Matthew 5:13a: "Ye are the salt of the earth."
It's amazing what a pinch of salt can do to bring out the flavor of food.
A big bowl of popcorn is absolutely bland without salt.
It has been documented that 0.04 ounces of table salt dissolved in 530 quarts of water
can be tasted!
Christianity is to be to life what salt is to unsalted popcorn.
Christianity gives flavor and seasoning to life.
Christians like salt must have contact to have an influence!
The Christian is to be a preserving force in the world wherever God has placed them.
As a perservative, salt will never do any good just sitting on a shelf.
It must come in contact with the meat to preserve it.
To be effective, the salt had to be rubbed into the meat.
In a similar way, Christians must allow God use us wherever He has placed us.
Whenever the church becomes just a salt warehouse, it will have no effect on the world.
Salt must make contact to have an effect.
Notice what Jesus says and does not say to those who answer His call.
He does not say, "You can be the salt of the earth."
Nor does He say, "You should be the salt of the earth."
Jesus says, "You are the salt of the earth."
To be salt, we do not have to be spectacular.
To be salt, we do not have to be sensational.
To be salt, we do not have to be successful as the world views success.
To be salt, we just have to affect our little corner of the world.
All we have to do is just be a little pinch of salt.
Even a little salt will make itself known as history has proven.
One of those wonderful examples was a man named William Wilberforce.
Wilberforce was a small, even somewhat distorted man, who took up
a career in politics, and eventually gaining election to the House of Commons in England.
He became a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven in 1784, and at age 25
proved his saltiness by taking an active stand against the slave trade
despite repeated defeats in parliament.
William Wilberforce died on 29th July, 1833.
One month later, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act that gave all slaves
in the British Empire their freedom.
He was just a little pinch of salt that made his presence felt.
So, what does it take to arrest the spread of evil?
Salt. That's what Jesus was talking about.
Salt stops the spread of moral evil and preserves society from total corruption.
Here's the exciting part.
It's doesn't take much salt to do the job.
Just a little bit of salt in the right place will do the trick.
Remember how Abraham prayed for God to spare Sodom because his nephew, Lot, lived there.
He said, "Lord, if I can find fifty righteous people, will you spare the city?"
And the Lord said, "Yes."
So Abraham said, "Well, Lord, if I can find forty-five righteous people in the city,
will you spare it?"
The Lord said, "Yes," again.
So, he tried forty, and the Lord again said, "Yes".
Then he tried thirty, and the Lord said, "Yes," again.
Abraham didn't believe that there were thirty righteous people in the whole city.
So he tried again, "How about for twenty?"
And God said, "I will spare it for twenty."
Then Abraham took a deep breath and said, "Lord, what if I can only find ten?"
God answered: "I will spare it for the sake of ten righteous people."
Just think what that means.
A whole city could be saved if only ten people were righteous.
Sodom was a wicked place.
It was evil through and through.
Yet, God would have spared it for ten righteous people.
As it turned out, Abraham couldn't even find ten people who were righteous.
So God prepared to destroy the city.
But before He did anything, He allowed Lot and his wife and his two daughters to leave.
Even God wouldn't destroy the city while the righteous were still there. .
Did you see that.
Just a pinch of salt would have saved the city.
It doesn't take much salt to do the job.
Robert Bellah, a sociologist at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University,
wrote: "We should not underestimate the significance of the small group of people
who have a vision of a just and gentle world… .
The governing values of a whole culture may be changed when 2% of its people
have a new vision."
Think about that.
Only 2% can change an entire culture.
Being the salt of the earth means acting as a purifying agent
to hinder the spread of evil.
We who follow Jesus Christ are to be a "moral disinfectant" to stop the spread of evil.
We are to be the conscience of the community, standing up for what it true and right.
The man who invented potato chips sold only a few packages a week
until he thought of putting salt on them.
At first, he fried thin slices of potatoes and peddled them on a very small scale.
But then, he decided to put a little pinch of salt wrapped in a blue paper into each package.
His business grew so fast that he purchased a large farm to grow his potatoes.
In Great Britain alone, over 10 million packages of chips are sold each week.
The potato chip business has spread all over the world.
But without salt, it would have died in England a generation ago.
Without the "salty influence" of Christians, the Christian movement would have died long ago.
Most all of the uses of salt both ancient and modern can be applied to the Christian.
We must learn what keeps this world from doing what it seems most intent on doing.
When I look at the world, it seems as though our world is intent on self-destruction.
We can talk about the wonders of the capitalistic system and the evils
of the communist systems, and yet one has already destroyed itself.
And the other seems so open to corruption, greed, selfishness, and bottom-line profit
that it looks as though it will "kill the goose that laid the golden eggs."
In our nation, our welfare system is said to have now become so monstrous
that it needs to be scrapped, and that we should start all over.
There is evidence that our educational system is in need of a massive and major renovation.
The street killings and drug wars indicate that the very fabric of society is rotten to the core
and coming apart at the seams.
Over and over we hear it said that the world is "going to hell in a handbasket."
Society can become corrupt so easily.
Greed, lust, and indifference leads so quickly to decay and rot.
These are the harbingers of death, and they are not stopped unless something interferes
with the process.
And yet, somehow humanity has endured day after day, year after year.
Something has prevented the inevitability of the process.
I believe that you and I know what it is that protects and preserve society.
We are part of a people created, formed, instructed, and guided by the Word of God.
We know what it is that keeps creation from falling into the abyss completely.
It is for the sake of those who are God's people.
God's love for His people -- His faithful followers is so great that God will renew,
restore, preserve, reform us into new possibilities, so that the world survives
for the sake of even just a few.
G. K. Chesterton observed that men and women can strive for goodness,
and reach a level of goodness and maintain that level.
But evil spirals downward and no one reaches a level of evil and remains there.
It will just keep getting worse and worse.
For instance, one lie will lead to another lie, and then, a bigger lie.
But there is something that prevents our total disintegration.
There is something that preserves humanity.
The story of Noah is a story of great evil, and yet, God out of His great love
for one righteous man and his family did not totally destroy humanity.
All humanity did not perish in the flood.
God's love for eight faithful people was enough to preserve human life.
I believe that Jesus is saying something like that in this Sermon on the Mount.
He has just described in the Beatitudes those who are happy and blessed in His kingdom.
And now, He says to His disciples around Him:
"You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste,
how should its saltiness be restored?
It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out
and trodden under foot by men."
It is not that they shall be, and not that they could be, but Jesus says
that His disciples are the salt of the earth.
He is saying that we are what preserves and keep humanity from perishing.
The community of the faithful Christians has a responsibility to all of society.
Those few who are blessed and happy are the ones that keeps
and protects humanity from destroying itself.
"You are the salt of the earth."
So, if we are called the salt of the earth, we must understand
that it's not a compliment or a blessing.
The whole idea, from a chemist's point of view, that salt might lose its saltiness is strange.
The chemical compound of salt does not decompose.
It may react with other things and become diluted.
Or it may get mixed with dirt and become unfit for use, but salt in the ocean is still salt.
Salt in salt barns will stay salt for ages.
So what does Jesus mean when He says, "lose its saltiness"?
Salt in the time of Jesus was tremendously important because it was used
to keep food from spoiling.
Salt was the primary means of preservation of foods.
Salt was the one thing that stood between rotten food and healthy food.
Jesus is saying to us as His disciples are the people on earth
that prevents society from going to hell completely.
God's faithful disciples will be the ones who preserve society from total decay and death.
By our faithfulness, by our worship, by singing our hymns of joy, by being merciful,
by being poor in spirit, by being ready to minister to others
-- all of creation is preserved from the destructive consequences of evil.
What is it that acts like salt in the world?
Jesus says that Christians are those who saves and preserves creation.
The fellowship of believers has the high calling of being the salt that prevents society
from its natural decay.
God's great love for His few faithful people, 4, 2, or 3 together in His name keeps
God from allowing the destruction of humanity from coming to completion.
"You are the salt of the earth" is not intended to be a compliment
as much as it is descriptive of the work of the church.
We are to be the community that preserves and keeps creation from destroying itself.
And if we forget what our mission is -- if we lose our commitment to God in Christ,
then we have lost our saltiness, our purpose, and are just tossed out on the road
where even grass will not grow.
If we are to be salt, our main opportunity is to provide a place where the continuing impact
of Jesus Christ can be felt upon the lives of others, and to be a people where
the power of the Holy Spirit can be felt in our lives.
God's people are the ones who will activate that liberating story
of a good and gracious God that is told in the Holy Scriptures.
If we are to be the salt of the earth, then we must continue to grow in our commitment
to Jesus Christ through praise, prayer, a fellowship of openness, a friendship,
until the effect of that commitment to Christ is is obvious to others
as the presence of salt is on french fries.
The world may view the church as the watchdog of decency,
as the police of moral and spiritual values, but we are not call to be salt
by the expectations of the world.
The mission we have is to witness again and again to this great gospel of Jesus Christ,
this good news that God so loved this one faithful follower that he will spare the whole world
in order to give joy and glory, and life to that one person.
We are the salt of the earth whenever we live in response to God's goodness for us.
We are the salt of the earth when we live as those who have given more than they can earn.
We are the salt of the earth when we accept this amazing love
that while we were yet sinners, God still loved us.
We have responded to what is it that keeps society from ultimately destroying itself.
It is believers who live their lives in response to a goodness and love of God
that we have been given without being earned and is offered to all of us who could
never earn it or deserve it.
And we are the sources of delight and surprise because when people come to receive Jesus,
we have the joy of receiving them in the name of Jesus.
If we as Christians are to be the salt of the earth,
we must have a Christian influence on those about us.
We know that there are certain people in whose company it is easy to be good,
and there are those in whose company standards are relaxed.
The Christian must be the cleansing, antiseptic salt in society.
The Christian must be the person who by his or her presence defeats corruption
and makes it easier for others to be good.
We must heed the warning of Jesus.
Jesus isn't saying that salt loses its saltiness.
When Christians live and act the the world, they lose their ability to be a perservative
in the world around them.
Many Christians have lost their preserving power and their ability to be
who God intended them to be.
This happens when we start tasting like the world.
When we start to think and act like our non-Christian neighbors
-- we have lost our saltiness.
When we start to think and act like our non-Christian neighbors
-- then we have lost the power to influence others for Jesus.
Salt only acts on things that are not salt; it only acts on things that are different from salt.
Salt does nothing to salt, but it sure can do something good for meat or beans.
Therefore, God's people must be different from the world to live and function as salt.
Sad to say, but it seems that the church of today has lost its influence in our communities.
There are many reasons why this is so, but one reason stands out above the rest.
The church has lost its influence because Christians have neglected their responsibility
to be salt and light in the world.
As we have neglected to be what God has called us to be, the world has decided to ignore us.
It is also true that when we as Christians decide to be salt and light,
the world pays close attention to what we say and do.
Vance Havnerreminds us that we are the salt of the earth, not the sugar,
and our ministry is truly to cleanse and not just to change the taste.
Too many Christians live their Christian lives only inside their heads,
and it never gets out through their hands and feet and lips.
A great pastor of the past, George Truett once said:
"You are either being corrupted by the world or you are salting it."
More often change will happen on a small scale.
Your companions will be more careful with what they say in your presence.
They will not take the name of Jesus and profane blasphemed that precious name.
Those with whom you work will develop something of a conscience
about the standard of their work.
Respect for others will be more common in your presence.
Your life -- your pinch of salt will save others from yielding to the immoral pressures
by which our contemporary world is characterised.
When you are the salt of the earth, you preserve society.
That is so simple!
When we are salt and light, the world listens to us.
When we aren't, they don't.
What about you, Christian?
Are you allowing yourself to be corrupted by the world or are you salting the world
with your little pinch of salt?
Sermon adapted from several sources by Dr. Harold L. White
