NaCl

Psalm 34:11-14 (Opening) 11  Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. 12  What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? 13  Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. 14  Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Introduction For as long as I can remember, I have always loved potatoes. Boiled, mashed, baked, fried, hash browns, french fries, chips, home fries. Pretty much any form of cooked potatoes, I have always loved them. I remember, as a kid, helping my dad plant potatoes. He would buy seed potatoes, then cut them into pieces so there was only one eye on each piece, and then we would plant them in the rows that he had dug. I’d watch him cover them over, and once they started growing, I’d watch him hill the potatoes, mounding more dirt at the bottom of the plants so the potatoes would grow better. I remember there was always a two-week vacation at the end of September and the beginning of October because of the potato harvest when I was in school. It gave the larger farms a bigger pool of workers to get the harvest in faster. Some school districts still do this, but most of them have phased it out over the years. I remember helping my dad dig potatoes. You had to be careful not to spear them with the long tines of the potato rake. You had to work hard to dig deep enough to miss the potatoes, but still be able to pull the dirt to be able to pick the potatoes. For a kid it was sometimes a difficult compromise. Of course, the problem with potatoes is that they’re mostly carbohydrates, and eating too many carbs isn’t good for you. But otherwise, potatoes are a very healthy food; depending on how you cook them. Another problem with potatoes is they don’t have much flavor on their own; they need something else to make them flavorful. Like butter, sour cream, bacon, and, depending on how you’ve cooked them, salt and lots of it. Of course, all the things you add to the potatoes to make them taste better make them less healthy for you in the long run. Depending on how you cook the potatoes, salt is probably the most important “spice” you can add to make them taste better. Value Salt by itself or misused can be overpowering. I heard a story about a family who was canning one summer, and a guest came over. The guest sat at the kitchen table and was given a cup of coffee. They guest decided to doctor his coffee the way he normally would, so he took a few tablespoonfuls of the white powder in the bowl on the table and stirred it into his coffee. Unfortunately, it was a bowl of salt on the table for canning. The sugar had been put away. Salt is one of the five flavors we can taste. The reason we can taste salt is because we need salt to live. Salt is one of the main elements of our bodily fluids; it’s really what keeps us together and going. When our bodies need salt, like when we’ve been working outside for a long time and we’ve lost a lot of our salt through sweating, we begin to crave salt. The salt flavor also seems to help other flavors show through in what we eat. It’s amazing to me the amount of research that is still being done in the area of taste and how it works. Most of what we learned in biology class is just the tip of the iceberg. But even with all that research, some of what science is “learning” about taste has been known since ancient times. The book of Job is quite possibly the oldest stand-alone story in the Bible. Many scholars believe the story takes place around the same time that Abram left Ur on the beginning of his trek to Canaan. And yet, in this ancient book, we read this: Job 6:6 6  Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt, or is there any taste in the juice of the mallow? It’s like ordering french fries without salt. I know that some people have to do that for medical reasons, but all you really taste is the oil the fries are cooked in. To me, they need salt. Kind of like the low salt potato chips. Nice crunch, but not much flavor. In the past hundred years or so, we’ve gotten really good at making table salt in a more uniform size. Something that easily comes out of those tiny holes in a salt shaker. But for millennia before, salt was basically just rock salt that was crushed and stored, or collected from evaporated sea water. There was nothing to keep it from clumping back together, and there were more impurities and various sizes of grains of salt. Because the grains of salt were larger, and because of the different minerals that were usually mixed in with the salt, and also because of the roughness of the grains of salt, it was often used as a cleansing agent. Rock salt can be used mixed with oil to scrub dishes clean, and it is also a mild disinfectant. In ancient times, newborn babies were often rubbed with salt to ensure they were clean and healthy. God used a negative example of this when He spoke to the people of Jerusalem. Ezekiel 16:4 4 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. God is telling the people of Jerusalem they were behaving like they were not loved and cared for. Kind of like asking someone if they were raised by wolves as a child. If you care for your newborn baby, you clean them and dress them and love them. Salt was often used as a scrub to clean newborns, the same way it’s used today as a facial scrub and exfoliant. With these essential uses for salt, another interesting one is as currency. Yes, salt was exchanged as money. The word “salary” is derived from the Latin word for salt. So is the word “soldier”. A person that is “worth their salt” will provide a good amount of work for their salary. At one points in time, salt was actually exchanged for gold at even weight. In ancient Middle Eastern culture, when a covenant was made between two people or families, an animal was sacrificed, and cut in two, and the people agreeing to the covenant would walk between the halves of the animal. Then an amount of salt would be given to show commitment to the covenant. A covenant of salt was a ratified, serious agreement between two parties. Abijah, the grandson of Solomon, in defense of his claim to the throne of Judah in Jerusalem, climbed to the top of Zemaraim (zem a ra im) and threatened Jeroboam, king of Israel, the northern kingdom. Part of what he said was to remind Jeroboam who God intended to be king. 2 Chronicles 13:5 5 Ought you not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingship over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt? A covenant of salt, a serious agreement between David and God. Abijah wasn’t saying that actual salt was used to bind the agreement, but that the covenant that God made with David, saying that he would never be without a son of the throne, was a permanent agreement. Uses of Salt Probably because salt was used in ratifying a covenant, salt was also an important part of man’s interaction with God in Temple worship. It’s not something you hear about very often. You always hear about the incense for the Holy place, the sacrifices on the altar, the special holidays when specific things were to be given to God, but you don’t usually hear about salt. Salt was an integral part of everything given to God. When God was telling Moses the details about everything for the tabernacle and tabernacle worship, He gave specific instructions; about everything. Everything down to the smallest detail. God gave Moses the precise recipe for the incense to be used in the Holy place, where incense was kept burning. Exodus 30:34-35 34 The Lord said to Moses, “Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (of each shall there be an equal part), 35 and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy. God reminded Moses this recipe was special and was not to be used by anyone else in any other place than in the Holy place in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple. Anyone who used this recipe for their own incense was to be cut off from the people of Israel. God lists the four main ingredients, and then He includes that is must be seasoned with salt. He doesn’t say how much salt to include in the incense. The salt may have been a binding agent to help hold the other four ingredients together in the incense. Along with being included in the incense burned before the Holy of Holies, salt was also supposed to be added to grain offerings. Grain offerings could be brought at any time before the Lord, but were generally offered at Pentecost, the festival of Firstfruits. When God explained the requirements for grain offerings to Moses, He gave specific instructions about how they would be offered. The grain could be ground into flour and offered that way, or it could be made into flour and baked into small round loafs to be offered. Either way, oil and frankincense would be added to the flour, and if it were baked, oil would be poured or smeared onto the loafs. But God adds one more detail. Leviticus 2:13 13 You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt. Leaven or honey was not to be used in any of the bread of the grain offerings, but salt was a requirement. Without salt, the grain offering, no matter what form it took, was unacceptable. When it comes to animal sacrifices, the animal had to be a “clean” animal, one allowed to be sacrificed to God or eaten, but that animal also had to be perfect. The animal could have no physical defects or illness. Only the best was allowed to be given to God. When God spoke to Ezekiel during the exile of Israel in Babylon, God showed Ezekiel a vision of the rebuilt city of Jerusalem, including the temple. In the vision, God showed him the details of the temple, the size and dimensions, and placement of all the articles in the temple. This all starts in Ezekiel chapter 40. By the time we get to chapter 43, the vision includes the dedication of the new temple, including the sacrifices to purify the altar and the sin offerings for the people. Ezekiel 43:23-24 23 When you have finished purifying it, you shall offer a bull from the herd without blemish and a ram from the flock without blemish. 24 You shall present them before the Lord, and the priests shall sprinkle salt on them and offer them up as a burnt offering to the Lord. God tells Ezekiel that the offerings burnt on the altar had to be sprinkled with salt. This was another part of the covenant of salt between God and His people Israel. We can infer from Leviticus 2:13 that all offerings to God, not just grain offerings, required salt of an unspecified amount. Here in Ezekiel we see the priests salting the burnt offerings for God. But a covenant has two participants. In this case, God and the children of Israel. Part of God’s covenant with Israel was that He would take care of them. The Levites didn’t have any way to grow crops or graze herds, so they were totally reliant on God to provide for their needs. God promised the Levites He would take care of them. He would provide for them. To do that, the tithe that Israel was to give to the Temple was to be given to the Levites. Numbers 18:19 19 All the holy contributions that the people of Israel present to the Lord I give to you, and to your sons and daughters with you, as a perpetual due. It is a covenant of salt forever before the Lord for you and for your offspring with you.” That was God’s side of the covenant of salt with Israel. He explained how He would provide for them. You Are Salt That’s a lot of information about something as basic and mundane as salt. I’m sure you’re thinking “Ok, that’s nice. So what?” Well, I wanted us to understand salt in the context it would have been understood in the first century. That way we could look at a particular scripture, where Jesus talked about salt, and try to understand it the way the people who heard Him may have understood. Matthew 5:13 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. Is Jesus focusing on the flavoring aspect of salt here, or is that just the best way to determine if salt is still valuable and useful? If salt isn’t salty anymore, will it melt snow? Will it still be good for flavoring your food? Is it still effective as a scrub and antiseptic? Is that what Jesus is talking about here? Eugene Peterson is a Presbyterian minister who wanted to make the Bible easier for people to understand. It all started when some of his parishioners asked him for an easier to understand translation of Galatians while he was teaching it. So, he went back to the original Greek texts and translated it by concept, instead of word for word. It was so popular that he decided to translate the entire Bible the same way. That translation is known as “The Message”. I think it makes some scriptures easier to understand, but I wouldn’t use it for deep studying of the Bible. That said, here’s how The Message translates the same scripture. Matthew 5:13 (Message) “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.” I think Mr Peterson limits his context of salt to only our current use of it, as a spice or flavoring agent for food. I think there may be more to what Jesus is saying than that. Remember all the other aspects of uses for salt that we talked about. When I read this scripture from the Message, I see Jesus saying that without us, His disciples, the world is bland and unpalatable. It’s unpleasant to deal with. Christians are supposed to be making the world palatable by showing the image of God to the people around us. Another way I can see us being salt is by using the cleansing and antiseptic properties of salt. Maybe our job is to be the clean-up crew. Jesus wants us to go and make disciples, right? The more disciples we make for Jesus, the less problems, in theory, there should be in the world. I think the best way to look at it is through the lens of the covenant of salt. As the salt of the earth, we are dedicated to God as the earth’s share of the covenant with God. God provides for our needs, just like He did for the Levites. He cares for us. As a part of the covenant of salt, we are like God’s portion of His promise to the earth, that He will provide a way for everyone to be redeemed. We facilitate that by sharing the good news with people and being the image of God to everyone we meet. Paul wrote about salt to the congregation in Colossae. He wanted the Christians there to be a good example to everyone around them, and to be able to explain about Jesus in a positive way. Colossians 4:5-6 5 Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. We need to be able to make our speech palatable to people, so we can convince them of the good news about Jesus. Conclusion Sometimes when we meet people and talk about Jesus, our speech is like mushy, bland potatoes. It’s the same stuff they’ve had before, and they don’t want to think about it. We need to make sure we’re seasoning the message the way people want to hear it, but not watering it down so it isn’t God’s truth. No matter how you slice it, we’re supposed to be different from the world around us. Salt is different from everything else. It makes tasteless food taste good. It makes the hidden flavors come out. That’s what we need to be like when we are around others. We need to make the good in them come out, and make them want to be more like us, because we’re more like Jesus, showing the image of God. I challenge you this week to be more like salt. Make a difference for other people. Make this life palatable for someone who is dealing with the bitterness of the world. Hebrews 13:15-16 (Closing) 15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.