From the Home Place

September 24, 2025

As most of you know, we have spent our summer working on the outside of this ‘ol house. Many of those summer days were well above ninety degrees. It has been a hot one, and as such we have consumed gallons of water, tea and Propel in an effort to keep our bodies hydrated. It seemed like that every quart I put in, my body put out almost an equal amount in plain sweat.

Working on a steel roof at ninety-four degrees soon turned our t-shirs into wet rags and our foreheads into a river of sweat. And yes, we smelled like it too. So you can imagine that every time one would bend over or look down, we had sweat running into our eyes, and the salt in the sweat burned like acid in the eyes. I mean it really burned!

Also, as we worked with a mountain of lumber and hundreds of feet of steel, there were plenty of stickers and cuts. And once again, when the salt running off our bodies would get into one of those open wounds, it really burned!

For all of the studies I’ve taught and all of the studies I’ve listened to about the “salt” mentioned in Matthew 5. We discuss that salt is a preservative, that it adds flavoring and that salt is used to kill germs in bad water, but I have never heard anyone mention that salt burns when you get it in an open wound, or in one’s eyes! Perhaps it is because it’s not very glamorous to talk about the sweaty salt.

Yet I think it is really amazing that our Creator has made our sweaty bodies to produce salt water that really burns when we get it into an open wound. Perhaps it is to be a reminder of what the Lord Jesus said to His first disciples, and to us as well, “You are the salt of the earth,”

With all of the good things that salt is, it can also be a cause for real pain. Perhaps, it is time for we Christians to be the real “salt of the earth.” For far too long we have sat in our churches and been well behaved children of God. Loved one, Jesus was not speaking to well behaved children! He was speaking to a group of believers that He expected to reveal all of the good qualities of salt, but then they were also to be an irritant to their sinful culture.

Let’s read Matthew 5:13 in its entirety: “You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again. It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”

That is another blessing of working on a hot steel roof in a ninety-plus degree day. Inevitably, while working up under the eve of our house, some of that sweat would always drip into my mouth, and do you know what, it tasted just like salt!

Salt is great for flavoring, for sterilizing, for preserving and for reminding us that salt is an irritant that is supposed to taste like salt!

In my opinion, we/I Christians are guilty of losing our saltiness, and especially of losing the irritant quality of salt. After wrestling with a jagged piece of steel I ended up with a significant cut on the palm of my hand, and you guessed it, some sweat ran into that cut and man did it burn. But you see friends, that burning effect of salt reminded me that I am still alive, another positive of salt.

So I ask, could it be that as salty Christians are we to be irritants to the sinful world around us? Not in obnoxious ways, but in ways that make it uncomfortable to continue in sinful actions and attitudes. (The Scripture also reminds us that we are to correct with “gentleness.” 2 Tim. 2:25) That would require we Christians to not possess those same sinful actions and attitudes within our lives, or otherwise we would truly be hypocrites. That my friends, is what Jesus meant when He said that Christians can become “tasteless.”

But here we are, still on earth and still usable to our Master. Perhaps it is time for we Christians to repent of our sinful tastelessness and to become all that salt is intended to be. Including an ocassional irritant. After all, that burning feeling reminds folks that they are still alive. According to 2 Timithy 2:25 we must be the irritant of “gentleness.”