4th September 2024

4th September 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Matthew 5:13-16)


Message (Alan Burke)


Salt gets a bad rep these days. Not so long ago I was taking a bible class on this passage and salt was the predominate topic of conversation. The reason why is that many of the teenagers couldn’t get their heads round that salt was actually a good thing because they’ve been taught how bad it is for you, fluid retention, can negatively affect your kidney function, cause high blood pressure, but at the same time too little salt in your diet can be a problem but the thing is most of us eat too much of it. I digress but must of us know that salt was an important commodity. Salt added to meat slows down the growth of bacteria, even stopping it all together. Salt draws moisture out of the cells through a process called osmosis, when you put salt on meat it sucks the moisture out and without the water the meat can last longer added to that salt creates an acidic environment, it doesn’t support bacteria growth. 


Look what Jesus says v13 “You are the salt of the earth”.


Remember Jesus is talking to his disciples in the main, yes there were crowds there but this is for the disciples of Jesus, they are the salt of the earth, if you know and love Jesus this is what you are the salt of the earth and what salt does is it preserves. 


Think of that piece of meat without the fridge, freezer or the salting process to cure it and you wrapped it in a cheesecloth and hung it in a cool place away from sunlight. Maybe stick it in the spare bedroom wardrobe that’s full of clothes you never wear but are too precious to part with. Well give it a few days and you’re going to have some reek. Like get a whiff of that, it will be a feast for the nostrils but not the belly. 


Salt preserves, without the salt decay sets in, things become rotten, putrid. 


Well we are the salt of the earth, Jesus is teaching us what we are, we are the salt and without us in the world, without us we backward Christians who believe that marriage as between one man and one woman, that sex is within marriage, that life starts at conception, that those who are aged need to be cared for those who are dying, it is the Lord who gives and takes away, we treat the sabbath as a holy day not an every day, and there are lots of things we could add to that list. 


But without us in the world, without backward believers, who are out of touch with reality, who lives with kingdom values that are counter cultural to this world that we live in then if we think it’s bad now, the rot would hasten, the decay would speed up. Without true believers, the salt of the earth, then the decay of this world would hasten astronomically. It doesn’t take many believers to have an impact on the culture around us.


Look how Jesus continues; “But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” But real salt can’t loose its saltiness and of course we know that, salt is salt. For the believer they can’t stop being what they are, they can’t loose their salvation, they can’t stop being salt and if we truly are salt we are going to live as salt, we are going to live in a way that is consistent with the profession of faith that we have made. There are though people who claim to be the disciples of Jesus, who are outside and inside the church but are not salt. 


For those who are disciples the proof is in not only the words that they say it is in how they live, they can say all the right things but if their lifestyle is inconstant with their profession then they are not what they claim to be. Now of course none of us are sinless and we all have the potential to fall into shocking sin. What Jesus is talking about is those who might have the vestiges of religion but aren’t disciples of Jesus. If we are those who claim to be Christ’s, if we are salt then we are people who love his word and precepts even if there is a cost to ourselves. Is the confession that we make credible, have we been transformed by the gospel or this world?


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q81. What is forbidden in the tenth commandment?
A. The tenth commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor, and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his.
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