Jesus Gives us a Great with Great and a Great
IDENTITY: Salt/We are
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- In the 1st century, salt was a precious and valuable commodity
- Roman soldiers were often paid in salt giving rise to the saying “worth his salt” – 1 Corinthians 6:20
- Religious context – Rabbi Yohanan VS. Rabbi Jesus
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- Rabbi Yohanan was from a town called Arav in Galilee but felt Galileans “hated the Torah” and moved to Jerusalem
- Rabbi Yohanan quoted as saying, “If you are holding a sapling in your hand and someone tells you, ‘Come quickly, the Messiah is here!’, first finish planting the tree and then go to greet the Messiah”
- Rabbi Yohanan was said to live AS long as Moses associating him as the “Second Moses”
- Lastly, Rabbi Yohanan was called “the lamp of the universe” and “light of the world” by the Pharisee disciples
Jesus called Himself the “Light of the world” in
- Here, Jesus sets a comparison not simply in contrast to the prophets, but against the most formidable Torah teacher of the day i.e. Disciples of Jesus and handlers of the gospel possess more light than the father of Rabbinical Judaism
- Matthew 11:11-13 – We are greater than John the Baptist
- 1 Peter 1:10-12 – We possess knowledge prophets and angels long for
RESPONSIBILITY: Salt/We what is rotting (Discipleship)
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- Salt served as a preserving function of meat to prevent or slow decay
- Similarly, we are to act as preserving action to the things of God to a rotting world
RESPONSIBILITY: Salt/We make the world (Witness)
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- True disciples make bad circumstances palpable
- Our light should attract the world, not repel it
- Darkness cannot suppress light, rather is an absence of it (vs. 14 – City on hill cannot be hidden)
- True disciples give light where there is dark
- When living in light, stop chasing the shadows (vs. 15- we don’t put a lamp under a basket)
- Our light is noticed in contrast to the darkness
- Our light shines in contrast to our wounds
RESPONSIBILITY: Salt/We act as agent for the World – (Sanctified/Holy)
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- Sacrificed meat must be salted (Leviticus 2:13)
- Go back to Matthew 2, John the Baptist says Jesus will baptize with “fire”
- We possess the Spirit that acts as the purifying element to the world
WARNING: Salt/We can our Salt
- “if the salt loses its saltiness” (vs. 13)
- Most salt in ancient world came from salt marshes, not evaporation of salt water. Often, the salt was more soluble than the impurities therein leaving the salt worthless (vs. 15)
*If the Gospel in our life dilutes faster than the impure sin in our life, we become worthless i.e. “good for nothing” to the Kingdom
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- To lose our saltiness means:
- Losing the Christian distinctive
- Being superficial and not authentic
- Wasting God-given talent in pursuit of perishable things