A Short Converation on Matthew 5

Auto-generated from the audio — may contain errors.

0:00 Okay, this time we're in Matthew chapter 5. I'm starting at verse 13. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand they make gives light to the whole house.

0:30 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. Of course this is Jesus talking right at the beginning of the sermon on the Mount, and I've got Carol and Brian here with me to think about this text. Guys, what does it make you think about? Salt and light in the world. It makes me think about in our country, I'm thinking about the church, because that's

1:05 where the people of God gather, like the physical church even, and how it's a big deal. That's why it gets criticized and analyzed, and people hate it, and people love it, and being part of something that people really have strong feelings about is a big deal. I feel like the flavor being the salt, I'm bringing that down to me.

1:45 How do I want that to look? How do I want people to perceive Jesus because of the way I am? I do get a lot of questions about the church and how we're doing things, and what does it look like, and people don't love it? Not what we're doing, but they don't love the church. It's hard. Being in a group of people that all don't feel the same way is hard, and people want a group

2:19 where everybody believes the same, feels the same issues, and I don't want to be part of that. I've never wanted to be around people that think and are the same as me. I want to be around people that are different because it opens your mind to the goodness of God. He can work in so many ways that we are so limited. Being the salt and being the light and the city on a hill, did we get to that part, is

2:56 really important to be represented well because people are going to see our good works and believe in Jesus because of it. So we've got to be doing good works and be living well. The church needs good people out there living well now as much as ever. Not being perfect. We're not going to be perfect. Well you. Maybe me.

3:27 Intent isn't enough. I was peeking over a different translation. The way it says it's interesting, I never thought about it, but salt brings out the flavor in other things. Like if you put salt, like when you brine meat, we talk about salt on meat and you put it in the refrigerator, it sucks all the meat out and it brings it all back in and it gives it more flavor and then light reveals beauty about the things around you and how salt might that can be towards the lowercase E evangelism.

4:00 But it can also, a byproduct of those things has seemed the beauty and tasting the goodness of God around us. That once we have that in our heart and seeing people act that way, we can see things in a different way. We can taste things in a different way. We can see that the kingdom is coming on earth as it doesn't have and it's not here yet, but it's the whole Pauline like here, but not yet. And yeah, yeah, it's totally it's like fascinating that God is still committed to his truth and

4:36 beauty and flavor being in the world through people. Like, yeah, it's crazy that he's still committed to that. Yeah. And through us. Yeah.