Introduction:
Influencer = Social media professional who has built a sizable following around a relevant topic, and can therefore influence their followers to take an action, thanks to their credibility and authority.
As Salt and Light, I Am God's Influencer (Matthew 5:13-16)
- My Influence is Expected.
- My Influence Comes from Me Being Different.
- My Influence Is for God's Glory.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:06
Open up your Bibles with me, please, to the book of Matthew and chapter five.
00:08-00:12
Today, we are going to talk about influencers.
00:17-00:29
Now, the young people here already know something about this, but those of us who are older, I'm in that category too.
00:29-00:34
This might be a new concept to some of this.
00:35-00:36
But what is an influencer?
00:36-00:37
We have a definition here.
00:37-00:39
Can we get the definition up on the screen?
00:40-00:43
This is what an influencer is, okay?
00:44-01:10
It's a social media professional who has built a sizable following around a relevant topic and can therefore influence their followers to take an action thanks to their credibility and authority.
01:11-01:18
That's what a social media influencer or an influencer, that's what that is.
01:19-01:22
And those relevant topics, it's a lot of different things, right?
01:22-01:26
It's food, health, fashion, pop culture, travel, gaming, beauty.
01:26-01:31
You name it, there's somebody out there that is an influencer.
01:34-01:37
They are internet celebrities.
01:39-01:46
And by that, some of them were already celebrities and they got online.
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And some of them are people who became celebrities because of their online presence.
01:59-02:01
There's lists of the top ones.
02:01-02:12
I was looking up all these lists and you can do this sometime, not now, but I was looking up lists of who were the biggest influencers of our day.
02:13-02:16
And for sake of time today, I'm just gonna share top five.
02:16-02:20
Here's the top five, according to this one list for whatever that's worth.
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The number one biggest influencer, Cristiano Ronaldo.
02:28-02:30
I don't even know who she is.
02:30-02:31
Does anybody?
02:33-02:37
A soccer player, not football.
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That is a different sport.
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We call it soccer like good Americans.
02:45-02:49
Okay, so apparently Cristiano Ronaldo is a soccer player.
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on this list, the biggest influencer in the world currently.
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Number two, I think I heard of her.
02:55-02:56
It's a Selena Gomez.
02:57-02:58
Isn't she like a, is she an actor or something?
02:59-03:00
Okay, actor, singer.
03:00-03:01
Okay, all right.
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Number three is Mr. Beast.
03:07-03:08
Probably not his real name.
03:11-03:14
Number four is Lionel Messi, Messi?
03:16-03:17
Another soccer player.
03:18-03:19
(congregation laughing)
03:22-03:26
I played soccer in high school and college and it was not popular back then.
03:27-03:30
Now two of the top five so far, oh, number five, I know number five.
03:31-03:37
Number five is the Biebs, as his followers like to call him, Justin Bieber.
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That's number five.
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Did you know God has a face for his brand?
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God has a spokesman.
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God has someone to endorse his relevant topic.
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Do you know who that is?
03:58-03:58
It's you.
03:59-04:00
It's you.
04:03-04:14
Lick it by your heads with me, and I want you to pray for me as we turn to God's word, that I'll be faithful to communicate it, and I will pray for you to have a heart open to receive what God has for us today.
04:15-04:15
Let's pray.
04:22-04:25
Father, Your Word tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ.
04:27-04:33
The only transformation that can happen is supernatural transformation.
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It has to come from You.
04:36-04:45
I pray, Father, that as we encounter Your Word, as we encounter You, we are profoundly changed.
04:45-04:47
We pray these things in Jesus' name.
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And all of God's people said, amen.
04:52-04:55
We just finished what was like an eight week series on the Beatitudes.
04:56-05:00
And the Beatitudes describe what a follower of Jesus is like.
05:02-05:10
Verses 13 through 16 describe the function of the believer in the world.
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You are God's influencer.
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You are.
05:18-05:31
When you live as described in the Beatitudes, you influence the world.
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Like, well, how does that happen?
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Well, let's see what our Lord says.
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Matthew 5, verse 13.
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He says, "You are the salt of the earth.
05:45-05:49
"But if salt has lost its taste, "how shall its saltiness be restored?
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"It is no longer good for anything, "except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
05:58-06:00
"You are the light of the world.
06:01-06:11
"A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, "nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, But on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
06:12-06:13
In the same way.
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Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.
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Jesus here is saying, OK, here's the short version.
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The world is decaying.
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And it's dark.
06:37-06:43
Have you noticed what it needs is salt and light?
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Let's talk about salt and light for a second, shall we?
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When it comes to salt, look, in our day, we kind of take salt for granted.
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It's everywhere.
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It's on every table, it's in your cabinet, it's everywhere.
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And it's cheap.
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But the people that lived in Jesus' day they would have had a different view of salt.
07:08-07:11
To the Greeks, they considered salt divine.
07:12-07:21
The Romans said that there is nothing more valuable than two things, sun and salt.
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In fact, Roman soldiers were actually paid in salt.
07:28-07:30
Do you ever hear that expression?
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He's not worth his salt?
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That's where that comes from.
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True story.
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It was so important in so many ways.
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People would use salt in making covenants.
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Salt was used in Old Testament sacrifices.
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Salt was used for flavor, obviously.
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Salt is an antiseptic.
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Like, well, how did Jesus mean it?
07:56-08:02
I believe the main primary focus of Jesus' teaching here is salt as a preservative.
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Salt prevents corruption.
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You see, in Jesus' day, they didn't have refrigerators.
08:09-08:14
They didn't have a deep freeze chest in the garage like we do.
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So in order to preserve meat, you would literally have to rub salt into the meat to keep it from spoiling.
08:25-08:31
And in the same way, Jesus followers are the salt in the meat of the world.
08:32-08:37
We are what's preventing the world from totally rotting right now.
08:38-08:51
But the Bible says, 2 Thessalonians 2, the book of Revelation, when the church is removed from the world in the rapture, the world is going to go to hell.
08:52-08:58
It's going to get horrific because the salt's been removed.
08:59-09:00
It's gonna rot.
09:01-09:13
So the implication here of salt is that the world is polluted and corrupt and it has this tendency to rot like meat.
09:14-09:18
And what it needs is your influence.
09:19-09:20
It needs salt.
09:23-09:25
So let's talk about light for a second.
09:27-09:35
Also much more valuable in Jesus' day because again, we kind of take it for granted, don't we?
09:37-09:44
We're so used to having electricity and flicking the lights on, but don't we just lose our minds when a storm takes the power out and there's no light?
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I know our house does, but see, they didn't have that electricity.
09:52-09:56
So light would have been a much more valuable thing to them.
09:56-10:04
But you know, Jesus said, "I am the light of the world," back in John 8, verse 12.
10:04-10:09
And here, Jesus says, "You are the light of the world." So which is it?
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And the answer is both.
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It's both.
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It's His light through us.
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Just as the moon doesn't produce its own light, but reflects the light of the sun, that's how it is for followers of Christ.
10:25-10:30
We are to reflect the light of Jesus Christ in our lives.
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Now, when the Bible talks about light, it's talking about revealing God's truth.
10:41-10:46
This is what the Bible refers to talking about light, right?
10:46-11:00
Psalm 119, 105, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet "and a light unto my path." So light has to do with the revelation of God's word.
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It is the light that tells us the cause of the darkness.
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It is the light that shows us that our problem is we're separated from God, but it's also the light that shows us the way out of darkness.
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It's the light of God's word that says there is a way to get back to God.
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And that is through Jesus Christ, who died for your sins, who rose from the dead to give you eternal life.
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It's through faith in him.
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That's how you get back to God.
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And that is only revealed in the light of God's word.
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So the implication when Jesus talks about light is this.
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The world is dark. Sin has made this world a very dark place. What it needs is light. It needs your influence. So on your outline, I encourage you to take some notes here. Here's the sermon. As salt and light, I am God's influencer. I am. And if you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you are an influencer for God.
12:25-12:33
You are. Let's unpack this a little bit, shall we? Number one, write this down, "My My influence is expected.
12:37-12:39
My influence is expected.
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Interestingly, in the Greek, we talked about this in the Beatitudes, it's here too.
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You know, you is emphatic in the Greek.
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So literally, you could translate this, Jesus is saying, you are the only light in the world.
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You are the only salt in the world.
13:02-13:04
I was thinking about salt this week.
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You know, something really interesting about salt, as valuable as it is, it's really no good on its own, is it?
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It's not good by itself.
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I mean, when was the last time you went to Pantera Bread and you said, "Yeah, you know what?
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I'm not really that hungry.
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I'm just going to have a bowl of salt." Like, who does that?
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It's no good on its own.
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Salt is always used for something else.
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And you know, thinking about that further, light is the same, isn't it?
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Light is always used for something else.
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Meaning this, when you turn on the lights, you don't do it because you're like, You know what, man, I just really like light.
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Nobody just really likes light.
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Why do you turn it on?
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Because it's light that illuminates what's in the room.
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Light has no other purpose.
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So salt and light, always used for something else.
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always used for something else.
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You know what?
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You, you are so valuable.
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You are.
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But like salt, you're not valuable for yourself.
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Here's what I mean.
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If all God wanted was for you to be saved, then the moment you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, God would just take you to heaven.
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Like, we're done.
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Good job.
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I wanted you to be saved.
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But he doesn't do that.
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God, when you're saved, God keeps you on this earth for one reason.
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It's influence.
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He keeps you here to be salt and light.
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You see, that's what Jesus is saying here.
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There is no salt and light except from a Christ follower who is going to show and tell the people around you about Jesus.
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You're like, "Well, you're the pastor.
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Isn't that your job?" No.
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Look, it can't be.
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You're going to encounter people just through the course of your every day that I'm never going to meet.
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You're going to work with people, and there's people in your family that Pastor Taylor is never going to meet.
15:59-16:04
So whose job is it to let them know about Jesus Christ?
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That's yours.
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So why God has you there?
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There's no alternative.
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There's just not another option.
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But you know, side note, it's an interesting paradox.
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Last week we were talking about persecution, right?
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And people hating you because of Jesus.
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Isn't it an interesting paradox that the world hates us so much, but the world needs us so desperately?
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Look, you're expected.
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You are expected to be salt and light.
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That is so clear from Jesus' words.
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It is just an expectation.
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That's why Jesus gives warnings of being useless.
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Did you see that?
16:56-17:14
He says, verse 13, "If the salt has lost its taste," and then over in verse 15, he says, "Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket." What's the point?
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Well, the point is this, if salt isn't salty, it's useless, right?
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And if light doesn't shine, it's useless.
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What Jesus is saying here is when salt isn't salty and when light isn't bright, what that means is you've lost your influence.
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You've lost your influence.
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It's a terrible place to be when you lose your ability to be salt and light for Jesus Christ.
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You're like, "Well, how does that happen?
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How do you lose your influence?
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How does salt lose its taste?
17:58-18:02
How do you hide your light?" Well, it happens through sin.
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That's how it happens.
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complaining, you're losing your saltiness.
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Gossiping, you're losing your saltiness.
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Do you have a hair trigger temper?
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You're losing your saltiness when that erupts.
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Inappropriate with the opposite sex in any way.
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Flirtation, direct messages to full on affection.
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affairs. You're losing your saltiness when you're involved in sin. Jesus gives a hard warning about that here. He says you're not good for anything when that happens.
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I can just speak personally. You know, over the years there have been several pastors who have been a big influence, influence.
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Several pastors have been a big influence on me.
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Some local guys, some national names.
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People who have disqualified themselves from ministry because of flagrant sin.
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And in a lot of the cases, it was affairs.
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Whether it was emotional or physical, that seems to be the predominant disqualifier And look, right, wrong, or indifferent, you can reach your conviction on this.
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But I've got to tell you, I've thrown away a lot of books, and a lot of sermons, and a lot of materials from ministries because those pastors lost their influence.
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How can you preach this and for years secretly live a completely different way?
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How can you do that?
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don't have audience with me anymore." You're like, "Yeah, that's terrible." Well, what about you?
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What about your influence with your unsaved family, with your friends, with your coworkers, when they know that you're a Christian?
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And by the way, they absolutely should.
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Look, when they know you named the name of Christ, they're watching you.
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They are watching everything you do.
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They're watching your attitudes.
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They're listening to every word that you say and how you say it and what you talk about.
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They're listening.
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They're watching.
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I have to ask you, when they do, do they see sin?
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Or maybe you just try to tone down the salt a little bit when you're around them.
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Maybe when you're around them, you don't wanna be the weird religious wackadoo.
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So let's just dim the lights a little bit.
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Can we just dim the lights a little bit?
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Jesus says, if that's the case, he says, you're not good for anything.
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Like, Jesus is saying, "Why do I have you here?
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Why do I have you here if you're not going to be salt and light?
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You're no good." It's a hard warning.
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But notice Jesus didn't say, after the Beatitudes, "Okay now, would you pretty please be salt and light?" He said, "You are.
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You are." The question is, how salty are you?
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How bright are you?
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Because you're gonna influence people one way or the other.
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And Jesus is expecting his influence on this world to happen through you.
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So your influence is expected, number one.
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Number two, right this time my influence comes from me being different.
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My influence comes from me being different.
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That's something else about salt and light.
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It has to actually be touching what it's going to affect.
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Did you know that?
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If the salt's gonna be of any use, It has to be on the food.
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I know that's profound, right?
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What'd you learn in church today?
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He said something about the salt's no good unless it's on the food, right, right.
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The light must be mingled with the darkness, right?
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But at the same time that it's touching, it's also distinct.
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What I mean is salt and light are unlike the medium on which they're placed.
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So the point is we are to be different from the world.
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We're to be as different as the salt is from the meat.
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We're to be as different as the light is from the darkness.
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And that means, my friends, we're not self-serving.
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We're not materialistic.
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We're not worldly.
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The influence happens when we're different from the world.
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And somehow, we have a hard time as Christians remembering that.
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We think, we think that we are going to attract the world by imitating them.
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We have this game in our minds where we say, well, I'm going to show them that I'm no different than them and they're gonna see that I'm cool and I'm relevant and then I'm gonna be able to give them the gospel.
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We think being like them is going to attract them.
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Just imagine you have this coworker and you have an exchange like this.
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Your co-worker says, "Hey, you want to hear a dirty joke?" And your reply is, "Yes, and then I will tell you one, because I'm cool." Or your co-worker says, "Hey, did you check out that new lady that they hired?
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She is fine." "Fine!" And your reply to that is, "Yes, I also think she is smoking as you do.
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"Because you and me are the same." Your coworker says, "Hey, "do you wanna have too much beer later?" And your reply is, "I sure would because that would be relevant to my relationship with you, because I'm just like you. And then maybe after our beers I will tell you how Jesus changed me."
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(congregation laughing)
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Changed you, from what?
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Even in the church, even in the church, there's this tendency, we wanna attract unsaved people so we think we've gotta be just like them.
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Let's put on a show, let's make it like a secular concert.
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Let's get the laser lights and the smoke machine on a big theatrical production here.
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Let's be like the world.
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That'll win the world, won't it?
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Because don't we want people to be comfortable?
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We hate that, don't we, when churches are like, we want you to come and be comfortable.
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Church is the last place you should be comfortable.
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Standing in the face of the word of God is the last place you should feel comfortable.
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The churches, you know, let's be like the world, And what that means is we're going to have to not take such a hard stand on the truth of God's Word.
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Because we want to win the world, right?
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And in order to do that, we've got to be like the world.
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I was shown a church recently, online was advertising, you can get baptized there.
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But the interesting kicker was, they said you can get baptized any way you want.
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Any way you want.
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You want to get dunked, we'll dunk you.
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You want to get sprinkled, we'll splash you.
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You want us to dip our hands in water and touch your forehead, we'll do that.
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You name the way you want to get the water on you, we'll get the water on you.
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As our Lord would say, what is going on?
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I heard this quote one time that always stuck with me.
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Somebody said, regarding the church, they said, "Just when the world needs us the most, we become just like them." And look, if we're just the same, we got nothing to offer them, right?
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And if we learn anything from the Beatitudes, it's this.
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Kingdom of heaven people live different than kingdom of earth people.
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We are not the same.
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We are not made out of the same stuff that the world is made out of.
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We are salt and light.
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My influence comes from being different, right?
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And finally, number three, my influence is for God's glory.
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My influence is for God's glory.
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Look at verse 16 again.
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Jesus says, "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." Good works, good works.
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You do good works?
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Well, you have to check your motives for that, right?
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Because it's not about what people think about me as much as what they think about God.
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But Jesus said, "They'll see our good works "and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Meaning this, I do what I do because I love Jesus.
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And people are going to see that, and that is going to give me the opportunity to share the gospel with them, to invite them to church where they're going to hear the gospel.
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And our hope is that they receive Jesus Christ Lord and Savior, because that is the ultimate way that God is glorified.
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But if we're going to be influencers, we have to be salt and light both.
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You could read this passage and be like, isn't Jesus kinda saying the same thing with the salt and the light?
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Like, why did he use two pictures?
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Why didn't he just keep it short and use one?
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Because there's some key differences between salt and light.
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The one I wanna focus on is this.
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We could spend so much time on this, we don't have it.
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But I wanna say this.
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Jesus is saying you have to have godly conduct.
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That's salt.
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And you have to have the gospel message.
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That's light.
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You have to have both.
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Meaning this, you can't just walk away from this message and focus on one of these aspects, but not the other.
31:40-31:44
Meaning, let's just say you're only gonna focus on being salt, okay?
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You're like, you know what?
31:46-31:48
He's right about the salt, you know what?
31:48-31:49
I gotta work on that.
31:49-31:52
I'm just only gonna focus on being salt.
31:53-32:00
I'm just gonna focus on my walk with Christ, but you never actually share the gospel with anyone.
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Well, the question is, how is anybody gonna glorify the Father if you never tell them the gospel?
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Do you think people are going to see your good works and just automatically, somehow, miraculously understand the content of the gospel just because you're doing good works?
32:36-33:00
There was a saying that was thrown around years ago. You know those sayings that sometimes creeps into the church that Christians use that sound, they sound so like magnanimously spiritual, but they're really, when you think about it, really kind of empty.
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This is one that kind of drove me nuts. Years ago people would say, "Preach the gospel and use words if necessary." Remember that one? "Preach the gospel and and use words if necessary.
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Look, words are necessary.
33:21-33:22
Words are necessary.
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No one hears the truth just by watching somebody's character but on the other hand, if you're like, you know what, you're right, I'm not gonna worry so much about the salt.
33:35-33:39
I'm not gonna monitor my salt content so much.
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I'm gonna focus on being light.
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But look, if you're just running around telling everyone John 3:16, but you're not personally walking with Christ, there's no good works backing up this message that you're preaching, you're going to leave people asking, "Why should I listen to his message?
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Because he doesn't seem any different than me." You got to have salt and light both.
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See, salt refers to your general conduct.
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Light is the specific word.
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Salt talks about who you are.
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Light speaks to what you do.
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Salt is being the example.
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Light is carrying out the work of evangelism.
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Salt is living it.
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Light is telling it.
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See, that salt can't save anyone.
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Salt holds back the corruption.
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You need the light of God's truth to lead to salvation, but the light has to be backed up by the salt of godly character and good works.
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That's Jesus' point here.
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And the end game?
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The end game is the same end game for literally everything in the universe.
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The glory of God.
35:13-35:15
Can we get that definition of the influencer back up here?
35:17-35:19
I looked at a few definitions here.
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But I thought, "Wow, doesn't this definition really speak to the same kind of stuff Jesus was talking about here?" Look, here's what I mean.
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Has our Lord built a sizable following?
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A little bit.
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You may have heard of Him.
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He built a sizable following.
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Does He have a relevant topic?
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I would argue the most relevant topic ever, eternal life.
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Is our Lord interesting in influencing His followers to take action?
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That's why we're here.
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Like, well, how does that happen?
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Those last two words jumped out to me then.
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Credibility and authority.
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What's credibility?
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That's salt.
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And what's authority?
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That's light.
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Look, God has given us a new mission field to reach at Harvest Bible Chapel.
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God has given us a community without a church where we can be salt and light.
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So there's an exciting new chapter ahead for Harvest Bible Chapel.
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And just now we're going to have our town hall meeting, getting an update on how God is moving.
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And my friends, you were in the presence of a miracle today because I got done early.
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(congregation laughing)
37:24-37:24
(congregation applauding)
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We'll do the director's cut in the next service.
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So why don't you just, what, we're gonna take a couple minutes.
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We're gonna start at 10 promptly, Pastor Rich.
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So why don't you take a couple minutes if you need to check on little Joey or use the restroom.
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And then at 10 o'clock, sharply, Pastor Rich is gonna come up here and we have an amazing update for you on what the Lord's doing.
37:56-38:00
So let me pray real quick and then we'll reconvene here at 10.
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Father in heaven, I just wanna close this time in your word by asking you to empower us to be what you've already pronounced us to be.
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You've said we're salt and light, and God, we need the wisdom of your word and the power of your spirit so that we can carry out that function in a way that glorifies your name.
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Thank you, Father, for all that you've done.
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We're excited at what you're going to do.
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We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Matthew 5:13-16
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
In what ways are disciples of Jesus like salt? Like light?
How does salt lose flavor (the believer lose their influence)? In what ways do we put our lamps under a basket? Why does Jesus say someone in that state is “no longer good for anything”?
Why is it important to both salt AND light? Why not just focus on one or the other?
How do you really know if you are doing good works for other people’s attention or God’s glory?
Breakout
Pray for one another to be salty and bright.