River Church NOLA
Salty and Shining

  • Salty and Shining / Living Distinct on the Narrow Road

    Opening Hook
    Before we read a single verse, I want you to do something for me. Think of the person who first made Jesus real to you.

    Who made Jesus Real to you? Whose list are you on?

    Not the first person who told you about church. The first person whose life made you think, “Whatever they’ve got, I want it.”
    Maybe it was a grandmother who prayed over a pot of red beans like the Lord Himself was coming to supper. Maybe it was a coach who could have cussed you out and didn’t. A Sunday school teacher who remembered your name. A coworker who was steady when everything around her was falling apart. For some of you, it was the man who kept showing up to visit you when you were locked up — when nobody else did.
    [Pause. Let them picture the face.]
    Got a face? Here’s what I want you to notice. Most of those people never preached a sermon. Most of them never had a title. Most of them have no idea to this day that they’re on your list. They just lived their faith out in the open — close enough to you that some of Jesus rubbed off.
    Now let me turn the question around, and this is the question this whole message is going to press on you: Whose list are you on?
    Twenty years from now, somebody around here — your son, your granddaughter, the new guy at work, a neighbor, a teenager sitting in a detention center tonight — is going to be asked, “Who made Jesus real to you?” Will anybody say your name?
    Because here’s the truth:

    The world you live in on Monday is going to be shaped by somebody. In the mix - or on the shelf?

    Your workplace is going to have a culture — somebody is going to set it. Your family is going to have a spiritual temperature — somebody is going to set it. Your kids and grandkids are going to learn what a follower of Jesus looks like — from somebody. The only question is whether the people of God are going to be in the mix, or sitting on the shelf like a box of salt nobody ever opened.
    A lot of us have been saved for years. We’ve got the salt. We’ve got the light. But the people around us — the coworker who’s quietly falling apart, the neighbor who’s never once been invited to church, the teenager at your supper table who is deciding right now whether this faith thing is real — they’re watching our lives and can’t see much difference.
    This morning Jesus is going to tell you who you are. Not who you should try to become — who you already are. And if you hear it, you might just end up on somebody’s list.
    Matthew 5:13–16 NLT
    13 “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. 14 “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
    Pray
    Setting the Scene
    Don’t miss where these words come in. Jesus has just finished the Beatitudes. He has described the people who belong to His kingdom: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the humble, the hungry for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted. And the very last thing He said before our passage was, “Rejoice when people insult you and persecute you.”
    Look at who He is talking to. Fishermen. Farmers. Tax collectors. Ordinary, unimpressive folks sitting on a hillside in Galilee — a backwater region of a small nation under Roman occupation. Nobody in Rome had ever heard of these people. And Jesus looks at that crowd and says, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

    Jesus didn’t say “Try to be.” He said “you are.” This is an identity received by grace, not a job you earn.

    Notice what He does not say. He doesn’t say, “You should try to be salt.” He doesn’t say, “If you work real hard, maybe someday you’ll become light.” He says, “You are.” This is not a job description you earn your way into. It is an identity you receive by grace. When you came to Jesus, He didn’t just forgive you — He changed what you are. Everything we say this morning flows from that. We don’t shine to get God’s approval. We shine because, in Christ, we already have it.
    So let’s look at four things Jesus teaches us here.

    1. You are Salt - so make a difference.

    In the ancient world, salt was precious. There was no refrigeration. If you caught fish on the Sea of Galilee — and some of these listeners did — you packed that fish in salt or it rotted. Salt did a few things, and every one of them preaches.

    Salt preserves but only on contact.

    Salt slows down decay. It doesn’t stop the world from being a fallen world, but it holds back the rot. That’s what God’s people are called to do. When a believer is present in a break room, the gossip slows down. When a believer is present in a family, the bitterness doesn’t spread as fast. When believers show up at a school board, a jail, a nursing home, a ballfield — something is preserved that would otherwise spoil.
    Here’s the thing about salt, though: it only works on contact. You can’t preserve a fish from across the room. Salt has to get in it. Some Christians have spent their whole lives building a wall between themselves and the world and calling it holiness. Jesus never called us to be isolated from the world — He called us to be insulated from its corruption while we stay in contact with its people. Salt that stays in the shaker never preserved a thing.

    Salt adds flavor.

    Colossians 4:6 “Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.”
    Job said it a long time ago: who wants to eat something bland without salt? Salt brings out what’s already good in the food. And believers are meant to bring out the good in the world around them — joy, hope, kindness, laughter, grace. Somewhere along the line, a lot of folks got the idea that following Jesus makes you grim. That’s backwards. Paul said,
    Colossians 4:6 NLT
    6 Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.
    The people who know Jesus ought to be the most interesting people to be around, not the most miserable.

    Salt makes people thirsty for living water.

    Eat a handful of salted peanuts and see what you want next. You want something to drink. When your life is genuinely seasoned by Christ — when you have peace in a crisis, when you forgive somebody who doesn’t deserve it, when you’re generous when you don’t have to be — people get thirsty. They start asking, “What is it about you?” And that’s when you get to point them to the Living Water.
    So let me ask you:

    Is anybody thirsty because of you?

    2. Don’t lose your saltiness, stay distinct.

    Then Jesus gives a warning: “What good is salt if it has lost its flavor?”
    Now, technically, pure sodium chloride doesn’t lose its saltiness. But much of the salt people used in Jesus’ day wasn’t pure. It was gathered from places like the shores of the Dead Sea, mixed in with other minerals and dirt. When moisture got to it, the real salt could leach out, and what was left looked like salt, sat in the jar like salt — but it didn’t do anything. It was just white dust. And people would throw it out on the path where it got walked on.
    That’s what happens to a believer who slowly mixes with the world until there’s no difference left. It rarely happens in one big fall.

    Salt rarely loses it’s flavor all at once. It leaches out through slow compromise

    It happens through moisture — a little compromise here, a little “everybody does it” there. A little more of the world’s entertainment, a little less of God’s Word. A little more of the world’s attitude toward money, toward sex, toward people we don’t like. Nobody notices the day the salt leaches out. You still look like salt. You still sit in the same pew. But there’s no flavor left.
    Here’s the hard question:

    If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

    Would your coworkers be surprised to find out? Would your browser history testify for you or against you? Would your text messages?
    And hear me — this is not a call to try harder to be good enough for God. It’s an invitation to stay close to the One who makes you salty in the first place. Salt doesn’t make itself salty. You and I don’t generate our own distinctiveness. It comes from abiding in Christ.
    John 15:5 NLT
    5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.
    When the flavor has faded, the answer isn’t more willpower — it’s coming back to Jesus. And the good news is, by His grace, He can do what Jesus said was impossible for salt: He can make you salty again.

    3. You are light, so don’t hide it.

    Then Jesus switches pictures. “You are the light of the world — like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.”
    In Galilee, many towns were built on hills. At night, with every oil lamp burning, you could see them glowing from miles away. Travelers walking in the dark could navigate by them. Jesus says that’s you. Not a spotlight on yourself — a reference point for people trying to find their way home in the dark.
    Then He says something almost comical: “No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket.” The word there is a household measuring bowl — what you’d use to measure out grain. A typical home in that day was one room. One little lamp could light the whole house — if it was on a stand. Put a bowl over it, and you’re back in the dark. Plus, cover an oil lamp long enough and it suffocates and goes out.
    Nobody does that on purpose. But a lot of us do it in practice. What are the baskets we put over our light?

    The baskets over our light Fear of what people will think

    We’re afraid of what people will think. Afraid we’ll say it wrong. Afraid of being labeled. So we keep our faith very private and very quiet.

    Comfort - my light only shines inside the church.

    We like our church friends, our routine, our pew. Light that only shines inside the church house is a lamp lighting a room that already has the lights on.

    Busyness - I’m too tired to shine.

    Mark’s Gospel adds that you don’t put a lamp under a bed (Mark 4:21). Some of us aren’t hiding our light out of fear — we’re just too tired and too busy to let it shine.

    Inconsistency - Sunday talk… Monday walk.

    Nothing covers a light faster than a believer who talks one way on Sunday and lives another way on Monday.
    Here’s the beautiful part: Jesus didn’t say, “You are the light, so go generate some wattage.” He said elsewhere, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12
    John 8:12 NLT
    12 Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”
    We’re like the moon. The moon has no light of its own — it just reflects the sun. Your job is not to manufacture light. Your job is to stay turned toward the Son and get the baskets off.

    4. Shine for His glory, not your own.

    Now look at the purpose clause in verse 16:
    Matthew 5:16 NLT
    16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
    There’s a difference between a spotlight and a lighthouse. A spotlight says,

    “Look at me.” A lighthouse says, “Look out — and come this way.” Good deeds lead to praise to the Father

    Jesus is not interested in making you famous. In the very next chapter He warns against doing good deeds to be seen by people (Matthew 6:1). The goal is not that people say, “What a good person.” The goal is that people say, “What a good God.”
    And notice: it’s “good deeds.” Real, practical, visible goodness. Not just good opinions. Not just good arguments on Facebook. Good deeds. Taking a meal to the family with the sick child. Mowing the widow’s yard. Visiting the young man in detention that nobody else visits. Being the honest one at work when cutting corners would be easier. Forgiving the brother you haven’t spoken to in five years. When people see that kind of light, sometimes it softens hearts that no sermon ever could.

    Salt and Light walk the narrow road.

    Now, I want to connect this to something Jesus says later in this same Sermon on the Mount.
    Matthew 7:13–14 NLT
    13 “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. 14 But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
    Here’s why that matters for salt and light. The broad road is the road where everybody blends in. It’s crowded and easy, and you never have to be different from anybody. Salt loses its flavor on the broad road. Lamps get covered on the broad road. You can’t be distinct and still go where the crowd goes.
    The narrow road is the road of a disciple. It begins at a narrow gate — and that gate is Jesus Himself (John 10:9
    John 10:9 NLT
    9 Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures.
    You don’t get on it by being good enough. You get on it by trusting Him. But once you’re on it, it is a different road. It goes a different direction than the crowd. And here’s the thing about walking a narrow road in the dark: the people behind you are watching where you put your feet. Your light isn’t just for you. It’s for the ones following you.

    The lamp in the Window You never know who’s out there in the dark

    Let me tell you a story about a woman named Miss Adele.
    Miss Adele lived at the end of a shell road on a bayou in South Louisiana. Her husband, Clovis, had been a shrimper for forty years. Every night he was out on the water, she would set a kerosene lamp in the back window that faced the bayou. Clovis used to say that no matter how dark it got, no matter how thick the fog came in off the marsh, if he could find Adele’s lamp, he could find home.
    Clovis passed away. And Miss Adele kept putting the lamp in the window anyway. Her neighbors thought it was sweet at first, then a little strange. Her own grandson told her one evening, “Mamaw, Paw-Paw’s gone. Nobody’s out there. Why do you keep doing that?”
    She said, “Baby, you never know who’s out there in the dark.”
    Years went by. Then one October a storm came through faster than anybody expected. The power went out across the whole parish. Every porch light, every streetlight, every TV glow — gone. Pitch black.
    And out on the bayou that night was a sixteen-year-old boy. Truth be told, he was not a good boy that year. He had taken his daddy’s skiff without asking, gone out with some friends to do things he had no business doing, and when the weather turned his friends had gone home and left him. Now the motor had died, the rain was coming sideways, and he could not see his own hand in front of his face. He was paddling, and he did not know which way home was.
    And then he saw it. One small, steady, yellow light — the only light anywhere on that whole black bayou. He didn’t know whose it was. He just knew it meant land, and people, and dry ground. So he paddled toward it for an hour, crying and soaked, until his skiff scraped the shell bank behind Miss Adele’s house.
    She heard him banging on the back door. She brought him in, wrapped him in one of Clovis’s old quilts, and sat him at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee milk while the storm raged. And somewhere around two in the morning, that boy asked her the question: “Miss Adele, why was your lamp the only one on?”
    And she told him. She told him about Clovis. And then she told him about Jesus — the Light of the world who came looking for people lost in the dark. Not people who had it together. People exactly like him. That night, at a kitchen table at the end of a shell road, that boy gave his life to Christ.
    He grew up. He became a preacher. And for the rest of his life, he never forgot that the only reason he made it home was because one old woman decided to keep her light burning when everybody else thought it didn’t matter — when the whole world went dark, when nobody was watching, when it would have been easier to blow it out.
    Church, there are people on the bayou tonight. You know some of them by name. They’re in your family. They’re in your office. They’re in your kids’ school. They’re in our jails and our detention centers. The power has gone out in their lives, the storm is coming sideways, and they don’t know which way is home.
    They will not find their way by the crowd’s lights on the broad road. Those lights are out. They’ll find it by somebody walking the narrow road with a lamp that’s still burning.

    Make a Decision

    So I want to ask you to make a decision before you leave here this morning.

    Walk through the narrow gate - trust Jesus for the first time

    If you’ve never walked through the narrow gate — if you’ve never actually trusted Jesus as your Savior — that’s where it starts. You can’t shine a light you don’t have. Jesus is the gate, and it’s open to you this morning. Not because you’ve cleaned yourself up, but because He went to the cross and paid for everything you’ve done. You can come home today.

    Come back

    If you’re a believer, but somewhere along the way your salt lost its flavor — you’ve drifted, blended in, gone quiet — this is your morning to come back. Not to promise you’ll try harder, but to turn back toward the Son and let Him make you salty again.

    Walk the narrow road with your lamp in the stand.

    And if you know Jesus and you’re ready to stop living on the broad road — I’m asking you to commit to walk the narrow road this week, on purpose, with your lamp on the stand. Here’s what that looks like:

    This week

    Get out of the box.

    Name one person you’re going to deliberately be salt to this week — a call, a meal, an invitation, a prayer.

    Pull off one basket:

    Name the basket — fear, comfort, busyness, inconsistency — and ask God to help you lift it.

    Do one good deed nobody asked for.

    and let God get the credit.

    Stay turned toward Jesus.

    Daily time in His Word and in prayer. A moon only shines when it faces the sun.
    In a moment, we’re going to pray, and the altar will be open. If God is speaking to you, I invite you to come. Come to trust Christ. Come to come home. Or come and simply kneel here and say, “Lord, I’m committing to walk the narrow road.

    Keep my lamp burning, Somebody’s out there in the dark.

    Somebody’s out there in the dark.”

      • Matthew 5:13–16NLT

      • Colossians 4:6NLT

      • John 15:5NLT

      • John 8:12NLT

      • Matthew 5:16NLT

      • Matthew 7:13–14NLT

      • John 10:9NLT

  • Salty and Shining / Living Distinct on the Narrow Road

    Opening Hook
    Before we read a single verse, I want you to do something for me. Think of the person who first made Jesus real to you.

    Who made Jesus Real to you? Whose list are you on?

    Not the first person who told you about church. The first person whose life made you think, “Whatever they’ve got, I want it.”
    Maybe it was a grandmother who prayed over a pot of red beans like the Lord Himself was coming to supper. Maybe it was a coach who could have cussed you out and didn’t. A Sunday school teacher who remembered your name. A coworker who was steady when everything around her was falling apart. For some of you, it was the man who kept showing up to visit you when you were locked up — when nobody else did.
    [Pause. Let them picture the face.]
    Got a face? Here’s what I want you to notice. Most of those people never preached a sermon. Most of them never had a title. Most of them have no idea to this day that they’re on your list. They just lived their faith out in the open — close enough to you that some of Jesus rubbed off.
    Now let me turn the question around, and this is the question this whole message is going to press on you: Whose list are you on?
    Twenty years from now, somebody around here — your son, your granddaughter, the new guy at work, a neighbor, a teenager sitting in a detention center tonight — is going to be asked, “Who made Jesus real to you?” Will anybody say your name?
    Because here’s the truth:

    The world you live in on Monday is going to be shaped by somebody. In the mix - or on the shelf?

    Your workplace is going to have a culture — somebody is going to set it. Your family is going to have a spiritual temperature — somebody is going to set it. Your kids and grandkids are going to learn what a follower of Jesus looks like — from somebody. The only question is whether the people of God are going to be in the mix, or sitting on the shelf like a box of salt nobody ever opened.
    A lot of us have been saved for years. We’ve got the salt. We’ve got the light. But the people around us — the coworker who’s quietly falling apart, the neighbor who’s never once been invited to church, the teenager at your supper table who is deciding right now whether this faith thing is real — they’re watching our lives and can’t see much difference.
    This morning Jesus is going to tell you who you are. Not who you should try to become — who you already are. And if you hear it, you might just end up on somebody’s list.
    Matthew 5:13–16 NLT
    13 “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. 14 “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
    Pray
    Setting the Scene
    Don’t miss where these words come in. Jesus has just finished the Beatitudes. He has described the people who belong to His kingdom: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the humble, the hungry for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted. And the very last thing He said before our passage was, “Rejoice when people insult you and persecute you.”
    Look at who He is talking to. Fishermen. Farmers. Tax collectors. Ordinary, unimpressive folks sitting on a hillside in Galilee — a backwater region of a small nation under Roman occupation. Nobody in Rome had ever heard of these people. And Jesus looks at that crowd and says, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

    Jesus didn’t say “Try to be.” He said “you are.” This is an identity received by grace, not a job you earn.

    Notice what He does not say. He doesn’t say, “You should try to be salt.” He doesn’t say, “If you work real hard, maybe someday you’ll become light.” He says, “You are.” This is not a job description you earn your way into. It is an identity you receive by grace. When you came to Jesus, He didn’t just forgive you — He changed what you are. Everything we say this morning flows from that. We don’t shine to get God’s approval. We shine because, in Christ, we already have it.
    So let’s look at four things Jesus teaches us here.

    1. You are Salt - so make a difference.

    In the ancient world, salt was precious. There was no refrigeration. If you caught fish on the Sea of Galilee — and some of these listeners did — you packed that fish in salt or it rotted. Salt did a few things, and every one of them preaches.

    Salt preserves but only on contact.

    Salt slows down decay. It doesn’t stop the world from being a fallen world, but it holds back the rot. That’s what God’s people are called to do. When a believer is present in a break room, the gossip slows down. When a believer is present in a family, the bitterness doesn’t spread as fast. When believers show up at a school board, a jail, a nursing home, a ballfield — something is preserved that would otherwise spoil.
    Here’s the thing about salt, though: it only works on contact. You can’t preserve a fish from across the room. Salt has to get in it. Some Christians have spent their whole lives building a wall between themselves and the world and calling it holiness. Jesus never called us to be isolated from the world — He called us to be insulated from its corruption while we stay in contact with its people. Salt that stays in the shaker never preserved a thing.

    Salt adds flavor.

    Colossians 4:6 “Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.”
    Job said it a long time ago: who wants to eat something bland without salt? Salt brings out what’s already good in the food. And believers are meant to bring out the good in the world around them — joy, hope, kindness, laughter, grace. Somewhere along the line, a lot of folks got the idea that following Jesus makes you grim. That’s backwards. Paul said,
    Colossians 4:6 NLT
    6 Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.
    The people who know Jesus ought to be the most interesting people to be around, not the most miserable.

    Salt makes people thirsty for living water.

    Eat a handful of salted peanuts and see what you want next. You want something to drink. When your life is genuinely seasoned by Christ — when you have peace in a crisis, when you forgive somebody who doesn’t deserve it, when you’re generous when you don’t have to be — people get thirsty. They start asking, “What is it about you?” And that’s when you get to point them to the Living Water.
    So let me ask you:

    Is anybody thirsty because of you?

    2. Don’t lose your saltiness, stay distinct.

    Then Jesus gives a warning: “What good is salt if it has lost its flavor?”
    Now, technically, pure sodium chloride doesn’t lose its saltiness. But much of the salt people used in Jesus’ day wasn’t pure. It was gathered from places like the shores of the Dead Sea, mixed in with other minerals and dirt. When moisture got to it, the real salt could leach out, and what was left looked like salt, sat in the jar like salt — but it didn’t do anything. It was just white dust. And people would throw it out on the path where it got walked on.
    That’s what happens to a believer who slowly mixes with the world until there’s no difference left. It rarely happens in one big fall.

    Salt rarely loses it’s flavor all at once. It leaches out through slow compromise

    It happens through moisture — a little compromise here, a little “everybody does it” there. A little more of the world’s entertainment, a little less of God’s Word. A little more of the world’s attitude toward money, toward sex, toward people we don’t like. Nobody notices the day the salt leaches out. You still look like salt. You still sit in the same pew. But there’s no flavor left.
    Here’s the hard question:

    If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

    Would your coworkers be surprised to find out? Would your browser history testify for you or against you? Would your text messages?
    And hear me — this is not a call to try harder to be good enough for God. It’s an invitation to stay close to the One who makes you salty in the first place. Salt doesn’t make itself salty. You and I don’t generate our own distinctiveness. It comes from abiding in Christ.
    John 15:5 NLT
    5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.
    When the flavor has faded, the answer isn’t more willpower — it’s coming back to Jesus. And the good news is, by His grace, He can do what Jesus said was impossible for salt: He can make you salty again.

    3. You are light, so don’t hide it.

    Then Jesus switches pictures. “You are the light of the world — like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.”
    In Galilee, many towns were built on hills. At night, with every oil lamp burning, you could see them glowing from miles away. Travelers walking in the dark could navigate by them. Jesus says that’s you. Not a spotlight on yourself — a reference point for people trying to find their way home in the dark.
    Then He says something almost comical: “No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket.” The word there is a household measuring bowl — what you’d use to measure out grain. A typical home in that day was one room. One little lamp could light the whole house — if it was on a stand. Put a bowl over it, and you’re back in the dark. Plus, cover an oil lamp long enough and it suffocates and goes out.
    Nobody does that on purpose. But a lot of us do it in practice. What are the baskets we put over our light?

    The baskets over our light Fear of what people will think

    We’re afraid of what people will think. Afraid we’ll say it wrong. Afraid of being labeled. So we keep our faith very private and very quiet.

    Comfort - my light only shines inside the church.

    We like our church friends, our routine, our pew. Light that only shines inside the church house is a lamp lighting a room that already has the lights on.

    Busyness - I’m too tired to shine.

    Mark’s Gospel adds that you don’t put a lamp under a bed (Mark 4:21). Some of us aren’t hiding our light out of fear — we’re just too tired and too busy to let it shine.

    Inconsistency - Sunday talk… Monday walk.

    Nothing covers a light faster than a believer who talks one way on Sunday and lives another way on Monday.
    Here’s the beautiful part: Jesus didn’t say, “You are the light, so go generate some wattage.” He said elsewhere, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12
    John 8:12 NLT
    12 Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”
    We’re like the moon. The moon has no light of its own — it just reflects the sun. Your job is not to manufacture light. Your job is to stay turned toward the Son and get the baskets off.

    4. Shine for His glory, not your own.

    Now look at the purpose clause in verse 16:
    Matthew 5:16 NLT
    16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
    There’s a difference between a spotlight and a lighthouse. A spotlight says,

    “Look at me.” A lighthouse says, “Look out — and come this way.” Good deeds lead to praise to the Father

    Jesus is not interested in making you famous. In the very next chapter He warns against doing good deeds to be seen by people (Matthew 6:1). The goal is not that people say, “What a good person.” The goal is that people say, “What a good God.”
    And notice: it’s “good deeds.” Real, practical, visible goodness. Not just good opinions. Not just good arguments on Facebook. Good deeds. Taking a meal to the family with the sick child. Mowing the widow’s yard. Visiting the young man in detention that nobody else visits. Being the honest one at work when cutting corners would be easier. Forgiving the brother you haven’t spoken to in five years. When people see that kind of light, sometimes it softens hearts that no sermon ever could.

    Salt and Light walk the narrow road.

    Now, I want to connect this to something Jesus says later in this same Sermon on the Mount.
    Matthew 7:13–14 NLT
    13 “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. 14 But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
    Here’s why that matters for salt and light. The broad road is the road where everybody blends in. It’s crowded and easy, and you never have to be different from anybody. Salt loses its flavor on the broad road. Lamps get covered on the broad road. You can’t be distinct and still go where the crowd goes.
    The narrow road is the road of a disciple. It begins at a narrow gate — and that gate is Jesus Himself (John 10:9
    John 10:9 NLT
    9 Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures.
    You don’t get on it by being good enough. You get on it by trusting Him. But once you’re on it, it is a different road. It goes a different direction than the crowd. And here’s the thing about walking a narrow road in the dark: the people behind you are watching where you put your feet. Your light isn’t just for you. It’s for the ones following you.

    The lamp in the Window You never know who’s out there in the dark

    Let me tell you a story about a woman named Miss Adele.
    Miss Adele lived at the end of a shell road on a bayou in South Louisiana. Her husband, Clovis, had been a shrimper for forty years. Every night he was out on the water, she would set a kerosene lamp in the back window that faced the bayou. Clovis used to say that no matter how dark it got, no matter how thick the fog came in off the marsh, if he could find Adele’s lamp, he could find home.
    Clovis passed away. And Miss Adele kept putting the lamp in the window anyway. Her neighbors thought it was sweet at first, then a little strange. Her own grandson told her one evening, “Mamaw, Paw-Paw’s gone. Nobody’s out there. Why do you keep doing that?”
    She said, “Baby, you never know who’s out there in the dark.”
    Years went by. Then one October a storm came through faster than anybody expected. The power went out across the whole parish. Every porch light, every streetlight, every TV glow — gone. Pitch black.
    And out on the bayou that night was a sixteen-year-old boy. Truth be told, he was not a good boy that year. He had taken his daddy’s skiff without asking, gone out with some friends to do things he had no business doing, and when the weather turned his friends had gone home and left him. Now the motor had died, the rain was coming sideways, and he could not see his own hand in front of his face. He was paddling, and he did not know which way home was.
    And then he saw it. One small, steady, yellow light — the only light anywhere on that whole black bayou. He didn’t know whose it was. He just knew it meant land, and people, and dry ground. So he paddled toward it for an hour, crying and soaked, until his skiff scraped the shell bank behind Miss Adele’s house.
    She heard him banging on the back door. She brought him in, wrapped him in one of Clovis’s old quilts, and sat him at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee milk while the storm raged. And somewhere around two in the morning, that boy asked her the question: “Miss Adele, why was your lamp the only one on?”
    And she told him. She told him about Clovis. And then she told him about Jesus — the Light of the world who came looking for people lost in the dark. Not people who had it together. People exactly like him. That night, at a kitchen table at the end of a shell road, that boy gave his life to Christ.
    He grew up. He became a preacher. And for the rest of his life, he never forgot that the only reason he made it home was because one old woman decided to keep her light burning when everybody else thought it didn’t matter — when the whole world went dark, when nobody was watching, when it would have been easier to blow it out.
    Church, there are people on the bayou tonight. You know some of them by name. They’re in your family. They’re in your office. They’re in your kids’ school. They’re in our jails and our detention centers. The power has gone out in their lives, the storm is coming sideways, and they don’t know which way is home.
    They will not find their way by the crowd’s lights on the broad road. Those lights are out. They’ll find it by somebody walking the narrow road with a lamp that’s still burning.

    Make a Decision

    So I want to ask you to make a decision before you leave here this morning.

    Walk through the narrow gate - trust Jesus for the first time

    If you’ve never walked through the narrow gate — if you’ve never actually trusted Jesus as your Savior — that’s where it starts. You can’t shine a light you don’t have. Jesus is the gate, and it’s open to you this morning. Not because you’ve cleaned yourself up, but because He went to the cross and paid for everything you’ve done. You can come home today.

    Come back

    If you’re a believer, but somewhere along the way your salt lost its flavor — you’ve drifted, blended in, gone quiet — this is your morning to come back. Not to promise you’ll try harder, but to turn back toward the Son and let Him make you salty again.

    Walk the narrow road with your lamp in the stand.

    And if you know Jesus and you’re ready to stop living on the broad road — I’m asking you to commit to walk the narrow road this week, on purpose, with your lamp on the stand. Here’s what that looks like:

    This week

    Get out of the box.

    Name one person you’re going to deliberately be salt to this week — a call, a meal, an invitation, a prayer.

    Pull off one basket:

    Name the basket — fear, comfort, busyness, inconsistency — and ask God to help you lift it.

    Do one good deed nobody asked for.

    and let God get the credit.

    Stay turned toward Jesus.

    Daily time in His Word and in prayer. A moon only shines when it faces the sun.
    In a moment, we’re going to pray, and the altar will be open. If God is speaking to you, I invite you to come. Come to trust Christ. Come to come home. Or come and simply kneel here and say, “Lord, I’m committing to walk the narrow road.

    Keep my lamp burning, Somebody’s out there in the dark.

    Somebody’s out there in the dark.”

      • Matthew 5:13–16NLT

      • Colossians 4:6NLT

      • John 15:5NLT

      • John 8:12NLT

      • Matthew 5:16NLT

      • Matthew 7:13–14NLT

      • John 10:9NLT

River Church NOLA
robert@riverchurchnola.com
504-578-8317
https://riverchurchnola.com
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