Salty Christians

The last two weeks have been really good services, and I have enjoyed preaching about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday and the second chance that Peter received from the Lord last Sunday as we observed Second Chance Sunday here. I would like to take this moment again to say thank you to Rob Pannier from Hope CDA for giving us his testimony as well as to Troy (Lloyd). I have been approached by many people in the last week telling me how they were blessed by y'all sharing that with us.

Today we reenter our series our The Way, the Truth, and the Life as we study through the life of Christ throughout all four Gospels. Back in January, we entered into the portion of Jesus' ministry where he gives his most famous discourse, the Sermon on the Mount. This is such an important sermon that we are making a sub-series to this with the title The Sermon on the Mount: A Kingdom Manifesto.

You will remember, hopefully, that before this point Jesus has been going around teaching and preaching about a kingdom. This is no earthly kingdom, it is the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God. He has acknowledged that he is the Messiah, God's chosen one to save the people from sin. He has declared that he is God in the flesh and proven it with the miraculous proofs that the prophets of the Old Testament had prophesied.

This is great news for the world and for the Jews. However, the Jews had been under foreign oppression for so long, around 500 years at this point, that they no cared more about physical deliverance and being lifted up above their enemies than they cared about spiritual deliverance from the grip and condemnation of sin.

Just to be clear, the prophecies of the Messiah in the Old Testament do indicate that He is to bring both physical and spiritual deliverance. But the thing is, our timelines and our thoughts of how things are to be done are rarely in line with God's plans and ways of doing things.

This was a hard thing for an oppressed people to see in Jesus, and as Jesus talked about being the Messiah but refused to be king, it caused in many, especially the religious leaders of the day, to hate him. Think about it, for hundreds of years they have been waiting for a deliverer. Now, in comes a man that can do the miracles ascribed to the Messiah. He knows the scripture. He is pure. But he also refuses to raise an army, even though he has thousands of followers. He refuses to conform to the traditions that generations of teachers have added to the scripture, and he teaches about this Kingdom of Heaven as a kingdom that is spiritual in which anyone can enter, even the Gentile oppressors; even the Samaritan half-breeds; even the worst of sinners, those Jews that had so willingly turned to work on behalf of the Roman empire.

No, this went against their interpretations of who the Messiah would be and how he would act. And still, they were not completely wrong in their expectations for the Messiah, because it is clear in the Old Testament that the Messiah does come and put all enemies under his feet. He comes as a conqueror, as a physical deliverer of his people. What the many of the Pharisees and other religious teachers of the day got wrong, however, was the timing. If you read the end of the Book, you find out that Jesus does come again. This time, not as a humble servant, but as the conquering King of Kings. He does deliver the earth from those that would prefer to side with sin than to side with him. He does at that point set up his kingdom upon the earth as a physical kingdom, reigning with the saints that have been saved by placing their faith and trust in Him as their Savior. Jesus himself offered prophesies as to when this would happen, and we will get into those as we progress through his life.

But now, now Jesus, being followed by a multitude in the region of Galilee, sits upon a hill and begins talking to his disciples. This sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, is Jesus teaching his followers what it means to truly be a citizen of this kingdom, the Kingdom of God. If it were a college course, this course would be named Christianity 101 - the basics of Christianity.

The Sermon on the Mount, though it is a sub series of the Life of Christ series, it itself contains more sub-series. So we just got done going through about ten weeks of a study on the introduction of the Sermon on the Mount. This study is known as the Beatitudes.

We discussed that the whole of the Sermon on the Mount rests upon the truth of the Beatitudes. These are crucial characteristics that the Holy Spirit produces within followers of Christ. These are not found naturally, but produced supernaturally within the each Christian. The lack of these Beatitudes within our lives indicates the that we are not in close fellowship with Jesus or that we do not know Him at all.

And if you have kept up with the series so far, you know that our next verse is Jesus telling his disciples that they are the salt of the earth.

The word salty has a variety of meanings. In fact, for a long time, referring to someone as salty meant they were experienced. This is taken from the reference of "salty sailors." This would have been said of a sailor that had been exposed to the salt of the sea for so long because of the amount of time spent on a ship. This would be a reference to his nautical skills and knowledge.

Salty would also have been used for someone who had a crude way of speech (also a common trait often attributed to sailors) or who had an explosive temper.

More recently, however, to be salty has a slightly different meaning. Today, if you are called 'salty', it has nothing to do with your nautical experience. In fact, many people have been referred to as salty that have never spent any significant amount of time on a boat at all. No, nowadays, being salty can mean you are behaving in a bitter, irritated, or resentful manner.

It can also mean that you are overly sensitive, defensive, or get angry easily when someone else criticizes you or slights you in any way.

Although this previous description may apply to some of you, that is not what we mean by "salty Christians" this morning! So if you're here today, and you are thinking to yourself, "Yeah, I'm a bit salty," or, even more likely, "I know some salty Christians, alright. They're always mad at somebody or something...," that is not what I am talking about.

📷

Yes, the sermon is titled Salty Christians, but that is not what it means.

Though the verse that we will be studying today is Matthew 5:13, our key verse for the next two weeks is going to be found, not in Matthew, but in 1 Peter. So go with me, please, to 1 Peter 2:9

1 Peter 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:

We are to show forth the praise of Jesus. If you want something to show forth, or stand out, it must be different than its surroundings. And as we study about salt, I want you to understand that it is something very different than anything else it comes in contact with.

Now we can turn to Matthew 5:13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

We read this verse in Matthew about being the salt of the earth with the context of the Beatitudes in mind. The Beatitudes make it clear that the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven are very different than others. And this difference makes us salt.

In ancient time, much like today, salt was used for a variety of things. Salt was used to delay the decay of food, it flavored food, and it represented purity. When you think of those uses, think of how different salt is. If something is rotting, then a very different substance called salt can be applied to it and stop the rotting. Salt creates an environment where germs cannot live and therefore cannot slows the process of putrification.

Lets use the example of meat. Meat spoils pretty easily and quickly. However, salt, because of its very different qualities than meat, can help prevent the decay of that meat, or slow it down quite a bit.

Watermelon and salt do not belong in the same flavor quality, but for some reason when you put a pinch of salt on watermelon, it tastes so much more like watermelon! It is the very different quality of salt that allows it to interact this way with the Watermelon, or whatever food you put it on.

Think about ice. Icy streets are something we deal with here. But put salt on them, and its effect is very obvious, it melts it. Part of the reason that salt helps melt ice is that it prevents water molecules from bonding together and refreezing.

"Salt is essentially different from the medium in which it is placed and in a sense it exercises all its qualities by being different." - David Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

If salt tasted exactly like watermelon, if you added salt to watermelon, it would do nothing. If salt were a susceptible to decay like meat, adding it to meat would not slow the decay process, but in fact might even speed it up.

If salt helped bond water molecules together instead of preventing its bonding, it would not be very effective at melting ice. This is what it means when we say that salt "exercises all of its qualities by being different."

And compared to the area affected by salt, whether that be meat, watermelon, or ice, it doesn't take much salt to change the characteristics of what we put it on.

Again, Martin Lloyd-Jones makes the observation that "The very characteristic of saltness proclaims a difference, for a small amount of salt in a large medium is at once apparent."

The presence of salt is noticeable.

And as we study through the characteristics that salt has that exemplify the characteristics we should have as Christians, I want to start by making an emphasis on the condition of our world first.

The Condition of the World

"Ye are the salt of the earth" is not only a description of the Christian. It is a description, by implication, of the world in which Christians find themselves.

The phrase implies that the world is rotting, and that its tendency is toward worsening rather than bettering. And we all know this to be true. For all the technological advancements there have been in the last 40 years, the world is worse off in 2024 than it was in 1984. More sin is more acceptable in more places more openly than it ever has been. In general, throughout history we see that generation after generation continues to get worse and worse morally. There are exceptions, but they are typically regional and even national exceptions, while the world around those regions or nations has continued to decay more and more.

We should not be surprised, and in forty more years, we should not be surprised at the state of the world then because this is the scriptural position regarding the world - sin is constantly and increasingly corrupting the world.

The moment sin entered into the world, it started polluting everything.

You'll remember that in the 6th chapter of Genesis we studied that God said, "My spirit will not always strive/struggle with man." The corruption due to sin had become so great that God had to send a flood that wiped out the world's population except for one family.

The tendency toward rotting is persistent and always showing itself constantly.

Not only is the world growing in sinful corruption, but the world is insipid. It is flavorless. Clearly, people find life to be dull and boring. That is why there is so much pleasure seeking. The entertainment industry is on track to reach a net worth of $2.54T this year (2024), and in three more years it is projected to reach nearly $3T.

People are looking for a way to escape this tasteless world by seeking entertainment, among other things.

The Saltiness of Christians

So that brings us to this: Christianity prevents decay in this world much like salt prevents decay in food, and Christianity provides flavor to an otherwise flavorless world. And this is why Christians ought to be salty.

It is the function of each Christian individual to be salt. Next week, we will talk about the function of the church as it acts like a city set up on a hill that cannot be hid because of all the light it produces.

But today, as we look at Christians being salt, this is not talking about the church, but about individual Christians. Because the business of the Church is to spread the Gospel and make disciples, then it is up to the individual Christian to be salt where he or she is in the world.

Each Christian does so by his individual life and character. By just being a man or a woman that they God has made them to be within the speres in which they find themselves. What kind of individuals are we made to be? Well, we just talked about that in the Beatitudes - poor in spirit, grieved over sin, meek in our conduct with others, hungering after God, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and longsuffering.

Allowing God to perfect these qualities in us allows us to be salt in the world.

We cannot be salt only in the privacy of our homes, we must be salt in every sphere in which we find ourselves - our friend circles, our workplaces, schools, and even our country.

And though the Church's call is not to be salt, it is the call of the individual Christian. Let me explain. The calling of the church is not to be a lobbyist in politics. Our job is not to intervene in political, economic, or social conditions. The call of the church, the body of Christ. It is to be light, to proclaim the gospel and make disciples of Christ.

That is why we here at GNBC will never hold a rally for any political candidate or cause. The church will not be a medium for any candidate to announce his or her political viewpoints. The church will serve as a medium to proclaim the gospel and as a training ground to equip Christians in how to be disciples of Jesus Christ and serve Him.

These disciples of Christ then have the responsibility and privilege of being Christians within the circles God has placed them. That means that Christians ought to vote, ought to get involved in politics, they ought to get involved in their communities, they ought to be a noticeable presence in their workplaces and schools. They ought to be vocal in those areas.

How many are familiar with the name William Wilberforce? William Wilberforce was a key instrument to the abolition of slavery in England. He felt a call from God upon his life to see the slave trade suppressed, and God greatly used him in this manner. And though he and other evangelical Christians were a loud voice against both the horrors of slavery and the great surge of immorality and vice that gripped the British Empire, it was them that God used to bring about reforms that eventually abolished slavery completely and even brought about reforms that tempered the public immorality of the nation. These were results of individual Christians doing what God had directed them to do, not churches implementing programs or lobbies.

Let the individual Christian play his part as a student, worker, and citizen, and as we do this, we will bring a preservation to the world around us.

Our presence must bring with it a controlling of the pollution of sin around us, like the presence of salt brings to the food it is applied to, a controlling of the pollution in it.

How do you know when this is happening around you? When you walk into the break room at your office and the talk of the coworkers is more... unworthy, shall we say. Do they stop? Do they continue? Do they invite you into the conversation?

The salty Christian will bring a level of control to the sinfully polluted environment that he enters. And all it takes is just a little bit of salt. Just a little salt can affect a great mass. A little salt can preserve a lot of food. This is our individual calling right now.

Just a little bit of salt can preserve, and just a little bit of salt can add flavor. I love me some watermelon! But very rarely does a watermelon taste good enough to just eat on its own. Most times, it needs just a sprinkling of salt. Salt enhances the flavor of that watermelon slice so well. Now, if you poor too much on it, its gross, but just a sprinkle really enhances the flavor and even draws out the sweetness.

Let me ask you this, "Do you enhance the flavor of life of those you do life with?" I'm not asking if everyone likes you. I'm asking if your presence generally makes others' lives better and more flavorful.

In 1859-1865 there existed a period of time in England known as the English revival. This revival totalled over 650,000 adults that were saved and became members of churches in England from Baptists to Methodists, Congregationalists and other denominations. These numbers do not include children, nor do they include non-English residents, and they do not include people who had been members of a church only to realize during this time that they had never truly been saved and then got right with God. These numbers would have constituted a great many more people, pushing that number around 900,000.

The thing that is impressive to me is that this revival, and in fact most other revivals, were not started by a church program or campaign to have revivals. I cringe a little when I hear the phrase "revival meeting." Revivals are not brought on by weeklong meetings under a circus tent. I sat in a service where the guest preacher was talking about a "revival" meeting that he had preached at a church across town. He was talking about how good it was to preach that revival meeting and to be a part of that revival meeting.

Well, I went to that revival meeting, and can tell you that there wasn't a single thing revived about it.

I'm not knocking the preaching, it was good and Biblical. The music was good and God-honoring. But to call thirty people sitting under a tent for five nights listening to preaching a revival meeting is stretching it a bit.

The hope in this church was not a bad hope. They hoped that they would attract a great deal of people from their community and that many lost people would hear the gospel and be saved. That is a good thing to hope for, but a tent and a sawdust covered floor does not a revival make.

How then did a revival spark in London, England and spread like wildfire throughout the rest of the country? It started about 4 years earlier, actually. It started with a man named Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury. As a member of Parliament, the Earl of Shaftesbury sponsored bills that would allow people to have church services in non-consecrated buildings. Until then, the only place where church services could be held were in church buildings. This was very useful during the English Revival that would start 4 years later because church buildings could not hope to hold the amount of people that were interested in hearing the gospel preached. In London alone, it is said that on a Sunday, you couldn't go to a theatre or meeting hall because there were religious services going on in them. One citizen said that you could not walk down the streets of London from one end to another on a Sunday or a fair weathered evening "without hearing someone preach, and not only men, but women too."

The work of the Earl of Shaftesbury made that possible. But it didn't start with him only. See, the Lord Ashley, as a teenager became a devout Christian. He did not become a Christian because of the influence of his family, however. As a child, he was very unhappy. The boarding school which he attended treated their students horrendously, in a way that would be considered torture nowadays.

But the ability for the English revival to be held in theaters, meeting halls, and on the streets of London itself over the course of 6 years would never have taken place if it had not been for one of the maids that worked for the Ashley-Cooper family. The home of the future 7th Earl of Shaftesbury was described as a loveless home. This is the way his biographer described the young boy's home life: "Ashley grew up without any experience of parental love. He saw little of his parents, and when duty or necessity compelled them to take notice of him they were formal and frightening."

But it was this maid, this housekeeper that had a Christian influence on the young Ashley. Maria Mills was her name, and she modeled such a Christian love to him that he would regularly refer back to her as the basis for his vast social activism and philanthropic work. She was the one that would tell him Bible stories and taught him how to pray. It was because of the salt she was in a horrible home that evil was held back, and good seed was allowed to take hold.

Though the Earl of Shaftesbury was instrumental in preparing the places where the gospel message could be preached to the public, it was not only his work that started this revival. In the years preceding the English revival, individual Christians began to pray. They prayed God would do a work in their cities and country. Church members began meeting before services and after to pray and during the week to pray for God to awaken their nation. These individuals, fueled by prayer, filled by the Holy Spirit, became the salt that permeated every aspect of English culture, stopped the putrification caused by sin, and allowed the Gospel message to burst forth and bring countless fruit.

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones commented that the effect of the revival could be seen in the literature publishings before and after the time period of the revival. Salt. It slows corruption, it adds flavor. Surely, close to a million lives were that much more flavorful because of the saltiness of a few Christians that prayed for revival and lived out their lives among their circles.

But why does it often not happen that way?

The trouble is that far too few Christian people are salty enough. Again, I am not talking about being aggressive. I am talking about being truly Spirit filled - controlled by the Holy Spirit. A person like this radiates influence. It permeates any group in which they happen to be.

The trouble is, our salt has lost its saltiness. Unsavoury, adulterated, and diluted salt is no longer noticeable, and that defeats its whole purpose.

A Warning for the Salt

Matthew 5:13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

We might think that the idea of salt losing its savor is a ridiculous notion, as we have at our disposal salt, pure sodium chloride that is stable and doesn't break down.

However, to be noted is this: Most salt in the ancient world was derived from salt marshes, rather than by evaporation of salt water. This would cause the salt to contain a lot of impurities. The actual salt was more water soluble that most of the impurities, that is to say, it dissolved in water much easier than the other components of this so called salt. So if there was humidity present, the actual salt would be leeched out and then what was sprinkled on the food would not have any saltiness to it. It was therefore fit for nothing than to be thrown out in the streets.

This salt that had lost its flavor, or it seasoning ability was useful for one thing only. It was useful for either throwing out in the street of throwing up on top of the roofs of houses. This impure and unsavory salt would then harden, preventing roof from leaking and providing a hard coating on streets.

This is the opposite of what salt should do, and what salt actually does. Salt, for us here in Iowa, is pretty important. Not just because you can use it to cure ham and other meats, not just because it really makes the corn taste good, but also in the winter months because it makes clearing driveways and streets a whole lot easier. Put some salt on that ice and watch it melt away.

Salt softens cold things, and if you ever meet anyone that is cold hearted toward God, your saltiness can soften their heart. But if you as the salt have lost its flavor, you'll do nothing more than help harden it some more.

Invitation

"You are the salt of the earth." It is used in an emphatic sense. Jesus here is emphasizing and stressing the unique calling of Christians. We are to be different from the world.