The Power of the Parables
Part 3- How Do You Taste?
Pastor Ryan Akers
Matthew 5:13-16, Luke 11:33-36
(A very small portion of the historical research was taken from Jose Marin’s sermon, Salt and Light Witnessing.)
Matthew 5:13-16 13"You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it useful again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. 14You are the light of the world--like a city on a mountain, glowing in the night for all to see. 15Don’t hide your light under a basket! Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine for all. 16In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
How do you taste? Don’t worry I’m not going to ask you to lick your arm or anything.
Although I can imagine we would be get the community buzzin with talk if we started to say instead shake the hand of the person next to you, we said make sure your nice and lick the hand of the person next to you.
Continuing this series on the parables today.
This is not so much a story as an illustration but it is still considered a parable by most scholars.
Jesus talks about us being the salt and light right after his sermon on the mount. If you remember the Sermon on the Mount was preached so all who heard could know what is expected of a believer. It was given by God to bring believers into obedience to God, not by our power. To follow these by our selves on our human strength will only cause us to fail. These are only attainable with the help of the Holy Spirit. Christ lists the qualities of a believer. Look at Matthew 5:3-12.
We are not going to read it but look at the qualities Jesus requires out of us as his followers.
*Blessed- this word means more than happy. “Happiness is an outward emotion, dependant on outward circumstances. Blessed here refers to a spiritual joy that is shared with those who share in the salvation of Jesus Christ.”
*poor in spirit- in contrast to the spiritually proud and self-sufficient.
*meek- humble
*hungry that thirst for righteousness
*merciful
*pure in heart- center of our being, mind, will, and emotions
*peacemakers- those that promote peace amongst themselves and try to bring peace between others
*persecuted- read vs. 11
From this section of scripture Christ says that we as God’s children are to be the salt of the earth. We are to be a light for the world. We are to bring sustaining flavor and guiding light to a dark and barren land. The Sermon on the Mount dealt with how we with the power of the Holy Spirit should live and this next section shows how with those qualities we can bring hope to the hopeless. That is why we are here. It all fits under our mission as a local and global community of believers no matter what your doctrinal beliefs our mission never changes. Love God, love people, and follow Jesus.
Why does Christ use salt?
In Christ day Salt was necessary for survival. It was a cherished commodity. It was a highly prized material. Sometimes it was even used as money. The English word salary is derived from the Latin word Salarium which refers to the payments made to a Roman soldier with salt.
Salt basically had three main purposes which Christ used as the perfect illustration to show how the Christian life should be the same.
1. Salt preserves
Salt was a preservative. The men and women of Christ day couldn’t throw their leftovers or their freshly cut meat from the deli into the freezer. They needed a way to preserve their food for a short time.
Salt would temporarily hold back or pause rotting of the meat.
Dr. G Campbell Morgan says about the value of salt, “It is not antiseptic, but aseptic. Antiseptic is something which is against poison and which tends to its cure. Aseptic is something which is devoid of poison itself. Salt never cures corruption. It prevents the spread of corruption. If meat is tainted and corrupt, salt will not make it untainted and pure. But salt in its neighborhood will prevent the spread of corruption to that which otherwise would become tainted.”
Maybe you can see where I’m going. Christ says to us, “You are the salt of the earth.” The earth as we know it is corrupt. It is evil. It is filled with sin. Corrupt leaders, misguided thinking, and selfish ambition. Christ says you are the salt. You as the church are what I have chosen to sprinkle on this world to hold back the evil until I come again. We cannot cure the evil of this world. Only Christ can do that. We, as believers are to simply do the work of God. The work he calls each of us to do in order to hold back the evil until that chosen Day of Judgment.
For this lawlessness is already at work secretly, and it will remain secret until the one who is holding it back steps out of the way. II Thess. 2:7
When is that day? Not even Jesus knows. And we can’t worry about that.
(ILL- Wal-Mart worker who thought they knew when Christ was coming back)
We have to ask ourselves how are we preserving this world. What are we doing to hold back the corruption, the evil, until that day comes?
2. Salt Seasons/Flavors
Salt is a beneficial seasoning. Probably the most common statement made at the dinner table is, “please pass the salt.” Without thinking about it when a plate of food is put in front of us we immediately grab the salt and put it on the food. How do we know that food won’t taste good without salt?
(7 brides for 7 brothers, my food can stand on its own two feet.)
Salt just makes things taste better. It is extremely beneficial, but also salt can lose its flavor. It can lose its tang, which is the word most used by the Scots. If salt has lost its tang, what is it good for?
Naturalist tell us salt, that has lost its flavor, when thrown out upon fields will cause bareness.
When I read this I thought about the scripture in Matthew 9:37-38 where Jesus says, “37He said to his disciples, "The harvest is so great, but the workers are so few. 38So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send out more workers for his fields."
Christ is talking about the lost that need to hear the truth, but if the workers that are going out have lost their flavor what good will they bring? They won’t. They will only bring bareness across the land. They will not save souls; they will cause people to turn away.
While we as believers can never lose our soul we can lose our savor, our flavor. We can become flavorless in life. And when we are flavorless in life our influence is lost to a flavorless world.
How do I know if I’ve lost my flavor?
Are you comfortable right now? Are you happy with where you are at in your life as a father, mother, and believer? Are you happy with just doing the absolute minimum to get to heaven and to just be a number? Are you willing to just jump ship when things aren’t exactly your way? If you’ve said yes to 1 or more than you are probably losing your flavor. You may be losing the seasoning that is needed to live for God, to be used by God, to grow in God.
Complacency kills the harvest. Complacency kills the flavor of your salt. And when a complacent flavor losing believer tries to live in flavorless world bareness will happen.
But don’t worry there is hope.
The person with seasoning goes around spreading it where ever they are.
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Col 4:6
The one that is seasoned brings smiles to people’s faces.
Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other." Mark 9:50
The seasoned believer brings peace among others, and does not allow strife between them and someone else to enter their lives. They get rid of it. Basically these scriptures go right back to the character traits of a believer found in the Sermon on the Mount. Peacemaker, humble, thirst for holiness, merciful, forgiving.
A seasoned believer has peace, patience, joy, goodness, gentleness, self-control.
A seasoned believer is slow to become angry, not rude, not proud/arrogant, not self seeking, keeps no records of wrongs against them by others. All of this sounds familiar? The seasoned believer is filled with love. Love God, love people, and follow Jesus.
"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Luke 14:34-36
All men and women and children must hear. If you lose your flavor Christ says it is not good for soil nor is it even worthy to be in a pile of poop. It is thrown out!
How do you taste?
3. Salt cleanses
One day the men of the city said to Elisha, "You can see for yourself, master, how well our city is located. But the water is polluted and nothing grows." He said, "Bring me a brand-new bowl and put some salt in it." They brought it to him. He then went to the spring, sprinkled the salt into it, and proclaimed, "God’s word: I’ve healed this water. It will no longer kill you or poison your land." And sure enough, the water was healed—and remains so to this day, just as Elisha said. 2 Kings 2:19-22
Flavorless salt causes bareness but salt with flavor will cleanse a poisoned land.
As you and I live this crazy life of being a believer in Christ. Not a religious person. Jesus was not religious. Religious persons are focused on the tradition, rituals, dogmatic thinking. Christ was against the relgion of his day because it had become corrupt. The true believer is not about religion but relationships.
I love when I meet people and they ask me what I do and I say I’m a pastor. They usually look at me and say I’m not really into religion. I say really!? Me either, that is awesome. Normally they look at me kind of funny, but I then tell them I’m into relationships. Loving God, loving people, following Jesus.
The seasoned/flavorfull believer who chooses relationships over religion is the one who, with the power of the holy spirit will preserve, season and help bring cleansing to a dead land. The character traits Christ talks about will be more than mere words on a page. They will pierce your heart and bring transformation.
Now the tough part of the whole cleansing process is when we are the ones who need to be cleansed. All of you have a past that is like an open wound. If salt gets put on an open wound it hurts. But while it hurts in the beginning that salt is being used to bring healing to that wound.
As brothers and sisters in Christ there are things in our lives that we will not admit, they are open wounds that we don’t want people to find out. If someone found out it might bring pain that we couldn’t bare. But inorder to be transformed for Christ we must be able to give up even our weakest temptations or most terrible sins to Christ.
That might hurt but in the end it will bring a healing. Then when Christ has brought a cleansing to your life you can turn around and bring healing to others.
If you wonder why you aren’t growing or are still struggling with big and little things, what haven’t you given up? What wound are you unwilling to put the salt on.
Is it addiction? Bad marriage, past marriage, grudges, anger, guilt… what is it that you have not released yet that is keeping you from growing to a place where you desire to be? To feel a joy and freedom that Christ so long to gives you?
Improve your flavor
1. Surrender to God
Give up for him. Surrender to him, Release your life and let God take over. Don’t be the lord of your life, let God be the lord of your life.
2. Salivate for God
Thirst for him, long for him, be consumed by him. Don’t make Jesus a Sunday event, make Jesus a lifestyle. Don’t think you can separate the spiritual life from the physical life, God created the physical and breathed life into your physical so there is not separation. Everything is spiritual. What you do, what you say, how you act, how you live, what you eat, what you think, how you move, what you watch, what you listen to. Everything is spiritual. So everything and absolutely everything matters to God.
Get in a bible study, get accountable. Share your hurts and fears. Let others see your wounds. Let them pour their salt on your wounds. It will hurt but it will bring healing.
As the salt of this earth we are to preserve, season, and cleanse this world. God is going to give us people, opportunities to do just that. We may never be world changers in the sense that we travel the world and see millions come to know Christ. But if you reach out to just one person through obedience to God you have done just as much as the one who travels the world.
ILL- (Austin, missed opportunity to share Christ with him. Committed suicide a year after I left school)
Don’t miss your opportunity like I did. Don’t just pass people up because you don’t like them or they don’t meet your standard. Or they don’t agree with your doctrine or beliefs. Be consumed with his love and sprinkle that all over the place. Love God, love people, follow Jesus. How do you taste?
