Pass the Salt

Tim Ross | June 20, 2021

Listen

Transcription

I'm so grateful to be back with you all and excited about continuing this series. I want to give shout-outs to the dads once again. Amen to you. I don't know about you, but I enjoyed exactly what I did to become a dad.

Amen. I'll do it again.

I also want to just remind everybody in the room that Juneteenth is a day that if you don't know about it should make you curious enough to go learn about it. On this day back in 1865, General Granger made a gospel message, "All slaves are free." It's two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. How many of you all know stuff can be in legislation and not be in your heart? This declaration that all slaves have been free is really a gospel message because 2,000 years ago, what Jesus did on the cross, bridged the greatest divide that there's ever been between Jew and Gentile.

After that bridge was reconciled, He raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places with Him. I'm just celebrating today, not that we were late getting the news in Texas, but that we are all equal in Texas and the entire world. Is that good news?

That's good news. All right. I'm really hyped. We had real good prayer time back there. It was like the tone of the prayers made me want to preach, so that might happen.

I want to give a shout-out to Embassy City Church who is continuing to be patient with flat-Timmy on Sunday mornings? I'm so grateful that you have given me this opportunity to come over and be with my Gateway family. The gospel according to St. Luke 14. This is a series that we've been in all month for June called Discipleship 101. Every single weekend, we've been talking about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Last weekend was crazy. Over 1,000 people across all the campuses and in Embassy City Church stood on a platform to make a public declaration that they were going to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

We should turn up for that right now. That's good. I'd go home. That's just good. We're so excited about those that have made the commitment to be one more disciple to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. I want to draw your attention to The gospel according to St. Luke 14, starting at the 25th verse. I'm going to reading 10 verses in your hearing, then I'll give you the title of the message and see what the Lord would say. Is that all right?

Starting at the 25th verse, here's what it says, "A large crowd was following Jesus." It's a perfect pick-up to what we talked about last week. We had large crowds that we've just connected with that now when I follow Jesus. This large crowd was following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, "If you want to be My disciple, you must hate everyone else, by comparison." "Dang, Jesus.

Your social media account just went up in the thousands, and Your first thing You want to say to them is that you should hate everybody, by comparison, if they're standing next to Me." Then, He doesn't just leave it for your imagination, He actually lists the individuals off: "Your father, happy Father's Day, and your mother, your wife, and your children, brothers, and sisters, yes, even your own life, otherwise, you cannot be My disciple." "If you do not carry your own cross and follow Me, you cannot be My disciple. Don't begin until you count the costs, 'For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there was enough money to finish it? Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money and then everyone will laugh at you.' " They would say, "There's that person who started that building and couldn't afford to finish it."

"What king would go to war against another king without first sitting down with his counselors to discuss whether his army of 10,000 can defeat the 20,000 soldiers marching against him? If he can't, he will send a delegation to discuss terms of peace while the enemy is still far away. You cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own." That's really strong. What's interesting to me in this chapter, and where the writer decide to break it up, that if he would have left it there it would potentially be more of what I talked on last week.

There seems to be a pivot that's not a pivot at all, that Jesus extends to and the next verse just seems to come out of nowhere. After you've just said, "You need to hate everybody in comparison to me, you're mamma, your daddy, your wife, your children, your brothers, and sisters, and yourself, two, counting up all the cost of all these things," then He says, "Salt is good for seasoning." What?

Just imagine  hearing a sermon on discipleship and He's telling you everything you must renounce and denounce and now pronounce that Jesus Christ is Lord. Then in the same breath, He says, "Salt is good for seasoning." We essentially turn from discipleship to the food network without any announcement. "Salt is good for seasoning, but if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor for the manure power, it's thrown away. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand."

Okay, Jesus. If you're taking notes on this message, the title of this message is simply Pass the Salt. Would you pass the salt, please? Bow your heads. Let's pray over the word before we get into it, shall we? Holy Spirit, make us salty, amen.

I like salt. Salt is good. I like restaurants that know how to give liberal amounts of salt. I've gotten tired of these establishments that are concerned about my health. 

That's my business.

If I want to eat healthily I'll find better avenues. I'm here now, I want salt. I don't want you to put a salt packet in the bag for me to sprinkle myself, Chick-fil-A.

I expect those deliciously peanut-oil-drenched fries to have salt on them already. Where Chick-fil-A has failed, MOOYAH Burger has not.

MOOYAH Burger doesn't care about your blood pressure.

MOOYAH Burger cares not if you have a stroke.

MOOYAH Burger sprinkles so much salt on those fries that you have physical evidence on your fingers. I would have to go back to childhood to remember what it was like to have so much salt on your fries that you would have to wipe them off on your pants. Salt is great. In my research for the sermon, I found out there are over 14,000 uses for salt. It's too much to even try to go into.

After 60, I just gave up. You can use salt to test if there's going to be a rotten egg. You just put it in some water and then you put two tablespoons of salt. If it floats then, it's rotten. If it sinks, that means it's good. I didn't know that. Salt was used for cleaning before chemicals came out. Salt is used for a lot of stuff. When I was reading this particular chapter, I was amazed by Jesus's use of salt. After giving what would be a turnoff to some people, this bold declaration that "You're going to have to follow Me at all costs." That, by comparison, "If you don't hate your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your children, and your own self, you cannot be My disciple." Can I just pause and say, "I love Jesus's leadership style."

Jesus is not worried about winning a popularity contest. Jesus is not worried about likes. Jesus is not worried about if you're going to like Him tomorrow, He's going to tell you the truth today, and if you show up tomorrow He's going to tell you the truth again. He's constantly vetting why you're following Him: "Are you following Me just for blessings? Are you following Me just for health? Are you following Me just for wealth?" It's going to be tested. By comparison, "Do you love Me or your children more?" Oh, Jesus. With a blank face, He's just looking at you like--

By comparison, "Do you love Me or your wife more?" "Oh, Jesus. You told me to love my bride like You love Yours." "If it comes down to Me or her, who is it going to be?" "Jesus, You want me to hate my mother and my father? They born me, Jesus." "I need you, by comparison, to hate everything else when it comes to Me. Not only that, I need you to pick up your cross; I need you to follow Me. Please, don't do this unless you count up the cost. Don't do it out of emotion. Don't do it because they sang your favorite song during altar call. Don't do it because they dimmed the lights. Don't do it because your friend grabbed your hand. Only do this if you've counted up the cost."

You will have great days with Jesus, but how many disciples know there are also going to be some tough days with Jesus. He is not with you to have just a good life; He's with you for all of your life. On the good days and the bad days, on the ups and the downs, on the mountains and the valleys, Jesus promises to be with you on all of those days, not just the church days.

After we've had a wonderful weekend in service, Jesus says, "I'll be with you on that tough Monday morning. I'll be with you on that terrible Tuesday afternoon. I will be with you on that confusing Wednesday. I will be with you on the devastating Thursday. I will be with you on the tumultuous Friday. I'll be with you on the crazy Saturday until we get back to a glorious Sunday. I'm not with you to entertain you; I'm with you because I promise to be." This is a sobering thing He has brought to the attention of all of His disciples.

Can you imagine being in the crowd and going, "Oh, I didn't know You wanted all that. My friend just invited me to church. The church seemed cool. They had a great front door to get into the church. I just thought growth track would be great. I thought growth path would be the wonderful four steps to go through. I didn't know You were going to ask me to give up stuff. I'm going to give up all my money for You? You want me to hate people in comparison to You?" To which He says, "Yes." Immediately, He switches the subject, "Salt is good for seasoning."

I'm sorry, Sir, what? Salt is great for seasoning, it's great for flavor, but if it loses its saltiness, it's worthless. It's not good for the table. It's not good for the manure power. It's good for nothing. Then He says at the end and this is the thing all disciples have to pay attention to, "He that happened to hear, let them hear. Those that can understand let them understand. I'm saying something without saying it because I want to see how closely you're paying attention to Me. Salt is good for flavor, but if it loses this flavor, what is it good for?"

14,000 uses, but in Jesus's day, there were three main uses for salt. The most commonly known uses for salt. Those three are the ones I want to explore today. The first one is what He says, "Salt seasons." Have you ever noticed how much better your food is with a little salt on it? You ever had some food that was ugh. You were like, "Can you help me the salt, please?" You start--

Ever been to the family reunion and somebody's potato salad wasn't right?

You were looking for something to doctor this thing up with, "Can you pass me the salt, please?" Have you ever had somebody's grits just wasn't popping?

You were like, "I'm going to need some more butter and some salt." If you put sugar in your grits, please, leave.

I'm dead serious, you got to go. I'm not going to even finish my sermon until you leave.

Leave or repent either one, but don't put no sugar. Stop putting sugar in your grits. If you want diabetes, just go. Don't get no sugar in your grits. The salt is there for flavor. It makes it pop; it makes it come alive.

In Matthew 5:3, He actually says, "You are to be the salt of the earth. You are the salt of the earth. If it's going to have any flavor, it's because you as a believer in Me is in the earth. I need you to go season everything. I need you to go out into the world and bring some flavor to it: not hatred, not strife, not division. I need you to bring some love and some peace and some unity to a world that is so cynical, and so corrupt, and so dark, and so jaded. I need you to sprinkle what I put in you into the earth."

There's a guy. I can't say his last name. He's a Turkish man. His first name is Nusret, but they call him Salt Bae. Salt Bae is a guy who is a restaurateur. He is an entrepreneur. He is a butcher. He is a chef. He has become popular and gone viral for the way he sprinkles salt on his steaks. This man will cook you a steak. Then he takes the salt and he does this. He don't put it in a shaker. He grabs it with his hand, coarse salt all the way up here and start sprinkling it down. It dribbles down his forearm, jumps off his elbow onto the steak, and people eat it.

What is happening? Where is the hygiene? I don't know. They let this man sprinkle his salt off his hand, forearm, and elbow onto their food. They eat it, and they love him. We need more Salt Baes in the body of Christ. We need more people that are so attracted to our salt that they want to be around just to get sprinkled on. We need people who are disciples of Jesus to live out their lives in such an attractive way that people just want to be around you, not because of you, but because of who's living on the inside of you.

Everybody do like this. Everybody do like this. Next time you go to the mall. Next time you go to the gas station. When you get back to work, just do it on a Zoom call. It don't matter, just bring something that makes this world tastes better. Bring something that makes this world a little bit easier to digest because there's a lot of corruption out there. He told us to be the type of people that would literally bring flavor to the earth. Paul says in Colossians 4:6, that when we have our conversation with people, that it should be gracious and it should be literally seasoned with salt, is the word that he uses. For all of you, all that you like to tell people how you feel, to give people a piece of your mind, let's just make sure it's salt and not acid.

We're three weeks deep into this. Only got one more week after this, so I just got to talk to you straight. Next time you post something, make sure it's salty and not acidity. The next time you have a conversation and you disagree with a person, make sure you leave them salted and not assaulted.

I can do this all day.

Salt seasons. The second thing salt does, salt preserves. It's not just for flavoring and for seasoning, it also preserves. When we talk about salt seasoning, we're talking about sprinkles. When we're talking about salt preserving, we're talking about tossing. When you want to preserve something, you got to toss a lot of salt on it. Some sprinkles won't do. The wonderful thing I learned about salt is that when salt is used as a preservative, it literally dehydrates the meat or the food that it is preserving. All that delicious beef jerky that we have in the South, a lot of salt went on that.

Literally was being drawn out as all the moisture, but not only the moisture, all of the bacteria in that meat is drawn out with it. When I talk about salt preserving, what am I talking about? I'm talking about preserving our values. I'm talking about preserving our beliefs. I'm talking about preserving the doctrine, the tenants of our faith. I'm talking about living the type of life that it doesn't matter what's going on in the world, the world is not going to have an influence on you, you are going to have an influence on the world because you are not just sprinkling salt, you are also tossing salt

I'm that type of person; I love sinners. I love people that don't believe in Jesus Christ. They are attracted to me because I'm salty.

When they get up to me and we start talking about different things and they start telling me their value system and their belief system, I go from sprinkling to tossing. I'm like, "Oh, this is over. Now, I need to huh."

It's not done in a demeaning way; it's not done in a condescending way, I'm just preserving me.

I don't know if they want it or not, but I need enough salt on me, on my faith, on my life, on my way of thinking. The scriptures mean something to me, and I'm going to preserve it and not let the world contaminate it, it preserves. The last thing salt does is salt kills. Salt kills, too much salt, dead.

Just enough salt, hmm. Little more salt, preserved. A lot of salt, dead. Salt's been used to kill stuff for years. You got some grass growing through some cracks? You don't sprinkle some salt, you don't toss some salt, you dump some salt. You dump some salt in between that crack, you know what's going to happen? That grass is going to die on the spot. Have you ever been to a restaurant and had the horrific experience of somebody leaving the salt shaker unscrewed.

You go to sprinkle and the whole thing just-- You don't try to brush it off to continue eating it, that meal is dead.

You wait for the waitress to come back, you're like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, your salt shaker-- I'm going to need another chicken fried steak; this one's ruined." Why? Because it was too much salt. Here's my fear. I feel we have dumped salt in places that it was never meant to be dumped and we've sprinkled in places that were never meant to be sprinkled. Here's my burden, is that we get our salt distribution correct as disciples of Jesus Christ. You only dump salt when you need something killed.

Here's what I've seen happen too many times amongst believers, is that we go out of our churches and we come out from hearing a rousing sermon and we actually give bad news to unbelievers and good news to believers. We walk out of his church service and we say, "You're going to hell," to unbelievers. We just dumped salt on them. Soon as we see them and we're like, "Ah, you ain't living right. [yells]" We're dumping salt on people that we were never meant to dump salt on. If the good news is good news, then going to hell is actually not good news.

I remember being 18 years old walking through a mall. They had just released a youth group into the mall who were on fire for Jesus to walk up to people and just to see if they would give their life to Jesus. I'm walking to the mall. These three little girls; they were so cute. They came up to me and they said, "Hi sir, do you have a minute?" I was like, "Yes." They said, "If you died right now, do you know what your soul would go?" Now I'm a PK kid who is unregenerate and haven't given my life to Jesus yet, they caught the wrong dude.

They said, "Do you know your soul will go if you died right now?" I said, "Straight to hell."

All three of their faces were like, "We were not trained for this response."

I don't know. They were looking at each other like, "What do we do now?" There was like 45 seconds of awkward silence and then they said, "Thank you for your time."

The good news for unbelievers is that Jesus died for them. That God loves them so much that He sent His Son to die for them. That's good news. We've been giving bad news to unbelievers and good news to believers: "Your life's going to be great. Give life to Jesus is going to be awesome." When the truth of the matter is the good news is for the unbeliever, the bad news is actually for the believer. The good news for the unbeliever is, "Give your life to Jesus. He loves you. He died for you." Then you give your life to Him and it's like, "Okay, the bad news is that now you got to die for Him."

I got a whole bunch of stuff in red: "You are going to have to hate your mama, and your daddy, and your wife, and your kid." This is the gospel message for people that actually give their life to Jesus. We need to dump in the right spot and stop dumping in the wrong spot. Who am I advocating that you dump salt on you? You. Your will, dump that salt. Your way, dump that salt. Your agenda, dump it on you. Your pride, dump it. Your lust, dump it. Take the words in this book and don't sprinkle on yourself, dump the salt on you until everything that's not like Jesus leaves you alone.

I love y'all. The reason why I love y'all, the fact that I could be preaching on discipleship and y'all clap it like y'all clapping, the world is not going to be ready for y'all. This is about to be the saltiest earth that the world has ever seen. All it takes is knowing where to put the salt and how much. Sprinkle on the earth in your conversations while you're out and about. Sinners need a little salt. Somebody tries to challenge your faith, toss that salt, preserve. The devil is a lie, won't get me. To Him, I live and to Him, I die. Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God. You can have whatever kind of thoughts you want to, but it will not knock me off-center on what I believe in this book, point blank period.

Lastly, please, dump the salt on you. I promise you if you kill that attitude you got, that talk-back spirit you got, that laziness you got-- I know I'm talking country now.

I'm just saying, "Got," at the end of everything. I'm telling you generational curses can be broken if you just dump it out.

Would you bow your heads and close your eyes? What is the Holy Spirit is saying to you through this message? Here's my hope and my prayer, my hope and my prayer is that all of us that have decided to become disciples of Jesus become the saltiest people that we have been called to be. Until we flavor the whole earth, preserve the truth of scripture, and kill every selfish motive we have.