Stay Salty
Transcript
Shelby Abbott [00:00:00]: Welcome to the Connecting Podcast with Paul Tripp. My name is Shelby Abbott and this podcast exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life, right here, right now. So, Paul, we're working our way through Matthew 5, The Sermon on the Mount.
Paul Tripp [00:00:16]: Yes, and before we do that, I was just thinking this week of the blessing of what we're doing here and what we get to do because we get to be the first people who are convicted and encouraged by God's word by what we're going to say to others.
Paul [00:00:41]: I'm working on a book of joy and I'm writing a chapter called "Self", and it's just proposing that if you put yourself in the center of the world, you'll never have that kind of lasting joy. And as I got to the end of the chapter, I actually ended by writing about this.
Paul [00:01:06]: I was just deeply convicted myself, and all the things that I defined as the life where you put yourself in the center, I could still find in pieces in my own life. I was just so thankful that God was rescuing me through what He's called me to do.
Shelby [00:01:28]: It's beautiful.
Paul [00:01:30]: And very thankful. And then, I talked about God's grace and the passage in John 1(:16) where it says of His fullness, we have received in grace upon grace, that that's the only way to find hope. Now, one of the reasons I'm talking about that is that we're going to be talking about some heavy things today, things that could be potentially discouraging and it's really important to remember that our hope as God's children is never our knowledge.
Paul [00:02:09]: It's never our theology. It's never our biblical literacy. It's never our performance of the law. It's always the grace of Jesus, and that is an inexhaustible fountain of divine generosity and help. And so, it's really important for people to remember that as we talk. We're going to make a really significant transition in this podcast. We have been talking about how to live a vibrant, hopeful, courageous, faithful Christian life in a world that's just insane.
Paul [00:02:52]: Luella and I were watching something a couple of nights ago. It seemed pretty safe to watch, but in the middle of it was some weird sexual thing that's stuck in there that had nothing to do with the story; and I just thought again, it's hard.
Paul [00:03:15]: The transition we're going to make is from the blessings of character that only grace can form in you to, now, what your calling is. And I'm going to say this, and you can comment as you want, but I want people to understand God's total involvement paradigm.
Paul [00:03:38]: Now, here's what I mean by that: that we tend to divide Christian culture into those who are in ministry and those who are not. That's not a biblical division. Everybody who has been chosen to be one of God's adopted children by grace is also called to ministry.
Paul [00:04:06]: That doesn't mean your ministry is going to be a full-time paid profession, but you are called to always be conscious that you are part of God's work of redemption on earth. That's important, and that should be every part of your life.
Paul [00:04:30]: That should be your consideration in marriage. You want to be part of what God is doing in the life of your spouse or your children. You want to be part of God's work in your children. Raising children is not just about getting them prepared for a good job and a good marriage or whatever.
Paul [00:04:50]: You want that mentality at work. Peter talks about working in a way that makes the gospel attractive. It's very interesting. You want that mentality towards your neighbors. You're not just a neighbor, or you're not just a citizen. And so, you're always thinking, what is God doing in His redeeming mercies, and how can I be part of that in the way that I live?
Paul [00:05:16]: That's the next chapter of what Jesus is going to say in his sermon because living well is not just about passively separating yourself from the surrounding culture. It is that and valuing things in character that our culture doesn't value.
Shelby [00:05:42]: That are different, yes.
Paul [00:05:43]: But it's the active also of working for your Redeemer, and remember, Jesus is speaking this first to his disciples. They're living under Roman occupation, a legalistic, perverted religious system, a lot of suffering, a lot of poverty.
Paul [00:06:10]: Nobody in Palestine knew where that story was going to go. None of the kind of human rights that we would normally think about [were there] for Jews in Palestine, and so, even there, Jesus isn't just calling people to survive. He's calling them to be active, proactive agents of His work.
Shelby [00:06:40]: Yes, I heard someone say one time, there's no junior varsity in the kingdom of God and I think that encapsulates it pretty well, especially, for people who kind of have that sports mentality, that paradigm. They think about it.
Paul [00:06:57]: Yes, Francis Schaeffer's way of saying that was there are no little people.
Shelby [00:07:00]: Yes, nobody's riding the bench in the kingdom of God.
Paul [00:07:03]: That's right. So let me read the next section of Matthew 5.
13“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
14“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
17“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Shelby [00:08:28]: It's hard stuff.
Paul [00:08:30]: Wow!
Shelby [00:08:30]: Yes, wow.
Paul [00:08:32]: So what I've read is going to take us four episodes of this connecting podcast. We're going to start with 13aYou are the salt of the earth. It's very interesting that Jesus doesn't say (this is where words are so important), "You are called to be the salt of the earth."
Paul [00:09:01]: That's not what He's saying. He's saying, "You are the salt of the earth. I have formed you for this." You could say this is your spiritual chemical compound. This is your DNA. This is what you are transformed to be and that's everybody. Everybody who's a believer is salty and Jesus is saying, "Stay salty. I formed you to be salty."
Shelby [00:09:46]: Can you unpack a little bit of that word picture for us?
Paul [00:09:49]: Well, yes, and I was going to say that I love this portion of Christ's teaching about how we're positioned in this broken world because it has these graphic word pictures. The primary use of salt in New Testament times was not as a flavor additive.
Shelby [00:10:23]: Yes, which is what we think of immediately.
Paul [00:10:25]: That's immediately what we think of. It surely was used for that, but its primary function was to retard the corruption, particularly on meat, and so, when an animal would be butchered for food, it would immediately be encased in salt. The closest thing that we have to that is ham. Ham is traditionally salt-cured, and that's a preservative, and it means it can last for a long period of time.
Shelby [00:11:04]: Good shelf life, yes.
Paul [00:11:05]: So the purpose of salt is, then, to retard corruption that would destroy the meat that was to be food.
Shelby [00:11:21]: Not preservative of, of course.
Paul [00:11:23]: So we're put on earth as God's children to be a corruption retardant, that our presence in culture wards off the normative corruption of a fallen world.
Shelby [00:11:44]: That's good.
Paul [00:11:46]: Now, this is going to challenge some people. That means we're not supposed to be separate from the world. This Christian life philosophy that good Christians separate themselves and become the SOS (that's Secret Order of the Saints) is just not biblical. The only way that salt could retard the corruption in meat is if it was touching it.
Shelby [00:12:22]: Yes, yes, it's got to be present.
Paul [00:12:24]: Got to be present, got to be there and so, God wants us in the world. Jesus will later say "in the world, but not of the world". We need Christian artists. We need Christian musicians. We need Christian chefs, Christian lawyers, Christian doctors, Christian plumbers who are outwardly living their faith, who are salty where they are.
Paul [00:13:01]: We shouldn't just surrender social media and streaming services and Hollywood and education, higher education and politics to the world because that's worldly stuff. That's not what Jesus is saying here.
Shelby [00:13:19]: Yes, you had said at one point, too, monasteries didn't work because people tried to pluck themselves out of the environment and be separate and they dragged their sin into the monastery. You said that to me one time.
Paul [00:13:29]: Yes, absolutely. It doesn't work. So there's a couple of stages to this. First, we have to work not to let the world corrupt us because that's the salt losing its savor. That's what Jesus is talking about. If you become corrupted, you're not salt anymore and I love James 1:27.
Paul [00:14:01]: 27Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, [I love this "and"] and to keep oneself unstained from the world. That's just beautiful. Can I say this? Well, I'm about to. I don't know why I'm asking permission. It starts, that "unstained by the world," starts with the choices you make in the privacy of your home or on the privacy of your phone.
Shelby [00:14:40]: Good. Yes, that's real good.
Paul [00:14:43]: Because we are now carrying the corruption of the world in our pockets or our purses, and I'm afraid that many of us aren't making good choices. And maybe it's not something dark and sexual, but maybe it's just the materialistic pleasure stuff of the world that you go down that rabbit hole, and two hours later, you've been feeding on stuff that is taking away your savor, so it starts not just with your relationship to the world, but it starts with saying, "I don't want the world to corrupt me” and with the pervasiveness of modern media, that's hard. It's really hard.
Shelby [00:15:41]: Yes, it's a constant stream of messaging, images, propaganda pushing you in a specific direction. You're being discipled all the time, whether or not you realize it.
Paul [00:15:54]: Yes, we were again watching something on one of the streaming services and the language was just... I mean it wasn't every fifteen minutes. It was like a barrage and we just said to one another, "I don't want to watch this."
Shelby [00:16:14]: Let's just cut it off, yes.
Paul [00:16:15]: I don't want to get to the point where...
Shelby [00:16:18]: You think that's normal, yes.
Paul [00:16:20]: I think that's normal and it doesn't bother me anymore, and we just... it was something really engaging and funny, and we just said, "We can't do it." And then, there's a second part, is "don't let yourself be corrupted by the world".
Shelby [00:16:41]: First part, yes.
Paul [00:16:42]: And second part is be a corruption retardant.
Shelby [00:16:46]: Yes, can you explain what that means?
Paul [00:16:47]: I like Romans 12:1-2.
1I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Paul [00:17:15]: When you offer your body a living sacrifice, you're giving the members of your body to God for Him to do what He wants to do in and through you; and part of that is this world of discernment. That's to have the wisdom to know... you look around, say, "Oh, I get why God's put me here."
Paul [00:17:48]: When I got out of seminary, I thought I was too young to take a church, so I got involved with a ministry that would house people who'd come out of prison or whatnot, and they couldn't pay me, so I worked for a guy who had a big warehouse selling electronic equipment, and I had to pack boxes.
Paul [00:18:16]: And I stood at a table with all these guys; the language there was perverse and I really took my mission to spread salt in that moment. And these guys got more and more aware of who I was, what I stood for and the language became more and more pure, the relationships came and I thought, "At least, for eight hours."
Shelby [00:18:40]: Yes, you're a corruption retardant.
Paul [00:18:42]: These guys are not thinking and doing what they would have done if I hadn't been there. Praise God! Praise God! Praise God! And because of that, they would ask me what makes me tick, and I had opportunities to actually speak the gospel there at that...
Shelby [00:18:59]: What are you doing? Why are you different?
Paul [00:19:01]: ... at that table. There's just a little example of that discernment. Why am I here? Why is this my neighbor? Why is this my boss? Why am I working so closely with these people? Why am I given this opportunity? Why am I on this campus? And then, looking for those opportunities to be salt.
Paul [00:19:26]: Two parts: fight being corrupted by the world. Second part is look for opportunities to be a corruption retardant, and for that, we have grace (transforming, empowering grace) because boy, do we need it!
Shelby [00:19:45]: Yes, we do. Beautiful, love it.
