Living For The Glory Of God - Matthew 5:16 Series

Matthew 5:13-16 "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. 14 "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 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. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Introduction

Living for the Glory of God

1 Corinthians 10:31 whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

How do you do that? How do you drink a glass of milk in a way that brings glory to God? What does it look like on an hour to hour basis to live a life that glorifies God?

Review

Light is most useful in the dark

We have been studying verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount and the past two weeks we have been in verses 14-16 of Matthew 5 where Jesus calls us to function as salt and light in the world. I spoke with a realtor last week who makes assessments of land values, and he was telling me about the property we are buying down on 88th and Huron. He said it is not worth much because it is in such a bad neighborhood. There was another church building that is for sale nearby that we also looked at. That pastor told the realtor that the reason they were moving is because they did not want to be in such a low-income neighborhood. They wanted to move to a wealthier part of town. Nobody wants to be in a bad neighborhood.

People have similar attitudes about where they work. If you get into a work environment where there is hostility against Christ, and there is pervasive, dominating ungodliness and darkness, it can seem overwhelming. You find yourself all alone without any Christian fellowship at school or at work, and it feels like God has stranded you in the darkness. But God does not strand His people – He situates them. It is a dark world, but as much as we hate the evil and despise the darkness, we are not surprised when God situates us in dark places because that is where lamps are most useful. If you take a flashlight outdoors at noon it is worthless. But in the middle of the night in a pitch dark area even a little pen light can be worth its weight in gold. A lamp is most useful where it is darkest, so do not be surprised if God situates you where you are most useful. If you go to work and find that people despise Christ and mock God’s way and are blind and foolish and steeped in sin and folly and the whole place is pitch black spiritually, do not be shocked that you are there. Where else would God place a lamp?

That goes for us as individuals and for us as a church. I do not know what is supposedly so bad about this neighborhood where the new church is, but the way I figure – if our reason for existence is to be a city on a hill then the darker the neighborhood the more useful we will be. We are the light of the world!

Infiltration

People sometimes ask me what kind of evangelism program we have at Agape. And there are various different things we do, but by far the most important is what I call our infiltration program. The goal is to get our members to go out into the world and infiltrate secular business and schools and neighborhoods, and then shine the light of Christ. That is the model Jesus gave us, and it is working great! We are just a small church, and yet we have already managed to infiltrate numerous large corporations, small businesses, stores – we have got people in school classrooms at every grade level, college classrooms, and we have infiltrated neighborhoods all along the Front Range. It has been a brilliant strategy, but we cannot take credit for it. It has been in use ever since New Testament times. Around 200 AD Tertullian taunted the great Roman Empire with these words: “We are but of yesterday, yet we fill your cities, islands, forts, towns, councils, even camps, tribes, delegations, the palace, the senate, the forum; we have left you only your [pagan] temples." We have successfully infiltrated every nook and cranny of your world – from the most remote island to the very palace of the Emperor himself. The only place you can go where you will not find us is the pagan temples.