Matthew: You are Salt and Light

For the next season, we'll be making our way through the Sermon on the Mount.

The Sermon on the Mount is the core of Jesus' teaching.

We went through the Beatitudes this summer, those nine Beatitudes, and then we took a break the last two weeks as we had our last week at Walker School and our first week here at our new building.

And now we'll be going through the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

So we'll be in the Sermon on the Mount, this core of Jesus' teaching for the next few months.

And then we get this teaching here that Jesus says that you are salt and you are light.

So we know light illuminates and salt preserves.

That's the historic use of salt as a preservation.

So what he's saying here is he's saying that you are the illumination by which the world comes to seed, that you are the preservation by which people's hearts come alive, that their wounds and their issues and the sin and the world, that you're the illumination by which they see this.

And out of that, that you're the preservation by which their hearts come alive to him.

And he's using emphatic language, I mean, really emphatic, motivating language.

He's saying, you are this, you are this, you are this.

Be this.

You should do this.

Your life should look like this.

How can you not be this?

He's being very emphatic, and it's quite a calling, right?

I mean, especially when you're just trying to get through the day.

I mean, when you're just trying to get through the school assignments you have, or trying to get a date, or just trying to, you know, you just to get a shower while you're caring for your kids.

Like I took a shower today.

That's a big deal for some of you this week.

Because you got a shower every day of the week.

And you know that if you're a stay-at-home mom, taking a shower can be a huge deal.

The rest of you don't even know what I'm talking about.

You'll get there.

You'll get there.

It can be a big deal.

And so some of it, we're just trying to get through the day to keep the job or to find a job you're gonna like.

And I'm supposed to be light and salt, and it can feel, it can just feel like quite, quite a calling.

It's not the only place that we get a very clear sense of Jesus' calling on our life, of what we should be like as Christians, if you call yourself a Christian, what your life should be like.

And maybe you're here and you're not a Christian, and you I think you'll even appreciate the calling Jesus gives to his followers.

A guy comes up to Jesus in Matthew 22 and he says, Hey, what's the greatest commandment?

So he's basically saying, like, what should my life be about?

Just tell me what my life should be about.

And he replies in verse 37, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment, and the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself.

So the calling is to love.

That light and salt is about love, and it's about creating good works, that the good works shall lead people to God Himself, right?

That we're the illumination by which people come to see, the preservation by which their hearts come alive.

And so we have to ask, how does this happen?

How does this work?

How does this work in my life when I'm just trying to get by with all of my insecurity and all my anxiety?

How does that work?

What is this good work?

Is this a fully put-together person that then is light and salt?

Is that what this is?

Is that that person, or is this possibly, possibly me?

Well, the disciples don't look like fully put together people.

Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, he didn't look like a fully put-together person.

I know most of you, y'all don't look like fully put together people.

I know me, I'm not a fully put-together person, so it has to mean something else.

So, songwriter novelist Leonard Cohen, he wrote this ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in.

Have you ever felt like you can't show the real you?

You got all these cracks, and so what you do is you you cut you cover that.

And maybe you call these cracks shame, and the Bible calls it sin, and out of that there's shame all mixed into that, and so we we cover it.

Have you ever felt like you could never pull back that covering?

But but what if?

What if the cracks were so busy hiding?

What if that's actually the way that the light gets in?

And what if that's actually the way that the light gets out?

So back in the spring, my girls were so excited for spring break, right?

I mean, it's been all winter and no swimming for months.

This is you know, huge deal in kid world.

I mean, it's been months and months and months with no swimming.

So spring break's coming up, and this is swimming week coming up, and so the weeks leading up to it, just more and more excitement about being able to swim because it's been months since they've last swam.

And so I come back into the week, you know, the next week we're headed into spring break, and it's middle of the week, end of the week, and I get home, and I'm expecting what I want to be the ideal evening, which means you know, you have some dinner, clean up, a little dance party, bath time, books, bed, just kind of the normal rhythm.

But I come home and my little four-year-old at the time, she's curled up in the chair, and she is worn out, white-faced, crying, ice on her elbow.

And so Christy takes her to urgent care that night, and we end up, she ends up in a nice hot pink cast just in time for a week of swimming.

This is not ideal.

This is not ideal for her, it is not ideal for parents, right?

This is not ideal for one of your kids to be in a hot pink cast in time for a week of swimming.

The ideal is gone.

All that's left is the actual.

See, there's always a difference between the ideal and the actual.

You know what I'm talking about because you bidd and won on that leather jacket off eBay, and you're so excited, and it showed up and it felt like a brown tarp.

You know what I'm talking about.

You bought something, you bid it, you got it, it came, and it was not what you thought.

It was it was the actual, it wasn't the ideal.

And we know this from experience.

We we know it because there's a difference in us between ideal and actual.

So in the world of psychology, this is called the self-discrepancy theory, that there's a discrepancy between our actual self and our ideal self, and that this difference creates emotional discomfort.

Anybody feel the emotional discomfort?

So, my ideal self, I'm very broad-shouldered in my ideal self.

And I can grow a really nice salt and pepper beard that I can keep well manicured and it's full and it looks good, and I don't get headaches.

I always feel good in my ideal self.

I'm independently wealthy in my ideal self.

I have a four-car garage instead of a two-car garage, as two's not enough, and apparently four in my mind will be enough.

I never get impatient with my wife or my kids in my ideal self.

And I'm not selfish either.

I'm independently wealthy, but I'm incredibly generous in my ideal self.

In my ideal self, I don't like sugar.

I don't even want it.

I don't even care.

I like carrots and hummus, and I'm very happy with that in my ideal self, and I can build things, and I pray, and things happen.

They just happen like all the time.

And all this is great.

Like I that's what I would want.

That's the ideal.

That's the ideal.

And we want the ideal, and we see the ideal, and we know it's out there, and it can be a good thing.

The ideal can be a good thing, it can be a godly thing, but it can also crush us because we also have our actual selves.

And my actual self is a I'm incredibly skinny.

I have been my whole life.

I've been waiting to fill out since I was 12.

And my body feels like I'm nearing 40 because I am nearing 40, and it turns out I'm not perfect, and I'm not able to maintain that.

And sometimes I don't want the carrots and hummus, and I just want the jar of talenty.

Anybody just want the jar, the whole jar of talenty?

Is anybody?

It's a small jar.

It's a small jar, thank you.

Yeah, so that can justify.

That's your justification.

Heather gave you justification to get talenty and eat the whole jar of it.

And I feel insecure at times, I feel doubtful at times, I'm anxious at times.

And then there's this passage, and this passage doesn't help a lot because historically I have read it as a calling alone.

And with that comes a lot of subjectivity that I should go do this.

And so comes all this subjectivity and all this sort of like, well, how am I doing?

Am I light enough?

Am I being light enough?

Am I preservative to this world enough?

And how am I doing in that?

But the language of this passage is jointly, this is what's so great about it.

The language in this passage is jointly a calling, but out of a promise.

See, he's promising that, he's deeming you this.

You are light.

You are salt.

You are this.

So it's a calling, but it's a calling based in the secure promise of something you have been deemed even before you become it.

So he's deeming it over us, even though we're still filled with all these cracks in our actual selves.

Because come to find out, amazing, right?

Groundbreaking news here, come to find out, the light gets in through the cracks.

I mean, let's not forget who's listening here.

I mean, who's listening here in this context is sick hurting people?

People, some people in this crowd have never cared about religion, and they're coming to hear.

Some people are so addicted to religious striving.

And then you have these disciples who just are constantly not quite measuring up.

And Matthew 15, I love this story because Jesus tells a parable, and his disciples say, Hey, can you explain the parable to us?

And Jesus responds, and this is in Matthew 15, are you still without understanding?

And I like some other translations that say, Are you still so dull?

Right?

Like I want us to do a retreat, we'll do a student ministry retreat, Rob's gonna do it, and that's the theme verse.

Are you still so dull?

And we're gonna make little plates and put it on there, and then you can, you know, put it above your sink, you know, and you're doing dishes.

Are you still so dull?

Jesus' words to you, comforting words, right?

But the answer is yes, yes, I am.

I am so dull.

And that's why I need, I need you in your grace to keep speaking, to keep illuminating to me because I'm dull and I don't see things right away.

And I need the revealing, I need illumination, I need preservation, I need that light, I need that graciously to be coming into me because I am dull, and it takes me a while.

And then he says, To those people that are so dull, you are the illumination by which the world will come to see.

So, three points.

Point number one, this is true about them because this is true about him.

And I know that rhymed, and I was very proud when I wrote it.

This is true about them because this is true about him.

This is true about you because it's true about God.

You ever been playing hide and seek, and maybe maybe it was this weekend with your kids, or maybe it was 15 years ago, maybe it was 20 years ago, maybe it's 40 years ago when you were a kid and you're playing hide and seek, and you dare to go into the one closet that has the really dark back corner.

And so you get in there and you pull the door shut and you go all the way back to that back corner, and it's so dark, and then your eyes slowly adjust, and you realize it's not quite so dark in here.

Right?

And it's not so dark in there because the light shines in through all those cracks around the door.

Right?

Light finds its way in.

John 8 12, Jesus says, I'm the light of the world.

See, God, through the work of Jesus, the reside, the residing of the Holy Spirit in you, that is God's light coming in through the cracks to the core of who you are to create security, eternal life, transformation.

The cracks are the only way in to the core of who you are.

Point number two is that the cracks receive the light.

Finally, we can embrace the actual self because we're secure in his work and validation for us.

Because of the cross, Jesus on the cross takes our sin, our shame, our shortcomings, our actual selves, our cracks, and it gets cast upon him so we don't have to work our way out of our imperfection, and his righteousness gets deemed and put on us even before we are this.

We are deemed this before God.

This is the imputation.

This is what brings us security before God, which means cracked and messy, and though you are a little too much in love with J.

Crew or whiskey or yourself or people's approval or achievement, you are fully loved in Jesus.

And you are fully secure before God if you are in Jesus and have received this sacrifice and person of Christ and have placed faith in him and not in your work.

And that's the way that we can begin, begin to let this grace in through the cracks.

So that's point number two, the cracks receive the light, and lastly, point number three, the light shines outward through the cracks.

Our brokenness, those regrets and shame, can actually give grace to other people because finally something is real.

Something resonates.

And it's not just Pinterest perfectionistic self in front of them.

It's not the portrait of the ideal self in front of somebody.

It's just your actual self where finally, in the actual self, you can talk about God's grace.

And maybe it's just one crack of the hundreds or the thousands that you have that you can let be known to a neighbor, but that one crack allows you the time, the place for you to speak about God's grace, and that's where the light floods out of you.

Right?

A light on a hill.

A light on a hill is open and exposed by nature of being a light on a hill.

By being a light on a hill, Jesus says, You're our light on a hill, you can't be hidden.

But by being just the nature of that means you are open and exposed.

So the cracks let the light in and the cracks let the light out.

So, my brothers and sisters, the God that finds and preserves is inside of you.

He's in you.

And out of that floods the illumination by which the world comes to see, and out of those cracks comes the preservation by which the people need for their hearts to come alive.

You are the light of the world and you are the salt of the earth because he is in you.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you do not give us a calling without a promise.

Thank you that you do not give us a demand without great grace before it.

Thank you that you deem us something even before we are that.

God disinforms my heart.

And all of that anxious subjectivity that I've so often have begins to melt away and rest in the security that you are light to me.

You illuminate my path, you preserve my heart.

Would you help us as a people to have honest confession before you about the cracks that we have?

Our shame, our wounds, our sin, both in our hearts and our behaviors, and live an open, honest confession on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis, that we might be confessing over to you our shortcomings and receiving your great grace to us, the light that shines through the cracks.

And would you teach us how to walk humbly in this world?

And a measure of honesty, that we might speak love, care for people, listen to people.

Would you help our pride melt away?

Only by your grace, only by your grace have we learned to become anything.

Thank you for the redemption that comes by your word for us and not our word for you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.