Following Jesus? People of Influence – Sermon – Pastor Marlee Page

Our focus this morning will stay mostly focused on vs. 13.

“YOU ARE THE SALT.”

To the average Christian, salt is something that comes in a box and hides itself on the shelf until it’s needed or it’s found on one of these little white packets…(pepper’s best friend). If you’ve spent more than 20 minutes in church, you have probably heard that “you are the salt of the earth”.

Few things in creation are more ordinary than salt.

Most of us have interacted with it in the last couple of hours, whether we realize it or not. It is used to make leather, pottery, soap, detergents, rubber, clothes, paper, cleaning products, glass, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. It sits largely unnoticed on hundreds of millions of café and restaurant tables around the world.

Unlike pepper, which is often sitting next to it, salt is essential for our health and has always been eaten by human beings wherever we have settled. We add it to so much of our food that many languages simply distinguish between sweet and salty flavours.

We spread it across roads when it snows. More than half of the chemical products we make involve salt at some stage. And that’s without mentioning the trillions of tons of it that sit in our oceans, covering 70 percent of the surface of our planet.

Salt is everywhere.

I was watching a newscaster report on the horrible devastation in the midwestern US. these past few weeks, several were killed, thousands displaced. it was absolutely horrible and he said these were “salt of the earth kind of people-hard working, honest, people”

Our hearts break for these folks…but that’s not what Jesus meant in any way, shape or form when he uses the words “you are the salt of the Earth.”

When Jesus said, “you are the salt of the earth,” He was speaking to anyone then or now who accepts Him as Saviour. It’s one of the clearest declarations from Jesus to His followers. Notice, He did not say for us to become salt. He said we are salt; once we accept Him into our lives we are automatically the salt of the earth.

And the second part of the verse gives us insight into what being salt should mean…”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 underfoot.”

In fact isn’t Jesus saying…just being salt is not enough…if we are salt and not being salty we are good for nothing Christians?

But the question is what do we do with this? – HOW DO WE ACT AS SALT IN OUR WORLD?

The answer lies in the way salt is used. Salt is a seasoning and preservative.

It seasons by adding taste and enhancing flavour.

It preserves by cleansing and slowing spoilage.

In both cases, the salt has to be in contact with what it seeks to season and what it seeks to preserve before it works; its power cannot be released unless it touches the food.

Salt does no good sitting in the little packets or shaker. It might as well be thrown out.

I said, its power cannot be released unless it touches the food…but how much do we use, when do we use it, when do we not use it?

These are very important questions both in cooking & baking as well as the application of our faith.  The answer might come from our Mom’s so often and that’s where we come into the picture.

The Barna group did a study not long ago and reports this:

The Article’s Title was  “Moms Are Primary Activity & Conversation Partners for Teens”

“For all the stereotypes of teens rolling their eyes at their parents, Gen Z are actually very open with and dependent on their mothers. Consider their descriptions of one-on-one time with other housemates. Today’s Christian teen consistently identifies their mother as the principal housemate for almost all activities. From eating meals together (85%) and watching TV or movies (81%), to talking about God (70%) and having confrontations (63%), mothers are the primary activity partner for their teens. They are second only to friendships even when it comes to using their phones for texting (69% mothers vs. 73% friendships) and calling (61% vs. 71%).  The only time mothers are not leading the way is when it comes to activities like interacting on social media or playing sports, both dominated by friendships.

All of us, whether you are a mom or not, I want you to think about your own family setting right now, I expect for most of us here, the Mom and child relationships we know fit into these statistics.  The number one way for Christians to be salt is for us to show Christ’s relevance & to live His relevance in every area of life. And an incredibly important factor in that is for Mom’s (each parent really) to model and encourage how to be the ‘salt’ in the relationships around our kids.

We cannot accomplish this by talking only to ourselves, writing only for ourselves, and working only in the “safe” spaces in the world.

Mom’s play an incredibly important role in the future of our next generations ability to be “Salt” where the world needs both seasoning and lack of spoilage.

In this passage, Jesus isn’t speaking to pastors and missionaries at a convention…He’s speaking to lay people and he’s challenging them to think strategically about the Kingdom of God and to act in ways to lift it up. We all need to do the same with our next generations!

We are called to Be Salt in raising and uplifting our family.

If you keep Christ’s relevance bottled up in the church, it’s like keeping Salt in the shaker.

…as we go…and wherever we go, we need to show His relevance and the relevance of His word in every aspect of modern life.

…It’s not an option  and something we can be ashamed of …It’s a scripture imperative! That means a command.

For us to be obedient to this command it takes penetration; salt must penetrate the meat to preserve it; Christians must penetrate the world in the key areas of our culture if we want to preserve it.

Penetration does not mean standing outside and lobbing bombs of criticism over the wall. It is not about being reactionary and negative.  It is about being inside through competence and talent, with God’s help and the discernment of the Holy Spirit, offering scripturally based alternatives to those things that are corrupting and evil.

“Be in the World…but not of the world.”  – You cannot be salt without both.

Boycotting a movie is much easier than creating, producing and selling “The Chronicles of Narnia”

Protesting an abortion clinic is much less time intensive than volunteering at the Melo Clinic – one of our Missions Partnerships.

That, my friends, is salt.

When Christians criticize and complain but offer no alternatives, the world rolls its eye, snickers and moves on…and our kids and everyone around us see that.

However, it’s when we offer “a more excellent way” that we should get more attention.

It does very little good to communicate with each other about how evil the world is, how evil the media is, or the political community, or whatever- honestly the list in endless.

Sitting in the pews wringing our hands about the mess in the world isn’t being SALT.  Neither is declaring things evil without offering positive, godly alternatives.

It’s exactly what Paul advised the Roman Christians.