Legacy Series with Dale Thompson - "The Commands of Jesus" Part 2 "Your Light" - October 14, 2012

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Welcome to this episode of the Legacy Series of our Chapter and First podcast.

We're so excited that you're joining us for this message.

Today you're going to hear a message from one of the former pastors of our church, Brother Dale Thompson.

Brother Dale was the pastor here from 1992 until 2019 and had an incredible ministry that saw God do wonderful things throughout the life of the church and that tenure.

We also know that Brother Dale is a highly gifted preacher of the Word.

He has an incredible knowledge of Scripture, and his delivery is wonderful how he speaks directly to you, and God uses him in such a unique way to connect with the congregation and point them to Jesus.

This particular message is the very first message that Brother Dale preached when he became the pastor of First Baptist Church.

In fact, we had someone in our church who has been enjoying our legacy series and been here quite a while who requested that we play this message from Brother Dale and include it in our legacy series.

And you will see why when you hear him preach the word and cast vision for what God wants to do through First Baptist Church.

And so we thought it was a wonderful message to show.

We appreciate that request.

And I know that you will be blessed as you hear Brother Dale Thompson preach the word of God.

Take your Bible if you would today.

Turn over to the Gospel of Matthew and chapter 5.

And we're doing a new series.

We started last week on the commands of Jesus.

We've been focusing for several weeks on the whole concept and principle in Scripture of being a disciple, a follower of the Lord Jesus.

We did 10 weeks on talking about sort of like marks of a disciple, different things and focuses in the life of a disciple.

Certainly, these are things that must be to be a disciple.

And we used as a springboard for that whole thought what's called in the 28th chapter of Matthew, the Great Commission, where Jesus said, Go, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And then he said this, and then teaching them all the things, or teach them to observe, teach them to obey, teach them to respond to all the things that I've commanded you.

And Jesus also said, If you love me, keep my commandments.

Now, if you walked up to the average Christian and said, maybe you, and said, Could you name me four or five of the commands of Jesus?

Some of us would immediately be disarmed.

We go, well, let me think here.

And we might default to the Ten Commandments to the book of Exodus and go for the big ten.

And certainly that is God's moral law and it has a standard that brings us to grace and mercy, shows us that we're sinners.

But Jesus gave numerous commands.

And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if you search through the scripture, you would find something like about 50 commands of Jesus in the Gospels.

But we can't name a lot of them.

So in this series, what we're doing is this.

We're not going to go 50 weeks and cover every single one of those commands, but we're going to look at the most startling ones, the clearest ones.

And then what you'll discover is that once you know those commands, you'll start to be able to identify the other commands that you discover in the Gospels from time to time by yourself when you read the scripture.

You'll see the commands of Jesus.

I would encourage you if I'd take one of those blank fly leaves of my Bible.

You know, they've got some of those blank pages the publisher puts in there, either in the front or the back, and I'd write at the top of it the commands of Jesus, then I'd start tracking them by verse, and that way I could think about the commands of Jesus in my life.

You could take that blank page at the front, right?

The commands of Jesus.

The first one we looked at last week is repent.

We talked about repentance and belief in Jesus for salvation, trusting the Lord.

We talked about repentance as an ongoing process in the life of the believer.

And today we're going to look at the second command of Jesus that's very obvious in the Bible.

So you'd have number one, and then you'd have number two.

And we're going to look at that second one today.

Now I want you to think about the commands of Jesus and what that means to you and to your life as a Christian.

And the first thing you have to consider is this What do you really think about Jesus Christ and his claim on your life?

What do you really believe?

And you might say, Well, Brother Dale, what do you mean?

What do you mean by that?

Well, let me give you an illustration.

I'm going to show you two Jesuses, and I want you to decide which one is the real one.

Jesus number one.

Hi, y'all.

I'm real thankful for you.

I feel real lucky that you are my follower.

And I appreciate you believing in me and trusting in me.

And I appreciate you making a profession of faith and being baptized.

It's so nice of you.

And I'm just blessed by it.

I want you to know every time someone comes into the kingdom, I just feel so fortunate and blessed.

And I'm so blessed by you.

And I thank you for considering some of my commands, and I thank you for looking at them and maybe thinking about them from time to time.

And I really appreciate that.

And I know you've been trying real hard.

Not been doing very good, but I know you've been trying real hard.

And I just have to tell you how overwhelmed I am to have you.

And and you know, I want you to see my commands.

I don't want you to see it harsh because you know I'm a nice guy, and uh and I, you know, you really should look at these kind of as options.

And what you'll discover is when you cooperate with my options, you'll just feel better about life and you'll have more peace, and it's all about you, and it's all about how you feel.

And so uh I'd like for you to take a look at these commands, and uh I'd like for you to give them your good consideration, and and I just it it would just make your Lord feel so good to just see you cooperating with me.

That's Jesus number one.

Now, we're kind of snickering and laughing about that, but you know what?

That's the Jesus that a lot of us in the room right now believe in.

Here's the other Jesus.

The other Jesus says, I'm the Lord of glory.

I'm the Son of God.

I died for your sins, I arose from the dead.

All authority has been given unto me in heaven and earth.

I've saved you by my mercy and my grace.

And if I had not saved you, when you die, you would be cast into outer darkness forever, and you would suffer my wrath and the judgment forever.

But through mercy and grace, you have been saved.

You're not saved by your own effort or by your own goodness or your own righteousness or anything you've done.

It's by my death and my resurrection that you're saved.

And now, as the Lord of glory, I have some commands.

In fact, I would like for you to consider them as demands.

There are certain things that you will be my disciple, you'll do.

And if you don't do them, you put your hand to the plow and you look back, you're not fit for my kingdom.

Whoa.

How about that, Jesus?

How do you like him?

Which one do you think is the real Jesus?

The whip?

Or the Lord?

Well, it's the Lord.

So today, as we begin to enumerate and think about his commands, his demands as a disciple, let's open up our ears and think this way.

If I am a Christian, a disciple of Jesus, and I can't enumerate some of his commands, then I should be hungry to know what they are.

I should want to commit them to some memory.

I might want to give some energy to what are the commands, the demands of Jesus on my life as his disciple.

Now don't get this mixed up with your salvation, and don't get this mixed up with work salvation.

Don't get that all mixed up.

I've I can do works where I will remain saved.

The God that has saved you has saved you by mercy and grace, but he has put a compass in your life that points toward obedience to Christ.

Jesus said, If you love me, keep my commandments.

John wrote it and said, if you love God, you keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

What does that mean?

When he gives commands, you don't go, oh man, I don't want to do that.

Oh man, what a hassle it is to follow Jesus.

The idea is that we find a gravitational, spiritual pull toward those commandments.

We set up, our ears perk up.

I'm a disciple of Jesus.

What do I do?

So his commands are there to give us direction.

And our hearts turn toward those commands.

That's where we're at.

So, here we are.

Commands of Jesus.

What does he say?

How many can you name?

That's why I tell you, make you a page somewhere.

Start listing them so when someone asks you where the commands are, you can say, Let me go get my Bible.

I'll be right back.

And hide as many of them as you can in your heart.

Alright?

Here we are.

We're in the fifth chapter of Matthew.

We're in the Sermon on the Mount.

Let's see what he says.

Chapter 5, Matthew, start reading with me in verse 14.

You are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lamp stand.

And it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let Jesus speaking to us.

Let your light shine before men.

That they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

The command boiled down is this let your light so shine before men.

Now let's put it in a vernacular that we 21st century Americans understand.

When he talks about letting your light shine, he means this.

He means that Christians are to be disciples that influence the world around them.

Light influences darkness.

It pushes it away.

We're going to let our light shine in such a way that God's glorified.

We're not to hide it.

We're not to cover it up.

We are to let our light shine.

You learned this a long time ago, many of you in preschool.

This little, I won't sing it, but I'll give you the lyrics.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

We didn't know or didn't stop to think, possibly at the time, that that is a command, a demand of Jesus for his followers.

Let your light shine, so shine before men, so that God is glorified.

Now today we live in the day of the.

Well, Brother Dale, I have a very private faith.

It's a very personal thing.

It's like a self-help book I found at the bookstore.

My faith is about making me feel better.

My faith is a coping faith that helps me get along in life.

My faith is sort of self-centered.

It's all about me.

And I don't want people to think I'm a hypocrite, so my faith is a very secret faith.

It's very, it's it's it's just me in the Lord.

Well, that's a bunch of baloney.

That sure doesn't go along in parallel with what Jesus says here in this fifth chapter, does it?

Jesus says, Let your light shine in the world.

When we become all absorbed in ourselves and the difficulties of our own life, we forget that the Lord has a design for us and a design for our lives.

Let me read you something, uh, and if you're quick, you can turn there.

Let me read something to you from the prayer of Jesus when Jesus was praying for his apostles.

The 17th chapter of John is nothing but Jesus praying for the apostles.

He's in the Garden of Gethsemane, the prayer where Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He's going to be arrested that night.

He's going to be crucified the next day.

He's praying, he's praying for the followers, his followers, his disciples.

He says, Not only do I pray for those that are with me, the apostles, but those who will believe because of their testimony.

Oh, who would that be?

Well, that would be me and you.

And so he's praying for us.

Look at what he says in verse 15.

I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them, or that you should keep them from the evil one.

They are not in the world, just as I am not of, they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

Then look at verse 18.

As you sent me into the world, and who is Jesus?

He's the light of the world, right?

As you sent me into the world, I also sent them into the world.

We've been sent into the world.

What have we been sent in the world to do?

Well, one of the things we've been sent in the world to do is to be light in the darkness.

The world that we live in is dark.

It's not slightly dark, it's dark.

And it's getting darker all the time.

And our world needs light.

Now, what do we do with the dark today, as uh Baptists, as uh evangelicals in the 21st century?

And we look around at our own culture, what do we do?

What's our inclination?

I've done it, you've done it.

We curse the darkness.

Hot dogs, things aren't going very good.

What are those politicians thinking?

What's that Supreme Court thinking?

What are these folks doing?

What are they doing about the sanctity of life?

What are they doing about marriage and the family?

And what in the world are they thinking?

Well, the darkness is coming in, isn't it?

Darkness is covering us.

Our thoughts, our attitudes, all these issues, the darkness is coming in.

So what we do often is we step back as followers of Jesus and we look at the darkness and we curse it.

Boy, that's wrong.

And well, in a sense, we're supposed to identify the difference between right and wrong in the heart and the mind of the believer.

Yes, we are.

We are to do that.

There's no doubt about it, we are to do that.

But we're not just to curse the darkness, we are to be light in the darkness.

Sadly, today, the church is growing more and more like the darkness instead of more and more like the light.

The darkness is entering into the church.

The church, in some ways, in America, seems to be joining the darkness.

And it appears to me that the darkness is winning the influence battle in the culture in which we live today.

So, what does it mean?

Let your light so shine.

Let's look at that passage and break it down just a little bit.

It's looking back at verse 14, and with that in mind, thinking about the context of this.

This is a Sermon on the Mount.

If you were to go to Israel and visit it, you could go out to the Sea of Galilee, and there's a traditional spot where they believe that the Sermon on the Mount was preached.

And uh, it may or may not be the exact place, but it's the idea.

That's the place.

And uh where Jesus preached that uh message, uh it's kind of an interesting terrain.

It's it's not like the lush forest of Arkansas around uh the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus preached that sermon.

It's a little sparse there.

Uh there's a lot more development there than when Tony and I were there uh 30 years ago.

But uh it's it's kind of an interesting uh thing to see.

Look at the passage that says this.

You are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

If you were to stand in that spot where Jesus preached, if if he were preaching and looking at the crowd, it matters whether he was looking up that terrain or down it when he preached the sermon, but to uh if looking down to his left, if looking up to his right, on the rim of the ridge that goes around the Sea of Galilee, there's a little city there.

I think it's called Saphat, if I remember correctly, and it sets there on that ridge.

It's said to be an ancient city, so there may have been a village there during Jesus' time or something near there.

Jesus could have preached and said and motioned with his uh with his hands, a city set on a hill can't be hid.

You can see it in broad daylight, it sits right on the ridge.

And at night, it's dark, dark, dark.

I mean, this is before night lights or street lights, okay?

When it got dark and there's no one of those nights where there's no moon and it's dark, dark.

If there was a little city with little little lamps in the windows of the houses, even in the dark, dark, dark, you could see even the smallest light, could you not?

Jesus said, a city set on a hill can't be hid.

He goes on.

Look what he says.

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, that it may give light to all who are in the house.

More or less Jesus said, uh, you know, we we think of candles, and the word is translated into English candles, but what the uh the Jews really used were these little lamps that were a, it was a little container and it had a little kind of like a, almost look like a little pitcher type thing, and there'd be a wick and there'd be oil in it, and the wick would be soaked with oil, and they would light the wick and the little lamp would glow.

And he says, When you light that lamp, what do you do?

You light that lamp and you go over and set it on the table, then you go in and dump all the dirty clothes out of the dirty clothes basket, and then run in and put it over the lamp so it's not too bright, right?

Duh.

No.

What do you do?

If you want it to really light the house, you get a little stand that's a little higher than just the table, and you put the stand there, and then you light the lamp and you put it on that, and it lights the whole house.

Jesus is talking about the fact that there is a light within the soul and the life of a born-again believer who knows Christ, whose calling is to be his disciple.

And if we don't take care, we so personalize our faith that it's about us that it's like putting a basket over our lampstand and the light doesn't go anywhere.

And what we ought to do is lift it up, not to lift up and glorify ourselves, but to lift up the light of Jesus Christ in our lives so that people say that's the difference in that person's life.

Jesus Christ.

His Lord, her Lord, her master, his master.

That person is a follower of Jesus Christ.

The point is that it's not about us making ourselves look good, but it's about Him.

What does this mean to be the light?

He says it's about our works, it's about our words, it's about our attitudes.

You feel like a victim sometimes?

You kind of feel like a victim sometimes in the world.

And you know what?

Sometimes you may be a victim.

But you know what?

You can't afford to take the time to play the victim in this world all the time.

You've got to give that up.

Uh I've read the back of the book.

Your trust is in Jesus, you win.

All will be well.

Don't waste time being a victim in this life and in this world.

You have purpose.

You are not the defeated.

You are not the downcast.

You are the children of God, followers of Jesus Christ.

Your life has purpose and meaning, and in the end, God provides all things that you need through Jesus Christ who died and arose for you.

And so, men, your works, your attitudes, your words can be like light in the world.

Speaking love and encouragement and truth is like light in the world.

You can be the person who walks in the room that everybody dreads, or you can be the person who walks in the room and everybody goes, praise the Lord, they're here.

Many of us may not even realize that the dark attitudes that have taken up charge of our life make us a very unappealing person to walk into the room.

We bring something, and what we bring is the person of Christ in our lives.

The light of Jesus Christ in our life.

Not our own light, his light.

Not our positive thinking, not our wonderful personality, but the rule of Jesus Christ in our soul.

That is light.

God has not called you to be obnoxious with your faith.

The Lord has not called you to be a fanatic and be a weirdo and press people and make people uncomfortable.

God has not called you to be some force that is condemning or condescending.

He has called you and I to be light and truth in our world.

It begins in your family.

It begins in those closest to you, in work associates, in relationships, in people around our lives.

God has called us to be light.

And the commands of Jesus, one of them is for us to be a light in the world that we live in, in the circles that we relate to.

It's influence.

It's how we influence.

With our faith and our trust in Jesus, those we come in contact with.

Now listen to me.

You will be in this world an influencer, or you will be an influence-e.

You know what I mean?

An influence-e is someone who is influenced by the dynamics around them.

An influencer as a disciple is someone who influences others through the person who is in them.

It's a totally different deal.

You and I are called to look at life in that way.

It's not about how wonderful we are or how great we are, it's what Christ is and what he is in us that makes the difference.

Jesus changes us from being victims to being victorious.

Jesus changes us from having a life with no meaning to a life that has the highest meaning.

Jesus Christ has called us to be lights in the world in which we live.

And influencing others through the Christ that lives in us.

In the passage, it tells us not to cover up our light.

Your goal is not to blend in or check out or be stingy with what God has blessed you with.

Your calling is not to lie low or be uninvolved in what God is doing.

You and I play a part.

The world, in Luke 179, says, the world is in the shadow of death.

It sets in darkness and waits for the light to come.

The light of the world is Jesus.

Jesus resides in the life of the believer through the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, Jesus says, I'm gone, but you are light to the world.

That's what we read in Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

It's not about ultimately us, it's about Him.

And then it's not that we are made great, but God is glorified.

His grace, His mercy, His love, His provision, His compassion, His long-suffering, His forgiveness, His reconciliation is exalted through the life of the believer.

Light in the world.

Well, how do I do this, preacher?

How do I do this?

I want to give you a few ways.

Now five, if I can get there with the time I've got.

Five ways that you can turn up your jets.

You know what I mean by turn up your jets?

You remember when we used to have the F-16s?

I liked all the noise they made.

You may have thought, oh boy, they're scaring the birds away.

I like those jets.

I like those F-16s when we had them, and they would take off out here, and you could hear them, boy.

I mean, you could hear them roar all over town when they take off.

I just music to my ears.

And sometimes they would do exercises at night.

They would do training at night, and the sun would be going down, it'd be it'd be going down or almost down, and one of those F-16s would take off, and then he'd kick those afterburner on.

They call it kicking on the afterburner.

That's like stepping on the accelerator.

It's it's uh pouring the fuel to it, and man, there'd be a big old flame shooting out the back, and then you couldn't even see, you couldn't even see the aircraft anymore in the dark.

All you saw was that flame, man, just whoom! Just blowing out the back of that thing.

And it was making all kinds of noise.

I love that.

And uh I love that.

I guess it's a guy thing.

I love that.

Well, we need to turn up our jets.

We need to turn on the afterburner of the light that's in us.

It's kind of like that burner on the stove, that gas burner.

You can turn it to where it's got a little bitty flame, you know, it's just barely on and it kind of goes, you know, and it's just barely going there.

Or you can turn that thing up and you got a flame.

I mean, you can heat the water up.

Well, too many of us are just kind of, you know, we're just kind of spitting a little flame out.

We need to turn up the jets.

Let me give you five ways to turn up the jets in your spiritual life so you can be light in the world.

Number one, turn away from the darkness.

Turn away from the darkness.

You don't have to embrace the things in the darkness.

When you've compromised your life with compromising with the world, you are turning down the light in your life.

The Lord might be mocked because of you.

You might be called a hypocrite by unbelievers.

They may make light of the faith in Christ because of you.

Turn away from the darkness.

Man, if people know that you're a Christian, and they need to know that you're a Christian, not because you are you're obnoxious about it.

But if people know that you're a Christian, when they see you cooperate and compromise with the world, you may see it as just a practical response of your life.

They see it as you betraying your Lord.

They see it as hypocrisy.

And they mock God because of it.

Turn away from the dark.

Those things in your life that bother your conscience and you feel and sense the rebukes of the Holy Spirit about, turn away.

Turn away.

The things that are compromised is like you taking the basket and putting it over your lamp.

So the light can't disperse.

Turn away.

If you want your light to shine, you can't be compromising with the world, and you are not a soldier for Christ.

One of the great issues of Christians in the 21st century are many are false confessors and have a religion and not a savior, but others do not see themselves as soldiers.

Turn away from the darkness.

Don't be self-righteous, don't be arrogant, don't be pompous.

But the darkness is growing great.

Just as history tells us about a time before the Reformation of a dark ages, we are facing a new dark ages today.

The assault on the sanctity of life and the family, the biblical illiteracy, even amongst those who claim Christ, many who have turned over and compromised with the enemy, confessing to believe, but have no energy for the kingdom, have signaled to the world that they are compromisers.

We need to not long for the acceptance of the world, but long, long for the encouragement of the Lord in our lives.

And we need to turn away from the dark.

We need to turn away from the sensuality of this world, some of the entertainment choices that we make, the gods that we make out of different things, even our sports and other things.

The darkness is great.

And really what it comes down to is what are our priorities?

You have priorities.

You knowingly have priorities, or you've just assumed a posture in your life that has priorities.

First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, the list goes down.

To be a disciple, the first priority needs to be the Lordship of Jesus Christ and my following of Him.

I'm a disciple first.

First.

Then the Lord will help you align the other things and then even kick some things out of the list that don't belong there.

Turning away from the darkness means I've got the right priorities in my life, and I'm seeking to be an influencer rather than to be influenced by the dark.

Folks, this is a real issue in our time, and this is a true issue.

We need to consider it.

I've got to hurry.

Number two, to turn up your jets, you've got to expose all things in your life to the light.

In John 3, that famous text about the new birth and about for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son, in that same chapter, it speaks about the fact that men don't want to come to the light because the light exposes us.

A disciple needs to willingly take his life underneath the light of God's word and truth and the Holy Spirit.

And let God examine us our thoughts, our words, our actions, our values, our practices.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light, a light, a light unto my way, my path.

Expose everything to the light.

Be in the word.

Let the word speak to you.

Don't just do it as a habit.

Let the word cast light on your soul and on the actions of your life.

Number one, turn from the darkness.

Number two, expose your life to the light.

Number three, forgive all offenders.

Be a forgiving person.

The idea that we can bind bitterness to our life and walk in the light is a mistake.

In fact, bitterness binds us to the darkness.

It's impossible.

It's an impossible condition to seek to be a follower and let your light shine when you abound your soul in the chains of the darkness of bitterness.

It won't work.

But, Brother Dale, you don't know what they did to me.

I know.

I know you were hurt.

I know you were offended.

I know you were abandoned.

I know it wasn't right.

But you have a choice freedom or chains.

That's it.

And the bitterness will chain you in the darkness.

If you let it go, you trust God, you forgive, you give the situation to Him.

You don't have to say they were right.

You don't have to say that it's nothing.

You just let go of the bitterness and forgive and let it go and give it to God, and He'll deal with it.

Go on.

Number four, to turn up the jets, be generous.

Turn to chapter 6 of Matthew.

You're in chapter 5.

Turn over to chapter 6.

Look real quickly, and I'm moving fast.

Look at verse 22 of chapter 6.

The lamp of the body is the eye.

And therefore, if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.

Here's this whole light-darkness thing again, isn't it?

Let's go on.

But if your eye is bad, evil.

The evil eye.

You've heard about that, haven't you?

If your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.

Now, what he's talking about there very interestingly in that passage is that an evil eye is a picture of greed or being stingy.

And a single eye speaks of loving and giving, more or less generous.

I know it may sound strange to you, but to be a light in the world, we need to be generous.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we're only generous with resources or generous with money.

We may not have a lot of that to be generous with, but you can be generous with kindness, you can be generous with time, you can be generous with encouragement, you can be generous in being helpful, you can be generous in lots of ways.

Thinking about somebody else's needs, not just your own.

And when you do, you're a light in the darkness.

Let me hurry.

Number five, to be a light.

Gather with other believers and other disciples on a regular basis.

In John 1, 1, 7, it says that when we have fellowship with one another, we walk in the light.

The idea is that we encourage each other and sharpen one another to be followers of Christ.

In Christianity, there is no book called First and Second Lone Rangers.

And then followed by the short book, Tonno.

It's not in there.

Matter of fact, when the Bible talks about us, it normally talks about us as the whole and not as the individual.

That's hard for Americans.

We're the church.

The scripture says, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

I would say, as iron sharpens iron, one disciple sharpens another.

We inspire one another.

We hold each other to accountable.

We spur each other forward in the faith and the calling that we have in Christ.

These things sharpen the believer.

These things turn up the jets.

Turn from the darkness.

Two, expose yourself to light.

Three, forgive offenders.

Four, be generous with your life.

Number five, gather with other believers to be sharpened.

Jesus' command is that we be light in the darkness, is not the option of Jesus number one.

Oh, I would like for you to kind of think about following my commands.

It would be nice, and I think it would be helpful to you.

Oh, please.

Oh, please.

My Lord is risen and glorious.

And he has commands, and he says, Let your light shine.

I died for you.

I've got promises for you.

I've got plans for you.

Shine.

That's his calling on our lives.

It's one of his commands.

True disciples resist the darkness in our hearts, in our families, in our world.

Don't join the darkness.

Don't surrender to the dark.

Don't compromise with the dark.

Don't betray the kingdom.

Let your light shine.

If we join the darkness, we cannot be true disciples.

And the darkness that is compromised in each and every one of us weakens the church.

The church can become mocked and despised in the world only if we put our light under a basket.

Ultimately, you are going to be an influencer or an influencee.

You're called to influence others with the light that is in you.

The commands of Jesus.

Which Jesus?

This one.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we pray that you would speak to our hearts and grasp our hearts with this truth and the command of Jesus.

Father, I sense that we have full authority to embrace this truth from your word with great energy.

And Father, I feel I make no apology to say that you are our Lord and you have a right to call upon us in this area.

Father, I pray that we would analyze our own lives and not others.

I pray, Father, that we would go from this place and that in this list of your commands we see the command to repent and we see the command to be light.

And Father, we're energized by it.

And may our priorities be transformed by the conviction and direction of your Holy Spirit.

Work in us.

We pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church.