Matthew 5:13-16, How Do You Change the World?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

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Matthew 5:13-16 How Do You Change the World?

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Matthew chapter 5 verses 13 to 16. Here are the word of the Lord. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?
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It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world.
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A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, 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.
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In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your
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Father who is in heaven. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word.
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Well, do you want to change the world? That's what those great philosophers, those renowned philosophers known as the
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Beatles said. You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world.
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You tell me that it's evolution. Well, you know, we all want to change the world. You say you'll change the constitution.
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Well, you know, we'd all love to change your head. You tell me it's the institution.
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Well, you know, you better free your mind instead. Well, they're right.
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If you want to change the world, you better start with yourself. Then if you're thinking globally, you better act locally.
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Christians in England, a century after the Reformation understood this, they wanted to change the world, but first they knew they had to change their own country.
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And that began with changing their church, which started with changing themselves. They were known for their goal of purity, hence they were given the name of Puritans.
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They wanted not only that they themselves be personally pure, but that their churches be pure, pure of everything that's kind of traditional, just man -made, and that the nation be pure, and then the world.
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They were a minority, of course, as true Christians always are, and so they were persecuted, as we saw last week that Christians are.
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But under Elizabeth I and James I, these persecutions were usually, if the
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Christians were not separatists, they were usually minor inconveniences, sometimes intimidations, sometimes threats.
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James, at one point, threatened, if they don't conform, I'll harry them out of the land or worse, but he never really did much.
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Little provocations, like James' first book of sports that he ordered to be read in the churches, which encouraged
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Sunday sports and really offended the Puritans. Church was, in his view, apparently the center for PE, but mainly the government turned a blind eye until Charles I took the throne in 1625.
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He decided to enforce absolute conformity on Britain. No more quiet non -conformity allowed.
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The Puritan pastors were either to submit or to be forced out of the church, and the common
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Puritan believers were just going to have to do what they were told. They were forced to choose between the kingdom of England or the kingdom of God.
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Forced for that decision, either A, conform, or B, rebel, they chose
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C, go to America. And so in 1630, on their way to New England, aboard a sailing ship named the
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Arabella, their leader, John Winthrop, gave them a sermon entitled A Model of Christian Charity.
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Somewhere between Boston, England, and what was to become Boston, Massachusetts, Winthrop told his fellow
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Puritans that they were going forth to plant, quote, a city upon a hill.
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They were going to America not to retreat from the world, not to be cut off. They were going to avoid conformity in old
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England and persecution, while also avoid becoming separatists, cut off from the world, kind of living only for themselves in little detached enclaves.
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No, they weren't going for that. They were going to reach out to their neighbors, the Indians, Native Americans, whatever you want to call them, a people as strange to them as anyone could possibly be, and they were going to use their freedom in America to set up churches according to the word of God and to live together as Christians, caring for one another so well that people from all over the world would see their good works and glorify their father.
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That was his vision, A Model of Christian Charity.
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They were going to America not to get away from the world, but to reach it. Winthrop said, quote, for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
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The eyes of all people are upon us. Their purpose in coming to America was not to escape from the world, not to leave the old world behind.
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It was to build a model Christian society to show the world how to live and evangelize the world.
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They retreated to America to make it a base from which to advance to be a light to the whole world.
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Now here in this brief passage, the Lord Jesus gives us the map on how to travel through this world as followers of the king in a world that is in rebellion against their king.
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He has just told us that in the world we will be persecuted. Remember, that's the end of the Beatitudes. You will be persecuted.
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And so the natural instinct then for us was either going to be persecuted, either surrender and conform, becoming like the world so we're not different anymore so we avoid persecution, or you try to escape from the world, just get away from it, or maybe cut yourself off in little enclaves where you're just not coming in contact with anybody from the world.
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You're always just in the church or church activities. The world may be reviling you, but you never hear them because you're never around them.
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That kind of attitude all the way to avoid persecution. In just four short verses, the
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Lord Jesus tells us that both these courses are off course and shows us how to navigate between them.
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Here in this passage, we see three vital truths to steer between the rocks of conformity on one side or separatism on the other.
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The descriptions first, then the distinctions, and finally the directions.
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But first there's the descriptions. You are the salt of the earth.
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You are the light of the world. Notice their descriptions.
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This is a statement of fact. It describes what we are, not what we should be.
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Let's say you should be salt of the earth. You should be the light of the world, or what you can be. You can be that if you try really hard.
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Not that. It's not an instruction. It's not an order. He's not telling us, be the salt of the earth or be the light of the world.
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He says clearly, you are the statement of fact, salt, light. Being precedes doing.
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He describes what we are, what we have already been made by God. Remember here,
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Jesus is speaking, says in verses one and two, introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, speaking to his disciples.
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So lots of people from the world, they're kind of listening in, but this is addressed to the disciples. And this is our descriptions of the disciples.
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You are salt and light. When priests are looking for a suspect, they often say, look for someone who fits this description.
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Do you fit the descriptions? And the Greek, the you is emphasized.
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In Greek grammar, you don't have to say the word you. It can be implied in the verb. Here, it's said, so it's really emphasized.
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It's put out there. You are. And the Lord Jesus is saying, I'm talking about you. It's like put there first.
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You are. This isn't someone else's job. It's not what you pay the pastor to be, the missionary to be, the evangelist to be.
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We'll pay you to be the salt of the earth and light of the world. And meanwhile, we'll just make the money and we give it to you to do it.
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No, you all, you disciples, are salt. You all are light.
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And it's about us. It's a plural you. It's corporate, not individual. It's about us corporately, not about me or you individually.
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The you is plural. It's a good southern y 'all. You all are salt. Y 'all are the light of the earth.
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The church corporately, living and working together, acts as salt and light. Now, a tiny grain of salt was one grain of salt by itself.
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It makes really no difference. We need to be concentrated with other disciples to be the salt and the light, to be the preservative, to shine.
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This really isn't about this little light of mine. It's about this big light of ours.
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But that doesn't rhyme with shine, so it doesn't make for a good song. But, you know, we as the church have
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Christ in us, being the light of the world. Being precedes doing. How are you to change the world?
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Well, you have to be salt. Now, what does salt do? It's probably not what we use it for. Table salt, add a little flavor to your eggs or your potatoes.
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Remember, they had no refrigeration or preservatives in those days. And the only thing they had to keep their meat from spoiling was salt.
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That was salt's main purpose, to keep their food from putrefying and having to just throw it away.
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So they salted, rubbed the salt into it to make it last longer. Also understand what they called salt, what
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Jesus is referring to as salt here, was not pure sodium chloride. They had this white powdery stuff, probably harvested from the
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Dead Sea, that would often have a lot of sodium chloride in it to begin with.
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But the real salt, the sodium chloride, in that powdery stuff was often easily washed away.
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If it got wet, the salt could be washed out. And so they could have salt with no real salt in it.
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They knew that sometimes what they called salt, the white powdery stuff, was good at preserving meat. Sometimes it was, and sometimes it had the sodium chloride washed out, and so then it was useless.
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And the way to tell the difference between the good salt that's effective at preserving meat and the bad, quote, salt that was good for nothing is to taste it.
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The salty -tasting salt, well, that was good. The tasteless salt, because white powdery stuff that tasted like dust, well, that was good for nothing.
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In verse 13, if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? Well, it can't be.
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You just get rid of it. You need new real salt. The unsalty salt is then, he says, no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
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So they just dump it out on the ground with the rest of the dust. Now, the description is that we are real salt, sodium chloride.
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We are the stuff that preserves the earth, that keeps it from spoiling. Now, meat and the world will rot if left to itself.
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If you leave a steak out on the kitchen counter for a week, don't get mad if the steak goes bad.
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Now, if you bought salt to salt your meat with to keep it from spoiling, but the, quote, salt had no salt, no active ingredient of sodium chloride in it, and so it didn't prevent it, then you could be angry at the one who sold you the salt, bogus salt, because it was fake.
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It looked like a preservative. It was advertised as a preservative, but it was good for nothing. We here are described as salt.
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We can preserve the world, but there's a lot of fake salt out there too, stuff that looks like salt, is sold as salt, doesn't have any sodium chloride in it, doesn't have the power to preserve the world.
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And the power of Christianity is the gospel, for the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
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It has the power to transform lives, and then lives that then have the power to withstand the conforming power of the world, and they will be able to then stand up against injustice, against untruth, against immorality, against degeneration.
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We have the Word of God, and so we declare it to the world, and we tell them that their sins are sins.
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So people, so then the world knows that. The world knows what's bad, what's good, what's sinful, what's not, and they are rebuked even if they don't repent.
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Maybe they're not all converted, but some are still ashamed of their sin, and so they stop the rot in the world.
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This is in what is Reformed theology is called the third use of the law, that is using
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God's Word to tell the world what is right and what is wrong, so then the world knows and helps, at least for some people, helps to stop the rot.
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The first description is that we're salt, we're preservative. Do you fit the description?
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The second description is that we are light, in verse 14. Notice again, he doesn't command us to be a light.
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He doesn't say, shine, disciples, shine. No, even in verse 16, we are not told to actively shine.
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We're told to let shine, assuming we already have a light, and something maybe is hindering it, is obscuring it, but it's there, and it's a passive there, let shine.
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There's a big difference between shine as an act of command and let shine. It's not turning on a light that we don't have, but a simple letting be what is, removing the cover over our light.
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We are described, we're not commanded, you are light. Being precedes doing.
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When we are the light of the world, we illuminate how to live. If we don't do that, it's always comforting the world, making you feel better.
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We're always telling them how Jesus loves them. We don't tell them how to live. We don't tell them how not to live. We're not shining our light.
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Our light makes them see that the things they think are good are really bad.
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The things they think are bad, sometimes they're good. See, they're following their passions, maybe having sex whenever and whoever they feel like it.
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That results in a bad life, like Proverbs says. The result of our light is that people can see what is wrong, what will destroy first their own lives, first their marriages and their families, and then will destroy the world.
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The injustices and the crimes that make this world a horrible place then are stopped because they're exposed by the light.
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Gladiatorial games were stopped by the light. Incessant rampaging warfare was actually stopped by the light that Christians brought.
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Tyranny, slavery. Slavery was stopped by the light. Racism, exploitation, oppression, abusing women and children, and now just lifestyles that destroy marriages.
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All that is exposed by the light and it can be stopped by it. We are for the world even when they are against us.
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Of course, we can only let shine if we are the light. Imagine how absurd it would be to command and say if I had an unlit candle here and just yell at it, shine.
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That's an order candle, shine. It won't work. Think about the absurdity of yelling at a dead flashlight, shine, let shine.
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Doesn't help. Well, the batteries are dead. They have no power in them to shine. But if you replace the batteries or the candle, you light the candle, you give it real power, you give it light, and you just turn it on or remove the cover, just let it shine, then you have the light.
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If you're not a light, all the motivational speaking, you know, to get you to shine, oh, you'll feel great if you just shine, please shine.
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You'll love it if you shine. All the cajoling, the nagging, the scolding, the yelling, it isn't going to help.
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If you aren't first a light, you need to be made one, and only the
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Lord can do that. How do you change the world? Second, you must have the distinctions.
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How different from the world should we be and how should we be different? Those are two separate questions.
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How different from the world should we be and how should we be different? Well, first, it is crucial that we be different.
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We can't be salt if we're just like the meat, right? You have spoiled meat. You just add more meat to it.
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You're just going to get more spoiled meat. We can't be light if we're just like the darkness.
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We're the salt of the earth. And so we have within us the active ingredient, the sodium chloride that kills the forces of decay, that stops the rot.
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That's a very big difference, isn't it? That is, we have what is poison to what makes the world go bad.
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So the distinction is stark. Here, the world, if left to itself, will rot.
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Some people say, oh, the world is going to hell. It's going to pits. It's horrible. Oh, yeah.
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Okay. What'd you expect? It's going to rot. It's in the dark. We shouldn't be shocked when society seems to be falling apart, no more than we would be if we discovered that our meat was rotting.
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You left it out on the counter. It's rotting. What do you think's going to happen? It's what meat does without freezing or preserving. That's what the world does without the influence of the
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Lord through his people, through his disciples. It rots. It's dark. We must be distinct.
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Now, some Christians seem to think not that we're the salt of the earth, not that we're salt stopping decay, but we're the sugar of the world that we're supposed to sweeten the rotting meat of the dead world, kind of cover it over, cover over the putrid taste of spoiled meat with a glaze of sweetness, cover it with a glaze of sugar, even though it's rotten underneath.
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When I was in Singapore, I got to interview Bill Gothard. He was kind of a famous, kind of a famous American Christian leader in the 1980s and 90s.
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I gave him a copy of our magazine and he flipped through it, stopped on a brief unsigned article. On the show, if any of you remember, do you remember the show
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Beverly Hills 9 -1 -2 -1 -0? Anybody remember that? Somebody you do? Okay. It was a popular, sexually permissive, as dark as a rotten show from America and it was on the air in Singapore.
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And so our magazine published an article about it. The anonymous article lampooned the show and scorned its values.
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And Gothard said, he saw that article, scanned it, said, we shouldn't publish stuff like that.
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We should just be positive. You know, just sweet. Not sodium chloride that kills bacteria, but sugar.
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I just kind of smiled because I had written an article and soon the Singapore government took the show off the air, perhaps because of the article.
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Now, Jesus, of course, did not say you are the sugar of the world. He said, you are the salt of the earth.
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Salt stings. God's word stings the flesh. How do you change the world?
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Well, by being distinct, by being essentially distinct from the darkness, from the rottenness of the world.
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Darkness, by definition, is an absence of light. Light drives out darkness. They're very distinct.
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The two are as different as they can possibly be. And so the answer to the first question about our distinction, how different are we to be, is that we are to be essentially different.
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We're salt. We're light. But that's a different question than how are we to be different.
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Some imagine that we're to be different in some kind of outward forms, like about how to dress and how to speak and how to act.
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Some how to act, that's certainly true, but about styles of music, just styles, appearances, language and looks, cutting ourselves off from any kind of popular entertainment.
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A man who thinks being different is about putting on a suit and tie, maybe never drinking alcohol, keeping his hair short, and reading a
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Bible translation in a style of English that no one has spoken in 300 years, but then shares the same racism as the culture around him, or at least refuses to be distinct from that, to denounce it, has the same self -indulgence as the world around him, the same greed, just living for making money like the world around him, the same unteachable arrogance.
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He might look different than the guys hanging out at the bar trying to pick up girls, but he's not really different.
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There's no real distinction. Remember, there is fake so -called salt with no sodium chloride, stuff that looks like salt, but can't stop decay.
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It's good for nothing. Just looking like salt is not good enough to stop the decay. You have to be salt.
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How are we to be different? Not in styles or jargon, not in what we eat or drink, not what goes on our bodies or even goes into our bodies, but what comes out of us, out of our heart.
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Light, it causes people to see and glorify God. We are the light, and so people can see with the light we provide.
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Here, our light, that is the true good works are the light, so they see our good works.
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They are a spotlight on the Lord. With the light we provide, people see the
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Father and come to Him. In the wake of John Winthrop, remember
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John Winthrop, the leader of the Puritans to New England, his great migration to America to build a city upon a hill, a light to the world?
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There came, along with him, a Puritan pastor named John Eliot. Eliot explained his reason for coming to America was, quote, to enjoy the holy worship of God, not according to the fantasies of man, but according to the
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Word of God, without human additions and novelties. There's the essence of Puritanism right there.
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That's the city upon a hill. But it wasn't just for himself. He'd think, well, okay, I've got my church like I like it.
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We're enjoying the worship of God, not according to the fantasies of man, but according to the Word of God, without human additions or novelties.
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This is great for us. Who cares about the world? Let it go to hell. No, that's not the way he thought. Once they were on this side of the ocean, they found themselves with non -European neighbors, these strange people that they first couldn't even talk to, to whom they had to be salt and light.
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And John Eliot became one of the first great evangelical missionaries, really one of the grandparents of the modern missionary movement.
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Eliot learned their language of the people around him. To be light, that is to illumine, you have to be able to communicate to people outside the church.
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And so he learned Algonquian. He translated the Bible into it. The first Bible printed in America, North America anyway, was not written in English, but written in Algonquian, the language of the
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Indians. Eliot preached in the Indian villages. And in the summer of 1650, Eliot founded the first what is called praying town,
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Natick, Natick, Massachusetts, to gather those who wanted to be different, to be transformed.
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And eventually he would found 14 praying towns and have as many as 1 ,100 native folk, red
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Puritans, they called them, who chose to live in them. Eliot records an Indian evangelist by the name of Pugh happily reporting, quote, now we have food and clothes more than we will want to have before we pray to God, and we have contented ourselves therewith and have bent our minds more to look after heavenly riches.
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Because of the good works of Eliot and others, because of their light, new people,
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Native Americans, glorified our Father who is in heaven. How do you change the world?
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Third, we have our directions, the things we're called to do, our instructions, our commands.
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And that is simply we are called to do what we are. We are to let ourselves be what we are.
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The only command in this passage is in verse 16, and it begins with, in the same way, in the same way that a city on a hill is obvious.
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Now, cities are already obvious. Cities, by definition, are big. A lot of people concentrated together. Putting you on a hill makes it even more prominent.
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In the same way, then, you be obvious and prominent. People know where the city on the hill is.
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They know how to get there. It's not secret or hidden. Like a city on a hill, be like that. Be broadcasting, be obvious, accessible.
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In the same way, as a common sense just guides people to put a light on a stand to maximize the exposure of its rays.
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So also, in the same way, you maximize the exposure of your light.
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You don't hide a light. That makes no sense, right? When you think where to put a light, you put it in the most efficient place where it gets its light out.
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We put them exactly where their rays reach the most area. Here, there they are, fixed to the ceiling, so they can shine down on the whole floor.
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So, in the same way, at the beginning of verse 16, the same strategy, same way of thinking, the same purposefulness, we need to put our influence so it reaches the most people as possible, reaches as much of the world as possible.
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The direction we are to follow is in verse 16, let, this is the direction, let, which means it's passive.
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It means you're allowing something to happen rather than kind of actively doing it. But let your light shine. It's a passive imperative, which is really kind of odd.
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Most of the time you're commanded to do something, it's active. You're commanded to do not kill, something like that.
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It's an active command. But here it's a passive and imperative, a command. Imperative means that it's our direction.
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It's not an option. It's also passive in this odd combination. Here, literally, we're not told to do something.
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We're told to let ourselves do something, to do what we are.
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And the direction we are to allow ourselves to be, corporately, corporately again, it's all of us, we are to do what is of our nature to do, what we're supposed to be doing, to let our being do what it does.
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Like we're letting these lights do what they do. We put them prominently, we turn them on, they do what they do.
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It's what they're for. We're to be the same way, to remove the obstacles that keep our light from shining. Are there unnecessary things about the way that we
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Christians meet or organize, we arrange our buildings, the way we communicate, like using an early 17th century
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Bible translation. That doesn't seem to make much sense, does it? Our customs that hinder our influence in the world. Well, if so, we better remove them.
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Be like if there's a cover over our lights, we need to remove it. Remove anything that's hindering your light from getting out to be what we are.
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And to do that in the same way that any person with common sense arranges for the light fixtures to be where their light spreads the easiest, remove the covers of our light, get our salt out into the world.
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That's the directions. Now look at this building. Is there anything about a gym that hinders the preaching of the word, that hinders prayer, hinders the worship of God?
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Does the basketball goal somehow hinder our worship, the basketball markings on the floor?
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No, I don't think so. Not that I know of. We can preach and teach in here just as well as in a traditional sanctuary with pews and stained glass.
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Now, if we had spent our money buying a traditional sanctuary with pews and stained glass instead of a gym, would that have hindered our being salt and light to the world?
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Would fewer kids be coming here on Saturday afternoons and Sunday evenings? Oh yeah.
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It's kind of obvious, isn't it? They're probably not going to come just to hear us. Sorry. We wish we were these attractive, great, magnetic people.
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The kids just want to love to be with us and no matter where we are, they'll come. But the fact is, a lot of them just want to play. The pews and the stained glass might make us feel comfortable, but they would be like a basket over our light, keeping it from shining.
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But many Christians have a hard time obeying this command. You know, they think, we think, how are we to relate to a world that persecutes us, that reviles us, that hates us, that insults us, that makes us feel weird or unwelcome, or that offends us or even tempts us?
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Well, first we think we need to retreat. We just get away from it. For a thousand years, the ideal of a dedicated
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Christian life was to become a monk or a nun, retreat to a convent or to a monastery and have nothing to do with the world.
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Christians today have their own version of this. They're perhaps dropping out of the world, so they're not involved with anything going on around them.
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Everything, their whole life is absorbed in the church, like the old claim that Christians should never go to movies. I remember being told that when
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I was a young Christian and when I was young. It was a real crisis when I was invited to see a movie at the age of 17.
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Is this worldly compromise? Am I going to be contaminated, exposing myself to evil? I wasn't sure.
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I didn't even know what the movie was about. But I went. The movie was
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Chariots of Fire, partly about the Olympic champion Eric Little, who himself, if you know the movie, he was pressured to put his own light under a basket.
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His sister was disapproving of him. You should go into missions, don't go into athletics, go to the
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Olympics, don't do that. That's compromise. Put your light under a basket,
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Eric, like in verse 15. But he didn't listen. And so he became a light to the world.
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Letting our light shine means that we as the church are intentionally in contact with the people of the world in a decaying, dark world.
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You can be a light by being involved in the world, by speaking up, making a difference, stopping the rot, standing up for what is right, getting involved in politics, perhaps, to promote justice, not just us, not just in what helps me keep more money or make more money.
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At the very least, these are directions that we should vote in a democracy when we have the opportunity to have a say in our society by voting.
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This direction, I think, is a command that we should do that. You should vote. We have to take advantage of that opportunity.
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So we should vote if we can. Some of you aren't citizens here, but if you are, you should vote.
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We should be an influence to the world, showing that we are seeking first the kingdom of God. We're not just seeking money like everyone else, that we really are committed to sexual purity.
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We're committed to marriage. We're committed to the least of these, like the unborn, to justice, not just us, to change the world.
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You have to engage the world. The direction is that we let our light shine, and to do that, we have to be put out there in prominent places, not hide behind a multitude of unnecessary church activities that don't get you out into the world, that don't make a difference.
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Our place is to be rubbed into society. As salt is rubbed into meat, we need to be rubbed into the meat of the world to stop it from going bad.
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But that means that we can expect, as we're being rubbed into the meat of the world, if we're following our directions here, we can expect to come up right against what we're against, even while shining on what we're for.
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So we shouldn't be surprised or appalled, horrified if we hear words our tender ears disapprove of, if we encounter ways of living that we know are wrong.
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Yeah, if you go to the Olympics in Paris, they will mock the Last Supper. But if you're
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Eric Little, the world will see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
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We are salt and light, so we must preserve and shine.
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We are salt, so we must do. How do you change the world?
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Well, first you have to be changed yourself. You have to have salt in yourself, that you have the active ingredient in you that fights the rot, that you have the light in you.
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Now, if you don't, if it's all just a form, you're kind of looking changed, but not really. There's nothing about you that holding back the decay.
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There's no sodium chloride in you. There's no light shining from you. Then it will be no good for me to just tell you, be salty or to shine.
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Being precedes doing. So it must be your being that is changed.
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You can do all the salt like things, the light like things that you can think of. You can do your best to act like a light, but if you are not transformed to become salt and light, if you don't fit the descriptions or if you don't have the distinctions, you cannot keep the directions.
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If you're not a light, you can't shine. So you must be something else.
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You must become someone new and only God can do that.
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He just yelling at you to shine again would be like yelling at an unlit candle. It will do you no good.
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Only God can make you into salt. Only he can say to the darkness of our souls, let there be light and you will start shining.
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Change the world by ensuring that you are changed.