Salt and Light

Read Matthew 5:13-16

We’ve been looking at the Beatitudes. We have found that they describe the citizen of the kingdom of heaven. Now Jesus goes on to tell us in detail what kind of person you will be if you follow him.

He uses two comparisons to describe the impact that a Christian will have on the world around him. Those two comparisons involve substances that were very precious in the ancient world - salt and light.

In verse 13, Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth.” Salt was a very valuable commodity in the ancient world, just as oil is a valuable commodity in our modern world. Salt was used for many purposes. We know from ancient records that Roman soldiers were actually paid in salt. That’s where we get our word “salary” from.

When Jesus said “You are the salt of the earth.”, he was telling his followers that they were going to have the same impact on the world around them in a spiritual way as salt had on everyday life in a physical way. So to understand this, we need to know what salt was used for.

1. Salt was used as a preservative. It was used to prevent decay. In an age before refrigerators and freezers, the only way to keep meat from spoiling was to salt it. That’s because salt is an antibacterial agent. If you put salt on a piece of raw meat, it retards the growth of the bacteria that are on that meat, and prevents it from rotting as quickly.

For this reason, salt became a symbol of purity in the ancient world. In the OT, the blood sacrifices and the grain sacrifices that the Israelites offered to the Lord were to be offered with salt - the symbol of purity. We know from ancient inscriptions that when the pagans went into their temples, they would offer a pinch of salt to their gods and goddesses. Salt was a symbol of purity.

Jesus was telling his disciples that just as salt was a purifier or a preservative, that is what they would be spiritually on the world around them. One of the functions of a Christian is to have a purifying influence on his environment.

Have you ever noticed that people act differently when a Christian is around? They clean up their language. They don’t tell certain off-color jokes or stories. This happens even though the Christian may not ever say anything specifically about it. It’s because a true follower of Jesus Christ is acting like salt. He has a cleansing, a purifying impact on the world around him. The world is a cleaner and better place when he is around.

You look at the positive social changes that have occurred in our world over the past 2,000 years and you’ll find that most of them have come from Christians. Slavery was abolished through the efforts of committed Christians like William Wilberforce in England. Education of the masses was promoted through men like Robert Raikes, the founder of the Sunday School. Nine of the ten Ivy League universities were founded by churches to serve as training schools for the clergy. You talk about advances in medicine and public health and hospitals. Social welfare programs like the Salvation Army and the YMCA. Civil rights programs. Work among immigrants and the underprivileged. All done by Christians who were committed enough to Jesus Christ to serve as salt in their world.

Now for salt to have an impact as a preservative, it must come in contact with that which it is supposed to preserve. When you want to preserve meat, you have to put the salt onto the meat. You can’t preserve meat by placing a salt shaker full of salt beside it. You have to get the salt out of the salt shaker and onto the meat for it to do its work. You have to spread the salt around so that the individual grains can come in contact with the meat. Too much salt in one place is deadly. Look at the Dead Sea. Nothing grows there because its too salty.

I mention this because of the tendency we have as Christians to withdraw ourselves from the world. We like to gather together in our churches and have a great time fellowshiping together. We almost convince ourselves that the most Christian thing that we do all week is to come to church on Sunday.

But that’s wrong. For a true Christian, church is just a preamble to the rest of the week. Church is where we come to get our marching orders for the rest of the week. Church is to the Christian as a huddle is to a football team.

I was reading this week where NFL football and college football rank number one and two as the most popular spectator sports in America. Why do Americans flock to see football games? Why is it that when the Super Bowl telecast is on, the streets of America are empty as millions upon millions of households are tuned in? Do you think that they are watching that football game in order to see the teams huddle? No, of course not. They’re watching to see what those teams are going to do after they break huddle and line up over the ball. They’re interested in seeing what difference what they talked about in the huddle is going to make on the way they play the game.

Now it’s important for us to remember this. Because often when we get together as Christians, we talk as if the huddle is the most important thing we do. We even compare huddles. “How many people were in your huddle last week.” “Well, you should have been in my huddle last Sunday. Boy, my quarterback sure is a wonderful play caller.”

Listen, the whole purpose of your being in church today is so that you can break huddle, line up over the ball on Monday morning, and score a touchdown for Jesus this week.

You’ve got to get the salt out of the salt shaker if its going to do any good.

2. Salt creates thirst. You walk into any bar in America and what do you see? Right there on the bar, you’ll see a bowl of salted peanuts, or pretzels, or some kind of snack with salt in it. And it’s free. You can go into that bar and eat as much of that stuff as you want and not have to pay for it. Why? Is it because the bartender cares so much about you? No. It’s because he knows that if you eat that stuff, the salt is going to make you thirsty. And then you’ll start ordering drinks. The more salt you eat, the more drinks you’ll want.

This is another way that Christians are like salt. Christians should make non-Christians spiritually thirsty. As we follow Jesus Christ, our lives are going to attract others to Jesus Christ. They’re going to notice the way we live and say things like, “How come you’re happy all the time?” “Why do you seem to have such peace, even though you’ve got problems?” Our lives are making them spiritually thirsty, because we’re like salt.

3. Salt enhances flavor. I was talking to someone who was on a low sodium diet. No salt allowed. This person said “Everything is so bland and boring because I’m not allowed to put salt on my food.”

Salt brings out the flavor in things. And that’s what being a Christian should do for your life. Being a Christian brings out the flavor in life. Christians should be having the most fun of anyone on earth. Jesus said “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.”

But there are many Christians who look like death warmed over. Never smile. Crabby. Critical. Down in the mouth all the time. What a turn-off!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great Supreme Court Justice once said, “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”

A woman was asked if she would like to become a Christian. “Oh no.” she replied, “I’m sad enough as it is.”

But Christians who are truly following the Lord Jesus Christ are not glum; they’re happy and at peace. They’re having a good time with living, and their lives are like salt to make other people want to have a drink of the living water, too.

So salt is a preservative. Salt creates thirst. And salt brings out the flavor.

Now Jesus goes on to give a warning about salt:

But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

How can salt lose it’s saltiness? It can’t stop being salt can it? No. But if you mix enough other material in with the salt, you can make the salt lose it’s saltiness. In fact, this is what happened in the ancient world.

The houses in Palestine usually had flat roofs. Now the people used these roofs for many things. The children would go up and play on the roof, because they had no backyards. Families would gather up on the roof in the cool of the evening and visit with friends. The roof became a social place, a gathering place.

The people would waterproof their roofs by using a waterproof paste that was made up of a mixture of gypsum and salt. They would daub this paste all over the surface of their roof and it would seal the roof. Now the point is that when you mixed salt with gypsum, you could no longer use it as salt. All it was good for was to be put up on the roof where people would walk on it. Salt, if you mixed with any other substance, becomes less and less effective as salt until it has totally lost its saltiness. It loses its potency when it is adulterated with another material.

This is what happens to a Christian when he gets mixed up with the world. We need to be in contact with the world in order to be a preservative and all those other things. But we have to remain different from the world if we’re going to do our work as salt. You see salt depends on being different in order to accomplish its purpose. If you start to adulterate the salt by adding other things to it, it’s no longer going to be salty; it’s no longer going to be effective. Christians who become worldly very soon lose their impact as Christians.

And they also lose the respect the world has for them as Christians. The world will not ignore a true Christian who is following Jesus Christ. But the world just laughs at a person who calls himself a Christian and lives no differently from anyone else. In a sense, the world tramples him underfoot. The world ignores a worldly Christian the same way the people in Palestine ignored the salt on the surface of the roof they were walking on.

Just before he went to the cross, Jesus prayed a prayer for his disciples. It is found in John 17. Listen to what he said as he spoke to his heavenly father…

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.

Notice that Jesus says that his followers are in the world, but not of the world. He sent us into the world, not to become worldly, but to be salty. That’s the only way we’re going to bring people to Jesus.

Earl Palmer tells the story of a young pre-med student at the University of California at Berkeley who became a Christian after a long journey through doubts and questions. Palmer says “I asked him what were some of the key factors that helped to tip the scales in favor of Jesus Christ for him in that spiritual journey. He told me of a bout with the flu that had hit him very hard during the previous school term, forcing him to miss ten days of school. During that critical absence from his organic chemistry class a classmate who happened to be a Christian carefully collected all the assignments and work for him in the chemistry class and then took the time away from his own studies to help him catch up to the rest of the class.

The student said to me “You know that this just isn’t done and I myself probably wouldn’t have done it, but he gave that help to me without any fanfare or complaints. I wanted to know what made him act the way he did. I found myself asking him if I could go to church with him.”

That’s what it means to be a salty Christian. A simple act of love and concern. A missed homework assignment shared. A meal prepared for a sick neighbor. An errand run for a shut-in. A smile, a touch, a hand on the shoulder of a person in need.

You are the salt of the earth.