You are the Salt of the Earth

Earl Palmer is the pastor of an evangelical Presbyterian church that is located in Berkeley, California. Being in Berkeley, right next to the University of California, means that Palmer has a lot of college students in his congregation. He tells the story of one of them, a young pre-med student who became a Christian after a long journey through doubts and questions.

Palmer asked him what were some of the key factors that helped him to put his trust in Jesus Christ. The young man related this story:

During the previous school term, he had come down with a terrible case of the flu. He was so sick that he had to miss ten days of school. In the highly competitive academic environment of U. Cal Berkeley, a long absence like that could have been devastating.

But during his illness, another student in his organic chemistry class, who happened to be a Christian, carefully collected all of his assignments. He took the work to the sick student every day, and took time away from his own studies to help him catch up to the rest of the class.

The pre-med student said to Palmer, “You know at Berkeley this sort of thing just isn’t done. I myself probably wouldn’t have done it for someone else. But that Christian friend helped me without any fanfare or complaint. 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 story is the essence of what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5:13, where he says “You are the salt of the earth.” He’s talking about the influence that we will have as “Beatitude people”; the impact our lives will make on others. And he describes that impact in terms of salt.

Salt was a very precious substance in the ancient world. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder said “There’s nothing more useful than sun and salt.”

Salt was used in a wide variety of ways. It was used in worship. In the OT, we read that the blood sacrifices and the grain sacrifices of Israel were to be offered with salt, because salt was a symbol of purity. The pagans would go into their temples and offer a pinch of salt to their gods and goddesses.

Salt was also thought to be a symbol of friendship. It was said that if you ate salt with someone, you were his good friend. The Bible talks about a “covenant of salt” between God and the Levites in Numbers 18, and the descendants of David in 2 Chronicles 13.

The tradition of salt as a symbol of friendship was continued right up into the Middle Ages. If you went to a feast at the castle of a great nobleman, your social standing with the lord of the castle was determined by where you sat in relation to the salt. If you sat “above the salt”, it meant that you were sitting nearer to the head of the table, and thus were a closer friend of the host of the banquet.

Salt was also valued, in the days before refrigeration, for its preservative properties. It prevented decay. To this very day, certain Bedouin Arab tribes in the MIddle East still rub a newborn baby with salt in the hopes that it will help the child to have a long life. That custom is very ancient; the Bible mentions it in Ezekiel 16:4.

Farmers used to spread a little bit of salt on their fields to increase their productivity. Bakers used salt in the process of making bread. They would put blocks of salt in the bottom of their ovens to hold the heat and give an nice even temperature for baking.

Salt was so valuable that Roman soldiers received their monthly pay so that they could buy salt. They were given “salt money”—a “salarium”— from which we get our word “salary”. If a workman does a particularly good job, we still say that he’s “worth his salt”. Give him his salt money!

So when Jesus talked about salt, he was talking about a substance that was very familiar to the people of his day, and very valuable to them. What spiritual insights can we gain from Jesus’ words “You are the salt of the earth”?

1. Salt is a preservative.

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 it prevents it from rotting so quickly. It has an antiseptic effect.

Jesus is telling us that just as salt arrests decay, Christians arrest spiritual decay in a world that is under the corrupting influence of sin.

Not too long ago, I heard a very interesting true story about a man who was about to go away on a vacation with his family. Just before they left, they went grocery shopping so that there would be food in the house when they returned. Then they went away for a week.

When they returned, and opened the front door of the house, they were met with the most overpowering stench imaginable. They stumbled into the house, and with handkerchiefs over their noses to keep from gagging, they stumbled around trying to find out where the foul odor was coming from.

Finally, they found it. It was coming from a piece of meat that they somehow had forgotten to put into the refrigerator after they had gone grocery shopping the week before. The meat had gone rancid in the summer heat. It was curling up and turning green, and emitting this overpowering stench. There were little white maggots crawling around on it.

What did the man do? Did he blame the meat for going bad? No. He blamed himself for not taking the proper steps to insure that that meat would be preserved. He blamed himself for forgetting to put it into the refrigerator.

We live in a world that is going downhill morally and spiritually. For example, back in the 1950’s a number of public school teachers were asked what were the most difficult discipline problems they faced. The teachers replied 1. talking in class; 2. running in the halls; 3. chewing gum; 4. smoking in the washrooms.

You ask the same question of teachers today and they will list things like drugs abuse, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and students bringing semi-automatic weapons to school. Our world and our society is decaying. It’s going downhill.

And a lot of Christians look at that and blame the world for it. But the world is only doing what the world will do when there is no salt present. What we ought to be doing is blaming ourselves.

For salt to have an impact as a preservative, it has to be 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 you’ve got all that salt in one place.

As Christians we have a tendency to want to withdraw ourselves from the world. We like to gather together in our churches and have a great time fellowshiping together. We fool ourselves into thinking 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 where we come to get our marching orders for the rest of the week. Church is to a Christian as a huddle is to a football team.

A recent USA Today survey showed that NFL football and college football rank number one and two as the most popular spectator sports in America. Why do you suppose so many Americans flock to see a football game?

Why is it that when the Super Bowl telecast is on, the streets of America are empty as millions upon millions of households are glued to their TV sets? Do you think that they are watching that football game in order to see the teams huddle? 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.

Now it’s important for us to remember this. Because often when we get together as Christians, we talk as though 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 called some wonderful plays.”

Listen, the whole purpose of our being in church today is so that we can break huddle, line up over the ball tomorrow morning, and score touchdowns for Jesus this week.

You’ve got to get the salt out of the salt shaker if it’s going to do any good. That’s one of the reasons why Jesus said “You are the salt of the earth.”

2. Salt creates thirst.

Walk into any bar in America and what will you see sitting on the bar? You’ll see a bowl of salted peanuts, or pretzels, or some other kind of snack that has salt in it.

And that stuff is free. You can go into a bar and eat as much of that stuff as you want and they won’t throw you out. Why? Because the bartender cares so much about you?

No. It’s because he knows that if you eat enough of that stuff, the salt is going to make you thirsty. And then you’re going to start ordering drinks. The more salt you eat, the more you’ll want a drink.

Christians are supposed to make non-Christians spiritually thirsty. As we follow Jesus Christ, our lives are supposed to attract others to Jesus Christ. They’re going to notice the way we live.

They’re going to start wondering “How come she seems to have such a peace and contentment in life, even though she’s got problems?” “How come their marriage is together when ours is falling apart?”

If we live as Jesus wanted us to live, our lives are going to make people spiritually thirsty. And it’s going to happen without you hardly even trying, because we’re salt.

Jesus met a woman at a well in John 4. At first, she didn’t want to give him the time of day. But the questions he asked, and the interest he showed in her, and the tone of his voice, and the smile on his face made her spiritually thirsty.

The salt in us is going to be what brings people to the Living Water. That’s another reason why Jesus said “You are the salt of the earth.”

3. Salt enhances flavor.

Have you ever tasted baby food? Next time you’re in the grocery store, treat yourself to a bottle of Gerber’s strained peas. Man, that stuff looks horrible, and it tastes even worse! It’s so bland. It’s got no salt in it.

Salt brings out the flavor in food. And that’s what being a follower of Jesus should do for your life; it should bring 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.” That word means “bubbling over”.

But so many Christians look more like death warmed over. They never smile. They’re crabby. Critical. Down in the mouth all the time. They look like they’ve been baptized in lemon juice.

A lady was once asked if she would like to become a Christian. She said, “Oh no! I’m sad enough as it is.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, the 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.”

What do people think of you? Christians who are truly following the Lord Jesus Christ are not glum; they’re joyful, they’re fun to be around. They’re full of zest and enthusiasm for life. They’re having a good time and they are like salt that brings out the flavor.

Salt is a preservative. Salt creates thirst. Salt brings out the flavor.

But Jesus gave a warning about salt. He said:

“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? After all, sodium chloride is a stable compound. It can’t stop being salt.

But if you mix enough other material in with the salt, you can make the salt lose it’s saltiness. And that is exactly what Jesus meant, because that is exactly what people often did with salt in the ancient world.

The houses in Palestine had flat roofs. Now the people used those roofs for many purposes. The children would go up and play on the roof, because they had no backyards. We read in Acts about Peter being up on the roof praying.

At the end of the day, families would often gather up on the roof and visit with friends in the cool of the evening. The roof was a social place, a gathering place.

Now the people in those days would waterproof their roof by using a paste made up of a mixture of gypsum and salt. They would spread this paste all over the surface of the roof and seal it—make it waterproof.

Now here’s the point Jesus is making. When you mix salt with gypsum (or any other substance) you can’t use it as salt anymore. All it is good for is to be walked on. Salt loses its saltiness when you adulterate it with another material.

This is what happens to a Christian who’s not following Jesus wholeheartedly. The salt begins to lose its spiritual saltiness because it’s getting mixed up with other things.

Some Christians want Jesus to be in a certain part of their lives, but they want to fill up the rest of their lives with other things, other values, other priorities, other interests. Those Christians start to lose their spiritual saltiness.

That phrase that Jesus used—“loses it’s saltiness”—is actually a single word in Greek. It’s a word that is used in Romans 1:22 and 1 Cor. 1:20 to describe people who had become fools. A Christian who has lost his saltiness is the equivalent of a person who has become a fool. And the world has no respect for that sort of Christian.

Listen well. The world cannot ignore you if you follow Jesus Christ wholeheartedly. They may love you, or they may hate you, but they can’t ignore you.

But if you call yourself a Christian and live no differently from anyone else they’ll just laugh at you. They’ll trample you underfoot, so to speak They’ll ignore you the same way the people in Palestine ignored the salt that they walked on up on the roof.

People need us to be salty Christians. In our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our schools, in our homes. G. Campbell Morgan said “The character of our influence is the influence of our character.”

What kind of influence are you having? The people around you need you to be salt because those people need the Lord.

If you sense that God has been speaking to you this morning about this matter of being a salty Christian, and if you feel a need to tell Jesus Christ that you want to follow Him wholeheartedly from now on, I’m going to ask you to do something scary. I’m going to ask you to stand up.

I’m not trying to manipulate anybody. God speaks in different ways at different times to different people. If God hasn’t spoken to you this morning, I don’t want you to stand up. I don’t want you to be a phoney. Don’t stand up just because somebody else did. Don’t stand up because you’re afraid of what other people are thinking. This is between you and God.

But if you want to make yourself available for God to use you as salt in your world, and you want a way to tell Him that this morning, then just stand up. Right now, where you are. Just stand up and let Him know how you feel. And then I’ll pray for you.