All right. So as we celebrate the start
of another 12-month cycle of serving in our community,
serving in our cities that we live, and doing
what Jesus called us to do, which is to live beautiful
lives, here as in heaven, with the mentality of heaven,
but doing so here on earth, we're going to anchor our hearts
on a passage of scripture that comes to us in Matthew 5. Matthew 5. Jesus speaking-- and I'm calling
this message, by the way-- A Grain of Salt and
a Beam of Light. A Grain of Salt and
a Beam of Light. That's good. A Grain of Salt and
a Beam of Light. [MIMICKING LASER] Matthew 5. "You are the salt of the Earth. But if the salt
loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but
to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill
cannot be hidden. 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 your light so
shine before men that they may see
your good works and glorify your
Father in heaven." Now one more scripture
if you would humor me from Psalm chapter 34,
verse 8, where we read, "Oh, taste and see that
the Lord is good." "Blessed", or oh,
how happy, literally in the original language, "is
the man who trusts in Him." Here's my theory. My theory is that
everybody can find what their soul is longing for
in a relationship with Jesus. Yes, amen. To trust in Jesus, to
find your worth in Him, to find your value in Him,
to find your identity in Him, to anchor your life in
Jesus is to come to a place where you look up and
you go, I'm blessed. I trust in Jesus. My soul has found
what it craves. I've tasted and I've seen
that the Lord is good. I love that those are
user sensual descriptives. You just taste and see. To taste and see, right? Because that's vivid. That's not religion, by the way. You don't walk away
from religion and go, I tasted and I saw, right? You're like, I endured
and I sat through it. I survived. But when we think about a
relationship, that's taste. This is no mistake
that the Bible uses this idea of a marriage
to help us understand properly how amazing and beautiful
God wants our relationship with Jesus to be. Because in your
relationship, taste, right? Your lips taste like wine. That's what the Song
of Solomon talks about. I'm intoxicated, I'm enchanted. Your lips are like honey. There's a taste to relationship. Relationship tastes beautiful. And relationship employs
the idea of something your eyes drink in. I know when I've been gone
from my family for awhile, and I finally see my bride,
she's a sight for sore eyes. When I see my babies,
when I see my kids-- Facetime's great, I'm
thankful for Facetime. Pictures are great, I'm
thankful for pictures. I was preaching in Beverly
Hills this week to event-- 2,000 women, believe it or not. [LAUGHTER] Oh, yeah. There was so much
estrogen in that room, I didn't even know
what to do with it. It was me and Lisa Harper. And she's up there
preaching, talking about what happens when
she jumps on a trampoline. And I'm like, I don't want
to know anything about this. I don't want to know
anything about this. I don't want to know
anything about this. La, la, la, la. And I'm preaching, and my
kids were doing something, and their babysitter
was sending pictures. And I'm telling you, it
is amazing to see a photo, but when I got home,
they're a sight for-- when they run into my arms,
when I get a hug them, and kiss them, and
smell their heads. I drink them-- I'll eat
you up, I love you so. Right. God wants you to
love Him like that. God wants you to
have a relationship. He wants to eat you
up, He loves you so You're a sight
for His sore eyes. Taste and see that
the Lord is good. But let me ask you a question. How can the world taste
and see if we're not the salt and light? The world--
sermon-in-a-sentence-- can't taste and see if we're
not the salt and light. And to tell us more
about this, would you help me welcome your campus
pastor to the platform? Yeah. [APPLAUSE] Come on, come on, come on,
come on, come on, come on. [CHEERING] Oh, man. Well, hello! Thank you so much. And thank you, Pastor Levi. You can go ahead
and take a seat. If I haven't had the chance to
meet you yet, my name is Chris. I have the joy of
being the campus pastor here in Kalispell. And my wife Ali and I
absolutely love this house. And it's an honor to share the
platform today, and share out of this passage in Matthew 5. Now, if you know
anything about this, you know this is from
Jesus's most famous sermon that He ever preached--
the Sermon on the Mount. I've heard it said that this
is one of the purest iterations of Christianity of all time. So no big deal. One commentator called
it the Manifesto of the King, which is like
the most epic phrase ever. But what that means for
us is that regardless of your opinion, regardless of
your upbringing, regardless of, really, what you think, if you
are a follower of Jesus, who spoke these words,
these aren't suggestions that we're meant to consider. This is a lifestyle. This is an identity that
we're meant to become. We are meant to be
the salt of the Earth and the light of the world. A grain of salt and a beam
of light in this world. So I want to look
at these analogies, and just kind of explore in
our time, what this looks like for us as we
fight to own this, and then see God
do work through it. Are you ready get to work? Yeah! All right, let's do it. The first analogy
we see is salt. And that really is a
description of the participation we're meant to have. That's the first
point-- participation. Now, to be clear, we
don't really have a choice if we're going to participate. We live here. It's kind of a non-negotiable. But we do get to decide what
our participation in this world will look like. And Jesus gives us what that
is meant to be in verse 13. He said we're meant to
be the salt of the earth. Now, in the times
when Jesus said this, salt had three
distinct purposes. It was a preservative,
believe it or not, they didn't have refrigerators. So they would put salt on their
food to keep it pure and fresh. They used it as an antiseptic. When people would get injured,
they would put salt on wounds to be able to catalyze
the healing process. And it was also a
seasoning like we still use today to enhance flavors. And in those same
ways, we are meant to be salt in the
people's lives around us. We're meant to be preservatives
of the word of God. We're meant to embody what
that looks like in this world. Our culture right now is one
that is so thirsty for meaning and for purpose, where truth is
relative and absolutes, if they exist at all, are
seen to be hateful. And we are designed and meant to
live in contrast to that as we look like the word of God. And so what this
looks like for us, this means that we have
to know the word of God. We have to be crazy
about what God said. We have to tremble
before God's word, and know it because
we can't represent a word that we don't know. And we can't represent
a character of God that we don't know. We need to know that. And as we do that, that has
to transform us so that we can live lives of integrity. This means that when
you're at home by yourself, when you're at home with your
spouse, when you're at work, when you're in
your neighborhood, you are the same person
and you are imperfectly striving to glorify God. That is what we're called to do. It's such a heavy task
that God has put on us. But it's something that
will preserve His truth and His image in this world. And we're also meant to live
as a spiritual antiseptic. You and I both know this,
we are surrounded constantly by people who are hurting,
and broken, and wounded. Even in this room, there's
people who are hurting. And our presence in their
lives, our participation in their story should catalyze
and bring about the healing that God wants for them. We're also meant
to be a seasoning to enhance and flavor up the
lives of the people around us. You should bring a spark
of life wherever you go. Yeah! All right, by show of
hands, how many of you have ever had a food that
was like, crazy bland? Not a little bit--
like, a lot bland? OK. Good, I'm glad you can relate. My wife and I were out to dinner
with some friends a while back, and we had, like,
offensively bland food. Like, I took a bite and it
was like, it's not gross. It's just existing. It's just there. If it was a color it
would have been beige. And in that moment, I
realized the value of salt. I doused that thing and it
brought out the flavors that were in the dish. And in the same
way, you and I need to be people who enhance
the lives of others. [CHEERING] So my question for you is this. Ask yourself this. What is the aftertaste
that you leave behind? When you leave a
group of people, are they thankful
you were there? Are they more optimistic? Are they more hopeful? Or are they more frustrated? More validated in
their discontentment? A little bit of salt
can go a long way in us being the
salt of the Earth and livening up the lives
of the people around us. William Barclay,
he put it this way. He said, "There should
be a sheer sparkle about the Christian. But too often he dresses like a
mourner at a funeral and talks like a specter at a feast. Wherever he is, if he is to
be the salt of the Earth, the Christian must be
the diffuser of joy." I love that so much. I love that picture. All right, anybody have
an essential oils diffuser in your house? All right. Anybody sitting next to
someone who obviously has it? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. So what those do is they
take a little bit of oil and it fills the
volume of the room, and it changes the atmosphere. In the same way, if we
are diffusers of joy, we should, when we step into
a room, change the atmosphere. We should bring
joy wherever we go, and the people that
we're around should be blessed by association. This is how we're made to live. This means that if we're going
to be the salt of the earth inside and outside
of the church, as we're participating
in Kalispell-- going to soccer games,
going to coffee shops, going to the gym-- this means that
wherever we are, we are preserving the
nature, and the character, and the word of God as we go. We're looking for hurting people
to bring hope and healing to. And we bring life
wherever we go. So that's our participation. We are called to be
the salt of the Earth. And that brings me
to the second thing-- our perspective that we're
meant to shine on who God is. And we do that by
bringing light. We shine perspective
by shining light. Think of it this way--
if salt is what we do, then the light we bring
is the outcome of it. And Jesus saying that you
are the light of the world isn't a flippant thing. If you can believe this,
this like blows my mind. I can't even imagine. This is a day where they
didn't have electricity. I know. There's like a collective gasp. It's crazy. And so when He says that you
are the light of the world, He's referring to something that
was so crucial in their day, and so, so important. And in the same way that
salt had three main purposes, so did light. Really, the biggest and
the most well-known really, is that it's life-giving. If you know anything, or you
remember your middle school biology classes
about photosynthesis, the photosynthesis process is
sunlight coming into a plant, giving it nutrients,
and then it allows it to grow and cultivate life. And in the same
way, you and I are called to be life givers
to people around us. We need to be people
who are encouraging, who speak life, who believe
the best about people. Not constantly
posting on Facebook all the things
wrong with the world or gossiping about
people behind their back. Ali and I have kind
of coined a new phrase called "Godly gossip",
where we talk well about people behind their back. It's one of my favorite
things in the world to be able to tell someone,
oh, my gosh, my wife and I were talking about
you, and we just couldn't believe how
humble, and wise, and amaz-- like, that's what
we're called to be. We're called to be
kind, and winsome, and attractive in this world. And as we do we get to shine a
perspective on the heart of God for that person. A different aspect of
light that the church is meant to emulate as we
shine this perspective, is that it's a spectrum. It's a spectrum. Now, this is a cool fact. Did you know that if you take
all the colors of the spectrum of light and shine them in the
same place at the same time, you know what color it gets? You didn't sound
super confident. Anybody try this with
crayons growing up? That's what I did. I was surprised. It turns white. It's amazing. And in the same
way, when all of us bring the different gifting,
and the perspectives, and the proclivities,
and the abilities that God has put inside of
us, as we're individually living as beams of light,
we bring them together and we get to shine the
beautiful white light of Jesus, and it transforms lives. [APPLAUSE] This is how we're meant to live. Not just doing
this individually, but doing this
corporately as well. And the third aspect of light
that we're meant to embody is that it's invasive. It's invasive. This verse that we just read,
it described an experience that they had. They took this lamp and
they put it on a stand, and it shined light for
everyone in the house. And the assumption
that you and I can make from reading that
is that they shined it at nighttime, because they
didn't have electricity and there's not really need
for light during the day. And I think that's
important for us to note, because it's in the
dark, low moments of life that you and I are meant
to shine the brightest. Not when things are
going well, but when things fall to the
ground, when you see hurting people,
when you see grieving people, hopeless people. That's when the light
that's within us should shine a perspective
on God the brightest. This means that when
people are hurting, we are the first to
show up with a meal and tell them that we love them. That God loves them
and He sees them. This means that we're
the first ones when we see a moving truck come
through our neighborhood, to show up, knock on the door,
introduce yourself and say, hey, I'm Chris. I'd love to help you move in. I love moving couches. It's one of my
favorite things to do. True story. This means that
we rock this city and we unleash Christ's
love right where we live. We need to invade the darkness. This means that you and
should be a smiling people. There is scientific data
that talks about the impact that a single smile
can have on somebody. What if we, as a church,
were a smiling church where we went around Kalispell
and just brightened it up as we go about our lives? That's how we're meant to live
as we invade the dark spaces. And as we do, we
shine a perspective on the character of God
that's such a beautiful thing for people to see. And as we do both
of these things-- as we live our lives
as a grain of rice, and we live our lives
as a beam of light, God unleashes His purpose. That's the third thing. We get to tap into
God's ultimate purpose that we were created for. And in this passage at
the end we see this. It says we do all these things. We shine our light
as He's describing. We are the salt of the Earth,
and He talks about what that is and what that's not, what
happens if we do and don't. And then we're the
light of the world, and He talks about
what that looks like. And then He says, "We
do all these things so that men may
see your good deeds and glorify your
Father in Heaven." The good deeds are
how we should live, and the outcome and the motive
for us is the glory of God. And that phrase good deeds,
I did a little bit of digging into the Greek. And there's two words
for good in the Greek. The first is
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],, and it means good in quality. Like, that's a good table. That's a good chair. That's not the word that's used. It's [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],,
which is the second word, and it means it's not
only good in quality, but it's also attractive,
and winsome, and beautiful. That is how we're meant
to live our lives. We're meant to be so beautiful,
so attractive to people, so winsome, not so that
we win people to us, but so that we
win people to God. [CHEERING] We're meant to live lives
that are so great, not so people think we
are great, but so they know that our God is great. And when we do this,
He is glorified. That's why we exist. That's why we live. We live for His glory, we
were saved for His glory, we serve for His glory. And when we own this,
people can see who God is, and they can taste and see,
and put their faith in Him and be the blessed ones that
our Bible has talked about. It's a huge responsibility. So my question for you is,
how is that going so far? [INAUDIBLE] It's hard. Consider this. If how you live your
life was the only picture of God that someone ever had,
of how He loves, of if He loves, of how intimately He
cares for someone, of how He fights for people,
if somebody watched your life and gathered conclusions
about the God that you serve, would they worship him? Would they be able to
see your good deeds and then glorify your
Father in Heaven, or would they walk in
the opposite direction? Brennan Manning famously
put it this way. He said, "The greatest single
cause of atheism in the world today is Christians
who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and
then walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an
unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." People see too many Christians
not being salt and not being light. They see too many Christians
either participating in the wrong way, in a way
that doesn't honor God, or they see them representing
a heart that doesn't actually belong to God, but
they ascribe it to Him because of people who
claim to be followers of Jesus. Let that never be said of us. My prayer for our
church is that we would be a people who own
this heavy responsibility of glorifying God as we
live lives of salt and light as we honor Him. Isaiah 58 talks about both what
it looks like and the outcome as we live this out. I want to speak this over us. Isaiah said, "If you
pour yourself out for the hungry", Fresh Life,
"if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy
the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in
the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will
guide you continually and satisfy your desire
in scorched places, and make your bones strong. You shall be like
a watered garden. Like a spring of water
whose waters do not fail. Your ancient ruins
shall be rebuilt. You shall raise
up the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repairer
of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in." Fresh Life, let this be us. Let us own this responsibility. Let us rise into the calling
that God has given us as a church, as believers,
as followers of Him, and watch as His
glory transforms His valley and beyond. Amen? Amen! [CHEERING] Amen. Back to you, Pastor. Come on. Hey, let's honor
these men of God who have done such a
great job this weekend. Honestly, we love
these campus pastors. These men and their wives who
lead out across the church. Jennie and I are so grateful
to collaborate with them. We have a great team. Never better than right now. We've spent a lot of
time with them this year, and just really love, love,
love, love what God is doing. It's just incredible
to get to see the talent and spirit of all
these leaders in this house. Amen? So we want that participation,
we want that perspective, and we want that purpose
to tap into that. Because the world
can't taste and see if we are not salt and light. And that's why to Jesus'
followers, He goes, don't be don't be a light
hidden under a bucket. That's ridiculous. You're meant to be
a city on a hill. The brightness of light,
and how far that can shine. You think about during
World War II when there was the blackout period. Something like eight
months in England where there were just
bombing runs after bombing runs from the Germans. And so everyone did
what they needed to do. They shut the curtains,
they shut the lights out. Because they realized
that a single candle can shine for miles. There's this power in light. Your light is meant to shine. Your salt is meant to get out. Now, you think
about how cool it is when we read a passage
like this and we discover the origin of some of
those phrases that you hear. Because you might hear language
from the Bible in society. Someone might go,
how's that dude? That dude? Oh, that guy's legit. For real? Yeah, salt of the Earth. Why do we say that? It's because of Jesus. You're supposed to be
the salt of the Earth. The reason we use that
phrase is because Jesus said that's what His followers
are meant to look like. So the great compliment
we would give to someone is actually what Jesus said
His people should be like. It is an honor to be trusted
with the name of Jesus. Have you ever seen someone at
a restaurant spill the salt? You ever see that happen? What do they do? If they're a real weirdo,
they'll crawl under the table and come out the other side. You ever see someone
that hardcore? That's actually a thing. They'll actually
crawl under the table. But most people would just
grab a little bit of it, and what do you do? [INAUDIBLE] You want to know why? Judas Iscariot supposedly
spilled the salt at the Last Supper. And in Leonardo's da
Vinci's famous painting of The Last Supper,
if you look closely, there is a spilled salt
container on the table. And it was Leonardo
da Vinci's way of saying that Judas
was saying to Jesus, no, I won't do what
you called me to do. I'm not going to be the salt
like you've called me to be. And his turning over of the salt
on his way out to betray Him was his way of
saying, I'm not going to take the great commission,
I'm not going to follow you. I'm doing my own thing. It's real possible to not follow
Jesus' command to be the salt. But I think that Leonardo
kind of had it wrong. I think the way to
disregard Jesus's orders isn't to spill the salt, it's to
keep the salt in the container. There's this big
trend these days, it's popping up all over the
country, and its people who lie in salt tanks. And just float around. You want to go float
in the salt tank? And I'm like, no. I actually really, really,
really don't want to do that. I think that's actually all
too often a perfect picture of the church. We've got this
precious Gospel message and we're just
rolling around in it. We're just floating
around in it. Isn't it so great to be saved? Yeah, let's have
another potluck. Pass the KFC, brother, right? While the world's out
there going to hell, we're just up in here
drinking our own bathwater. I'm telling you something. The way to honor Jesus is to
get the salt out of the tank. The way to honor Jesus is to
get the salt out into the world. The way to honor God
is to get the salt where it's meant to go. Y'all. Y'all. That's how we can
be worth our salt. Yeah. Do you know that in
the Roman Empire, salt was a part of
the compensation package for a soldier? In fact, they were
given a solarium every time they were paid. Every time your
employer gives you your salary, that's our version
of solarium, which translated directly just means salt money. So if someone wasn't
worth their salt, it means they didn't
pull freight in the army. We all need to be
doing our part to get the salt out of the tank,
or we're not worth our salt. Come on, He gave us his
love, we've tasted and seen, we've been set free, we have His
spirit, He's given us His name. Let's get that salt
out of the tank. Let's love, let's serve,
let's continue to give. It's good for the world. It's also good for us. They say an act of kindness
done for someone else releases the exact same
things into your bloodstream that antidepressants do. Wow. Wow. So it will make us feel better
to live a life of service and generosity. You walk away, like,
you might be tired, you might be a little bit
behind when you go back to-- I'm telling you, you're
going to feel better. You've done something
for someone else. I want to close our
time out with a verse from the book of Ephesians that
I preached one time at Easter. And I love it so much because
it's an invitation to the dead to live. It's a great Easter text, right? An invitation to
the dead to live, which is so great
on so many levels. But here's what Paul says
in Ephesians chapter five. He says, "Awake, you who sleep. Arise from the dead, and
Christ will give you light." You know, it's
deadness on the inside that was the reason God
sent His Son to this world. We've said it this
way before, Jesus didn't come to
make bad men good, He came so dead men could live. Yes. Amen. And when they come to life,
when you come to life, when I come to life
in Christ, we taste and we see that He is good. It's I was dead
and I am now alive. I was looking for
value, now I found it. I was thirsty,
but now I've found what I was aching for
all along, and I taste and I see that you are good. And the way God gets us there
is He puts people in our lives who are that salt and
who are that light, so that we can come
to life, which He equates with seeing the light. "Awake from your deadness and
Christ will give you light." Coming to know Jesus where
you once thought this, but now you see Him as
lovely, see Him as worthy, it's seeing the light. Seeing the light. I see what I didn't see before. I now see-- I saw the light. That's salvation. We-- listen to me-- are out there in the
world to be the salt so the world can see the light. Yes. There's one last way that
the salt shows up in our day. And it's in little
tubes like this. It's actually
ammonia, but we call it smelling salt. When a
football player gets knocked down, when a wrestler just
doesn't have any more, power lifter. [GROANS] Oh, God-- [SNIFFING] [LAUGHTER] Never done that before. The salt does no good. Jesus, help me. The salt does no
good in the tube. It's got to get out. If we don't spill the salt,
the world can't see the light. So that's our commission. That's our responsibility. Man, that's intense. That's our honor. It's mostly up in here. And that's why we got to
live a lifestyle rocking this city in Jesus' name. Would you pray with me? Father, we're grateful-- hop up
to your feet, every location, if you're sitting. Thank you, Jesus, for calling
us to be a city set on a hill, to be that light
shining, to be that salt. And Jesus, we recognize
that we can't be light if we never been lit. And so we ask, as
your followers, for you to light us
afresh with your fire. We know salvation brings us
into a relationship with you, but you said if
we ask the Father, you'll give us the
filling of the Spirit. So I just want to give space
and time in our service at this moment-- I feel led to just say, have
you come to Jesus as Savior, but never received that promise
of the Father of the Spirit's power on your life to cause
you to shine brightly? If so, this is a
moment in time we'd like to make available
for you to ask the Lord to give you a fresh
filling of the Holy Spirit. You can't be that light
if you've never been lit. So here's a moment
in time for you say, I would like the Holy Spirit
to come upon me in a new way. To give me my gifts,
to give me strength, to help me to see
the opportunities, to give me a divine enabling. There comes a moment in time
when you just realize that, and you say, I want that
Holy Spirit power on my life. It's not weird, it's not,
like, some super creepy thing. It's divine, but it's natural. Supernatural. And so here in this moment,
if you're a believer and you would like for God to
fill you with His Holy Spirit, to give you that light,
to give you that strength, can I just ask that you just
raise a hand up in the air? Or if you've been given
that gift you've asked for, but you'd like to be refilled,
which is my prayer every day and every time I preach, to
be refilled with the Spirit, could you just raise
your hands to the Lord as an expression
of you saying, I want God to fill me
with His Holy Spirit. Light us on fire so that
the world could see us burn. We ask this, Jesus,
because you said we should. You said, a father who is
good will give good gifts to his kids, even earthly dads. And you are, Heavenly Father,
how much more will you be willing to give us
the Spirit if we ask? So we ask for you to
give us the Holy Spirit. We ask for your to set
our hearts on fire. We ask for you to do what
but only you can do deep down in the core of our being. Help us to once again taste
and see that you are good. To walk in the blessing that
is the property of those who trust in you. Thank you, Jesus.
