10-18 Sermon - Final

Good morning, church.

My name is Phillian.

We're gonna be reading Matthew 5, 13 through 16, Romans 12, 17 through 21, and Galatians 6, 7 through 10, and 1 Thessalonians 5, 15.

Matthew 5, 13 through 16, you're 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're 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 in the house.

In the same way that your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Romans twelve seventeen through twenty one.

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil of good.

God is not mocked, for whoever sows that he will also reap.

For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit from the spirit reap eternal life.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season he will reap.

He will not give up.

So then as we have the opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

First Thessalonians 5 15.

See that no one repays anyone for evil, but also seek to do good to one other than everyone.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thank you, Phillian.

Good morning, everybody.

Um how many of you have ever shown up to church feeling heavy hearted?

Okay, so most of you.

Yeah, I you know, this morning was one of those mornings, and I just came in feeling heavy-hearted.

Some things have been weighing on me the last few days, and um, and I didn't realize how much I needed to praise the Lord this morning.

I didn't realize until he started singing that last song.

So, Paul, thank you for leading us in that song.

That that that moment, yeah.

That that kind of summons get up and praise the Lord.

And I like it hit me, and I was like, wow, what is that?

I didn't realize that in the midst of the heaviness of heart, that one of the most important acts that we can do as a Christian is to get up and praise the Lord.

That reminded me of a passage here in Habakkuk 3, it says, This, though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit beyond the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, and the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

Amen.

I think it's uh appropriate that we begin in praising the Lord, even whatever condition we may come in, that the offer of praise to the Lord, it speaks of a deep truth, a deep truth that I want to talk about, and we'll get to later this morning.

But before we do, I just have a couple housekeeping items.

Um, if you have your worship folder, you notice on the very back page, at the very bottom, we have a giving update.

And I just want to draw attention to a couple things about that for you.

Uh the first is um thank you so much for your generosity and giving that helped us get all of the sound equipment updated and our projectors updated.

Uh, wanted to draw your attention, though, that uh the last six weeks of our giving have been pretty low.

And so maybe some of you had transferred your giving to the building fund, and we want to encourage you, if you've done that, to transfer it back to the general fund.

Our general fund is basically for normal operating ministry, and so that's really important, and we want to see that fund continue to be supported so we can do the ministry that God has called us to do here.

As you can see, uh September was a pretty tough month.

I also recognize gas is expensive.

Yeah?

I was like, man, what the heck?

I my my my son filled up his car and it was like$125, and I was like, that's it, you're not driving anymore.

We're just taking it away.

So anyway, if that's um if that's if that's you and you've you you have some extra resources to give to the general fund, we'd encourage you to do that.

Uh also, we are continuing our series called Jesus Loves California, in which we're focusing on three primary initiatives that we have as a church over the next year.

And those initiatives are intentional praying, sacrificial serving, and gospel sharing.

And this morning we're going to be focusing on that second initiative, sacrificial serving.

And that's why we had all the passages that Phillian read for us this morning.

Passages really about the topic of good works and what does it mean and look like for us as Christians to be engaged in a life of good works.

And so, our main point this morning that I want to kind of focus our attention on as we begin from these texts, and this is a mouthful.

I came up with this main point and I wrote it out, and I was like, that's about a paragraph long, and that was a perfectly length main point for me.

I was like, yes, I would like it to be longer, actually, but I shortened it up for you.

Good works are comprehensively distributed acts of sacrificial service done in the name of Jesus and for the sake of love.

Comprehensively distributed acts of sacrificial service done in the name of Jesus and for the sake of love.

That's like, isn't that a great concise definition?

You guys love that?

Yeah, I came up with that myself, actually.

But what I want to draw our attention to is the text, all of the texts that we read are highlighting something specific about the nature of good works and specifically of Christian good works.

That they are comprehensively distributed.

They are to be spread out to all.

Listen to the language of Jesus in Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

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

Comprehensive distribution to the whole earth, to the whole world.

Paul says in Romans chapter 12, to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

He says to live peaceably with all.

Paul later says to do good to everyone.

Seek to do good to everyone.

He says it twice.

In other words, this is a Christian call that our good works are distributed across the face of the earth.

They are done to all.

Christian good works, in other words, are not tribal.

Not only do we not just do good works to one another, but we do good works to all.

We love all.

That is a fundamentally Christian idea.

Jesus famously said it this way later in the Sermon on the Mount.

He said, if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

He says, even the pagans do that.

There's nothing particularly special about loving those who love you.

What distinguishes Christian love is its movement out not only from those that are like us, but those that are unlike us, even to enemies.

Christian love is not tribal.

Yes, we are called to love one another, but its distinctiveness, the language that Jesus uses here is its saltiness.

That word saltiness, uh, it's also translated as taste, and it has to do with distinctiveness or an edge or a sharpness in flavor.

And this is what Jesus is highlighting about Christian good works is it has that edge, that sharpness, that distinctness that sets it apart, that recognize, that helps you recognize that this is something different.

And what Jesus is getting at is that what's distinctive about Christian love, about Christian good works, is that they are distributed even to the very worst in the world.

They're distributed to all, to everyone, to the whole earth, to the world.

This is a distinctive mark of Christian love that's been a part of the story of the church from its very beginning.

Um one of the stories that I was reading about this week was uh the Emperor Julian, sometimes called Julian the Apostate, and he writes to a high priest of a uh a pagan temple in the region of Galatia, similar to where the letters that Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, um, he writes to a high priest there some 300 years after the time of Christ, and he says this.

He says, the impious Galileans, that's what they called Christians then, the impious Galileans support not only their own poor, but what?

Ours as well.

And he's concerned about this.

Julian looks out and he sees the Christians not only loving their own poor, but the poor all around them, and he's worried about this.

This is a PR problem for Julian.

This is looking bad for the Roman Empire.

Because these Christians, they're loving everyone, and it's causing us to lose our power.

Uh, I also read about a lady named Saint Macrina.

And Saint Macrina the Younger, she uh oh, where did my quote go?

That's a beautiful quote, isn't it?

Saint Macrina, uh, famously, she was the brother of a well-known theologian named Gregory of Nyssa.

And he writes about her, he writes her story, the story of her life after she passes away.

And there's a whole crowd of young women, a massive crowd of young women that come to her funeral service, and he remarks about them that all these women who came to her funeral came because they were all babies and children that had been abandoned on the side of the road during a famine because the parents couldn't feed them, and so they they they just left their babies on the side of the robe, and Macrina came and she picked these children up.

She brought them into their Christian community and she raised them and cared for them.

And these women's lives were all transformed because of this woman's sacrificial love and service to her community.

That this has been a mark of the Christian world and a mark of the church from its very beginning that love is distributed not to those who are worth it or deserve it, not merely to those who are like us or believe what we believe, but that Christian love is distributed comprehensively to all.

Now, as we talk about Christian love, I think good works, especially for us as Protestants, and um, you know, there's kind of like three big branches of the church, you know, the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox and then the Protestants, and good works have gotten into some trouble for Protestants.

It's kind of gotten a bad rap.

We can kind of be anxious about good works as Protestants, and rightfully so, there's some anxieties about it because often we tend to think what what we do is we contrast good works with faith as Protestants.

And what we tend to say as Protestants is there's one thing that good works can't do.

What's that?

They can't save you.

Good works can't save you, and that is the right emphasis.

That good works lack this one specific power, that your good works cannot commend you to God.

The danger with us as Protestants is we tend to stop there.

We tend to stop and say that your good works can't save you.

And I and I love this teaching, actually.

It's a very important and powerful teaching.

It's critical to how we understand who God is.

Your good works cannot save you because we have a fundamental conviction that God's love isn't transactional or performative.

What I mean by that is what what we do what we don't want to say is that God will love you only when you're good enough.

God will love you only when you've done enough good.

God will love you once you perform enough of the right actions.

What the cross of Jesus Christ is all about is that God's love for you is prior to you doing any good works at all.

We love because he what?

First loved us.

That's what the cross teaches us, that God's love isn't, he doesn't love you only when you're good enough, only when you've done enough to deserve his love, only when you've performed enough Christian good works, only when you've performed enough spiritual acts to kind of get him on your side.

That that would be a broken idea of God.

Maybe some of you grew up in households like that.

That my parents only showed me love only when I did the right things, that my parents only showed me love when I performed a certain kind of way.

Maybe some of us are used to that kind of love, but this isn't God's love.

As Adam began our service this morning, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

And this is what the cross communicates to us.

And this is a powerful teaching because what it does is it frees our good works from the pressure of having to be enough.

You don't have to worry about your good works being enough.

Martin Luther, the great reformer, he said it this way: God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.

God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.

So, just because your good works can't save you, it doesn't mean though that they lack power.

This is the clear teaching of Scripture.

Today is gonna be less about what your good works can't do, which is save you, and more about what they can do, the power of Christian good works, or what we're calling in our movement sacrificial service.

Here's what we're gonna look at and see from our text this morning.

Three things that good works can do.

Three things where we see the power of Christian good works.

First, good works can interrupt evil.

Good works can interrupt evil.

Second, what we're gonna see is good works can change hearts.

Good works can change hearts.

And third and finally, what we're gonna see is that good works can reveal God.

This is the power of Christian good works, what they can actually affect in our world.

So let's look first at good works that interrupt evil.

This is the idea of Jesus' teaching when he tells his disciples, you are the salt of the earth.

This idea of salting the earth is a very ancient idea, and it comes from actually ancient military conquests.

In an ancient military setting, if there was a victorious conquering nation that decimated its enemy, and if that enemy continued to prove itself to be rebellious over and over and over again, that conquering nation would come in and they would throw salt on all of their agricultural land.

And what that salt would do would prevent them from growing any crops and force them to be dependent upon the conquering nation for their food supply.

It was a very strategic act by the conquering nation as a way of stopping the growth of their economy so they would depend upon the economy of the conquering kingdom.

And Jesus appeals to this idea, and he tells his disciples, you are the salt of the earth.

In other words, Jesus' kingdom is coming, it is conquering the world, and you are the salt that is being distributed across the face of the earth that is preventing the growth of evil, so that the world would come to depend upon God for all of its good.

Because God is always the source of all that is good and right and true and beautiful.

In other words, what Jesus is saying is you, you followers of Jesus, God is distributing you, spreading you across the face of the earth so that you would interrupt the progress and growth of evil wherever he distributes you.

Your actions interrupt the growth of evil.

And what we come to see throughout our text this morning is that evil grows typically through cycles of retribution and retaliation.

This is why in several of the texts that we read this morning, Jesus or Paul will say things like, never avenge yourself.

No evil for evil, do not repay evil for evil.

And this is a really powerful insight into the psychology of evil, how evil tends to work, is if you are hurt by someone and you retaliate and hurt them back, what we discover is that your retaliation does not convince the person who hurt you that they were wrong.

Have any of you noticed this?

Like if you retaliate, the person doesn't think, oh, actually you're right.

You're right, I was wrong.

No, when you retaliate, all it does is reinforce with the person who hurt you that they actually are correct.

And now not only were they right in hurting you, but now they're the wounded party again, and so they can retaliate against you.

And what it does is it generates a cycle of retribution.

And this cycle tends to escalate and grow.

Um, I I've now been a parent for almost 20 years, and I've seen cycles of retribution grow in my family.

Have any of you seen this with your children?

Right?

They tend not to de-escalate with themselves.

This is why one of the primary jobs of a parent is to be a referee, right?

Okay, and then we've got to lay down the rules and we've got to throw the flag in the middle of the game and say, hey, you you know you can't do that, that's a foul, right?

But these cycles of retribution tend to escalate over time.

And what Jesus teaches us is that Christian good works interrupt this cycle and not only interrupt it, but counteract this cycle.

Later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is gonna say things like this if someone strikes you on the cheek, what are you supposed to do?

Turn the other cheek.

If someone takes your cloak, what are you supposed to give them?

Your tunic as well.

If somebody demands that you go a mile with them, what do you do?

You go two miles.

You do not refuse the one who asks from you.

You Paul will say it, you overcome evil with good.

He will say, if your enemy is hungry, what do you do?

Feed him.

If your enemy is thirsty, you give him a drink.

That this is the pattern of Christian love.

As it works, it counteracts the cycle of retribution.

And I think what's important here in these texts is to notice that this isn't a passivity.

I think a lot of people struggle with what Jesus says here, turn the other cheek.

And they tend to interpret it as something like this So am I just supposed to let evil people have their way?

Is that what I'm supposed to do?

Am I supposed to just let people take advantage of me?

If somebody demands That I go a mile, am I supposed to just let them continue to take advantage of me by going an extra mile with them?

Is that what I'm supposed to do?

And that's a kind of passive interpretation of Jesus' words.

Jesus is not commending that we have a passive approach to evil.

He is not commending that we let people take advantage of us.

In each of these examples that Jesus gives, turning the other cheek, giving your cloak and your tunic as well, going not only one but two miles, feeding the hungry enemy, giving them something to drink when they're thirsty, in each of these examples, they require an active participation on the part of the Christian.

Not passivity in letting people take advantage of you, but actively responding to them with good.

Actively overcoming their evil actions with your good works.

In fact, the language that Paul uses is language of spiritual warfare.

Overcome evil with good.

That language of overcoming is spiritual warfare language in which you, as the Christian, overcome the hostilities of evil with the overwhelming force of good.

You're not being passive.

You're actively overcoming their insulting of you by slapping your cheek.

You're actively overcoming them by their unrighteous demands and forcing you to go a mile.

You're actively overcoming their insults.

You're actively overcoming their evil by your righteous action.

This is one of the great powers of Christian good works, is that it interrupts evil.

It's assault that ceases and brings an end to the growth of evil in our world.

And it's a powerful expression of Christian love.

And it is our Lord's command to us.

The Lord summons each of us to be interrupters of evil in our own age and in our relationships, in our families, in our communities.

This is a powerful expression of the love of God.

Okay.

So good works interrupt evil.

Second, we read that good works change human hearts.

This is one of the strangest texts, I think, that you'll read.

It seems to suggest something like what Paul is commending is a sort of passive aggressiveness.

Well, we're really, what, we're acting really nice around you, but we want you actually to feel bad.

Right?

And that kind of strange dissonance.

I don't know if you've ever been in a relationship with somebody who's passive aggressive, but they do nice things for you, and you think to yourself, but why do I feel worse?

And we can we can interpret this text this way, that this is actually what Paul is aiming at.

And I think it's largely because this image of heaping burning coals has been lost on us.

It's an image that has no resonance in the modern world.

We don't get what he's talking about.

But in the ancient world, what would happen is that somebody who was repentant, who was sorry for what they had done, one of the ways that they would express that is by taking ash and coals and throwing it on their heads as a symbol and a sign that they had repented and changed their behavior.

They had recognized what I was doing was wrong, and I want to change that.

This was particularly true in relationship to God.

This was an act of recognition.

I was wrong.

And so by doing these good works, it overcomes their hostility with good and not only interrupts their evil, but actually can change their enemy's heart.

That's what this image is about.

That not only does it stop the cycle from perpetuating of retaliation, me getting back at you, not only does it stop that cycle, but it can actually change the enemy.

It can change their heart, it can bring about repentance.

That's the word repentance just means to have a change of mind.

It's a powerful expression that you can actually change the heart of an enemy by your good works.

As I was thinking about this this week, I was reading about a man named Daryl Davis.

This is Daryl Davis right here.

And he was a fame, a pretty well-known musician.

He played for lots of famous artists like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B.

King, Bruce Hornsby, a very accomplished musician.

And one time he was playing in a in a uh whites-only bar in Maryland, and he was confronted by a man who um said, you know, you're the you're the best player I've seen play the piano since Jerry Lee Lewis, but you're black.

And and Darrell was kind of caught off guard by this comment, and and um what he came to discover is that this man was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

And um and what they began to do over time was Daryl began to befriend this guy, pursue relationship with him.

And because of this relationship, not only did this man change, but he started giving Daryl the names and contact information of a bunch of the members of the Ku Klux Klan in Maryland.

And Daryl, this big he was so audacious, he started calling up these guys from the Ku Klux Klan.

And he wanted to befriend them.

There's a uh there's a documentary made about him called Accidental Courtesy.

It's about 10 years old now.

And if you want to watch it, it's a fascinating documentary.

But in it, he tells we we we catch up with Darwin, and he's actually on the uh daytime talk show Geraldo.

Anybody remember Geraldo?

He's on the daytime, you know, and remember these daytime talk shows, they were crazy.

And on one of these talk shows, Geraldo had a young girl, she was 12 years old, she had been raised by a father who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, had been raised in a very racist family, and she comes on the show and she's clearly been brainwashed.

And she's spouting off all of this, the most venomous racial epithets that you could imagine.

It was just terrible.

And Daryl is there on the show with her, and he's engaging in this conversation with her.

Well, after the show, Daryl comes to discover that this young girl's name, her name was Aaron, and he comes to discover that Aaron's dad had been thrown in prison for 10 years.

And she lived in the kind in Illinois outside of Chicago.

And so Daryl decides what he's gonna do is he's gonna call her mom.

So he calls Aaron's mom.

And she likewise is incredibly racist, and she just chews Daryl up one side and down the other, calls him every possible name that you could think of.

And once she finishes spewing all of her venom out on Daryl, he says, Hey, I just want to recognize that you guys are in a tough situation, and what I'd like to do is fly out to Chicago, pick up your daughter, and take her to go visit her dad.

The mom did not know what to do with this.

And so he ends up taking the whole family to go visit her dad in prison, and this singular act strikes up this relationship with this young girl, Erin, in which she ultimately abandons her whole racist past.

Her whole family abandons their whole racist past, the Ku Klux Klan and everything.

And she her the daughter, she ends up marrying a black man and then joining Daryl on a Martin Luther King Jr.

Day celebration.

Yeah, that's an incredible story.

Um what we come to discover is that um in that in all the time that Daryl has been interacting with the Ku Klux Klan, he's had 26 members of the Ku Klux Klan give him their robes.

Just hand them over and say, I'm not doing that anymore.

26 members.

He's had upwards of 60 members of the Ku Klux Klan abandon the Ku Klux Klan simply by his direct action of caring for them, of loving them, of engaging them.

And oh hundreds more have left indirectly from the Ku Klux Klan because of this one guy's singular action.

He's been the godfather now of some of their children.

One of the couples that he met, he actually walked the bride down the aisle.

He not only interrupted the cycle of evil, but he changed hearts.

Aaron Twig's mom said this.

She said, Sometimes God works through other people and he worked through Daryl in our lives.

One man's good works not only interrupted a cycle, a horrific cycle of evil in our world, but he changed the hearts of his enemies.

Isn't that powerful, Mission Hills Church?

That your good works have that power.

They have that capacity to bring change.

So, good works interrupt evil, good works change hearts, and third and finally, good works reveal God.

Matthew 5, 16, 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.

That good works, as a Christian, what they do is they reveal the glory of our Father who is in heaven.

You see, in our world, this text assumes this deep truth that there is a pervasive ignorance in our world about who God is, about what he is really like, about his true nature, his true character, his true identity.

This ignorance is described throughout Scripture as a form of spiritual darkness.

Colossians chapter 1, verse 13 says that the world lives in the domain of darkness, that people are powerfully ignorant of what God is really like.

Colossians 1:13

This spiritual darkness and this ignorance leads to all kinds of harsh judgments and thoughts about God.

I read this, uh watched this interview of Billy Crystal this week.

Um, anybody remember Billy Crystal?

Uh, for those of you young people, if you haven't seen The Princess Bride, after service, run, don't walk, and go see my beloved miracle Max.

He's also been in city slickers and in all kinds of wonderful, he's a hilarious man, but he recently was interviewed and they asked him about his faith in God, and he says, I don't trust him.

Too many bad things have happened.

And I and I get that sentiment.

I think all of us can get that sentiment.

When we look out at the evil in the world, when we look out at all of the horrific things that have happened and are happening and will continue to happen, it can be very hard to trust that there is a good and loving God who calls himself our Father in heaven.

It can be hard to trust that.

But I think Billy Crystal's statement, it's doing something more than I think he even understands.

Because by his statement, what he's conceding is that the bad things that are happening are more powerful than the goodness of God.

And once you accept that position, once you accept that the evil that is in the world has the final word, you have accepted a position of despair.

That's all that's left.

There may be goodness in the world, but it doesn't have the final word.

Evil does.

The bad things that happen, those have the final word.

They are more compelling, more powerful than God Himself.

And Christianity, it doesn't deny the presence of evil.

It doesn't deny that bad things happen.

It doesn't live in ignorance.

We don't stick our head in the sand as Christians.

It simply insists that evil is not greater than God.

And it insists that evil does not get the last word.

And one of the ways that Christianity insists upon this is through the good works of Christians.

That despite the evil in the world, despite the bad things that happen and the horrific tragedies that sweep through the earth, the Christian remains committed to serving and to loving and to doing good to everyone in light of all of that evil.

It is an act of defiance that says, no, that is, I do not accept a position of despair.

I do not accept a position in which evil has the final word.

Christian good works are an act of spiritual defiance.

Good works, to say it somewhat differently, pierce through the darkness.

Pierce through the darkness, and they speak of another world, and they speak of another reality, and they speak of another person.

They speak of God Himself.

And when others see us loving and acting, despite the evil in the world, in a way that is loving and generous and sacrificial, it pierces through the darkness and it begins to open up something.

This is what Jesus says: that they will see your good works and do what?

Glorify your Father who is in heaven.

The darkness is pierced.

As I think about what this looks like in very practical terms, I can think of no better example that I in my recent memory than uh a dear family friend of ours, his name was Matthew Curry.

And uh sorry.

Uh recently Matthew passed away, went home to be with the Lord, and Matthew um, he was uh trained as a pastor, but never got hired to be a pastor.

And so he accepted work at Trader Joe's and UPS.

And he worked at Trader Joe's and UPS for decades.

And in all those decades of service at a grocery store and on the on the line at UPS, he was able to shepherd and pastor hundreds and hundreds of lives.

We went to his memorial service and there, I mean, you you could have not imagined a more motley crew of people showing up to one man's memorial service.

And it didn't matter if these people had broken, lost, pagan lives, they cared nothing for God.

Matthew served and loved them.

When you went to Trader Joe's, he was the most friendly face in Trader Joe's amongst all the friendly faces that are there.

And he had a beautiful Scottish accent, and so you just wanted to talk to him anyway.

But he he learned people's names.

He asked about their children.

He invited people over to his home to share with them the good news of the gospel, because of all the things Matthew was most passionate about, he was most passionate about his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And so whether that was at UPS or at the grocery store, whether it was a co-worker or just somebody coming in to buy some lettuce or orange chicken from Trader Joe's, he made them feel loved.

His workplace became a place where the light of heaven pierced through.

And I think about him because Matthew, he didn't live a spectacular or uh famous life.

In fact, he ended up getting hired as a pastor at a church up on Palomar Mountain.

And he described it to me one time as you know, our church on a really big Sunday swells to three people when one of the people brings their dog.

Right?

And he would drive up to Palomar Mountain Sunday in and Sunday out to serve a small congregation on top of that mountain.

And I think uh it reminds me of a quote from George Elliott in which she says that the growing good of our world is half-dependent on unremarkable people who live hidden lives of good.

That in the end it's not about great demonstrations of goodness, it's about the simple, quiet, ordinary acts in the lives that God has given you.

In your place of employment, with your neighbors, the people who live up and down the street from you.

It's with the people that you sit next to at recreation fields, the people that you bump up against at the grocery store.

What Matthew's life spoke to me about is the power of ordinary Christian goodness and what it can do in our world.

And I think what I want to leave you with, Mission Hills Church, this morning, is that God has enlisted us, all of us.

And we're gonna do things as a church family together, serving our community throughout this Jesus Loves California campaign.

We're gonna do some things together.

But where the real power lies is not in these bigger events that we're gonna do as a church family.

Where the real power lies is in your ordinary acts of service and love in your homes with the people that you do life with, where in those simple locations you can interrupt evil, you can change people's hearts, and you can reveal the very character and nature of God Himself.

Let's pray.

Father, as we draw to a close here and consider the words of your son Jesus, that we are the salt of the earth.

That we are the light of the world.

We consider what that means in each of our lives.

Many of us struggle to do the good that we desire.

And so, Lord, for those of us who find ourselves there, wanting and intending to do good, and yet struggling to do so.

Father, my prayer is for the power of the Holy Spirit to come into the deep places of our hearts and to begin to change us.

To strengthen us, to equip us, and to enable us to do the good that you have called us to.

Father, I pray for those who have come here this morning and perhaps they're they find themselves a little bit in the position of Billy Crystal, struggling, and maybe not even at all trusting God.

Estranged from him, far from him.

Maybe they've embraced a position of despair in their own lives, and have kind of taken their own lives into their own hands.

Father, I pray for them here this morning that above all they would look to the cross.

And to see the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, his death on it, and his resurrection from the dead as the clear demonstration of your character.

That you are trustworthy even in the midst of evil, even when bad things happen.

That because of the cross we know who you are.

And I pray for them, Lord, that they today would place their trust in you.

And Father, I pray for us here at Mission Hills Church.

That you would so move in our midst by the power of your spirit that you would scatter us like salt.

And that we would be a people that do not hide our light.

That we would instead be a people who set our light on a stand so that people not would not see us, but would see you and glorify you.

And we pray that people in our community would come to faith in the Lord Jesus as they see us serving them, that our lives would bear witness to your glory and goodness.

And we pray this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.