Good morning! Following is my speaker notes from the October 4th sermon:

We Were Made For So Much More

KEY SCRIPTURE: Matthew 5:13-16 “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.”

Our Scripture today comes from the Sermon on the Mount. This particular passage is right after the beatitudes. Why did I pick this passage? Because this is laity Sunday and I love that Jesus didn’t teach the Sermon on the Mount as a keynote address at the annual Pharisees Retreat. No, this message was addressed to people like us—the laity! I’m here today to challenge us—the lay people—to realize that we were made for so much more than what we are living for right now.

You may be thinking that you can’t do anymore!! If you are like a lot of people I know, you are already exhausted. You are already facing numerous daunting problems and now I just said that you are made for more? You aren’t alone in thinking that, John Stott in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount said this, “Yet the very notion that Christians can exert a healthy influence in the world should bring us up with a start. What possible influence could the people described in the beatitudes exert in this hard, tough world? What lasting good can the poor and the meek do, the mourners and the merciful, and those who try to make peace not war? Would they not simply be overwhelmed by the flood tide of evil? What can they accomplish whose only passion is an appetite for righteousness, and whose only weapon is purity of heart? Are not such people too feeble to achieve anything, especially if they are a small minority in the world?” (Stott p. 57 “The Message of the Sermon on the Mount”)

The short answer to that question of can Christians change the world is—“YES!!” because of Jesus! Don’t believe me—look at Mother Teresa, look at Dietrich Bonhoeffer, look at William Wilberforce, or John Wesley.

We–just like those well-known Christians-are the salt and light of the world. We know this because Jesus said so!

So, if Jesus is calling us (and let’s remember that Jesus always initiates this call to us—we don’t initiate, we just respond) not only to be salt but also the light of the world; our activity is to be visible.

We have been saved not just for ourselves, but for everybody else too! If you have said yes to Jesus and accepted His atoning death on the cross for your sins, then share that with others. Don’t keep a good thing to yourself. The light we are called to be is for everyone. And the good news is that it isn’t too late to start living as salt and light right now! If God hasn’t called you home yet, then you have work to do. As Bill Allison told our men’s group a couple of years ago, “If you aren’t dead, then you aren’t done.” If you were waiting for the right time to start, then I would suggest that this is the right time! John Wesley said, “Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.” 


What keeps us from living this type of life? I think that all of us—and even a lot of well-meaning good people who are not here and generally don’t want to come to a church–really do want to help others out. They really do have good intentions—good plans to live a good life, but they just don’t quite execute those intentions where the rubber meets the road. There is an example in the Bible of someone like this. Someone who on the outside looked as if he had it all together, but as we will see that wasn’t the case. The Bible just calls him the rich, young man (read from Matthew 19:16-22)—I don’t think this passage is saying that if you have any possessions you aren’t saved, but I do think Jesus is making the profound statement that He doesn’t just want your stuff, He wants you!! All of you!! The rich young ruler had the head stuff down—he knew how to be religious and he probably really did love God, but even with that he knew he was still lacking something deep. He obviously (he says in the text, “What do I still lack?”) was still yearning for something more, but for whatever reason, he wouldn’t allow himself to live 100% for Jesus. Like so many of us, He wanted to hang on to part of himself. But Jesus wants all of us!

We really are made for so much more, but it is so easy for us to be deceived in our culture. It is so easy to get tricked into thinking that the tangible things, the distracting things, (dare I say the idols of our age) is all there is.

I also think in our culture that busyness is a major idol that gets in our way. We allow ourselves to be so busy with our day-to-day living. We get up in the morning—go 100 miles per hour all day and then we crash at night exhausted! Because of technology—which is another potential idol– we have the world at our fingertips. We have access to so much information and news that it can be overwhelming! It is so easy to start to feel useless because we realize that we can’t help everybody but yet because of our access to technology it seems we are exposed to everybody’s pain. Without a proper perspective, we can wind up focusing on what we can’t do instead of focusing on being salt and light where we are at—in our sphere of influence.

Because no matter how many bad things are happening all over the world at a given time, we can still have the high title of Ambassadors of Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5:20 says, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.” Isn’t that so awesome! We get to be ambassadors for Christ in this world!! I can’t think of a more deeply satisfying job title than this!

You see—Jesus is for us. This is why we are made for so much more. Because Christ is in us. So let’s get going shall we? Because there is no shortage of need in the world is there? Matthew 9:37-38 “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” We are the answer to that prayer! We are the laborers. As laborers, we have work to do. Part of that work is being salt and light in the world by being able to articulate what we believe and why we believe it. I’m not so sure that in our culture today that it’s enough just to believe strongly in something. I think in this age, we need to be able to talk about what we believe intelligently and passionately with others. 1 Peter 3:15 says, “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect”. I love that verse, because it calls us to always be ready to give an account of our faith—but to do it in a way that is gentle and respectful. If we can do that, we will stand out in the coarse culture we are in today.

In this manner we will be the salt and light of the world, we will live the life Jesus wants for us. But just know there are two paths we can take–Esther 4:14 says, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” God’s plan and purposes will be fulfilled—with us or without us—but I know that I want to be a part of His story.

Now, how about some encouragement to close this message out? How can we do this? How can we live out our faith in this world? Do we have any help? Yes! We have a helper!! John 7:37-38, “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” John 14:15-18 says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

You see, we keep searching for answers to life’s problems in all the wrong places. The Holy Spirit is already with us. For those of us who believe, He is with us! But that isn’t all He has given us! Jesus knows that He made us relational beings so we also have access to other believers around us. I have a group of 7 other men I meet with weekly who help me to be an ambassador of Jesus. This past week when we met I was kind of having a pity party talking about some of the job related stress I was experiencing. They told me just what I needed to hear to get over my pity party, they said Jesus loves you, we love you—now suck-it-up buttercup and get back out there living for Christ! Now, they didn’t say it that way—they listened as I shared about my situations and then they actually laid hands on me and prayed over me. I can’t even express how much that meant to me and how those prayers impacted me. It changed the attitude of my heart just like that. Don’t we all need to know that in this hard, tough world that there are actually people pulling for us when it seems like so many are pulling against us?

In closing, I pray that as you get ready to leave this morning that you leave knowing that you are not alone! The Holy Spirit is here in this place and that same Holy Spirit will go with you as you leave. I also pray that you would realize that you have access to other loving believers who can walk the road of life with you. Lastly, I pray that you would look at today as the day where you surrendered all to Jesus and started to realize that Jesus made you for so much more. Amen!

More to come…
Jeremy