Wednesday Bible Study: What Jesus asked, Part one

 

This week, I am wading my way through a nasty sinus attack to kick off a new line of studies:  The questions that Jesus asked in the Gospels.  The first one in Matthew is this one, right after Jesus finished teaching the Beatitudes...

Mat 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. 

Now the first thing to look at here is, WHY are we to be salt of the earth?  I thought to myself (with a little digging help), "What IS salt good for?"

- Flavoring.  It's had to grasp how many things salt makes better until you have to cut back salt.  And it's a flavor that stands on its own.  Like I said last night on something completely unrelated, "You never hear of, 'Table salt, now with 50% less sugar' ".

- Preservation.  You wonder why everything you buy has 'sodium this' and 'sodium that'?  They preserve the food.

-Melting of ice.  I know, not one you normally think of in this particular aspect, but just wait.

-Value.  Show of hands, everyone who knew 'salary' comes from the fact that Roman soldiers were paid in salt.  Everyone?  I thought so.

So now, how does this fit with us being the salt of the earth?

-Flavoring:  Every sacrifice had to have salt thrown on it.  God wanted salt on his sacrifices; it makes the mundane better.  We bring the flavor to the world, through faith, through service, through praise.  By the way we stand out, we draw people to God.  We don't need flavorings like glamor, fame, or power; the salt we draw from Christ is sufficient.

-Preserving: I could give you many examples of this based on prayer, but let me do it from the logical end instead.  Observe:

Act 2:38  And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

2Th 2:6  And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.
2Th 2:7  For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.
2Th 2:8  And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. 

The Holy Spirit is in every saved believer.  By our existence, and the existence of the Spirit in us, we preserve the world from the judgment to come- until the day He (and perhaps we) is 'out of the way".

Melting of ice:  Our job is to melt the hard hearts around us with Christ's love and mercy.  Keeping in mind that there are some souls frozen so cold that even salt won't melt them.

Value:  With Christ in Heaven, we are His face on earth.  WE are the most precious possession the world has- and most of the world doesn't even know it.

But, now there is one aspect that Jesus was focusing on here, and that is the crux of His question.  If we are not flavoring the world, standing out so that people draw near, what good are we?  As Christians, we have two options:  To stand out and flavor the world; or keep our flavor to ourselves... and get trampled.

The question, "How shall it be restored?" Jesus has just gone through the steps that would bring blessings to man.  The salt in us comes from living out those things- poverty of spirit, meekness, willingness to suffer persecution, and so on.  He is just about to teach on how no one puts a light under a basket- that we can't just look at these things we should live out and NOT live them out.  I guess it's just the difference in whether we want to be table salt at the Lord's feast- or the bag of sidewalk melter in His mud room.