Impact

From Matthew chapter 5, verses 13 through 16. You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid, nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

In other words, if a fellowship of believers exists in a certain place for a period of time and fails to make an impact on the world around it, something's wrong. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, if the earth around isn't getting anything, isn't receiving any saltness, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid, nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand.

So if the world around isn't seeing the light of God, if they're not conscious of the fact that God is alive in your midst, something's radically wrong. When Jesus came out of the wilderness and began to proclaim the kingdom of God, he made an impact. Not everybody liked him.

Not everybody believed in him, but everybody knew that something of God was going on. Even the people who accused him of casting out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, knew better. And when the believers in Jerusalem, after the death and resurrection of Jesus and on the day of Pentecost and from then on, began to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen to Jerusalem, they made such an impact that the authorities quickly began to lock them up and kill them.

When Paul and Barnabas would walk out into a city in Greece, nobody noticed them. But within days, there was an impact. The normal effect of a fellowship of believers in a given place is that that fellowship of believers very quickly begins to make some kind of impact on the community around them.

People begin to know that God is there. He's speaking. He's manifesting his presence.

He's healing people. He's drawing people from death into life, from darkness into his kingdom. And yet today, we're very, very hesitant to expect very much in the way of impact.

We limit what we really expect to take place if we're functioning as a manifestation of the body of Christ. And even when we accept the fact that we really should be making an impact on the world around us, we're tempted to very quickly think in terms that the politicians use or the marketing specialists. We think about advertising, promotion, the media.

But if the salt is the salt of the earth, it doesn't need any assistance. It will be tasted. If it's truly the light of the world and it's shining, it will be seen.

So if we are where we ought to be as a fellowship of believers, we should be able to naturally expect that the impact we make on the community around this building and the communities where we live and the places where we work and the unemployment lines where we stand, wherever we are, that the impact should be no less than the impact Jesus made on Jerusalem. Now, I'm not just talking about numbers, although numbers are involved. There will be numbers, more numbers than we can handle as the Spirit of God gathers and then sips down.

Then they go down again. Then he gathers another bunch and sips it down. And so it goes.

But I'm basically talking about changes in people's lives. It ought to be that every time we go forth from here, we ought to see people breaking out of their chains, eyes opening, life being turned from self to the kingdom of God. And it ought to happen that every time we come together, we should have the joy of welcoming at least one or two more brothers and sisters into the kingdom.

Is that too much to expect? If we are indeed the salt of the earth and the salt has taste and with the light of the world and the light is shining, is it too much to expect some kind of harvest? That goes on and on. And with a harvest, of course, there will come problems that we don't have now. For instance, the problem of persecution.

As people begin to change and come to faith, there will be irritation and there will be anger on the part of friends and relatives and there will be persecution wherever there is an impact. The only times and places in history where there's no persecution are those times and places where there's no impact. When a church, an assembly of believers, fails to make the impact it was ordained by God to make on the world around it, sooner or later, the spirit of the Lord visits that assembly and calls it to repentance.

If it repents, it comes to life and tremendous things begin to happen, things that are not just for themselves, but basically for the world beyond them. If, on the other hand, it ignores the call to repentance, from that moment it begins to die and in time will cease to exist as a church. And so Jesus calls the church at Laodicea to repentance because it's not making an impact.

From Revelation chapter 3, verse 15, I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would you do a cold or hot? So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.

So why isn't it making an impact? For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing, not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. So what's the cure? Therefore, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and soft to anoint your eyes that you may see. Now, you don't have to take these verses and distort them in the least.

Bend them the slightest bit in order to apply them to us. Let's be honest. I mean, we can hardly call ourselves hot.

And it may even be that we are taking some secret pride in being not hot. I mean, we're not fanatical. We're sensible.

So what does it mean to be lukewarm? To be lukewarm means to be settled and satisfied with ourselves the way we are. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing, not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, naked, and the fact that we almost never think of ourselves as wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, naked. And that's exactly what we are.

Apart from the mercy of God and the spirit of God, that's exactly what we are. The fact that we never really think of ourselves this way. And the fact that we are the only times we really get upset is when somebody puts their finger on our ego or threatens our material security.

These things are evidence enough that we're lukewarm. And we will never make the impact we were called by God to make on the world around us until we acquire three things, gold refined by fire that we may be rich, white garments to cover our nakedness, keep the shame of our nakedness from being seen, and soft to anoint our eyes that we may see. Therefore, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire that you may be rich.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break through and steal. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, for where your heart, where your treasure is, that's where your heart's going to be. And the gold refined by fire, the treasure in heaven is a commitment to the kingdom of God that makes it through the fires of trial and remains true.

It's disappointed, it's hurt, it's beat upon, all kinds of things go wrong and remains true. Commitment to the kingdom of God, radical commitment to the kingdom of God. Nobody makes an impact for God on anything or anyone who is not radically committed to the kingdom of God.

And I'm talking about a commitment that gets up with us in the morning and goes with us into the day. And it's with us when we come together and goes with us as we scatter. I'm talking about a commitment that manifests itself in the way we handle the issues of daily life.

Do we keep our promises? Do we open our hearts to human need? How do we handle our money? How do we use our time? I counsel you, Jesus says, to buy from me gold refined by fire. Why do we have to buy it? I thought everything was a gift in this kingdom of God. But here he says, I counsel you to buy from me because this gift only comes as an exchange.

In that sense, we have to buy it. This gold I get only as I give back to him in exchange my present security for his return. And when they had brought their boats to land, they forsook everything and followed him.

They were buying gold refined by fire. What has to happen is that we exchange our commitment to mammon and things for a commitment to Jesus. We do not have that in ourselves.

This doesn't come naturally to any of us, but it begins to happen as we start burning our bridges behind us. We get it from Jesus as we start letting go of things and all the stuff we're preoccupied with, the things we know are compromising our hearts. We lift all these things and we grapple with Jesus.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire that you may be rich. And if we don't have that, there is no impact in our lives. Just go around like ships without rudders.

I counsel you to buy from me white garments to, to quote you, to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen. White garments, holiness, holiness, without which no one shall see the Lord holiness, without which nobody makes an impact. We never make an impact on the world by being doctrinally correct.

We only make an impact on the world when we have something that is pure and holy and right. We never make an impact on the world by being superficially holy and righteous. We are only beginning to make an impact on the world when we are inwardly holy and righteous.

He's talking about a single eye, a pure heart, a life that is separated for the purposes of God, a tongue that is put aside, guile and deception of every kind. Now we don't have those garments of ourselves. We don't have that kind of holiness.

We have to buy it and we buy it in an exchange by giving to Jesus our external righteousness, our surface righteousness for his inner holiness. We need to draw near to him, constantly draw near to him and offer him our filthy rags. Lord God, take this mess that I am and give me your righteousness, your holiness.

Lord God, flood me, give me that robe of righteousness. Today as I receive your body and blood, let me be clothed in your righteousness and inwardly filled with that holiness. I counsel you to buy from me, sob to anoint your eyes that you may see.

He's talking about vision. Vision that sees God and the kingdom of God and the things of God and the purpose of God. Vision that sees people with God's eyes.

Vision that penetrates the visible to the invisible, cuts through the temporal into the eternal and begins to see. We don't have that vision. We have to get it.

And as I was saying, we don't really make an impact by being doctrinally sound. We make an impact when we see. When we see with God's eyes that have been opened by God, the woman at the well put her jar back and ran back to the town of Sychar and said to the whole town, come see a man who told me all I ever did.

Isn't this the Christ? And she made an impact. She got a response immediately. People came because she spoke as one who had vision.

Her eyes have been opened. She has seen Jesus. She knows what's going on now.

And she speaks with the authority of one who now has their eyes open. We have to buy that eyesight. And we buy the eyesight.

We get the vision in exchange for forever thinking we're doctrinally correct and taking tremendous pride in always having the right answer. God delivers from all of us from this. Here it is, Lord.

Take it. Take it. Give me vision.

If Nicodemus had given up his doctrinal correctness as a Pharisee to Jesus and said, here, take this and give me what I really need. He would have walked out that night with his eyes open. He would have seen as the woman at the well saw.

We need vision. There's no way we can make it. There's no way we can do anything meaningful unless our eyes are open.

And that vision has to be continuously renewed, all the time refreshed. What I saw yesterday with clarity, I will see with clarity today, only if my eyes are kept open by the spirit of God today. You are the salt of the earth.

But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hit, nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand and gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. When are we going to be able to let the world taste our salt? When is the world going to begin to see the light coming from us? When are we going to begin to make the impact on the world around us that we were ordained by God to make? Only when we receive the counsel of the Lord and with broken contraparts. Therefore, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen.

And so have to anoint your eyes that you may see. Let's just draw near to the Lord and begin to buy. Let's pray.

Lord, we're offering up to you. We're asking you to take from us whatever it is in us, whatever kind of pride, whatever kind of pride is hindering us from seeing what you want us to see. And we pray, Lord, that as you receive those things in us that really have to be removed, that we might see, that you'll open our eyes and give to us a fresh today, a vision of the things that we, as individuals and as a body, can be doing, the results that should be happening, Lord God, the changes that should be taking place, the joy and the encouragement that should flow out like a river into this city.

Lord God. We're asking also, Lord God, that you would enable us by that vision to see the difference between the kind of correctness that we are or feel we're living right now and the kind of holiness that you're calling us to practice. And finally, Lord God, we just ask that you'd enable us to let go of everything we have to let go of in order to have the goal refined by fire and do whatever you have to do with us as individuals and as a body to bring us down to that.

I ask it in Jesus' name.