Forgive.
Psalm 24, 17 says, do not gloat when your enemies fall.
How hard is that?
How hard is that in the political season that we're in?
Do not gloat when your enemies fall
and let your heart rejoice when he stumbles.
Don't let it.
We forgive.
Why?
Because we are the forgiven ones.
We are the forgiven ones.
We forgive one another because God in Christ forgave us.
And so we let our light shine before others
so that they may see our good works,
prayer and forgiveness in so many others
and give glory to God, their Father in heaven.
This is not about your own congratulations.
Good job, chap.
You've done well.
This is about God's glory and his radiance
shining on this earth through his people.
I encourage you this morning.
You are the salt of the earth.
You are the light of the world.
For some of you, that means making a phone call today.
For some of you, that means setting up
a lunch meeting with someone.
Or if that's not possible, at least going to the place
of the hard work necessary to release them from the debt
that their harm has incurred on you
and release them from what they owe you in your heart.
Friends, this is the gospel.
When we owe the insurmountable debt
of our failure to perfect our faith,
of our failure to perfectly obey God, our holy creator,
Christ still died for us.
And he procured our forgiveness of our debt
and the restoration of our relationship to God.
The servant is not greater than his master.
This is only our duty.