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Salting the Schools
Matthew 5:13-16
World Corruption
1775-1783 – the American Revolution - theThirteen Colonies united against the British Empire and entered a period of armed conflict known as the Revolutionary War resulting in 50,000 casualties.
1861-1865 – the American Civil War – the southern states attacked the north, the war resulted in 620,000 deaths.
1945 – World War II - the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan killing 140,000; three days later a second nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki killing 80,000.
1950-1953 – the Korean War – over 1M dead
1959-1975 – the Vietnam Conflict – 1.4M military personnel were killed and 2M civilians were killed.
September 11, 2001 – a series of coordinated suicide attacks against the United States led by the Al-Qaeda terrorists left 3,000 dead.
Jesus said, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.” (Matthew 24:6-7) Biblically we are informed that the world is corrupted and decaying. With time it will not get better instead it will only get worse. Our current world is going from bad to worse. Since there is no inherent goodness to build on, no spiritual and moral life in which it can grow, the world can only get worse. The Bible tells the future of the world – it will experience 21 horrific judgments during the Great Tribulation and eventually this earth will be so corrupt it will be burned up. The world is not getting better, but it will only get worse.
Spiritual Statistics
28% of adults raised in a church as a child have left that faith.
The Protestant faith is on the verge of becoming a minority religion in the US.
There is a rapid dropping of hope for organized religion and church life.
Only 3% of young adults have a favorable impression of Christianity.
Worldwide immorality is on the rise. Sexual immorality, disrespect for God’s gift of marriage, cultural acceptance of abortion, pornography and profanity are the norm. The world’s love has grown cold; wickedness is ever rising. Masses of people are leaving their faith and any interest in God. The world is not getting better, but it will only get worse.
Salting the Schools
We have demonstrated that the world is quickly becoming progressively worse, and spiritual statistics point to a larger and larger movement away from God. Did you know that once the believers are removed from earth in the rapture that it will take only 7 years for evil and immorality to destroy our world? It is bad now with rampant sin and immorality, but in only 7 years with the absence of God’s people evil and sin will dominate the entire earth. The world is becoming worse and worse, yet the presence of believers has the effect of slowing our self destructive process down. Jesus told his followers as he preached greatest sermon ever – the sermon on the mount – He told them about the influence of his followers on the world. He said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” (Matthew 5:13) Jesus was teaching his followers that as citizens of the Kingdom of God, they have significant influence on this world. Jesus is saying to us that we are the only salt of the earth. The world’s corruption will not be slowed down unless God’s people are its salt. Jesus is not commanding us to become salt, instead he said that all believers are salt. The only question is whether or not we have any taste – are we tasteful salt that makes us influencers that slows down sin or are we tasteless salt meaning that your presence has no impact on sin that goes on around you.
When Jesus called us salt, he was identifying believers as influencers. We can have great influence on this city, and the influence is to hold back, slow down the corruption that sin has unleashed. Salt has always been valuable. It was so important that in Greek history they referred to as theon which meant divine. They associated salt with the gods. In Roman history they held that except for the sun nothing was more valuable than salt. Salt was used in the ancient Near East to bind a covenant, similar to how a contract is notarized in our day. When the parties to a covenant ate salt together before witnesses, the covenant was given special authentication. In 2 Chronicles 13:5 God made a covenant of salt with David. God prescribed that all sacrificial offerings in Israel were to be offered with salt. Jesus’ hearers would have understood salt of the earth to represent a valuable commodity. They were to have an extremely important function in the world. Salt always stood for that which was of high value and importance.
Christians represent God’s presence in the earth. We are the salt that prevents the entire earth from degenerating even faster than it is. The earth is degenerating quickly, but it is slowed down due to salty believers. The primary characteristic of our saltiness is that of preservation. Christians are a preserving influence in the world. We slow down moral and spiritual corruption. Just as when the church is taken out of the world at the rapture and it takes only 7 years for the world to spin into immoral chaos, if believers in this city lose their saltiness our city will spin out of control because no one is acting to preserve this city.
You are salt, so be salty. God said that his followers are salt but not all of us have flavor. If we lose our flavor then we have no usefulness. In Jesus prayer to the father, he prayed, “I do not ask you to take the believers out of this world but to keep them from the evil one.” Jesus does not want to us leave this world until absolutely necessary, until then we have a calling, an assignment from God. The assignment for all believers is to slow down the moral corruption – certainly we should stop adding to the moral corruption – our call is to slow the corruption down by being influencers. If we are flavorful salt, then our influence will slow the moral corruption. Consider what the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.” Have you ever considered how you are the aroma of Christ? There are many phenomenal believers in my life who are God’s fragrance. Kristy Tobin is God’s fragrance of joy. Sam Avramov is God’s fragrance of loyalty. Dave and Jackie Collins are God’s fragrance of sweetness. Have you met people that are the aroma of Christ? When they walk in the room, when they enter your life they affect you in great ways. Now, turn it toward yourself, what is your fragrance? Is your fragrance distinct from the world; when you walk into a room do you blend in with everyone or do you have an aroma of Christ that positively impacts people? You know how we buy colognes and perfumes…I went with Rachel at Christmas time to buy her perfume, and the person who worked there must have shown us 50 different perfumes. Each had a distinct fragrance. Then we went to the men’s section, and the guy showed me 3 colognes and said pick one. This seems to be true spiritually – women represent a variety of wonderfully different godly fragrances while guys just need to pick from the few – hardworking, loyal, integrity and so on. God’s mission, his assignment for you is to develop that distinct fragrance, this is your flavor as salt in this city. It is that fragrance, that flavor that can have great influence.
No fragrance, no flavor, no saltiness. Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” Salt can be contaminated with minerals that makes it taste flat and repulsive. When a batch of contaminated salt was discovered, it was thrown out. It would be thrown on the road where it gradually was ground into the dirt and disappeared. Jesus is not saying that we can lose our salvation; salt does not lose its saltiness but it is contaminated and loses it distinct flavor. Christians can lose their influence and effectiveness on preserving the city from moral corruption. We cannot be an influence for purity in the world if we have compromised our own purity.
Romeo Schools
Jesus speaks of the salt in plurality, all of his believers are salt. Each grain of salt has limited influence but collectively his body of believers can give great flavor to our community. Some years ago a magazine carried a series of pictures that graphically depicted a tragic story. The first picture was of a vast wheat field in western Kansas. The second showed a distressed mother sitting in a farmhouse in the center of the field of wheat. The story explained that her four year old son had wandered away from the house and into the field when she was not looking. The mother and father looked and looked all day but the little boy was too short to see neighbors who had heard of the boy’s plight and who had joined hands the next morning to make a long human chain as they walked through the field searching. The final picture was of a heartbroken father holding his lifeless son who had been found too late and had died of exposure. The caption underneath read, “O God, if only we had joined hands sooner.” The world is full of lost souls who cannot see their way above the distractions of the world and cannot find their way to the Father’s house until Christians join together as salt and sweep through in search of them.
This story helps me to see that the kids in the Romeo school system have been plunged into a world filled with immorality that is high like the field of wheat. It is unfair to think that they can find their way out of it, and while parents have great intentions for their kids the increasing faithlessness of our culture makes it impossible for them to find the kids who are lost in the fields of immorality. But, if we – the believers of this community – band together as the salt of the city we can help the kids in the Romeo schools find their way out of the wheat field of moral corruption.
God of this City Campaign
1. We will be praying to see God of this City, specifically how we can love on the Romeo school system. For the next four Tuesdays we will have lunch time prayer time. At noon, you can join the staff here at the church to pray for our city, to pray that God would choose our city; to pray that God would help us discern how to bless this Romeo school system. For the few of you that will join us in prayer, come the next 4 Tuesdays at high noon.
2. We want your suggestions. In the back is a God of this City suggestion box. We are asking you for your ideas on how our church can bless the Romeo schools; how can we show them we love them and bless them with a church who wants to serve.
3. A special offering. We are inviting any of you so moved by God to join us in a special offering on May 18. I have never been asked by so many to have a special one time gift opportunity. You can give for Phase 1 – our building renovation; you can give for our kidstown renovation; you can give for whatever God is moving you, and we will do our best to honor your desires. Or, you can give to our God of this City vision. Our current goal is to honor the mothers of the Romeo school system. We want to give away the molly maid service of house cleaning, a week of dinners to give them a break, relaxation massages and so on in honor of mother’s day.
The world is on a crash course for disaster. Time and again, we see that our world finds wars and moral corruption. As Christians, God has made us the salt of this earth; in fact, we are the salt of this city and we are the salt of the Romeo school system; but the spiritual statistics prove out that many professing believers are leaving the faith, they are leaving the church and thereby are abandoning their influence on their city. So how will you demonstrate your flavor and fragrance to bring God to this City? Certainly, you do not want to be salt that has lost its saltiness and is no longer good for anything. Instead, we want to be used by God to be the salt that helps preserve our city, our schools from the inevitable corruption and moral decay. Together, we can have great influence in this city.
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