Salt Within You
If you’ll follow God’s procedure, you’ll begin gloriously.
Transcript
Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Oh, I’ve just been praying that God would speak to somebody’s heart, ‘specially today. I trust that maybe so. I pray every day that God may put His love, and His truth, and His blessing in my voice and in my heart, and that something might reach a specific need, to put a handle we often say, on the Word of God, so that you can get hold of it for yourself.
I’m going to linger just a moment more in the last verse of Mark chapter 9. Our Lord Jesus said, “Salt is good, but if the salt have lost his saltiness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves and have peace one with another”. Now, Jesus said to His disciples, “Ye are”, not ye contain. See, the Bible is not, not contains the Word of God and Jesus said, “Ye are”, not that you have or you contain the salt of the earth, “Ye are the salt of the earth”.
Whatever a born again believer is, this is part of what he is, you understand me? And so, the Savior here in this Mark 9 verse 50 passage, is emphasizing that same concept, it seems to me. He said, “Have salt in yourselves”.
Now, what did this grow out of? Well, go back in the ninth chapter. It grew out of the argument the disciples had had concerning who was to be the greatest. “Along the way”, it said, “they disputed among themselves who should be the greatest”. He said, “Well”, said, “if anyone wants to be first, he has to be last of all, and servant of all”, and then he gave the object lesson of the little child, childlike faith, childlike trust, childlike obedience, is what God wants from people who wish to be great.
Growing out of that then was a bit of information that was volunteered by John. John said, “Master, we saw one casting out demons in thy name and he followeth not us, and we forbade him because he followeth not us”.
Now, the Savior’s answer, and we went over this didn’t we, gave something of the true basis for real cooperation: a loyalty to the Lord Jesus, deep concern for those who trust in Him. One of these little ones, that believe in me, Jesus calls them. A desperate desire for personal holiness and then this spiritual reality that the Savior called salt. When you find someone like that you can work with him no matter where he gets his paycheck, right?
So anyway, He said, “Have salt in yourselves and based upon the inerrant, infallible Word of God, I’m giving you the theological format here, so that you can build upon it, the reality of Christ in your life is something that the Savior wants you’ll to experience. Have salt in yourselves. Your reaction to life depends not upon what the other person is doing or how he or she is doing it, but what God is doing in your own life. But I woke up this very morning dreaming, quite graphically, about a situation that involved relationships with other people, and some kind of a crisis that was occurring, and I remember saying, just as I woke up, the essence of success is to be ready not to react. Well now, that was pretty good philosophizing for a dream, wasn’t it? The essence of success is to be ready, not to react. “Have salt in yourselves”. See, what I’m getting at here, and I don’t want to belabor the point, but somebody needs to be reminded of this, I’m confident or else I wouldn’t have it on my heart. The thing that is important for you beloved is not what the other person is doing. This is such a sophomoric, childish ploy that we ought to recognize the minute it appears, but we don’t.
Many years dealing with young people in Youth for Christ, for 13 or 14 years and in all, and then 23 years on the college campus. You would, again and again, find somebody saying, “Well other people are doing it. Why are you picking on me”? Well, the problem is not other people; I would have to say gently, as gently as I could. The problem is not other people, right now we’re talking with you. So, let’s get over that first hurdle, shall we? That concerned that everyone seems to have about what other folk are doing. “We saw one casting out demons in Thy name we forbade him because he followeth not us”. He doesn’t belong to our group, he doesn’t portray our image, he doesn’t enhance our particular power or popularity, he doesn’t use our methods, “He followeth not us”, so we said stop it. Oh no, all Jesus said, don’t stop him, forbid him not. Anybody does a miracle in my name, he’s not against us, he’s for us. So, there’s the first thing. My concern has to be, what sort of person am I? What sort of Christian am I? What is the essence, what is the reality of my spiritual life? Is the Holy Spirit of God in evidence in what I say and what I do and my thoughts and my purposes? And the affect that I have on other people, what kind of an effect is that? You know beloved don’t you, that every person you ever meet will be affected by you in some way. It is a fact. And so, that’s the thrust of those words.
Before we go to that other phrase that has do with peace, one with another, let’s just think about this. How do you make sure that your experience is a blessed, salty, genuine Christian life? I read just last night a letter from a person who said, “I bought a new truck and the truck only had an AM radio, but I was trying to get some kind of a station, and as I drove along early in the morning, I came across your program. I listened” and he said later on, “I was led to accept Christ as my Savior”. He said, “Now I know”, underscore, “that I’m sure of my salvation in Christ”. Well now, that’s great.
How do you get to be sure? Well, that’s the first step, isn’t it? How do you get to be sure? You do what God tells you to do. Procedure is always important and many people are trying to be saved using the wrong procedure, aren’t they? And the Bible says, “If you want to be a child of God, you better receive Him”, the Holy Spirit of God of course brings that wonderful presence into your life. “Born”, it says, “of water and of the spirit”. “Born of water”, refers to your first physical birth, “Born of the Spirit”, refers to that new birth that the Lord Jesus said you must have. How do you receive a person? If I came to your house and you wanted to receive me, would you stand in the doorway and wait till I pushed past you? Oh no. Would you have me beat the door down? No. How do you receive a person? You open the door, you stand aside, you smile say, come on in.
Jesus our blessed Lord says, these are His own words aren’t they, “Behold, I stand at the door”, that’s the door of your life, “stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and over the door, I will come in”. That’s what Jesus said. The first verb there is receive and you need to talk to Him. You may never have done this, in this manner. You need to talk to the Lord Jesus and say, “Come into my life blessed Lord, forgive my sin, make me a child of God, I do receive you”, the best I know how. Talk to Him. The Bible says, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved”. That means you need to talk to God and ask Him into your life. Then the other verb is believe, “Even to them that believe on His name”. His name is Jesus, do you know what that name means? Matthew 1:21 says, “Thou shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins”. If you believe on a person’s name, you trust Him to do what His name means, don’t you? If my name is Cook, if you were going to believe on my name, what would you trust me to do? The cooking. Today, we have Mr. Banker, Mr. Baker, Mr. Shoemaker, Mr. Carpenter, we have all these different names that have come from the ancient practice of calling people after their occupation.
His name means Savior, and if you believe on His name that means you’re going to trust Him to do what His name means. Invite Him into your life and then by faith, trust Him to save you, to forgive you, to make you a child of God. I can guarantee that if you’ll follow God’s procedure, you’ll begin gloriously, to have what the Bible calls salt; reality, in other words, flavor, in your life. That’s where you start, have salt in yourself. You don’t depend now on somebody’s beautiful sermon, you don’t depend upon the encouragement of a trusted friend, you don’t depend upon circumstances that may happily fall out in your favor, you don’t even depend upon the way you feel, you don’t always feel religious do you? How many of you wake up early in the morning singing, “Holy, holy, holy”, at the top your voice? Not many, I’ll guarantee. Those who do are resented by the rest of the family, probably. There’s a verse in the Bible that says, “He that riseth early in the morning and rejoiceth with a loud voice, behold it shall be counted a curse unto him”. So, be quiet in the morning, will you? The Bible says so! (chuckles)
Well, no you don’t depend upon feelings or people or circumstances. You have within you, the power and presence and blessing of Almighty God. Oh halleluiah for that truth. We’ll get at that a little more of this next time we get together.
Dear Father today, may we be salty Christians in Jesus’ name I ask, Amen.
Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!
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