“You are the salt of the earth….” Matthew 5:13
As the people on the mount with the Lord heard Him explain that those who live Godly lives are the salt of the earth, another use of salt would have come to their mind. In Biblical days food needed to be preserved. Without refrigerators the common way to preserve food was salting. Salt is an aseptic meaning it is free from contamination and harmful bacteria. Thus salt can inhibit infection. While it cannot cure an ailment, it can stop its spread. Salt will not totally deter contamination but it can greatly slow it. To do this meat would be layered in salt and placed in sealable earthenware crocks. Another method of preserving food with salt is soaking it in a salt brine. While not as good for long-term preservation, brining kept food edible through several years. Brining was used for cheeses, vegetables and meats. No matter how the preservation was done salt acted in the same way to preserve the food for a period of time. When added to food, the salt interacts with it to foster a climate that deters the development of bacteria, yeasts, and molds. By osmosis the salt extracts moisture and oxygen (which are needed by the bacteria to grow and reproduce) from the food. When interacting with salt water is drawn across a cell membrane to try to equalize the salinity or concentration of salt on both sides of the membrane. If enough salt is added too much water will be removed from a cell for it to stay alive or reproduce. As a result the microbes explode because of the difference in pressure between the outside and inside of the organism. It is interesting that a high concentration of salt, typically 20%, is needed to kills organisms that decay food and cause disease.. While salt take moisture and oxygen out of food, it can also change the pH of the meal. This is due to the ionizing properties of salt, which allows it to separate into positive and negative ions. Thus salt does not lave food in the same state, it changes the nature of the food it touches. When preparing food that was preserved in salt the first thing a cook would do was to soak the food in fresh water to remove as much of the salt as possible. No matter how much this was done, however, it was next to impossible to remove all the salt meaning that food would typically be much saltier. It could never go back to its normal state. What can we learn? The world we live in in rapidly deteriorating It is becoming more and more corrupt as we watch the sequence outlined in Romans 1:18-32 happen before our eyes. With that in mind we think of the words to the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3. Another way to be lukewarm is to lode one’s saltiness. From the lessons of salt above, we see applications for believers today. First, we cannot stop the corruption of the world we live in but we can confront it and retard it. To do that we must get close to the world but we must remain separate from the world. We will be around deadness and bacteria (sin) of this world. To be successful as believers we must remember that our bond with Christ is complete just as the solid bond between sodium and chloride makes it stable and impermeable to bonds with other outside elements. We must touch the world without becoming part of the world. Second, we see the process of confronting is primarily osmosis. We have to come close to the causes of impurity and remove its ability to live. We do this by taking away what fuels the corruption so that it cannot live and grow. Third we are reminded the way we confront the world is using our own saltiness. That might be invisible. For example we can impact the society we live in by praying for it and our leaders. God works as He pleases and it may be to change the hearts of our “Nebuchadnezzar’s” just as much as it is to remove him. Fourth, we confront the world by creating a thirst for the living water, Jesus Christ. It has been said, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”. That is not true if you give him enough salt before hand. We are to be the block of salt that creates spiritual thirst.