Are We Salty?

“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.” [Matthew 5:13]

For the longest time I did not know what Jesus was talking about in this section of the Sermon on the Mount. Although it is just one verse in the bible, it is filled with meaning, even in our day and age. So much, in fact, that I wish to share with you today, just how much this one little verse should have an impact on your life!

Salt is used for the flavoring and preservation of food. If you’ve ever been to a ranch, you’ve most likely seen salt licks around. Salt licks are rather large, blocks of salt! Horses lick on these blocks, thus the name, salt lick! Horses get really addicted to their salt licks. Visiting ranches, it will seem as though that’s all the horses do. They just stand there licking their salt licks! Ranchers provide the horses with these salt licks, not to provide the horses with enough sodium chloride for their neurons, but rather to get the horses to drink more water. Salt makes horses, as it does humans, thirsty. That’s why they put mounds of salt on the popcorn you buy in movie theatres. So that you will subsequently buy something to drink.

Why did Jesus compare us with the compound sodium-chloride (table salt)? From the above paragraph, we see that saltiness causes thirst. As with horses, and most North Americans (!) salt is addictive. With anything that’s addictive, you can’t seem to get enough of it. You want more and MORE. There is something about salt that compels us to desire more.

Potato chips are a good analogy for this phenomenon. Have you ever just wanted to try one potato chip and ended up eating a lot more than you had wanted to? Just the thought alone makes my mouth water.

Do interactions with you cause others to thirst for Jesus? If people you knew, were to sit down and think about you, would it cause them to thirst for (or more of) Jesus? Does your lifestyle show others what they are missing out on? Does it reveal to them that there is more to life than what they have been experiencing? Questions that Jesus himself brings asks us. Questions we should seriously consider if we are to be truly faithful to our calling as children of God and ‘lights to the world’.

If we are salty, then there is something that attracts others to us. And that should steer them to the source of our being. Namely Jesus Christ. If we are salty, then there should be something about us that causes those in our immediate surroundings to thirst for Christ.

There is a flip-side to this though. In Luke’s version, he writes that when salt loses it’s saltiness,”It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.” [Luke 14:35] If we don’t promote thirst for Christ, we are not even suitable for the manure pile! Now that’s a hard one to swallow (both literally and figuratively!!!)

Selah.

That’s why Jesus continues his sermon with, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” [Matthew 5:14-16]

So why should we be salty? So that the people around us may turn to praise our heavenly Father.

Let us all take this to heart and continually maintain the flavour of our saltiness.

Tags: Edification Corner, Mini Sermons, salt, thirst