Salt. Luke 14:34

Good morning FCA!

How is everyone? Good first week back? cool cool.

I’m Austin Ussery, i know some of y’all. I’m the student pastor over there at FBC Gray. Just y’all know we are starting back on Wednesday nights at 6:30 in the chapel. I you don’t have a church home come check us out.

Any ways.

I’m happy to be here this morning.

First one of the new year.

So question for you.

who likes to eat?

I know y’all are high schoolers, i’ve seen y’all eat, y’all can get down.

But when I was in college, I worked at Chick-fil-a. Slinging chicken.

And so, what is he best side item at cfa? It’s fries. you might say Mac and Cheese, but you’re wrong and it’s okay. It’s fries.

But every so often we’d get someone come in and order no salt fries.

Which I get if you have a sodium thing, or if you’re gonna salt them yourself just so you get hot fries. I get it.

But just eating no salt fries because you like the natural flavor of potatoes.

no.

The potatoes needs help. unsalted potatoes taste like how beige looks.

But you need salt, a long time ago, Salt was super valuable, it was traded as money.

The phrase “not worth it’s salt, is from that.” You could buy things with salt.

Salt has lots of uses. It’s not just for making waffle fries awesome

Salt is literally needed to keep you alive, you have to eat salt, that’s why we crave it. Our body needs salt in small doses.

Salt will heal wounds, salt will preserve.

Salt will clean things out. Salt can get rid of infection. We need salt.

SO that is what I want to look at this morning, looking at the words of Jesus.

So if you have a bible, flip over to Luke 14:34 and read this with me. Just two verses.

pray for our time

Y’all read this with me, Luke 14:34-35, everyone there? Read this with me.

Luke 14:34–35 ESV

34 “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Okay so what is Jesus getting at? What is he trying to teach here?

This is in one of his discords with with people

it was to his disciples but not only,

he was telling this to a crowd.

Look where Luke locates this in the text.

A few verses earlier Jesus had just told them to count the cost of following him.

Just one verse earlier he says,

Luke 14:33 ESV

33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Then immediately after he talks about salt he talks about going to the lost, going after those who don’t know.

Luke 15:4 ESV

4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?

So what is Jesus saying here?

To be a follower of Jesus and to be on mission, you have to be salt. It is one in the same.

So what does it mean to be salt?

Why does Jesus use salt?

Because Salt, when used properly, enhances everything.

Going back cfa waffle fries, salt makes them better,

So what is Jesus doing when he tells them this?

He is saying be the kind of people who enhance. Be the people who help heal.

Be the people who preserver. Be people who are truthful, because the know the one whom ultimate truth flows out of.

Jesus is telling them to follow me, and become like me. Do as do, and be about what I am about.

Be the people who are righteous but not self-righteous.

Everywhere Jesus went all sorts of people came to him, in the verses about the lost sheep it says the tax collectors and sinners came to him.

Didn’t matter, he offered them the same choice, follow me and leave everything, or don’t.

that is what encountering Jesus makes us do, it makes us choose.

are we going to follow him or not? Are you becoming like him of not?

So here is what I want to do, I want to answer two questions.

I know this FCA but I’m not going to assume everyone in here knows Jesus, some of you make be curious and a friend invited you. And you have no idea what it means to follow Jesus.

SO here is the first do i know him? Do i actually know him, not have I gone to church, but do I know Jesus as savior and Lord? So if the answer to that is no, you need to know him. Because here is the Gospel, Christ died in your place, Christ took all your sin upon himself.

And if you are sitting there thinking you aren’t good enough to come to him, join the club. None of us are. Jesus has already bought and paid for you, he knew what he was buying.

If christ is not lord, then this life doesn’t matter. If Christ is not Lord then there is no real joy, there is nothing in this world that will satisfy eternally. You either know him or you don’t. SO answer that question first.

The second question. and this is if you know him, if yes is the answer to the first question.

How do we become like him? How do we become salt?

Because there are people who think they are salt, but they don’t act like. They aren’t enhancing, they aren’t helping to heal, they aren’t pointing to truth, they aren’t preserving.

A bunch of salt that isn’t salt is just sand. And nothing good grows in sand. Sand is useless, unless it’s next to some salt water. You can’t grow in sand, you can’t preserve in sand. Sand is sinking, sand erodes quickly.

So how do we become like him? What do we do?

Start with who Jesus is and how he lived his life.

This is what the disciples would have done, because that is how Rabbi’s taught back in the day.

If you followed a Rabbi back then, you followed him, literally, you did what he did.

If your Rabbi went here, you went to.

It’s simple but it’s hard. The christian life is simple, but it’s hard.

For a lot of us, we want complex and easy.

We want a formula.

If i just do enough quiet times, if I just go to Sunday School enough, if i do this, do that.

We are just doing and not becoming, you can wake up and do a quiet time and not think about it the rest of the day.

But if you build your life around the rhythms of Jesus life, then you start becoming.

Jesus would go off and be still, in solitude in prayer before the Lord, not asking, not talking all the time, but listening. Listening.

Jesus would sabbath, not in a legalistic way, but where once a week he would rest, he would be restored.

When was the last time you truly rested, not slept till 3 pm, but truly did something that restored your soul.

To do that, it changes your rhythms, you structure your days and your weeks different.

If you model your rhythms after the rhythms of Jesus, then you will become like Him.

then you bring people to him. Look at your feet

mission

So here is my encouragement, to you.

Start of a New Year, i know it’s the middle of the school year, but I want to encourage you, take inventory of what your walk with Him looks like, are you truly following him, or are you just checking in with him?

Are you checking boxes or keeping rhythm with him?

Start this new year off by keeping in step with Jesus. Truly become like him.

So let me pray for you, and then we will get off to class.