Recovering our Saltiness (Matthew 5:13-16)
- executives over at Sears were facing a marketing
challenge
- plenty of women were shopping at Sears for stuff
like hardware and tools and plumbing fixtures, but the women were avoiding
the women's department
- Sears executives were convinced that if women
only knew about the new line of clothing they had for sale, that they
would become customers of that department too
- but how could they promote the clothing in such
a way that it would connect with these customers?
- marketing experts studied the situation, and
they hammered out a marketing strategy
- they developed an advertising campaign called
"Come see the softer side of Sears"
- they developed a two page magazine ad
- one side of the page showed an automotive battery
- the other side showed a woman wearing a very
dramatic evening dress
- the headline quotes the woman as saying "I
came in for a Die Hard, and left with something Drop Dead"
- Sears analyzed all the demographic information,
placed the ad in particular publications, and then looked at the viewing
habits of women in the age they wanted to reach
- they decided to place 30 and 60 second TV commercials
on the annual Emmy award show, as a very high female viewership
- in all, Sears spent $40 million U.S. on this
marketing campaign
- it's working
- sales of women's apparel at Sears has gone up
-
- okay, so why am I giving Sears a free 60 second
commercial?
- this is not part of their $40 marketing plan
- the reason I've been doing it is of a passage
of Scripture
- when Jesus walked this earth, he taught that
citizenship in God's kingdom is open to anybody who sincerely seeks
it
- this was an incredible message to people
- what he was saying is the very individuals who
thought there was no way they could be good enough to enter into heaven,
that they could get in not on the basis of their goodness, but on the
basis of his goodness
- Jesus wanted that life-changing message to be
communicated far beyond the side of that hill by the town of Capernaum
2,000 years ago
- he wanted people all over the globe to find out
about it
- because surely when people find out that God
has flung open the doors of his kingdom, they're going to respond in
droves
- so he needed, to put it crassly, a marketing
strategy
- how is he going to have his message communicated?
-
- here are the words Jesus used to describe his
strategy in Matthew 5
- Mat 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth.
But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?
It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled
by men.
- Mat 5:14 "You are the light of the world.
A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
- Mat 5:15 Neither do people light a lamp and put
it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light
to everyone in the house.
- Mat 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine
before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father
in heaven.
- what he was saying to that crowd, and to us today,
is you are my marketing plan -- you're it
- I'm not going to buy ads in the Toronto Star
or Macleans Magazine or on the television or even in the Yellow Pages
- because my Plan A is you, and I don't have a
Plan B
- the way I want you to market my message to your
families and neighborhoods is for you to be salt and light: that's my
strategy
- you're thinking, what is salt and light? that
doesn't sound like a very powerful strategy for reaching the world!
- Jesus is using it as a metaphor
- one thing both salt and light have is a radical
influence, a dramatic influence on whatever they come in contact with
- think about salt for a moment
- what does salt do?
- salt makes people thirsty, it spices things up,
it's a preservative, it enhances flavor
- He says, live the kind of life that is going
to make people thirst for the truth about God
- the kind of life that will spice things up by
stimulating people to think about me
- the kind of life that will retard the rate of
moral decay in society
- the kind of life that shows people that following
me will enhance their life, not detract from it
- and then think about light
- it illuminates, it exposes, it draws people towards
something, like those search lights that promoters use
- Jesus was saying, live the kind of life that
will illuminate the truth for people
- that will shine the light of my compassion to
the dark places where there is despair
- and live the kind of life that will attract people
to me, because ultimately, he said, I am the light of life
- this is an incredible vote of confidence that
Jesus gives to me and to you
- to say that we are going to be the main purveyors
and communicators of God's message to the entire globe
- what an incredible responsibility
- so how do we proceed?
- what exactly in 20th century terms does it mean
to be salt and light?
- while Jesus used it as a very positive metaphor,
they can also have very negative connotations too
- think about it
- if you put salt in a wound, it stings
- if you put too much salt on food, it makes you
want to spit it out
- if you get too much salt in your diet you get
high blood pressure
- salt isn't altogether good
- and the glare of the light that is much too bright
and shines right on your eyes makes you recoil
- the problem is that some kingdom citizens, even
though they might have good intentions, are inadvertently repelling
people from Christianity instead of attracting them
- listen to what one person wrote
- he said "The best argument for Christianity
is Christians -- their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But
the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians, when
they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug,
when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand
deaths."
- isn't that true? I've found it to be true
- there are things that Christians do that would
make anybody want nothing to do with being a Christian
- and there are others who do things who have a
mysterious way of drawing people to God
-
- if you want some adventure in your Christian
life, if you want to make a difference in eternity, there are some things
you can do to be salt and light in the community
- but Jesus is also clear that there is a real
possibility that Christians can lose their saltiness or influence
- he says, "But if the salt loses its saltiness,
how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except
to be thrown out and trampled by men."
- I've been thinking of some ways that we lose
our influence for God
- the church ceases to be a powerful witness for
Christ
- let me describe some things I've been thinking
about, and ask yourselves which ones might apply to you or this church
-
- THE FIRST IS A LACK OF A CHRISTLIKE VISION
- listen to what one author writes:
- "I backed the car out of the driveway
as I do every morning at 5:45. I switched the radio from a program
on ethics to the Tokyo stock closing. While I drove through the
neighboring subdivision, I mentally critiqued architectural design.
I bought coffee at the twenty-four hour coffee shop and successfully
avoided the talkative cashier. As I turned into [work], I formulated
a convincing defense for a…plan I hoped the staff would adopt.
I climbed to my third-floor office, wondering about the productivity
of the nighttime maintenance crew. I shuffled through a mountain
of mail on my desk and wished someone else would answer it…"
- now listen to this:
- I spun around my chair and looked out the
window…In that quiet moment I saw the previous quarter hour
for what it had been - an hour tainted by purely human perspective.
Not once during that hour had I seen the world through godly eyes.
I had been more interested in international finances than in the
moral demise of our nation. I had thought more about houses than
the people inside them. I had considered the tasks awaiting me more
important than the woman who served my coffee. I had been more intent
on logically supporting my plans than sincerely seeking God's. I'd
thought more about staff members' productivity than their walk with
the Lord or their family life. I'd viewed correspondence as a drudgery
rather than a way to offer encouragement, counsel, or help.
- It was 6:00 a.m. and I needed a renewed heart
and mind
- have you had this experience?
- so often we go through our days seeing the world
through human eyes, never thinking of Christ's perspective
-
- listen to Luke 19:41
- (Luke 19:41) As he [Jesus] approached Jerusalem
and saw the city, he wept over it
- Jesus was seeing Jerusalem from a divine perspective
- in another passage, Jesus cried,
- (Matthew 23:37) "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how
often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers
her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."
- as we see our cities through God's eyes, they
look very different
- but many of us lose our saltiness because we
are consumed with a human perspective
- how about you?
-
- WHAT ABOUT FEAR?
- many Christians are afraid to be bold about their
faith, fearing rejection by others
- they are so timid that they work alongside people
for years without anyone knowing that they are followers of Jesus Christ
- and yet Jesus said:
- Mat 5:15 Neither do people light a lamp and put
it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light
to everyone in the house.
- Mat 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine
before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father
in heaven.
- (Mark 8:38) If anyone is ashamed of me and my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will
be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy
angels."
- Paul said: (Romans 1:16) I am not ashamed of
the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone
who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
-
- THERE'S SOMETHING CALLED DECAFFEINATED CHRISTIANITY
- Anglican Bishop Michael Marshall suggests that
"the problem with contemporary Christianity…is that many people
have settled for a facsimile of Christian freedom: running their own
lives while at the same time saying they believe in Christ"
- he further contends that many so-called believers
have suggested a "decaffeinated Christianity - it promises not
to keep you awake at night"
-
- friends, a brand of Christianity that does not
cost anything and does not prompt the loss of sleep is unlikely to wake
up others to their need to be redeemed as Christ
-
- these are the three reasons why many Christians
lose their saltiness
- a lack of Christlike perspective
- fear or timidity
- and a costless, decaffeinated Christianity
-
- but I also thought of two reasons why churches
lose their saltiness
-
- THERE'S THE HIRED HAND MENTALITY
- here is how most churches operate
- the congregation's job is to show up and to give
enough money so that the church can hire a pastor
- the pastor's job is to do ministry
- it's like the one pastor who said to his congregation,
"I'm paid to be good, but you guys are good for nothing"
-
- whoever thought of this arrangement is dead wrong
- because as a result of hiring someone to do the
ministry, churches have been crippled
- the majority of churches operating under this
scheme only have one person in the church engaged in recognized ministry
- here's how it should work biblically
- (Ephesians 4:11) It was he who gave some to be
apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be
pastors and teachers,
- (Ephesians 4:12) to prepare God's people for
works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up
- in other words, the pastor's job is not to do
ministry, it is to prepare you to do ministry
- how many of you have ministries?
- there's something wrong if you call yourself
a Christian and yet you have no recognizable ministry
- it's dead wrong
- and churches are losing their saltiness because
of it
-
- but there's one more problem with churches
- AND THAT'S THAT CHURCHES HAVE WALLS
- if you ask the average person where a church
is, they'll point to a building
- casually we might say to someone, "We're
going to church" when we mean we're going to a particular building
- or we might say "Our church is located at
276 Park Lawn Road"
- but that introduces a subtle problem
-
- friends, this building is not a church
- our church is not located at 276 Park Lawn Road
- you are the church
-
- you see, something subtle happened when churches
began owning buildings
- instead of the church being God's people sprinkled
through a community and acting as God's ambassadors, church began to
take place inside walls
- somebody's called it "the fortress mentality"
- it's saying to people, "we're not coming
to you, so you better come to us"
- "you have to penetrate our fortress before
you can join the church"
- it's also led to a preoccupation among many with
the physical plant
- many churches are so consumed with paying for
and maintaining their buildings that they forget about the mission,
which is to reach lost people for Christ
-
- friends, this building is not the church
- you are the church
- and the church is most effective not when it's
sitting in the saltshaker or church building, but when it's sprinkled
through the community
- as we act as God's representatives
-
- [CONCLUSION]
- we're losing our saltiness
- because of a lack of Christlike perspective
- fear or timidity
- and a costless, decaffeinated Christianity
- because we expect the pastor to do the work
- because we let the walls of the church hold us
in
-
- but the church can be a powerful force as we
act as salt and light
- I'm going to lead us in a prayer, that is found
in page six of your Adventure Journal:
- Christ, I'm discovering how much you care about
my community. You see the suffering I overlook. You feel righteous anger
when evil prevails. You weep over cities that reject your love. Thank
you for visiting where I live. Your vision for my community fills me
with hope. May your church use its powerful resources to make this
a better place. Amen.
