The Ark Encounter :: By Sean Gooding
Matthew 5:14-16
14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
This week, my family and I and a few friends went to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. Wow! Simply wow! I would encourage you to go if you can and see what the Ark may have looked like. See the size of the vessel and see how the space could easily have housed many animals and the food the people needed and left a lot of space for walking, as well as giving the families space to live. I was astonished by the amount of people that we saw there. We met people from Oklahoma, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois and many others. The parking lot was quite full, and the buses were full, taking people from the parking lots to the actual facility.
When we were through, we had the chance to enjoy several concerts with Southern Gospel bands. In this auditorium, there may have been a thousand people or so who were worshiping the Lord. As we were there, we learned that over the eight years that the Ark Encounter has been open, some 50 hotels had been built in the area. This tells me that Christians from all over the world have attended and have the economic capacity to drive change if we want to. We could have more and more faith-based businesses if we wished to, but we don’t.
Brothers and Sisters, the verses in Matthew that we are considering tell us that we, you and I, are light. We are to shed light into the dark corners of the world, exposing evil and offering guidance to Jesus, the Way. But many of us have shrunk into the shadows ourselves. In Matthew 5:13, we are called ‘salt.’
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
Salt, as we know, flavors food, but it is most often used as a preservative. Salt slows down the breakdown of foods and allows it to last longer. We are supposed to preserve the people of the earth, to help them have more time to see the grace of God and have the opportunity to be saved. We are a preservative that is supposed to slow down the societal breakdown and slow the coming judgment. We are here to extend God’s grace, extend God’s patience, and offer more and more opportunities to be saved. There are a lot of us. No one thought that a Bible-based ‘amusement’ park would be viable, but it is. It is economically viable to the Christians who invested in it and for the secular businesses around them.
If we want bad businesses to stop existing, Christians have the financial power to do so. We can focus our money on either bolstering or bankrupting a business. We have seen that with companies like Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby. If we want businesses to thrive and not have to open 7 days a week, we can do that. This is the kind of salt and light that we are called to be. We have the power to make or break things. If we wanted ‘drag-queen’ story hour to stop, we could. Just take our kids out of the schools and home school instead, and start more church-based Christian schools; we have the economic power and the financial ability to do so if we want. It would appear that we do not want to.
If we wanted, we could run and fund those campaigns to put Godly men and women on our school boards, on our city councils, and on our state/provincial legislators and truly make lasting changes that would last for generations.
Imagine what would have happened in the last 8 years if President Trump had not nominated conservative judges to the US Supreme Court. Roe vs Wade would not have been revisited and overturned, as well as many laws supporting gun ownership and the like would have been struck down, further empowering the government. Imagine what would happen here in Canada if we had seriously fiscal and morally conservative majorities in our Parliament? But somewhere along the line, somewhere in our history, we Christians became hands-off when it came to politics.
We did not want to lead any longer; we just sat in the background and hoped for the best. Look where that has gotten us. The drag queens are mainstream, and we are the fringe, and there are millions more of us than they. We stopped being salt and light. We stopped slowing the decay, and we have stood by as these people who Jesus died for are heading to Hell, and we have become spectators to their demise. ‘They are just getting what they deserve,’ but that is the whole point of the Gospel: the people, we included, DO NOT get what we deserve; instead, we are graced into the loving family of God.
Sadly, a large part of the Christian populace has stopped sharing the Gospel. We just stopped telling others about Jesus. We stopped making a difference, and this is what light and salt do best; they make a difference for the good. We stopped being light in the dark places. We stopped being salt in the rotting places. Now, the world we are leaving our kids is darker than it has ever been, and the rot is pungent. We stopped slowing the decay. But if we wanted to, we still could slow the rotting and shed light on the darkness; we have the economic power and the population density to do it.
I have a pastoral acquaintance who once commented that he had not properly prepared for retirement because he thought Jesus would have come back by now. Jesus has not come back, and we don’t know when He will.
What will happen to the world we leave our kids and grandkids if we refuse to invest our money and economic powers in the good?
What if there were Biblical theme parks all over?
What if all conservative churches made a covenant not to allow any more of our kids to be raised by LGBTQ teachers and the like?
What if we stopped supporting businesses that were hostile to godly beliefs and put our money or started businesses that did not even have to be preachy, just not hostile to the Lord?
What if we truly wanted to be Light and Salt?
What if we could picture everyone we meet in Hell for 5 seconds? How would that change our lives and the way we live? How would it change me? How would it change our churches?
What if by being salt and light we bought a little more time, a little more grace to offer a few more people the opportunity to be saved?
The Ark Encounter was eye-opening, not only to the Ark story itself in Genesis 6-9 but the power that we have as God’s people to affect change if we want to. I pray we will want to. There are millions of lost people that need us to want to.
God bless you,
Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
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