Salt of the Earth

Today, I would like to speak with you about a rather common chemical compound. It's everywhere in society. We have it in our homes. It has been said that no basic commodity is put to as many uses as this particular one, but it is used by meat packers, chemical companies, food processors, soap manufacturers, road construction companies, state highway departments, glass makers, metal refineries. It is used in the softening of water, and ranchers provide it for their livestock. It is what? Salt. I have my prop here today. Sodium chlorine. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave what Mr. Conner commonly called the Beatitudes. Right after that, he said, you are the salt of the earth. And the problem we have is we take it for granted. We have refined salt where all the other minerals are taken out of it. Unless, like us, you buy sea salt where you have all these other essential and helpful minerals involved. But refined salt is everywhere. And in fact, in this society, we have been told by the medical profession that we take too much, so get the sodium out of your diet. And when people do that, then they suffer because they don't have enough salt. Because the Bible says salt is good. And I think God knows what he's talking about. But, you know, we humans go to extremes. But Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth. And that statement has only limited impact on us today because it's a different day and age. So I want to look at the topic of salt. In the ancient time, you had salt roots that covered all of North Africa and the Mediterranean world because some few select areas had access to salt. Many, many areas did not have it. And frankly, you have to have it if you're going to continue to live. So you had these salt roots that crisscrossed so much of the known world.

People of Christ's days, they were what we could call connoisseurs of salt. For us, if we take good old Morton salt there, salt is salt is salt. It, you know, blah, it's always the same. And yet, when it is naturally mined or gathered, for instance, the southern end of the Dead Sea for ages has been an area where you just have the salt what is it? I'm looking for the wrong word here. Not calcifying, but any crystallizing. Sorry, crystallizing. Right there along the edge and the Dead Sea has something like 26 percent mineral content. I think I'm, I believe I read salt is saturated at 14 percent. So you've got all these other minerals and it just crystallizes there and so they can just go gather it. Plus, there's this giant cliff that is salt. I should have brought that as a prop, too. I've got one I kicked free from that back in 1973 and I have, well, it's been a long time, but I used to lick it from time to time and sure enough it's still salt. So salt for us is everywhere. For them, it was so valuable, it was so rare that in some, among some peoples, it was considered as being more valuable than gold. It varied greatly in its pungency, the bite that it had. It varied in its taste. So when Jesus said to his disciples, you're the salt of the earth, it meant a lot to them that we can easily miss because, again, we're in a different day and age. What I want to cover today in the sermon is seven functions of salt. The first six are positive uses of salt.

The last one, the seventh one, is a warning. But let's focus on the positive. So six positive, one negative. Or six positive usages and one caution. Number one, salt maintains life. Now let me plug this book here first of all. This is Salt for Society by Philip Keller.

You might be familiar with Philip Keller as an author. He's written as a lad. He grew up in Kenya, a missionary family. They herded sheep. He has written. One book is A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. Very good material there. He has one on the fruits of the Spirit. He has one on a good shepherd and his sheep there from John 10. So he has a number of works, and I find all of them to be very helpful. Now, salt maintains life. In other words, we have to have it. It is a key ingredient for life. It is essential for body metabolism. It is instrumental in the osmosis between cells, the movement of fluids and nutrients between cell walls. It is involved with the retention of fluids in the body. Now, when you have peoples who work in environments where you have high heat and high humidity combined, especially, then what happens? Well, like when I worked Wednesday up at camp, everything I had on after a few hours is totally drenched, and I was pounding the water, pumping the water into me, but it kept going on out. With that perspiration, we lose a lot of salt and electrolytes and other essential nutrients and all that we need to replenish. Well, with someone who is, say, an athlete, someone who works in an extremely hot humid area, someone who works down in a mine, they will often issue extra salt tablets because it's needed. I remember as a kid in the high school locker room, here was this little container on the wall, and you could turn it and have a salt tablet drop down in your hand. The summer we spent in Israel, very hot, not quite as humid, but very hot, and the nurse who was there on staff from Ambassador College at Bricket Wood, she kept going around pumping. Her gospel that summer was, you need salt. Take salt. She was always pumping the salt, and we needed that. Now, in the times of Christ, they did not have some of the things that you and I take for granted. I will admit, I'm spoiled. I like this air conditioning. I like a fan.

My school, in growing up, we never had air conditioning unless you got in trouble and went to the office, and I was there quite often. No, not very often. We had an old swamp cooler, an evaporative cooler at the farm, and then it seemed like the climate was changing there, and they got to where they just didn't work well and pumping so much humidity into the house. You couldn't get the drawers to pull out of the dresser and things like that, and it was only probably about time I was leaving that Dad got a window unit air conditioner, and it was in the living room, and that was it for the house. But they didn't have that option at all. They didn't have that, period. And we take it for granted. They lived and worked. They were exposed to heat and sunlight and they had to have salt in order to survive. Now, if we had a glass of water, and there's no need to do that, you know what'll happen, and I would take this and turn it and pour some in, and especially if I'd kind of stir it up a little. It's not that just one area of that water is salty and the rest of it's still just water. It penetrates, it permeates, it goes to every H2O molecule and does its work. So, Jesus said, you're the salt of the earth. And in part, he's saying you are to maintain the life of the world around you. Wherever you go, you are to permeate, you are to penetrate, you are to do your work. Let's go to Matthew chapter 10.

Matthew 10 is a story where Jesus sent the 12 disciples out.

Matthew 10, we will begin in verse 5. The chapter begins where he called them and he told them he was going to give them power over unclean spirits and power to heal diseases.

Lists the names and in verse 5, these 12, Jesus sent out and commanded them, saying, do not go into the way of the Gentiles and do not enter a city of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons freely. You have received freely give. It continues on. Let's just go on down to verse 16. Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. So he sent them out to permeate, to penetrate society. He sent them out literally to inject life into the world around them. A world in darkness, a world without life, kind of like the world you and I live in. We look at the example of Jesus Christ. It's interesting to stop, think, ponder what he did when he walked this earth. You have all kinds of people who will tell us about Christ and tell us things about him, and they'll speak great things in his name. But if we just look and see what did Jesus do when he walked the earth, we have one story after another where he would go and speak to this American woman at the well, something an average Jew of that day would never do. He would go and here would be someone with an issue of blood, and he'd heal. Here would be someone with buchus, bunches of demons, and he'd cast them out.

Wherever he went, he left in his wake good. He had thousands of people at times who followed him, and he fed them. And that's pretty much a summary of the life of Christ. He preached the gospel, he trained the disciples, he healed the sick, he comforted those who mourned. He gave strength and purpose to a society that had none. He asks nothing less of us to go and have an impact on the world around us. We are to contribute to the health and the vigor of a dying world. We are to give of our lives for the common good of those around us. Who knows how many times we might be in a position, whether it's a funeral, whether it's just stopping at a gas station and going in. Maybe the last person was just rotten and awful to them, and we can go with a smile and leave something behind good in our wake. Maybe we can say something to somebody, and as you drive through to pick up some laundry or dry cleaning, say something that leaves a little bit of a life behind in the life of someone. Salt is interesting in that it is a compound. It is made up of sodium, and it is made up of chlorine. Individually, each of those is toxic to our life. Together, together, they are essential for life. It seems that the carnal life, the carnal mind on its own, leaves behind destruction and devastation. But with some of us, God has given us His very mind, His very spirit. And the Spirit of God, combined with our life, can go and leave the same type of good behind us in our wake and be effective in preserving the life of the world. Number two, salt preserves. Salt preserves. Once upon a time, as a student at Ambassador College Big Sandy, of course, they had the farm, they had cattle. There was a meat processing plant. Once in a while, it would be a kill day. And a few times, I was out there working. And generally, of course, you had the men who were really proficient at the butchering and all. But one thing I remember doing quite a bit was they would cut loose the hide. And there was this separate outbuilding where you take a hide out there, lay it out, the hair down and the inside of the hide up. And then you had this big place where you just shovel, look like this rock salt, ice cream salt. Put about an inch layer, an inch inch and a half layer of salt all over it. Go get the next one and bring it. Layer the salt on it. And then another one, you might have two dozen stacked up with layers of salt between them and above them. That preserved those until every so often from the tannery, they'd come out and they'd pick up all of those and take them off to be further processed. But salt preserves. We take for granted the modern methods of preservation of food. We take things like freezing for granted. Probably at most of our homes we have a refrigerator with a freezer compartment. We probably have a separate freezer. Maybe we have freezers, plural, but we have refrigerators. We have means of where we can can foods. We can sometimes we have a food dryer. You can you can slice apples or fruit and put them through the dryer and preserve them that way. There is what is called freeze drying. So none of these were available in the first century. These 20th century miracles that came along the last century weren't even known a number of decades back. Some of you remember the family had an ice box and what a wonderful thing that was have an ice box and some some sawdust. And once in a while getting this block of ice and that was it. Well, salt preserves.

You know in ancient times when animals were slaughtered, all they had was meat. It was salt for that meat. They salted it down. When two of our kids and their families recently were in Nashville, we went and spent a little time with them. One day we went out to the Nashville Zoo. It's out at the old Grassmere Plantation and walked over and looked in the house and went around back. They have a smoke room. So you know a lot of meats were smoked, but a lot of it was salted. We've all heard of salt pork, heavily salted. If you go back 500 years ago, you had the the age of discovery when some of the European countries were sending out ships of exploration. They might be on the ocean for weeks on end. And in order to preserve life, they would take meats, take barrels of brine, and they would put the meats down into the brine. And it preserved the meat. So that three weeks or four weeks into the trip, they had something I could pull out and feed to the men and keep them alive. But large quantities of salt were used to preserve food. Salt was essential to stave off hunger and starvation. Salt was essential for survival. So Jesus said, you're the salt of the earth. You're to go and be the element that helped preserve society from total death and destruction.

Regardless of how grand the design, human plans seem to always turn downward. They run downward. Just as we would pour water out on open ground, it's going to flow down to the lowest level. And human nature tends to keep going down unless it is stopped, moderated, preserved by the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit within us makes us agents to preserve so that we do not go into complete destruction. We do this a number of ways. We are professional students of the Holy Scriptures.

We have to continue to keep our nose in the book. As Paul told Timothy, 2 Timothy 2 verse 15, 2 Timothy 2 verse 15, he told him to study to show yourself approved in the God. And then he spoke of being a workman that rightly divides the word of truth. And the next chapter, 2 Timothy 3 16, speaks about all scripture is by inspiration of God. And that Greek word speaks of God breathing life into us. And so we are asked to do that, to study, and then to live and to teach the word of God.

The Bible must be the true and clear standard for the way we live our life. And hopefully then, as we have impact on those around us, they see and might be inspired to go and do likewise, to follow the example that they find from our life. We work at overcoming.

We are inside. We work from within society. We're not called out of the world. We are like Jesus sent disciples out. We too are sent out. We are to engage the people around us. We live with people who have problems. Well, we have problems too. And hopefully again, we can be in positions where, like salt, we can quietly penetrate, permeate, and leave behind good and be in a positive example.

We should never underestimate the power of a positive example as far as the preservation of those around us. Number three, salt seasons. Again, think back to the time of Christ. Think back 2,000 years ago, and in fact, we would have to think back that many decades back. Our diet today has changed dramatically. We can go in the local Publix or Kroger or whatever grocery store you prefer, Sam's or Costco, Walmart, and you can buy grapes all year long.

Now, what's the season of grapes? Well, late summer, August, September. But you can go get grapes, and if you look at it, it may say it came from Chile. I looked at a bag of oranges once, and they said they were from Israel. You can get citrus all year long. You can get bananas all year long because of the modern shipping around the world. But once upon a time, and not that many decades back, and certainly in Christ's time, they didn't have that.

They had basic foodstuffs that they would put up, basic grains that they would harvest and preserve through our store for use throughout the year. And then they had other foods that were seasonal. You know, there are times when you have fruit coming off. There are times when you have your garden produce, and then after a while, it's gone. And without the modern techniques like freezing or canning, when it's eaten up, that's it until the next year.

So it was a rather bland, if not drab, diet that they had. And probably a lot of the years, there'd be a primary grain, whether it's wheat. I mean, look at the world around us today. Whether it's wheat or rice, there probably is a tremendous percentage of humanity who have a diet based around either wheat or corn or rice. And in some places, like down in South Asia, and in some of your more tropical areas, you've got diets long on rice and fish. Rice and fish.

Well, that's all fine and good for a while. But then it gets old. We get tired of that. There are times when I've taken a serving of green beans, and we don't generally don't add much salt. But once in a while, I'll get some green beans and I like green beans, but there's no salt.

And, you know, I just want it's rare, but I will reach for the salt shaker and just put a little on. And it's amazing how much more enjoyable it is with just a little bit of salt. Now, again, in this society, we've overused it. You go buy processed foods, you buy canned goods. I mean, there's a lot of salt, probably more salt than we realize in them. So we have had health issues as a result of overdoing it. But around this world of this day, millions exist on very bland, simple diets. And salt makes survival a little more bearable. So Jesus said, you're the salt of the earth. And by that, with that, he was making the statement that you are to be the element that makes life a bit more bearable for others. You're to make life a little more palatable. You're to bring a certain zest, a tang into the lives of those around you. You're to bring inspiration to those around you. You're to inject purpose. We were at the feast in Palm Springs, California for three years when we lived out in Southern California. In 1992, the feast coordinator mentioned that there was one particular restaurant most of us would recognize who were at the feast there. And the the restauranteer had told the coordinator that he said, when you people are here, when you are in my when you are in filling my restaurant, it's like a hundred light bulbs going off all over because of the example that God's people were able to set. We see that with camp. I was at the camp Wednesday. They had their group. I've been there a number of times over the years when when their own groups are going there. And you see kids, I mean, it scares me. You get kids just meandering all over unsupervised or it appears unsupervised. But the people who work there, they can keep about five on to run the high ropes force. And the kids, the young people who work there, they kind of, I mean, politely fight with each other as far as who gets to stay when that church group comes. Because, and the ladies in the kitchen, they realize we're different. We're going to have the kids dressed in t-shirts. They're going to look like a camp, hopefully act like a camp. No sink's going to get torn off the wall, at least so far. It hasn't happened. If something happens and we damage the camp, we're going to see to it that it gets fixed. Put back the way it was or better. They know that our group is going to be respectful to them. If a kitchen, one of the ladies that works there, tells them in the kitchen, you know, well, you need to do this. We'll clean up that. Well, don't put that over there. They're going to do what they're told. We've got some wonderful kids in God's church. It's an example that people notice, but the world people around us don't have the same focus that we have, the same hope in the world tomorrow that we've been given. Too many lives are spent just seeking pleasure and entertainment, leisure, and then too many lives are just boring. They get up, they go to work. They may or may not like their work, but they have to go to work. They come home, they get cleaned up, they eat, they sit down, turn on television, or look at the newspaper, or read, and they just go through the motions because they don't have the focus of seeking first the kingdom of God. So, God asks us to learn to supply hope and encouragement to the world around us to provide a bit of seasoning to be available to listen to those who are frustrated in pain, to be willing to give to those who are hurting, to give of our time. You know, our life consists of time.

He wants us to show empathy for those who are suffering. And when we do this, God can use us as the seasoning that the world desperately needs. Number four, salt facilitates healing.

Healing. Now, if we have a scrape, a cut, we have, boy, you go, I, if I go into a Walgreens or a CVS, I mean, it's a whole wall full of stuff that they offer you, whether it's eye-related or nose-related or ear-related or bandages. It used to be you go in and get some band-aids. And, I mean, here's a whole wall of different things you can pick from. Two thousand years ago, it was pretty limited. You know, the head cloth they could wrap around. But as far as a treatment, they had salt. Salt was one of the basic, the more modern, and the more common, rather, medications. Because it was recognized early on that salt is important in preventing infection. It's important for use in bathing wounds and aids in the process of healing. Now, we have, to the south of us here, two, three hundred miles, we have a Gulf Coast. Once upon a time, we lived in Lubbock, Texas, and John was just, our youngest one, was just a little guy. Well, Ben had started school, and he came down with chickenpox. And, you know, the incubation period is about 14 days. So, 14 days later, guess who came out with chickenpox? But Jenny and John. And we were to come to the garrisons to see them, spend some time here, spend a week here. We were going down to the Gulf Coast. We called her parents. Denise and I had had chickenpox. Her parents had had chickenpox. And they said, please come on. You just will heal up from chickenpox here as back at your house in Lubbock. And we thought, well, yeah, and we did. We drove, we came here. And Ben and Jenny, of course, our kids having red hair, fairer skin, they had terrible cases of it. It was, it was awful. By the time we were here, a couple of days, it was scabbing over, you know, which means you're beyond the contagious point. So we decided to go on down to the Gulf Coast, as we had originally planned, spend a couple of nights. As the kids got down there and played in that salty water, lo and behold, the healing of those, those, I don't know, the little pox was amazing. And we were afraid, it was so severe, we were afraid they were going to cover these little, these little dotted scars all over the bodies. And they were not. But it was just amazing as soon as they would go get in the salt water, how, how rapidly it seemed like the healing took place. Well, we have bodies of water, not just the ocean. We have the Great Salt Lake out in Utah. And, of course, in Israel, you have the Dead Sea, that famous sea you cannot sink in. They warn you, if you're going to go get in the Dead Sea, do not shave that day. You know, the men do not want to shave. The ladies do not want to shave their legs, because if you get in there, it will light you up. And once in a while, somebody forgets, and sure enough, it lights them up. But it's, it's the healing that, the healing power that is that work there with the salty water.

My grandmother Dobson lived to be 96, and she, she had in her house this strange looking little glass. It had a base, it had a little short pedestal. It had the glass part on top was kind of oval, but, but then curved. And I remember asking her, what is that? And she said, oh, that was your grandpa's eyeglass. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, your grandpa would take salt and water and stir it up and put some in there. And it was formed where it would go right over the eye socket. So you close your eye, put that against it, and then you look up and open your eye, and your eye is bathed in salt water.

So some of you have apparently heard of that, because again, of the power, the benefit, the benefit that it could have to the eye. Let's go to Matthew chapter eight. Matthew eight.

And we will read verses 16 and 17.

Verse 16, when evening had come, they brought to him many who were demon possessed, and he cast out the spirits with the word and healed all who were sick. That it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, he himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses, but he healed all who were sick.

Jesus came for many reasons, but one was to be a great healer, and his physical healing foreshadowed the far more important spiritual healing that he came. He asks us to have the same impact. I said earlier that some of the salt had a more pungent and a greater pungency, a sharper bite, and it was found that the sharper the bite, the greater the healing power from that salt. And Christ asks us to go out and to provide that distinct zest bite, pungency for the world around us. We live among those who are sick, who are suffering, and those who are dying. We, by our life, we want to provide a bit of healing and soothing to the world around us. I will mention an example of a man who was in the Memphis church years ago. Denise and I moved from here to Memphis in 1981. And during that time, we still in the church were having tremendous growth. Some of you remember back in the 60s and the 70s. In the early 80s also, tremendous growth. Back when we were here, Mr. Martin and Mr. Collins, you know, we had AM and PM out there at Truman Ferguson's hall. And sometimes we'd have 20, 30 people we baptized. Tremendous growth in the church. Well, in Memphis, the way the church handled it then is before email, before so much that we have today. If someone watched the telecast, if someone read an article in the magazine or a booklet, they could either write to Pasadena or they could call a toll-free number. Somebody there would take out if the person said, I want to see a minister, they had a certain card, new member visit request card or new visit request card. Yeah. Take the name, address, phone number. They'd get those together for the zip codes for Memphis. They'd put them in an envelope, send them to the pastor. Well, the man I was assisting, he would then pass that to me and say, there are 12 new visit requests. Go see these people. Tell me what you find. So we would go and visit.

Quite often, we'd run into a young man or a young woman. As we talk, we realize, you know, this person is grounded. This person has been a student of the Bible. Somewhere along the course of the conversation, I would generally ask, well, what was your initial contact with, at that time, worldwide church of God? How did you find us? And a number of times, one of these young adults would say, oh, well, I know about your church because of my my uncle Henry. Well, Henry was the longtime member in Memphis and Henry was for real. He lived it. He was genuine. And nephews and nieces noticed that. I was at Henry's house visiting him and his wife one time. The phone rang. And, you know, I said to him, do you want me to step out in the porch? And he said, no, just stay right there. Well, it was obvious, just hearing his side of the conversation, that somebody in the family called. And in order to continue receiving some welfare benefit, I think it was a nephew. The nephew wanted to use Henry's address as his address. In other words, it would be dishonest. And Henry said, no, I can't do that. And I could imagine the young man saying, why? And Henry said, because it's against my principles, that would be dishonest. I will not do that. But, you know, each time he was sowing seeds because they realized Henry lives what he finds to be biblically sound. And I think it was some eight or 10 of those nephews and nieces of Henry that somewhere along the line, I'm not saying they all came into the church, but we had new visits with them. And it was because this man was for real. And the way whenever things would come along, and they began asking those questions, you know, what would God have me do? What do I need to do with my life? They thought of their Uncle Henry, and they started looking for the church. Acts chapter 10.

Interesting here how Peter, this is a chapter where he's dealing with Cornelius and family, but he summarizes the life and times of Jesus Christ in an interesting way.

Acts 10, and we'll just read verse 38. And Peter is speaking to Cornelius's household. And in verse 38, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, then notice the next phrase, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him. But I like that phrase, who went about doing good. That'd be a nice one to have on our gravestone, wouldn't it? He or she went about doing good. And that's how Peter, who was there throughout that ministry, that's how Peter summarized what Jesus did when he walked this earth. And what he did ended up in the healing of a lot of lives. He healed, he comforted, he supported, he taught, he founded a church. In some of the lists of gifts of the Spirit, it mentions the gift of healing. And salt, if we'd put a little salt in that glass of water, or if we'd shake some over a pot of whatever vegetable being cooked, in short order, you can't see any of the little grains of salt down in there because it completely gives itself over to that in which it works. And God asks us the same to go forth and to heal. There are those who have hurt feelings, disappointment, grief, sickness, and he wants us to just go and quietly go around serving fellow man. Or as Peter said of Jesus, he went about doing good. Number five, salt symbolizes friendship. It symbolizes friendship.

In the days of Christ, of course, in that society, deceit, cunning, cheating were part of life. Well, nothing new under the sun. Here we are 2,000 years later. We have, as they had, outright ranked dishonesty everywhere. Then Christ came and he described his work as he told people, I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the light of the world. And anyhow, in that society, there was a custom that we're probably not familiar with. And the custom was called eating the king's salt. Or if it was not, you know, among with royalty, it was just sharing a friend's salt. And what was involved was whether it was a king or some kind of a leader would have people over or maybe a friend had other friends over. And as you have the time, you share a meal together, you converse, you fellowship. If you feel a special bond that has developed or strengthened, in the case of the king, he would have a servant come and place a little saucer in front of each place. And in that saucer was salt, and he would encourage people to take a little pinch of that salt and put it on their tongue. And it was called eating of the king's salt. Or, again, among we commoners, sharing a friend's salt. Now, it came to demonstrate the binding of peoples into an unbreakable pact of loyalty and devotion to each other. It was a public validation, an act of public validation of friendship. It came to represent a guarantee of an unbroken comradeship and loyalty. It was well known and respected as an indication of friendship among people. So Jesus said, you're the salt of the earth. And in one sense, he was saying that you are to permeate and you are to penetrate society. And you are to be those who are so devoted one to another that you go and provide that example, provide that inspiration to a world terribly lacking in it. We are to be people who are trustworthy, reliable, dependable, to say what we mean and meet it. Follow through with it. Again, we have a world around us where contracts are broken, governments break treaties, we have nations of the world looking at our country right now and realizing we can't be relied upon to back our friends. We have plenty of people who will stand there before a minister, a judge, a justice of the peace. And in one year, they will pledge devotion one to another till death do we part. And a year or three or seven years later, they'll stand there and say, essentially, sorry, I didn't mean it. How do I get out of this marriage? It happens far too often. Our government, it has been said, and I believe it's true, our government has broken every agreement we ever made with the Native American Indians. And anyhow, the world looks for those who can be the salt of the earth and then in that sense, to be devoted as friends one to another. That pass overnight, we can go to John 13 and read verse 35. John 13 verse 35. That pass overnight, Jesus said, by this, all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Now, we've heard the old saying that blood is thicker than water. By that, it means that if you have some kind of a battle, struggle, a row between peoples, we're going to jump in there and help the people we're related to by blood. Now, we, at home, we might fight like dogs and cats with our own siblings and our cousins, but when there's a battle, you're going to jump into it and help your blood relatives.

Well, we could also say spirit is thicker than blood because the Spirit of God is the glue that binds us together more firmly because we have the same hope burning within us. We have the same dream of the kingdom of God. And hopefully, with the help of God, one of these days, we'll all do a better job individually and as a body, living by this, that people will look at us and say, these are Christ's disciples because of the love that they have for each other.

Well, we are to be a people who keeps our promises, carries out our commitments, shows up on time. Philippians 2 verses 13 through 15. Actually, I'm just going to read verse 15. That you may become blameless and harmless, children of God, without fault, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. That you may become blameless and harmless, children of God, without fault, in perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world.

That sermon on the Mount, he spoke of the the Beatitudes. He told them you're the salt of the earth. And the next thing he told them was you're to be that light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Well, friendliness, devotion, loyalty. These are the things the world need to see, to see a group of people living it from the heart. Number six, salt symbolizes sacrifice. For about 1,400 years, we had the old the old covenant and its heyday. And a lot of sacrifices as they did not worship or did not rather obey God. The year later, he added the sacrificial law. And let's just notice Leviticus 2. There is a statement here about the the grain offering, the meal offering. And with every one of them, they were not to offer it with leaven. They were not to offer it with honey. But with every one of them, they were to offer it with salt. Salt is identified with sacrifice and with suffering. Leviticus 2, verse 12, as for the offering of the first fruit, you shall offer them to the Lord. They shall not be burned on the altar for a sweet aroma. And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt. You shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings, you shall offer salt. And you can you can follow other references. There were other sacrifices where specifically you were to offer it with salt. And so for 1,400 years, tremendous quantities of salt would have been used up with the sacrifices that were offered.

Jesus said, you're the salt of the earth. By that he was saying you are to have a sacrificial role in this society. You are to go and identify with Christ and his sufferings. You are to go and give of yourself to fellow man. You are to lose yourself in sacrifice just as salt loses its identity whenever it was offered with the grain offering. It was completely burned up and consumed in the process. Matthew chapter 16. Notice what Christ says here about losing our life for the calling he's given us. Matthew 16 will read verses 24 through 26. Matthew 16 verse 24. Then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. So if we're in this calling just to save our own skin, save our own neck, somewhere along the line, God's going to let us lose that life. Of course, we know none of us will get out of this life alive. But whoever loses his life, and what is our life? Well, it's our time. It's 24 hours a day. If we are losing, if we give of our life for my sake, he will find it. What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? So here he speaks about this sacrificial role we're to have. Of course, we know Romans 12 verses 1 and 2 talks about giving ourselves as a living sacrifice unto God. And so we give up. We sacrifice sometimes our own rights because the needs of someone else is a higher priority at that time. We lose ourselves so that others may live. Salt permeates and it penetrates. It gives of itself, and we should do no less. All right, number seven. Those six are the positive uses of salt. We do have a seventh one, and it is a warning. And number seven is that salt can be a very destructive substance.

Salt can be a very destructive substance. Let's turn to Matthew 5 because, you know, we never really read in the Sermon on the Mount the verse where Jesus said, you're the salt of the earth. That's just the first phrase. There's a lot more that follows. And what follows is a warning. Matthew 5 verse 13. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. So here he says salt is peculiar in that it can lose its usefulness. It can use its bite, its pungency, but it still retains one very dangerous potency, and that is that it can kill everything it touches. It can sterilize soil. It can kill every blade of grass that tries to come up from that salt-poisoned soil. We lived in that house in Lubbock, Texas for seven years, and back in the back from the back porch, the walkway going back to the back gate. They just poured these little concrete borders on either side and then lined inside of it with bricks. Well, we'd have dust storms and dirt would blow in and get rained on. Of course, weed and grass seeds would go in there, and then I'd have to go out and clean all this grass out of these bricks that were just laid there until I realized we have ice cream salt. We have rock salt, and between those concrete borders, I could just shake some salt, and suddenly no grass to clean out. And the concrete borders kept it from bothering the lawn or the garden outside of those. Salt has been used to keep roadways clear of growth. It has been used to keep paths clear. And in time of war, it's been used to completely devastate a captured people. You may remember from history where Rome had a lot of trouble with the Carthaginians written about in the Punic Wars. Hannibal, the forces crossing over, going over the Alps and all the damage. And if Rome finally got tired of it and finally fought them all the way back to Carthage, they besieged Carthage. The city finally, finally fell. The Romans destroyed the city, took the valuables, burned the city, and then as the last act, they sowed the seeds with salt for this huge area around the city because they didn't want Carthage to come back and be a thorn in their flesh ever again. Now let's look in Judges 9 because there is an example in the Bible where that very thing happened. Judges 9, this is after Gideon and you have his son, Nubimilek. Excuse me, I went to Joshua.

Judges 9. And in, let's see, again, you can read the story here, but the difficulties that they had with some of the people at the city of Shechem. Shechem today is called Nablus. And if we just, let's go down Judges 9 to verses 44 and 45, and we see this very thing playing out. Then Nubimilek and the company with him, they had divided the forces into three, rushed forward and stood at the entrance of the gate of the city, and the other two companies rushed upon all who were in the fields and killed them. So Nubimilek fought against the city all that day. He took the city and killed the people who were in it, and he demolished the city and sowed it with salt. So it has been known to happen. Christ referred to us as being the salt of the earth. In part, he was warning us because our lives can preserve, our lives can heal, our lives can leave behind so much good in our wake. But if we aren't careful, we can also destroy, and we can leave destruction and death behind us. It would be interesting, we cannot know, but it would be interesting. How many times has somebody walked away from the church because of ungodly examples that we have set? Possibly more than we... well, we certainly don't want to dwell on it, but hopefully learn from it to do better another time. Salt can kill and destroy. Our lives can do the same. Our lives can lead others toward God or drive people away from God. The way we live, the words we speak, the attitudes we carry with us, the lifestyle we adopt, we're going to produce fruit, either positive or negative. And years of good can be undone so quickly by letting down and setting one bad example. We can work for years at the same place, and people can notice. They never hear foul language from us. They never hear improper jokes from us. We can let down one time and undo a decade of hard work of setting a good example. Jesus said, you cannot serve two masters.

We must serve God, or we'll be serving self and mammon and the riches of the world. Jesus wrote a letter to the church at Laodicea, and he said, I wish you were hot or cold, but rather you're in the middle. He wants us to be one way or the other. We're either for Christ or we're against Christ. We either set positive, powerful examples for others to follow, or we destroy by the examples that are less than stellar. Let's close over in Mark 9, because this too speaks of this warning.

Mark 9, right toward the end of the chapter, verses 49 and 50.

Mark 9 verse 49, for everyone will be seasoned with fire. Speaking of the trials and tests, we will go through, and every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and have peace with one another. One of Paul's epistles, he tells them, I think it's in Philippians, he tells them, let your speech be seasoned with salt. God wants us to reflect these positive uses of salt, and he warns us, lest we let down and destroy everything we leave behind us. So if we allow God through His Spirit to lead our lives, we can be tools of preservation, tools of healing, of enthusiasm, of friendship, devotion. We can be genuine and for real. So like salt and how it works invisibly and quietly does its job, we don't have to be spectacular, we don't have to be sensational, we don't have to put on a big show. We just quietly go around like it said of Jesus Christ who went about doing good.