July 31, 2014
Chopped
I recently heard a
sermon about “Salt and Light” based on Matthew 5:13-16. The theme of the
message was how believers can change the world. The accompanying illustrations were
examples we’ve all heard many times before, and they were being served to a seasoned
audience. I think many of our preachers could take a lesson from the Food Network
reality show “Chopped.” Four guest chefs are given a basket of 3-5 secret ingredients
and they must incorporate all the ingredients into a dish that is restaurant quality.
There chefs compete in three category rounds — appetizer, entrée and dessert,
using everything from pound cake to tuna fish. The contestants cannot expect to
win the contest if they simply put a chunk of tuna on a slice of pound cake and
serve it to the judges. Likewise, preachers should not expect to motivate mature believers by
simply telling us about the properties of salt and light.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Salt was the 1st century AD refrigerator. Jesus did not say we were the world’s changer, but rather we are the world’s preservative. He did say that the world would know that He came from His Father if everyone following Him were one, “…that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” (John 17:22)
-----A couple years ago our storage room took on an awful smell. Char was sure something had crawled up and died in there. It was too much smell for too long to be a mouse. And anything else was big enough it should have been found. After several months of bewilderment, somebody found, buried deep in a stack of boxes, a package of really, really nasty sausages. Char had defrosted the freezer and forgot to put them back.
-----I think we Christians forgot to put the world in the refrigerator. It’s smelling worse than those sausages. Look at how badly we’ve fractured and warred with one another! The world doesn’t even believe Jesus existed, let alone that He was sent by the Father. And we run around thinking God put us here to change the world. He didn’t. He put us here to change ourselves, from one degree of glory to the next, into the image of Christ. “Oh! But Steve, but Steve, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job to change us!” No wonder we’ve changed so little from the world we’re mixed up in! It is the Holy Spirit’s job to guide us into the right change. It is we who are responsible for moving our feet, but their steps belong to Him.
-----It’s too late for putting the sausage back. Salt won’t help now. The ending of evil has begun. It isn’t being pretty. And it will get far uglier. He will soon come. And He will change the world. It is His job. Ours’ is to behave enough like Him so as many people as possible will hear us calling for them to crawl out of the wine press before they change into grapes of wrath.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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