Salt and Light with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

All right, MetaCurch, welcome in to a brand new service.

We are continuing to stream together and serve together while we're waiting to get back to meeting together and moving together.

We've been walking through week after week, really just focusing in on what our role is in this emergency.

We've seen that God has this role, and over and over, if we're looking for it, he always will emerge in emergency.

And then he also has an expectation of this movement that he began through Jesus, the movement of Jesus we call the church, and that is that we can emerge and see the opportunities for Jesus in the midst of emergency, that we can rise above the crisis from time to time and see the people who are hurting in the midst of it and offer them the hope that we uniquely have as believers in Jesus.

We're continuing to just acknowledge where we're at.

We're in an unprecedented time.

We are in what I believe we will look back on as perhaps the most significant event in the 21st century.

And so, in our generation, having never seen something like this, we're just getting into scripture and we're seeing how we can best handle ourselves and continue to push this powerful movement forward in the midst of the chaos.

I want to read to you out of Matthew chapter 5, verse 13, Jesus says this you are the salt of the earth.

Matthew 5:13

But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty?

It's no longer good for anything, but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

You are the light of the world.

No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lamp stand.

And it gives light for 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 in heaven.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, I feel like there is a lot in these few verses.

And once again, we're coming and we're not really in a series, and we're not, we're just coming in, and we know that you see us.

You see the world right now, you see what's going on.

You're not distant.

You are everywhere, and you are right here.

You are transcendent, you transcend time and space to stand right beside us.

In fact, we believe your spirit is in us, you're closer than close.

We're just getting into your word.

We're asking you to speak to us.

And God, there may be some people who are losing hope and losing faith.

And God, we we all almost have more questions than answers at this point.

And so we're looking to you, God, and we don't need all of the answers.

We're comfortable standing in faith, but we do want to see how to move forward.

We want to see the next step to take.

We want to see how to continue to be your church, your movement.

We love you.

We pray all these things in the powerful name of Jesus.

And everyone who agrees and is ready to get in the word, right where you are, uh on your couch, cuddled up in bed, working late in your office, wherever you're streaming or watching this, you can go ahead and say, Amen.

Jesus has begun his ministry and he is traveling all around.

In fact, at the end of verse 4, it says, large crowds followed him from Galilee, the decapitalist, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

It's saying basically he's going everywhere.

We saw this in our Wonder Week series.

Jesus is traveling, and the crowds begin to grow and grow and grow.

And at one point, the crowds grew so large that Jesus actually uh ascended a mountain just so that he could see and be seen, so that he could speak into them down into the valley, and his voice could carry out to the mass amount of people who had come to see him.

In Matthew chapter 5, we call this the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

It goes for a few chapters, and there's a good chance that uh many of the different teachings Jesus had in this Sermon on the Mount you've heard before, that the things like the Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God, and blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

We we learn about uh turning the other cheek in this.

We learn about how we don't have to worry because you know God takes care of the flowers of the field and the birds in the sky, and how much more will he take care of us?

The sermon on the mount is just rich with this knowledge and insight about who God is and how he sees you.

It's hard to pick a favorite part of the Sermon on the Mount, and every time I pick a favorite part, I always feel like maybe I shouldn't be picking a favorite part.

Maybe I should just say the whole of Scripture is my favorite, but I do, I have a favorite part in the Sermon on the Mount.

This part about how we are salt and we are light.

One of the reasons that the crowds had grown so large is that everyone anticipated that Jesus might be the Messiah.

You see, some of the religious leaders, the people who really studied the Torah and the Tanakh, these Jewish writings that kind of led the Jewish system and religion, uh, they had done a kind of a countdown.

And Daniel, in his prophecies in the Old Testament, he had laid out kind of this timeline of when the Messiah might come.

And it takes a little bit of work, but if you dig in there, you you can kind of follow it, and it goes through these different generations and a certain amount of generations from Abraham to Moses and a certain amount of generations from Moses to present time.

And many people thought that sometime in these years, if they were right about the prophecies, that this might be the time that the Messiah shows up.

Everyone was on edge and they were under Roman occupation and they didn't have their freedom, and they wanted a Messiah so badly, and so Jesus could heal.

He had power, he spoke with authority, he did miracles, he challenged the authority of the Jewish leaders, the authority of Rome.

I mean, if anyone could be the Messiah, it would be this guy.

And so people came and they hung on his every word.

If the Messiah was really here, everything would change.

If the Messiah was really here, they would get back their freedom.

If the Messiah was really here, they didn't want to miss the opportunity to see him.

And so thousands gathered on the side of a mountain.

They listened to this man named Jesus.

He was now seen as a prophet, as a rabbi for 30 years, he'd just been a carpenter from Nazareth.

And now he has the attention of the Jewish world.

And after he teaches them a little bit of new kingdom ways of thinking about what it really means to be blessed, what it really means to live a good life, he looks at these people who have traveled.

Many of them are poor, many of them are down and out.

A lot of Jesus' followers were really on the fringes of society.

Now, there were also some who were wealthy and elite, and even some of the religious leaders began to wonder if he might really be the Messiah, but the majority of people were lower income, they were low on the totem pole, and things were different than they are today.

If you were poor, you were seen as cursed, maybe even cursed by God.

If you had some kind of physical ailment, if you were blind or deaf, if you were handicapped in any way, it was it was obviously because of some sin.

God hadn't looked like fondly on you, you didn't have the favor of the Lord.

And so, man, it was this very rigid class system, and people treated each other accordingly, and these people saw in Jesus something that they could finally cling on to.

And in verse 13, Jesus said, You are the salt of the earth.

The salt of the earth.

And what could be more common than salt?

And in fact, I really don't know if this is where it began, but this is still a saying today.

Man, uh, he's just such a salt of the earth guy.

Man, such a salt of the earth group of people.

And it's so interesting because in a world where everyone is trying to be extraordinary, everyone wants to be different, everyone wants to have their thing and be known as kind of a little bit out there, a little bit on the edges.

Today, the most extraordinary thing you could be is ordinary.

The most radical thing you could be is common, and we when we find someone who's just kind of normal, just works hard and loves their family, and and and man just like just goes after it and does life in more of a traditional way, they're often called salt of the earth.

What could be more ordinary than salt?

I use salt in almost everything.

I brought a salt packet today.

Um, our salt today is very advanced.

It's it's it's it's so basic, right?

You learn about salt in like chemistry class, and it's just a like a compound.

I don't know anything about science or anything about what I'm saying, but it but it's very basic, but it's also very advanced from the salt in Jesus' day, and I use salt in everything.

If I cook anything, there is salt that goes inside of it.

Salt is so useful, it also goes in in my uh my water purifier in my garage, right?

We fill it up with these larger chunks of salt, and you can use salt to make your homemade ice cream.

And some of you don't know this because the only cookies you've ever made have been like break and bake where it just comes in a little thing and you set them on the pan.

But if you like make cookies, like if you make cookies from scratch, a pinch of salt has got to go in there, and the salt accentuates the sugar, it actually makes it taste better.

And man, in Jesus' day, salt was used for everything.

It was vital.

They didn't have fridges and freezers, it was a means of preserving meat and other products.

It was used medicinally, it was actually used by doctors, it was an antiseptic, it was valuable in some places.

In fact, at one point around Jesus' time, the Roman soldiers were paid in solarium.

That was the name uh of the currency, and it was actually like a salt-based payment.

It was widely used, widely used, widely, widely, just so common, such a mainstay.

Nothing extraordinary, just ordinary.

You are the salt of the earth.

Sometimes the most extraordinary things are the things that are actually most ordinary, most commonplace.

Salt is vital, but it doesn't really feel like much of a compliment.

Like Jesus is pretty much saying, you are basic.

Like you are so basic.

Like we need you around.

I guess you're necessary, but no one is running around bragging about being salt king.

Like you can be king of Israel, you can be the tiger king, but no one wants to be salt king.

Like that's not a thing.

You are the salt of the earth, vital, but common, important, but ordinary.

And what is what's Jesus getting at?

Because most of the people who sat under his teaching felt very common already.

They already felt very ordinary.

Like Jesus, you don't have to remind us that we're really nothing special.

Like you could have picked an exotic spice.

You are the cumin of the earth, like like you are the time.

I've never used time because I'm not that fancy.

I don't even have it in my cupboard.

Like you are the cinnamon, you know what I'm saying?

You're a little bit spicy.

Like you can go with sugar and be real sweet.

Like, give me something a little bit cool, give me one of the cool spices.

You are paprika.

Oh, yeah.

Like, like give me something that's got a little kick to it.

No, you are the salt of the earth.

All the other spices come in tiny, tiny atoms, McCormick's tiny.

Your salt contain my salt container is this freaking big because it's the most common.

Thank you, Jesus, for reminding us that we're really nothing special.

Just salt of the earth.

Not a lot going on.

I guess it matters that we're around.

How many people sit in the teaching of churches today and don't really need a reminder?

How many of us who are listening to this right now, who are listening in your AirPods right now, how many of us don't need a reminder that we're actually pretty basic?

We're actually pretty common.

And we try to dress it up, you know?

It's like, you know, we bought some skinny jeans.

That's that's in, right?

Got some skinny jeans.

I walk, I walk like this, I can't bend my knees, but I got the skinny jeans, you know, so I'm in now.

Like we try to cover it up, but if we're honest, it's like seven billion people.

How much do I, like me personally, how much do I really matter to this world?

The people who were following Jesus were dying all the time.

Life expectancy wasn't very long.

People were often starving.

People were just going paycheck to paycheck.

Money, food, money, food, money, food.

If money didn't come in, food didn't come in.

No reserves, no savings.

Outcast, sinners, prostitutes.

Even lepers began to follow Jesus, literally known as the walking dead.

People who would be stoned to death for walking inside the city limits.

I mean the lowest of the low on society's ladder.

And Jesus has an inspirational message.

You are salt.

Good for something, but there's a lot of you.

Very common.

I wonder if at this point maybe people got offended.

Maybe it just triggered their curiosity.

What else could be going on that you are common, that you are the ordinary?

And then Jesus says something that changes everything.

He says, You are the salt of the earth.

And you are the light, the light of the world.

And salt is so common.

Salt is so ordinary.

But light is extraordinary.

The very first miracle at the very beginning of our Bibles, God says, Let there be light.

And there was light in the heavens, and light is the source of life, and light is what makes the crops grow.

And light is what the ancient world was missing at night.

And light took some real work.

There was no uh switches to flip.

Man, you had to have like real candles with real oil.

You had to work for it.

Light.

Light was special.

And we see it as maybe special.

Maybe we see it, we kind of downplay it because we have light everywhere.

We have electricity.

I got a bunch of spotlights that are pointing at me right now, and lights in a room with no chairs in it because we're streaming and serving that meeting and moving, and we've got light on neon signs here at the bar where we usually meet at one of our two venues here at Medichurse.

Like light is so common, and maybe we take it for granted, but in Jesus' time, light wasn't taken for granted.

It was extraordinary.

Salt, ordinary light, extra ordinary, and as amazing as it is to us, as amazing as it is to walk into a dark room and to know that on the phones we carry around, we can just touch one button and we have light.

It's hard to imagine outside of context what this meant to the people listening to the sermon on the mount.

You see, Isaiah was a prophet hundreds of years before Jesus.

And Isaiah was a big deal.

He wrote one of the books of the Jewish scriptures, what we call the Old Testament.

And Isaiah talked about the coming Messiah, and the coming Messiah he described as the light to the nations, the nation specifically of Israel, since the Messiah would come through the lineage of Israel and into the Jewish people.

The light of the nation.

The light that Isaiah prophesied.

And if he's the light of the nation, he's the Messiah.

And if he's the Messiah, everything is getting ready to change.

And what Jesus does in one sentence is he reverses the roles in such a dynamic and unexpected way that it would have taken everyone's breath away.

They were hoping that he was the light of the nation of Israel.

And Jesus says, listen, you are salt, you're common, ordinary, important, but there's a lot of you.

But you are also the light, not just of the nation that we're a part of, you are the light of the world.

Revolutionary.

Everything on the Sermon on the Mount is revolutionary, but we miss this.

They're hoping that Jesus will be the light, the light that shines into the darkness of what Israel was experiencing under Roman occupation, the light that would shine into the darkness of these disenfranchised lives and families and communities who are cast down and pushed down and made to stay in place.

No room to go up in society, no room to advance.

They were hoping that Jesus would be the light, and all of a sudden he tells them, You are the light.

And I wonder if you feel like the light of the world.

I wonder if you ever feel like you might be that significant or that special.

Jesus has a lot more to say about this because with each of the affirmatives, there's a warning.

He says, You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty again?

It's no longer good for anything, but to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

And the salt that we work with today, uh it's refined, right?

Purified.

And it'll stay for a long, long time.

You could find this salt packet many years from now, open it up, and it will still season your food.

It will still be salty.

It wasn't as advanced in Jesus' time.

They were mining salt, they were pulling it out of the Dead Sea, and this salt would lose its saltiness.

It would literally turn almost just into like as valuable as sand.

And so if you can imagine the local butcher there in Jerusalem or Galilee or Jordan or Jericho, at the end of the week, they would get down to the very bottom of their huge container of salt.

And that salt at the bottom would have sat too long, lost its saltiness, and he would walk it out the front door and throw it onto the dirt streets, and people would just walk over it.

It was useless, worthless.

And what happens if the salt of the earth loses its saltiness?

He goes on and says, You are the light of the world.

No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house.

And we sang the song growing up.

This little light of mine.

I'm gonna let it shine.

And then we would say, hide it under a bushel.

No, I don't know what a bushel is.

I'll be honest, I don't know what a bushel is.

A bushel sounds like it would catch fire.

Didn't that be a break?

I don't know what a bushel is.

But I got the point, which is you don't light a lamp and then cover it up.

You don't go looking for something in the dark, pull out your light, and put your hand in front of it.

This is the opposite of progress.

You are salt.

You are light.

There's an interesting thing that's happening as Jesus is speaking, and it's difficult sometimes for us to get it in English, but he's using a specific verb.

It's in the Greek este, and really, this is a beautiful thing for us here in Texas because este is you, but it's also what we would call y'all.

What Jesus is really saying is, y'all are the salt of the earth.

Thanks a lot, Jesus.

We're basic, ordinary.

We get it.

But wait, y'all are the light of the world.

We were looking at a building several months ago, looking for a permanent location for MetaCurch someday when we get back to you know being able to actually meet in our venues.

And we walked in, and I'm talking about a building that is empty and blank and pitch dark.

And I pulled out my light and I turned it on, and I was really excited because.

Because I really wanted to see around, and it was like I could still see nothing.

I even looked just to make sure that the light was on.

And all of a sudden, behind me, a spotlight shone.

Illuminated everything.

All of a sudden, everything.

I could see it.

I could see it.

I could see it.

I could see what could be.

I could start imagining and dreaming about it.

I couldn't see my one light was not enough.

But he had a spotlight, many lumens.

Wider circle.

You see, we're salt and we're light, but we don't do it alone.

And if the salt loses its flavor, it cannot be made salty again.

What is our worth?

What is our value?

Will we become stagnant?

Our light is only good enough if we will allow it to shine.

And a lot of people get in moments of crisis, and who they look to as their leaders, who they look to as their pastor, their priest, their boss, their governor, their president.

And listen, we take leadership very seriously, everybody should.

But Jesus is the ultimate leader.

Jesus is the one who actually has all of the answers, and they are hoping that he will say, I am the light, but he doesn't.

He says, It's y'all.

Y'all are the light of the world, and where is our hope in an emergency?

It can't just be the four pastors that we have on staff.

It can't just be the politicians and celebrities who are gonna sing imagine by the beatles and magically cure the world.

It can't be that.

It has to be all of us, it takes all of us, and you are salt.

And what we say at MetaCurch is that this is a movement of ordinary people, and there's beauty in the ordinary, and there's miraculous in what is common.

And the fact that we are salt, that we are basic, that we are a foundational element, means that you and I, right now, in this time of panic and pandemic, you and I, as basic members of the human race, we can relate.

We can see others and know what they're going through.

We're not magic, we're not special, we're not higher than, greater than, above or beyond.

We are salt.

We're standing right alongside everyone else in this world.

We're all going through it together, but do not forget you are salt, but you are light.

And because of Jesus, there is something inside of you that is greater than you.

And if we quit being common and we see ourselves as a spiritual elite who have all of the answers and we have all of it figured out, and we don't really need any help.

And man, we are too blessed to be stressed, and we've got it all going in the right direction.

We will we will disqualify ourselves from being able to speak into the lives of hurting people.

At the same time, if we only see ourselves as salt and we don't realize the light of God inside of us, then we will connect with the people around us, but we will not be able to illuminate the hope inside of us.

You are salt.

Common.

We're a movement of ordinary people who are seeing extraordinary things as a part of the movement of Jesus.

And we are not extraordinary because of ourselves, we are extraordinary because of the power of God inside of us, and it says, Nobody, nobody lights a lamp just to hide it.

And the last verse it says this in the same way, in the same way, let your light, the light inside of you, you are sought, you are common, you are light, you are extraordinary.

Let your light shine before others.

Has that ever been more important than this moment, this moment that we have to help redefine or undefine for people what the church was meant to be?

Let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works, and so they may give glory to your father in heaven.

See, they were waiting for the Messiah.

The one, the one, the one sent from the Father, the light to the one nation.

And Jesus says, He's not just my father, he is yours as well.

And if he is your father, then you are salt and you are light.

What are we gonna do as we are quarantined, sheltering at home, homeschooling, stuck in place, losing jobs, in emergency, in crisis, in pandemic?

What's our role?

How do we make a difference with our life?

We recognize that we are salt.

We have the ability to connect and understand what everyone around us is going through.

We're human, we're frail, we're broken.

And God doesn't want to use you in spite of your brokenness, he wants to use you through your brokenness.

And if you are struggling to stay sober as an alcoholic, he's not looking past that and trying to, he's looking right through it.

He sees it and wants you to connect with other people who are struggling similarly.

And if you're a single parent, there are other single parents.

You are salt.

You know what they're going through.

You can connect with them, and you are light.

And as we connect, we point people, we point people to hope, we point people to peace.

We do not hide the light inside of us, we shine it forth.

And as we are stuck, and as we're in crisis, if we will be salt and we will be light, we will show the world the glory of our Father who is in heaven.

Would you pray with me?

God, we love you.

We thank you.

We thank you that we're basic.

God, we all want to be unique and we all are unique.

I mean, we are created by the creator.

We are unique.

But even our uniqueness is common.

Sometimes it feels like the harder we try to be different, the more we end up the same as everyone else who's just also trying to be different.

I pray that we would embrace the fact that we're human, that we're broken, fragile, finite, and we would allow our role as salt to connect us with the rest of the basic, common, ordinary world.

God, I pray we wouldn't forget that if we have believed in Jesus, we have the Spirit of God inside of us, and we're not just salt, we are the light of the world, illuminating the path to hope in our Savior.

We love you.

I pray that this week we would go out, we would be salt, we would be light, and I pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Metachurch, I'm so glad that we got to spend some time together.

Man, this is an opportunity streaming together for you to really, really invite through social media.

You can invite people throughout the week to join us on our live streams, or you can share these videos after they're posted.

You can share them every day of the week if you wanted to get crazy and get this message of hope out.

We are reaching new people every day through our digital interaction and our missional activities out in the city.

And so continue to stream together and serve together salt and light.

I love you guys.

I hope to see you soon.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast, you can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps, you can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.