.jpg)
Trinity Community Church
Trinity Community Church
Red Letters - The Christian Distinctive
Welcome back to Red Letters! In today’s message, “The Christian Distinctive,” Pastor Kelly Kinder dives into Matthew 5:13-16 and reminds us that Jesus doesn’t ask us to become salt and light—He boldly states we already are. That single truth reframes every conversation about identity, influence, and purpose.
Salt mattered in ancient kitchens because it preserved meat from rot and drew out rich flavors. Kelly shows how believers carry the same function in society: slowing moral decay and making truth compelling. But Jesus adds a caution: salt can lose its bite. When we compromise conviction to fit in, our presence no longer preserves anything, and culture shrugs us off. Kelly explores practical ways to stay “salty,” from guarding personal holiness to speaking hard truths in love.
The metaphor of light lifts the conversation higher. One lamp can change a room; one city on a hill guides travelers for miles. Light’s power is in visibility, not volume. Jesus invites us to place our everyday lives on a stand where neighbors, coworkers, and classmates can see good works that reflect God’s heart. Kelly illustrates this with stories of ordinary disciples: a mechanic who refuses dishonest upsells, a teen who befriends the outsider, a mom who hosts weekly dinners for single parents. Their influence isn’t flashy, but it directs attention to the Father.
Three questions drive the message: Where are you positioned to shine? How can your conduct make the gospel attractive? Why do you do it— for personal acclaim or for God’s glory? Ephesians 5:8 and Proverbs 4:18 remind us that light grows brighter when we walk in step with the Spirit, hinting that our best impact may still be ahead.
If you’re weary of identity labels tied to titles, successes, or social media metrics, this conversation will breathe fresh freedom. Kelly’s honest anecdotes and Scripture-rich teaching equip you to step into your God-given role with courage and joy.
👉 Hit play and let the Word recalibrate your view of who you are and why you matter. Then share the message so others can taste the salt and see the light of Christ in action.
We are Trinity Community Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Subscribe to our Podcast & YouTube channel to find past sermons, classes, interviews, and more!
Find us on Facebook & Instagram
I'm really excited about this series. We're going through just this. We're calling the series Red Letters and it's a study of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. And I'll just tell you up front, prepare you up front, this is, get ready to be challenged, because Jesus' Sermon, which covers Matthew, chapter 5 through 7, it's disturbingly radical.
Kelly Kinder:Jesus was a disturbing Jesus and he doesn't let us get comfortable with where we are, to bring us really where he wants us to be. And I think what he wants to do through this whole series, he just wants us to reevaluate where we are in relation to him and to the kingdom and to the righteousness which he calls out in this sermon. And you know, if you were to ask someone off the street, do you think you're a pretty good person? Most of the people that you would ask that would say yes, I'm pretty good, and they would proceed to tell you what they've done in the past or maybe what they're still doing that they consider pretty good. But Jesus in this sermon goes deeper and he begins to look at us and to try to encourage us to look at our heart, to see what's really going on with us, because there we don't often look and we find in our hearts some things, that what he wants to bring us to is true righteousness. That's what this sermon is about, true righteousness. And, for example, in verse 20 of chapter 5, he says For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And what he shows us, I think, will surprise us. It will intrigue us and, as I say, it will challenge us.
Kelly Kinder:Before we get into the message this morning, which is going to be on salt and light, I want to just kind of give you a little bit of an orientation to the kingdom, an orientation to the kingdom, and I want you to picture it. As you know, if you are oriented to the king properly. Some people are, let's say, the kingdom was where you are, their backs would be toward the kingdom. But as Jesus begins to get our attention, we slowly begin to turn toward him and what he offers us. And some of us are like this and some of us are, as he said, not far from the kingdom. Some of us had made the choice to be in the kingdom and to trust him and put him first place in their life. So let me give you this orientation.
Kelly Kinder:I think the thing that I wanted to share first is just simply we need to define some terms here, because we hear that term kingdom, kingdom of God, jesus preferred kingdom of heaven. It's basically the same thing, all through the scriptures talking about this kingdom, and you say what is this kingdom? And whole books have been written on this subject. To try to explain it, let me just kind of give you a bullet down a bit for you, just in a simple way of thinking about it. The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is God's rule and reign in human hearts. Does God reign and rule in your heart today? Very often we allow our own place on the throne to take the place of our Lord Jesus, and what he calls us to do is to put him there first place. And so this idea of God's rule and reign in our hearts, that's the kingdom that we're pursuing.
Kelly Kinder:Second, I want you to see how Jesus puts this sermon together Matthew, chapter 5 through 7. If we just kind of read it in selected parts, you know, sometimes we'll pull out the section on the Beatitudes or maybe some other section on, you know, murder or other things that we just are really focused on. But you know what we'll do by doing that is miss the overall message and context. And so here's what I want you to see. Jesus' sermon begins with the happy attitudes of those who live kingdom-oriented lives, and last week Tyler did such a great job looking at the first major section of chapter 5, which has traditionally been called the Beatitudes, and some people have called them the Be Happy or the Beautiful Attitudes. The Beautiful Attitudes and you might wonder why we call them the Beatitudes and that word comes from the Latin word beatus, which means blessed or happy. Oh how happy or oh how blessed. You see each of those in the eight qualities that are in verses 1 through 12 of chapter 5. Each one of those begins with the English word blessed, and for that reason, as I say, they're often called the beautiful attitudes, because they bring us in line with the kingdom, and this is the way Jesus begins this sermon. They orient us to the kingdom and picture that turning toward it. So let me I can put a diagram here up for you just to kind of give you an overall picture of the whole sermon, and it might picture it in chapters five through seven like this Three words attitude, identity and action. Attitude is foundational. It's what we're talking about. What we're talking about on Wednesday night it's the first one is critical.
Kelly Kinder:I won't get too much far into Eben's sermon. I just want to kind of give you this as an example. He says there the very first one the blessed are the poor in spirit. And so we ask ourselves do you feel your spiritual poverty? Do you groan because you're not what you should be? Do you feel your inadequacies? This is where we begin. You can't even get into the kingdom unless you come as a spiritually bankrupt person, and so this is foundational.
Kelly Kinder:Now I feel like all of these, all of these beatitudes, all of these beautiful attitudes come with a measure of emotion. You should feel it, and this is what draws you in. And you know, if you're not poor, you can't get into the kingdom. But you hold and carry and I'm talking about spiritually poor but you hold these attitudes in your heart. These are inward qualities, these are things that come from inside. As someone said, attitude determines altitude and that's altitude, and that's never more true than in the spiritual life. Your attitude toward the kingdom will determine your progression in the kingdom and every one of these progress as you go higher and higher in our relationship with Jesus. So these attitudes, these inward qualities, you can't live them out in private. You just can't. They have to be. They only work, they only have power when you put them to work. So we're going to see that as we go through the weeks.
Kelly Kinder:This is the foundational thing, and back in that diagram attitude, the second one. This is why Jesus goes on to crown these with two brilliant and searching metaphors salt and light, which we'll talk about today. He uses this to describe our identity, our identity in the world, and so, as I say, we'll look at those today, and once we get those the attitude, the identity then we, and only then, can we begin to live these out. These things that we look at from chapter later on, in chapter 5, begin talking about the ethics of the kingdom. It's how we ought to live if we are following Jesus, and so this is revealed in our behavior before a watching world, and so this gives you really a picture of the sermon. The design of Jesus' sermon here is to give a complete portrait of a true disciple, and so keep that in mind as we go through these.
Kelly Kinder:The main theme, as I said, is true righteousness, and the main thrust, really, of the whole message I think is found in Matthew 7, verse 24. He says everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. You want to build your house on the rock? Then follow and obey the words of Jesus as we go through here. So with that in mind, let me just kind of this morning let's bring what we look at in salt and light to the teaching this morning from Jesus and about a disciple's identity Matthew, chapter 5, verses 13 through 16. So read with me, if you will.
Kelly Kinder:He says Jesus says to us, you are the salt of the earth. But if Jesus says to us, 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 the house, 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. Let's pray, father, we're thankful that you teach us from the great truths that are in your heart. And, lord, I just pray for every one of those folks, including myself today, that Holy Spirit, you would move among us and speak, and, lord, call us to greater and higher things in terms of your kingdom. Lord, open our eyes and our ears and our mind, lord, to understand, and we give you praise for that in Jesus' name, amen.
Kelly Kinder:So let's now see what Jesus teaches us about our identity in this kingdom, the Christian identity. Jesus knew that before we focus on how we are to live, we must first know who we are. We have to know who we are, and there is that who am I question? That kind of resounds, I think, in every person, every person. It deeply affects how we influence the world in which we live, and I don't care whether you're a Christian here this morning or you're not yet a Christian. Your identity is important. If you don't know who you are, then you really can't rightly live in this kingdom that Jesus is talking about here, because he describes it as something that we are, something we are.
Kelly Kinder:Klein Snodgrass in his book who God Says you Are writes. Every religion, every denial of religion and every philosophy or ideology seeks to tell people who they are, how they fit with the reality around them and how they should then live. If your life has any meaning, it will be because you project, and have projected, a meaningful identity. Let me just say this, and especially to us, since it's Father's Day men, your job is not your identity. It's not. You know, it took me a while to understand that, and you know when I did, when I realized that my job was not my identity. You know what I did? I took all the diplomas that I had obtained off my wall because they used to define who I was, telling me what I was supposed to do. My identity is not in my education or it's not in my job.
Kelly Kinder:A 24-year-old woman once said this. She said, and she was put in jail because she had really she had been she committed fraud because she'd accumulated designer clothes and she said I don't know who I am without my stuff. You are not your stuff, you're not your money, you're not your clothes, you're not your house, it's not the car that you drive, it's not the group that you belong to, it's not the political party that you hold to, it's not your country, it's not your sports team, the celebrity you try to imitate, the entertainment that you pursue, and those all may be factors in maybe forming our identity, but they're sort of failed attempts to achieve that. They're not who you are and they're certainly not who God says you are. You know what I found that, and probably you have too. Social media tries to conform us to its identity, making us what focus on ourselves instead of on the one who made us. You are made in the image of God and God gets to call that shot. He gets to decide who you are. Our identity, our true identity, flows from understanding, that made in the image of God.
Kelly Kinder:John Calvin once said. He said without knowledge of God, there is no knowledge of self. So to fail to live out of our identity you know what it does it results for us in a crisis. I'm talking about disciples here, followers of Jesus. If you fail to live out of your identity in Christ, it creates a crisis not only for you, because you sort of live in that tension of I'm not what I should be, but I know that that's not what I am, and it also creates a crisis for the world. Because, guess what? If you are to be in the world and be what Jesus calls you to be, the world loses out, and it's so critical.
Kelly Kinder:Jesus reminds us then of who we are in this passage, and the first thing he said is you are the salt of the earth. We heard that phrase. Sometimes Somebody says, well, he or she is the salt of the earth. What did Jesus mean when he said this to these followers? Salt, you see, back in that day, had a number of uses and I don't have time to list them all here. But the most important function that salt provided was it was a preservative. It preserved things. Food, specifically, we take for granted. I think that we have refrigeration in our day. We just put the meat in there and it cools. It keeps it cool. They didn't have that back then, certainly not in this day for sure, and the only way to preserve meat was to soak it, or put the salt on it and press it into the meat, or put it in brine and let it soak there. And that was true right on up into the 20th century. We didn't have refrigeration Without salt. What would happen? The heat would quickly make it spoil and decay.
Kelly Kinder:I want you to listen to one of the early missionaries who kind of describes this. In a place like the Mideast where he served, he said and this was years ago he said this was absolutely imperative. Under the high temperatures and hot weather of the region, decay and decomposition of meat was astonishingly rapid. We had no winter weather or cool, frosty nights to chill the flesh. We had no winter weather or cool, frosty nights to chill the flesh. Besides this, swarms of ubiquitous flies soon hovered over the butchered carcasses. The only way to prevent them from ruining the meat was to soak the slabs of meat in a strong solution of salt. You know those missionaries in that day that was kind of the norm. They said that when David Livingstone died and they were wanting to get his body back to England, they used salt to preserve it. The person who was his servant actually took out his heart and buried it there in Africa and they sent his body back, after soaking it in salt, to Westminster Abbey for burial, and so those things were really common.
Kelly Kinder:So possibly Jesus, then I just say all that. To say Jesus possibly meant he's saying that we prevent the decay of the world, and that's true when we step out and do what Jesus calls us to do. The world, you see, is decomposing, it's decaying, it's rotting away and Jesus is calling us to step out and be a preservative. Left to itself the culture, just like you're seeing right now. It will deteriorate. So what does that say about the church? Where's the church?
Kelly Kinder:You know, years ago, and just trying to give you a little understanding of what it means to be Saul here, I think I was eight years old and I was standing out at a church right before the service began and most of the people had gone inside. My dad and the rest of my parents were inside, brothers and sisters, and my uncle, who was the worship leader, was a little bit late, but he was there in the front. There was a little yard in front of the church and all at once I heard him yelling stop it, stop that right now, stop it. And then I saw him hurriedly run into the church and I followed him in there and I was like what in the world, even at eight years old? He says Sonny, sonny, which is my dad's name. He says Sonny. I told the man that he was beating his wife and I told him to stop, and he's coming after me. So you know he was sometimes, you know, spoke before. He thought a lot of times, but he was willing to step out and have enough courage to tell the man something he needed to hear. And this is what we do if we're following Jesus At sometimes the cost, the risk to ourselves could be greater than we know. And I don't remember what happened to that guy. I suppose he got afraid and he quit because there was a whole church full of people in there, maybe, but I don't know. I don't know what happened. Just that memory stuck in my mind that my uncle was willing to say something when nobody else would Right, you know, our presence in the world is meant to retard decay. And if you think of yourself as a salty Christian and I'm not talking about in a self-righteous or condescending or condemning way, but generally through our presence and through the words we say, we can make a tangible difference by what we are in the world, through the words we say, we can make a tangible difference by what we are in the world.
Kelly Kinder:Question let me ask you who was the first salty Christian in the New Testament? You think let's ask Jesus. John the Baptist is who I'm thinking? John. Remember what John John? He not only looked the part, but he acted the part, right, rough, but willing to say what needed to be said. Remember what he did More than one time, john the Baptist. He rebuked King Herod if you remember the Gospels for divorcing his wife and marrying his niece Herodias, who had been his brother, philip's wife. And you remember what happened to John? He got his head chopped off.
Kelly Kinder:But remember what Jesus said about him in Matthew 11? I'll just read it, matthew 11,. He says truly, I say to you, john was Jesus' cousin. Truly, I say to you, among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And I think Jesus was just. Why did he say that? I think he was so admiring what Jesus, or what John was willing to do to step out and be what he needed to be. This is Jesus who's calling us all to this. We're to be salty, you see, because, why? Because God so loved the world that he was willing to send his son. Can you imagine a more salty action than that? Willing to send his son to die, to take on the sins of you and me. That's a salty God and a salty Savior.
Kelly Kinder:I can still remember my trip to Israel years ago I think I was in college and during the travels, you know, you travel days and days and days and you start to get tired and I sit down. We were riding on the tour bus and I sit down to this German lady who was on the tour with us and she had lived through World War II in Germany, had gone through that whole thing and her family had experienced that, and I said that's interesting, could you tell me about that? And she just kind of did like this, shaking her head. She said I can't talk about that and I thought why not? And I asked her about it. She said it's difficult, so many knew, but they never said anything. When the Nazis came and killed all the Jews, she said we knew, even the Christians knew, but no one said anything. And I think she was just ashamed because she had not spoken up and become like this. What Jesus was calling us to. So Jesus, I think, is at least telling us to be a preservative for the world and the evil that's going on around us.
Kelly Kinder:Number two there's another primary use of salt that I think Jesus is getting at here. He specifically ties salt and look at the text to salt affecting our taste or the world's taste. And boy we understand that, don't we? How many of you like salt to salt your eggs Good. How many like them without salt? To salt your eggs Good. How many like them without salt? Sometimes you have to Salt, or maybe your steak off the grill or a burger.
Kelly Kinder:Most of the time we put salt in a lot of foods because what does it do? It adds flavor, it enhances the taste, and salt gives just a little tang to whatever we put on it. And it's just kind of amazing. It doesn't take a lot, does it? Just a pinch sometimes will do the job. And I think we need to keep that in mind when we think about what Jesus is saying here.
Kelly Kinder:But he says this. He says in verse 13, 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. And his words seem a little bit obscure. If you know anything about salt, a pure salt never loses its flavor. Sodium chloride it's stable, it has a stable chemical property. It doesn't lose its flavor. So what is Jesus talking about? What's he getting at here? Well, back then most natural salt was either taken from salt marshes or maybe even the Dead Sea, and when it was there it would dry out in the sun and the deposits would contain a lot of times, a lot of impurities. And whenever it was exposed to the elements, guess what would happen? The salt would wash away. And what would happen? The salt would wash away and it would just leave essentially the dirt, no salt.
Kelly Kinder:And I think this is kind of the imagery that Jesus is trying to get at, maybe trying to say when the world gets into the church, it dilutes our testimony, it dilutes what we have to say to the world and carelessly allowing the impurities of the world to get into us. And I think this is a powerful indictment on disciples who have lost their distinctiveness. The title of the message is the Christian Distinctive, so we no longer have anything to contribute to society. Maybe that's where we, a bit we are today. When the church looks like the world, when it compromises, when it, when it gives up its truth and its values and the practices it holds, jesus says it becomes tasteless, bland, even worthless to God's purposes. In the world. The world, you see, doesn't respect Christianity. When it gets like this, what does it do? It just ignores it and kind of. You know this is a sort of deserved persecution. When the world doesn't oppose us and it just doesn't care, you know what it does. It's just a simple contempt for us, just complete disinterest in the church. I don't want you to feel like Jesus' words are hopeless, because when he says it's lost its savor, I think he's trying to tell disciples don't lose this, because you know what he doesn't say you should look like salt. He says you are salt, this is your identity. You carry this. But for Jesus, a tasteless Christian is an ineffective Christian.
Kelly Kinder:Our English word is kind of a good word to think about this, and I put this on here because I think it is a good word to look at this definition by Webster's. The word insipid may not be a common word for you, but it's a word that Webster's describes it. It describes us losing what we offer really well. The word means lacking in qualities that interest, stimulate or challenge Dull, flat, lacking taste or savor. You know what Jesus is, I think, warning us about. He's warning us about being boring Christians. The world doesn't have anything to look at. We ought to be the most dynamic, exciting, creative people in all the world.
Kelly Kinder:Here's something else, and I think it's a little bit more subtle even than that, and maybe warning us of losing something that's more significant. Even the word for taste here in verse 13 is the word merino in the Greek, and it's not the normal word for taste. This word literally means to become foolish, and so what sounds like a totally inappropriate verb in the sentence really is a metaphorical way of symbolizing the wisdom which the disciples ought to be showing, ought to be exhibiting, and when we lose the wisdom that God gives us, we have nothing to give away to the world. Because why? Because the church a lot of times loses the wisdom that God gives us, and we reject the truth of God and prefer the way we think of things worldly wisdom. And guess what this is saying? It's the church that takes on the character of a fool, so that there's a little bit of suggestion here of there's a moral deficiency going on that's inherent in the idea of being a fool, and so this is a failure, a moral failure, and so we fail to align ourself with the truth of God, we lose our ability to be salt in the world. It's what I think he's getting at, and so it's a significant warning.
Kelly Kinder:Someone can ask, I think, at this point, how do you then become a salty Christian? And that's the wrong question. You already are, simply by being in vital connection to him. So we're not challenged to be salty, we're challenged to stay salty, to remain faithful to what we are, what he's made us to be, and so I think this is a good reminder for us. You are the salt of the earth. Think about that.
Kelly Kinder:Jesus gives us another metaphor about our Christian identity. I think it's so essential. It's you are the light of the world. You are the light of the world. Salt is different, isn't it, than light in its purpose. Light gets rid of the darkness by just doing one thing shining. Shining. And where there's light, people can find their way. In the darkness, everything becomes clear. If they don't stumble, they're not lost when the light is turned on and I'm talking about spiritually. For us, ours is a reflected light.
Kelly Kinder:Think about these verses John 8, 12 through 13,. Jesus said I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And in John 9, 5, he said as long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world. Now think with me on. This is what happened when Jesus left this world. Who did he send? He sent the Holy Spirit, right. And when he was gone he said the Holy Spirit would do one thing. He said the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. So how does it happen if the world doesn't know, doesn't have that connection with God? Because you're going to carry that? Only through us, because we're indwelt by the Spirit, have the capacity to give the world what it needs to hear the message about Christ and the gospel, about sin and righteousness and judgment.
Kelly Kinder:Jesus calls us to a visible demonstration of the light within us. That's what he's saying here. He literally calls us this is the way it's written the light of the cosmos. The light of the cosmos, it's a different word than we might think. It's not like dirt. The light of the cosmos, it's a different word than we might think. It's not like dirt, it's like the world system. You're the light of the world system, not the physical earth, but the world system.
Kelly Kinder:And notice three things he says about us, about the light here. Number one he tells us. First of all, jesus tells us where we are light and what he's saying. Our Christian influence has to be out there. It has to be prominent, it has to be visible. This is in verse 14 and 15. And it's notable here that Jesus uses the plural when he says you are the light of the world.
Kelly Kinder:In East Tennessee, y'all are the light of the world, all of you who belong to Christ. And what we do, we so often think in terms of me, myself and I, what I've got to do. And I think his word to us is no, you are that, but I'm really talking about this. If anything, jesus is speaking, at some level, of many lights together. If I have a pin light and I have 10,000 pin lights, it looks like bigger than a little light. Right, I have a picture here. I want you to see this. This is a picture of a NASA space station going over the United States and you can see the cities that are out in the rural areas and they just have a little bit of light. Sometimes you can just barely see them, but for the cities that have multiple lights, it's so easy to see Cities set on a hill. So See, we're to be visible in.
Kelly Kinder:I think Jesus is saying we're to be visible in a practical way in the public space. Are you light where you work? Are you light out in the community? A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. He's the one that sets us on the hill. Our task is to turn the light on to shine. City on the hill. Our task is to turn the light on to shine. City on the hill emphasizes what it emphasizes the corporate power of being light in the public square.
Kelly Kinder:Boy, this is something we're missing, something that we need, and I think also we're to be visible in our homes. Since this is Father's Day, word to you, father. He says or you put it on a stand, and it gives light to what All in the house A practical application would be. Are you being light in your house, men? You are the prophet, priest and king in your home. You're the one that carries the light, you're the one that leads out in spiritual matters to bring the word to bear on your family life, maybe the prayer life, and I just challenge you, if you're not doing that, just step out and be light in your family. This is a transformative place where everything changes is out of the family. Boy. We got to recapture that. Folks. We're going to be visible.
Kelly Kinder:You know, I heard a little boy one time in Sunday school. He was taught that Jesus was the light of the world and after class he went up to his teacher and he said if Jesus is the light, he's really the light of the world. I wish he'd come out and hang out at my house. It's really dark there. We need this. We need this so much. The consequences of people living in spiritual darkness, you see, is tragic and it's devastating. And Jesus is simply telling us stop hiding your light. Stop hiding your light. Jesus not only tells us where we are light in prominent places, he tells us. Secondly, jesus tells us how we are light.
Kelly Kinder:Our Christian influence, I think he says here, is simply when you're light, be an attractive, light, be attractive. Verse 16 says In the same way let your light shine before others. Highlight so that they may see your good works. So they've got something to look at that lets them know. There's something different about you and me, the word good in this expression. There's different words for good. This one is a word that usually describes something that has an attractive form or appearance to it.
Kelly Kinder:So, rather than maybe the content of a thing, and I just think of practically just simple acts of kindness. I was out, I don't remember, a month or so ago and we were in Walmart and I'm not, you know, thinking anything about it, but the lady couldn't reach something at the top, trying to get some things at the grocery store and she's just kind of looking around. Nobody was helping her and it was a little taller than I am because I'm a little short myself. But I said let's see if we can get that for you. Those little things like that, simple acts of kindness, can communicate volumes and I think the Holy Spirit can give each one of us times and places. He just prompts us to say go, do that for that person. Let them know who you are.
Kelly Kinder:Ephesians 5, 8, 9 says for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. Good, right and true. This is the lifestyle that we're to lead, and I think how we do, what we do, matters to God, really matters to God. Well, there's a third thing Jesus tells us not only where and how we're to be like, he tells us why. Why we're like Our Christian influence is to be purposeful, intentional. Verse 16 says so that why? Why are we doing these good works? So they may see them. And what? Give glory to your Father who is in heaven. This is the ultimate purpose of being light, isn't it that we glorify God? You say, what does that mean? To glorify God means to let people see God's attributes, that he's good, that he's kind, that he's faithful, that he's loving All these things that are the character of God. He wants people to see that in your life and sort of, as I say, be a reflection of who he is. Proverbs 4.18 says the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. Brian Bill gives a really great example of this when he writes this little story. He says During the summer between my first and second year at Moody Bible Institute, I had the privilege of teaching at a Bible college in Zimbabwe, africa.
Kelly Kinder:This experience marked my life and ministry in countless ways. One of the memories I have is how dark it was at night Because we were in a rural area. There were no streetlights or neon signs. When the sun went down it was pitch dark. During the first week we had an activity at the Bible school at night and when it was over I headed to the dormitory which was located about a quarter of a mile away. Over, I headed to the dormitory which was located about a quarter of a mile away. I somehow got separated from others and found myself walking in deep darkness across the soccer field. I felt disoriented, distressed, alone and afraid. I knew the dorm was at the end of the field, but I couldn't see anything. It was so dark I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. I kept walking very slowly, squinting in the hopes of finding some sort of light to guide my way. I finally saw the faint beam from a classmate's flashlight and made my way back.
Kelly Kinder:You think that might be how the world might see us the light that brings hope in the darkness. I saw a recent article called the Power of Light. It kind of caught my attention and it goes like this. It says there's been a light from the beginning. In all its forms, visible and invisible. It saturates the universe.
Kelly Kinder:No one is exactly sure how to describe it. It's a measure of light's importance in our daily lives that we hardly pay any attention to it. Light is almost like air, it's a given. A human would no more linger over the concept of light than a fish would ponder the notion of water. There are exceptions, certain moments of sudden appreciation when a particular manifestation of light, a transitory glory appears a rainbow, a sunset, a pulse of heat lightning in a dark sky, the shimmering surface of the sea at twilight.
Kelly Kinder:Usually, though, we don't see the light, we merely see with it. We merely see with it. This is what we are folks, and people can't see. Without the light that we offer, without the spiritual light we offer, we'll you know Scripture kind of talks like we'll all die in the dark. Listen to what 2 Corinthians 4 says Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing In their case. The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For God, who said let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the image of God, for God, who said let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Kelly Kinder:Well, let's land this plane. You know, salt can sit for years on my table and next to the steak. Unless I pour the salt on the steak, the steak remains the same. Light too can shut down the deepest darkness, but guess what? Unless I flip the switch, nothing happens. And so there is this key distinction in both of these images salt and light. It's distinction. To be effective, the Christian has to seek and display the Christian distinctive. You are salt, you are light, and we can, as we step out in faith, be that for the world. We just have to do it. We just have to do it.
Kelly Kinder:And you know what I'm praying. I'm praying that we all, each of us, will hear the Spirit of God in these days as we're watching all the chaos that's going on out there, and say this is my moment. Church, this is your moment. What are you waiting for? Let's pray. This is your moment. What are you waiting for? Let's pray. Father, we're thankful that you call us and you identify us by name. We are yours, as the word was shared this morning. You're pleased with us and you love us beyond measure. Lord, you haven't rejected us and you haven't put a stamp of hopelessness on us. You haven't said you're done with us. Lord, we're here for a purpose. I pray today for myself and for every person who hears today, lord, that we'll take on our identity, our true identity that's found in you, and be what we are in these days, and we pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.
