Brown's Daily Word 3-4-10

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this glorious day. The Lord blessed us with a wonderful Wednesday Evening gathering. We studied the verses in Mathew 5: 13ff, and then we discussed the influence and impact we can have in the world as followers and servants of Jesus, our Lord.
Jesus said to his followers, “You are the salt of the earth.” But we miss something in the modern English translation; the KJV translates this verse “Ye are the salt of the earth.” Jesus spoke to his handful of basically uneducated disciples and referred to them as the salt of the earth. What great dignity Jesus bestowed on his followers. What a great compliment! Because salt was a necessity of life in ancient times, 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.
Because we live in a part of the world where we have an abundance of food we don’t understand the monotony of the diet of those who lived in Jesus’ day, and even for most of those who live in third world countries even today. In a great portion of the world rice is the common food, three times a day. In Job 6:6 the Bible says, “Can flavorless food be eaten without salt?” For this one reason alone salt is indispensable.
Christians, like salt, are of infinite value. Furthermore, Christians, like salt, act as a preservative. Salt was important for survival, because it was the only way people of the day had to preserve meat. Obviously, they were not as privileged as we are with refrigeration, so salt became very important in their ability to preserve their food. Salt was rubbed into the meat before it was stored. Salt was used to arrest or at least to hinder the process of decay, so too Christians are given the task of arresting the decay of our world.
Christianity has, in fact, had a profound positive effect on the world. The most dramatic impact of Christianity on the world is that it has attached new value to human life. Prior to Christianity, infanticide and abandonment of children was a common practice. Hospitals, as we now know them, began through the influence of Christianity. The Red Cross was started by an evangelical Christian. Almost every one of the first 123 colleges and universities in the United States has Christian origins, founded by Christians for Christian purposes. The same could be said of orphanages, adoption agencies, humane treatment of the insane, (the list goes on and on) of dramatic impact of Christianity in our world. [D. James Kennedy. “What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1994) pp. 3- 4]
Christian’s continue to have a positive benefit on our world. As a "moral antiseptic", Christians keep the corruption of society at bay by opposing moral decay by their lives and their words.
So, to recap, Christians, like salt, are of infinite value. Christians, like salt act as a preservative. Also, Christians, like salt, are meant to promote thirst. In arid climates and in athletic competition, salt is used to promote thirst. Christians are to make Christ attractive and desirable. In Titus 2:9, the Apostle Paul told Christian servants that they must act in such a way “that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.” “Adorn” is the Greek word from which we get the word cosmetics, and is used to describe the arrangement of jewels in a manner to set off their full beauty. The idea is that Christian servants (any Christian for that matter) have the power, through their exemplary behavior, to make the Christian life and faith beautiful to those who are outside.
Whenever we, as Christians, are introduced into a setting, whether is social or work related, unbelievers should see evidence of the difference that Jesus Christ makes in our lives. They should be able to look at us and say, “I don’t know what they have but I want it.”
Christians, like salt can lose their usefulness. (v. 13b) 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.”
Christians, like salt, must have contact in order to have influence. We, as Christians, are to be a preserving force in the world wherever God has placed us. Note, however, that salt never did any good just sitting on a shelf in one place while the meat was somewhere else. To be effective, the salt had to be rubbed into the meat. In a similar way, Christians are to allow God use them wherever he has placed them. Whenever the church becomes a salt warehouse, a place merely to store up Christians, it has missed out on the lesson that salt must make contact to have an affect.
Let us notice what Jesus said and did not say about salt. He did not say, “You all can be the salt of the earth.” Neither did he say, “You all should be the salt of the earth.” Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth”, and in the Greek it is literally “You and you alone are the salt of the earth.”

To be salt, we do not have to be spectacular
To be salt, we do not have to be sensational
To be salt, we do not have to be successful (by the world’s standard’s)
To be salt, we just have to affect our little corner of the world.

In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDQ1bfG2SWo