You are listening to a sermon from River Community Church in Prairieville, Louisiana. Please remain standing, if you will, for the reading of God's Word. Matthew 5, 13. You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. This is the word of the Lord. Amen. You may be seated. Instead of doing something different for Easter Sunday this morning, we're going to continue through our study on the Sermon on the Mount, and we come to verse 13. If you looked at your bulletin or the newsletter, you'll see that my sermon title is a little cheeky. It's, Be Salty. Be Salty. Now, when you hear that phrase, what comes to mind? If someone were to tell you, stay salty, my friends, what would you think they meant by that? I think it suggests a rude, rugged, rough, sassy attitude, doesn't it? It's associated with anger and resentfulness and snark. But is that what Jesus is getting at here? No. To use salty language means what? To curse like a sailor. Should we as Christians, cursed like sailors, give in to our anger, speak curtly and rudely to other people? Obviously not. So what then does Jesus mean by saying, you are the salt of the earth, which means you should be salty? Here it's helpful to step back and think about salt's uses, especially in the ancient world. So first, and most obviously, salt is and has always been our primary seasoning agent. It's what you put on food to make it taste better. Second, salt was used and is still used as a preservative for food. And of these two, salt's use as a seasoning agent is chief on Jesus's mind. After all, he talks specifically here about the tastelessness of salt and how that's a problem. So we'll start there. First, the tastiness of salt. Of all the things that we put on our food for flavor, salt is the most essential. In the right quantities, it blocks the unpleasant flavors, the bitter flavors, and it enhances the better ones, the savory flavors. It also stimulates salivation in our sense of smell, and so it improves not just the flavor, but our perception of flavor. In a word, a pinch of salt makes everything taste just a little better. And a well-seasoned dish makes you want to go back for more. And in Louisiana, we know our salts. We love our salts. You have your favorite salts, whether it's Tony Chachere's, Slap Ya Mama, Lawry's, or something homemade. We can buy a selection of various salts. We can get our Himalayan pink salts, if you're fancy. You've got your table salt. You've got your low-sodium salt. You've got your rock salt. You've got your sea salt. You've got your kosher salt. You've got the big flakes and the little grains. So many different kinds of salt. In Jesus's day, most of his salt was gathered from the Dead Sea and it was a mix of different minerals as well as salt that would gather on the shore. But the last thing you want is a tasteless salt. A bland salt. Hillary and I somehow ended up with one of those not too terribly long ago. I think it was a sea salt. I'm not sure. It was probably meant to be a subtle like finishing, like dessert salt or something like that. But it had so little flavor that we were adding half again to double the salt recipes called for just so it tasted like something. Surprise, surprise, my blood pressure went up and I was puffy in the morning. When we finally realized what was going on, we switched to a different salt, one that had flavor, but we had gotten so used to over salting for flavor that for about half a week, every recipe was inedible because it was too salty. Think briefly with me about another thing that Jesus says here. If salt loses its taste, how will its saltiness be restored? Salt is the primary seasoning ingredient, right? So how are you going to season the seasoning? Are you gonna pour salt on salt? If you try to salt a bland salt with a stronger salt, you're only diluting the good salt. You're better off just throwing the bland tasteless stuff out. That's what we did with the salt that we had. There's no use in trying to save it. The money's already been wasted. We know it's not good. And that's Jesus's point. But before we go there, let's apply it. Jesus says you are the salt of the earth, and chief on his mind is this idea of being tasty, of being savory, of making things better. Given what we've seen, Jesus is saying that you and I need to be tasty in life. We need to make the world around us more flavorful. This speaks to the idea that we saw last week, the idea that we are, as Christian disciples, called to have a prophetic influence on the earth. Not a pathetic influence on the earth. That's the problem Jesus is addressing, a prophetic influence on the earth. We refer to 2 Corinthians 4.15, for we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. We should not be an offensive smell to the world, not if we can help it. We should be a savory smell to the world. A parallel idea is at work here. We should not be an offensive taste to the world around us. People shouldn't have to hold their nose to swallow us. They shouldn't be around us and go, ugh, mm, mm-mm, no more. We should be a salty, good taste to the world around us. In other words, you should be a seasoning agent in the dishes of your life. wherever those dishes are served. You should be a living embodiment of Tony Sashary's. Probably not Slap Ya Mama. But you should make life taste better for the people around you. Specifically, you should make the gospel taste better to people around you. Your life should make people say, oh, wow, that's different, that's good. What is that? I need some more of that. The last thing Christians should be is bland or blasé. or milquetoast, I love that word, milquetoast, with a Q-U-E for some reason. Christians shouldn't be wearisome or dry or dull. Unfortunately, there is a tendency among some Christians to live so upright and conservative and rigid and disciplined, that they are bland, that they have no flavor. There's nothing appealing about their lifestyle. Yes, it's decent and in good order, but there's nothing about them that would make people say, okay, what they have clearly makes their life better. They are more joyful, more fruitful than anybody I know. And I want some of that in my life. Friends, a tasteless life is missing something. It's missing the attractive power of the gospel. You can have all of your theology correct. and be bland. You can be living a generally righteous life, free from sin, and be bland. And also note that salt doesn't do anyone any good. It doesn't do any meal any good if it just sits on the shelf. You need to put it in your food to make a difference. It needs to be sprinkled onto, stirred into, even dissolved into the food. It doesn't take much, but it has to be applied. Christians who remove themselves from the world and the cultural around them so that they have few relationships and few interactions with unbelievers make themselves tasteless. Even if they're joyful and savory and tasty in themselves and with other Christians, where it counts, they're tasteless because they're not seasoning life. They're not seasoning the world. They're not being the salt of the earth. As it concerns this world, their existence is pointless because they aren't engaging with the world to flavor the world, to salt the earth, we have to be sprinkled on the earth. James Montgomery Boyce writes, to be effective, salt must be rubbed into the meat. In a similar way, Christians must allow God to rub them into the world. There is even a sense in which the salt must dissolve if the flavor is to be released. And for this reason, God sometimes shakes the salt shaker. Sometimes it will mean that we have to dissolve our own interests, that we shall have to extend ourselves in areas of the world where we do not see many Christians. We shall feel lonely and even depressed. But that is where the salt is needed most. That brings us to the second point, the preserving power of salt, the preserving power of salt. The other major use of salt in the ancient world was as a preservative. In the ages before modern refrigeration or even canning, you had basically two ways of preserving food if you didn't want it to spoil. First, you could pickle it with vinegar or by fermentation. Not the greatest way to preserve meat. Or you could dry it out by salting it. Even today, the primary way you cure meats is by coating it and treating it with salt, even if it's just a nitrate or a nitrite. That's how we get sausage and jerky and bacon and salami and pepperoni and prosciutto. Are you hungry yet? Not if you came for Sunday school. Closely associated with this preserving effect was salt's use in the ancient world for purification and cleansing rituals. Salt can hold decay at bay, right? Salt can hold decay at bay. So if it can prevent spoilage, then it can also purify spoilage was the idea. It was well known that salt was one way you could treat a wound. And we have an idiom for that. It's like salt in the wound. It burns, but it's burning because it's doing something. You actually rely on this use of salt if you ever take an Epsom salt bath, or if you have an ingrown toenail. For the body, if we take a salt bath, it has a detoxifying effect on the body. It has a relaxing effect on the body. If you've got an ingrown toenail, you start by putting your foot in a salt bath to soak. Why? Because it helps draw the bad stuff out, reduce inflammation, kill bacteria, and it puts good minerals back into your toe. In a similar way, Christians are to have a purifying, cleansing, healing, preserving effect on society. The world has an awfully bad ingrown toenail. It's got an open, festering wound that will kill society if something's not done. So even while our presence in our community should be attractive, it should also ward off decay. It should facilitate healing. There are two ways we can do this. First, you have a responsibility to promote and preserve anything that is good in society. You have a responsibility as a Christian to promote and preserve anything that is good in society. The way you act as salt is not primarily by condemning what is evil, but by conserving what is good. That's what salt does to me. It preserves it. It makes it last so that you can eat it. Therefore, you should live and work and play in such a way that you can serve and highlight the good flavors of the world, the good meat of the world. You should make them last. If there's anything good in the world that you see, anything commendable or worthy of praise, Paul says, you should do what you can to preserve it and promote it and make it last. Second, related, you do have a responsibility to hinder What is foul in the world? What is corrupt in society? What is polluting the life of our community? Just like salt removes the moisture on which bacteria thrive, we should identify the things in society that promote rot and lead to decay. It's not just about opposing the bad fruit of society. The bad growths. We need to figure out what are the circumstances? Where's the moisture that's feeding this mildew? Where's the leak? Where's the rot? Because if we don't deal with the rot and the leak, then we're just gonna keep making the same repair over and over and over again. It's not enough to attack the bad fruit of society. We have to identify the conditions that lead to putrid growth. And then we have to remove that influence. We have to draw the water out of the system and let it dry out. Understand, this is not just a matter of speaking against evil. We have to take action against evil. This includes social action. This includes political action. But most importantly, entrumping all the others is gospel action. Understand that as Christians, we alone have access to the healing balm of Jesus Christ. Christians alone have access to the healing balm of Jesus Christ, and only He can heal our society. Only the church can be the church. Only Christians can be salt. The government can't do that. The government only makes problems worse. You've seen our problems, just wait until you see our solutions. The intelligent and elite of society can't do that. They think they know what they're talking about, but they don't. They have theories and agendas, but they don't help. The wealthy can't do it because this isn't a problem you can throw money at. The preservation of our society, The purification of our society can only happen as we bring the gospel of Jesus Christ into our relationships, into our workplaces, as we bring the wisdom of the Scriptures with us into society wherever we go. And where the gospel is needed most is where society is hurting most. Where the gospel is needed most is where society is hurting most. It is in the most putrid, the most infected, the most oozing places of the world. The very places you don't want to go is where you are needed. And what is more, this must be done by you as individual Christians, as individual grains of salt Martin Lloyd-Jones writes, it is the principle of cellular infiltration. Just a little salt can affect the great mass. Because of its essential quality, it somehow or another permeates everything in life. That, it seems to me, is the great call to us at a time like this. Look at life. Look at society and the world. Is it not obviously rotten? Look at the decay that is setting in amongst all classes of people. Nothing will halt this process save the presence of an increasing number of individual Christians who will control the putrefaction and the pollution and the rottenness and the evil and the vice. Every one of us in our circle has thus to control this process. And so the whole lump, the whole mass will be preserved. You are the salt of the earth. That brings us to the third and final point, the disposal of bad salt. If salt has lost its taste, it's good for nothing except to be thrown out and trampled upon. As with the salt that Hillary and I bought, that was no good. It was useless for flavor, only made us puffy, and so it ended up in the garbage can. Even so, every so-called Christian who loses their saltiness is good for nothing but the trash." Now hold up. It raises the question, how can Christians lose their salt? How can salt even lose its saltiness? Now, here the commentators I read like to mention that salt in Jesus' day, because it was taken from the Dead Sea, was a mix of different minerals, only a portion of which was actual salt, sodium chloride, sodium nitrate, nitrate, whatever. Therefore, if that salt mixture was exposed to water or exposed to certain climate conditions, the salt could be leached out of the mix, leaving a whitish residue that was flavorless. Or because it wasn't pure salt, other flavors in the environment could get infused into the mixture and make it not taste as good. In other words, the main way that salt can lose its saltiness is because it's not pure salt. So how does this apply to Christians? Well, consider. If you allow the world to wash over you, day in and day out, you're at risk of your saltiness being washed away. If you allow yourself to be diluted with the cares of this world and this world's priorities, you risk your flavor being reduced to nothing. If you as a Christian lose all distinction from the world, then you are no longer any good for it. To be salt, you have to be a little different. If you taste just like everything and everyone else, you aren't adding any flavor. If you go along to get along, and your goal is just to not make ripples, then you aren't having a preserving effect on the world, and you are useless. Useless. Not worthless. You have dignity and worth. As a human being, if you are a child of God, you have dignity and worth in Christ, but you can still be useless. Friends, in order for us to have the effect that Jesus wants on the world, we have to be different. We have to be in the mix. But we also have to preserve our own unique identity as Christians. As followers of Christ, we have to be both in the world, but not of the world. We have to be right there alongside pagans and unbelievers and toxic people, but we have to be different from them. If we as Christians are no different from the world, how can we make a difference in the world? How can we act against the social decay of our community? We can't. And again, in Christ's eyes, we are practically useless. We've become like salt that has lost its taste. We've become too subtle, too compromised, too diluted to do anything good at all. And as a result, Jesus says, He will throw us out. And He will replace us with Christians who will be salty. And what does this mean? Does this mean that we as Christians can lose our salvation? No, not at all. Where would you get that idea? Rather, this is a warning against what we might call lukewarmness. It's a warning against spiritual and moral compromise. It challenges us to persevere and to grow in our faith and to intentionally seek to impact this world for Christ. In John 15, one and two, And then for 15.6, Jesus says, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will bear more fruit. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. Friends, what Jesus wants, to switch metaphors, what Jesus wants is for you and me to bear fruit. If we're not bearing fruit, then that means that we are dead. And we are dead because we are not abiding in Christ. Those Christians who do not bear fruit in their lives were never really Christians to begin with. Because to be savingly connected to Jesus is to bear fruit. To return to the image of salt. Any salt that can lose its taste is not a true salt. It's diluted and mixed with a variety of other things. True Christians cannot lose their salt because they are salt. So if you lose your saltiness, you were never really salt. If you fail to have a difference on the people around you, you were never really a Christian. Jesus says that such people will be cast out and trampled upon. The language of trampling appears again in Matthew 7, Luke 8, and Hebrews 10, among other places. It's the language of ruin. Trampling means treating someone or something with utter contempt and disdain. Here are these passages, Matthew 7, 6. Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Disregard it, abuse it, mistreat it, reject it. Luke 8, 5, a sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. Disregarded, destroyed. Hebrews 10, 28 and 29, anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which He was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? Such is the destiny of every so-called Christian who refuses to be a salty presence in the world. If you make no difference to the world around you, if your faith makes no difference to your family, to your workplace, to your hobbies, to your clubs, then you're good for nothing. And at the very end, you'll have nothing to show for all your labor, all your work, because it did no lasting spiritual good. Even if you are technically saved, if you do not have an impact on this world as salt, then you are only getting into heaven by the skin of your teeth, as it were. There are eternal rewards for all believers who are faithful in executing their calling. who act as salt, and as we'll see next week, act like light in the world, who do good works and bear good fruit in life. There are rewards, but you can be a genuine Christian and have very few rewards because you were not very fruitful. I hope that's not true of any of you. Don't let your life, friends, go by pointlessly. Don't be a useless Christian. Don't let your life be tasteless. Don't let your life be without effect, whether that's in your home, in your workplace, in your hobbies, or in your communities. You are salt, so be salty. As we close, I want to link us back up with the resurrection. It is, after all, Easter Sunday. I'll end with this. Jesus did not just die for your sins. Jesus did not just die to forgive you. Jesus did not just rise from the dead to give you a new lease on life or a hope of a resurrection someday, or so that you can go to heaven when you die. Jesus came to this earth and died and rose again so that we might have a meaningfully different life than what we had before, and that we will have for all eternity. This is life that he's given us by his resurrection of an entirely new sort, a life dedicated to him, a life fruitful for him. He rose from the dead so that you could have his resurrection power at work in you doing good things in the here and now. In the second chapter of Ephesians, Paul describes the glory of God's wonderful saving grace. While we were dead in our trespasses and sins, He raised us with Christ and in Christ. By grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing, it's the gift of God. And then in verse 10, at the climax, the kind of, okay, so what, of that first section of Ephesians 2. He says this, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Do you hear that? Do you hear that? Christ was raised from the dead to give you a new life that he wants you to live. You are the salt of the earth. So be the salt of the earth. Be what God has created you to be. Let's pray. Thank you for listening to this sermon from River Community Church in Prairieville, Louisiana, where you will always find biblical preaching, meaningful worship, and the equipping of disciples. For more information on River Community Church and its ministries, please visit rivercommunity.org.