You are the Salt of the Earth B

Now I'm telling you something, if we're going to retard the corruption of the world like salt, we can't live the way the world lives.

We just can't do it. We've got to be in the world rubbed into the society like salt dissolves into the meat and yet different, separate. What is salt on your dinner table that is used to save lives and to give food flavor?

In the past, armies fought to capture it and soldiers were paid with it. What is this substance? Well, it's salt. With salt serving so many crucial functions in the ancient world, what specifically did Jesus mean when he called his disciples the salt of the earth? Today on Grace to You, John MacArthur will explain what Jesus wanted his disciples, including his followers today, to understand about our role in the world as John continues his series, How to Live in a Dying World.

And so with the lesson now, here's John. What does it mean for us to be salt? How does salt manifest itself?

Okay? Let me give you some thoughts about salt. I don't know if you know this, but salt is very valuable.

It always has been valuable in human society. Today it's not like it used to be, but the salt was very important. Romans said nothing was more valuable than sun and salt because in a day without refrigeration, the only way they could preserve meat was to salt it and they would literally rub the salt in.

You know, you've read about the old deals where they traveled across the sea and they kept their jerky, you know, in these big barrels soaked in brine or whatever or even just salted and then left hard and stiff and you see it even in stores today. Salt was a preservative. By the way, Roman soldiers were paid with salt.

Did you know that? And if you were a lousy soldier, you weren't worth your salt. And that's where that phrase came from. Salt was used throughout the ancient society as a sign of friendship. There were salt covenants. Today in the Arab world, if a man partakes of salt with another man, if two Arabs today partake of salt, that means that they are under each other's care.

And even if a worst enemy came in and ate with a man and ate his salt, that man would be obliged to care for that enemy as if he were his fast friend. So salt was used for pay. Salt was used to bind friendships. Salt was used with covenants when people...I think there's been something kind of a holdover to that even today where people throw salt over their shoulder or something when they make a promise in some society. But in 2 Chronicles 13 5, God speaks of a covenant of salt that He made with David. It was common in that time of the world to add salt to a covenant. There wasn't any notary public, you know.

There wasn't somebody to put his little stamp on it. So when you wanted to authenticate the legality of a document, the two men who entered into the agreement would eat salt in the face of witnesses. And when the witnesses saw them eating salt, they said the covenant is binding. And by the way, God prescribed salt as a necessary part of the sacrifices, partly to be a preservative. The sacrifice, some of it would be eaten by the priests, some of it would be taken back and perhaps as a symbol also of this covenant concept. But in Leviticus 2 13 we read, every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt. Neither shalt thou suffer the salt of thy covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering with all their offerings thou...with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt. So salt was a very important commodity. Now when Jesus said, You are the salt of the earth, they could have thought of a lot of things.

They could have thought, Well we are the valuable people in the world. We are the ones who are honored in the world, nothing more important than salt and we're salt. And then He later on says, We're light, we're light and salt.

I mean, that's it. That's what the Romans have been saying for years. So maybe Jesus was playing off of that little thought, something.

What Jesus said no doubt had tremendous significance to them. Salt was used to season food. In fact, food without salt, let's face it folks, has got something missing. And you know, people just have a terrible time when they have to go on a salt-free diet.

Well that's biblical. You're supposed to eat some things with salt. Take eggs, for example. Eggs are awful, generally anyway, but without salt. I heard a doctor say the other day the yolk...the white of the egg is fine, you can do what you want with that, but leave the yolk alone.

It's supposed to be a chicken. But anyway, in Job 6, 6...in Job 6, 6 it says, Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg? Job says, You don't eat an egg without salt. So maybe the idea of salt used to season things. By the way, Isaiah chapter 30 and verse 24 brings up the same issue.

I thought this was just kind of interesting little things. Salt was used to preserve. Turn to Ezekiel 16 and you'll find a fascinating use of salt.

Mothers, you may be a little reluctant to try this, but it's kind of interesting. In Ezekiel 16, 4, you have the birth of a baby. As for thy nativity, or the birth of a baby, in the day thou wast born, thy navel was not cut. In other words, you were still connected with the umbilical cord, neither was thou washed in water to cleanse thee, thou wast not salted at all. You say, Now wait a minute, are they going to eat this baby?

No. You know what they used to do? The first thing they'd do was wash the baby and the second thing they'd do would be to rub salt all over the baby.

You say, Why? In the process of birth there may have been some nicks or scratches or wounds that occurred to the baby and this would act as a healing agency. And so they would rub salt all over the baby. And so he's simply saying, You weren't salted.

But then, of course, they were swaddled which meant they were wrapped in some kind of a cloth. So it was used for healing value. Newborn babies were even washed with salt. It could also serve a destructive purpose. If you wanted to really mess up your neighbor's field, you were having an argument with your neighbor, you'd just salt his field.

That would do it. In fact, in Judges chapter 9 verse 45, Abimelech, when he captured Shechem, wanted to show his displeasure with them and so he salted their fields as a punishment. Salt became a symbol then of something that was sterile and something that was barren. Salt could be something virtuous, something valuable as the commodity used in a salt covenant. So you can see that just saying, You're the salt of the earth, could open up to the minds of the people a lot of thoughts, a lot of things that were possible. Salt was used in a positive way.

He could be saying, You are the salt. You're to go out there and you're to punish the world. I'm sending you out there to sprinkle their fields and kill their crops, in a sense. They could have looked at it like that, that they were supposed to end the typical lifestyle of the unbelievers and act as judges in the world. They could have looked at it as if it was the idea of healing and a medicinal application or they were seasoning for the unseasonable life of man on the earth. All of these possibilities, tremendous potential richness here.

But now let's get specific and let me suggest several things that many commentators suggest and then we'll pick the one that's the best, okay? First of all, some say Jesus had purity in mind. What color is salt? It's white.

It's white. And some feel that this is what Jesus is emphasizing. You are the salt of the earth and those times sometimes there would be a little pile of salt outside and it would just glisten against the rather brown drab background of that particular part of the world. The glistening whiteness could have aroused this thought in Jesus. And He was saying, connecting this with verse 8, blessed are the pure in heart, that the believer is to be sort of the glistening white, pure, righteous person in the world of drab, brown, gloomy, dark, decadent evil. We are to be examples of purity. We are to hold up the divine standard in thought and speech and action. We are to be pure and pristine and glistening and white. Well, I think something of that is contained in the Lord's thought, but I don't think that aspect really captures the richness. It seems a little strained to imagine that that's what they were talking about because He could have used any white thing and when He talked about being real white in another occasion, He talked about a painted sepulcher, didn't He?

So we wouldn't necessarily see this as just an illustration of white. And by the way, if salt sat out very long, the dust would blow on it and it would be brown until it was washed. Second possibility, He's talking about flavor.

And some commentators really go crazy on this one. They say, well, Jesus is simply saying, you are the flavor of the world. The world is tasteless, dull, drab, lifeless, unsavory like the white of an egg. And you are the flavor of the world. You're what salts life. The pleasures of the world really are yours.

In other words, this is the idea. God blesses the believers and the unbelievers who stand around get the spill off. You know, like the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Well God sends the rain to bless His people, but unsaved people get wet too. We are the salt. We spill over on the world. We flavor the world. What a world it would be without Christians. One writer says, we Christians have no business being boring.

Our function is to add flavor and excitement to the world. Jesus was saying, in effect, does this world have to go on the way it is without salt? Can't we have some salt around here, please?

That will add a beautiful touch to the whole thing. If I as a Christian am boring and dull, if I'm not adding flavor to life around me, I'm not fulfilling my function as salt. Well, it's a nice sentiment.

There's a kind of problem with it. I agree that we do kind of flavor the world. You know, 1 Corinthians 7 says that an unsaved spouse is sanctified by a believing partner, right? I mean, even an unsaved person is going to be sanctified and blessed just by hanging around a Christian.

So it's true that in a sense we do flavor the world. I mean, with only eight righteous people in the world, God just destroyed it in the flood. And with only a few righteous people left at the end, He'll destroy it again.

And when the church is taken out at the rapture, all hell breaks loose everywhere. So the world ought to be glad we're around because we do give it a flavor of righteousness and we do give it a flavor of life and we do allow it to go along a little further without being blown to smithereens by a holy God. So there is a sense in which we make the world palatable. We make life palatable. But frankly, the world doesn't see us that way. As far as they're concerned, we're party poopers.

I don't think that...to say you are the salt of the earth, I don't think the earth thinks of us as the salt. The tragedy is that people have connected Christianity with exactly the opposite. They think we make the world taste less, huh? That they're trying to live it up and party it up and live as salty a life as they possibly can and we're just raining on the parade. They've connected Christianity with that which takes the flavor out of life. Well, I don't want to become a Christian. It's so dull and boring. You can't do anything. Like Swinburne said, thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean, the world has grown gray from thy breath. What a state. You've just lulled the world into gray.

Let me give you a third option. Salt stings, not only its whiteness and its flavor, but it has a medicinal or a healing property when put into a wound. And so some say our Lord is saying believers are not to be honey in the world to soothe the sinful world. We are to be salt in the world and whenever we see a place where there's already a problem, we just throw ourselves in and make it sting.

I like that. I don't think we do near enough of that. I think we just want to drip honey on everybody and we just figure if we don't ever offend, if we just go along in life, oh, it's all right, don't...and just kind of gloss it over and let it all be the way it is that nobody's going to get upset and everybody will say, oh, those Christians are so loving, oh, they're so tolerant of us, it's so wonderful.

But there's never any clear definition of a distinction, you see. No, we're not honey, we're salt. 2 Corinthians 2, 15 and 16 says, For we are unto God a sweet saver of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish. To the one we are a saver of death unto death and to the other a saver of life unto life. In other words, we are honey to the believers but, man, we are salt to the unbeliever. Many Christians never see this.

All they think about is living comfortably, don't upset anybody, don't get anybody angry. Oh, they might reject Christ if you say anything too confronting, don't get too open with things, you just have to kind of gloss it over, they'll come along. A man said to me the other day, he was in a church and no matter what happened in the church, they had some elders who were having affairs with other elders' wives and the pastor said, don't do anything, God is on the throne and everything will be all right and we just don't want to stir anything up. I think we ought to have a stinging ministry. I think we ought to get in the wounds of the world and irritate them to pieces. In fact, in John 20, 23 it says, Whosoever sins you remit are remitted and whosoever sins you retain are retained. We need to go around and say to people, your sins are forgiven because of your faith in Jesus Christ, yours aren't and be confrontive.

I really believe, people, if Christians don't start standing up for something, the whole deal is going to go down the drain. Well, I think salt is to sting but I don't think that that's all there is to it. Let's go to a fourth possibility. Some writers say that salt's primary purpose is to create thirst, that salt is to create thirst. It's in your body because it creates thirst, makes you drink and you've got to drink in order to stay alive. If you don't drink, of course you don't drink water, then you get bloated and die and salt is involved in that. One writer says this, the primary function of salt is to create thirst. Without salt in the food there would be an improper intake of liquid and where there is an improper intake of liquid there would be dehydration and death or severe sickness.

This would be particularly true in the desert countries around the land where our Lord was speaking. An essential part of every traveler's baggage was a sack of salt to prevent dehydration. Even in our day, those who labor manually in the summer use salt tablets.

I can remember as a football player in college popping salt tablets on hot days because you had to do that in order to keep your thirst going so that you would drink water. And so some writers say that we're to be salt in the earth in this sense. We are in the world to create thirst, you see. It's kind of like Romans 11 where God allows the Gentiles to make Israel jealous, you know. We're around and we're saved and we have the Messiah and we're supposed to make Israel thirsty. Or I have...you know, sometimes people come up to you and say, Oh, what is it you've got?

How can you have so much peace in this situation? Why do you always seem to have all the...where does all this get taken from? See, that's creating a thirst, isn't it? And salt will do that and that's all right. They may not like our theology and they may not want our Christ, but they may see lifestyle in us that makes them thirst for that, you see. Well you say, is this the thing Jesus is talking about? Well I think partly.

I think we ought to...I think we ought to be white and pure in the world and I think we ought to flavor the world and I think we ought to sting the world and I think we ought to also to just make the world thirsty for God because our lives are so full and so rich. But I think the key reason that we're called salt is the fifth one and that's a preservative. That's a preservative. I'm going to close with this.

This is a negative function in a way. I think we're here to prevent corruption. That's what I believe.

As I told you, they used to rub the salt into the meat, just rub it in so that it would saturate it and preserve it. And that's the principle idea. We are an antiseptic in the world. We are a preservation in the world. If you don't think so, watch in the Bible what happens to the world when the church is removed.

And watch all the demons of hell released, evil goes wild. We are a preservative. We are an antiseptic. And as we live in the world, a holy Christ-like character, and as we are pure white in the world, and as we do flavor the world, and as we do sting the world a little bit, and as we do make the world thirsty for God, all of that in combination can be added to the thought that we preserve the world from going completely corrupt. And once we leave, it only takes seven years for the world to go to the pits of hell. We check the rottenness and decay of the world. And beloved, He says right here, the only way we'll ever do it is if our salt still has its savor, you see? Our presence in the world is to hold back crime.

The Spirit of God in us is the one who hinders 2 Thessalonians. Our presence in the world should change certain kinds of conversation. It ought to affect barbershops like D.L.

Moody's did. It ought to affect kids like Andrew Murray's life did. We ought to pass through the world the way that goddess did, and everywhere we snap, flowers bloom. You see, that's what He's talking about.

Our presence should condemn apostasy. Our presence should affect the way men think. Well, I know a little about that. It's amazing how people alter their conversations when I come around.

It's amazing, and you know that too. Back in Genesis chapter 18, God was at the decision-making point. I want you to see it in verse 23. Genesis 18, Abraham drew near and said, "'Wilt thou destroy the righteous with the wicked, God?'" God, you don't want to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. God, you don't want to wipe out all the righteous people with the wicked. Suppose there are fifty righteous people in the city.

Will you destroy and not spare the place for the fifty? That be far from thee to do after this manner to slay the righteous with the wicked, and the righteous should be as the wicked. That be far from thee shall not the judge of all the earth do right." And the Lord said, "'If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, I'll spare the place for their sakes.'

Abraham answered and said, "'Behold now I've taken unto me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes.' Suppose there shall lack five of the fifty righteous? Will you destroy all the city for lack of five?' And he said, "'If I find forty-five, I'll not destroy it.' He spoke unto him again and said, "'Suppose there shall be forty?'"

You see, he's moving down the scale now. He says, "'I'll not do it for forty's sake.' "'What about thirty?' "'I'll not do it for thirty.' "'What about twenty?' "'I'll not do it for twenty.' "'O Lord, please don't be angry.' "'Ten?' And he said, "'I'll not destroy it for ten.'"

Want to know something? Just ten righteous people could have spared that entire population. Listen beloved, believers in the world preserve the world from the wrath of God. We are an agency to retard God's inevitable judgment. One day God's going to judge this world and before He does He'll pull all of His believers out.

I believe that. He'll pull all of us out and then He will fire His judgment at the world. Now I'm telling you something. If we're going to retard the corruption of the world like salt, we can't live the way the world lives. We just can't do it. We've got to be in the world rubbed into the society like salt dissolves into the meat and yet different, separate. I just feel like the church has got to be in the world and touch the world and yet never be of the world. Notice it says the salt of the earth and I think the term earth here just covers the whole globe. We're the only salt in the whole earth. He doesn't use the word world because world has more of a philosophical connotation.

Earth just means the masses of humanity that live on the globe. We are responsible for the retardation of the deteriorating, disintegrating, rotting carcass of humanity. We are the only restraint in the world as indwelt by the Spirit of God.

This is the power of our influence, the power of our silent witness. Isn't it amazing how God uses us to do that? Isn't it amazing how God uses something as humble and useless and basic as us? Boy, God gives noble purposes to ignoble things, doesn't He? When He made man in the garden, He didn't use gold and He didn't use silver and He didn't even use iron, He used dirt. And when He called David to deliver Israel from the Philistines, He didn't use a great flashing sword, He used some little pebbles.

And when He came into the world, He didn't enter a family of wealth and nobility and didn't be born in a castle, He came to a peasant girl and was born in a stable. And God wants to take you and me, sinners, saved by grace and make us salt, literally use us to hold back judgment on the world and to retard the corruption. What about your influence? What's it like?

What happens when you walk by? I'm going to close with this story. The writer says, when I was saved during a mighty movement of the Spirit in the city of Glasgow, Scotland, a young lady was also saved. Her name was Helen Ewing. She was just a slip of a girl but at the very threshold of her new life in Christ she was crowned...she crowned Him as Lord absolutely and was filled with the Spirit.

The rivers of living water just simply flowed from that young girl's life. Although she died at the age of 22, all Scotland wept. I know hundreds of missionaries over all the world who wept and mourned for her.

Imagine...died at 22. She had mastered the Russian language and was expecting to labor for God in Europe. She had no outstanding personality. She never wrote a book, never composed a hymn. She was not a preacher, never traveled more than 200 miles as far as I know from her home. When she died, people wrote about her life story. Although she died so early in life that she had led a great multitude to Jesus Christ. She arose early every morning of her life at five o'clock to study God's Word, to commune and to pray. She prayed for hundreds of missionaries. Her mother showed me her diary, one of many diaries, and there were at least 300 different missionaries for whom she was praying at all times. It showed that God had burdened that young heart with a ministry of prayer. She had the date when she started to pray for a request and the date when God answered it. She had a dynamic prayer life that moved God and moved man.

I was talking one day with two university professors in London. We were talking about dynamic Christianity when one of them suddenly said, Brother Stewart, I want to tell you a story. And he told me that in Glasgow University there was a remarkable little girl who wherever she went on the campus left the fragrance of Christ behind her.

For example, he said, if the students were telling dirty stories, someone would say, Shhh, Helen is coming. And as she passed by, she unconsciously left the power of God, influence. Let's pray. Father, help us to be salt, help us to be light, help us to so live that the world can see who You are and that we belong to You. Father, help us to be obedient to the things that are needful, the things that belong to Your kingdom, and to be separate from the world for Your glory.

In Jesus' name, amen. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. He's been showing you how to have the greatest influence, an influence for eternity, on friends and family members and really everyone in your life.

The title of John's current study, How to Live in a Dying World. Now, friend, if you're thankful for lessons like the one you just heard, if these broadcasts are helping you learn and love and apply God's word, John has a reminder for you that relates to the station you're listening to right now. John, the mic is yours. Well thank you, Phil, and every once in a while we just need to stop whatever else we're doing and say a huge thank you to the station manager and staff of this radio station. And I know we're passing along thanks not only from you and myself, Phil, and from all the people here at Grace to You, but from everybody who listens to Grace to You on this station who knows how vital the partnership is. A quick example of the notes we received from our listeners.

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To get the app or to access thousands of other free resources, visit our website, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today. Be here tomorrow when John shows you how Christ equips His followers in every age to be the light of the world. That's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.