The Salt of the Earth

If you have a bible we are back in Matthew this morning in Chapter 5. We have been in Matthew chapter 5 for quite some time, and today we will be again focusing again on one verse. But before that let us pray.

Matthew 5:13 ESV

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

Again Jesus words here are so power, and I thought about combining verse 13 with 14-16 but this idea of being the salt of the earth I believe calls for us to look at the verse alone by itself even though we will see some of the same things next week. and i thought about titling the message this morning are you salty, but with this congregation I thought you make take it with a improper meaning. If I asked you if you were salty.

What i believe Jesus is teaching us from the text is this.

Christians are called to be the salt of the earth so they do not lose their usefulness.

As we think about being the salt of the earth we must not forget about what we learned the last 8 weeks prior to easter. The beatitudes that we looked so closely at are key to being the salt of the earth. I won’t repeat them again go back and listen if you want to learn them again. But for us today we need to know that Christians are called to be the salt of the earth so they do not lose their usefulness.

Few observations I want you to take note of the first is this…

Christians are called to be the salt of the earth because the world is in decay.

I don’t think I am going to get one argument from that point this morning. The world around us is falling apart its rotting away.

We see have seen that since the very dawn of time since the fall of Adam since the very first sin the world has been rotting away.

Look what happens to the world when left to its own passions. Its sickening about how bad the world really is without Christ. When you look at the scripture and see the horrendous acts of Sodom and Gomorrah our world makes those actions look tame at times. You read articles watch the news, and its all bad news from people all around this fallen world. Millions dying of various things people doing horrendous things to one another. All we see around us it total decay.

One man said. Jesus is effect says Humanity without me is a dead body that is rotting and falling apart.

And as bad as a wrap Christians might get for various usually false reasons. The world as a whole is decaying less because Christians are being the salt of the earth.

Need proof of that let me talk about what we do just as a church.

WE send 1000’s of dollars a year to help various ministries all around not only our local area, but money you give to the Lord at this local church supports things all around the world, and missionary’s who are being the salt of the earth all over the world. To the end’s of the earth your dollar is going there.

We have this clothing giveaway that Sharon leads up that helps give clothes, toys, necessities to many boys and girls.

On Wednesday nights we see young people who are not connected to the Lord yet get to see some salt from other believers.

I have signed us up for the 111 project that I hope to introduce to you later on in the coming weeks so that we can help people with real needs in our community.

Every Sunday the gospel is proclaimed, the word is sung, and we get to be salt in the world that is in decay.

We have started this movement I hope saying we are praying for you. Being people who go to others in prayer being salt in this world.

I was researching this week how do believers change the world. And the internet is full of things that the Christian faith has done be salt in this decaying world. Let me talk about some of those things, and some of the comments people said about them.

If you did not know the first hospitals we have came from Christians. Many of the hospitals we see in the metro have Christian names like Baptist, of Deaconess, or Mercy.

Christians are salt in the decaying world because we adopt and foster more kids than non Christians. We have families here to have adopted or helped those who have adopted In FACT the stats show that a Christian is twice as likely as a non Christian to adopt. James 1:27

James 1:27 ESV

27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Adoption is a beautiful picture of the gospel and a amazing way to be salt in this decaying world.

The Christian worldview keeps families together. In fact the Christian worldview goes such against the worlds view of sex and relationships. We will see this in Matthew 19 and later in chapter 5. But Jesus and the bible as a whole shows us what the family model looks like. Married mother and father who are faithful to one another who raise their kids together, and those families are salt in the world today.

Want to be salt in this world have a biblical view of sex and marriage.

Christianity has impacted the arts, and literature. Reading this week for this sermon I found that According to Guinness World Records, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, with over 5 billion copies sold and distributed. The City of God, written by Augustine, has sold more copies than any other book than the Bible and is considered by many scholars to be the most important book ever written.

Christian values helped found this country.

The American Constitution was signed by 39 men, most of whom were professing Christians.

Christianity created the foundation for our education systems. Learned some things this week that I didn’t know. Kindergarten originated from a Christian man named Friedrich Froebel. Graded levels of education (1st grade, 2nd grade) came from Johann Sturm, who was also a Christian who thought that advancing to the next level would be a reward for his students. It was Christian men and women who pioneered formal education systems for the blind and deaf.

Sunday school originated from Christians that wanted common, poor people to have an education, so a man named Robert Raikes decided to start teaching them on Sundays before church.

Most colleges and universities in American that are well known today began as Christian schools, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia.

Men and women being formally educated in the same setting was also mostly a Christian innovation. Before this, it was only the boys that got an education.

I also learned this.. Christians created many of the foundation for science. Johannes Kepler, a devout Christian, became famous for discovering three laws of planetary motion. Blaise Pascal stands out for his “Pascal’s Law” and for inventing the syringe and the hydraulic press, and also for constructing the first adding machine. He boldly said, “We know God only through Jesus Christ.” Christianity is the most powerful force in abolishing slavery. Slave auctions were once practiced in the United States, and unfortunately, many slave owners called themselves Christians.But the true Jesus-followers, called abolitionists, eventually paved the way for the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that freed all black slaves. In 1957 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which assumed a posture of Christian nonviolence to promote its objectives. Today, modern slavery still exists. But Christian organizations like A21 and End-it Movement are the forerunners of the abolition of modern sex trafficking and other forms of slavery. Christians have always viewed every human being as equal, whether “slave or free.” Christianity is the most powerful force in charity work. Read this week that Almost all charitable organizations find their conception from Christian influence. Countless lives have been saved and impacted because of the Christian principles to love your neighbor and to care for the poor. Samaritan’s Purse, Compassion International, Feed My Starving Children, Children’s Cup, Salvation Army, Operation Christmas Child, and hundreds of organizations have covered the world in love and compassion.

The Jesus movement is not stagnant in the fight to truly love your neighbor. It’s a movement of relentless care and compassion for those who need to be saved from the world’s tragedies. Jesus always has the final say. Imagine the world without all the things I just listed and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Christians have helped the world is countless ways. We are the salt of the earth and we are called to this world to make sure it does not decay.

Secondly.

Christians are called to be salt of the earth.

Jesus is clear in the text you are the salt of the earth.

What makes this text so powerful is the context that it was written it. They did not have the modern day luxuries that we have when it came to keeping food properly stored.

During Jesus day salt was used for 5 things. To purify, to preserve, to flavor, to heal and to create thirst.

And honestly I believe we can take all 5 of those things and apply them to the Christian life.

To purify, to preserve, to flavor, to heal and to create thirst.

If you been with us following along with us during these messages you would have remembered in verse 8 we talked about being pure in heart.

Matthew 5:8 ESV

8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

And brought into the context as a whole the pure in heart will see God, and the earth shall see them. And hopefully will see them as pure, and purity is not just for the world its for us as believers.

To be pure in heart to be pure in our walk makes us useful. God cares deeply about our purity, about our obedience, He saved us and calls us to have a pure life. One of the destingusing marks of the Christian is that they pure. In a world full of garbage, full of sin we want to use the power in us the power of the Holy Spirit to look more like Christ than the world. Being Salt of the Earth means we will be pure.

But it also means we will perserve. Salt during that time was used as a preservative. They would rub it into meat to slow the decay of the meat.

What slows our decay what preserves us. The presence of the Holy Spirit. God in us keeping us pure, causing us to be born again. The work of Jesus Christ his Word keeps us preserved in this dark and dying world. We because of sin are decaying we are wasting away, but, we can be preserved because of the finished work of Christ.

We also add flavor to the world. Christianity is not just some boring religion with rules. people who see it that way are sadly mistaken.

Listen to one man… Oliver Wendell Holmes put it this way: "I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not acted and looked so much like undertakers." Some Christians behave as if they were baptized in lemon juice!

That is not the way true salted Christians are! Rather, that is the way life is without Christ-insipid and dull.

That is why our culture attempts to numb itself with its pleasure mania and with drugs. People are literally dying of boredom. Our entertainment industry does its best to make life look otherwise.

Fictional good is made out to be boring and flat, while fictional evil is exciting and intriguing. But it is the other way around. As Malcolm Muggeridge wrote:

Nothing is so beautiful, nothing so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy as good; no desert is so dreary, monotonous and boring as evil.

In Biblical times, as today, salt was not only a preservative, but also a spice, a condiment. Christianity is what brings spice and zest to life. The bland is made savory, and the unpalatable becomes a delight! Believers must be salty not only because they are righteous, but because life is alive. They ought to write the best books, be the most courteous, work the hardest, be the best musicians and artists and craftsmen and students.

Friends if you think Christianity does not add spice to your life than maybe you don’t know Christ as you ought. Because being the salt of the earth adds a spice to your life nothing else can bring. All the things the world has for us that claims to be spicy is just rotting away and decaying, but the spice that Christ adds to our very own lives has flavor sweeter than honey.

Salt flavors but salt also heals. I will say this until I am blue in the face friends, the only thing can heal your sin your hurts anything is God. Yes he gives us things to deal with sickness and mental health, but God is the ultimate healer. I have seen that in my life in your life, and if you come here today looking to heal old wounds only through him can you be healed. If you are going to be the salt of the earth you have to let God heal your old wounds.

Finally I said that Salt was used to make people thirsty and man this one was convicting for me.

As Salt of the Earth we are suppose to make people thirsty for Jesus.

I read a quote this week that blew my mind and convicted me. It said Are we salty enough to make people thirsty for Jesus. x2

Thats an amen or ouch thing isn’t it. Yes we are called to a life of purity in our homes, in our churches, in our workplaces, on the internet off the internet. We are called to perserve everything we can in this life, most importantly ourselves, we are called to flavor this world with Jesus Christ, we are called to heal this decaying earth.

But we are also called to make people thirst for Jesus.

People all the time thirst after the lusts of this life, but what if this world in decay said you know believer so and so he or she makes Jesus look like something I desperately need!

People should thirst for Jesus because each and everyone of us. Thats convicting isn’t it. Thinking of my life to often that is not the case, because I might be the wrong kind of salty like I talked about earlier.

As a church we could do so much good if we looked in such a way so much like Jesus that when we people saw us, they would say what makes him or her so happy, and why do i want what they have.

Don’t under-estamate the power being the salt of the earth has in your life. Just a little salt goes along way.

Take note of these words from one man. How beautiful is the life of a salty believer-bringing preservation to a decaying world as a living reproof to sin, an enticement to Christ, one who brings spice and flavor to life, one who makes others thirsty for Christ and life in Heaven.

Of we are salt, how are we to maximize our effectiveness? We must be spread out upon the decaying world. Salt can sit for years in the saltshaker, but it will never do any good until it is poured forth. In Jesus' time its effect was maximized when it was poured upon and rubbed into the meat. We must allow God to rub us into the world, without our becoming like the world. We may fear that we will disappear, and disappear we may. But that is the point:

Salt dispenses its power as it dissolves into the world's flesh. That is when its effect is greatest. As pungent people, empowered by the presence of Christ's Spirit within us, we are to penetrate society. We are to become involved in life-in the community, in our schools, in politics, in our neighborhoods, in the world at large. Does this text affirm us or mock us? Are we salt?

Christians are called to be salt of the earth so they don't lose their usefulness.

Let me end with a warning for the last point.

last point is this.

Be the salt of the earth; don't let the world pollute you.

If you read Matthew 5:13 again it says…

Matthew 5:13 ESV

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

Let me teach you something that you might not know. Salt never stops being salt. Scientifically speaking Salt is a stable compound. But going back to Jesus day they got salt from salt marshes not the evaporation of salt water, and what was happen is the salt would still be there, but there would be many impurities. And sometimes that salt would lose its usefulness.

Just be thrown out not used on the roofs to help the leaks, or help the meat not spoil it would be thrown out to be trampled on.

This is where the church is today we have lost some of our usefulness because we are to much like the world. The truth is this if we are not the salt of the earth than the earth will influence us. It will get ahold of us. We are either the salt of the earth or useless.

So we must leverage where we are at to be salt of the earth, so we are not good for nothing.

I read this this week. We see testimony of this in church history. We search in vain for the once-great churches of Asia Minor with their flourishing parishes. The churches of Corinth and Ephesus are all but nonexistent. We look in vain for the church of North Africa where the great Augustine ministered. Salt that lost its saltiness was cast out and was trodden underfoot by the men of this world.

This does not mean a loss of salvation but of vibrancy and fruitful testimony!

Seeing this, we must dispense with any illusion that the churches of Western Christianity are eternal.The reality is that much organized Christianity is already falling because it has lost its saltiness. The best evangelical traditions are not immune from inconsistency, preaching that is barely Biblical, and a status-quo mentality. I am sometimes asked, "Are evangelicals born again?" And the answer is, "Not necessarily." True Christianity lives the Beatitudes, however imperfectly. True Christianity is pungent and salty.

Yet with all of this, Christ's expression of this metaphor is essentially positive. Jesus said, "You [emphatic: you alone] are the salt of the earth." Jesus says, "I believe in you. I have called you." Jesus believes that we can have a healing, preserving influence on our own society and world. He believes that we can bring flavor to life— that we can make the world thirsty for him.

We are salt, and he wants us to cultivate our saltiness by constantly communing with him and being constantly filled with the Spirit. Then he wants us to get out of the saltshaker and into the world-rubbed into the rotting wounds of the world. And he wants us to remember that though we are not much, a little salt goes a long way!

Have you let the world pollute you? I believe we all have to an extent. We are not being the salt of the earth God calls us to.

What do we do if we have lost that saltiness well God is gracious repent of that and he will allow you to be salty again, and the warning in the verse to us is that if we are so polluted by the world we will not be useful to God’s kingdom.

How do you respond today? Be Salt in this decaying world, You be pure unlike the world, you preserve yourself in the word, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, you have a good flavor you heal the broken with the good news of Christ, and you live in such a way that says to the outside world, and inside the church I want to be like him or her.

If today you don’t know Christ today the judgement is clear you will rot away in this life and will never be the salt of the earth, but also the life to come you will spend eternity away from Christ in Hell.

Jesus is salt, because he overcame the world in such a way where he did not sin, Fully God fully man he overcame this decaying world and people hated him for it so much they crucified him on the cross. But he rose again three days later, and the only way that you will not decay forever is to repent of your sins and to put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone and he will save you and you can be the salt of the earth and be useful for his kingdom.

What do you need to do to be more salty today? Let us pray.