Living on Mission: Salt of the Earth | Matthew 5:13
Brian Hedges | July 24, 2022
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5. We’re going to be reading Matthew 5:13 here in a few minutes.
Today I’m beginning a short, four-week series called “Living on Mission,” and essentially we’re going to be talking about evangelism for the next few weeks. I think Rebecca Manley Pippert is right in her comment about evangelism. She said, the one thing that both believers and unbelievers [Christians and non-Christians] feel about evangelism is we all feel uptight about it! Maybe you’ve experienced that if you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with one of your unbelieving friends about Jesus; you felt uptight, they felt uptight. It’s hard for us, sometimes, to have these conversations with people.
I think all of us know that we should do evangelism; we want, as faithful Christians, to share our faith with others. It’s certainly right at the heart of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, a follower of Jesus, is to make disciples of others; and it’s right at the heart of our church core values; it’s hanging on that banner right over there on the wall: “Sharing Jesus in word and deed.” That’s mission, and we are all called to that. And yet we find it difficult to do.
I think there are a variety of reasons for that, and we’re going to talk about some of those reasons in this series. At the end of this series we’re going to do a coffee break on a Sunday evening that’s going to be an evangelism training workshop. So it will be a very interactive time for us to try to get some training and some tools and some helps so that we can be having these Jesus conversations with others.
But it is difficult to do evangelism today, and maybe more difficult than it was, say, 50 or 60 years ago, because the world has changed. There was a missionary named Lesslie Newbigin, who was a British missionary sent to India in the 20th century. Lesslie Newbigin went to India, he was doing the deep, hard kind of missionary work there, adapting to the culture in which he was living. When he returned to England decades later, he made the observation that England had changed. The western world had changed, but the church had not changed with it. The church had not adapted and learned how to speak the truth about Jesus and share the gospel in this new culture.
That’s certainly true in the world today. It’s changed not only in England but throughout the western world, including in the United States. There are lots of studies that show this today. Did you know that studies show that there are 100 million people in the United States today who have no contact with the church? That’s approximately one third of the population. There are at least 85 million Americans who are completely unchurched and unbelieving, and America is now one of the most pluralistic nations in the world, with more religious options represented than ever before. Now, you may not think that, when we live here in the Midwest and there seems to be a church on every corner; but the reality is, many of the people that you rub shoulders with through the week are completely unchurched, they know nothing about Jesus, they’ve never been in a church service, they don’t know the first thing about Christianity. They only have first impressions that they get from media or TV or entertainment, those kinds of things, but they don’t really understand the message of the gospel.
Newsweek in 2009 ran a cover story that was called “The Decline and the Fall of Christian America.” Indeed, that’s what has happened. We once lived in a Christianized country, a country that was a part of Christendom, where we basically, as a nation, even though not everyone was a born-again Christian, everyone essentially had a worldview that was formed and shaped by Judeo-Christian ethics and values. We now live in a world full of moral relativism, pluralism, postmodernism. We live in a post-Christian era.
That means that things have changed. A lot of authors have drawn attention to this. One author that I have found helpful is Tim Chester, who has interacted with a guy named Stuart Murray, who wrote a book called After Christendom. Chester, quoting Murray, says that “there are seven transitions that the church has to face in a post-Christian culture.”
Here they are (this is all just introduction):
There’s a transition from the center to the margins. Whereas Christians once inhabited the very center of society, now we are more marginal.
We’ve moved from the majority to the minority. That’s actually happened. At one time Christians were a majority, but certainly in the western world at large, and increasingly so in certain places of the United States, Christians are the minority population.
We have to make the shift from being settlers to sojourners. There was a time when people basically felt at home in this culture, Christians felt at home in this culture. Now, we are more like resident aliens. We are more like the church of the first century, who lived in the Roman Empire, and they were not at home. They knew that their citizenship was in heaven, they were living as strangers in a strange land, and they had this sojourner/pilgrim mentality. That’s the mentality that we increasingly need to have today.
There’s a shift from privilege to plurality. Within Christendom, Christians enjoyed many privileges; but in a post-Christian world, Christians represent just one community among many, many communities, many different groups.
This also involves a shift from control to witness. We have less power, but we are called to bear witness to the truth about Jesus.
A shift from maintenance to mission, where we’re not just trying to keep things going as they always have. It’s not “business as usual.” If we just have a maintenance mentality, the church will shrink, the church will eventually shrivel up and die. We have to be on mission, where we are seeking to win people to faith in Jesus.
This means a shift, at least to some degree, from institution to a movement, where we’re thinking not so much about maintaining an institution of the church per se, but we’re thinking of a movement of followers, disciples of Jesus, who, in a very organic way, are reproducing and multiplying and sharing their faith with others.
I think those are the realities for us as the church in a post-Christian society.
That’s really just setting the context for what I want to do over the next four weeks, which is talk about mission, and I want to do it in this way. I want us to look at the four primary metaphors in the New Testament for evangelism and mission. These are the four primary word pictures that we find mostly in the teaching of Jesus for sharing our faith, and for what we’re called to be in the world. Those metaphors are salt of the earth, light of the world, fishers of men, and sowing and reaping.
I think the metaphors are complementary. They each emphasize different things. They are helpful to us in different ways, and I just want to spend one week on each of those to try to unpack, in a very holistic way, what does it mean for us to live on mission in the world in which we live. Today we’re going to start with salt of the earth, Matthew 5:13. So, if you want to turn there, you can read it in your Bible; you can also read it on the screen. I’m going to read this text, and then what I want to do is give you five key words, and along with each key word a principle for how we are to think about ourselves as salt of the earth, how we think about mission and our role in the world today.
Matthew 5:13; these are the words of Jesus, it’s in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says,
“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.”
This is God’s word, the words of Jesus.
One of the most interesting things about this particular word of Jesus is he’s not actually commanding us to do anything. This is not an imperative. He’s not saying, “Go be the salt of the earth.” It’s rather an indicative. He is saying what we are. He’s saying, “If you are my disciples, if you are the citizens of my kingdom, if you are my people, you are the salt of the earth.
Now, I think that does have practical implications for us, and I want to tease that out with these five principles, five key words with a principle for each one, to help us understand what this means.
Key Word #1: Preservative
The first key word is the word “preservative.” What in the world is a preservative? A preservative is something that keeps something from going bad. You have preservatives in food that keep the food from going bad. That was the function of salt in the ancient world. That’s what salt did. Salt was rubbed into meat so that the meat would not go bad; salt served as a prevention to rottenness, corruption, and decay.
I think that means that as Christians, if we are the salt of the earth, it means that we are called to be a force for good and a preservative against moral decay in the world. Again, the emphasis here is not so much on what a person must do in order for that to happen as it is on the fact that if you are followers of Jesus, this will be the net effect. This will be the influence. If you are followers of Jesus, you are salt of the earth, and the presence of Jesus-followers in a community will be both a force for good and a preservative against moral decay in that society.
Let’s think about what that means. What does that mean, for Christians to be a force for good? I think it means that anywhere that engaged followers of Jesus live and are present, there should be visible, obvious effects in that community where good is being done in the name of Jesus. I think that’s what it means. I think it means that anywhere that there is a strong, genuine Christian presence in a place, that place should be better off than if the Christians were not there.
Certainly this has been the case in the history of the world when people have authentically followed Jesus. There’s a sociologist, a guy named Rodney Stark, who wrote a book called The Rise of Christianity. He was looking at how Christianity came to be such a strong, vibrant force in the world. He wasn’t looking at the supernatural aspects of this. He was looking at the sociological aspects of this; he was just trying to explain from a sociologist perspective what are the factors that accounted for the rise and progress of Christianity in the world?
The things that he points out are the kinds of things that Christians have done in communities throughout the history of the world that have brought good to the communities. This is what he says. He says, “Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world. Christianity revitalized life in cities . . .” Listen to how it did this. It “revitalized life in cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. To cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective services.” It’s because the Christians were doing these things by virtue of who they were as Jesus followers, they were doing these things, Christianity spread—from a sociological perspective.
Indeed, when you look at the history of the world and you look at the great good that has been done in the name of Jesus, and the great strides that have been made in healthcare and in justice, all these different things, Christians have usually been at the forefront. Do you know that Christians were the first ones to build hospitals? Christians were the first ones to build universities. It was Christians who were, by and large, responsible for the abolition of the slave trade in England. Christians are, by virtue of being followers of Jesus, always meant to be at the forefront of this kind of good in society.
The counterpart to that is being a preservative, then, against corruption and moral decay. It’s been observed by Sinclair Ferguson as well as others that the thing that saved England from a revolution that was as bloody and violent as the French Revolution, which was a horrible, bloody, violent affair—what saved England from going through that same level of violence and upheaval was the Great Awakening of the early 18th century, where George Whitefield and John Wesley went throughout England and were preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. There was this evangelical revival that changed the conscience of that nation. So many people have observed that because that took place, it served as something of an impediment to the kind of upheaval that happened in France later in that century.
I think the question for us is simply this: Do we as a church and as individuals function in this way? Are we a force for good, and are we an obstacle, a prevention to moral evil and injustice and wickedness and sin in our own context? Are we a force for good in Niles, Michigan? Are we a force for good in Michiana? Does our presence here make a tangible difference to the communities in which we live? I think if we’re genuinely followers of Jesus, that should be the case. That’s part of what it means to be salt of the earth.
So, preservative. That’s the first key word, the first basic principle; that we are called to be a force for good and a preservative against evil and moral decay.
Key Word #2: Difference
The second key word is “difference.” Here’s the principle: We are called to be a distinct counterculture who live according to the values of Jesus’ kingdom.
Now, the reason salt is a preservative that keeps meat from going bad is because of the chemical makeup of salt, the chemical compound, sodium chloride, right? It’s because salt is different than the meat that it’s able to function in this way.
I think that implies that Christians must be different from the world for a Christian to have this kind of effect on the world. They must be different. If Christians are just like the world, they’re not going to have this kind of effect.
What does that mean? What does it mean for Christians to be different, to be a distinct counterculture to the world? I think you get the answer if you look at the context here, which is the Sermon on the Mount. This is Jesus teaching about what it means to be a citizen of his kingdom, to live under the reign and the rule of God. That’s what this sermon is about. Just look at the verses that precede. These are the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3-12. Jesus here is essentially describing the characteristics of the citizens of his kingdom, and it may be kind of surprising what the citizens of his kingdom are like, because they are not accomplished, successful, powerful, influential people. That’s not how they’re described at all. Listen to what Jesus says.
He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” These are not people who have their act together; they are people who actually know that they are spiritually impoverished and they are desperate for God’s mercy. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” They’re probably mourning both for their own sins and mourning for the evil and the injustice and the sorrow of the world. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Not the strong and mighty and powerful, but the meek. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—” That probably means hunger and thirst for justice, because they’ve experienced so much injustice “—for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
Then Jesus says really radical things. He starts saying you’re blessed if you’re persecuted, right? “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely, on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
I think one thing that should be obvious from this list is that the primary difference between Christians and the world is not that the Christians have more influence, have more power, are more successful; it is rather that they have a completely different kind of character. They are the humble, not the proud. They are the ordinary and the unassuming, the meek, not the strong. They are merciful and compassionate, they are not vengeful. They are hungry for justice, they are pure in heart, single-minded in their devotion to God; they are peacemakers, not troublemakers; and they are persecuted. They are the people who trampled on, persecuted, hated, and despised by society. Jesus says, “If you’re like that, you are my followers, you are the citizens of my kingdom, you are living under the reign of my Father, and you are blessed, and you will be salt.”
It’s this kind of character, a very different kind of character; a counterculture very different than the way of the world. I think when this is present it will do two things. It will arouse curiosity on one hand and hostility on the other.
It will arouse the curiosity of many unbelievers, because when they see Christians respond to persecution in this way, they respond to injustice in this way, they respond with this kind of humility, this kind of meekness, this peacemaking mentality—when they respond in this way, they’re going to scratch their heads and they’re going to wonder, “What’s going on? Why do these people act like this?”
You get a picture of this in the book of 1 Peter. 1 Peter, by the way, is a wonderful letter written to exiles that are also strangers in a strange land, and Peter’s writing this letter, essentially, to call the church to be the church in a pagan culture. The whole context is they’re suffering persecution. We frequently quote 1 Peter 3:15 in the context of doing apologetics and evangelism training and things like that: “Be ready to make a defense for the hope that is within you.” But you have to read that in context. The reason they need to be ready to give an answer is because people are going to be so curious because of the way that they are living in the midst of suffering and persecution. Listen to what Peter says.
He says, “Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”
The idea here is that people are kind of dumbfounded by the way Christians are responding to the persecution, and that’s why they’re asking, “Why do you respond this way? What gives you hope so that you’re able to respond this way in the face of threat and suffering and persecution?” It’s a curious response.
I think it will also bring about sometimes a hostile response from people. Sometimes when Christians live as Christians, as salt of the earth, they live like Jesus, they behave like Jesus, they respond like Jesus, that will actually bring out the worst in people, so sometimes there’s more hostility, more antagonism.
There’s an interesting illustration of this that R.C. Sproul gives in one of his books. He talks about Billy Graham one time golfing with President Ford, Gerald Ford, and some other golf professionals. There’s a picture of them. Gerald Ford is the guy in the yellow shirt; Billy Graham’s in the hat. (I’m really glad that golf fashion has changed in the last 20 years!)
So, they were golfing, and after the round, one of the pros who had been golfing with them was in a conversation with a friend, and the friend asked him, “What was it like playing golf with Billy Graham and the President?”
This guy just unloaded a stream of curse words, and then he said, “I don’t need Billy Graham shoving religion down my throat.” And then he stormed off to the practice tee.
His friend who asked him the question was kind of taken aback, and he silently followed him over there, and after a few minutes he said, “So, was Billy kind of hard on you out there?”
He said, “No, he didn’t say anything. I just had a bad round.”
R.C. Sproul tells this story to illustrate that sometimes when people are just in the presence of someone who is associated with the goodness and the holiness of God, their reaction is one of hostility. I mean, why do people blaspheme the name of Jesus? Of all people, why would you use the name of Jesus as a curse word? It’s because there’s this hostility to who Jesus is and the way he is, hostility to the heart of Christianity.
I think we can expect both responses. If we are different from the world, if we are holy people, if we are good people, if we are people who follow Jesus, we can expect both curiosity on one hand, because it’s going to be so utterly countercultural, and we can expect hostility on the other.
Key Word #3: Permeation
But we have to be in the world for that to take place, so here’s the third key word. It’s the word “permeation.” What I mean by this is that we must not withdraw from the world, we must not withdraw from society. We have to be in the world, but not of the world. Get this: the only way that salt could have this preservative effect on meat is if it was actually rubbed into the meat. It has to permeate the meat. That’s the only way. Otherwise, the meat’s going to go bad. So unless the salt is actually rubbed into the meat—you know, we still do that today. That’s what salami is. Salami is salted meat, right? It keeps the meat from going bad. But if the salt stays in the salt shaker, so to speak, and it doesn’t get into the meat, there’s no permeation, there’s going to be no effect.
So I think the same thing is true for us in the world. If we’re not actually in the world, if we’re not actually engaged, if we don’t actually know and associate with non-Christians, there’s no effect.
Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to evangelism for a lot of us is that we live in a Christian bubble. We go to church with Christians, we are friends with Christians, we work with Christians, we go to school with Christians. We don’t really know any non-Christians, so we’re not actually really involved.
Some of you are thinking, You don’t know the people that I work with! If that’s the case, hallelujah, praise God; that’s great. You’re on the front lines; you’re on the mission field. You’re the missionary force of the church if you are working with unbelievers. I don’t have that opportunity, and I have to tell you, I feel like I was much more effective as an evangelist, as far as personal evangelism, when I was working in the secular world than I am now, because I just don’t have as much interaction with non-Christians today as I did then. So if you’re there, you’re on the front lines, that’s a good thing. Don’t wish that away.
Permeation: we must not withdraw from society. This is the error of monasticism. It’s the error of the Anabaptist movement that wants to so totally withdraw from the realm of the world into these pious enclaves that there’s no involvement, no engagement with society.
I think we should take as a model the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, but not Israel as a theocracy, not Israel when they were ruled by King David; but Israel in exile. Do you remember this? When Assyria and then Babylon invade Jerusalem, they invade Israel, they take them captive. The Israelites are deported into a strange, alien culture, and now they’re living there as exiles, not in their homeland. Did you know that the prophets gave them specific instructions on exactly how they were to live?
You have this in Jeremiah 29, where Jeremiah writes a letter to the exiles, he sends it from Jerusalem to the elders of the exiles, the priests, the prophets, the people that Nebuchadnezzar had taken captive into Babylon, and in the letter this is what he says. He’s giving them instructions on how they are to live.
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
That’s what they were called to do. Seek the welfare of the city in which you live. He’s not encouraging them to plan their great escape, he’s not encouraging them to withdraw into their own little enclaves. He wants them to integrate into the culture in which they live and to be a faithful presence there.
I think that phrase can be helpful for us: faithful presence. That’s what we’re called to. We’re called to permeate the society as salt—different than the world, not of the world; nevertheless, we are called to be in the world, a faithful presence.
This is a phrase that I’m drawing from James Davison Hunter, who wrote an outstanding book called To Change the World. I’m not going to quote him, but here’s the essence of the argument. Hunter essentially says that the way Christians best engage the world is neither through trying to coopt power—say, through politics—nor through withdrawal from the world into pietistic enclaves and communities, with little thought to the world outside. It’s rather through their faithful presence in the world, in their communities. By faithful presence he means imitating Christ and his incarnation by living intentional lives, promoting the good of others, sacrificial love, being faithful, being present to the people and the place in which we live, to the tasks that we are given, not just in the church but in our secular vocations—within our spheres of influence, whatever that may be.
That means that we should do our best work, that we should do good for others in our family, our neighborhood, schools, vocations, all the rest. It means we should be good citizens, good employees, and we should do it all in the name of Jesus.
Now, that certainly means that we are to use whatever influence we have to do good. We should use our influence for the cause of justice and righteousness in the world, understanding that we do that as Christians, as salt, and we make a distinction, I think, between what we can do as individual Christians and what the role of the church as the church is. The role of the church is not to try to change the political structures of the world. That’s not the role of the church. The role of the church is proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But as individual believers, we should leverage all of our influence to try to do good in the name of Jesus.
This is where an example like William Wilberforce is so helpful. He was a member of Parliament, he was a Christian, and he labored for human rights, for the abolition of the slave trade. He wasn’t this great man. He wasn’t great in stature, he wasn’t a particularly great speaker. Someone who observed him said that when he would take the platform it was like seeing a shrimp get up on the platform, but by the time he was done it was like watching a whale at work. He had such a tremendous effect, as he used his influence for good.
That wasn’t bringing the kingdom of God to earth. That wasn’t necessarily gospel work, right? But it was being salt, and it was doing good in the name of Jesus Christ.
I think the same application can be made today to, say, pro-life issues, especially abortion. As you know, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, what that essentially means is that pro-life issues and abortion issues, those laws all go back to the states, right? So states now have to make those decisions. Listen, there is still work to do, both in Indiana and in Michigan, both to protect life in the womb and to serve and care for women who are in need. As individual believers, we should both be informed and utilize our rights as citizens to effect laws that protect life.
There are actually things going on even this week in the state of Indiana. If you want some information about that, talk to some of the members of our church who are heavily engaged in pro-life work. Lyndon Azcuna, Lisa Smith working for LifePlan; Dan and Nicole Pyle are very involved in pro-life causes. Talk to them; they can inform you of what’s going on.
Listen to what John Stott says about Christians permeating society. I love this quote. He says, “Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars. Our place is to be rubbed into the secular community as salt is rubbed into meat to stop it going bad, and when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world. But should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: Where’s the salt?” Permeation.
Okay, two more, and I’m also done.
Key Word #4: Saltiness
The fourth word here is saltiness. It’s just a reminder—this follows along with the last two points—it’s a reminder that we have to beware of becoming so much like the world that we lose our effectiveness. Again, it’s the point of difference and distinction. But I’m drawing attention here to what Jesus says. He says, “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.”
Some people might read that and think, “That’s a mistake, because salt actually can’t lose its saltiness. Sodium chloride cannot lose its effectiveness.”
What you have to understand is that in the ancient world they didn’t get table salt through a process of refinery, the way we do today. Rather, salt was gathered from salt deposits around the Dead Sea, and those salt deposits included other minerals, like gypsum. Over the course of time the salty factor could be diluted, and what you would have left was a white powder that looked like salt, but it had no saltiness left in it. But people still called it salt. So that’s what Jesus has in mind.
I think the point here is this: if the Christians, if the followers of Jesus, are not actually living these kinds of kingdom-oriented, transformed lives—if there’s no saltiness to their lifestyle—what good will they do in the world? It’s a call, once again, for us to be in the world but not of the world.
To change the metaphor, someone once compared the church to a ship in the sea. The church is the ship, the sea is the world. They said, “It’s good for the ship to be in the sea, but it’s not good for the sea to be in the ship.” If you get too much sea in the ship, the ship is going to sink, right?
Horatius Bonar one time said, “I looked for the church and found it in the world; I looked for the world and found it in the church.”
Brothers and sisters, we need to be careful that we do not so over-adapt to our culture that we become like the culture. We must remain distinct even while we remain engaged.
Key Word #5: Gracious
Our lives should express the gracious attractiveness of Christ’s gospel and kingdom.
Here’s the deal: salt was not only a preservative, it was also a seasoning. Just as we use salt today to season our food, to bring out flavor, in the same way, salt was a seasoning in the ancient world. I think that’s also in mind, because Jesus says, “If the salt has lost its taste—” He certainly has in mind the taste of salt. “If the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?”
There’s another place in Scripture that uses salt in exactly this way, bringing out the flavor. It’s in Colossians 4, the apostle Paul, and it has everything to do with our speech. Listen to what he says. This is Colossians 4:5-6. This is a great passage on evangelism. He says, “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”
What does that mean? What does it mean for our speech to always be gracious? Well, I think it means that there are certain kinds of speech that we always avoid. In fact, Paul spells it out in Ephesians 4:29. He says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
There’s a great illustration of this from Gary Thomas in one of his early books. He talks about working in an environment where the gossip was terrible, the gossip and the slander. People were just backstabbing all the time, talking about each other behind their backs. He wanted to be an influence for good, so this is what he decided to do. He decided to try what he called “positive gossip.” He would go to one employee and he would say something really positive about somebody else.
Let’s say he goes to John and he says, “Isn’t Sally just a wonderful, bright presence here? Isn’t she great with people? Isn’t she great with customers? Isn’t she doing a good job?”
John’s like, “Yes. Yes, I think she’s doing a good job.”
Then [Gary] goes to Sally and says, “Hey, Sally, you know what John said about you? John said that you are a wonderful presence here. You’re doing a great job.” He did this with everybody! Over time, it changed the culture of the place where he worked. It was positive gossip. It changed the culture.
What was he doing? He was being salt through gracious speech. Brothers and sisters, this is one practical thing. This isn’t the only thing—we’re going to talk more about specific ways to have conversations about Jesus with others. But mission starts with who you are, and you are salt. Here’s a practical way to do it. “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt.” “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths.”
Listen: let it never be said of this community, or of you in your workplace, that you stab people in the back, that you gossip, that you slander, that you are a complainer, that you are hard to get along with, hard to work with. That should not be who we are as believers. Instead, we should be positively using our words to build up others, where we are spreading the flavor of Jesus and his gospel and his kingdom everywhere we go.
Brothers and sisters, this is our call. It’s to be the salt of the earth. We must not lose our saltiness.
How do we become like that? How do we do that? We do it by knowing Jesus in a deeply transforming way. Jesus is the one who changes our hearts. He’s the one who transforms us. He’s the one who makes us new. He’s the one who actually gives us the saltiness. He gives us that as we encounter him in his grace and his power. So let’s seek him, let’s seek to know him, and let’s seek to follow him together; and as we do, we’ll have an effect for good in this world. Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank you this morning for your word. Thank you for the teaching of Jesus, and we pray that you would help us to apply it, to put it into practice. Help us to be in the world but not of the world. Help us to be radically distinct and different from the culture around us in attitudes, in values, in our ethics, in our lifestyles; and yet, help us not to disengage from the people around us. Help us to know and befriend non-Christians, nonbelievers. Help us to be deeply embedded in our communities, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and to do so in ways that will have positive effects. Help us do it all in the name of Jesus and depending on your Spirit to work.
Lord, we need you as a church. We want to be on mission with Jesus. We pray that you would help us learn what that means.
As we come to the Lord’s table, may we come this morning in humility. May we come depending on what Christ has done for us. May we come repentant of all of our sins, and may we come to have fellowship with you. So prepare us, Lord, as we come to the table, and draw near to us, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
