Sunday Sermon: Salt and Light (Matthew 5:13-16)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe. The Apostle Matthew writing the words of Christ in the

Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, verses 13 through 16. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

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.

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 who are in the house.

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. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank

You again for Your Word. These words of Christ who shows us the Father, that they may see the

Father, that they may give glory to the Father, being salt and light in this world.

May we understand what this means. And likewise, we give glory to our Father who is in heaven, who has saved us through the giving of His Son.

Speak through Your Word today that we may hear and understand and be followers of Jesus.

Let us not be ashamed of this Word, but rejoice in it, as we have it said to us in Romans 1 -16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

May we believe and so teach it to others. Thank you this morning also for the presence of our good friends,

Dave and Vicki, who could be with us again and keep them safe in their travels. We pray these things in Jesus' name and all

God's people said, Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So this is a very familiar passage,

I think, and even if you couldn't quote it from memory, you know the call that is upon us regarding salt and light.

These references that are in the Sermon on the Mount. If you grew up in church, if you were in Sunday school from the time that you were a little kid, you've heard about being salt and light.

Even if maybe you're a young believer and you haven't been a Christian for very long, yet you still kind of heard these terms before, being salt and light in the world.

What do these things mean? When I was a kid and one of the churches that we attended, they had a food pantry ministry that was called

SALT, and that was an acronym, S -A -L -T, and it stood for Salt and Light Today.

So it was called SALT, but even the word SALT was in the acronym. The whole point was that we care for one another's needs, we distribute food to the poor and needy, so we are salt and light today in the world, and that's often the way that you hear these terms salt and light used.

As I said to you when we started our series in the Sermon on the Mount, this is the most famous sermon that was ever preached, and being the most famous sermon, it's also the sermon that is most taken out of context.

You will hear all kinds of different pieces of the Sermon on the Mount that'll be taken out, that will be misused, misapplied, twisted in a certain way.

When we came into the Beatitudes, I said that the Beatitudes are often misused, and you probably recognize that right from the start when the very first Beatitude is,

Blessed are the poor in spirit. How do you most often hear that in the world? Blessed are the poor, right?

Blessed are they who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Can you just hear this in a very natural sense, as though these are naturally occurring things?

A person who is just poor by their nature, a person who is mourning because the circumstances have not gone well, a person who is meek because that's just their demeanor, but we come to understand that's not what these passages mean.

But as I had quoted to you from Charles Spurgeon, they are describing those who are saved.

People who are Christians, who are following after Christ, are those who are to be poor in spirit.

Those who are to mourn over sin and the fallen state of this world, longing for the kingdom of God.

Who are meek and humble, considering others' needs ahead of their own. Who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ.

Who are merciful to others, for God has shown mercy to us. Who are pure in heart, desiring the things of God.

Who are peacemakers, sharing the gospel of God. And who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

So again, that was obviously a passage we see twisted out of context, but understood in a right way.

See that it describes those who are followers of Jesus. And likewise, this section is the same.

Often when we hear about salt and light, the way you hear these things communicated is you have to do something to be these things.

You must be salt and light in the world. You have to do this so that you would become salt.

Do this so that you would become light. But look at the verbs. You've heard me do this exercise with you many times before, and I do this with my kids as well.

My older two in particular, Annie and Zeej, who can read. So when we do our Bible study and we have the

Bible open in front of us, I will say to the kids, what are the verbs? Point out to me the verbs.

So even my kids, who are, remind me your age's kids, 12 and 8 respectively.

Is that where you are now? Annie just celebrated a birthday, so now the adjustment has to go towards she's 12 now and not 11 anymore.

So even my oldest two can look at this and they can identify the verbs, and we see one in the second word in this sentence.

You are the salt of the earth. Verse 14, you are the light of the world.

So are you doing something to become anything here? As a follower of Christ, you already are this.

So you're not doing something to become this, you are this. So the question is not, what do we do to be salt of the earth?

The question is rather, what does this mean? If we are the salt of the earth, what is that supposed to look like then in the life of a believer, a follower of Jesus Christ?

What we're talking about here is the nature of being, who we are in Christ.

This is a study that the philosophers have called ontology, the study of the nature of the being of a person.

What does it mean to be a person? What makes a person who they are? What are they after? What is a person's hopes and dreams, aspirations?

What is their meaning and purpose in life? All of this is kind of wrapped up in ontology. There are a couple of different places in life that we enter into what society typically terms an existential crisis.

Usually get that in about your late teens, early 20s, when you leave home for the first time and you're out on your own and you kind of have that state of mind of like, who am

I? What is my meaning and purpose in this life? I'm not like my parents. I need to be my own person.

I need to find out who I am, right? Have you ever asked that question before? The other place you hit that crisis is what's called the midlife crisis, which is like somewhere in your late 40s, early 50s, where you feel like you have to drive a sports car and wear clothes that are 20 years out of fashion.

So I've not hit that one yet, so watch out for me in case I do. But I did go through the existential crisis when

I was in my late teens, early 20s. Of course, that's exactly the time that I'm in college.

So I'm asking that question of myself, who am I? Who am I supposed to be? What is it that God has in store for me?

I would Christianize it, but I'm not really interested in what God wants for me. I'm interested in what I want for myself.

So I am going to find out who I am. There's another term we use for that.

It's sowing your wild oats, right? There's another term for that. It's called depravity.

It's just going out and sinning. And somehow we have this idea that if I just go out and sin, and I chase the passions of my flesh, the desires of this sinful person that I am, somewhere in there

I will find myself. But really, all you are is a dog chasing his tail. You're going to end up the same way you started.

You were a sinful, selfish person when you started that journey. You're going to end up a sinful, selfish person at the end of it.

And that's who I was. That was exactly me when I entered into that existential crisis of mine.

And I just fell into all this depravity, chasing after the passions of my flesh, doing what it was that I wanted to do.

And I would even rationalize that God wanted these things for me. I would even excuse not doing certain things by saying, you know,

I don't think God wants that for me right now. But all of that was just vanity. It was just blasphemy.

I'm taking the Lord's name in vain to justify my own fleshly desires and praise the Lord that He broke my heart in the midst of this sowing my wild oats, in the midst of this going after the passions of my flesh.

I could have fallen into much deeper sin than I actually did, but the Lord was merciful to me. In the book of Proverbs, it says there is a way that is right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

And I came to realize if I continue on this path that I'm on, that's exactly where I'm going. I'm going to die, and I'm going to perish under the judgment of God.

And in tears, I came before the Lord, and I asked Him to forgive me of my sinful ways.

And I asked Him, take this heart of mine that is desiring all these sinful, wicked things and give me a heart instead that desires

God. And He answered my prayer. And it took a little while to get over some of those sinful, fleshly tendencies, and I'm still working on some of that as He grows me in holiness and in sanctification.

But praise God that I did not continue on the road that I was on, for it was a road that led to my own destruction.

You fast forward about six or seven years after that, and my brother entered into that exact same thing.

He was using the exact same terms that I was using and saying exactly the same stuff that I was saying years earlier.

And he's trying to find himself. And I tried to intercept my brother on that track.

And I tried to say to him, look, you're never going to find out who you are chasing after these things.

I found who I really am in Christ, who I'm meant to be, a worshiper of God, not somebody who is chasing after the lusts and defilements of the flesh.

So I tried to intercept him on this course and say, don't go after those things because at the end of this journey, you're only going to find one of two people.

Either you're going to find yourself exactly as you were when you started, and you're not going to like that person.

Or the second person you might find yourself is a person far from God.

So these things that we try to do to find ourselves don't end up anywhere except our own destruction, rebelling against God, exactly the state that we were in when we got started on that.

We don't know who we are until we see who we are in Christ.

And we only see that person through the Word of God. You see that you are a person who is made in the image of God when you look into His Word.

Psalm 139, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. But you know what you did?

Though all of you were made in the image of God, you took those things that God gave to you, and you blasphemed

God with them and sought after your own glory instead. Paul even talks about this in Ephesians 2, verses 1 -3.

You were dead in your sins and your transgressions in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, right?

Those things that God gave us to worship and glorify Him, and yet you're pursuing those things for yourself.

You're using them to glorify yourself instead of glorifying God. And we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

So who does Paul say we are there? He says we're sons of disobedience, sons and daughters following after Satan, and we are children of wrath, deserving of the judgment of God like the rest of mankind.

That's who we were from the time that we were born, for we had inherited the sin of our father

Adam. But as Ephesians 2 -4 goes on to say, God did not leave us dead in our sins and our transgressions, but He gave us

His Son, and by grace you have been saved. And we are no longer children of Satan following after Him to destruction, but in Christ we've been given a new family.

We've been adopted into the family of God, and now we are children of God. Previously the objects of His wrath, now we are the objects of His mercy.

And as children of God, we become fellow heirs of the kingdom of Christ with Him, and we will enter into that eternal kingdom with Christ forever in glory because of who we are and what we receive in Jesus.

I can't tell you the number of people that I run into who think that they are a child of God just because, hey,

I was created by God, so I am a child of God. Yes, you're correct on the first part of that.

You were created by God, but then you took what God gave you and you blasphemed Him with it. And in doing that, you became an object of wrath.

God will destroy you for your wickedness, for glorifying yourself instead of glorifying

God. So turn from your sin, believe in Jesus, and then you will be a child of God.

Then you will be saved from wrath and destruction, and you will have eternal life.

This is who we are in Christ, children of God. And in Christ, you are the salt of the earth.

In Christ, you are the light of the world. This is biblical ontology. We're not in pursuit of these things to become them.

We are this. So what does it mean to be this? So verse 13, you are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. So obviously we have two metaphors going on here.

We have salt and we have light, salt and light. Now this particular region, of course,

Jesus is on a mountain in Galilee when He is preaching these things, but you're talking about the Holy Land in general.

First century Judea. What are we talking about? We're talking about salt here.

This actually was a very salty region because of the proximity to the Dead Sea, and this was where the majority of their salt supply came from.

You would go to the Dead Sea and you'd fill up a basin of water from the Dead Sea, and the water would be evaporated in the sun, and then what you have left is the salt deposits in that particular basin, and so then they would use that salt for various things.

Now, this is not the kind of salt that we enjoy today. The refined salt that you even have sitting on a salt shaker on your table, or even the salt that you would be using to salt your sidewalk with, a lot of that salt has been refined and it's in a very pure form, but this is not so pure a salt.

Now this salt that comes from the Dead Sea, by the way, the Dead Sea, a very salty sea. It's like the saltiest enclosed body of water on planet

Earth, and it's so salty, in fact, that you could just lay down on the top of it and you wouldn't sink because there's so many mineral deposits in the

Dead Sea. I don't know if you've ever done like the, what do you call it, the dead man's float? No, a dead man's float is face down in the water.

On your back, the survivor float, that's what it is. Survivor's float, survivor man float, whatever it is.

Anyway, you know that when you learn to swim, it's like the first thing they teach you. You lay down on your back, you spread your arms and your legs out, and you're supposed to just float there on the surface of the water.

I was always terrible at that. My waist starts kind of like sinking down. I'm trying to spread my arms and legs out, it ain't working,

I'm going down. So I just could never do that float, but apparently it's really, really easy to do on the surface of the

Dead Sea because of just how salty it is. So that's where Jerusalem, Judea, got the majority of its salt from.

They would take it up from the Dead Sea, and then they would use that salt. Of course, we think of salt as a seasoning.

I've already mentioned your salt shaker on your table, but it was also for them, and most especially for them, it was a preservative.

They didn't have refrigeration, didn't have deep freezers. Dave Echol goes out and shoots himself a deer, gets it ground up and put into rolls, and then he drops it in his deep freezer, and then he's handing it out to all you guys for the next year.

So the new meat you've got from Dave Echol is actually from his freezer from the deer that he killed last year.

So we can hold on to that meat for a long time. Hey Dave, is that accurate? All right, thumbs up, here we go.

So we can hold on to that meat for a long time, and even with the scare of a pandemic, you're probably going to the store and buying up meat and dropping it in your deep freezer and you've got it in case the supermarkets get sold out of all their stuff, and this virus really does hit hard, and then we're in a dire need, well, you've had some food stored away for a little while.

But here in first century Judea, they didn't have any refrigeration or freezing to be able to do that, so they would keep their meat packed in salt, or really kind of cover it up as best they could in salt, and that would keep the meat lasting for a long time.

So apply this now metaphorically kind of to our modern day context, we've already talked about those who are not in Christ are dead in their sins and their transgressions, right?

People are walking around as dead rotting carcasses. And we being the salt of the earth are preserving the earth from the destruction that is coming against it.

Right now on the podcast, I'm going through Romans 1 in verse 18, it says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of man.

We know that the judgment of God is coming against man, but mankind and their wickedness and sinfulness would be falling into even far deeper depravity far more rapidly than they are if it were not for the presence of the church, and those who are standing presenting the gospel to a lost and dying world.

This world would be going to its destruction. So we as salt of the earth are preserving the earth from that state, and that we would even hold out the gospel to those who are dying so that they might be saved.

In such a way, we are a preservative, preventing those from dying who are heading toward their death, those rotting carcasses that would otherwise be cast into the flames and destroyed.

We're also a seasoning in the sense that we give life to a world that otherwise has nothing to offer.

Like I talked about being that person who was going after the sins of my flesh, I was even chasing after material goods and thinking, hey,

I needed to be rich and then I'll be prosperous. I remember one of the episodes of the briefing when

Mike Bloomberg had just thrown his hat into the ring running for president of the United States, and Albert Mueller was talking about Mike Bloomberg's status on the

Forbes 500 list, and he was something like number nine, eight, or seven, like the seventh richest person in the world.

And one of the things that Dr. Mueller was talking about in describing Mike Bloomberg's wealth is that you can be number seven on the

Forbes 500 list, but you're never happy with that. You've got to be number six. And then when you get to number six, you've got to be number five.

And even if you were to get all the way to number one, you have to do everything that you can to stay there in the top spot as being the richest person in the world.

If you drop down to number two, guess what happens? Your stock starts going down. The companies and the businesses that you own, people are going, uh -oh, he's losing ground, so they're going to sell, and then your stock starts dropping.

You start losing wealth, and there your ranking begins to drop down the Forbes list. So even those who are wealthy are not satisfied with their billions.

If a billionaire is not satisfied in being a billionaire, what hope is there for the rest of us who are never going to attain that kind of money in our lifetime?

There is no hope in the things of this world. The world cannot satisfy us with its stuff.

And yet, we feel some amount of elation like we're born again when we get the newest cell phone, and then next year it's totally out of date.

You have to have the new model in order to get the high that you got the year before when you bought that cell phone. The stuff that you buy is going out of date the moment that you buy it.

It doesn't last. There is no true joy and satisfaction in it. And so here's what happens when you find

Christ. And speaking even of my own experience 20 years ago, when you find

Christ and you taste and see that the Lord is good, as we read this morning from Psalm 34, you look back on all the stuff that you were eating and you see how rotten all that food was.

You thought that this was the good stuff. You thought that this was the thing that you need to feel satisfied, to have that hunger, that desire quenched, and no longer need those things anymore.

I just need to eat more of this, and if I still feel hungry, well, I'll just go eat more of it. And then you taste and see that the

Lord is good, and all the rest of that stuff now looks bitter to you. It's not good for anything. There's no seasoning in that.

It's not good food. In fact, it was food that was going to kill me if I kept eating it. And so in this way, we're a seasoning even, as salt of the earth, because we demonstrate through our belief of the gospel and our sharing of the gospel that the

Lord is good, that He has given of Himself. And as Jesus said, whoever hungers and thirsts for me will never hunger and thirst again.

Remember what we just read in the Beatitudes. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.

That's a seasoning that has a truly wonderful taste to it.

And when we show that to the world and they taste and see that the Lord is good, everything else on earth is understood now to be garbage.

None of that could have saved us. None of that could have satisfied our appetite, but we are fully satisfied in Christ.

The person who is the salt of the earth is fully satisfied in Jesus and sharing that food with other people.

You are the salt of the earth, but look at this, if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. There are certain skeptics who criticize

Jesus on this particular point because they'll say salt can't lose its saltiness.

So Jesus just wasn't a culinary expert. He just didn't know about salt. He thought you could lose its saltiness.

So see, this demonstrates that Jesus really wasn't the Son of God. He was just an ordinary man that didn't know enough about salt.

But once again, the kind of salt that we enjoy today, especially in modern

America, is not of the pure refinement, or it is of the pure refinement, unlike the salt that Jesus had in that time.

The salt that we're talking about coming from the Dead Sea is not as pure a salt as we have mined and refined for us and then put on our dining room table.

But even more than that, the salt that we have today is not in its purest form either. I mean, it's of the earth.

So obviously it cannot be pure. Even rock salt or table salt will eventually lose its saltiness.

In its refinement, it might take a little bit longer, but it will lose its saltiness. I read a story of a guy down around Hutchinson.

You know, you got the salt mines down there. And so he had bought up a couple of barns and some bins that he was going to put salt in and then distribute the salt out to those who needed it, farmers in particular, but anybody who needed it for their cows or they needed it for salting roads or whatever, he just decided he was going to try to make a small fortune for himself selling salt.

And so he filled up these barns and these bins with salt, and the barns in particular, he didn't put anything down on the floor.

So he didn't try to put wood on the floor or anything underneath the salt. He just piled the salt on the ground in the barns.

Well, as the salt quantities that he had began to be depleted and he would come down to the very bottom, he noticed something about the salt that was the closest to the ground.

It wasn't salty anymore. He could pick up the salt in his hand and even though there was dirt mixed in it, there was still salt there.

And when he touched his mouth to it, it just tasted like dirt. There was no saltiness to it at all. So he discovered the closer that the salt is to the earth, the more quickly it loses its saltiness.

My friends, the closer we are to being like the world, the closer we are to losing our saltiness.

And then what good is it anymore? It's not good for salt. It's just good to be thrown out and trampled upon because you're as good as dirt.

That's about it. And when we behave like the world, when we call ourselves

Christians, but we look just like the world looks, the world doesn't care.

You call yourself a Christian, they're going to go, so? You look just like me. What do you have that I can't get through all this other stuff that you're going after just like I'm going after it?

You panic like I panic. You fall into hopelessness like I fall into hopelessness.

How do you deal with your depression? Drugs? Yep, so do I. And when the world sees that, you've got nothing to offer and you're just as good as the rest of the world.

So you're good to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be restored?

It can't. What a person demonstrates when they say that they're a follower of Jesus, but then they still act like exactly like they acted before they started saying they were a follower of Jesus, they demonstrate that their conversion never really was genuine.

It wasn't real. Nothing happened. No transformation happened in a person's heart. They're still living just like they did, but with Christian verbiage.

And so you show that you're just as good as the rest of the dirt that people trample underneath their feet.

Let us be those who demonstrate a holiness in our lives, a holiness meaning that we're set apart.

We don't behave like the world behaves. We don't think like they think. We're not after the same things that they're after.

Our first and foremost desire is Christ and His righteousness.

And whatever we need on earth, God will give it to us. As we're going to go on here in Matthew 6 in the

Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, look at the birds, look at the flowers of the field. Does your

Father in heaven not provide for them? So how much more is He going to provide for you?

Don't you know that we are of more value than many sparrows or the lilies of the field? And so do not lose heart.

The Lord provides for us. Seek first Christ. And in this way, we demonstrate that we are the salt of the earth.

We're not becoming this. We are this in Christ Jesus. Next metaphor you have, verse 14, you are the light of the world.

Again, not something that we're pursuing, but something that we already are. In Christ Jesus, we are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. I was listening to John MacArthur exegete this particular section.

That's what John MacArthur does. He exposits the Word. And he was talking about a trip that he made to the

Holy Land. And when he was standing down in the valley, he noticed all these towns, all these historic places that you read about in the

Bible, they're all on hilltops. You look over there, that town's on a hill. You look over, oh, there's the other town.

It's up on a hill. And where you're standing, you see them all in one place, up on a hill. They did that so that they would be safe.

They could see an enemy coming before the enemy gets there. But it also becomes a beacon to travelers.

If you're traveling at night and you're looking for where the city is, you look for the light up on a hill.

It's like a lighthouse guiding you to the place that you're looking to go. And so the city that is up on a hill cannot be hidden.

It's there. Everybody can see it. You can point and go, there's the place. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

And this is the way that we're to be. It's not that the world is kind of wandering around going, where are all the

Christians at? I don't see any Christians around here. But if we're living as the light of the world, like a city set on a hill, there's no question that person's a

Christian. That person doesn't look like the rest of the world looks. They're a city set on a hill.

Verse 15, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. So we've gone from the picture of the city on a hill to now a lamp on a stand.

No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket. You know the Sunday school song, hide it under a bushel.

No. Yeah, thanks kids. I'm going to let it shine. Okay. We're not going to do that.

We're not going to light a lamp. And literally the word here is peck, like a unit of measurement, but it was a basket built to a certain size.

So however much you filled in that basket, that was a peck. So no one lights a lamp, puts it under a basket, but they put it on a stand because that's what a lamp is for.

You put it on a stand, it gives light to all the house. Now when I read this, where my mind goes, when

I read Matthew 5, 15, I think of Revelation chapter one. When John sees

Jesus, he is standing among seven golden lampstands. And those lampstands represent the churches that Jesus addresses in Revelation chapters two and three.

And to several of those churches, he says to them, if you do not repent, if you continue in this sinfulness, if you continue to go after the world instead of be after Christ, then

I'm going to remove your lampstand. So that light that you were supposed to be to the world and you were for a time has been snuffed out and I'll remove your lampstand and you will no longer have treasure promised you in the kingdom of God.

Jesus says in Revelation chapter three, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.

So be zealous and repent, lest we have our lampstands removed.

So here Jesus says, you don't hide a lamp, you put it on a stand.

It gives light to all the people in the house. And we are that house. We are the church. The light shines brightly in the church that we may have illuminated for us

God and his word and his purposes for us, according to what was written down from the prophets and the apostles, a light shining on the gospel of Christ.

We rejoice continually in the gospel that saves us, but we understand in being the light of the world that we are not the light source, right?

We're really just a reflection of the light. John 1, 9, he is the true light who has come into the world.

We're talking about Jesus. So Jesus is the true light. He would be like the sun and we would be like the moon reflecting the light of the sun.

The moon is not a light source. Light does not originate from the moon.

It is rather a reflection of the sun to guide us by night, that we have lights in the nighttime.

And so that is who we are. Jesus would be the sun. He would be the light source and we're simply a reflection of that light.

But then Jesus says in John 12, 46, I'm sorry, John 9, 5, while I am in the world,

I am the light of the world. While he's in the world, where is he now? He's seated at the right hand of the throne of God, right?

So who is the light of the world? You are. You're the light of the world.

We are reflecting the light source, Jesus Christ, and showing the light to a dark world.

Consider John 3, 16, you surely have this memorized, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

A few more people know verse 17, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Even fewer people know verse 18, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he is not believed in the name of the only son of God.

Going on from there, and this is the judgment, the light has come into the world,

Jesus. And people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Wow, that sounds familiar, right? Matthew chapter 5, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your

Father who is in heaven. Listen to what Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 11 and 12.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify

God on the day of visitation. They may see your good works and they may glorify

God. So who's this all about? All the glory goes to God. It's not, they may see your good works and give you glory, oh man, good job, good job for that.

You're caring for your brother and sister in the Lord, way to go. We're going to name an award after you and we're going to have a big parade in your honor.

That's not what we're after. Our desire is that God may shine forth in the things that we say and do in our very conduct and everything that we are, who we're pointing to is

Christ, who we're reflecting is Christ. Philippians chapter two, verse 14, do all things without grumbling or disputing.

Man, I hated that verse when I was growing up. I wanted there to be a clause added in there. I'm looking down in the footnotes, except for those who have five brothers and sisters, you know, that's what

I was looking for. I can do all things without grumbling and disputing except with my siblings, right?

I can complain about them, but no, this is how we are to be as Christians. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.

Boy, if this is not totally counter -cultural, I mean, you just turn on the news and what do you find?

Grumbling and disputing. You go down to the restaurant and you listen to the table next to you, what do you hear?

Grumbling and disputing. You listen to the person ahead of you at the checkout line at the grocery store, what do you hear?

Grumbling and disputing. You drive in your car behind a person that is in front of you who's driving real slow, what do you hear behind the steering wheel that's in front of you?

Grumbling and disputing. But we're not to be that way. Do all things without grumbling or disputing.

The whole world would give you a pass on grumbling and disputing. You can complain about your nonsense as long as you allow me to complain about my nonsense.

And we're all looking for someone else to blame right now. Even when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, everybody's trying to blame somebody else.

It's China's fault. China's saying it's America's fault. Oh, it's the

Democrats' fault. It's the Republicans' fault. You guys should have acted earlier. We're always looking for someone to blame.

You have these philosophies that are even stirring themselves up in our own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, critical race theory, intersectionality.

These are two philosophical ideas that are all about blaming someone else. Well, I am not so privileged.

That person's more privileged than I am. So that person's the reason why I'm not as privileged as they are.

And we separate people out into different groups according to skin color. And we blame who's got the more privilege and who doesn't have as much privilege because that person's skin is lighter than mine.

We're always looking for somebody to blame. It's complaining. It's grumbling and disputing. It separates people.

It unites no one. And we're not to be as this.

We're not to be those who grumble and dispute. We are to be blameless and innocent. While the rest of the world is complaining about their circumstances, when stuff gets hard in marriages and they start jumping out of marriages, when stuff is going bad at their jobs and so they start suing people, when people start grumbling and disputing so they get online and complain about politics, that's not the way that we're to be.

We're to be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of the crooked and twisted generation in which we are in.

And in so doing, we shine as lights in the world. You know, when things don't go well for you and your circumstances get real tough and you start complaining and bickering about your circumstances, what you demonstrate and what you say is that you don't actually believe that God is sovereign.

You don't think that He is in control over even the circumstance or the situation. Because you're just bickering and complaining and arguing like the rest of the world who is already walking around with no hope.

But if you understand Romans 8, 28, that God is working all things together for good for those who love

God and are called according to His purpose, then these things are not going to get you down.

It's just another thing that you can praise God for and He is working this out for your good.

No matter how bad it seems right now, I can still rejoice in God because I know He's working it out for my good.

My dad just broke his ankle a couple of days ago. And in case you don't know, my dad is without work right now.

He was on his way to a job interview and he was at the gas station, tripped over the gas hose and broke his ankle.

And somebody was talking with him about that and said, you know, God is always trying to say things to us in the midst of circumstances like this.

You're without work, you're about to go to a job interview, you trip over the hose and you break your ankle. What do you think

God is saying to you? And my dad replied, oh, I heard a still small voice. They were like, really, what did it say?

Dad said, you should lift your foot higher when you're stepping over the gas hose. My dad is someone who has trusted in the

Lord all his life and I've seen tough stuff happen to this man. A man who has dedicated his life to ministry and yet people left and right have turned their backs on him.

And yet he still trusts God and still rejoices in the Lord. And he's not looking for fanciful visions or some sort of message spelled out in pea soup that is supposed to give him an understanding of the days that are ahead.

He looks to God's Word and he sees the promises of God have been laid out for us in Christ Jesus our

Lord. When I visited with my dad back in January, when I was down in Atlanta, as we were walking out to my car, he was getting kind of discouraged by the way things were going right now.

And he said, what am I supposed to think of these times and things that are going on? And I quoted to him

Romans 8, 28 and 29. And it felt weird because I was like, this is my dad. He's taught me this my whole life and here

I am sharing it with him. But when we got to the end of talking about that, he said to me with tears in his eyes,

I know I just needed to hear it again. And sometimes we need those reminders to one another.

We need to remind one another of the gospel. We need to remind each other of the goodness of God. When things get tough and all we see is the difficult circumstance, we need to be reminded

God is still on his throne. He is still sovereign.

He still reigns. The rest of the world is walking around without hope, but we have the message of hope that is in the gospel of Christ.

And in this, we are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. 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. So what are we talking about here?

When we read, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world.

Or remember what I said about the Beatitudes. Think of these things in context once again. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. These things describe us as Christians, and so it's no different when we get to the section on salt and light.

You're the salt of the earth. It's like we're still continuing this description of the followers of Christ.

You are the light of the world. Be a light on a stand, shining out to the world.

And who are you shining to the world? Jesus. Because really, when you go back through the

Beatitudes, Jesus was poor in spirit. Jesus mourned. Jesus was meek.

Jesus hungered and thirsted for righteousness. Jesus is merciful. He is pure in heart.

He is the peacemaker. And guess what? Jesus was even persecuted for righteousness' sake.

So when we are this, we are a reflection of our Savior whom we serve.

So my friends, be no longer like the world. Be as Christ in the world.

Holy, holy, holy In the highest hope shall rise to thee

Holy, holy, holy

Three persons

Blessed, transcendent

With a simple mem 'ry devotee

All thy works shall praise thy name

In earth and sky and sea Holy, holy, holy

Merciful and mighty God in three

Persons Blessed Trinity When we understand the text.