by admin | Jul 17, 2025 | Best Sermons
PART ONE OF TWO
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There can only be darkness if there is no light.
Matthew 5: 14-16“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Jesus was describing in verses 14 and 15 how, when our faith is real, we can’t hide it. We know through our saving faith in Jesus that we become something new and that others will see it in us. They’ll see the mistakes we still make and some will call us hypocrites for them. When Jesus says a city on a hill can’t be hidden, he means we can’t hide that our faith has changed us and others can’t help but see it. He then uses the example of a lamp and how the light from the lamp serves a purpose so we wouldn’t light it and then hide it so no one else, including ourselves, benefits from that light.
But in verse 16, Jesus is encouraging us to be purposeful in letting others see how our faith has changed us through our actions. By doing good, others can see Christ in us and God is glorified.
Our actions and how we handle our mistakes or sinful moments show to others that we’ve changed and are different from how we were before. When we are saved, we don’t suddenly become perfect. We start a process called sanctification and through that process, we start becoming more like Jesus; we want to understand the Bible and live out what it teaches. Even is we make mistakes, the people who truly know us will know that we’re living life differently.
A lot of rodeo cowboys struggle with thinking they don’t measure up. Many enter the sport because it appeals to their feelings of being an outsider. For others, they want to prove to themselves or others they can make it in a difficult sport where, in almost every event, it’s your individual power, strength and ability that will take you to a paycheck.
Your identity before you were saved and the outsider nature that can be found in rodeo might feed the idea that you don’t live up to what you think the Christian standard is; ;that you need to get your life together or in a better place before you can talk to God or walk into a church. But when you are truly saved through a real faith in Jesus and a genuine repentance of sin and desire to be forgiven for it through Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross that took the punishment meant for our sin, God sees you as perfect. However much good or sin has been in your life before then, God sees us all as perfect when we’ve made Jesus the Lord and Savior of our lives.
That means, even the smallest act of kindness or helpfulness you are able to do brings light into this broken and sinful world.
No matter how you’ve lived your life or how others have made you feel about yourself, you have as much power as the best preachers and godliest people you know, to affect the world around you. Even when you feel at your worst, the smallest act, a kind word, can glorify God and bring light into someone else’s darkness.
Even the toughest cowboy or blackest sheep in the family has the power to drive away darkness when they have a saving faith in Jesus.
by admin | Feb 15, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
When a cowboy or bull rider reaches a level where he gets a corporate sponsorship, he works for that sponsor. When we own our own business, we want employees that represent us to the public well and we think twice about how we speak to someone. We take our commitment to our sponsor seriously and we care that he or she or the business is well-represented.
Really, it’s a terrible comparison to how we should represent Jesus and why we should take his instructions to us from the Bible seriously. The sponsorship or business ownership example doesn’t come close to the importance of following Jesus but it at least gets us looking in the right direction.
2 Corinthians 5:20-21 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
To be the righteousness of God means that when we are truly saved through our faith in Jesus and our request for forgiveness through our repentance of sin, that despite our faults, mistakes, failures and sin, God now sees us as perfect, right before Him.
Once we’re saved, we become ambassadors of Jesus, something far more important than representing a brand paying your fees at the PBR and NFR. Jesus paid the penalty for your sin and gave you eternal life. Now we have a chance to both show others how Jesus has changed our lives by making us right with God and to tell them how to receive the same.
We also need to hold tightly to grace because as we try to live like Jesus, God knows we’re going to fail. One of the main points of receiving His grace is not so we can intentionally make mistakes and go on living the way we want to, but because He knows we’re going to blow it. Sometimes it’s privately or seen only by our closest family and friends and sometimes it’s in traffic with our “God is my copilot” bumper sticker there for everyone to see. Sometimes it’s in how we’re speaking to an employee in the lumber store because they ordered the wrong product for you and your job is going to be delayed as your Philippians 4:13 tattoo is showing on your t-shirted arm.
We’re going to blow it.
But are we living like we believe God’s word is true? Are we living like we believe what Jesus did on the cross for each and every one of us is the real deal and that our salvation is real? Do we take him seriously when he commands us to go into the world and tell others about him and teach them now to walk in his ways?
We can’t walk in His ways if he don’t open God’s word in the Bible, pursue the teaching that’s out there or even take time to talk to Him in prayer.
1 John 2:4-6 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
A lot of us would tell someone we’re a Christian if asked what our ‘religion’ is, but without a life-changing, saving faith in Jesus Christ, it’s the same as what John is saying here, we aren’t really Christians. We may not even understand or realize it. We don’t know we’re lying because we’re lying to ourselves and think we’re going to Heaven. We can’t judge whether someone is saved or not but we can certainly wonder based on how someone chooses to live. If we say we believe in Jesus we should live like we do and want to follow his commandments.
The fact many of us identify as Christians but don’t should rock a lot of us to our core. We take it with so little seriousness that when the day comes that we stand before God and are denied the kingdom of Heaven, there is no excuse. Right here, right now, if you’re reading this and don’t know if you’re saved or not, one sign is whether or not how you live your life lines up with what John is saying. John walked with Jesus. I think we should take his words seriously even if it was 2,000 years ago.
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