You know, speak to Christians about being salt and light in a dark world, why that is both challenging but also, in my opinion, kind of fun and kind of easy right now because we live in dark days. So it's not that hard if you just ran the same plays from the Bible. You'd stand out in a lot of ways, no? Yeah, no, I think I'm always thankful.
You know, we always sometimes use the phrasing, you know, you're called to be a salt and light. You're not called to be a salt and light. Jesus tells you, you are.
are. So he doesn't say, go be a salt and light. So even sometimes we use that vernacular. Hey, everyone, go be a salt and light out in the world today.
Jesus isn't looking at people and telling them to be something they're not. He's looking at them saying, you are, you know, I'm not a car guy. If you asked me to point out a radiator, I'd be like, Google, YouTube, you know, he's not telling Johnny or Devanis to become a car guy. He's telling me what I am.
I am salt and I am light, which really exposes a few fundamental truths. Jesus is assuming. That the Christian lives in a context of darkness, pollution, decay, and just total sin.
He's not assuming Christians are ever reaching this glorified entity where we all live together. He's assuming, because we're salt, that we are going to be mingled with a substance that is dying. And salt in the New Testament functions for a few things. It functions as a preventative for decay. But not only that, you know.
People would say a guy is not worth his salt because it also functioned to provoke thirst. So the Christian lives in a certain society and people watch them live when they have a peace that surpasses all understanding and they want what the Christian has. So it prevents decay, but it provokes thirst. And when Jesus tells us that we're salt, he's assuming that we are not huddled as Christians, but we're out in the world.
So salt is the Christian's conduct of how they live. And I think two main things in the New Testament where that's most distinctly manifested repeatedly is in the Christian sexual purity. We already mentioned this, seven out of the eight vice list.
It talks about how when a Christian is conducting himself in contrast to the unsaved world, it's that they walk in purity. And then not only is it sexual purity, it's the way that they employ their tongue. Because in James, in Ephesians, all those other categories, one of the ways that people are going to look at Christians and say, man, they're different. The salt element of it is this guy talks different.
So far from this like new thing, and this is maybe just a little bit of a rant, far from Christians going, eh, it's fine. I can cuss, you know, whatever. It's not that big of a deal.
It's all the heart, whatever. It's just a cultural thing. Jesus in the scripture. And throughout the entirety of the New Testament says that one of the distinctive marks of a salty Christian is they talk different from the world. And so in Ephesians 4 says, let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth.
And then it says that when we talk in this manner, do you know what happens? We grieve the Holy Spirit. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you are sealed. Christians grieve God when they think they can talk like the world talks.
So that'd be the salt, which is just your Christian context. And then light is the transforming power of the gospel. So light exposes the darkness just by very definition.
If you're in a dark house and there's a single match, it's going to expose how dark the world really is. But not only does it expose the darkness, it transforms the darkness because light is actually the verbal testimony. testimony of who God is. We've talked about this line before, preach the gospel and if necessary, use words.
That element that's often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi is the salty element where our life preaches a strong sermon. That is true. But Jesus tells us that we are not only salt, but we are light and light necessarily includes this element of verbal testimony. Yes.
to who God is because then it says, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. How are they gonna know who to glorify if we're not telling them the reason we are who we are is because of the work of our Father in heaven, which necessitates verbal proclamation. So light transforms the darkness and it exposes the darkness and then it glorifies the Son. And so that's the way, if we're to live in a way that glorifies God, We're to remember that we are a salt and light and I think one of the reasons that maybe just finally that that prevents us from Operating that way is I would put it in the realm of wrong placement Wrong priorities and wrong motives if you're going back to wrong placement Jesus tells us that we're a light, you know lights aren't supposed to gather together Candlesticks don't gather in the same room and just talk about how dark the world is.
We're to be a city set on a... Hill. Hill. which means that we are to be strategically located in areas of darkness. So Christians aren't to wholly huddle and shake their heads and wag their fingers at how lost the world is.
They are to go into the world to be mingled with the decaying and just totally sinful world that they're in to expose the darkness, transform the darkness. So it's wrong placement, wrong priorities in the sense where one of the ways that one of the things that prevents me from being a salt and light is my lack of conformity to Jesus Christ. So we don't have to go try to be something.
If we want to be more salty and more light, we need to seek to be increasingly transformed into the image of Christ. And then the wrong priority would be the purpose of being a salt and light, which is our identity, is not so that they may see your good works and glorify you. It's so that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven.
So when people try to shine bright. to receive the glory, they have the wrong priority because people aren't attracted to the bulb. They're attracted to the light, or bugs are, to the light that the bulb gives off.
And sometimes we can think, oh, people are drawn to me. No, they're drawn to Christ in us, which is supposed to rebound to his glory. So we are a salt and light. We don't have to become anything.
We have to be who we are in Christ through his spirit, through his power.