And if you'd please open scripture to Matthew 5. The late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once remarked, I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers. Sadly, it's true too often, and not just of some pastors, but of Christians. When I was a table waiter at a restaurant in Portland, Oregon for five years, Sunday afternoons were always the most difficult shift for my managers to actually fill. Because Christians were stingy tippers and generally the most unpleasant people that my colleagues and I would encounter all week. And it broke my heart to see my unbelieving friends get that picture of Christianity. And at times I found myself having to say, please don't judge my savior based on his people. In sharp contrast, though, to that, to Oliver Wendell Holmes' observation, as well as my colleagues' experiences with Christians, Jesus has created a beautiful picture for us of the Christian life and the Beatitudes, which we have spent two months looking at in depth. And in this week and the next, we come to the end of the first major section of the Sermon on the Mount, which deals with the character and impact of a Christian. If a Christian is seen in the kind of life that Jesus characterizes for us in the Beatitudes, then that kind of person has an impact on the world. In fact, last week we saw that that kind of person is so unlike the world that the world will lash out with persecution against all of those who truly trust in Jesus at some point or another, in some way, shape, or form, be it small or large. Today we take up a verse from which we get a famous phrase, the salt of the earth. And when you spend time with people who are genuinely good-hearted and helpful, you might sometimes say, man, they are just the salt of the earth. Jesus uses the phrase in a specific way, and it depends entirely upon what he's just preached in the Beatitudes. He has in mind that kind of a person, which is to say, the authentic Christian. The picture of somebody that we are increasingly growing into being like, and at the same time, falling far short of being perfectly. But isn't that what sanctification is? Growing into what we are in seed form because the life of God is in us through Christ. So let's look at verse 13 together. Jesus says, 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. Amen. Well, as he has been since the beginning of the sermon, Jesus is speaking to his disciples. He is not primarily speaking to the crowds that are gathered around him. Yes, they're there that day, they're listening, they're hearing, and I have no doubt that many of them were likely converted as they heard Jesus preaching something they had never heard before. but he is primarily speaking to his disciples and he makes this somewhat cryptic statement about them being the salt of the earth, which highlights for us something that Jesus just assumes to be true. He just assumes something about the world condition. The reason that we know that Jesus is assuming something specific about the world is because of the metaphor that he uses. He says, you are the salt. that is in the world, the salt of the earth. And as he's using this metaphor, he means something by salt and he means something by earth. Each of these things represents something. And in the case of salt, it's pretty clear from what he's saying that he's talking about those who are his people. He's talking about his disciples. He just comes right out and says that you are the salt of the earth. But when we look at the word Earth, it represents here humanity in general, not the mountains and the woods and the cosmos. He's talking about people, humanity all over the world, specifically those who do not trust in him, who are not his people. So there's an impact that his people are to have on those who are not his people. He's talking about a world condition in which the mass of humanity is in a particular state of being that needs what believers have to offer. And what is this condition? What is the condition of the world that makes Christians being salt so important? Now, I don't typically go in for laying out a string of Bible text and just saying, well, there you go. Go and apply that. But I'm going to do something like that for the next couple of minutes. Because I think that the scripture is so clear about the world condition that it needs very little commentary in order to actually just get the sense of what Jesus is assuming here that makes it so important that we are the salt of the earth. I'll start at the beginning, I'll go to the middle, and then I'll get to the end of the Bible. Because scripture is fantastically unified. in its desperate picture of the world condition. In Genesis 6, we're told that it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. I know that many people want me to make commentary on that, but I'm not going to do it. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. In the middle of the Bible, in Psalm 14, David tells us that the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt. There is none who does good, no, not one. And this is so at the core of the human condition that the Apostle Paul is just gonna quote that when he gets into Romans 3. And then in Ephesians 2, he puts it in another way. He says, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world. This is the natural course, he's saying, to be dead in sins and trespasses. According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. By nature, children of wrath, just like everybody else. This is the world into which Jesus was born, the only one born of woman who was not a child of wrath, who would be born so that he could bear the wrath of God for people who are naturally deserving of it, which is us. In 1 John 1, 8, there at the end of the Bible, the apostle says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. And so even after we come to Christ, we continue to struggle with what by nature we were, which by God's giving us the new nature we should not be, and yet we'll struggle with being until Christ makes us fully new, as our salvation is brought to completion. It paints a pretty grim picture, though, doesn't it? The world condition. Every single human being from conception is a sinner. And every person grows and begins making decisions. And the fact that we are sinners is evidenced by the fact that when we start to choose things, we choose sin. We are sinners by nature who sin by choice, because that kind of choosing is entirely in line with the nature that we have from conception. And this is not just a small deal. It doesn't only deal with the so-called small sins, the white lies, the little snide remarks behind the back. The intent of the thoughts of our hearts are evil by nature. We are a world full of corruption, is another way of putting it. This world is decaying under that kind of nature. And that corruption comes from the heart. Hearts that are dead in sin and enslaved to evil. And you can whitewash it, you can paint over it, but underneath it's still rotten to the core. This is scripture's clear, undeniable testimony. And it's only by the grace of God that things aren't as bad as they could be. It's God's restraining grace that not everybody does all the things they could do that they want to do. But because of his restraining influence in our world, we are held back graciously from doing. Once in a while, we get a glimpse of what it could be. We see it in the Adolf Hitlers and the Maus and the Stalins. And the 20th century is filled with the inventions of man that now use technologies that we've never had to do the kind of evil we were always capable of. And it is with sober judgment that we, if we are being honest, say, but for the grace of God, go I. So in a world in a condition of decay, decaying under sin, left to itself, the entirety of the human race would send its merry way right into the gates of the wrath of God in hell and the lake of fire forever. Which means that salvation is always all of grace. God so loved the world that he did something about a world in that condition. But God who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved. And raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches. Who is God? He is a lavishly good God. the exceeding riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. That's where Paul goes after he has told us that we are dead in sin. God the Son became the only man who never sinned and bore the wrath of God for his people in full on the cross. That's why he came. The world condition is bad, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is God's answer to this world's condition. And while it's true that because of the gospel all things will be made new and the cosmos will be made right, salvation nevertheless comes to individuals. who trust in Jesus Christ and repent of sin. It is by repentant faith that individuals are called out of darkness and into the light of Christ and follow him by faith alone. And trusting in Christ in repentant faith like that is what makes a sinner into a saint. What sets apart someone who is free from the world condition and then transforms them into the Christian solution to the world's condition. which they themselves once were suffering from. The gospel of Jesus Christ makes us free from the condition that we've just seen. Yes, we feel the impacts of sin. Yes, we continue to struggle with sin. We bear the consequences of sinful choices that we make, and yet we are not enslaved as the world is. The decaying effects of sin were born in Jesus. He has set us free from the power of sin. We bear still the presence of sin, but we are freed from sin's dominion. Scripture is as clear on that as it is on the fact that we once were all slaves to it. And if the Son has set you free, you are free indeed. Christians are sinners who have been saved and who tell other sinners where to find the Savior. That's the difference. Jesus is the only saving solution to the world's sin and death. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And as we look here at what Jesus says in Matthew 5.13 about our being the salt of the earth, remember the truth that he's assuming, the truth that we've just seen. The world is in a state of decay because of sin. It is rotting all around us, has been since sin entered the world. That's the condition. We have to remember that, otherwise it won't make sense what Jesus says when he says, you are the salt of the earth. And this immediately shows us in what sense Christians are the solution to the condition of decay in the world. And so if I might simply say, Jesus is telling us that Christians are God's means of influencing the world for his glory, and it's good. Christians are God's solution for influencing the world for his glory and it's good. A Christian is someone who has abandoned all hope of his own efforts at goodness and self-salvation. There's no Christian who just tries to pull themselves up by their spiritual bootstraps because the way we became Christians in the first place is to realize we don't have any spiritual bootstraps. So we go to Jesus, poor in spirit, mourning over sin, hungering and thirsting for the righteousness that he and he alone can give. And then being made new, pure in heart, we seek to be peacemakers in a world. The kind of life that we see in the Beatitudes, where we are being transformed from, as Paul says, one degree of glory to another, which is from the Lord, who is the spirit. And when you realize that, then you're in a place to see how Christians function the way that salt does. Because it's not about what we are in ourselves, it's about Christ in us. As modern Americans, we love ourselves some salt. We love ourselves some salt. We love the flavor that it brings to food. We find new ways to make it taste different, and then we package it and sell it at barbecue joints. And then we go for our annual physical and listen to our doctors tell us to eat less of it. But flavor is only a part of what salt does. The most vital functions that salt has are taken for granted by us today because we don't need them the same way that we used to. in the age of refrigeration, which is a pretty modern miracle. We don't need salt to do what it once did. These things that give the greatest power to what Jesus says in verse 13. But before we look at the effects that salt has in the way that Jesus intends us to take it, we need to go back a step and realize that none of salt's powerful effects can happen unless salt saturates what it's supposed to season and preserve. it has to saturate what it is meant to season and preserve. We need to first recognize that we cannot function as salt in the world unless we saturate the world. Now there are ditches on both sides of this, ditches that Christians fall into all the time, which church history is filled with examples of. On the one side, too many Christians confuse saturating the world with being like the world. These are the people who profess to know Christ, but are basically indistinguishable from the world. They love the things the world loves. They do the things a sinful world does. They embrace every sinful and unbiblical trend. And on the especially self-deceived days, they say, hey, I'm just being missional. And I'm just trying to get in with unbelievers so I can influence them. And all along, the irony is rather than them getting into the world, the world's gotten into them. oftentimes more likely, they never left the world. They desperately, this ditch, those in this ditch desperately need to come to terms with what the apostle John says. He says, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And for those who really love hiking and outdoor sports, he's not talking about being in the world in the sense of enjoying God's gifts. He's not talking about being some ethereal kind of person who doesn't have any tangible attachment to this world. He's talking about worldliness. He's talking about sin, the things that the world loves and chases after. You cannot love the things of the world and love Jesus because he doesn't come to us as a partial savior, but he saves and transforms and becomes Lord of all of us. But in the other ditch are those Christians who think that saturating the world is the same as being worldly. And these believers, and there are far too many of them, think that the essence of godliness is isolation from the world, or being so different from the world that you're just weird. That is not what Jesus is saying. Yes, there is a flavor to it, but it's not salt. These kind of believers really don't know how to interact with, or ever do interact with unbelievers, except when the self-checkout line at Walmart's down. And they have to talk to an unbeliever and risk being contaminated. And they pride themselves on not knowing much about the culture in which they live. Pietism is a form of this confusion. It's a tendency that trends toward Christians not engaging in the arts, not engaging in politics, not getting involved in government or the culture wars or anything else that might detract from why we're here, which is evangelism and worship and missions. And that very good impulse of wanting to make the main thing the main thing, though, nevertheless gets translated in some not so good ways into being detached from a world that very much needs the influence of Jesus. Because somebody will fill the void, right? And who would you rather have getting involved in and making decisions for and impacting the things that will, I don't know, create laws that govern what the church can and cannot do? that will go into effect during pandemics that will very much impact our ability to be faithful the way that we would like to be. I will choose the believers. But neither ditch is good, either separating from the world or being like the world. Jesus isn't after either of those things. What Jesus says as he prays over his people just before being taken to kangaroo court and then the cross is he says, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. So far from calling us to be separate from the world, Jesus very much calls us to saturate the world the way that salt saturates decaying meat. Separate from sin while being God's means of influencing the world for his glory and for the world's good. That's what Jesus is saying. Christian history is filled with those who have fallen into one ditch or the other. There is rampant worldliness that self-identifies as Christian, and then there's pietistic separatism that fails to live in the light of Jesus' declaration that his people are the salt of the earth. But Christian history is also full of world-shaping men and women who took seriously the calling of Jesus here and have done profound good in the world in every corner of society. And within the Reformed tradition especially, That is our heritage. It's a beautiful heritage. We will never live as salt in a world that is sinful unless we saturate it, unless we live in it, unless we love the people in it, unless we get involved in serving it, unless we are the kind of church that if we were to be gone, if our members, and this is a good distinction, we are not called to as a church corporately what the individual members of our church are called to individually. We are all of us gifted and called to be salt in this culture, and yet the corporate church's calling is one thing, and the way that we as individual Christians go out and influence the world is another. And we need to be a church full of people who take that so seriously that if all of our members were to just get up and go, if I'm wrong on the timing of the rapture and we're just boom, we're gone, Tyler's gonna go, man, we miss Sylvania Church. Even the exiles of Israel in Jeremiah 29 were told to seek the good of Babylon during their very temporary captivity. And likewise, the apostle Peter tells us that we are sojourners and pilgrims in this world. So how much more reason, I would ask, do we have to seek the welfare of our neighbors than rebellious Israel had to seek the welfare of those that they were gonna leave in 70 years? Much. And as we do, one of the effects that this has is the effect that salt has, which is that we season the world around us. We season the world around us with the flavor of Jesus, who is the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty. Indeed, we cannot help but have this effect. We can't help it. As Christians, why? Notice what Jesus says. You are the salt of the earth. That is, The verb form, it's indicative. What he's saying is, this is the facts. Here's the facts on the ground. This is just the way it is. You are the salt of the earth. If he were telling us to be something that is optional, that we might not be, he would have said, you should be, or you must be, or you are to try to be the salt of the earth. But what he does is he says, here's you. You are this. It's a declarative statement. And second, our lives are lived for the glory of Christ. That defines us as Christians, and he is himself truth, goodness, and beauty. We just sang a fantastic song, the king in all his beauty, and he is the one for whom we live. And how can we not seize in this sinful world with the goodness of our Savior if he is being formed in us? Remember what Oliver Wendell Holmes said about dour ministers and why he didn't become a pastor. Well, in our day, Christianity is often referred to by the world with the derogatory label of being puritanical because the culture keeps shifting to the left. And for those who aren't willing to shift to the left along with it, which by the way, that's what Christless conservatism does. The idea that being a conservative has value in and of itself because at least we're to the right of the world. Friends, back shift to 30 years. The conservatism of today is the liberalism of 30 years ago. But Christ has not changed. Christless conservatism damns Christ. conserves what is good and is himself making all things new. Christians have no business with Christless conservatism, but the name of Jesus being on our lips and in our lives, that's where he gets the glory. But the world, nevertheless, looks at any kind of standard of holiness and says, well, that's puritanical. And I think that they misunderstand what the Puritans were actually like. They were a joyful lot, many of them. They knew how to party like a Presbyterian and pursue the purity of a Baptist. I have so many Presbyterian brothers and sisters. I think I'd make a pretty good one myself. But I couldn't get there on some of the theological points. But don't think I didn't try. The Puritans knew what it was to live life to the fullest before the face of God and to enjoy his good gifts for his glory in a way that the world just frankly doesn't know how to. Now think about the Beatitudes that Jesus just preached before our verse. Now, if you have someone who's a peacemaker, who is hungering and thirsting for righteousness, pure in heart, turns from sin, and then influences his neighbors and loves them from that, does that sound like someone who's an unwelcome member of society? Or does that sound like someone you wish that more people in society were like? So we can see what it looks like when those who glorify evil have influence. It's a bad situation. We should never want that. The five people who watch the Oscars anymore know what I'm talking about. The news the day after the Oscars and some of the things that won, you're just like, man, all that is is glorified evil and charging people admission. Wow. On the other hand, true Christianity brings the flavor of Christ as it seasons everything around it. Christian art has every business being the best kind of art there is. We don't need to settle and it's okay to say we got it wrong. Even the unbelieving world knows the difference. When we read the first chapter of Daniel, what did we see? We saw a very godly young man and his three companions who were committed to Yahweh in a pagan land at the risk of their lives. And by the end of their saying, just let us be faithful to our God, just give us 10 days, What did it say? The outcome was something I had never read before in the sense that I'm reading it now that I'm getting into my 40s this year. It puts that they were more fat in flesh and healthy in the same sentence. The difference was stark. Now, what I'm not saying is just eat vegetables and God bless you along your merry way, but what I am saying is that what is the Book of Daniel except the chronicle of faithfulness in a world that was decaying? In the most pagan of empires of that day, you see what faithful salt kind of living looks like. It was so different that even the expert astrologers, magicians, and wise men of Babylon didn't hold a candle to these godly youth. And that shows you the impact and potential of using your teenage years for Christ. Imagine the world-shaping power you have because the generation above you messed it up. There will be a need for us to pick up the pieces of the seeds we sowed today, and you are going to be left to pick it up. So turn your eyes upon Jesus. Don't be the typical teenager. Go and do all that God has for you to do, and the world won't know what to do except glorify your Father who is in heaven. In addition to its flavoring powers, though, salt's most important functions in Jesus' time were to preserve and purify what was decaying and infected. And it is especially this purifying and preserving impact that Jesus has in mind. This is what salt has done throughout most of history. And it's only recently that we've forgotten it because we don't need, we salt our meat for flavor. We don't salt it so that we can eat it. I mean, without dying. I mean, some people won't eat it without salt and that's fine. But there's a difference between eating it to enjoy it versus eating it, I'm gonna get sick. And this is where the world condition comes into play in Jesus' metaphor. The world is in a constant state of spiritual decay and disease because it's under the power of sin, and the power of sin does what it does, it corrupts everything. It comes out in every direction, and it's the reason why no amount of human development or ingenuity or invention can cure mankind's woes. Arguably, the century of the greatest technological innovation saw the greatest destruction of human life. It gave us the atomic bomb. It gave us new and creative ways to do evil. It has created spam and phishing. And every time there's a data leak, I see how corrupting that is. Some of these things are worse than the others, absolutely. But the point is, we can grow as much as we want in our creativity, but we will always use it to advance our evil, except for Jesus. According to Jesus, here in our text, Christians are a major part of God's restraining grace and preserving power in a decaying world. It is a terrifying thought to think what the world would be if all the Christians just up and left. I mean, think about that for a minute. Think about the good that believers have done under the power of Christ. And then realize that the prince of the power of the air is in another place in scripture called Beelzebub, and you literally have what the outcome would be. It'd be Lord of the Flies. It'd be Lord of the Flies. That's what the world would be if God did not graciously give his church a salt in the world. The presence of Christians throughout history has been God's means of influencing the world for his glory and the world's good. In the rampant evil around the world, some of the stories coming out of Syria right now are truly astounding. They are unthinkable. But think what it would be if Christians were not living as Christians and functioning as salt in this world. And that's true both in a moral sense, as well as just about in every other benefit imaginable. The world would not be where we are in a good way if it wasn't for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Consider the effect that a godly person has on colleagues and friends who do not know Christ. I mean, you've seen this. You walk into a room where unbelieving colleagues or family members are telling a racy joke or saying things that once you walk in, they start to get quieter about, maybe not say at all. Why? Because there's something about the Christ in you that even the world who doesn't acknowledge his lordship knows requires a different response. Preserving. Does that save anybody? No. But that's not the point of this metaphor. It's about preservation. We'll see more about salvation next week when we look at the light of the world. Filthy language goes down. There's a kind of embarrassment that oftentimes sets in with unbelieving friends or relatives who recognize the difference. Don't worry about the embarrassment. Embrace it. They should be embarrassed. And so should I when I act like that. There is a godly place for shame. Just make sure to tell them about the one who died to take the shame. We don't need to apologize for being Christians. Jesus says you are the salt of the earth. And whenever Christians are living as Christians, however imperfectly, yet truly, then truth, goodness, and beauty will be preserved in the world. Things will get generally better as Christians exert their preserving influence. Jesus says in verses 10 through 12 that the world may hate and persecute us. But why? Because we're doing our job. The world hates the light that shines on it and exposes its corruption. So there is simultaneously persecution and blessing in the world. The world is being blessed by those whom they are persecuting in ways they don't even understand and yet they feel the benefits from every single day. It's like the kid that bites the hygienist even as she's cleaning his teeth so he won't die from gum disease. I could literally spend the whole length of a sermon detailing example after example of the good that Christians have done. But for the sake of time, I'm gonna just briefly walk through some of it from the words of R.C. Sproul. He says, it has been said that the intellectual history of the Western world was saved by the intellectual contributions of the Apostle Paul, in particular, and of Christianity in general. It's also been said that the advent of Christianity is what saved Western culture from pure barbarianism. If we look over the influence of the Christian church, particularly in the West, now that's not, by the way, to glorify Western culture in and of itself. It is to say that it makes a difference where the gospel goes, because it looks different. If we look over the influence of the Christian Church, particularly in the West, from the first century to the present day, we will see that the Christian Church, more than any other institution, has been responsible for the inauguration of higher education. The university system was the brainchild of the Christian Church. It was the Christian church that brought in the arts, music, painting, and literature. And many of the greatest artists have been Christians. And the same is true in the realm of music with Christians such as Bach, Mendelssohn, Handel, Vivaldi. Additionally, the Christian church began the hospital movement in the West. It was the Christian church following the mandate of Jesus to care for orphans that ushered in orphanages. Before that, children were just dying on the streets. And although the New Testament was written at a time when slavery was still in vogue, John Murray once made the observation that all the seeds for the abolition of slavery were sown in the pages of the New Testament. And friends, I would tell you plainly that it would have continued to exist in Rome longer than it did, were it not for the influence of Christians. And it was Christians who saw its abolition in the modern West. So in a very real sense, he says, the Church of Christ has been the preservative that God has used to keep Western civilization from imploding from internal corruption. You are the salt of the earth. Friends, this is the rich legacy of our faith. Christians are God's means of influencing the world for his glory and it's good. And will the world credit it for a moment? No, but that's not the point. This is who we are, because God is who he is, and he is in us. Next week, we'll consider another metaphor in verses 14 through 16, that Christians are the light of the world. And we'll look especially then at the fact that we are about the business of living as Christians in a way that explicitly communicates the gospel of Jesus. But the thrust of the salt metaphor is the power of each Christian to season, to preserve, to purify, and to do all this as we saturate the world around us. But as soon as he has said this, Jesus gives us a sober warning in the metaphor, and it's with this warning that we'll finish our look at the verse. He says, yes, you are the salt of the earth, but here's the warning. 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 Jesus not only tells us what we are as Christians, but then he goes on to warn us of the tragedy of useless Christians. Tragedy of useless Christians. The fact is that there is a terrible risk of not living as we're designed and called to live. Not living according to our identity. There are tragically countless stories of Christians who were useless in doing good to the world. And Jesus focuses on the danger of being a Christian who neither seasons nor preserves nor purifies. He focuses on the Christian who keeps to himself, who never really shows the goodness of Jesus and is not really that pleasant of a person. And I'm not gonna sit here and say that every person who is like that is not a genuine Christian, that's not my business. I am following Jesus' warning that if that person is a Christian, they're living like a useless one. And if there's one thing that a Christian ought not to be in this world, it is useless. Jesus is worth so much more. Jesus likens such a person to salt that loses its flavor. Now, for us who are used to good salt, that seems kind of weird because we're just like, how do you do that? How do you pull that off? And for those chemists in the room, sodium chloride, you would tell me it cannot lose its flavor, pure salt. But in that day, Jesus wasn't talking to a culture that was familiar with very much pure salt. Most of the salt in Israel came in rock form around the Dead Sea region. And it was salt that was mixed in with gypsum and some other elements that, especially in high humidity or with rain, the actual sodium chloride would get leached out, and what would be left would have the appearance of salt, and you really wouldn't know the difference until you put it on your meat and then got sick. or you expected a nice flavored burger, and then you were like, ew. Oh. What would that be? Would that be McDonald's? Would that be Burger King? I don't know. I know it wouldn't be In-N-Out Burger. It's not a good thought. And it's not a good thought to be like that. And so the people that Jesus was speaking to, they knew what that was like, and they knew that's a dangerous place to be. The tragedy of Christians who disengage or who are dour or who live like the world rather than impacting the world for Christ is that God's purposes aren't accomplished through them. And what would happen with that seeming salt that was good for nothing was it would be thrown into the footpaths and it would sterilize the ground and people would literally walk on it. That's why he says, it's good for nothing but to be trampled underfoot by men. And such a professing Christian has a sterilizing effect when he or she should have a life-giving, preserving, flavoring effect. And so Jesus asks of the rock salt that had lost its saltiness, how shall it be seasoned? And the thing is, once the sodium chloride had seeped out of the rock salt, it could never be seasoned again. Its saltiness could not be restored. And so what if a Christian has lost their flavor and their preserving power in our culture as time goes on. And by the way, the verb form is passive, and I think that's significant. What if it loses? That's a passive verb. Christians who lose their saltiness typically aren't out to tank their spiritual condition. It happens passively, over time, through the neglect of the normal means of grace, through failing to return to Christ, preaching the gospel to themselves every day, through spiritual apathy, laziness, any number of little ways that end up being one day you wake up and you go, how did we get here? I never knew how I could get here. And I'll tell you how it happened with one compromise at a time that made the next one easier, until all of a sudden, the unthinkable has happened and you don't feel much of anything at all. Can God restore that? Oh, praise be to God, what is impossible with man is possible with God. What man cannot do, only God can. He does, and he will, for all who return again to the Savior that they trusted in as at the first. When the believers at Ephesus had lost their vital communion with Christ and descended into doing really good things in a dead way, What does Jesus say in his letter to them in Revelation 2? He says, remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works. He's telling them if you've lost your vitality, do what you did at first, repent and believe the gospel. Run to Christ, taste and see that the Lord is good. Draw near to him and he will draw near to you, James says. And if you've been taking the name of Christian to yourself but only pretending, then run to Christ for the first time. Repent and believe in the gospel. Taste and see that the Lord is good and he will save you and make you like salt in the world and you will become less salty and more like Christ. To the good of everyone around you and to God's glory. The goodness of the Christian in the world is only proportionate to our living in communion with God, who alone is good. And so if we would live as salt in a sin-decaying world, we must live in Christ. He is good, and we are his means of influencing this world for his glory, and it's good. Let's pray. Father God, we thank and praise you that you have revealed to us so clearly our condition apart from Christ, that you have revealed so beautifully what you have done about it, that you show us the picture of Jesus that is unsurpassed as we see in scripture what we one day will see by sight, that what now is only apprehended by faith will one day be seen visibly to us. And as we wait that day and the blessed hope that we have of the return of Jesus to reign in this world, we pray that you would help us, help us to live as who you have made us in this world, that we would savor the ways that you make us the savor and aroma of Christ to a world that is decaying in sin. We are not worthy of this, we are not capable of it. It is only through the gospel and by the spirit of our God. And so we pray that, knowing that you delight to do it. In Jesus, amen. And sing.