Sermon Nuggets week of April 4
Sermon Nuggets Mon April 4
Verses Matt 5:13-16
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.
14 "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
15 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.
16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
(NIV)
Salt of the World
I asked a person from Eastern Europe what where some of the cultural surprises she experienced coming to the U.S. She was amazed, if not appalled, at the mammoth selections of food and so many brands of the same thing.
We are very choosy as to what we want to eat and purchase given the price is right. With recent concerns on diet we see low cholesterol, low salt, low sugars, and low calories. We have choices of light chips, light pop, light puddings, light soups, light on salt and light on sugars. Many of these products have additives and imitation substitutes.
I was thinking we also have light Christians. Low salt, low calorie, with a lot of imitation things added.
There is a musical back in the 70s entitled Godspell. Braham preformed it a few years back. It takes its story from the life of Jesus. One of the lyrics to a song is, "You are the light of the world, but if the light is under a bushel, it's lost something kind of crucial. You gotta stay bright to be the light of the world.
“You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost it's flavor it ain't got much in it's favor, you can't have that fault and be the salt of the earth. So let your light so shine before men, let your light so shine, that they might know some kindness again."
As we looked the last couple of weeks at the Beatitudes we noticed happy people are God's people. The people of God are depicted as poor in spirit for they find their richness in God; they mourn, they are meek, they hunger and thirst after righteousness, their merciful they are pure in heart they are peacemakers, and because of that they will be persecuted.
Jesus is teaching that our righteousness is more than the outward acts that we do; it includes the motives behind those acts. It is not the business of the church to adapt Christ to the world, but rather the world to Christ. We do not change spiritual truth, we are instead changed by Jesus who is the way the truth and the life. Love him or leave him.
Jesus is trying to teach His disciples not only the path for happiness, but also how we might influence others around us for Christ. He uses salt and light to illustrate his point. That will be our theme of devotions this week.
How do you influence others for Christ?
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Thurs April 5 –
Verse- Matt 5: 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.
Precious Salt
Jesus said to his followers “You are the salt of the earth.” But we miss something in the modern English translation; It is clear in the Greek that you is not singular, but plural. Certainly it includes these new followers of Jesus called the disciples who were basically uneducated and not leaders in any religious sense of the term. But he is also referring to all the followers of Him. You all are salt of the earth.
What a great compliment! Because salt was a necessity of life in ancient times and thus great value was attached to it. Salt was so important that it was sometimes used for money. The Roman soldiers of Jesus’ day were at times paid with it. In fact, our word “salary” comes from the Latin word salarium which referred to the payments to the soldiers with salt. We still use the phrase saying that someone either is, or is not, “worth their salt.” We don’t think much about salt because we can get as much of it in pure form as we want. It is just that little bottle with holes in the top on the table. But when you are completely dependent on salt to preserve your food, and when it is so valuable that it is used in the place of money, you get a completely different perspective on salt.
In our Western world I think often of how spoiled we are. AS I was eating yesterday I wanted variety and not eat leftovers. I though about the Israelites in the dessert where there was no variety of food- Manna day in and day out. For much of the world it is rice every meal. In part of Africa today they eat corn meal at every meal. Kim Hansen is headed for Tanzania. I heard their local dish is called “ooh golly”. One missionary said it was appropriately named because that is definitely described its taste - “ooh golly.” Without salt to make it palatable, it would be difficult to continue to swallow the same monotonous food, time after time. In Job 6:6 the Bible says, “Can flavorless food be eaten without salt?” For this one reason alone salt is indispensable.
We will continue to look at the value of salt this week, but Jesus wants us all to know first we are valued. We are precious to him. WE are important to the world into which HE has called us. We are to make a different. We are vital to His plan while on earth. We are to make a difference. Even if no one else cares, Jesus does. That makes us blessed. It also is His plan to make us a blessing.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Weds April 6
Verse- Lev 2:13 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.
Salt as Preservative
As salt was regarded as a necessary ingredient of the daily food, and so Israelites were instructed to add salt to sacrifices offered to the LORD. There is an Arabic expression, "There is salt between us"; "He has eaten of my salt," which means partaking of hospitality which cemented friendship; compare "eat the salt of the palace". Covenants were generally confirmed by sacrificial meals and salt was always present. Since, too, salt is a preservative, it would easily become symbolic of an enduring covenant. So offerings to Yahweh were to be by a statute forever, "a covenant of salt for ever before Yahweh" (Numbers 18:19).
Salt was most commonly used as a preservative for foods. Salt kept food from spoiling. We have become so used to refrigerators for keeping and storing and preserving foods from contamination for a period of time. We can keep food in freezers for long periods of time and it will still be good to eat. Hospitals find that refrigerators and cool storage is necessary for preserving blood that is collected and stored before use. Medicine is kept good by refrigeration; however they did not have electric refrigerators in the Middle East at that time.
When the disciples caught fish they had to get it to market soon. The only way to get it there in a condition in which anyone would want to buy it was to salt it down. They would pack it between layers of salt so they could carry it with them down into the markets in Jerusalem where it could be sold as fresh as when they caught it. Salt arrested corruption; it kept fish edible.
In that same manner you as followers of Jesus Christ we are to preserve our society with righteousness. Our lives become a living sacrifice to the Lord and living for Christ is to affect our sin filled world. We are to so stand as a preventative to corruption and decay in our society and world. Part of that influence that Christians are suppose to have in our life around them is to halt growing sin and corruption of man and their devises. We need to be people that say no to corruption be it in government, schools, social agencies as well as churches. We need to vote and speak up with issues on morality, pornography, injustice, truth, honesty, abortion. We need to preserve sanctity of family and marriage, and freedoms that will build good in our society and not free to impose the evils on one another.
Christians need to preserve our society by reminding us that it is a lie that winning is the only thing in life. Sports researcher Robert Goldman polled 198 world class athletes and asked, "Would you take a pill that would guarantee a gold medal even if you knew that it would kill you in five years? More than 50% agreed they would.
We need to foster a keen sense of right and wrong in early years. High on the list of priorities is pleasure and good times without weighing long range consequences that scar and hurt personalities for years to come. It's no wonder that the kids who want to remain chaste often feel like prudes and freaks today. Pornographic music videos, raunchy TV and teen sexploitation movies make it seem like everybody's doing it.
We are responsible before our Lord, not only of living honestly and Christ-like in our world, but by so doing we preserve it from getting worse. And that by living like Jesus.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Thurs April 7
Verse Ezekiel 16:1 "On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with slat or wrapped in cloth."
Salt Purifies
Salt is also used as a purifier. It became like an antiseptic in certain incidences. It was considered pure as a kind of medicine it was to clean and purify wounds. However if I got salt into a wound it would hurt!
And Christianity may rub many the wrong way, because it’s irritating to their wounds of sin. We shouldn’t purposefully try to be irritating, but also not surprised when it happens. It symbolized the purity and honesty of the agreement of people. Christians are to be pure and an example of purity by not lowering their standards. Being salt involves being honest and diligent in their work, conscientious in speech and in deed and thought.
Look at music over the last 50 years. It used to be that Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was considered the music of rebellion. But look at what’s on TV today. I remember when Gone with the Wind was being talked about because Redd Butler used one curse word. Have you watched the cartoons and how foul mouthed the characters are? Everyone gasped when the first couple was shown, not in separate beds, but in the same one…oh my! Don’t look at how it is today!
I flipped the channels and saw dancing with the stars and first thought it had something to do with Victoria’s Secret. I worry about our children and our grandchildren and the world where texting nude pictures to one another in elementary school is common.
What would the world be like if there were no salty Christians? We don’t have to guess…just read the book of Revelation once the salt is removed! If you think we’re in a wild spiral now, just wait!
We need to be salty saints when it comes to the abortion holocaust, pornography, homosexuality and gay marriage, and so much more!
The best way we can seek to be purifying agent is point people to the only one that can cleanse or purify anyone from their sin- Jesus Christ. Many have experienced freedom from sin and guilt that makes people so miserable and wonders what in the world is life for anyway.
It is not uncommon for me to hear someone tell me they wished they accepted Christ as their savior years earlier before they wasted so much of their lives. They discovered we really can know God his closeness and power in our lives when we stop living by our own lusts and wants and invite him to take over. Instead of being constricting it is a freeing up process. Born again people are not sorry about it, they are freed from guilt; the past is forgiven.
Pastor Dale
Sermon Nuggets Fri April 8
Verses- Matt 5:13 "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.
Job 6:6 "Food is tasteless without salt there is no flavor
in the white of an egg"
Palatable
Many foods without salt taste horrible; they are not palatable. They have little enjoyable flavor without adding some seasoning. The good old days did not have the variety of spices we do today so salt and pepper were the main ingredients. Salt adds flavor to many foods which are otherwise bland and insipid.
We typically have way too much salt in processed food and acquire a taste using greater quantities and as a result many have high blood pressure and hyper-tension.
But the figurative expression calling Christians to be like salt is to bring out the best in situations and other people. It is to have a positive effect on our society.
Jesus says that if the salt loses its flavor, (v. 13b) “… It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” Technically speaking, salt cannot lose its saltiness; sodium chloride is a stable compound. But in the part of the world where Jesus lived, salt was collected from around the Dead Sea where the crystals were often contaminated with other minerals. These crystallized formations were full of impurities, and since the actual salt was more soluble than the impurities, the rain could wash out the salt, which made what was left of little worth since it lost its saltiness. When this happened, the salt was thrown out, since it was no longer of any value either as a preservative or for flavoring.
When the salt was leeched out it still looked like salt, but it lost its taste. The essential difference can be leached out of a Christian’s life by the constant flow of the world’s values through our lives.
When Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual leader of India, he was asked by some missionaries, “What is the greatest hindrance to Christianity in India?” His reply was, “Christians.”
Salt in order to be any good must make contact with something.
To keep from corruption and decay it must touch the fish, to purify it, it must be rubbed on the wound, to taste good it must be sprinkled on the food. It is not worth much just sitting on a table.
Christians aren't much good sitting back and not making contact with others. We must have contact in our society in the earth to provide an affect on it. We are to be in the world, but not of it. But we must not be so contaminated that we are of no effect. For then you might as well be thrown out and trampled under foot by man. Mixture with impurities can make salt become useless and even dangerous according to chemists and nothing can be done to help it. If the salt loses its effectiveness it alone makes everything else corrupted. Our mission, as believers in Jesus, is to save and influence this world and if we don't the world is lost.
What type of influence do you have on others around you?
Pastor Dale
