SHARING BREAD
13 “You are the salt of the
earth. 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.”
Matt 5:13
(NIV)
Salt - the Hebrew symbol of the everlasting covenant between
God and man. All sacrifices the Hebrew
made – the firstfruits they presented to the Lord – were to be sprinkled with
salt – grain, incense, and animal sacrifices alike carried with them the same
savor. We discover in both Leviticus and
Ezekiel:
13 Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not
leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add
salt to all your offerings. Lev 2:13
(NIV)
23 When you have finished purifying it, you are to offer
a young bull and a ram from the flock, both without defect. 24 You are to offer them before the LORD, and the priests
are to sprinkle salt on them and sacrifice them as a burnt offering to the
LORD. Ezek 43:23-24 (NIV)
In like fashion, the disciples were to be the firstfruits of
the new covenant which the Lord Jesus came to usher in. Christ terms His guys “the salt of the earth” and rightly
so. Interestingly, Hebrew newborns in
ancient times were rubbed in salt to symbolize that they were children of the
covenant. It is not too surprising that the
disciples - being reborn into a new covenant – would be called “the salt of the
earth”. We can count on our everlasting
relationship with the Lord Jesus Who told us He would never leave us as orphans
and that no one could snatch us out of His hand:
18 I will not leave you as
orphans; I will come to you. John
14:18 (NIV)
27 My sheep listen to my voice; I
know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and
they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. John 10:27-28 (NIV)
In every age, as salt, Jesus’ disciples were and are to be
cleansing, flavoring and preserving agents to a vast world which lies in an unsavory
heap rotting. Disciples of the Lord, led
and equipped by the power of the Holy Spirit are to take on the same
characteristics as salt which are numerous.
Salt is a necessity of life – every warm blooded animal has to have some
level of salt just as very soul born has a God shaped vacuum within them yearning
to be filled albeit most do not realize it is God alone who fully satisfies
this emptiness within.
In the time of the original disciples, salt was scarce and
precious. Roman soldiers were often paid
part of their wages in salt – solarium – our word salary derives from
this. The Good News the disciples would and
do bring was and is highly valuable as well.
Disciples carry this treasure in their jars of clay.
Salt also halts decay.
Disciples are to be the preservative on earth to keep their society from
raging rot. Because of this it is of ultimate
importance that we do not blend with the world – that when the world looks upon
us they see something different and that Something is Jesus Christ. Over and over again in Scripture God relents
from sending judgment because of the righteous in the land. Believers are to be the preserving agents in
our age as well – the voice that stands for the hard right against the easy
wrong, the voice that speaks up for justice for the oppressed and the weak and
helpless. We are to love mercy and our
words are to be full of grace seasoned with salt.
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If
anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful
man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not
from the Father but from the world. 17 The
world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives
forever. 1 John 2:15-17 (NIV)
Disciples are also to be a primary seasoning – appetizing
for Christ sake. Are we winsome and
wooing as He? Do our actions point
others to Jesus or do they prevent others from tasting and seeing that the Lord
is good?
Lastly, salt melts ice.
Even the hardest hearts are not beyond Christ’s reach. Scripture states His “love never fails”.
Our Lord tells us here as well that flavorless salt-less
salt is worthless salt. We must maintain
our saltiness to be of use to our Lord and furthermore to ourselves. The best path for any human is God’s path though
sadly we often kick against His best for us.
His way is always the highest and most profitable but most often the
hardest yet the easy way often ends in waste and unprofitability, being
trampled upon by men – good for nothing.
Jesus states there remains no remedy for tasteless salt.
“The
true Christian cannot be hid, he cannot escape notice. A man truly living and functioning as a
Christian will stand out. He will be
like salt; he will be like a city set on a hill, a candle set upon a
candlestick. But we can also add this further word. The true Christian does not
even desire to hide his light. He sees
how ridiculous it is to claim to be a Christian and yet deliberately to try to
hide the fact. A man who truly realizes
what it means to be a Christian, who realizes all that the grace of God has
meant to him and done for him, and understands that, ultimately, God has done
this in order that he may influence others, is a man who cannot conceal
it. Not only that; he does not desire to
conceal it, because he argues thus, ‘Ultimately the object and purpose of it
all is that I might be functioning in this way’.” Martin
Lloyd-Jones
What
I glean from this:
· Salt is the symbol of the everlasting covenant between
God and man.
· Jesus’ disciples are to be the salt of the earth – cleansing,
flavoring and preserving agents for our rotting world.
· I am not to blend with the world thereby losing my
saltiness.
