Christian User Experience

We've heard a lot about customer or user experience in today's world. For those of you who like to have a title for a sermon, you can call this the Christian User Experience. So if any of you have gone out shopping or even to a restaurant recently, you'll notice that on the receipt, often there's a little thing at the bottom that says, we want to know how your service has been. Give us a call, or go to this website, and if you do, you'll be entered for a contest, and you might win $25 or a coupon for your next purchase. Everyone's looking for feedback. Companies are looking to understand, how did we serve our customers? If you've been on a call center call, maybe you've called your bank for something, or you've needed a service call of some type, they'll often say, press one if you'll stay on the line after the end of this call, because we'd like to improve our customer experience, and we'd like to have your feedback for that. We see it from retail stores as well. Home Depot, for example, if you go there, everyone's looking to enhance their customer or their user experience. And a great deal of training goes into getting it right. Organizations have culture, they talk to their employees about what they're about as an organization, what they want their people to be like, and what sort of user experience they want customers who are encountering them to have. It's the same way, actually, for us as Christians. If you had to think about the Christian user experience, or customer experience, what would you think of in terms of biblical passages? Turn with me, if you will, because I'd like to focus this sermon on a handful of verses in the Bible that I think describe the Christian user experience, the experience we're supposed to drive for people who come into contact with us. Turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 5. Matthew 5. We'll read verses 14 through 16.

These are probably among the most quoted verses in the Bible, so for many people this will be familiar language that we're going to read, but maybe we haven't thought of it quite in this way before.

Matthew 5, and we'll start in verse 14.

You are the light of the world, Jesus Christ's words as he's speaking in the Sermon on the Mount, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

So though we might not have thought about it before, these verses really talk about what the user experience or the customer experience should be for people who encounter a Christian.

Seeing good works, glorifying our Father in Heaven because of the light that they've come into contact with. What I'd like to do is take some time now during the course of this sermon and take this apart, think about it in those terms. What kind of user experience are we driving for the people that we come into contact with on a day-to-day basis? What conclusions do they draw about God from the experience that they have interacting with us as individuals? Now, like any philosophy of customer experience, ours is rooted in two parts.

First, understanding who and what we are, and then secondly, based on that fact, what it is that we're supposed to generate as outcomes. So let's look at it in those two contexts. First of all, who and what we are. Jesus Christ here uses an analogy of light, and I think it's instructive to take some time and think about why it is that he used that analogy. What it meant. And not just from a perspective of science and what light is and particles and wave theory and all that kind of thing, but when we think about it, the people that he talked to in that day and age that were listening to those words that he spoke, what would they have understood and taken away when they heard about light?

How would they have used light? What would they have thought about it? When we read in the Bible and examples like this come out and analogies like this are used, we should ask why.

And we should think about why and what it is that we're meant to learn from it. Now in this passage, Jesus Christ uses two examples, right? He uses first a city that's set on a hill, and secondly, he uses a lamp that's lit and put up on a lampstand. What would that have meant to people in that day and time? First of all, briefly thinking about a city. Now we experience cities differently today than in the ancient world. This is a point in time, a city like Cleveland, which I don't even know what our population is, but if you take Greater Cleveland, I guess we're between a million and two million people probably.

It's a run-of-the-mill city. Bob's trying to give me hand signals back there about how many people there are in Cleveland. But it's a fair-sized town, but not considered huge, especially by world standards, if you think of a Mexico City or Tokyo or Shanghai or a city like that. You think of cities as downtown, skyscrapers and things like that. When Jesus Christ was speaking here, he was talking to people who were living out in this case in Galilee, where he gave the Sermon on the Mount. Some commentators think that actually there was a town not too far away set up on a higher hill.

And that was usually where you would set a town, especially back in those days. You had to think of a strategic location for a town. So generally you'd put it up on a hill because it could be defended. You might have walls around it. You would certainly have a water source. But that town would sit on the top of a hill. And as you're walking down the road, as you're moving down the roads that existed, they didn't have highways, but there were well-developed road systems, you would know the towns that were along those roads.

And you could be able to measure your progress. You'd know where you were based on the towns that were there. In addition, in this part of the world, walls were basically built out of limestone. So you didn't have a lot of wooden structures because they had probably more stone than they had wood in that part of the world. And so you would have, as the sun hit these structures, you'd have a city sitting up on a hill with limestone walls, and it would shine.

And so when Jesus Christ would talk about this, maybe even gesturing over in the distance to a town that sat there on the hilltop, it's saying you're like that town on the top of a hill. You can't hide a town like that. See the way the sun is glittering off of those white limestone walls? That's what it's like to be a light. Up on that hill, where everyone can see it, where people can measure their progress going down the road, they can orient, they know where they are as they look at those familiar towns that might be sitting up on the hill, and they can understand where they are relative to those things.

Moving on to the second analogy that Jesus Christ gives using light, and we'll spend a little more time on this. He says that a light is not hidden under a bushel, but it's put up on a lampstand, so it can provide light for the entire house. Now, we don't really think much about lampstands these days, except maybe from an ornamental perspective. When you think about it, when's the last time that you came into your house, lit a candle or an oil lamp, and actually put it up on a lampstand?

Probably not recently. It's really instinct. You walk into a room, and you're groping for the light switch, and you flick it on. Let's admit it, we really don't think much further than that. Light is everywhere, isn't it? We walk into a room, we just flick on the light. We don't really think, wow, this is pretty amazing. We have light. We just turn on the light switch, and it's there. If anything, we think about it when our light bulb burns out. I've got one in the basement right now.

It's flickering. It drives me nuts. It comes on, then turns off. That's the only time I really think about the lighting in my house at this point, when a light bulb goes out, or when it's causing problems like that. But if you go camping, I know some of you like to go camping, when you go camping, you start to think about some of these basic things, don't you? Because night starts to come, and you've got to think, if you've got some sort of electric lantern with a rechargeable battery, and if you're like me, and you forgot to plug it in and charge it before you left for camping, now you're suddenly scrambling and thinking, how am I going to have light?

How am I going to cook? How am I going to get the tent put up? How are we going to get all of these things done? Or maybe you've got a kerosene lamp or a lamp that works off of one of those small propane bottles. Then you have to think about how much fuel you have. You've got to make sure you have something to light it with. That's the kind of world that people lived in at that point in time when Jesus Christ was speaking. Light was not something that was taken for granted.

Let me read a little bit of an article that was in the UK newspaper called The Independent. This was back in May of 2011. It's written by a lady named Jane Brocks. She actually wrote a book. She spent a whole research study about modern lighting and wrote a book about it. It's some very interesting things that came out. In this article from The Independent, it says, This thoughtlessness and the freedom light grants us is something humans couldn't dream of even a few hundred years ago. In the late 18th century, lamps were still rudimentary, depending on the same technology that had illuminated Roman homes and even the caves of the Pleistocene. A vessel of stone, clay, or metal with some kind of animal or vegetable fat as fuel and a wick. Except for the very wealthy or those living in places where fuel might be abundant, light was precious and used sparingly, in part because all fuel for light could also be used as food. John Smeaton, in his account of building the Eddystone Lighthouse off the coast of Plymouth, wrote that he founded a matter of complaint through the country that the lightkeepers had at various times been reduced to the necessity of eating the candles.

So if you get hungry and you've got a choice of burning the fuel or eating it to keep yourself alive, they were eating it. All light, the article goes on, had to be tended continually. It stank and it smoked, and the open flame was always a danger. Countless conflagrations were caused by a tipped-over candle or lamp, so much so that in some medieval cities, residents were required to put out their cooking fires, often the only interior light that many could afford, after dinner. In fact, the word curfew comes from the old French, couvre-fure, meaning cover fire. So, a little linguistic trivia for anyone who's interested in that. Not only households were dark, it goes on. In the Middle Ages, there would have been no street lighting, and with only the volunteer night watch to keep guard, the authorities, so as to keep civil order, required residents to stay in their homes after dark. Most willingly obliged, not only would any night traveler be in danger of tripping over wood piles and stones, or falling into a river, but there were plenty of footpads and thieves on the Rome. So, when you think about it, it's only within the last century and a half or so, maybe 200 years at the most, that light, something like what we experience today, was routine. It was something much more precious and difficult to come by at the time that Jesus Christ would have used this parable.

A few more bullet points, things that came from an NPR interview, I actually found an interview of this same lady from NPR, which I found a few things here interesting and humorous. First one, in Babylonian times, just to talk about the value of light, a day's labor in Babylonian times would get you about 10 minutes of light. So, if we put that into today's terms, I just looked up quickly what the median household income is in the United States, and divided it down. That's about $226 that it would cost you for 10 minutes of light. So, even by today's standards, I don't think many of us would be willing to spend that kind of money to turn on light in our house for 10 minutes. That's how precious light was at the time that Jesus Christ was using this analogy. Also, talking about this book that this lady, Jane Brockes, wrote, she talked about some of the different ways that people would find ingenious methods of creating light that wouldn't have to use fuel. In the tropics, they'd catch fireflies. They'd actually put fireflies in some sort of a jar or container so that could cast light. The one I got a kick out of was from Scotland. There's a bird called the Storm Petrel, which apparently is a very oily seabird. And so, people would catch it and dry it. Obviously, they'd kill it first.

They would thread a wick down the throat of this bird. They would use the dead bird as a light because it had so much fat and oil in it. So, if you can imagine you're having dinner, let's have a romantic dinner, dear. He set a dead bird on the table with a wick coming out of it. You light it up so you can have light in your house. People went to that extent to create light. That's the point here. So, when we read a parable like this, we tend to blow right by it. Jesus says we're lights. We turn on lights. When a light's going defective, it starts buzzing. That's really annoying. Jesus Christ was talking about a lot more than that when he was talking about light. We think about the time and the expense and the effort that people went to. The whaling industry is a big thing, or was back in the day. Do you know why whales were a big thing? They're basically floating blobs of fuel. You've got these big blobs of fuel floating in the ocean. If you can catch them and bring them in, you have fuel so you can light lamps. You can light fires. You can cook things. That's why it was so important. In fact, Cleveland itself, if anyone knows Cleveland history very well, was founded on this. Cleveland was the first big petroleum city. Kerosene was really the big fuel that made light in the United States readily available to people. Kerosene was being refined here. Rockefeller partnered up with some people. Back in 1963 was when they founded their first production company, Andrews-Clarken Company, which in 1870 became Standard Oil and took off. It took Cleveland up with it. Kerosene. We don't even think about Kerosene really anymore, but that was the main lighting fuel at that point in time. That made John D. Rockefeller, the city of Cleveland, everyone quite wealthy because there was fuel here to create light. When we read this, and when Jesus Christ says, you are the lights of the world, there's a lot more than that than saying, yeah, you're like the people when you walk in the door and you flick a light switch on, you're there. There's a lot more to that when you think of what expense, effort, time, trouble went into creating light at that point in time. You start to realize why people looked at the sun, tracked out solar patterns and lunar patterns, so they knew when there would be light during the nighttime at a full moon. They knew when the seasons were coming, when the sun would come back and they could plant their crops.

It was incredibly important, actually, to life itself to have light, and very expensive to try to create it on your own.

So what do we need to understand about ourselves then, going back to the idea of customer experience or user experience? What do we need to understand about ourselves because of this analogy of light? A couple of things I'd like to talk about briefly, and then we'll get into the heart of the topic. One is light versus darkness. The Bible uses light versus darkness as probably one of the most often used analogies throughout the Bible, with light meaning good and righteousness and darkness being used as an analogy for evil. One place, if you want to look at that, is Ephesians 5, verses 8-11.

This is another broader meaning when we think of ourselves as lights. We should be vehicles of righteousness, bringing the right way, bringing God's way into any situation, as opposed to darkness, which is the way of evil. Ephesians 5, verses 8-11.

Here Paul writes to the Ephesians, For you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.

Light, being a light, also exposes, through contrast, what it is that is darkness or unrighteousness.

The second thing that we need to understand about ourselves, fundamentally, in order to provide the user experience that we need to, aside from light as righteousness, is how precious we are to God. I talked about how precious and difficult to create light was back at that point in time. And God likewise, we have to understand, we are valuable and precious to Him. Turn with me, if you will, to 1 Corinthians 6.

To God, we're not an afterthought, like flicking on a light switch when you walk into a room. For God, we are something precious, like light back in the day that Jesus Christ was walking the earth, and the expense and the care and the effort that it took to create artificial light. 1 Corinthians 6, verses 19 and 20. Here Paul writes, don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, that you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price.

Therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which is God's. So he's talking here about the price, the precious price with which we were purchased. So I mentioned the cost that it would take, a day's wages for 10 minutes of light back at that point in time. We've been purchased with an even much more precious price, haven't we?

We think of the blood of Jesus Christ that was given for us, so we could have these spiritual lives that we do, so we could have the live as lights in this world. So moving forward, then, from this understanding of how God views us, and what we need to understand about ourselves to be lights, let's talk about three parts, then, that's laid out in this section of Scripture, in terms of the user experience that we are supposed to create as lights in the world. First of all, being the light of the world is exemplifying the qualities of Jesus Christ.

People should be seeing the qualities of Jesus Christ when they experience us as Christians. If you'll turn to John 8, verse 12, there's a couple passages where Jesus Christ talks about Himself as light, that I'd like to look at briefly. And in saying that we are lights, His followers are lights, He's in essence saying that we are like Him.

John 8, verse 12. Here Jesus was speaking to a group of people, and in verse 12 He spoke to them again, saying, So when Jesus Christ said that we are lights, what He was really saying, because He also said that He is light, is that we're like Him. And to take that just a little bit further, let's go one chapter back from there to John 9, and read John 9, verse 5.

John 9, verse 5. Here Jesus says, As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. As long as I'm in the world, which implies once I'm not in the world anymore, somebody needs to take over being the light of the world. And I think that's part of what Jesus Christ was saying in Matthew as well, when we put these things together.

Jesus Christ on the earth was the light. He showed God's way, He revealed the Father, He revealed the way that we should walk. And as we read in Matthew, that we are lights. And we look here in John 9, verse 5, He says, as long as He's in the world, He's the light of the world. We know that He left the world to ascend back to heaven. And as He says in Matthew 5, one of the reasons He left us behind was to be the light of the world.

So when we think about user experience, the experience that people have when they're coming into contact with us, it's supposed to be, they're supposed to be experiencing the qualities of Jesus Christ as they come into contact with us as lights in this world. There's another element that Jesus meant to bring out, and that people listening to Him at this point in time would have understood as He was talking. And that was that the rabbinical leaders, the leaders of the Jewish authority at that point in time, would have often been referred to as lights as well, just in common conversation.

Charles Spurgeon wrote in one of his sermons, This title has been given by the Jews to certain of their eminent rabbis. With great pomposity, they spoke of Rabbi Judah or Rabbi Yohanan as the lamps of the universe and the lights of the world. It must have sounded strangely in the ears of the scribes and Pharisees to hear that same title, in all soberness, applied to a few bronze-faced and rough-handed peasants and fishermen who had become disciples of Jesus.

So think of this, because they certainly would have known how people spoke about the religious authorities of their day, and how shocked those people must have been in that multitude hearing it when Jesus Christ looked out at them and said, You are the lights of the world. After they had heard the religious authorities, those who, as we read in the Bible, bound all of these burdens on the people, calling themselves lights, and Jesus Christ was saying, No, it's not that group of religious authorities, it's not that establishment that I'm working through, it's all of you as my followers, my disciples that I'm working through. You are the light of the world. A very strong statement, what he wanted those people to understand in terms of how they would act. Turn with me, if you will, to 1 Corinthians 1. We'll read a little bit more in terms of what it is and why it is that Jesus Christ said this. Because there are certain qualities that he's looking for in people who follow him. And as his spirit begins working in us, the qualities that are supposed to be built, he didn't see those qualities exemplified in the religious leaders of the day. They couldn't accept him because he didn't fit into the paradigm that they had built, and he threatened the power structure that they had built. 1 Corinthians 1, verses 26 through 31. Here Paul, speaking to the Corinthians, says, So here Paul was making exactly the same point that Jesus Christ was making as he spoke to that multitude. And he was saying, God is working with people who can express a humble and trusting faith in him, and who realize that they need him in order to achieve salvation. That it's not going to come because of anything that they're doing, it's not going to come because of positions or titles or anything else that they hold, it's not going to come because they're part of some caste or group of people that are separate or feel themselves superior to others. But just as Paul was saying here, Jesus Christ was trying to bring across the point, he's looking to those who are humble and ready to trust in him, not people who have certain qualities that might be valued in whatever culture you're in.

And you can name your culture, every culture finds ways to take attributes, often things none of us can help, whether it's body shape or height or weight or color, any of these things. It's interesting, we won't, you know, short digression, it's interesting how cultures often go to things that a person cannot even control in order to attribute worth or lack of worth to people.

And here Paul is saying, and Jesus Christ is saying, that's not what it's about. It's about being humble and a trusting heart, turning ourselves to him, having faith in him, and letting him take our lives forward. It's a statement of values, if we want to think again about customer experience or user experience. Companies have values that they put forward, right, to their people that interface with the customers. These are statements of values that Jesus Christ put forward, that Paul was speaking about as well, that he wants to see in the people who are creating the user experience for Christianity. Examples of humility, examples of faith in God, those are the things that will drive the user experience that Jesus Christ wants us to create.

So we're given the qualities of Jesus Christ himself, just to recap here on this section, the light of the world. They're bestowed on the people that God calls. Repentance, faith, and humility are the key qualities that we're supposed to have. And he says, if we look at the first part of that section in Matthew 5.14, he says categorically, you are the light of the world.

And we have to let that sink in as well, because he doesn't say, strive to become the light of the world. He doesn't say, I want you to try to be the light of the world. He doesn't say, grow to be the light of the world. He says straight out, you are the light of the world. That's why you're there. It is your definition. And so the choice then is, how do we shine? It's not whether we're going to be a light. He says, because he's called people out, he's given them his spirit, you are the light of the world. And we need to think about ourselves that way and consider how we are shining as a light. Secondly, in terms of user experience again, the passage explains, Jesus Christ says, Let your light so shine before men that they might see your good works. So this is another value statement that he's making in terms of how our lights should shine, how we should create user experience. And here he's saying, it's through good works that people should see. This is the first part of the action statement, what specifically we have to do to create that customer experience that Jesus Christ wants for Christians. And what he's saying is, we need to shine. We need to shine just like that city on the top of the hill shines. We need to shine just like that lamp at the top of the lampstand shines. That's how we're supposed to do it. So let's think for a few minutes about light and what it does.

Light is irrepressible, and it can't be hidden. And that's part of the point that he's making, for example, when he talks about the city on a hill. A city on the hill is visible. It can't help but be visible. It's placed at the top of that hill, and you're going to see it from far away, because of the way the sun would have glanced off that limestone, right? It would have been just like a lamp. You see some of the pictures sometimes of clouds over landscape and a beam of light coming down and striking something in the distance, and it just lights it up. And that's how one of these cities would have been. I think also of myself, I have trouble sleeping when there's light on. I don't know if any of you have the same situation. I tend to travel a fair amount. I might spend a night or two a week on the road in a hotel. And depending on where I'm at, one of the first things I'll do is I'll take a towel, I'll roll it up, and I'll stick it right under the hotel room door.

Because there's nothing that drives me crazy in the middle of the night than this big band of light coming into my room from the hallway, because there's a gap between the door and the floor. And if there is, I'll just stick a towel there to stop that light, because that light just comes in, and for me, I'm sensitive to light when I sleep. I'll wake up in the middle of the night, have a hard time getting back to sleep, because there's all this light coming into the room. But have you ever thought of how difficult it is to keep light out?

It's not an easy thing to do, because no matter what you do when you try to cover something, it's virtually impossible to completely block out the light. It's persistent. It finds just the little pinpricks to come through, and once your eyes adjust, something that you didn't even see when the room was light as the room darkens, even that little pinprick hole that's left, whether it's tape that you used, or a blanket to try, or curtains to try to block things out. The light just seems to seep in, and it's virtually impossible to get to complete darkness. I think the closest I've been has been doing a cave tour in South Dakota once, where you're down hundreds of feet down in the ground, you've gone around a couple turns, and then they'll turn the lights off for you. That's the darkest dark I've ever seen. But it's difficult, isn't it? Because light, it's irrepressible. It works its way into everything, and it keeps coming through. You know, I think of Christian qualities when I think about that. We won't turn there right now, but 1 Corinthians 13, if you want to look it up later, the love chapter that we talk about. 1 Corinthians 13, we look later in verses 4, 7, and 8.

It uses similar language in talking about how God's love works itself out in people. It uses language like suffering long, enduring all things, never failing.

When we think about that in terms of light, and how light always seems to find its way in, it's using those same types of words and expressions to talk about our own Christian walk and the love that we express. And the fact that God's love always finds a way through. It always seeps through as we experience it. And it should always be in us as we're walking through our Christian lives. Not only working in us, but being expressed out to other people. Our other people seeing that same thing as well in us. That we keep on, we remain steadfast in doing the things that we know we need to do, and also in expressing God's love to other people. Not as a passing phrase, but experienced as deep care that's going to continue coming back, and continue coming back just as God does in our lives.

So as Christians, we have to be the same way. We light the way in a dark world by the things that we do. Let's turn to Ephesians 2 and verse 10, and we'll talk a little bit more here about how the user experience is supposed to be driven. It ties in directly to light as well. Ephesians 2, and we'll read verse 10.

Ephesians 2, 10. Paul writes here to the Ephesians that we, talking about us as Christians, are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So the way that we operate as Christians should be seen through good works is what's being pointed out. This is the way that God's Spirit works in us. This is the way that light is supposed to be shown and experienced by the world.

Further, in Galatians 6 verses 7 through 10, here the two themes that we've been talking about are starting to be woven together in terms of doing works, and also, again, like light, being irrepressible and continuing forward no matter what. Galatians 6 will start in verse 7.

Here Paul writes, don't be deceived in verse 7. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, he will reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the spirit will of the spirit reap everlasting life. And here's where he hones in on it. Let us never grow weary while doing good. For in due season we shall reap if we don't lose heart.

Therefore, as a result of that phrase, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. So this, again, is a direct expression of the user experience that people should be seeing, right? That we not grow weary, that we continue on in doing good. To people who are in the household of faith, those who are our brothers and sisters here, but also to everyone that we come into contact with in the world. That's the experience that they're supposed to have, the light that's supposed to be coming from us. Constantly doing good, not growing weary, and continuing to find ways to express that love. We constantly hear things from people who come into contact with this congregation. That's one of the big things that they experience, which is fantastic to see. It's a love they see expressed to one another in the ways that we act towards one another as a congregation, the way that we welcome people in. And it's a fantastic thing to see, something we need to continue doing just as we have been, and continue growing in it. The last point I want to make in this section, in terms of how it's expressed, is it's about what we do and not what we say. And again, it's instructive to think about the example or the analogy that Jesus Christ uses. There's lots of things he could have said. He could have said, you are the housefly of the world. He could have said, you are the screaming eagle of the world. But he didn't. Have you ever been in the house, or worse yet, a mosquito? I remember sometimes being camping or being at summer camp up in northern Minnesota, lying there in the dark, and there'd be a mosquito around.

And all you hear is this buzzing, this incessant buzzing, right? You're like slapping yourself, thinking that somehow in the dark you can catch this mosquito or kill it. Or a housefly, when you're sitting in the house, it keeps dodging in and out and buzzing and making this noise and annoying you, right? Jesus Christ didn't say we're houseflies. He didn't say we're mosquitoes. He didn't say we're squawking birds.

He said we're lights. He said we're lights. Our actions, the things that people see being more important even than what they hear. Matthew 21, 28 through 32. Jesus Christ uses an analogy that strikes directly at this topic. Matthew 21, verse 28 through 32.

Jesus says, what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first, and he said, son, go work today in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not. But afterwards he regretted it, and he went. And then he came to the second, and he said likewise. And this son answered and said, I go, sir. But he didn't go.

Which of the two did the will of his father? What's he getting at here? What's the crux of what he's getting to? He's saying, what's more important? The one who said I'm going to do something, or the one who actually went and did it, even though he might have said he wasn't going to? And I think we all know the answer. Jesus said to them, assuredly I say to you, I'm sorry, they said to him the first. And Jesus said to them then, assuredly I say to you that the tax collectors and the harlots enter the kingdom of God before you.

For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn't believe him, but tax collectors and harlots believed him, and when you saw it, you did not afterwards repent or relent and believe him. So here again he was talking to the religious authorities of his day who said, God, we follow you. That was the core of what they were about, was saying we follow God. But he was saying when Jesus Christ came to the earth, it was others, it was sinners, people that they would have looked down on, who saw Jesus Christ, and even though they had not been living a righteous life in any definition of the word, saw him, repented and followed him. The things that they did were more important. Those were the most important things. Hearing the words from the others who would claim godliness but not follow him, in the end, was not worth anything. So what conclusions or lessons can we draw from this part of it as we think again about the customer or user experience?

It's driven by action, not by noise. God wants to see the results, the things that we do in our lives. The things that we say are important, and they're good, but ultimately, as he's pointing out in these areas, it's the things that we do. It's the things that we do as God's Spirit works within us and animates us and drives our actions that really matter and that create that customer experience for other people.

It's constant, it's steady, and it's relentless. It can't be hidden. Just like light, when you try to force it out of a room so that you can get some sleep or whatever else you need, and a complete darkness for, it's virtually impossible to completely darken a room. And we should be relentless that way in continuing to do the good things that we do and letting his Spirit work within us. So let's talk about the last part of the equation here, as we see in Matthew 5, verses 14 through 16. And this brings out the ultimate outcome of the user experience. And it's the last lines of this set of verses, which is, glorify your Father in heaven. Because the ultimate outcome that should be coming as people in the world experience us is at the end of glorifying God. That's a pretty powerful thing when you think about it. And it ties together all of these things that we've talked about. How precious we are to God. The fact that Jesus Christ talked about himself as light and now says that we're light. The fact that light is relentless. The fact that we should be showing these things and the things that we do. The ultimate outcome, the ultimate user experience at the end of the day, is that people should be glorifying God because they came into contact with us. Now that's a pretty high order. And I'm going to tell you that I doubt that 100% of the people who come into contact with me glorify God as a result of it. Because I'm an imperfect human being like every other person who's ever walked the earth. But this is the ideal that we strive for, right? This is the user experience that we strive for. That people, when they come into contact with us, whether casually or through deep friendships, are experiencing a peace of God shown forth as lights in the things that we do. The way that we treat them, the way we act towards them, the way they see us act towards other people, whether it's towards our family, our neighbor, our friends, and others. So we have Jesus Christ as the ultimate expression of the customer experience that we're supposed to drive. We see a lot of companies, right, that will use the founder of the company, and that founder will sort of personify what that company is all about. Kentucky Fried Chicken, right? You see Colonel Sanders all over the place. And, you know, Colonel Sanders is the culture and the icon of that company, right? Jesus Christ is the founder of Christianity. Christianity is named for him. We strive to be like him. And he's the ultimate of what the customer experience is. So what was the experience of people coming into contact with Jesus Christ?

How much have we thought about that? Let's turn to John 3.

We'll read John 3, 16 and 17 again. It came out in the sermonette. And we'll read it again here.

John 3, verses 16 and 17.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Verse 17. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but the world through him might be saved. I find that instructive in terms of the way that we act towards other people. Even Jesus Christ himself was not sent into the world to condemn the world.

And when we look at the example that Jesus Christ gave when he was on earth, I think we have to take some time to process what happened there.

Jesus Christ was accused, rightfully so, of eating and drinking with sinners.

He sat down with Pharisees, with publicans. He sat down with prostitutes. He sat down with people who cheated others. He sat down with people who committed every possible sin you could imagine.

He specifically said so in the Bible. People who the religious authorities and the pious would not have anything to do with because of the way they lived their lives. And he sat down and he ate with them. And not only that, but they were attracted to him. They were drawn towards him because of the way that he interacted with them. And at the same time, he did not compromise with righteousness.

He didn't sit down and say, oh, it's okay if you're a prostitute. Keep being a prostitute. Let's have dinner. Clearly he did not do that. He stood up for what was right. People knew through his actions and everything that he said and did that he modeled righteousness. But at the same time, people in the broad and general populace, even children, were drawn to him. We use that example for the blessing of the children that we do, where children came to him to the point where the disciples were trying to restrain the kids. Say, kids, stay away. He's got more important things to do. There was something about the way that he conducted himself, the way that he related with other people, where people were drawn to him. And they knew that even though he stood for righteousness, and he had very clear guidelines in terms of right and wrong that he lived by, they weren't afraid in any way to come and interact with him. And that's a model that we have to think about in the way that we live our lives, the way that we shine our lights in the world.

I hope I can put this across in the right way here, that we understand it. But if we think about common mainstream Christianity today in the world that we have, what is the user experience that most of the world would talk about with Christianity generally described? I can tell you what I hear a lot. Christians are judgmental. Christians are nitpicky and difficult to deal with. You can never be good enough for them. They're always ready to tell you what's wrong with you. And right or wrong, and there are exaggerations there in our world today that wants to take off and do its own thing, I'm not saying that the fact that Christianity stands up for things that are right is a bad thing. But as Christians, what's the user experience? Do the people that we work with, or our neighbors, find us as people who are always eager to tell them what's wrong with them and all the reasons they don't measure up? Or do they find us to be people who value them as human beings, who are loving and welcoming and ready to have a relationship at the same time as we don't condone or put forward any bad or sinful ways of being? We should consider and think about the way that Jesus Christ lived his life on the earth, showing a better way, encouraging people to take on a better way, laying out a way of hope, and being able to relate with people even when they didn't fully accept that way. Something we should consider and think about as we view our lives. Turn with me, if you will, to Ephesians 4. We'll just turn to a couple scriptures that lay out this type of approach, again, in terms of the user experience that people have when they come into contact with us as Christians. Ephesians 4, and we'll turn to verse 29. Here Paul writes in Ephesians 4, 29, Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. The words that we speak should impart grace to the people that are hearing it. And grace is a huge term, not something we're going to try to define here in this sermon, that implies a whole lot of things. Very heavily, the idea of extending to somebody mercy or forgiveness or pardon or kindness that they don't deserve. That's the essence of grace, the same grace that's given to us when Jesus Christ draws us to him and forgives us of our sins. Not because we deserve it, but simply because he decided he was going to do that for us.

Not out of anything that we did. That same grace, imparting grace to others, is what should come across in our words, as we're interfacing with other people. Turn with me, if you will, to 2 Corinthians 5, verse 20. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 20. Here, again, putting forward the same type of idea in terms of what the experience should be as people come into contact with us as Christian people. 1 Corinthians 5, verse 20. Paul writes here, Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. That means those interactions that we have end up being so powerful, it's as though we were begging people and showing them how great God's way of life is that they want to have a part of it.

He's not talking here about the fact that we're ambassadors for Christ, so that when people come to us, they know all of the things that are wrong with their lives that they have to fix. There's a place for that, there's a time for that, there's a relationship that matures to that point. But what's being pointed out here is that the way we live our lives is almost like a plea, like God pleading through our very actions to have a relationship with God.

That's something I encourage us to think about, especially as we move towards Pentecost, as we think about the Holy Spirit working in our lives. How is it in our lives that we can exemplify more of these things, imparting grace to the people that we come into contact with, and living our lives in a way that draws people and they see something? I want to be a part of that. Whatever it is that they're doing, I know they're religious, I know they believe in God, and there's something about what they're doing.

I want that. I want to have a piece of that. I want to have that peace, I want to have that happiness, that joy, I want to have that sense of purpose, whatever it is that they might sense uniquely in each and every one of us, because we're all different people.

How can we do more of that? How can we take more of this into our lives as the customer experience that people have when they come into contact with us as Christians?

So what's the takeaway here in this last part in terms of people glorifying God when they come into contact with our light?

Live His way without compromise. Have it be the center of who and what we are. There's no doubt, there's absolutely no doubt that Jesus Christ at His core was the Holy Spirit, the fact that He was God on earth, walking on earth as a fully righteous human being, and we need to have that at our core as well.

Through Jesus Christ, through God's Spirit, living His way of life and having uncompromising focus on doing what's right and practicing His ways.

At the same time that we do that, and we stand for what's right in the world through our examples, interacting with people in a way that is filled with grace, in a way where they want to have a relationship with us and ultimately with God.

In the end, that's going to be their decision, whether or not they do, but as we see written in other places in the Bible, even when people don't like what we stand for, we should be living our lives in such a way where they really can't really cast stones because the fruit that they see coming out of our lives is good.

And then doing good works to provide benefit to the lives of others, just as Jesus Christ did. Many of the things that He did, healings that He did, for example, simply gave temporal, physical relief to the people that He was dealing with.

And that's a good example for us to follow as well.

So in conclusion, what does God want us to drive as the Christian user experience?

Turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 5, verses 14 through 16. We'll go back to the source.

And with some of this additional thought and information, hopefully these words come even more to life as we think about creating a user experience for people who come into contact with us as Christians.

Matthew 5, verses 14 through 16.

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.