The Old Gray Dog Ponders . . . The Salt of the Earth

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You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

Matt. 5: 13

 

We have gotten accustomed to the blurred puffs of gray fog that pass for doctrine in churches and expect nothing better. From some previously unimpeachable sources are now coming vague statements consisting of a milky admixture of Scripture, science, and human sentiment that is true to none of its ingredients because each one works to cancel the others out. Little by little Christians these days are being brainwashed. One evidence is that increasing numbers of them are becoming ashamed to be found unequivocally on the side of truth. They say they believe, but their beliefs have been so diluted as to be impossible of clear definition. Moral power has always accompanied definite beliefs. Great saints have always been dogmatic. We need a return to a gentle dogmatism that smiles while it stands stubborn and firm on the Word of God that lives and abides forever. 
A.W. Tozer

 

    Jesus has taken His newly chosen disciples up into the hills, away from the crowds, in order to teach them what this Gospel is all about.  In His introduction, the Beatitudes, He explained the way to true bliss.  Now He is explaining what the responsibilities of a disciple are.

 

You are the salt of the earth. . .

 

    There is no higher compliment that we can pay a person than to say that s/he is the salt of the earth. Jesus gave us that expression. He told His disciples to be the salt of the earth. They would have understood, perhaps better than we, what He meant.

    Yesterday, as I was walking on the treadmill, I watched an old episode of JAG. Harm and Mac were on a submarine when a generator went out.  The captain ordered all the meat to be packed in salt.  With modern refrigeration, we often forget that for many centuries salt was the most common preservative in the world. If people wanted to keep things from going bad, they preserved them in salt.

    If Jesus' disciples are the salt of the earth, He means that it is our responsibility to see that things don't go bad.  We are responsible for preservingthe highest standards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

   We have become so accustomed to people making excuses for their failure to live up to their potential, that we assume God will do the same thing.  Jesus says, No; you are to be the salt of the earth. You and I are charged with preserving the highest standards.

 

 

. . . but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

 

 

The Theology of Accommodation

 

Salt Preserves

 

My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality.

James 2: 1

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.
John D. Rockefeller

    Today, far too many people are more concerned with whom they stand than what they stand for.  When we are concerned about not offending, we are accommodating.

 

 

Example: The Kindly, Committed, Grandfather

 

 Commitment is not enough. It matters to what one is committed. From all I have heard, Chris Glaser is a decent human being. But being a decent and committed human being is not enough. Similarly, that a gay couple may have a committed and loving relationship in no way ameliorates the sinful nature of that relationship. Again, it matters to what one is committed.

My great-grandfather, who also lived in Georgia, was a man capable of great love and commitment. He loved his wife and his children. His daughter, my grandmother, loved him and remembered him as a kind, loving and committed man. He died when I was four years old, but I fondly recall sitting on my great-granddaddy's lap and tugging at his long white beard. I remember him wrapping his arms around me and how I giggled into his snowy beard as he cooed, "snuggle-boy, snuggle-boy." He also was committed and devoted and served causes in which he believed while receiving little or no compensation. His devoted and selfless commitment was rewarded when he was elected Grand Dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan. It matters to what one is committed.

Dr. Earl Tilford

 

 

       I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom:  Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers;  and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.  But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

II Tim. 4: 1-5

 

 

    Christians are called to preserve godly standards.  We can't do that if we make exceptions to accommodate our friends. Christians are called to promote godly purity.  We can't do that if we compromise our beliefs to accommodate those in our society who are committed to ungodly causes, even if they are kindly grandfathers.

 

I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.  They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.  As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.  And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

    John 17: 15-19

 

    We are in the world to preserve, promote and exhibit God's standards.  We are sanctified as we do. We do not have the right nor the authority to change God's standards, to re-interpret them to accommodate our friends or culture, or to re-image God so that He no longer resembles Himself, rather He becomes the image of the prevailing cultural standards.

    If we are to be the salt of the earth, we need to change our culture.  We must not allow our culture to change us. If we do, we become good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

 

But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.  Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth.

Rev. 2: 14-16

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

     The Nicolaitans were a heretical sect within the church that preached accommodation with pagan society. They taught that since Christians were freed from the Law, they were at liberty to practice idolatry and immorality.

Neo-Necolaitans

"It can be an act of faithfulness to terminate the life of an unborn child"
OGA-88-109, "The Covenant of Life and The Caring Community", page 10, adopted by the 195th UPC* General Assembly (1983)

[Every woman has the choice whether or not to have unprotected sex, with the obvious exception of rape.  After she makes that choice, she needs to take the responsibility for that choice. It is morally wrong to shift that responsibility to an unborn child.  Killing a child is neither a moral nor responsible choice; and it is never "an act of faithfulness to terminate the life of an unborn child."]

"I confess that to love Jesus means to live in faithful, monogamous covenants of love. . ." 
Susan Andrews, Moderator of 215th PCUSA* General Assembly

[*The Mainline Presbyterian Church before recent mergers]

The First Presbyterian Church in Yorktown, NY, was the host of a "Universal Worship Service" in which the participants offered prayers to a smorgasbord of gods -- including those who, "whether known or unknown to the world, have held aloft the light of truth through the darkness of human ignorance." The service, which the Presbytery of Hudson River promoted by e-mail to its ministers, included readings from Islam, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, the tradition of the "Divine Female," Native Peoples and Judaism.

Apparently, a new pastor was called to the church who announced on his very first Sunday that only two Christian services a year would be held from now on (viz., Christmas and Easter).  He planned to lead "worship" like an imam on Ramadan, rabbi on Hanukkah, and so on; enabling Buddhist meditations on off Sundays.

MINNEAPOLIS – To the tribal rhythms of bongo drums, about 200 women – plus a "few good men," as they called them – swayed slowly into the room for the opening worship of the 10th anniversary (and final) Re-Imaginined god Gathering.
They came on this cloudless day, June 19, to praise water, tell their stories and be reminded that, as women, they have creative license to change entirely what has been an orthodox understanding of the Christian faith. After all, they say they believe the Bible is a product of a patriarchal mindset that oppressed women.
"We don't need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff."

PHILADELPHIA – When arguing for church acceptance of homosexuality, most advocates talk about monogamy. But others are bolder.
"I am a strong ally of those in healthy, polyamorous relationships," declared Debra Kolodny. She argued that having multiple sexual partners can be "holy." Kolodyn was leading a workshop at the WOW (Witness Our Welcome) 2003 convention, an ecumenical gathering for "sexually and gender inclusive Christians."

 

       H. Richard Niebuhr identifies liberal theology under the Christ of Culture label and sees liberals as accommodating Christianity to the prevailing culture.  In Niebuhr's view, Christianity and culture are neither in tension, nor opposed to each other.

       "Liberals are open to the truth of other religions," said Donald E. Miller in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, Westminster Press, 1983. "Christianity is not viewed as the only expression of man's search for God or of God's revelation to man. . . Liberals tend to assume a broadly ecumenical attitude."

       Whenever we see people compromising God's standards to accommodate someone with a winsome spirit or a kindly demeanor, we see that the Nicolaitans are still at work in the Church today.

 

"The plain man in the church has difficulty understanding the nature of the struggle. He does not yet appreciate the real gravity of the issue. He does not see that it makes very little difference how much or how little of the creeds of the church the modernist preacher affirms, or how much or how little of the biblical teaching from which the creeds are derived. This modernist might affirm every jot and tittle of the Westminster Confession, for example, and yet be separated by a great gulf from the reformed faith. It is not that part is denied and the rest is affirmed, but all is denied because all is affirmed merely as useful or as symbolic, but not as true. A thing that is useful may be useful for some and not for others, but a thing that is true remains true for all people and beyond the end of time."

J. Gresham Machen 

 

    Christians are called to preserve and purify.  We are never called to accommodate or excuse.

Salt Adds

Add Something to Where You Are

 

    Here is a soldier stationed in   Iraq  , stationed in a big sand box. He asked his wife to send him dirt ( U.S. soil), fertilizer, and some grass seed so that he can have the sweet aroma, and feel the grass grow beneath his feet When the men of the squadron have a mission that they are going on, they take turns walking through the grass and the American soil.

 

    There is the second great lesson:  Salt adds flavor!  If we are the salt of the earth, we must add godly flavor  -- a sweet aroma -- to wherever we are.  If your church disappeared today, would anyone in the community, besides the members, miss it?If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

    The way some Christians live, one would get the idea that Christianity takes all the fun out life.  It shouldn't be that way.  Living for Christ adds meaning and purpose; it does not deprive any of us of anything of lasting value.

 

    

 

 

 

 

What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

Rom. 6: 21

 

The first great gift we can bestow on others is a good example.
Thomas Morell

     What the world calls "fun" more often than not leaves one feeling ashamed afterward.  If we are to be the salt of the earth we need to be showing the world a better way.

 

 

O Lord of all good life purify our lives.

Help us to know more of Thee,

and by the power of Thy Holy Spirit, use us to show forth Thyself to others.

Make us humble, brave and loving;

make us ready for adventure.

We do not ask that Thou wilt keep us safe,

but that Thou wilt keep us ever faithful to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

In His name we pray.

Amen

 

 

 

 Blessed are the saints who are equipped with the sound doctrines of TULIP!

The Old Gray Dog
Jim Tuckett

The Westminster Fellowship
Clearly and Unequivocally Proclaiming What It Means To Be Reformed Christians

http://www.westminsterfellowship.org