Embracing Your God-Given Identity.

As you guys are finding your way back to your seats, just wanted to welcome you again. My name's Abbie. I'm the pastor here at New Culture. So excited you all made it. Some of us were talking about the time change. Did anyone forget about that? I was like, why do I feel a little more tired? But you all did it. You made it here on time. We're here together.

We're super excited. This past couple of weeks, we started a new series called A Whole New Way to Live. We're leading up to Easter. We are walking through the Sermon on the Mount. Last week, we talked about the Beatitudes. We have some resources at the welcome table with a reading plan for just a few verses every week to read. We're encouraging people for Lent to practice fasting and preparing for Easter. As a church, we're inviting people on Tuesdays to fast from food until dinner time. If you want to participate, we have resources at the welcome table.

But I'm really excited today. We have one of our community members, someone a part of our church family, that's going to be teaching today. One of the cool things about New Culture is that we have many people that get to lead in different capacities at our church. People who are working everyday jobs and doing everyday things. We love empowering everyday believers to do the ministry of the church. So we're super excited. He'll share a little bit more about himself, but today, will you give it up for Nathan as he comes to teach?

I just want to pray for you, Nathan, before you get started. So would you guys stretch your hands forward and we're just going to pray for Nathan. God, we thank you so much for Nathan. We thank you for his obedience in following you and preparing this message for us to receive the words that you have given him. God, we thank you that in the midst of his busy life and schedule you're continuing to speak to him. We just pray, would you pour your spirit out today? Would you give him the confidence and the boldness? Would you give us hearts that are willing to receive, knowing that this is a word from you? God, we just pray, would you bless this time? Would you bless this message, Lord? Would you help us to receive it and be transformed by it? In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you, Abbie. Yeah, well, like Abbie said, my name's Nathan. Most of you know me. I teach at the university, but I really have a heart for teaching. So I'm just really grateful, Abbie, for just giving me this opportunity. With daylight savings, I'm kind of tired, so we'll see how this goes, but yeah, so I ask for your grace.

When I was thinking about how I should start this sermon, I was trying to come up with a really good illustration or story to kind of reel everyone in. I felt like the Lord was just like, no, just start with the passage. Just start with the passage. So I'm going to ask all of you to open up your Bibles to Matthew chapter five, Sermon on the Mount, starting at verse 13.

You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. 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. 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.

Matthew 5:13-16

So I'd like to say a quick prayer before we get started. Jesus, I ask that you would just give me strength. I need your help and just guide us into your truth. I pray this in your name.

Your new identity

When you first read this passage, I think oftentimes we can see it as simply a moral platitude or just an analogy. Be the salt of the earth. The light of the world. Just add some flavor to the world. But I think the reality is that if you look into more of the context of this passage, it's actually much, much deeper than that. It's not simply just a moral instruction.

Jesus is actually giving his disciples a new identity. The Bible is full of God giving people an identity and then calling them to live up to that identity. Jesus says, you are the light of the world. You are the city on the hill. You are the salt of the earth. So now act like what you are. Be what you are. But he starts by saying, this is what you are.

This theme begins actually right at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis. In Genesis chapter 1, verses 27 through 28, God says:

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Genesis 1:27-28

Here God is saying, you are my image bearers. Now go and do this. Here is your identity. Now go and live up to that identity.

There's a lot of debate on exactly what the image of God means. You could write whole books on the rich theology here. But I think the primary meaning of what it means to be made in the image of God is that we are like mirrors that reflect God's goodness and love onto the world. Back in the ancient world, it was only typically kings that would be described as being made in God's image. But here Genesis says that all of you, all of you are royalty. All of you are God's imagers, reflecting his goodness and love and light into the world.

God is wanting to partner with humans in being the light. But as you know how the story went in Genesis, humans did not live up to that standard. But God was not done with humanity. Fast forward in Genesis and you go to the story of Abram. In Genesis chapter 12, God comes to Abram and says:

Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Genesis 12:1-3

One of the fascinating things I think about this passage is that God talks about this future blessing of all the nations in no uncertain terms. It is definitive. It will happen. Yet it involves us in some way. It involves this nation, this future nation being a blessing.

You might ask, well then, how can you wrestle with this idea of whether this promise to Abraham is conditional or unconditional? I would say it's definitely unconditional. But you might ask then, how can it be that if there's some sort of cooperation that's going on? The only way that can be is if our God is a faithful God that is willing to forgive and work with his people and mold them and shape them and sanctify them so that one day they then are a blessing to the world.

You see this being proven throughout the entire scriptures. It is a massive theme. This theme of God's faithfulness and this theme of God showing incredible graciousness. Saying, here's what you are, giving them identity, saying, you're my chosen people. You are the light of the world. You are to be my image bearers. But when they fail, he doesn't just abandon them. He reminds them of who they are. He does allow them to see the consequences of their wrongs. But once again, he reminds them of who they are and then calls them to do better.

In Exodus, this theme of God's faithfulness is so pervasive throughout the Old Testament. In Exodus chapter 34, we have God coming to Moses on Mount Sinai, which is a great pivotal moment in Israel's history. I'm going to read it for you:

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, that's Moses, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

Exodus 34:5-7

There's a lot we could unpack there. But the main thing I want to draw out here is just God's faithfulness. Again, a massive theme throughout the Old Testament. I would challenge you to go through the Old Testament and see God's faithfulness. It is just a massive part of the scriptures.

You see again this pattern of people failing and God reminding them who they are and raising them up. Have you ever read Psalm 51? The Psalm where David is crying out to God because he has sinned. The whole thing with David and Bathsheba, you can look up the story. It's not pretty. He says in Psalm 51:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

Psalm 51:1-2

This is David. This is like the guy that was supposed to fulfill that original promise to Abraham. Elsewhere, one passage about God's faithfulness that really speaks to me is in Isaiah, when the children of Israel have been taken away into exile and things look really, really bleak. They are wondering, where is God? There's a passage in Isaiah 49 where it says:

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exalt, O earth. Break forth, O mountains, into singing. For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted. But Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me. The Lord has forgotten me. And then God says, Can a woman forget her nursing child that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. Your walls are continually before me. Your builders make haste. Your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you.

Isaiah 49:13-17

To me, that's just such powerful imagery of God's faithfulness.

The covenant of salt

One of the ways that God's faithfulness and long-lasting covenant work. The reason it's long-lasting is not because of us. The whole testament proves this. God just keeps saying, return to me, return to me. It's because of his faithfulness that it's long-lasting.

But one of the ways it was symbolized is actually through salt. You see where this is going. It turns out I did a little research on this, and salt was very precious in the ancient world. We take nothing of it now. But it was so precious because it was a preservative. It made things last before we had refrigeration. It was very costly. I even found some sources saying that it was equivalent to the worth of gold. I wasn't able to verify that from a reputable scholar, so don't quote me on that. But the point is, it was very important.

If you read in Leviticus about some of the offerings, Leviticus chapter 2, it says:

You shall season all of your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering. With all of your offerings, you shall offer salt with all of them.

Leviticus 2:13

And in Numbers 18, it says:

All of the holy contributions that the people of Israel present to the Lord, I give to you and to your sons and daughters with you as a perpetual due. It is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord for you and for your offspring with you.

Numbers 18:19

I think salt, while you can really try to parse through all the different meanings and there might be multiple layers of different meanings, I think the biggest theme here is just this idea of God's long-lasting covenant and us being a blessing to the nations. All this massive history sets the stage now for the Sermon on the Mount.

If you look a little bit into some of the scholarship behind the book of Matthew, you will find that Matthew is very geared towards a Jewish audience. He has a very strong emphasis on this idea of Jesus being the fulfillment of the law. While Matthew doesn't explicitly say this, many scholars will say that Matthew's trying to paint Jesus as kind of this new Moses figure, patterned after Moses.

One thing that's really interesting is that I think it's no coincidence that the Sermon on the Mount is on a mountain just like Moses was on a mountain when the law was given to him. Jesus is inaugurating the new covenant. Jesus's words here. You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the world. The city on the hill. This isn't just like a moral platitude. This is where they're at. These Jewish people are under the tyranny of Rome and probably have doubts about whether maybe God has abandoned his people. Maybe all of that is lost.

But here Jesus says, you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the world. He reminds them that he has not forgotten.

Living out your identity

One of the things I find interesting is that after Jesus declares their identity, he then talks about how you should live out that identity. Honestly, the language is kind of intense, kind of harsh. Let me just read that again:

If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. Pretty hard words to swallow.

For some of us, we might be very aware of the ways in which we haven't been maybe a light to the world or salt to the world. We think, yeah, there's been some times I've maybe lost my saltiness. You might have this thought of, oh, there's no hope for me now. I think what we could read Jesus's words as is, oh, if you lose your saltiness then you are going to be trampled. Sorry, sucks to be you. End of story.

But I think looking into the actual context of everything, the children of Israel, they lost their saltiness and their light all the time. All of the time. Here Jesus is showing the tremendous love and compassion of God to come once again to his people and say, I'm the light of the world. Or you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the world.

So if there's anyone here that is struggling with maybe just shame over wrongdoings or just wrestling with that, be reminded that our God is so faithful. This is what I really love about God is that he doesn't just come to us and say that you know you are my child and you are beloved and give us an identity. But he loves us too much to just leave us where we're at. He calls us. He calls us higher and calls us higher.

So we need to take the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount seriously. This is really important. We need to heed the words of Jesus here.

One thing you might try doing sometime is kind of going through the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus lays out very, very high moral standards. Just asking yourself, how is my life conforming to that? I think we can tend to have one of two sort of reactions to that.

We might go through that and be like, oh dang, I am not really living up to this. Be just filled with a lot of shame. That's where I think you need to heed the words of Jesus where he says, you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the world. He starts with your identity. He is a faithful God. That's what you need to hear. That's what you need to hold on to.

But I think we can have another reaction. You might go through it, be aware of certain things where you know you're not really living for Jesus as you ought and think to yourself, well, God forgives me, so it's not that bad. It's all right. I think sometimes we can sort of downplay violating our conscience. But if you are actively violating your conscience, you will experience the negative consequences of that in your life. It's inevitable.

Which is why I think Jesus is so stern and so strong in his admonitions. Because in following these, you will have life. This is not about just following rules. This is about what gives you life. Some of you might be in a place of a little bit of lukewarmness. You need to heed the stern words of Jesus and take this seriously.

I think sometimes we get stuck maybe in certain sins or certain patterns in our life. It never gets resolved because we don't take it seriously enough. Violating your conscience even in small ways is significant. I hear of so many church scandals where you have these pastors where everything seemed fine and then all of a sudden something comes out and you're like, whoa, this pastor that I really looked up to for years and all this stuff gets uncovered. I don't think that sort of thing just happens fast. I think a lot of times it's very gradual.

It's not like one day you're a pastor and everything and you wake up and just want to do this horrible thing. But a lot of people, it starts with a small violation of your conscience. If that turns into shame and then you hide it because you're ashamed of that, that is going to give even more temptation to go back to whatever you're going back to. It can build and build. So this is just so important that we live righteously and with holiness.

Closing: a call to repentance

I really just want to close with a prayer. Kind of a communal prayer of repentance and just time for reflection. Just asking the Lord, how am I really following you with all of my heart? None of us are with 100 percent. None of us are perfect. Remind yourself of your identity and then repent and turn around and live differently. Live from this, not from a place of trying to earn your identity, but from a place of knowing that.

I'm going to go ahead and ask Sean to come up here. I'll go ahead and say a quick prayer and just have a short time of reflection.

Jesus, thank you for just how faithful you are. It's one of the most amazing things about you that you are there and even when we mess up, you're always there to call us by who we are, who we really are, and lift us up higher and call us to be better.

God, would you reveal to us where we have faults, where we've fallen short? God, would we get serious about following you with everything that we are? That we wouldn't cut corners. That we really, really would take you so seriously because in following you there is life, real and true abundant life. God, convince us of that. Convince us that this is true, that in following you there is life.