March 18, 2021
Last night we looked at Matthew 5:13-16, in which Jesus says that His disciples are the Salt and Light of the world. This passage, in my mind, is part of the Jesus’ intro to the sermon on the mount in which He is calling His followers to be completely different from the world around them. In the Beatitudes, Jesus defines the heart attitudes of His disciples, and in the illustration of Salt and Light, Jesus calls His people to permeate the world around them with those attitudes.
Jesus says that we are to be Salt because Salt has a purpose: to preserve, and to make things better. That is the purpose that Jesus followers have. Just as Adam and Eve in the garden were commanded to take God’s good creation and subdue it, making it better, so Jesus people are to permeate the world with God’s goodness in their actions and words.
Jesus follows this up with the illustration of His people as Light because light as the purpose of illuminating what it’s pointed at. Jesus says that we aren’t to hide our light, because then it becomes purposeless. Instead, we’re to shine so that the world in darkness would see and give glory to God. That’s the point of being light, that we would point at Jesus, and make Him look great. The beautiful thing is, the more lights that are pointed at Jesus, the better He looks to the watching world.
We spent some really good time reflecting on these things in small group, trying to get practical on how we are to embody being the Salt and Light of the world in our own contexts. It got the students really thinking about how we’re called to be set apart from the world, and about how much of an impact that can have on the people around us.
Next week we will be looking at Jesus’ teaching on Anger in Matthew 5:21-26. Looking forward to it!
Categories: Youth Night Updates, Youth Sermon on the Mount