Tag: salt

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Luke Devotionals

Losing our flavor

Luke

Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. (Luke 14:34-35)

As disciples of Jesus, it’s so easy for us to lose our flavor. To lose our ability to touch this world for Jesus.

We lose it when our faith becomes all about keeping man-made rules and we lose God’s love and compassion for people. We lose it when we refuse correction from our Lord. (1-6)

We lose it when we become proud, eager to show our importance to others, rather than humbly serving those who could never repay us. (7-14)

We lose it when we take God for granted and value other things, even our own family, more than we value him. (15-20, 26)

We lose it when we make our lives, our dreams, our comfort, our financial security more important than following Jesus. (26-27, 33)

Lord, I don’t want to lose my flavor. Forgive me for the times I close my ears to you. Forgive me for the times I make other things more important than you and your kingdom.

Give me your heart. A heart filled with compassion for those around me.

Open my eyes. Help me to see your glory and goodness. Help me see your love for me.

And as I gaze into these things, may it spark again my love for you and my desire to serve you. In your name I pray. Amen.

Categories
Luke Devotionals

Losing our flavor

Luke

In the last part of Luke 14, Jesus said,

Now, salt is good, but if salt should lose its taste, how will it be made salty? It isn’t fit for the soil or for the manure pile; they throw it out.

Let anyone who has ears to hear listen.” (Luke 14:34-35)

Just as salt flavors food, we are to flavor the world, touching the lives of others for Jesus.

But we can’t do that if we are living to please others or ourselves instead of Jesus. And that was Jesus’ point. (14:26-27, 33)

But in chapter 15, we see another way we lose our saltiness. And that’s if we lose our heart for the lost. Instead of reaching out to people with the love of God, we condemn them.

That’s what the Pharisees did. That’s what the older brother in Jesus’ story did.

Let us never lose our saltiness. Let us never lose our compassion, even for those who have hurt us.

Instead, let us first remember the grace we ourselves have received. And let us then reach out with the Father’s love and touch those who are dying apart from him.

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Colossians Devotionals

Words of grace, seasoned with salt

Colossians

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. (Colossians 4:6)

I don’t know about you, but those words are hard for me to live out.

“Always gracious.”

When I’m annoyed, are my words still gracious?

When I’m angry, are my words still gracious?

I can’t say they are.

“Seasoned with salt.”

Salt flavors food. Salt preserves food.

Do my words do the same for the people around me? Do they encourage people? Do they challenge them to grow? Do they help prevent the rot of sin from spreading in their lives?

Sometimes my words may be hard to hear. But can people see the grace that lies behind them?

Can my daughter see this in me? My wife? My church?

Because if I’m practicing these things at home and church, it helps me to do the same with the non-Christians I see during the week.

And that’s what Paul is primarily talking about here. When we are dealing with the people of this world, we should be speaking words full of grace, seasoned with salt, and making the most of every opportunity to touch them for Jesus.

Jesus said essentially the same thing.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It’s no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. (Matthew 5:13)

Lord Jesus, let my words always be gracious, seasoned with salt.

Let me not lose my saltiness because of the words that come out of my mouth each day. 

Rather, through my words, encourage, admonish, touch, and heal the people around me.

Categories
Mark Mark 9 Matthew Matthew 18

Parable of the unforgiving servant: Seasoned with mercy? Or fire?

The gospels

It’s been interesting putting all the accounts of this one discourse into one place.

But let us go back once more to the start of it: an argument between the disciples about who was the greatest. And probably during the argument, there were a lot of words said and feelings hurt.

So after Jesus talked about what to do when a person offends you, Peter asked a question that was very real to him at the moment. One of the other disciples had hurt him.

It wasn’t the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. The question was, how many times was he obligated to forgive?

Peter suggested seven, which at that time, was considered very magnanimous.

Rabbis at the time threw out the number three in forgiving a repeated offense. (Certainly this number is found nowhere in the Bible).

Jesus answered, “Not 7 times, but 77 times (or 70 times 7).”

One wonders if he was referencing the Old Testament, where a man named Lamech issued a curse in which if anyone hurt him, that he would be avenged 77 times. (Genesis 4:24)

But here, Jesus teaches that we are not to look to curse the person who hurts us, but to forgive.

Jesus, by the way, is not teaching that we should forgive up to 77 times or even 490 times. Rather, we are to always forgive.

He then tells the famous story of a king who forgives the huge debt of one of his servants.

The servant promptly goes out, sees another person that owes him money and demands it back. When the person begs for more time, the servant refuses, and has him thrown in prison.

The king, however, heard about it, and called the servant back in, saying,

You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to.

Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? (Matthew 18:32-33)

He then had him thrown into jail to be tortured until he paid all that he owed. Jesus then said,

This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. (Matthew 18:35)

Some points. To the servant who had his debt forgiven, the amount the other man owed him was huge. Basically it was about 4 months wages worth of debt.

But compared to the debt he had owed to the king, a debt worth millions and impossible to pay, there was no comparison at all.

Sometimes people hurt us, and to us, it is huge. We are hurt and scarred deeply. But what we need to realize is that our debt of sin that we owe to God is so much greater. Sure, our sins may be “smaller,” but what is small adds up.

If you sin 3 times a day, that’s nearly 1000 sins a year. Multiply that by your age and you start to get an idea of just how big your debt to God is. Yet God forgave you. Shouldn’t you forgive others?

If we don’t, what will happen? The servant in the story cast the man indebted to him away from himself to wallow in his guilt. And the man was guilty.

So often, we do the same. We refuse to forgive, and we cut that person off, hoping to make them wallow in their guilt.

But when the king found out, he cut that person off from his presence and handed him over to be tortured by the jailers.

I believe in the same way, when we refuse to forgive, God will hand us over to Satan to have at us. To make our lives miserable. To make us wallow in our bitterness and anger.

Why? Because God hates us? No. Because he loves us and wants us to repent.

I wonder about the order of all that Jesus said in these parallel passages. And I wonder if perhaps things weren’t said in the exact order that Mark places them. Because it fits perfectly here. Jesus said,

Everyone will be salted with fire. (Mark 9:49)

In other words, if you refuse God’s seasoning of grace and mercy, he will salt you with fire. He’ll make your life miserable until you repent.

Jesus then concludes,

Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? (Mark 9:50a)

Jesus calls us the salt of the earth. To flavor the world around us with his grace and mercy. But if we hold on to bitterness and anger in our lives, we lose that saltiness. So Jesus told his disciples and us,

Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other. (Mark 9:50b).

How about you? Are you salt to those who hurt you?

Categories
Matthew Matthew 5

Sermon on the Mount: Salt and light

Matthew

It is very interesting to me the context in which Jesus talks about us being salt and light in the world.

What was the context? He had just finished talking about persecution. That we are blessed if we are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

Right after that, he tells us we are the salt of the earth, and he warns us that if we lose our saltiness, we’re no good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled.

How can we lose our saltiness? By giving into pressure from our family, our friends, and the people around us to conform to them, rather than to Christ. To do so because we are afraid of what they will say or do to us.

When we are so focused on pleasing others that we forget that we need to please God above all others, we lose our saltiness.

We are meant to be salt in this world. Salt preserves. It keeps meat from rotting.

In the same way, Christians are to be people that keep our culture from rotting by showing people God’s ways.

Not just by telling them about God’s ways, mind you. But by showing them God’s ways by the way you live your life.

And by showing them God’s ways, they’ll see the contrast between a healthy, fulfilled life and a morally decrepit one.

Salt also flavors. It gives taste to food that has little or none. In the same way, we are to flavor the world around us with the love and touch of Christ.

But we can do neither of these things if we are simply blending in with the world.

God put us in this world to be light. A city on a hill that cannot be hidden. For what purpose? To show his glory to a lost, hurt, and dying world.

How can we then hide that light that God has lit in our lives by giving into the pressure of those around us?

How about you? Have you so conformed to this world that you’ve lost your saltiness? That your light can no longer be seen?

Who are you trying to please? God? Or the people around you?

May we obey the words of Jesus and let our lights shine before men, that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)