We're going to be looking at
Matthew chapter 5 and verse 13 today. If you want to turn there. Matthew 5, 13, continuing on
with the Sermon on the Mount. This has been a challenging study
for me to study this. I seemed like I had to work extremely
hard to get to a position where I was satisfied that I have some
understanding of this verse and I pray that the Lord would make
it meaningful to you and bless you with it. I realized as I
was studying this that there's nothing that I can say that will
be of any profit to you, even if I speak God's word, unless
the Spirit of God attends that word. It's just not possible. We were looking at Acts chapter
seven in Rescue on Friday night, and one thing struck me is that
the men who heard Stephen preach were convinced that what he was
saying was true. And yet they killed him. And
so they were convinced on the one hand, but they were not persuaded
in their hearts to trust Christ. So that's the way the gospel
is. God has to apply it to us. So
I want to ask the Lord before we get into the sermon that he
would do that right now. Let's pray. Father, we know that
nothing we do is of profit unless you ordain it unless you give us
the grace in it, unless the subject of our speech and the trust and
hope of our heart is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we pray,
dear Lord, that you would be with us in this hour. Open your
word to us, we pray. We cannot know what you have
said unless you make it known. Nor can we apply it to our own
hearts unless you apply it. So we pray, dear Lord, that you
would do that now for your namesake and for our salvation and our
edification. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Let's read Matthew 5.13 together. You are the salt of the earth,
but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be
salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing
but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men. Now, the context of Matthew 5.13
runs from verse 3. through 12, and the Lord Jesus
Christ there makes his disciples known. He makes them known by
the grace with which he has blessed them. They who have nothing in
themselves, who are poor in spirit, have only Christ. And having
Christ, they have all things. Those who mourn over their sin,
who have been given a broken and contrite spirit before God,
are comforted by God telling them that they have received
double for all their sins, and that Christ has taken their wrath,
and they are not condemned, but justified before God, perfect,
complete in Him. They are meek. They hear and
follow Christ, their shepherd, the shepherd of their souls,
and they will not follow a stranger. They are mastered by God, and
His will is their delight. They hunger and thirst after
Christ's righteousness. And they have received mercy
from the throne of the sovereign God on the ground of Christ,
propitiating blood. And they are merciful to others.
That's what these things are. They are pure in heart. Their
heart is clean, having been purified by faith. And their conscience
is sprinkled by the blood of Jesus. They're drawn to come
to God by Christ alone. They confess their sins, and
they confess what they are. And they do not attempt to bring
works to recommend them, but they come boldly, and they come
often to the throne of grace to find grace to help in time
of need. God has made peace with them
by the blood of His Son, and they know this peace through
faith in His blood, and they desire that men be reconciled
to God in Christ. And because they hold Christ
alone in all, in their hearts, and because they hold Him forth
before men, as the only Lord and as the only
one by whom God will accept them, they're persecuted for His namesake. That's the context of this verse,
you are the salt of the earth. In this It is in this context
that Jesus declares his disciples to be the salt of the earth.
Our master is emphasizing, I think, two things. First, that all of
his disciples are the salt of the earth, all of them. It's
not an exhortation to produce saltiness, but it is to be what
we are, what we have been given, salt. Second, he teaches that
we must be sure that we are genuine disciples. That we have the true
savor of salt. All of Christ's disciples are
salt and light. Just as all of his disciples
suffer affliction, persecution for his namesake. The gospel
offends natural men. It strips them. Strips them of
all they rely on and trust in and leaves them naked before
God with no hope but Christ. Nothing offends men more than
that God rules absolutely and sovereignly. Nothing offends
them more to know that He finds them guilty and utterly sinful,
and that they are entirely dependent on His sovereign mercy in Christ
for salvation. There's nothing you or I can
do to save ourselves. Nothing we can do to convince
God or coerce God to save us. He must act out of sovereign
mercy. He alone can save, and He does
this alone by Christ. The gospel unhinges natural man. Their reaction is told throughout
scripture and retold. Cain killed Abel. Ishmael tormented
Isaac. Nebuchadnezzar threw Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace. The Jews killed
their own prophets and the Lord Jesus Christ. Jews killed Stephen,
and Zealots and Gentiles killed Apostles. Persecution continues
today. Unbelieving husbands mistreat
believing wives. Unbelieving parents assail believing
children. The Gospel separates between
unbelievers and believers, though they be in the same family and
be friends. This separation hurts, and it
hurts more because the fault for it is laid at the feet of
the believer. It is a constant drain and sorrow
to live daily with unbelievers, to see no apparent softening
on their part towards the gospel. But Christ knows the sorrow.
He knows this sorrow. He himself felt every rejection. His brethren did not believe
him. He came to his own, but his own received him not. He
is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows acquainted with
grief. His disciples betrayed him. Peter
denied him. Every disciple forsook him. His
disciple, not his disciples, one disciple, Judas, betrayed
him. The abjects gathered together and mocked him and tore at him.
And his countrymen crucified him at the hands of his enemies,
the Gentiles. And in consideration of this,
our Master reveals that in this world, there's only one place
where the uniqueness of salt and life reside, where it's found,
and that is in His people, those who believe Him, His true disciples.
Understand this then, that scripture does two things. First, it explains
to Christ's disciples, this scripture does two things. It explains
to Christ's disciples their role, our place in the world and why
we are persecuted. We are salt and light. Second,
it separates the true from the false. They're not all Israel
who are of Israel. Not all who profess to be Christians
belong to Christ. There's good and bad seed. There
are tares and wheat. There is good fish and bad fish. There are branches that bear
fruit and branches that are taken away, that are fruitless. There
are the approved and there are the unapproved in the church.
And there is salt and what is salt less. Those who are salt
are Christ's. Those who are salt only in name
but do not have the savor of salt are not Christ's. In Mark
9 50 it says salt is good. We are to have it in ourselves.
And this is my prayer for us today. May God have mercy on
all here that we might possess the grace of salt in us. Let
us join together in prayer that we may be found salty according
to the purpose for which we were called from darkness to light
to show forth the praises of him who saved us and called us
and keeps us and for whom we look to bring us to glory. So
the question is, what does salt signify in scripture? What does
our Lord mean when he calls his disciples the salt of the earth? To understand this, we must understand
what salt signifies in scripture. Now if you look in scripture
you find a couple of things that stand out. Salt signifies two
contrasting things in scripture. Blessing and cursing. It signifies
judgment, that's the curse. It signifies preserving and enduring
nature of God's covenant in Christ to his elect. It signifies healing. It signifies seasoning that makes
things taste good. And salt was offered with every
sacrifice. And from these things we can
learn how we are to be the salt of the earth. Let's look at a
few verses together. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 29
and verse 23. In Deuteronomy 29, God is pronouncing
cursings on those who disobey His law, who then are under the
curse of the law. The curse of the law is expressed
this way in verse 23. When a man determines in his
heart to go out and do whatever is in the imagination of his
heart and live in the land and do there what God has told him
not to do, then it says in verse 23, And that the whole land thereof
is brimstone and salt and burning, that is not sown, nor beareth,
nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and
Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger
and in His wrath. So what you see in this verse
is that the consequence of disobedience to the law of God was the curse
of that law. And the curse of the law is expressed
in fire and brimstone like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah
and the land was sown in salt so that nothing would grow there.
Brimstone means a stone that burns. It's really a sulfur. And so that burning is a hot
stench and it causes whatever is there not to grow anymore.
It's the judgment of God. And so the judgment of God is
pronounced on those who disobey His law. Another place in Judges
9.45, you don't have to turn there, but Abimelech, who was
the son of Gideon and he had 70 brothers, Gideon had 70 sons
in addition to Abimelech. Abimelech killed his 70 brothers. And one of the things he did
was, God would destroy Abimelech for doing that. And he fought
against a city. In the process of fighting against that city,
Abimelech destroyed the city and he sowed the city in salt.
That means he put salt into the ground so that nothing would
grow there. And so in these two examples,
You see that salt is a figure, it signifies the judgment of
God. Remember Lot's wife? She looked back. After God delivered
her from Sodom, she looked back to Sodom and she was turned into
a pillar of salt. So in those ways you see that
God's wrath, his anger against sin, is revealed in this figure
of salt. But there's other ways that are
blessings, and this is what we're going to look at next in a few
cases here. If you look at Numbers chapter
18, you'll see that here in Numbers 18, God uses salt to signify
the covenant. In Numbers 18, 19, it says this,
that It says here that all the heave
offerings of the holy things which the children of Israel
offer to the Lord have I given thee. This is speaking about
Aaron and his sons who served in the tabernacle offering the
sacrifices. God said I've given all of the
heave offerings to you and to your sons and to your daughters
with thee. By a statute forever, that means as long as the Levitical
covenant was in place, it is a covenant of salt forever before
the Lord unto thee and to thy seed with thee. So salt in the
covenant signifies the enduring and unalterable nature of God's
covenant. with Christ and with His elect
in Him. This covenant of salt is just
another name for the covenant God made with His people in Christ,
and we'll talk about that more in a minute. This covenant that
God made with His people in Christ is an everlasting covenant. It
cannot change. Therefore, like salt, it preserves,
salt preserves things and makes it endure for a long time God
calls His covenant a covenant of salt because His covenant
endures and it cannot be changed. So that's the second thing in
which, and you see the blessing of that. God is comparing the
salt there to His covenant. He uses salt to signify the covenant
in His promises. Neither angels nor devils can
alter God's covenant of grace. Why? because it was made in God. It was made in eternity. God
set the conditions of it. God staked himself to fulfill
it. Christ is the surety of it. God
will honor it eternally. Salt signifies, therefore, the
enduring nature, the unalterable nature of God's covenant of promise
in Christ. Remember 2 Corinthians 1.20,
all the promises of God in Christ are yes and amen. Because they
can't change. They're certain and sure. So
just as salt in itself is always salt, And its effects on things
is to preserve them, so God preserves His purpose and preserves His
people by the covenant of salt made to His Son and His people
with Him in Christ's blood. And so we read that in Numbers
18-19, it's called a covenant of salt. And this was used in
figure there, but it's fulfilled in Christ. Another thing to note
here is that God gave these offerings to the priests to eat. And when they offered up things,
they would always put salt in it. And so when the priests ate
the offering, they tasted the salt. And they were reminded
that this was a figure. It signified the covenant God
made with his people. Man himself cannot alter this
covenant. And aren't you glad? Aren't you
glad that God's covenant with His people doesn't depend on
them? That it's made entirely in Christ?
As the priest ate the sacrifice, And as the sacrifice tasted of
salt, and they were reminded of the covenant, so we eat of
Christ, and we partake of Him. And in eating Him by faith, we
live by Him, as the priests did then. We're called priests to
God because we partake of Christ, our sacrifice. And then again,
as far as a covenant of salt, look at 2 Chronicles 13. 2nd Chronicles chapter 13. Here
in 2nd Chronicles, there was a point in time where the kingdom
of Israel had been divided. Under David, all 12 tribes, Jerusalem,
Judah, Benjamin, the Levites, and all the tribes, the other
10 tribes of Israel, together were under one man, David. And
God promised to David that Israel would always be under him and
his sons. But here in 2 Chronicles 13,
what we see is that one of David's sons, Abijah, was warning Jeroboam
that God had made a covenant of salt with David that his sons
and only his sons would reign. And so Jeroboam, who was not
a son of David, who had been a servant of Solomon and rebelled
against his master, had usurped the king, the rule of king, as
his own over the ten tribes of Israel. And now he's coming against
Abijah with 800,000 men. And Abijah has only 400,000 men,
and he prays to the Lord, and he cries against Israel, the
10 tribes, and to Jeroboam. He tells them that God has made
a covenant of salt with David, and Abijah relies on the Lord,
and because of that, God delivered Jeroboam and the 800,000. I think
500,000 men were killed in the battle. But listen to this verse
in verse 5. Abijah says to Jeroboam and to
the people that he is ruling over, he says, Ought ye not to
know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel
to David forever, even to him and to his sons by a covenant
of salt? So here again we see the unchanging
nature, the certainty of that covenant in Psalm 89. God says,
I have sworn once, have I sworn by my holiness that I will not
repent, I will not lie to David. His son shall sit on the throne
forever. And so that's the same covenant,
the covenant of salt. And then another blessing, first
there's the cursings, then there was the blessing we see in the
covenant. Another blessing we see in salt is found in 2 Kings. Look at 2 Kings chapter 2. 2 Kings 2, here Elijah had been
taken to heaven, Elisha now has replaced him, and the men come
to Elisha because the city in which they lived had water, but
the water was an evil kind of water. It would make sick and
it would even cause people to die, and it made the land barren. And so the men came to Elisha
and they said, the city is in a good place, The position of
the city is good, but the water is bad, and it makes the land
bad. And so in verse 20, actually,
let's look at verse 19. It says, in 2 Kings 2, verse
19, it says, And the men of the city said to Elisha, Behold,
I pray thee, the situation of the city is pleasant, as my Lord
seeth, but the water is not. That means it's evil, it's wicked,
it's bad water, it causes death. And the ground barren. And he
said, Elisha said, Bring me a new cruise and put salt in it. And
they brought it to him. And he went forth into the spring
of the waters and cast the salt in there and said, Thus saith
the Lord, I have healed these waters. There shall not be from
thence any more death or barren land. So the waters were healed
unto this day according to the saying of Elisha, which he spoke."
Here you see the blessing of salt. Elisha takes a new vessel,
salt is put into it, he pours the salt into the spring, into
the fountainhead of the waters, the waters are healed, the people
no longer die and the land is no longer barren but fruitful.
And so here you see the healing nature that God is referring
to in this salt. Now we know that the Lord Jesus
Christ is the one through whom we're healed. It's by His stripes
that we are healed. Is it not Isaiah 53, 5? By His
stripes you are healed. And we also know that Christ
told Nicodemus that all who look to Him As the children of Israel
were commanded to look at that serpent lifted up on the pole,
all who look to Christ, crucified, and find in Him all of the answer
to God's curse against them for their sin, they would have eternal
life. And so the salt here signifies
that healing nature. And it's a blessing in that way.
And then another blessing, look at Job chapter 6. Another blessing
salt is, we see the dual nature that God uses salt to signify
in the Bible, through first the judgment and now the blessings.
In Job chapter 6, the context here is Job was afflicted. God allowed Satan to afflict
him. And in the ultimate end, it was God who
was afflicting Job. And Job lost all of his house. He lost all of his cattle, all
of his camels, all of his sheep, all of his oxen. And he lost
his children. He lost his servants. He lost
everything he had. He even lost his health. His
body was covered with boils. And he sat down on the ash heap
to scrape himself. And he was in pain and misery,
not only in his heart, but in his body. And his wife tells
him, curse God and die. That's what Job's situation was.
And three of his friends come to him. acting as if they would
comfort him, but the comfort they pretended to bring was an
accusation against Job that the whole reason for his sufferings
was his own fault, his own sin. So they were miserable comforters.
And Job says here in verse 5, he says, Does the wild ass bray
when he has grass? You don't hear the donkey out
there braying when he has something to eat. Does the ox moo, loath,
over his fodder? When a cow has something to eat,
he doesn't spend all of his time mooing and loathing over his
feed. He eats it. He's content. And
then he says this, to build on this, he says, can that which
is unsavory be eaten without salt? Now he's speaking in physical
terms, but he's building up to something. His friends came to
him to comfort him, they said. But what God had given him was
a sickness in his body, taking away all his goods, and he was
left with nothing. Everything in his life had left
All of life tasteless to him and barren. And so he says, can
that which is unsavory be eaten without salt? Or is there any
taste in the white of an egg? Whenever I have eggs, I like
to put a little salt on them. I don't like boiled eggs without
salt. It just don't taste right. And Job is the first one who
recognized that. He expected his friends to know
that. But he's saying to them, my situation is bad, and what
you're bringing me doesn't help. God has afflicted me. I need
the blessing of salt to make this taste good. All of our life,
what is it in our life that comforts? What's the only thing that comforts
a believer? If you discover what that is,
you'll discover what salt is. And we're going to try to do
that today. So another way in which salt is seen in a good
way is found in Leviticus chapter 2. And this is where I want to
spend a little time. Look at Leviticus chapter 2.
Here we see that God commands salt to be mingled with and offered
with every sacrifice. Leviticus chapter 2. Look at
this, it says, Verse 13, Every oblation of thy
meat offering shalt thou season with salt. Every oblation shalt
thou season with salt, neither shalt thou suffer the salt of
the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering. With all thine offerings thou
shalt offer salt." You see that? So there's several things mentioned
in this verse. First, salt seasons the sacrifice. Second, salt is also again mentioned
as the covenant. The covenant of salt. He says,
the salt of the covenant of thy God, don't let it be lacking
from thy meat offerings. And then he says, with all thine
offerings thou shalt offer salt. Not only the offerings of animals,
the blood offerings, but also the offerings that were not animals.
The meal offerings like flour and other things. They were to
be offered with salt. Those that were burnt were to
be offered with salt and those that were not burnt were to be
offered with salt. Everything was to be offered
with salt. Salt was supposed to be in all the offerings. Okay, God required it. So thus far, the use of salt
in scripture has been seen as a curse or a blessing. As a curse,
it is God's judgment of wrath against sin. As a blessing, it
preserves and is enduring. It represents the enduring, unalterable,
preserving nature of God's covenant of grace. And salt also makes
things taste good. There are several things that
salt does. I looked it up. I was curious about salt, just
as a side note. Why does salt preserve things?
And I found out the science of salt is interesting. If you put
salt on something, if you put something in a solution of salt,
then the cells that are in that thing, let's say you take a piece
of meat and you immerse it in salt, salt water, if there's
at least a 20% saline solution, what happens is the cells that
make up the bacteria and the mold and everything else that
might be in that meat, they have water inside the cells and that
water migrates out of the cell body through its membrane into
the saline solution. It's called osmosis. And so what
it results in is that the cells dry up. They lose their water.
And when they dry up, they can't live. They die. And so the bacteria
and the mold, everything that would cause it to spoil, dies. And what's left is just the meat.
Now, I brought back my shoes from Alaska, and they smelled
like fish, and they were really bad. So I said, hmm, let's try
it. So I just put them in salt. They
let them sit there for a couple days. I shook the salt off. Wow,
they smell a lot better now. It killed a lot of that bacteria. I think you can use that principle
to clean your carpets and other things, but that's an aside.
Salt purifies things and it heals things because of that. You put
it in a wound, it hurts. But it's actually cleansing the
wound by killing the things in the wound, like you'd put it
on a wound that might get gangrene and it'll actually cure it. Salt
is a very handy thing. People could be in the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is 1400 and some
feet below sea level, the lowest place on earth, on land. And
it's full of salt. It's over 20, I think it's like
25 or almost 30 percent salt. You could put a dead person in
that lake and they could be there for a thousand years completely
preserved because they wouldn't rot. That's the way salt is. So it represents a curse in one
sense. Nothing grows and is barren,
but it also preserves. It also makes these things last.
And so the covenant of grace is referred to in this way. And
it was offered with every sacrifice. But if you use it in the right
proportions, it makes things taste good, doesn't it? My brother
likes salt more than I do. But we all have our own, our
tolerance to it. One thing you think, too, it's
okay to have a little salt on your food. If God says it's okay
to put it on there, put it on there. The priests lived on this
food they got from the sacrifice, and it all was salted. They got
so used to it. You can imagine Aaron's sons
and daughters having all this stuff. They had meal, they had
meat, they had wine. Everything that was offered,
the best of it, was given to them to eat. And so they had
it with salt. And they got used to it. So salt
in that way was given by God, but it makes things taste good. It was used to season the sacrifice. God required it with every sacrifice,
whether bloody or bloodless, whether by fire or without fire.
And so we learn from these things, the blessings of salt and the
cursing, the judgment of salt, we learn something very, very
important about it. How can we put these things together
to understand the significance of salt in Scripture and see
what Christ means when He says, you are the salt of the earth? First of all, remember what the
covenant of promise, the covenant of grace is. What is the covenant? I want you to think about this
for a minute. The covenant of promise is the covenant that
God made with Christ, His Son, in eternity. You can read that
in Hebrews 13.20. It says, Now the God of peace,
that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great
Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting
covenant. It's an everlasting covenant.
Make you perfect in every good work to do his will. To make
you perfect, the covenant had provision in it, not only to
cleanse, but to perfect God's people. And known unto God are
all his works from the foundation of the world. It's an eternal
covenant. God elected a people to be his sons by adoption. In the covenant of promise, every
elect son is a child of promise, just like Isaac was a child of
promise. They are the seed of Christ.
They're predestined to be redeemed from bondage to the law by Christ
and to be born of the Spirit by the incorruptible seed of
the gospel, the word of God. God simultaneously chose and
gave His elect to Christ in this covenant. When we read in Ephesians
1-4, we're chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.
That's what it means. Chosen and given as one act. Chosen in Christ. God chose His
people in Christ and that choice made them Christ's own. They're
called His people, His sheep, His brethren, His church, His
nation, His body, His bride. John 17 2 says, Thou hast given
Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to
as many as Thou hast given Him. Christ was made the surety of
that covenant. What's a surety? A surety stood
in the place of the people as one for them, providing, meeting
all of the obligations and meeting all the requirements God required
of them. That's what Christ did. He's
the surety of that New Testament. It says in Hebrews 7.22, By so
much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament. And in
9.15 of Hebrews it says, For this cause He is the mediator
of the better of a better testament. As surety, everything God demanded
and required of His elect, He laid on Christ to satisfy and
fulfill. The elect were chosen in Christ.
They were chosen by God and given to Christ and forever are considered
one with Him. In all of God's dealings with
them, God treats them and Christ as one. By this, God made sure
that his sons would be brought to glory. By giving them to Christ,
surety implies that, doesn't it? When Jacob trusted Judah
to stand before the governor of Egypt on behalf of Benjamin. He said, Judah said to his father
Jacob, I will be surety for him to bring him to you again. So
God, in Hebrews 2.13 says, it became him for whom are all things,
and for whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory
to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Christ is our surety. He's the
surety because He's the second Adam. We're one in that covenant
with Him. And so all that God demanded
of His people, Christ fulfilled. All God promised to Christ, He
promised to Him and His people with Him. All the promises of
God are sure and amen in Christ. On condition of Christ's death
in this covenant, the elect would receive eternal inheritance in
Him. It says in Hebrews 9.15, for
this cause He is the mediator of the New Testament that by
means of death For the redemption of the transgressions which were
under the first testament, they which are called might receive
the promise of eternal inheritance. Canaan was the inheritance of
the Jews. Christ is the eternal inheritance
of His people and were given Him in this covenant. Christ
rose to administer the inheritance of his people. Even though he
was the testator who had to die to put it into force, he rose
again to implement and administer it, interceding for his people,
saving them to the uttermost by his life. Not only, but he
reigns as king to subdue all of our enemies under his feet.
The entire covenant is solely the design and promise and work
of the triune God. It's all His. Angels cannot alter
it. Devils can't thwart it. Man cannot
fail, make it fail. It is as sure as God's holiness,
God's name. It's as sure as God's person.
Now, the covenant of salt refers to this same covenant as we saw
in 2 Chronicles 13, 5. As salt preserves and endures,
so God preserves His people in this eternal, unalterable covenant. This covenant cannot fail because
it depends only on the triune God. Man is a recipient only. All who were promised in this
covenant must and shall be saved and brought to glory. Everyone
in this covenant. All those whose names were written
in the Lamb's book of life shall be brought to glory. Because
Christ died for them. This is the meaning of Christ
as our surety. To deny this is to deny the purpose
and work and person of Christ. Let these words, the words I'm
about to read, give us present assurance and forever be the
ringing triumphant praise to God. Romans 834, and I've said
this so many times before, but I want the Lord to emblazon it
on your conscience, to comfort you, to be the spring of all
your comfort and assurance and praise. It is Christ that died,
yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand
of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Come what may, nothing
in life, death, hell, or heaven shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Because
we're in this covenant, the covenant of salt. Now that's the first
thing. Secondly, Christ and Him crucified
makes things taste good. There's more besides the covenant.
It is called the covenant of salt because all of the sacrifices
were to be offered with salt. Salt makes the sacrifices taste
good. We read that in Leviticus 2.13.
Salt seasons things that otherwise don't taste good. Therefore,
God required salt with every sacrifice. The way in which covenant
blessings were made sure is that Christ was offered. Salt was
offered with the sacrifice. What does that signify? Two things. As salt signifies God's judgment,
so Christ endured God's judgment. As salt makes and heals, makes
things that don't taste good, taste good and heals, so it is
by virtue of Christ's person, His nature, His life, and His
love that God receives from Him a sweet-smelling savor. This
is important. In Luke, chapter 1, verse 35,
Christ is called the Holy One of God. He is the Son of God. He is holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. He is
the spotless Lamb of God. All these things speak of the
virtue, the purity, the holiness of Christ that made the sacrifice
acceptable to God. The judgment of God's wrath was
poured out on Christ. Because He was holy, because
He was pure, because He had no sin of His own, even though He
had our sins, He fully endured that judgment in His own person.
The fire did not consume Him. But He absorbed all of the wrath
of God, and God's wrath against our sin was completely satisfied. Punishment was rendered, and
God received full compensation against our sin. And He Himself
was satisfied by it. Isaiah 53, it says, He shall
see the travail of His soul, and He shall be satisfied. What a blessing that is. It's
salt that makes the sacrifice acceptable. Salt is a curious
symbol with its two-fold significance. Judgment and blessing. God's
wrath poured out and grace given. Christ offered himself to God.
And he knew no sin. But the mystery of the gospel
is that he who knew no sin was made sin for us. He died the
just for the unjust to bring us to God. Not only was he holy
in his person, in his life, but he was holy in all that he did. Look at Ephesians chapter 5.
I want you to see this. Remember, salt was to be with
every sacrifice, and salt made the sacrifice seasoned. It made it taste good. Ephesians
chapter 4, verse 32 says, And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
you. Be ye therefore followers of
God as dear children. Listen to verse 2. Walk in love. as Christ also hath loved us,
and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to
God for a sweet-smelling savour. What a blessing that Christ,
by virtue of His righteousness, virtue of the love for His God
and love for His people, all that was poured out on Him, He
endured and fully paid. But God received from Him in
his love for his people, a full satisfaction, so to God it smelled
good. Christ's holiness and purity
made the sacrifice endure through the punishment and tasted good
to God. This is what Saul signifies,
I believe. He sat down on the right hand
of the majesty on high. He did all that he did out of
love. His father He did it for his father. He did it for his
people. And because of this, it was a sweet smelling sacrifice
to God. He propitiated God. Blessings
of grace result from the curse poured out on Christ. Judgment
on Christ. Blessings to us. grace out of
curse, grace out of judgment. That's what you see in the sacrifice
of Christ, and that's what you see with the salt. Salt represented
the judgment, but the salt was to be mingled with the sacrifice
because Christ endured that judgment, and by His enduring it for His
people, blessings come to us. Salt, therefore, signifies God's
grace out of the judgment of His own dear Son. And then secondly,
remember that the priest ate the sacrifices. And here I want
you to see that we are priests to God and so we look to Christ
alone as everything in our salvation. Remember Jesus told Nicodemus,
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, So the Son
of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believes in Him shall
not perish, but have everlasting life. As Elisha poured salt out
of the vessel into the spring of the water, and the waters
were made pure, so out of Christ God poured this salt, this virtue. And all of his people by his
stripes are healed. All those who look to him are
healed of the curse that is upon them. The man was cursed, pronounced
cursed, who didn't keep the law. And God says, in the Lord Jesus
Christ, there is full satisfaction for sin. And so by faith, just
like the priest ate that salty food, by faith we partake of
what Christ has done, seeing that God has accepted Him by
virtue of who He is, the love in His heart, His holy nature,
His holy life, and He's done it for us, and it's a blessing
to us. As salt was mingled with the sacrifice, making it acceptable
to God, so as the priest ate the sacrifice with salt, they
received that blessing in the same way. As Christ was offered
with the virtue of His righteousness, so by faith we partake of Him
as our own. We take the blessings from God.
We come to God through Him. And we partake of him, and that's
equivalent to the priest eating of that sacrifice with salt.
Salt, our faith in Christ, makes what he did to us tasty, doesn't
it? Isn't that the only comfort?
Job cried out, oh, my afflictions, my troubles, if I just had some
salt, as it were, with my food. And what he needed there was
the comfort of God. And so you see this. Now the other thing
we saw about salt is that it heals. Jesus says, you are the
salt of the earth. You're salt and light. Those
are unique blessings. There's nothing in the world
like salt. And if salt changes, the only way salt can lose its
savor is if it changes from being salt. It's no longer salt. As
long as it's sodium chloride, what we eat, or as it tastes
like the salt water. I got some splashed in my mouth
on the trip. I thought, that water is really salty. You immediately
sense it, don't you? Your tongue was made to taste
saltiness, and sweetness, and sour, and other things. So you
immediately recognize that salty flavor. Salt is a unique blessing. And Jesus says that his people
are unique in this way. They're the salt of the earth.
There's nothing like it. God's people give taste in this
world. They preserve in this world.
They purify and they heal in this world. How so? How is this
so? Well, because God's people uniquely
carry the message of the gospel in them. They not only hold to
what Christ has done, but they hold it forth. And what do they
hold forth? The dual message of salt. that
there's grace through judgment. This salt that was applied to
the sacrifice, the salt of the covenant, the salt that healed
the streams, the salt that gives taste to everything, the salt
that purifies the infant in Ezekiel chapter 16, all these things
were given to signify the grace, the blessing that comes by the
judgment, the curse that fell upon Christ. But the other aspect
of salt is this. as Sodom and Gomorrah was burnt
with fire and sown with salt by God, even so, outside of Christ,
there's only judgment. And that's the other aspect of
salt that God's people bring. Colossians 4, 6, take a look
at this verse of Scripture. I want you to see this. In Colossians
4, 6, he says, Let your speech be always with
grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to
answer every man." Always with grace, seasoned with salt. When
we speak, we not only speak of what Christ has done, but we
speak it in such a way that it's gracious. We don't hammer people
with a gospel. We entreat. We come to them as
sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I'm chief, and we point men to Christ. But there's this other seasoning
that is added here, and that's the other part of the message.
Outside of Christ there's nothing from God but judgment. The love
of God is only in Christ Jesus our Lord. And so we warn men
of that. It's not just grace, it's grace
with the aspect of judgment. Look at 2nd Corinthians chapter
2. I want you to see this as well. In verse 14, 2nd Corinthians
chapter 2 verse 14. He says there, now, thanks be
unto God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ and makes
manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. What is
the savor? It's the knowledge of Christ
made manifest. How is that made manifest? According
to Paul, by us. And so the saver of God is the
knowledge of Christ, and that's made manifest by God through
His people. Verse 15, For we are unto God
a sweet saver of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that
perish. To the one we are the saver of
death to death, and to the other the saver of life to life. And
who is sufficient for these things? For we are not as many which
corrupt the word of God. That would be to not have salt.
But we as of sincerity. Salt purifies as of God in the
sight of God speak we in Christ. The only thing we carry in this
vessel is the treasure of the gospel. And giving out that treasure
that's Christ and Him crucified, it's pouring out the salt that's
in us, that God has given us, which first came from Christ,
which is the healing of this world. We tell them what Christ
has told us. And so that is the message of
this. When the Lord Jesus Christ says,
you are the salt of the earth, he's telling his disciples, the
true disciple of Christ holds to Christ only. Knows that judgment
from God has been expended on him. And they come to the throne
of grace. They come to God. Not with their
works. But in spite of their sin, confessing
who they are and saying, Lord, have mercy on me for Christ's
sake. And they come that way all the time. Always eating from
the same sacrifice, always tasting the same salt, and always receiving
the same healing. And they hold that forth. to
the world, to their loved ones, as God gives them grace to hold
it forth. We hold it forth. Christ is my
only hope, and He's all my desire. That's what the Spirit of God
teaches us. That's what He's put in us, and that's what we
hold out. And there's no one in the world,
there's no place in the world where that salt is given but
to believers, because the Spirit of God takes the things of Christ
and makes them known to us, and by that we make them known. And
so God exhorts us. I'll read it to you one more
time in Ephesians chapter 5, and this will be our close. Look
at this one more time. He says, verse 1 of Ephesians
5, Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, and
walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself
for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor."
It was Christ's love that made the sacrifice a savory sacrifice
to God. And it's the love of Christ in
us that allows us to speak with grace to others for them. Remember what Paul said? My heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved. Brethren, And so we come with that same attitude given
to us because we know the hell from which we've been delivered,
the sin that we still have and need to be delivered from and
be free from. And we look to Christ only to
do that because it's His promise that He will. But He says in
verse 3, He goes on in the same vein, but fornication. And all
uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among
you as becometh saints, neither filthiness, nor foolish talking,
nor jesting, which are not convenient, but rather giving of thanks.
For this you know that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous
man, who is an idolater, hath an inheritance in the kingdom
of God, of Christ, and of God. so forth so you were sometimes
darkness but now you're light in the Lord walk as children
of light we show forth this salt not only by our words by but
by how we act towards others the same grace God has given
us we want that grace to be active the same love how I long and
in my heart. And do you ever find yourself
praying towards that end? 1st Corinthians 13, 3. It says,
If I give my body to be burned, if I can speak with the tongues
of men and angels, if I can unravel every mystery in God's word,
and yet if I don't have love, it's nothing. And so how I pray
that God, by His Spirit, would give the fruit of love that flows
out of seeing God's love to us in Christ, so that we might show
that love to others. We would not live to ourselves,
but to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. Let's pray. Father,
we pray that we would truly be your disciples, not bad fish,
not tears, not branches that bear no fruit, not unsaltiness,
but salt and light, true wheat, fruit-bearing branches. Lord,
all these things teach us that we need grace from you, your
own spirit, to give us life and light and faith in our Lord Jesus
Christ, to hold fast to him, rejoice in him, and to confess
and profess that he is all of our hope, and to cling to him
and hold him forth, clearly being able to give to every man an
answer for the reason of this hope that lies within us. Lord,
we pray for this grace. We pray that your name would
be lifted up and glorified in our lives, that we would trust
in nothing but Christ, but obey you in all things for Jesus'
sake. And in his name we pray, amen.