What Makes Salt Salty?


We continue this week with our series on the Greatest Talk Ever Given. That’s probably a better way to phrase it than the Sermon on the Mount. Because as Jesus addressed his outdoor audience spread out before him on the grass, it felt more like a summer festival than a church sermon. It was a talk. But what a talk!

Last week we looked at the meaning of the first part of the talk, the series of “Blessings” known as the Beatitudes. We said that the Beatitudes are not conditions that we should aspire to, or rules that we should try to follow, but rather Jesus is teaching us that God can bless anyone - the spiritually zero, those wracked by grief, the outcast – and therefore the Kingdom of God is open to everyone. This is the Good News of the Kingdom. Nobody need be excluded.

The importance of this truth has the implication that the availability of the Kingdom is here and now. It is crucial for us to understand that when Jesus referred to the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven, the phrases are interchangeable, he didn’t just mean the place believers will go to when we die, he was talking about an immediate reality.

The Kingdom of God is wherever and whenever God rules.

When we were getting ready to move to Duncansville from Huntingdon County we prepared our boys for the move. We explained that we were going to this good church in this town called Duncansville and that we would live in this nice place. And so the boys were excited about it. We came up to meet with the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee and to see the parsonage for the first time. And we are driving into town and Michael, who was two years old at the time, said, “I want to go to Duncanville.”

And I said, “Son, we are in Duncansville. It’s all around you.”

So it is for the follower of Christ, the Kingdom of God starts from the moment you “drop your nets” like those fishermen disciples and start following Jesus. The Kingdom of God starts an inch from your face. You are walking in it. You are breathing it in your lungs. It is all around you. We’ll come back to why this is so important in a bit.

Think again about to whom Jesus is preaching. They are not the best and the brightest. They are rough and uneducated. They are smelly, and impious, and poor and rude. They have bad teeth. But Jesus takes time in his teaching to point out the natural beauty of every human being. Think of the most glamorous person you know, (Solomon in all his glory), and they are not as ravishingly beautiful as a simple flower in a field.

“Yet if God makes even the grass so beautiful, won’t he clothe you of little faith even more beautifully?” Matthew 6.30

Jesus is telling us that we are good and valuable because we are blessed by God, not because of what we look like on the outside or by how successful we become according to our cultural values. God’s blessing is for ordinary people. Jesus is telling Israel that not only are they blessed but they can be a blessing to others. In fact, this promise was made at the beginning of their history as a people:

“The Lord said to Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you so that you will be a blessing. . .and by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Genesis 12.2-4

So God’s people are to be a conduit of blessing to others. Jesus again uses a “Show and Tell” method to illustrate this point. He pulls out a salt shaker and says:

“You are the salt of the earth.” Matthew 5.13

In the ancient world, salt was a vital necessity. It was not optional. It not only provided flavor for foods but it preserved. There was no refrigeration and Decay and rot were the great enemies of life in the ancient world. Salt was the only power to arrest decay. Mothers would rub salt on the skin of their newborn babies as a disinfectant. Salt had almost magical properties. And so it became a major item of trade. Rome would pay its soldiers in salt. We get the word “salary” from the Latin sal or salt. The Bible is full of references to salt. In the Old Testament is the story of a man named Lot who with his wife is fleeing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But Lot’s wife is disobedient and she is turned into a ____________. And they took her with them on the journey and that’s where we got the first salt lick from. Just kidding.

Jesus is saying I want Israel to be a people of blessing to a world full of corruption and decay and death. You will arrest the decay. You will preserve what is worth preserving. You will give flavor and life to this world.

How will God’s people be this good to impact the world like salt? If we are salt, what makes us salty?

Well, it’s clear that our saltiness has little to do with our inherent goodness. If it did, then we wouldn’t be able to lose it, and Jesus suggests that this does happen.

“but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?”

In fact, Jesus is suggesting that this is what has happened to Israel. They have lost their saltiness. There were different ideas then about Israel’s purpose. Rome had a vision for Israel that was pretty much tax her for Rome’s benefit. The Zealots had a vision that involved a violent overthrow of Rome. The Sadducees had a vision that was an accommodation of Rome. Jesus really didn’t have a lot in common with those visions. The group and vision that he had most in common with was the Pharisees. And it was with the Pharisees that he had his strongest argument.

The Pharisees believed in reforming the world through God’s Law. Jesus also wanted to change the world and Jesus loved the Law. Nobody loved the Torah of God more than Jesus. Jesus was accused of breaking the law or introducing new ones but to this he responds:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

“Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, no one letter, nor one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until it is accomplished.” Matthew 5.17-18

In the Hebrew language the smallest letter is called a yodh. It made by two small strokes of a pen. When God changed Sara’s name from Sarai to Sara, it was done with the removal of a single yodh, two strokes. Jesus is saying that is the attention that he gives the law and every stroke of the law will be obeyed and will be completed.

But – here is his argument with the Pharisees – the Pharisees obeyed the law in its form and outward behavior but they missed the purpose of the law, which is to direct the heart to its right love. Jesus taught that the point of the law is the transformation of the heart.

“The greatest commandment is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second great commandment is you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Mark 12.30-31

The Pharisees were very pious, very religious men. In fact, in terms of being religious they were the finest people of their day. But when it came to loving people, they were failures. They were lousy at it. And so their righteousness was not really righteous, it was just religious. The Pharisees thought they loved the law, but they didn’t love the God who gave them the law. And so the law couldn’t save them, it couldn’t only point out their lostness.

“The law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness.” Dallas Willard

So Jesus says in his talk, if your righteousness isn’t better than the Pharisees you won’t enter the Kingdom. In order to have a righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees we must be transformed in the heart. We must receive the blessing of God in order to be a blessing. We must not only act good, we must be good. And that can only happen by accessing all the power and the resources of the Kingdom that Jesus makes readily available to his followers. Jesus makes us salty.

We are the salt of the earth. No one can argue with goodness. No power can defeat love. No one can prevent you from being the salt of the earth. But we have to be out there. Rebecca Manley Pippert wrote a great book called Out of the Salt Shaker and into the World. It reminds me that Jesus called us not the salt of church but the salt of the earth.

The Greatest Talk Ever Given

Bridge to Terabithia is the story of two young teenagers who are linked by their kindness and imagination. The boy, Jess, is shy and has a gift for drawing. Leslie, a girl, is brave and bold and has a gift for story. One Sunday she asks if she can go to church with Jess and his family. Leslie confesses that she and her parents never go to church. She would like to go with her friend to his church. When she tells Jess this, he looks at her like she has just said, “I am a dodo.”

But Jess agrees to take Leslie with them and they all go to church together. They sing hymns. They hear a sermon. And on the ride home they talk about it. Leslie says,

“I’m really glad I came. That whole Jesus thing –it’s really interesting, isn’t it?”

Jess’ little sister responds, “It’s not interesting. It’s scary!” and she goes on to talk about God damning people.

“You have to believe it and you hate it,” Leslie tells her friends. “I don’t have to believe it and I think it’s beautiful.”

Now, they may be confused about some things concerning Jesus and the Bible but no more confused than many adults. I’ve used this scene before as an example because I think it comes pretty close to capturing the attitude of that crowd of people who came to hear Jesus preach this talk called the Sermon on the Mount.

The people didn’t come because they had to. They came because they wanted to. They were the sinners, the tax collectors who cheated people of their money, the prostitutes, the criminals, the losers. These are not the bright shiny people. They are the masses of humanity. They are smelly and rude and impatient and impious. Nobody ever asked them to come to church and hear a good talk about God’s love. But from the moment Jesus began to talk it was clear that he was talking not above them or around them, but to them.

The Sermon on the Mount is the Greatest Talk ever given by the most influential person who ever lived on this planet. Jaroslav Pelikan says that Jesus has influenced so much of history and culture that if you removed everything that he has touched in some way, how much really would be left?

The people that heard this talk realized right away that they were in the presence of a person who taught like nobody else. His words were compelling. They spoke to real life and with the authority of one who knew what he was talking about. Here was a person of great wisdom and ability, greater than they had ever encountered. They didn’t listen because they had to- they concluded that they would be fools not to listen and follow. John Ortberg says that nobody in the crowd took notes. Today, a person may take notes to remember the information. When I go hear a speaker that I respect, I often take notes on the talk. But nobody took notes in this crowd, Ortberg says, because the words were so powerful that it changed their lives forever. And you don’t forget that.

What were you doing on September 11 2001 when you heard the news? I bet you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing. You didn’t have to write it down.

“When something changes your life, you remember. You just know.”

Jesus sermon was like that. Nobody who was there forgot it. And He began. . .

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

Jesus begins his talk with a series of blessings that have been called the Beatitudes. The beatitudes have become very pious sayings that people put on their walls but many do not really understand what they are about. First, of all they are about real people. Like most of his preaching, Jesus uses a “show and tell” method. Some of the people in the crowd he has probably spent time with and even healed. He might use someone in the crowd as an example and say, “Here, here is what I am talking. . .”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit. . .” The poor in spirit are the people who don’t know anything about church. They don’t talk the language. They don’t know their Bibles. Gallup did a poll a few years back asking people who gave the Sermon on the Mount. You know what the number one answer was? Billy Graham. Many people thought it was called the Sermon on the Mount because it was given from the back of a horse. The poor in spirit aren’t going to win any Bible trivia games. They are the spiritual zeros. There is nothing spiritually attractive about them. And Jesus continues this pattern of pronouncing blessings on people in unattractive and unenviable positions.

“Blessed are those who mourn. . .” Does this mean its good to be in mourning? Is it good to lose someone you care deeply about? No, of course not. Jesus is not saying you are blessed because of your mourning or your spiritual poverty – you are blessed in spite of. . .The Beatitudes are not a set of instructions who what to do or be, they are an announcement of Good News to all people.

This goes against the grain of our beliefs, religious and otherwise. Deep down, we subscribe to what I referred to the other evening as a theology of “Good things happen to good people/bad things happen to bad people.” If our lives are going fairly well then subtly we begin to believe that we deserve it. We’ve earned it. Of course things are going good – I’m a good person.

This is not really the way life works and the Bible tells us this. In the Old Testament book of 2 Kings we read the story of Naaman. Naaman had a “designer life.” He was commander of the army of Aram, what we now call Syria. He was one of the most powerful men of his time. He was the equivalent of prime minister. He was wealthy and well thought of. But there was a great challenge in Naaman’s designer life:

“The man, though a valiant warrior, suffered from leprosy.” 2 Kings 5.1

Leprosy was fatal in those days. If you got it, you went through a gradual wasting that slowly crippled, disfigured, and finally, killed you. The word had the resonance that cancer has in our day. All Naaman’s success and accomplishments couldn’t help defeat this enemy in his own body. But one day a young girl from Israel is taken captive in a raid by Naaman’s soldiers. The girl becomes a slave to Naaman’s wife. The observes who new master’s condition and says:

“If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 2 Kings 5.3

Naaman has nothing to lose really. So he decides to try to go see the prophet. And Naaman does it in a way that he knows best. He sends letters of reference through his king to the King of Israel. He brings a lot of money with him as well to give to the king. He figures with the money and the references, the King of Israel will command the prophet to cure him.

Naaman believed that if you live a good, successful life then God must bless you. If you show you are successful, you can get whatever you want from God. I mean, it worked in Naaman’s dealings with other successful people, why wouldn’t it work with God? But the man is in for a shock. Naaman goes to the prophet Elisha’s house and is greeted at the door by a messenger who says, “the prophet said to go wash yourself in the Jordan River seven times and you will be cured.”

Good news, right? Not to Naaman. He was angry. He was angry because he didn’t believe it could be that simple. He was expecting some kind of elaborate ritual. He was expecting that he would have to pay the prophet some money. He was expecting to have to do some mighty thing, as Timothy Keller says, “like bring back the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West or return the Ring of Power to Mount Doom.” Naaman took this as an insult. Any idiot can go splash in the river. In Naaman’s world, the mighty and successful are in the control.

“Just wash yourself,” was the answer he got instead.

Jesus looks at the unwashed and says, God doesn’t need you to do anything. There is nothing you have that God needs. God doesn’t bless you because you’re good looking or you’re wealthy or you’re successful. And God doesn’t bless you because you’re unattractive or poor or sorrowful. Here’s the good news: God blesses you because his kingdom is for everyone.

What might God’s blessings sound like today? Blessed are the those with bad breath. Blessed are those with no fashion sense. Blessed are those who can’t sing. Blessed are the divorced. Blessed are the unemployed, underemployed, overemployed, and unemployable. Blessed are the HIV positive. Blessed are the homeless. Blessed are the perpetually angry. Blessed are the lonely. You get the picture. No one is beyond God’s blessing. No one is excluded from the kingdom. Now it’s possible that you can be these things and turn your back on Jesus and His kingdom. God won’t force his blessing on anyone. But if we would see and hear what those first crowds saw and heard we will remember and not forget. We will begin to understand the words of the prophet Isaiah:

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation. . . Isaiah 52.7

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. . .” Isaiah 61.1-2

Someday we’ll see the feet of One who comes down from the mountain to tell us - Good news friends - it’s here! The kingdom is finally and fully here!” Who is that One? Some of you may recall that passage in Luke 4 when Jesus reads that scripture “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. .” in the synagogue and he finishes the reading and says, this scripture is fulfilled right now in me. He is the Lord’s anointed.

Over the next month we will continue to study Jesus’ great message of the kingdom. I encourage you to read it for yourself. I invite you to pray with me now.

Love is not all you need

Jacob loved Rachel, but he didn’t love Leah. On closer inspection, Jacob’s “love” for Rachel was more lust than love. His behavior was that of an addict. He invested so much false hope and expectation in Rachel’s beauty that the idea of this woman became his idol. If you get married as Jacob did, putting the weight of all your deepest hopes and longings on the person you are marrying, you are going to crush them with your expectations. It will distort your life and your spouse’s life in a hundred ways.

“No person, not even the best one, can give your soul all it needs. You are going to think you have gone to bed with Rachel, and you will get up and it will always be Leah.” Timothy Keller

We have idolized romantic love in our culture. We have taken a good thing, and made it an ultimate thing, which is the definition of idolatry. When we idolize something, we love it, trust it, and obey it. Ernest Becker says we have elevated romantic love to the point where we expect it to rid us of our faults and our feeling of nothingness. We expect romantic love to justify us, to redeem us. “Needless to say, human partners cannot give this.”

As C.S. Lewis noted, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

There is a prophet in the Old Testament named Hosea and his story is like no other story in the Bible, and maybe anywhere else. God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. Why does God say this?

“because the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord.” Hosea 1.2

Hosea is a prophet in a dying kingdom. He sees the last gasp of success in Israel followed by a period of weak kings and disastrous decisions. In a period of twenty years six different kings reigned in Israel until Israel was no more. Hosea lists the last good king of Israel, Jeroboam, and he also lists the kings of Judah at that time. He leaves out these six kings in Israel. He’s too embarrassed for Israel to mention them.

What is also happening, not coincidentally, is Israel has become a spiritually unfaithful people. They have mixed the true worship of Yahweh with the pagan worship of the Baals, the localized fertility gods. The worship of Baal centered around each region having its own god for success with the crop harvest. You gained favor with your Baal by cultic prostitution and orgies. This was thought to manipulate the god in a magical way to reward your land with a good harvest.

When God tells Hosea the land commits great harlotry he means it almost literally – the people are debasing themselves for the god of the land.

God tells Hosea to marry a harlot and so Hosea marries a woman named Gomer. It is implied that Gomer was perhaps a prostitute in one of the Baal cults. The prophet of God marries a prostitute and they have children. And their marriage and family becomes the story within the story of God’s love for his people Israel. This image of God’s relationship with his people played out in this strange marriage is one uniquely Hosea’s own. One commentator notes that Hosea’s marriage is a “tragic mismatch.” In other words, you won’t get this match on Eharmony. Nonetheless, Hosea and Gomer’s marriage seems to convey a tenderness and a fidelity that weathers the storms.

Their first child is a boy whom the Lord names for them. (He’ll name all their children) When God gives people names, this is always a sign that this person will serve a divine purpose. The boy’s name is Jezreel, which is Hebrew for “punishment.” In other words, punishment is coming to Israel for her unfaithfulness.

The second child Gomer and Hosea have is a girl. She is named Lo-ruhama, which means “she is not pitied.” God has no pity for a wicked people.

The third child is another boy called Lo-ammi, which means “not my people.” And at this point, Israel is perhaps hoping that Gomer and Hosea are done having children.

What is God up to here? That’s always a good question to ask, especially when reading the Old Testament. I think we answer that by using the very modern acronym of DTR – define the relationship. Young adults and teens that are dating today often come to the moment when they have to “define the relationship.” They want to know who they are, what they are, and what they can expect. That’s what God is up to here in Hosea. God what’s to have a define the relationship conversation with his people. Let’s call this what it is. You show more interest in the gods and lusts of your imaginations than you do in the God who brought you out of Egypt into the promised land. So let me be honest with you. You will be punished and I don’t pity you. You stopped being my people some time ago.

The commandments Moses delivered tell us that our God is a jealous God. He won’t be cuckholded, or cheated on forever. Anytime we put something in place of God, whether that thing is a person or a passion, we are cheating on God.

I was watching the NFL Network the other day with the boys and they were showing a recap of the Steelers glorious run to the Super Bowl last year. At one point they interviewed Troy Polamalu. They’ve just shown Troy making some spectacular hits and interceptions, and at every moment playing with passion and reckless abandon. Then they cut to this quiet, humble man who says,

“I don’t love football. I love life. Football is a part of life and so I appreciate football and play it with passion.” He went to talk about the more important loves of his life, his wife and kids, and his ultimate love for the Lord.

The point is not that we have to hate sports, or shopping or whatever our interests are. The point is not that we should love our spouse less, but rather that we should know and love God more. Nothing can come close to what our love for God should be. Because no one or nothing else is as beautiful as the Lord is. Hosea is not the only place in the Bible where God describes his love for us as a marriage.

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 5.31-32

Here’s Paul again:

“If then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3.1-4

Timothy Keller tells the story of a woman named Sally. Sally, Keller writes, “had the misfortune of being born beautiful.” Even as a child she could see the power that her physical beauty had on people. At first she used her beauty to manipulate others. But then others began to use it to manipulate her. She came to feel powerless unless she some man was in love with her. She could not bear to be alone. This made for a lot of unhappiness and disappointment in her life. More than that, she felt her life slipping away as she worshipped the god of romance.

One day, though, Sally got her life back. She came across this passage in Colossians that we just read. She came to realize that neither men nor career nor anything else should be “her life” or identity. What mattered was not what men thought of her, but what Christ had done for her and how he loved her. So when she saw a man was interested in her, she would silently say in her heart toward him, “You may turn out to be a great guy, and maybe even my husband, but you cannot ever be my life. Only Christ is my life.” When she began to do this, Sally got her life back.

That is the promise of God. That if we allow our lives “to be hid” in Christ, when Christ begins to appear, the real you appears with him in glory. The good news is that, though the Lord may become jealous and angry, he is also forgiving and gracious and above all, full of love for us. When it comes to his people, God’s love won’t be denied.

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” Hosea 2.14

“And in that day says the Lord. . .I will have pity on Not Pitied, and I will say to Not my people, You are my people and he shall say, “Thou art my God.”