Refusing a Salt Free Life

William Barclay goes on to write on this text. The disciple will be such that in his presence, no doubtful language will be used, no questionable stories told, no dishonorable actions suggested. He becomes a disinfecting agent in the circle in which he moves, which is why when you show up at the water cooler, the conversation stops. Or in the classroom, you're a purifying influence. As Christians, what analogy can you think of to reflect who we're supposed to be? Maybe a fighter. We fight for God and go to war against secular culture. Others would say a peacemaker. We offer a message of love that's offered to everyone on earth. Or maybe a firefighter.

We help rescue people from the fire and bring them into a place of safety. Well, what analogy did Jesus use? You have some of it sitting on your dining room table right now. It's so small that we rarely give it much thought. It's salt.

Here's Stephen Davey with a message called Refusing a Salt-Free Life. Every one of us today has in our bodies four ounces of something that's pretty important. In fact, it's a matter of life and death. Since our bodies cannot produce it, we have to get it through foods that we eat. If we don't get enough of it, our muscles won't contract, our blood won't circulate, our food won't digest.

In fact, our hearts will stop beating. There's a lot of debate about how much of it you should have. The older you get, the more aware you are of it. In fact, you start reading food labels because everything you buy in the grocery store today is required to tell you how much it contains of this chemical.

What is it? Well, in chemistry terminology, I had to look this up. By the way, I've had people ask me why I never give science illustrations. Well, you're going to be thrilled because I'm about to read you a chemistry analysis of this stable compound. Here it is. Get ready to write it down.

Here it comes, those of you that complain. Here you go. A chemical compound consisting of an ionic assembly of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions. This compound is composed of positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chloride ions. That was breathtaking, wasn't it?

That was thrilling. Well, if you haven't guessed it by now, we're talking about salt. Supposedly, you should get around 500 mg a day.

You should need more than 2,400 mg of it a day, which means the two bags of popcorn I like, I'm good for the month when I'm done. It's interesting, the value of salt has increased over the centuries as science and medicine has made wonderful discoveries. Today, we know that having the right level of salt helps in nerve conduction, the absorption of potassium and other nutrients. It balances electrolytes in our bodies.

In fact, it regulates the water level in every cell invisible to the human eye. When Jesus declared in Luke's Gospel, chapter 14 and verse 34, which is our text for the day, salt is good. I'm really glad he said that, by the way.

Salt is good. He evidently didn't want his disciples living a salt-free life. What does he mean? He would know. He created it. He would know why it's good. He would know why it would make such a powerful analogy to the life of a disciple. He would know all the reasons we need it.

He certainly knew more than his world knew during his time and we still don't know everything about it by any stretch of the imagination. What we do know is that from ancient days, salt was understood to be more than seasoning. It was used as a cleansing agent.

It is considered the oldest form of an antibiotic. Even today, we use the expression to rub salt in a wound. That phrase comes from the fact that salt mixed with water can disinfect wounds.

It might sting, but it cleanses. Today, somebody might be told to take a salt bath or soak their feet in salt water. It was viewed so highly in preventing disease that the ancient world rubbed newborn babies with salt that had been ground to a fine powder, almost like baby powder today. In my study for this analogy, I learned that humans aren't the only ones who need salt. Farm animals do as well.

They lose weight if they don't get enough of it and they're craving for it. If they don't get it, they'll eat dirt, rocks, wood, trying to get salt. They'll lick the sweat off each other to get a little salt. You go back in history and even in ancient times, empires were built by this demand for salt. Civilizations in Africa, China, in Europe, India, the Middle East were built around salt deposits. Trade ships sailed the Mediterranean Sea during the days of Christ.

Camel caravans marched across the deserts of Africa in search of it. For centuries, the value of salt was twice the value of gold. In fact, it was used for money. Marco Polo recorded in his travels in the 13th century that he watched Tibetans using little salt cakes as money.

It was good as gold. As recently as 1785, one political leader in England wrote, and I quote, 10,000 people are arrested every year for smuggling and selling salt. That's because it was not taxed. This black market grew and they came down on it in the late 1700s so hard, putting salt cartels, we think of drug cartels, or salt cartels out of business. Because they did, hogs and cattle began to die in Britain for lack of salt because farmers couldn't afford the tax. Gandhi in India became famous early on for what? For demanding that an Indian ought to be allowed to harvest his own salt. He considered it what he called quote, a basic human right. Even John Wesley began preaching sermons against the salt tax.

And eventually the English parliament relented. As you can imagine, over the course of time, superstitions also grew up around salt. You go back as far as Plato, even Homer earlier, salt was considered to be endowed with this mystical spiritual power. And so out of that, of course, came mystical superstitions. I learned that on a wedding day, I don't know if they still do it, but on a wedding day, a Swiss groom will put bread in one pocket and salt in another symbolizing a prophecy of prosperity.

A German bride on her wedding day would put salt in her shoe, which would mean to me, she's going to walk down the aisle rather uncomfortably. Maybe that was prophetic too, who knows. One video I found online watched now by several million people. A woman is explaining how to place four salt crystals in your wallet and what to say when you do it to guarantee prosperity.

Hundreds of thousands of likes on that video. Of course there are negative superstitions. Spilling salt was considered an omen, a bad omen of unfortunate things to come. Leonardo da Vinci painted this concept into his famous Last Supper, where Jesus is eating with his disciples. If you take a close look, and I have, you can see that one of the disciples has knocked over the container of salt on the table with his elbow. And that disciple, of course, is Judas. All that bad stuff happened because he spilled the salt. Well, to this day, we use the expression of someone being worth his salt.

And that comes closer to the analogy that Jesus is going to make. For during the days of Christ, government employees were often paid with salt, which they then could sell at a profit. Sort of like today being paid with shares of stock from some corporation. Roman soldiers were often paid in salt. They were paid, the Latin word was solarium, from salt, which gives us our word salary.

So to be worth your salt means your worth, your salary. We know from Old Testament scripture that salt represented continuity because of the stable compound, God knew it was. It represented commitment. It represented a lifelong loyalty and friendship with God. God required salt to be added to the sacrifices of the Old Testament to represent this loyalty and friendship with God. When Lot and his family were running to escape the judgment of God on Sodom and Gomorrah, we're told in Genesis 19, verse 26, that Lot's wife looked back, which by the way, didn't mean she glanced back over her shoulder to see what was happening.

It meant that she longed to be there. Her loyalty was down there in that valley and God turned her into a pillar of what? Salt, perhaps to display the irony of her entire disloyalty to God. Now as the Lord continues toward Jerusalem just a few months from his crucifixion, he continues to describe how faithful disciples should live and he uses salt as an illustration. He says here in verse 34, simply enough, salt is good. Now if you combine the account of Matthew, the fuller account says you are the salt of the earth. Salt is good.

In fact, the more you know about salt, the broader and more challenging the application and it just sort of came to life for me as I studied its value. As salt, we are to demonstrate our loyalty to God. We demonstrate that our friendship with God is of greater value than our friendship with anyone else. We cleanse the wounds, so to speak, in other people's lives as we deliver to them the gospel. We're the currency of God. He's using us in the world as we spread this priceless treasure of salvation.

We offer on behalf of Christ this divine antidote of forgiveness that heals people who are dying from terminal sin. As faithful disciples, we become worth our salt as we advance the kingdom of Christ by faithful living. So Jesus delivers really a volume, doesn't he, in this little phrase, you are the salt of the earth. Salt is good. By the way, I want you to notice Jesus does not say you will become salt. You know, after a few years of growing in Christ, you will become salt. No, he says you are salt. You are. This isn't something you become over time. This is something you are right now.

Now, following this description, Jesus asks this question. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? Sodium chloride is a stable compound.

Salt doesn't become unsalty unless it gets mixed with or contaminated by impurities. This would be common in the ancient world. This becomes another analogy, doesn't it? It's easy to get ahead of me, right?

You can see this. We can lose our saltiness, our effectiveness by allowing impurities into our lives that dilute or corrupt our testimony. In fact, it's interesting in this phrase. In the original construction, Jesus speaks with this idea of potential, this expectancy. If salt has lost its taste, and it can, Jesus is warning us that this can happen then in the lives of his disciples. He's not talking about losing your salvation. He's talking about losing your saltiness, your flavoring, your credibility, your purity, your distinctive disposition, that seasoning power he wants you to bring to your world. You can dilute that.

Impurities can turn your life into bland ineffectiveness. Now with that, Jesus brings this analogy down to this most basic application here. And his world, of course, wouldn't know about the cellular value of salt, that it balances electrolytes, this invisible chemical value that takes place in your bloodstream as it absorbs nutrients.

They wouldn't know that in this day. But everyone in this world would understand this fundamental value, and that's the point he makes, and that is that it seasons everything you taste. Jesus moves from the question to the repercussion. Verse 35, if it loses its saltiness, it is of no use, either for the soil or for the manure pile. It's thrown away or thrown out.

Matthew's gospel says it this way. It is thrown out and trampled under the feet or under people's feet. Now in the Lord's day, rock salt was salt that had been made impure by other elements or salt that hadn't been purified completely. It would be used on pathways where it would be packed down by the feet of travelers. Salt then created their paths. If you're from the north, especially, you know all about this rock salt. We call it halite. It's spread on the roads to melt the snow and ice. It's not purified completely.

It's a little darker because it hasn't been processed as thoroughly. If you've moved down here from the north recently, you've noticed that we don't have all those salt trucks. With a little ice, we close down the whole county.

In fact, the weather report of the possibility of ice closes down the county. You might have noticed what the city does around here is put sand out on overpasses and streets. That doesn't help anything.

All it does is make that crunchy sound that you get to listen to as you slide off the road. But it's still worth all the inconvenience. It's still so much better for you to have moved down here from the north. Amen? Some of you want to go back? Your reaction reminds me of an email I got just two days ago.

I wondered, could I ever use this? And then realized, yes, today. There was a bumper sticker on a parked car that read, I miss Chicago.

I miss Chicago. So someone broke the car window, stole the radio, shot out all four tires, and left a note that read, I hope this helps. We're going to edit this out, okay? This isn't going to be the easiest way to live. You deliver the truth to your world, and to some it might be like a warm salt bath. To others, it will be like rubbing salt in a wound.

It'll sting, but if accepted, it will heal. So we declare sinful, but the world declares acceptable. Actually that's why Jesus never told his disciples they were sugar.

Although we could all be sweeter, he said we were salt. A faithful disciple acts as a preservative then, as salt does, slowing down the effects of corruption and decay. William Barkley wrote 50 years ago that the Christian serves as the conscience of his fellow man by his presence. The church serves as the conscience to the world around her.

See, we remind a corrupting world of its decay and its stings, which brings hatred or rejection. We declare to our world what the Bible says. The Bible considers male and female gender to be fixed by virtue of his creation, denying that brings devastating effects. The Bible considers homosexuality a choice. Living it will bring degenerating effects. The Bible considers adultery a violation of sacred vows.

It brings disastrous effects. We could go on and on about what the Bible says about embezzlement and drunkenness and pornography and anger and gossip and lying. The Bible doesn't pull any punches and the world knows that. That's why the world is always intrigued by some pastor who supposedly represents the Bible but won't tell the truth. They know better. They know the truth stings and it isn't just a sting, it is to heal. William Barkley goes on to write on this text, the disciple will be such that in his presence no doubtful language will be used, no questionable stories told, no dishonorable actions suggested. He becomes a disinfecting agent in the circle in which he moves, which is why when you show up at the water cooler the conversation stops. Or in the classroom you're a purifying influence and you prick the consciences of unbelievers simply at times by being present because they know who you are.

I'll never forget one illustration. I probably shared many years ago this happening. If you golf, you know that if you go to the golf course by yourself they're probably going to put you in a group of two or three to make it a foursome. Several years ago I had chosen a time of day when I knew the golf course wouldn't be busy besides I wanted to play by myself.

I wasn't going to do any golf evangelism that day. I just wanted to think and be by myself and besides when you play like I do you don't want any witnesses. When you know it they put me with three guys to make it a foursome and we shook hands all around. These three were good friends. They worked together and the game began. As we worked our way down the course they very quickly began swapping dirty stories, vulgar jokes, laughing it up.

After every bad shot they would swear. I just sort of lagged behind which was easy by the way for me. Kept to myself. Finally around the eighth tee one of them looked over at me and said, hey we're sorry for leaving you out and I said, not a problem. And he said, no, no, no. He said, what do you do for a living?

I said, I'm a pastor. They nearly fainted. They started apologizing for their jokes and their stories and started treating me politely. One of the guys started calling me father. I didn't want to be his father, trust me. Trouble is they watched every move I made now.

The game changed. I had a bad shot. I couldn't mutter under my breath.

Scripture verses I'd memorized. I couldn't slam my club in the bag. I had a bad drive, there it goes, off into the, I just had to smile as it went into the wilderness to wander for 40 years. Nobody will ever see that one again. Frankly it was a lot more comfortable when I kept it myself. But now it was out in the open. Maybe that's the reason we don't talk about it as much.

It's a lot more comfortable to be left alone. Salt was never intended to stay in the salt shaker. It was intended to be spread around.

God never intended us to live salt free lives. But to live out who we are. It's not for hiding.

It's not for collecting. It's for sprinkling, for spreading, for seasoning, for convicting, for cleansing, for restraining, for purifying, for enhancing, for flavoring all of life. Jesus says, are you listening? There at the end of verse 35, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. In other words, let the meaning of this simple analogy sink in. Let it keep sounding in your ears.

Don't forget this truth. This is who you are and how you're to live. That was Stephen Davey and a message he called Refusing a Salt Free Life. This is the 16th and final message in a series called Ministering to the Multitudes. If you missed any of the messages in this series, you can go to wisdomonline.org to listen to each of them in their entirety. Call us for information at 866-48-bible or 866-482-4253. Next time Stephen will begin examining the very last verses in the book of Revelation. Join us next time here on Wisdom for the Heart.