Best Sermon Ever: Salt and Light

(Someone in congregation yells out a “Woo”) Already we got a woo? Nice! Here we go. Hi family. Good to see you all third service. Guess what you get? All the bonus material. Then there's some bonus material for this message. So, we have a long way to go and a very short amount of time to get there. But before we go get started today, I want to give you a couple of celebrations for us. First of all, as of this week, we are officially closing our Restart program. The reason that we're closing it is because the world is reopening and businesses are back functioning again, and things are good. So, I wanted to give you guys just a bit of a celebration if you don't know what Restart is. Restart is a fund that we started a while back as we started to see local businesses struggling and we wanted to respond in a way that was actually helpful. So, what we did was we started a fund that you guys gave to, and we took 100% of that money and put it towards helping local businesses survive through the period of the pandemic. We gave a grand total of $205,944 (Congregation clapping) which is amazing, and we helped 15 different businesses which was also really amazing! (More clapping)

I wanted to give you three sections of little thank you notes that people sent that I think really capture  what our heart was. Because when you just give people a bunch of money, it’s not always helpful. We wanted to understand and build relationship with them, which is what we were able to do, and find out where they were actually pinched. I'll give you an example why this matters because the PPP money from the government, which was a great thing, was only allowed to be spent for employees, right? Well, the problem was there were a lot of business owners that sold homes or got six months behind on their mortgage because they were paying out of their own pocket to keep their employees paid, but they couldn't actually take that money and put it back into their world. Does that make sense? So, it made it hard because it was limited. We were able to build a relationship with them and go, oh, that's where you're at. Okay. We can take care of that. So, it was actually really cool to build those kinds of relationships. Here's one, “Hello. I just wanted to reach out and say, thank you for allowing us to participate in the Restart program”. By the way, this is from Meadow's Early Learning Center. “As a small business here in Parker, it's been critical in enabling us to be operational as a childcare center. When we are running at full capacity, we help the entire community of Parker and beyond by providing quality educational care for children while their families are working, this pandemic is something that none of us had anticipated or even dreamed of. However, we have learned so much from this experience and grown as a community, I will never be able to articulate our gratitude for your generosity fully, but please know that your assistance has helped our staff of 25 and over 100 Parker families. Thank you again for your generosity and dedication to the Parker community”. So, here's one from All-In-One contractors. Here's what it says, “It's such an incredible blessing. I just do not have words. It is coming at such an incredible time. I'm sitting in Arizona with my dad. We just put him in hospice and just sitting and waiting. He should see his Jesus soon, but that has been super heavy”. By the way, we all understand that this isn't just about business owners, struggling with businesses. This is about life still happening around us for a lot of people. Here's what it says, “This has been super heavy. So, this really lightens the burden of thinking on the financial piece of everything at home. Thank you. And please pass along our gratitude”. Here's one from Petite Parker, which is down on main street. Here's what it says. I'm just going to read a paragraph because it's a long email. “Hello, and apologies for taking so long to thank you. All of you. I've been thinking and thinking of what to say, but nothing seems sufficient enough to express how I feel and how thankful I am after submitting the application. I received a card that said you were all praying for me, and I cried when I read that. It meant so much to me. I hung it up on my wall to look at every day so I could read its message, for with God, nothing shall be impossible”. Which that's what we wanted to accomplish, right? That we would represent Jesus well in our community. (Congregation clapping) So that's really cool, and I just wanted to share that with you guys. The other thing that I wanted to share with you guys is that we have just passed the half million-dollar mark in the Chest of Joash, which is awesome! (Congregation clapping) If you don't know what the Chest of Joash is, the Chest of Joash was a fund that we started. 100% of the money that's given to the Chest of Joash goes to retired building debt. The reason is because once that debt is retired, the money we put into our mortgage payment can be reinvested into ministry and into the community, which is really where our heart is. So, there's a chest out in the lobby right now, it’s not very creative. There’s a sign on it that says Chest of Joash. For the record, it’s not actually Joash's chest. We found it on Facebook marketplace, but I think it was Bill's chest to be honest with you. What it’s there for is if you have change in your pocket, or if you have a cup holder in your car, that's full of change. You're like, ”I can't even put a drink here because there’s so much change”. I have a great place for you to put it. Just come by and drop it in the Chest of Joash. All of that money that's given to that goes to retired debt. Here's the thing. Over half a million dollars paid down on the building debt is great. What's really exciting about it is that over the life of the loan, that saves us well over $2 million in interest, and that's a celebration! (Congregation clapping) So, that's two and a half million dollars that we didn't have to pay to a bank. We get to pay that money back. That money gets to go back into ministry. That's very exciting so, well done Southeast family on both of those! I don't know if you guys know, but there's a guy who is a coordinator for all faith leader functions in the state of Colorado. He was talking with Tom and he's like, “Man, I've never heard of this, and I don't know of another church that's even thinking about something like this”. I'm like bummer, but cool. It's a bummer that more churches didn't step on and do something like that to help the community, but at the same time God has been super faithful to us. Because of that, we're not blessed to pad our bank account. We're blessed to be able to be a blessing conduit into the lives of people around us. So, we did, and it was awesome! Good job, Southeast family.

We are going to cover this morning, a very small passage of scripture, only four verses. We are going to just pull it apart and pull it apart and pull it apart. Are you guys ready to work? We are going to get into some fun stuff today. This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible because it's one of those passages that is most misunderstood. I think it’s because if you don't understand the context of what's going on and, I want to keep saying this, but you need to hear me say it again. Context matters, exclamation point! Context matters, exclamation point! You will always need to remember that.

Now we're going to talk about salt and light. This is the passage from which we get the phrase “That guy's just salt of the Earth”. Those are salt of the Earth people. If you've heard that, and typically what we mean when we say that is they're honest, what you see is what you get and there's no false with them. They're down to Earth. Their word is their bond. There's nothing wrong celebrating those kinds of people. There are far too few people like that in our culture, right? However, that is not what Jesus is talking about here. If we don't get this, we really miss the broader message of what Jesus is trying to communicate. So, I want to talk to you all this morning about salt, light, cities on a hill, and what in the world is that talking about? We're going to start in Matthew 5:13. Here we go. “You are the salt of the Earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they put it  on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven”. Now catch that phrase because later on, there's a phrase that we like to cling to, where Jesus is talking about giving. He says, “Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”. That's the one that we seem to want to hang onto. People say, “Dude, it has to be a secret, or it doesn't even count. No one knows it’s a secret”. What Jesus says is, “Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and glorify your God, your Father who's in heaven”. That's important for us to catch because your faith isn't a secret thing. We try to make it a thing (Pastor pretending to talk under his breath) saying, “I believe. I believe Jesus. It's cool, right”? We do that when we don't really want to talk about it. Faith is cool. (Congregation quietly chuckling) Here's the thing, your faith isn't a secret thing. It's not a secret thing. Your faith is fundamental and central to who you are as a kingdom resident. If we don't understand that, then we start to misrepresent what it means to walk with Jesus. So, we have to get that right! 

Now, there are three metaphors in this passage. Salt, light, and a city on a hill. I want to pull these metaphors apart and help us understand. We're going to spend the most time on salt because I think it's the most misunderstood of all the metaphors. We're going to spend the most time on that, but I think this is actually really, really important. Let's look at some pictures, okay? First picture. That's salt. It's actually salt from the Dead Sea. Now, yeah, this salt is Bonafede. The Dead Sea is a fascinating place in Israel. If you go to Israel, you have to go to the Dead Sea and you have to swim in the Dead Sea. There are rules. You can't even get out of the country. (Pastor says jokingly, but also serious) Some of the questions you’re asked, “Are you okay? Are you a criminal? Did you swim in the Dead Sea”? Yes? “Okay, you can get on a plane”. What I love about the Dead Sea is that you can't sink in the Dead Sea. Here's why. The ocean is between, depending on where you're at in the ocean, and I don’t know if you know this, but overall, the ocean is a really big place, but it’s between 6% and 8% salt. We call that saltwater. That's nasty and you don't want to drink it. It's got a lot of salt in it and fish poop. You also don't want to drink it because of that. Because there's a lot of salt, it's makes you thirsty, and it dries out your mouth. Horrible! You don't want to drink salt water at 8% salt, that's bad, okay? The Dead Sea is 36% salt. It's the lowest place on Earth, so all the water flows into it, it's literally the drain of the world. It's the lowest place. All the water flows down into it. Nothing flows out of it because gravity has no place to take it. It's 1300 feet below sea level. It's so salty that you can't sink in it. Now what you can do is know where all your hangnails are. You will know where every hangnail is, and pro tip for you women, don't shave your legs the day you go into the dead sea, because you'll know that you did, right? It stings! If you have any scratches on your legs or your arms, it stings! Now, the interesting thing is the next day, all those sores are gone. They're not healing, they're gone, because it just heals like that. Because of this, the mud from the Dead Sea today gets packaged and shipped all over the world to be used for facial mud packs. The properties are good for the skin. It tightens the skin up and makes it look good. It's pretty awesome stuff.

Because of the salt content, it's got these healing properties and what happens is people go to the Dead Sea and try to walk into it, just like you would go into any other body of water. They just start weighting in, right? Then eventually you hit a point that’s still way too shallow, but all of a sudden you go, boop, and you fall forward, and you can't roll yourself over. So, for those of us that are tour guides, it is awesome to not say anything. I just watch them, and people ask, “What are you laughing at”? I just say that I don't know anything. Then once the bubble stopped, we'd roll them over. (Pastor joking)That's kind of how that goes. The rule of the Dead Sea is you have to back into the Dead Sea and then you kind of float out like this. (Pastor giving an illustration on stage) You don't just waltz into the Dead Sea. You can't because you can't sink in the Dead Sea because there's so much salt. It's ridiculous! To this day, they mine salt at the Dead Sea. There are multiple veins of salt at the Dead Sea that they're working on. One of those veins has enough salt in it to supply the entire world's population with salt for 60 years. One of the many veins of salt that are the Dead Sea. There’s salt! I don't know if I made that point. There's a lot of salt!

There's a running joke in the Middle East between the Arabs and the Israelis. They say leave it to the God of the Israelis to take them to the one part of the world where there's no oil. In the Middle East, there's no oil, right? The Arabs control this huge oil this is a big thing. There's no oil in Israel, not much really to mine at all, but there's a lot of salt to which you ask, “Why are you telling me all of this stuff about salt”? For us, salt is cheap, right? You can buy it by the truckload for a dollar. Salt is cheap! It's not expensive anymore. However, in the first century, salt was one of the most valuable minerals on the planet. In fact, salt was so valuable that they paid people in salt. They called it a solarium. We get our word salary from it, make sense? They paid people in salt. It was that valuable. In fact, every Roman soldier would have a pouch on their belt that had salt in it for a really important reason. The soldiers spent most of their time outside. So, anybody that works outside in the Middle East needs to have salt because it's so dry. We think Denver's dry. It's so dry there that you can sweat and not know it. It literally evaporates off of you faster than you feel wet. It's that dry. So, they would eat salt to replace the electrolytes in their system. Does that make sense? Salt was really important!

I've been with people in Israel that have gotten dehydrated, it comes on you fast, and it is a nightmare! It is a nightmare to recover because it's just that everything around you in that whole area just wants to dry you out constantly. So, if you get dehydrated, you can't drink enough liquid to get rehydrated. It's not like our Eastern seaboard, right? Where you take a shower and dry off, and then you get out of the shower, and you're wet again. It's not like that. It's not 110% humidity. What even is that? That's like you are walking around in a fishbowl. 110, how could it be more than… I'm convinced that if the pilgrims had landed on the California coast, the Eastern seaboard would have never been populated. (Congregation laughing, then Pastor continuing to joke) I would have gotten to a point where I’d say, “Man, this is terrible! I'm going back!” I think they kept moving West, not because they were explorers though, but because they were sick of the humidity. They were like, “There's got to be something better! This has to get better. God, if this is the land you gave us, we don't think you like us very much”. Humidity's terrible, right? Not like the exact opposite, but it’s the polar opposite of that at the Dead Sea.  Dry, dry, dry, dry, dry! So, salt is really, really important and it's super valuable! So, let me show you a map. This is up in the top right corner. That's the Dead Sea. This is the shoreline of the Dead Sea, the Western shoreline. If you come along the bottom here, there's a yellow dot or yellow square there that says, “Zohar Brook”. That Brook comes through, what's called, “Wadi Zohar”.  Wadi Zohar is a canyon, in the Wadi was what's called the Old Salt Highway.

These wadis are really important because there's no topsoil in this part of the world. So, when it rains, the rare times when it rains, all the water rushes down into the wadis and then rushes out to Jordan river, into the Dead Sea. Now, if you ever want to see something spectacular, go on YouTube and search for Wadi floods. They're powerful! They move cars. They say that every year, people in Israel die from Wadi floods. They do because they don't think it can't be that big of a deal. What they say is, if you hear the water in a Wadi, you have seven seconds to get out of the wadi or you're dead. People don't take it very seriously, and so they wind up always messing with it.

These Wadis are really significant coming out of the Dead Sea, in the next photo, there is a dotted line. That's Wadi Zohar, and it goes from the bottom of the Dead Sea up to “Arad” on the ridge top. It's on the top of the mountain range there. So, you climb up, up, up, up, up, get to Arad, then that salt is put on camels. It's shipped out to the Mediterranean Sea and then shipped all over the Roman Empire. So, Israel is incredibly important because of its salt. Salt is the most valuable, most precious commodity that's there, and Jesus says, “You are the salt of the world”. The equivalent in our world because we don't have a frame of reference for it, would be this. “You are the diamonds of the world”. When he says that, when he says salt, in our culture, we don’t have a frame of reference for it. Salt isn’t viewed as valuable. For them, they're like, oh, that means I'm really, really significant and valuable.

I'll give you an illustration. I had this girl way back when I was in youth ministry. I had this girl that was great. She loved Jesus, super awesome girl. She was in our discipleship group. She didn't have a lot of self-confidence, so she pretty much dated anybody that would smile at her. It turns out that isn’t an effective way to live life and she couldn't understand why she kept getting her heart broken. We were talking about it, and the Lord gave me this illustration for her that I've used a ton over the years because it's extremely appropriate. When I started dating my wife, we started dating my freshman year of college. So, I had just come out of high school, and she had been in college for two years. So, she's much older than me. (Congregation laughing) I'm just joking. She's only a year and four months older than me, but she's two years ahead of me in school because she is much smarter than me. That's true. We started dating and I was like, ”Man, I'm dating this older woman”! The maturity level between a person coming out of high school and a person who's been out of high school for a couple of years is vast. There's a maturity growth curve there that happens quick when you're living on your own. So, when I got there, I just followed her around like a whipped puppy. I did anything she’d say. Here's what I learned from her.  I knew about the engagement ring, there's an engagement ring. When you start dating and then you get engaged, that ring is a promise that you're going to get married, right? What I learned about from her that I didn't know, was about the promise ring. The promise ring is a promise that we're going get engaged as a promise to be married. I thought, “What’s before that? Dinner and a movie?” I don’t know! A movie is a promise to get the promise ring, that’s a promise to get engaged, as a promise to get married. I think this is a racket created by jewelers just to get you to spend more money, but I had to have a promise ring! I had to. She's an older woman, she expects things, you know? She's worth all these nice things to me.

I had worked for two summers at a grocery store for $4.15 an hour. So, I was loaded. (Pastor and congregation start laughing) I walked into the jeweler with my big wad of cash in my pocket. I have to be honest with you. I felt profiled. (Congregation chuckling quietly) The weird thing is they weren't even willing to show me the big diamonds. There was one diamond that was two and a half carrots. I asked, “How much is that one? $10,000. Let's go all the way down to the other end. How much is this tiny one with a little gold band?” You could almost see the diamond without a looking glass. It was there. “How much is that one”? They said $53. “Box it up”! (Congregation laughing harder and clapping) Ha, ha, ha.

That's what I can afford. Why? Because it's what most everybody could afford. And that's where I was at in my life. The thing is that the $10,000 diamond was worth so much that very few people could ever afford it. This one I picked anybody could afford it because it wasn't worth anything. It was nothing. And what the Lord gave me for this girl is, here's the thing, I said to the girl in youth group, “You’re a two and a half carat diamond, and you’ve got to start living like it, because you're treating yourself like everybody can afford you, and what God says is that they can’t.  You are the diamonds of the world. You are so precious. You are so valuable and important. You matter so much”. When God made you, he stood back and said, “Oh. My. Me! I did a good thing! I amazed myself with this one! Oh, wow. Wow! Look at that! Look at that”! If you look at the story of creation, mankind is the crowning achievement of creation. It just builds more and more complex, more beautiful, and more wonderful in this crowning achievement as woman. Can I get a witness from my sisters? (Congregation cheers and claps) God makes man, and says, “That's awesome, but I think I can do one better”.

Read Genesis 3 before you get too excited about that. Oh, that was good. (Pastor laughing) I don't want emails. That one was funny. I don't care who you are. That was funny, okay? Now, God looks at mankind and says, “Oh my goodness! You are the diamonds! You are the most precious thing in creation”. The problem for you and I is that we live in a world that tries to get us to believe that we are the sum total of our mistakes. You're not!  You are what God says you are. What God says you are is the truth, everything else is a lie. The problem for us is that we want to get all wrapped up in believing  that we're unworthy, we're awful, we’ll never measure up, we're not good enough. We're not! No, no, no, no! That's the world's message to people. What God says is, “Yeah, you sin, but do you know who you are”? We say yes to Jesus, because we want to get out of hell or because we want to get into heaven or some variation or combination of those, but do you understand that the gospel is an invitation, not just to salvation, not only to salvation, but to a life with its fullest potential? The gospel, the message of the kingdom is this invitation to maximize what God made you when he was so enamored with you, that he would say, “Look at you. You're a diamond”.

Now, the next metaphor that he uses is light. So, let's take a look at this lamp. Oh sorry, this is the salt highway today. We hike it. When we come to Israel, come to Israel with me, we'll hike it. Not all of it, because that would kill us if we hiked all of it. If you look to the right, there's remains of an old Roman Fort that was there to protect that road because that road was so important, it was so valuable. Funny  story. I don't have time for this, but where are we going to go? Funny story. I took a group of people down in there and on the top that day it had set a new record for the hottest temperature for that day in history, 115 degrees Fahrenheit. So, we head down there and those rock walls, number one, block all breeze, and number two, they absorb the sun. So, they act like a convection oven. It was like 125 degrees down in the canyon, and I was like, this is incredible because one of the things that we do in the desert, which is this part of our desert section of our trip. I mean, it's not part of the tropical part, as you can see. One of the things that we do is that we talk about all the biblical metaphors about God and his people that raise out of the desert, and why they are important, right? This one in this particular, we talk about the importance of being in the shade, and at 125 degrees and no breeze, you learn the value of shade really quick! It’s just beautiful, and now every time I take people down there, I pray for just blistering heat. It’s awesome! People hate it, they complain and say it’s horrible. I'm like, “Well, look at you, little Israelite. Let's send snakes on you”. What's funny is that by the end of the trip, and we have an amazing trip, every day is something spectacular, but by the end of the trip, they all want to go back to this place because it becomes so hard, but so meaningful. The most meaningful place of the whole trip. There's stuff, there's an intimacy that we get with God that only suffering teaches us. This is it though. This is the Old Salt Highway, nothing fancy about it, but it was super important, okay?

Next photo. This is a lamp. You are a lamp. Nobody lights a lamp and puts it under a basket. It’s a first century lamp. You put olive oil in the back end, and then there's a wick of some kind that comes out of the spout. Then those are lit and put on a lamp. The reason why they're elevated is because the higher that they get, the more light you can get cast with less lamps in the room, right? So one lamp can actually do a lot when it's elevated. What Jesus says is, “Nobody lights a lamp and puts it under a basket”. That would be dumb. Next photo. Please forgive the cosplay. (The act of dressing up like a character) What they do is they light the lamp and they put it on a stand so that the light illumines everything around it, which is exactly what you're supposed to do. Now, here's the thing, light isn't you being right. Light is you revealing where God is. So, if you act in a way that is not consistent with the character of God, then you're being darkness, not light.

Next picture. The third metaphor is the city on a hill. There are a number of examples that Jesus has to point to, but what I want you to know is a rabbi will never use a metaphor without having something to point at. He won't ask you to conceptually go there in your head. He's going to point at something. So, salt and the lamp and the city on a hill, those are all things that people will be able to see right where he's at teaching, somehow, some way. Now, these are examples that are very visible from the Mount of Beatitudes, where we believe that story happened. This is one example. This is the Sea of Galilee, by the way, on the bottom. These are cities that are on the other side of the lake. We call that the Decapolis today, right? The other side. Next photo. Here's another one. There's that valley right in the middle of the photo, to the left. There's a clump of trees, left of center. That's the Church of the Beatitudes. That's where they believe that this actually took place. Just to give you perspective, that city on the top of the hill, there is a city named Savad. Savad is the world Kabbalahism capitol today. Savad is there in the first century is very important, that would be another example. Here's another example. Next photo. This city is Tiberius, which is just less than a mile away from where they're at. You have to go around the lake to get there. So, for them, eye shot it's closer than a mile. It's really close, it's really visible. Tiberius is where Herod Antipas puts his capital later on in his reign as Tetrarch. Which one is it? Well, it may be all of them. The point is that the City on a Hill is visible. Everybody can see it forever. The city is not something that you keep hidden. You can't. A city on a hill is visible to everyone. A city, especially at night is a collection of lights. So, as you and I become the light of the world, we live into the truth of our nature. We're the most valuable things on the planet. You're not a mistake. You weren't a whoops, you're precious. You're valuable. You matter! As we live into that truth, we become the light to the world and together as a community, you and I, we start looking a whole lot like the kingdom of God.

There's a rabbinic thought that the rabbis teach this. In the beginning, God separated light from darkness. This is now our job. This is what they teach. Our job is to separate light from darkness. So, when you and I go out into the world, we become a source of light, not darkness. And that matters not in the truth that we believe, but in how we treat other people, that's where it shows up. Like the grocery store clerk that doesn't ring your groceries up right. Even though it's a computer, they don't have any control over that. But boy, we let them have it. Or your server that brings your food and they don't bring it out right. We say, “Whoa! They have to know that they didn't do it right. They have to know so they can do it better. They have to know”. No, they don't! They don't have to know. You have to be like Jesus! (Congregation starts to clap) Listen, don't clap yet. You clap in a minute. (Congregation starts laughing) It's not your job to tell them that they're right or wrong. That's their manager's job. Then you'll want to go tell the manager. Nope. That's not your job either. The manager's job is to pay attention so that they can figure it out. Then you want to say, but they're not doing it. Then just be Jesus! Stop being a jerk! Now you can clap. (Congregation claps) We're not doing the kingdom any favors when we tell off everybody that disagrees with us. People know way too well what the church is against because that's all that we talk about. You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong. Bible, Bible, Bible. You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong. Nobody has a clue what we're for, and we don't want to talk about that because that would mean that we'd actually have to be nice.

Listen, the right thing done the wrong way is the wrong thing. There's too many Christians that are holding truth, but they're holding it from a place of darkness, not light. You don't represent the truth accurately, you may be right in your thinking, but you don't represent it accurately when you represent it from a place of darkness. We have to do better. We have to do better, but we want to tell them they're wrong. Listen, convicting the world of sin, that's not your job. That's the Holy Spirit's job. By the way, the Holy Spirit does it better than I do. Saving the world from their wrongdoing, that's not your job! That's Jesus's job. Holding the world together by causing it to function properly by my input, that's not your job! That's God's job, and by the way, they do better at it than you do. So let them do their job. Let's us do our job.

The problem for many of us is that we don't want to deal with the darkness that's in us. Then the darkness shows up and tries to control us. Like you guys know this, I go to counseling twice a week and people are like, oh counseling, how do you talk about it? That’s so embarrassing. Do you know how much more awesome I am? (Congregation laughs) Truthfully, I was kind of a dill weed before, but ask my wife. Do you know how much easier I am to live with when I live from a place of wholeness rather than brokenness? So, you can be upset with counseling or run from it if you want to, but I embrace it because I need it. I don't want people to not like me, although I just made a whole bunch more people not like me. I want to be able to be somebody that lives from a space of wholeness and healing and freedom, because that is my right in Christ! The darkness that's in me, it gets in the way. If I'm not willing to deal with that, by the way, first of all, that's cowardice. The kingdom of God doesn't move by cowards. It's also hurting, and the thing is it doesn't just hurt me. Yes. It limits my life. Yes. It limits my experience of God. Yes, it limits all this understanding of my wholeness, of my value of my work. It limits all of that. The darkness that's in me limits all of that. You know what else it does? It limits my children's ability to experience it too, and my children deserve a dad that is the best person that he can be.

They deserve that. Who would want to look at their kids and go, you know, I know how to get better and healthier and be a better dad, but I don't want to? Why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense. We’ve got to stop living by darkness and calling it light, because it isn't. In this passage truth isn't light, living in the value that God gives us is light. When we understand our worth, we're settled, we're secure. We're not trying to prove ourselves. We don't need to debate. If somebody disagrees with us, we can still love them as a human. I don't have to agree with everything you say to value you as a human.

I'll tell you another story. Bonus material. Last night, my daughters and I went out for a date, and we went to a restaurant here in Parker and there was a big group that sat next to us, and they brought in a life-sized cardboard cutout of Donald Trump. (Noises from the congregation) I heard that. No! Anybody but him. Well, here's the thing. This girl brought it in. She was like, Hey, my date for the evening. It was funny. They all laughed, right? Then these other people that were at other tables around, you know, they were kind of getting a rise out of it. It was all in fun, right? This one lady comes up and goes off. How dare you! What kind of restaurant is this and blah, blah, blah. She happens to be standing over a guy that was ex-military, wearing a cowboy hat, full-blown, like the epitome of the redneck conservative. He was the exact opposite of her, right? So, she says, “This is the last time I frequent this bar”, Which it wasn't a bar. He goes, “Okay”. (Congregation laughs) She walks off and right before she leaves the room from across the crowded room full of people she shouts an F-bomb and gives them the one fingered salute over a cardboard cutout. That happened last night in front of my girls. You don't have to agree on politics but treat them like decent humans. You don't have to like him. It's a cardboard cutout. In your mind, fantasize about kicking it and tearing it and whatever, like I don't care, but don't shout an expletive across the crowded restaurant at somebody. That's dumb, it's inhuman. That's where our culture has gotten to. And listen, the other side of that political coin is no better. So I'm not trying to fight for or against anything. I'm just saying we value all the wrong things. We care about all the wrong things and we're not caring about the right things, but when we do, when we get this right, when we learn our value, when we live as light and as a city on a hill, a collection of lights, when we do that, God's the one who gets the glory. Jesus says, “If I be lifted up, I'll draw the whole world to me”. Don't you think that world needs a little bit more Jesus and a little bit less of me? The more me it gets, the more jacked up it becomes.

I have some implications for us this morning and I’m going to tie it down. Lots more I want to say, but you get my point. Number 1- We are infinitely valuable. We will experience true freedom and peace when we live in our value, not in our lies. You'll never understand freedom and peace when you're living out the lies that you believe about yourself or that somebody told you about you, that you held onto, you'll never find freedom in that. Number 2- As followers of Jesus, we're called to bring light into dark places by calling out the true identity of others from God's perspective, whether I agree with them or not. Number 3- We should stick out, but for good reasons, not bad. You probably have to write that one on your bathroom mirror. We should stick out as a church, but for good reasons, not for bad. Number 4 is a question- This should be a question either in your personal reflection time or maybe at life group this week. Wrestle with this question. How are we separating light from darkness in our own lives? How are we doing that in our own lives? Here's what I think. I think we ascend to the truth of Jesus, but we don't let the light of Christ live in our hearts. We don't let the light of Christ invade us and take over and change us, so we hold to the truth from a place of darkness. That's not what Jesus died for. Jesus, didn't die to keep you in darkness. He died to set you free. That's what he died for. I think as we move into our communion time, that might be something worth reflecting on. Where am I holding the darkness? Where am I saying that the darkness in me is more important than the light that Jesus wants to bring through me. Maybe we can sit with that as we prepare our hearts for communion this morning, 

On the night, Jesus was betrayed. He took bread and he broke it. He said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me”. Let's remember him this morning. Then after the dinner he took a cup and said, “This cup, this is a new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you. Whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for your relentless pursuit of us and your refusal to allow us to settle for less than what you say that we are. And Lord, may we be people who take that same urgency into the relationships that we have with people in the church and in the world so that we can represent you accurately to a world who desperately needs to know who you really are.

Thank you, God for just refusing to give up on us. And God, may we be those kinds of people who represent you in the same way to the world in Jesus’ name, amen.

Let's stand and sing one more song.

So, I hope that this morning or afternoon now. Somebody got long-winded. As we leave here that we would live into the truth of who you really are before God. If you're struggling with that, if you're like hanging onto something, there's shame in there that's getting the best of you or whatever. There are some people that will be up here to pray with you if you want to come and pray with them, they'd love to do that. You can also pray in our prayer room, by yourself or with somebody there as well. May we be people who become light that represents God for who he really is, and together become a city on a hill that draws the world to him. Thanks for coming. Have a great week.