Impact El Dorado - Week 1: GOD ESTABLISHED THE CHURCH TO IMPACT THE WORLD | Matthew 5:13-17

Hi, it's Pastor Jonathan, and thank you for downloading the FBC El Dorado Sermon Podcast.

In today's sermon, we begin a new series called Impact El Dorado.

In this series, we are reminding ourselves that God created the local church to impact the world.

And the impact of every local church, well, it begins with identity.

So join us today as we look at Matthew chapter 5, verses 13 through 17.

Matthew 5:13–17

One of the best parts about having a smartphone is that that little calendar app on your smartphone that allows you to keep track of your entire life.

Of course, like the limits of those old paper calendars were it was just like a year at a time, right?

But the great thing about a smartphone calendar is you can go like years into the future and put dates on that calendar.

And let me give you a date that you may want to put on that smartphone calendar this morning.

It's April 15th, 2029.

And you can create an event and it should just say something like this: Apophis is coming.

And that's not like the newest villain for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Or maybe you think like Apophis is something like a hippopotamus, but um Apophis is nothing like a hippopotamus.

It's actually much bigger than a hippopotamus.

Um April 15th, 2029, and it is an asteroid.

It's an asteroid that is the size of four football fields put side by side by side by side, and on that date, April 15th, 2029, Apophis is going to pass by Earth at a dangerously close distance.

But guess what, guys?

Um I want to alleviate any of your fears.

You don't need to build that bunker you've always dreamed of.

You don't need to stalk away ramen and uh gallon jugs of water for April 15th, 2029.

Uh, because when it comes to space uh travel, uh close is a very relative term.

So um he's gonna be maintaining social distance.

Apophis will be uh from Earth.

Um but that doesn't mean I don't think that it's not a bad idea for us to uh have NASA contact Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck uh to see what's on their calendar for that day.

Uh the stars of the great asteroid movie Armageddon.

Um you should watch it if you've never seen it.

Um, it is not a piece of art, it is not life-changing, but sometimes we just need like uh pure sugar entertainment in our life, and that is uh Armageddon.

Now, NASA categorizes um asteroids like a pophis as something called a near-Earth object.

And they've been tracking and identifying these near-earth objects for about 20 years, uh, because if one of those big, gigantic intergalactic rocks did impact Earth, did pass through our atmosphere and hold together and impact the ground, there would be uh global devastation.

An object size, however, doesn't determine the level of its impact.

You know, for the last 16 months, our world has been impacted by something that is a fraction of the size of a POFIS.

The coronavirus, its width is 75 nanometers.

That is, it's then it that means that it is like 75 times smaller than um uh a red blood cell inside of the human body.

In other words, the coronavirus is teeny tiny.

But think about that.

This imperceptible virus, this virus that we do not see with the human eye, has had a global impact.

The loss of jobs, the loss of life, and even for some, the loss of hope.

The asteroid's gonna miss us in 2029, but in 2020 and even into 2021, that virus has found us, right?

But the impact of that coronavirus, it pales in comparison to the impact of an even far deadlier virus.

The virus we call sin.

In Romans chapter 5, the Apostle Paul writes these words.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

He says that when Adam sinned, sin entered the world.

Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.

In Romans chapter 5, what Paul tells us is that in the case of sin, Adam is patient zero.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

He is the first person infected with the virus, and from that moment forward, the virus spread throughout all of creation and hasn't stopped spreading to this very day.

It's a true global pandemic.

And we see the symptoms of that virus in the lives of individuals and in the life of a community.

Wherever there are places where families are torn apart by anger or addiction or abuse, that's a sign that the virus is spreading.

You know, wherever there are places where children go to bed at night, and the last uh words that they hear are shouts of anger and rage, and as they fall asleep, the only thing that they hear is the sound of their stomach grumbling because they didn't have enough to eat at night, that's a sign that the virus is still spreading.

Or wherever that we hear a racist taunt hurled, that's a sign that the virus is spreading.

Or wherever violence fills the streets and we use phrases like that's a teenager, that's a child who's fallen through the cracks, that's a sign that the virus is spreading and that it is a true global pandemic.

And for far too long, um, the measures the church has taken to address the spread of that virus, they've been wholly ineffective.

Um because some of us, our strategy when it comes to the spread of sin and the evidence of that virus around us, like are the words we live by is that old cliche that ignorance is bliss?

Like, things are broken, people are hurting, people are dying apart from Jesus, and our um desire is just to ignore the reality and to willfully look the other way.

Another strategy that some adopt is the strategy of insulation.

So we just like uh limit our entire relational network.

The only people we listen to, the only people we spend time with are Christians, and not just Christians, Christians who agree with us on everything.

Or another strategy Imitation.

Those who imitate, they just argue that's the way that the world works.

That's the way that the sausage is made.

If you're gonna make it in the world, you've got to act like the world.

So we act and we react, we think, we decide, just like everybody else.

But listen, church family, those three strategies, ignorance, insulation, imitation, that was never God's design or his intent for the local church.

Listen to this uh command written by Peter.

Um Peter chapter 2, verse 12 says, Um, be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors.

Then even if they accuse you of wrongdoing, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.

Another translation puts it this way that you should uh live good lives among them.

You should uh perform or complete good deeds in front of their eyes.

1 Peter 2, verse 12 makes clear that God's intent, his design for the church was never to ignore the world, it was never to insulate itself from the world, it was never to imitate the world.

1 Peter 2:12

Instead, God established the church to impact the world.

Yeah, that world out there, that world impacted by sin.

God established the church to be in the world but not of the world, to make a difference in the world.

And through, listen, through our good lives and through our good deeds, we can impact the world because our lives and deeds they can bear witness to the presence of God's kingdom in the here and now.

Our lives and deeds, they can bear witness to the truth of the gospel of the kingdom of God.

That announcement that God has come in the person of Jesus Christ, and what is broken now in the here and now, God wants to put right once again.

Through our lives and deeds, listen, we offer the world something they don't hear otherwise, and it's that simple message that what?

Jesus is alive.

And listen, we so often think that the message of Easter stopped last week.

That's the message for those 24 hours and for the other 364 days of the year.

We have another message.

No, our message is still the same.

Jesus has defeated sin and death.

He called injustice to account because he walked out of that tomb.

And he changed everything.

You know, when Jesus walked out of the tomb, what did he do?

He impacted the world forever.

No one had ever done that before, and no one's ever done it since until the day Jesus comes again.

Listen, sin has impacted our world.

But the church, in the power of the Holy Spirit, can make an even greater impact on the world.

Because as that old hymn says, his grace is greater than our sin.

And that greater impact, listen, it can set people free from personal sin that just separates a husband from God and from his family.

It can set a child free, it can set a mom free, it can set a senior, it can set anybody free, the message of the gospel.

And this, listen, this witness, this greater impact, it reminds people of the presence of God's kingdom in the here and now.

So we not only we not only seek to set people free, we seek to address generational sins, generational ills in our community that have no part in the kingdom of God.

That's our greater impact.

Instead of letting sin be the only thing that impacts the world, it's time for the church to remember that what?

God established the church to impact the world.

And our greater impact, it begins where we live.

It begins in El Dorado.

Today we're starting a new series, and it's simply called Impact El Dorado.

And it is the goal of this series, and there's like a bug that keeps getting in my eye, dropping out of my brow.

So I'll just admit it.

I saw you, and then I saw something right here as I moved around.

So the goal of this series, as our life begins to normalize a little bit, is to focus on God's design and intent for the local church.

And for the local church to rise up and to fulfill God's design that He wrote into our very fabric of our being.

And so that means throughout the course of this series, we're just going to be challenged to be the people who, again, in those words of 1 Peter chapter 2, we live good lives and we perform good deeds.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

We are, in the words of Genesis 12, we want to learn to be people who bless others.

In the words of Acts 1.8, we want to be witnesses of Christ in our Jerusalem, in our hometown of El Dorado.

And that really just gets to the core fabric of why God called and established the church in the first place.

It's rooted in the identity of the church.

Like if we are going to be who God created us to be, and so kind of today's big idea is these three words: identity indicates impact.

Identity indicates impact.

Who we are as designed by God points to, reveals the lasting impact we can make in our local community.

So listen to these words of Jesus found in Matthew chapter 5, verses 13 through 16.

Matthew 5:13–16

Jesus says this, he says, You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

You are the light of the world.

A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

That's just a snippet of Jesus' most famous sermon, the sermon on the mount.

And in this snippet of that famous sermon, Jesus gives two declarations of identity to his disciples, to those would-be disciples who are listening to him on that mountainside.

He says, You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world.

Each declaration of identity begins with the same pronoun, you.

And when we hear the word you, we think of an individual, we think of a single person.

But when Jesus spoke these words on that mountainside, he said you plural.

Now, in good proper English, we can't write you plural, but in the South, we know exactly how to say you plural.

We say y'all, right?

That's you plural.

And so maybe they need a South Arkansas translation of this verse, these two verses, they need to just say y'all are the salt of the earth.

Y'all are the light of the world.

And it's really important that we hear exactly what Jesus said.

Because what Jesus names, that identity he names, it's a collective identity, it's a corporate identity.

This is not the identity of a single disciple, it's the identity of a group of disciples.

It's the identity of God's local church.

This means that no individual believer is the salt of the earth.

I guess you could be a grain of salt, a granule of salt, but you're not a shaker of salt.

No individual believer is the light of the world.

You could be a ray of light, but you are not the sun.

So for this church, here's what this means.

When we go and we seek to impact our local community in the name of Jesus, we do it together.

Together we are salt, together we are light.

We do it hand in hand, side by side.

Identity indicates impact.

And it's an impact that we make together.

In the first century, it was hard to find anything that made a greater impact on daily life than salt.

One reason salt made such an impact was the fact that they didn't have refrigeration.

No side-by-side refrigerator in your home.

No freezer where you keep all your extra deer meat throughout the end of the season or your duck meat.

Like they had salt.

No airtight packaging.

They had salt.

Salt was their preservative that allowed meat to be kept and other foods to be kept for more than one day so they didn't just ultimately had it and had to eat it or it went bad.

Well, they applied salt to it.

Another reason that salt was so important and such a need on a daily basis was there was no modern medicine.

Instead, you had salt.

If you got an infection, you you cleaned it out and you put salt on it.

It purified the wound.

It helped it not get infected.

It helped it heal.

Another reason that they had salt was just simply the food was kind of bland.

They had a really simple, basic diet.

Salt, well, it made it taste a little bit better.

You know, every person on that mountainside knew the impact of salt on a daily basis.

They knew how important salt was.

They knew that salt was irreplaceable.

Without it, their food would spoil.

Without it, those infections would fester.

Without it, their meals would become stale.

In a very real sense, the world depended on salt.

So too, in a very real sense, the world depends on the church.

And the reason the world depends on the church is because no other gathering of people proclaims the gospel message.

No other agency, no other institution has at its core the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the only Son of God who came to this world announcing the arrival of God's kingdom, who lived a perfect life, declaring God's kingdom wherever he went, who died on the cross for the sins of the world, who rose again on the third day and one day will come again.

Nobody else at the core of their being has the message of Jesus woven into that fabric.

No government, no school, no rotary club, not the Kiwanis Club, not the Junior League, none of those entities have at their core the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And maybe one of our struggles as the church is we thought other people would take care of it for us.

That's a good guy, that's a good moral man.

He'll stand up for what's right.

It's like what's right isn't the issue.

What's the issue is Jesus.

What the issue is not morality, it's not right and wrong.

It's just like Jesus is king and lord, and no one says that except the church.

Now, if um assault is this uh necessary.

Element to daily life, this necessary impact, then light makes a noticeable impact.

For the Jews who are sitting on that mountainside beside Jesus, they had been taught that the light of the world were the righteous and the pious scholars of Torah.

Because they were the ones who could rightly read and interpret God's word and apply it to everyday life.

And so when Jesus looks at this group of disciples, he's like saying, You are the light of the world, which means what?

These guys are not the light of the world.

Like they are not aligned with what God is doing right now.

They are not revealing who God is.

Because throughout Scripture, light is this metaphor for the presence of God.

So here I think is Jesus' point.

I'm calling together this group of disciples who one day will start the church.

They will be the church.

They will plant churches.

And those churches, what they will do is they will reveal the presence of God in the world and what God has accomplished and is accomplishing, and what God's heart is in the world.

And God wants the church and wants its light to shine so brightly that darkness is dispelled and decay is healed.

Listen, together we are salt, together we are light.

We can't forget our identity if we want to impact the world.

And we honor that identity most fully.

When we gather outside of the walls of the church.

Not to other people who follow me, but just to the world.

The people who don't follow me, the people who don't uh believe in me, who are not believing that I'm the Son of God, that I'm bringing the kingdom of God into this world.

You see, impact requires our faith in Jesus to be a public faith.

A public faith means that the way of Jesus shapes the way that we do business.

It shapes how we teach our children.

It means that we are people who are not afraid to invest in the wrong side of town because we believe that God's kingdom lays claim to every inch of a town.

A public faith says this that every action and interaction is an opportunity to let my light shine.

To dispel the darkness.

A public faith means that not only do we gather in here, we gather out there.

So let me tell you about a couple of opportunities coming up.

First is an opportunity that we're calling at the ballpark.

So in the coming days, we're going to be recruiting teams of volunteers to join us on select nights out at the boys and girls' club fields over by the municipal auditorium.

I've talked to the boys' club, we're coordinating with their athletic director to find the nights they want us to come.

And what we're going to be doing at the ballpark is we're going to be passing out free hot dogs and free bottles of water to let our light shine.

Like, what did First Peter say?

Like, live good lives, perform good deeds.

It's just an opportunity for First Baptist Church to not be the walls of this building, but it to be your faces.

So it's not a confrontational street corner evangelism.

We're not asking anything of anybody who takes a hot dog.

If they would love to share their name with us, we'd love to hear it.

If they'd be open to us praying for them, we'd love to do it.

If they want to share their entire life story with us, we'll listen.

But there are no expectations for what we're requiring of people.

Like we just want to be present with them.

Why the ballpark?

I don't know if you ever driven by those fields and like notice like there's hundreds of people coming and going three nights a week for three or four hours a night.

Like the church should be in the places where the community gathers.

And it doesn't have to be some big production.

It's just like we're there.

We want our light to shine before men.

Um, a second opportunity coming up that we're encouraging all of our life groups to be a part of is one day serve local on May the 1st of 2021.

On that Saturday, and even in the days leading up to that Saturday, uh our life groups will be going out to perform a variety of ministry projects here in our local community.

To let our light shine, to help some of our great agencies in this community that are doing great work, help them out, to help out some of our neighbors who are in need, like just to do some simple task that they need volunteers to perform.

And we are doing that why?

Because we want to impact our community in the name of Jesus.

And some of these agencies we're helping, listen, they're making an impact in our community.

And so we view them as our partners in our gospel mission.

So we need to come side by side with them on that Saturday and even in the days leading up to it, so that we can make an impact.

So those are a couple of opportunities coming up, and there'll be more we'll talk about in coming weeks.

But I want you to understand and remember this too.

Impact is more than an event.

Impact is a way of life.

Impact is more than an event.

Impact is a way of life.

So here's what I mean.

Um, we on a couple of select nights, a few select nights, a select group of us, we're gonna go out and pass out hot dogs and bottles of water at the baseball fields.

But others of you are coaching, right, baseball teams.

You're coaching softball teams.

As a parent, God bless those who feel called to do that.

That is not everyone's calling.

And as a coach, what do you want to do?

You um you grew up and you loved playing baseball.

You loved playing softball.

You you love the friends that you made through it, you love the game that you got to play, you love kind of the life lessons and the even the relationship you had with your coach, some of those things stick out with you, and you want to provide that experience for children.

Children, some of your own children and and some of their friends.

But if you're a coach, remember this like not every child on your team is going to come from a stable, loving family.

So maybe God's calling you in that way of life to not just impact them with baseball, but impact them with something far more important.

That they would know that they are loved by Jesus, created by a God.

Like just to lay that groundwork in their life.

Or others of you, listen, like it's not your calling to coach, but you will be at every one of your child's practices in every one of your child's games.

Like you will be there.

You've already signed up for snack duty.

And you're gonna be in the bleachers, and I think all of us, here's what happens: all of us in the bleachers, what happens?

We are um immediately drawn to our existing network of relationships.

In other words, people we're already friends with, people we already know.

And if you're the parent who's at the bleachers in every practice, in every game, maybe sit by someone you don't know.

Because here's here's the crazy thing.

Like, you've you know how to start the conversation.

Hi, my name is, my child's name is that's them right there.

What's your child's name?

What's your name?

And and the funny thing, a lot of people like you ask them about their kids, and then it's like this wave of rushing water hitting you.

Like they will talk to you about their kid.

And some people, you can't get them to stop talking about, like it'll just keep going, and the conversation happens, and pretty soon you get to know them.

Part of us is we just have to re-understand the purpose of the life of our church and the purpose of our the lives of our families on how we can make an impact, and to just have a different mindset as we step into these different spaces in our community.

What am I looking for?

Who am I gonna sit with?

How can I have a conversation?

And and you don't have to sell anything.

Like live a good life and perform good deeds and get to know people and be kind to them.

And Jesus opens doors, and when he opens doors, you walk through doors.

We don't have to be obnoxious, but we just have to be faithful.

You know, the early church, it took its identity really, really seriously.

And the early church, together they were salt and together they were light.

And Acts 17 tells a story about um one day Paul and his team of missionaries, they go into the city of Thessalonica, and while in the city, Paul he journeys into the synagogue and he begins to teach about the fact that Jesus is the Messiah.

Um, some in the audience they accept uh Paul's message, they become Christ's followers.

Um, others have a far different reaction to the message of Paul.

Um they want to have Paul arrested, they want to drive Paul out of the city, and here's their rationale.

Um, they say this that these men have turned the world upside down.

These guys have made such an impact on the world and our life and this community, like they have turned it upside down.

It's never gonna be the same because they showed up.

Paul's impact in that town, that city is extraordinary.

In the name of Jesus, in the power of Jesus, Paul and his friends, they turned a city on its head.

And that, my friends, is the same impact that God wants the first Baptist and the churches of El Dorado to have in our community.

Listen, God established the church to impact the world.

But we only do that when we remember what?

Together we are salt.

Together we are light.

We only do that if we what?

Not only gather in here, but we have to gather out there.

Let's turn our hearts to God in prayer.

And now, um ask the Holy Spirit to just open your eyes to the impact of sin in our local community.

Maybe you've been ignoring it or insulating yourself from it.

God, show me where there are places and people who are hurting.

We need to see.

Because when we see clearly, we know how desperately the church is needed.

Lord, show us the places where there are haughty eyes, lying tongues, hands that kill the innocent, hearts that plot evil, feet that race to do wrong.

And now just pray for our church.

Pray that we would make an impact in our community.

Listen to how Paul prays for that church in Thessalonica, Second Thessalonians 1, beginning in verse 11.

He says that God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.

We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

And now, if you are ready and wanting to make an impact in this community, in your community, for the name of Jesus, would you just stand?

Are you ready to impact this world for Jesus?

To impact El Dorado.

For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Almighty God, you called out and established this church.

You planted this church in El Dorado to impact El Dorado.

Father, remind us of our identity.

Let us be salt together.

Let us be those who promote healing where there is brokenness, restoration.

God, just help us to look outside and to be that salt.

Help us to be light.

A church that declares your presence, your character in the world.

Lord, may we just be faithful to your plan for us.

And we'll leave results up to you.

We just want to fulfill what you've written on the heart of this church, God, and the heart of every church is to impact their local community.

Let that community be turned on its head by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Lord, give us the boldness to follow you.

The boldness to be faithful to you.

Jesus, we pray this in your name.

Amen.