About five years ago, I got introduced to a new bit of slang that I don't know, maybe you all have heard it forever, but I hadn't heard until about five years ago. I noticed this in a bunch of discussion threads where rival teams, fan bases, would get together and bicker about their sport thing. And I made that sound like I don't like sports. I like sports. I did not mean to poo-poo that. I'm so sorry, sports. Please still love me back. No, what I'm talking about though is that, you know, really in the big scheme of things, your sports teams do things and you have fun with it and you enjoy it. But after that, you move on with life. And some people, though, they stay mad and they get mad at other fans. And when they do, I've discovered they employ the expression somebody's salty. They call people who are mad about their team losing salty. And I remember seeing that for the first time and being like, I um I'm gonna say that a lot because I want to sound cool and smart and with it, but I should probably figure out what they actually mean by salty first, because salty could mean a ton of different things. I mean, salt has a lot of attributes, right? So does salty mean like this is the taste of the salty tears that the embittered fan is crying about as they complain about the refs or whatever went wrong? Does salty mean like ah is uh, you know, a bitter bite that they were forced to swallow and because they didn't like the taste of it because it's all salt, now they're, you know, spewing venom and their faces twisted up and mad. I don't know. What I figured out eventually is that nobody actually knows. And the expression just means somebody's really grouchy or fussy about things and they didn't like the way stuff went down with their sports team. Doesn't really matter that much to me when we're talking about sports teams and who won or who lost or whatever, but it does matter to me when the same expression gets used in the Bible, which holds itself out as coming from God and being really important in terms of shape and how stuff is. And when a passage that involves the word salt or the expression salty is happening in the context of something that holds itself out as like defining the values and virtues of a greater, truer, more real kingdom, then I need to know what it means, or I'm gonna get stuff wrong and I'm gonna do stuff that's weird. So, what we have in Matthew chapter five is Jesus' first big public speech in Matthew. He opens by defining the values of his kingdom with these beatitude statements: blessed are this, blessed is that. So this opens with all of these statements about kingdom values. It ends on what feels like kind of a down note, you know, blessed are those who are persecuted. And then verses 11 through 12, that's what we worked on last week, are all about this. You know, blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, but rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, because the prophets before you, they got persecuted as well. So the idea here is that while this isn't something that the kingdom citizen is being told to go out and invite on themselves, Jesus is presenting this as an inevitability when the kingdom citizen interacts with the world kingdom. There's gonna be a natural friction here. So I think that context a little bit helps us understand what's going on when we pick it up in verse 13 and go on through, let's just take it all the way through 16 here, and uh we get a sense of of Jesus continuing this thought about the relationship between the kingdom citizen and what's going on in the world. It says, You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? Salt, salt, saltiness, salty. Yeah, it's four times using salt or salty in one sentence. Clearly, we got to put some work into figuring out what it means here, but we'll keep working context before we get there. It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men. So before we've even figured out what salt means in this context, we can figure out a little bit here. You are the salt of the earth, means we're talking about the relationship between you, that would be kingdom citizens, because that's who he's talking to here, and the earth, that would be the world kingdom. Okay, I get the contrast. Somehow, salt has some attribute that is important in terms of how it relates to the world kingdom. And if it loses that attribute, whatever it is, and we'll consider that in a minute, then it's not good for anything anymore, and there's really no point in it existing. Aha! The formula then goes like this Kingdom citizens are supposed to have X attribute, some kind of attribute associated with salt, that somehow positively affects the world around it. And if Kingdom Citizen isn't manifesting this mysterious attribute associated with salt, then Kingdom Citizen is pretty much good for nothing, and there's really no point or purpose or function in Kingdom Citizen. Oh, okay. So without knowing what salt means even yet, we know that the stakes are pretty high here and this matters. So then the billion-dollar question here is how would these people have understood the term salty? Not that we really need a smoking gun Bible reference for this potential meaning of salty, but Job 6 does describe salt being used in the most obvious way, which is to make your food taste better. And then I wrote it down here, 2 Kings 2, 19 and forward, gives the impression that salt is associated with purity of like the heart, of the soul. The men of the city said to Elisha, Look, our Lord, this town is well situated as you can see, but the water's bad and the land's unproductive. Oh, bring me a new bowl, he said. That's Elisha who said that, and put salt in it. So they brought it to him. Then he went out to the spring and threw salt into it, saying, This is what the Lord says. I have healed this water, never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive. And the water has remained wholesome to this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken. So it seems like at the very least, salt here is being used as an example of literal purification. But pretty much anywhere in the Bible where we talk about literal purification, we're also talking about spiritual purification, whether it's in the Old Testament sense of refraining from bad, or whether it's in the New Testament sense of refraining from bad because of the singularity of one's direction and purpose. So this would tie back into the Beatitude having to do with blessed are the pure in heart. Leviticus makes reference in talking about how the sacrifices are supposed to be done, to adding salt to that as well. So maybe this fits with this idea of purification literally and metaphorically as being the meaning of salt that people would have thought of. Additionally, there's some kind of tough to wrap my brain around references to salt as a descriptor of loyalty. Um, that would be in numbers 18. You don't need to hear me flipping over there. This felt cute. Maybe I'll delete it later. Found it. Verse 19: whatever is set aside from the holy offerings the Israelites present to the Lord, I give to you and your sons and daughters as your regular share. It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord for both you and your offspring. So maybe there's some ancient Near Eastern thing. I think this is also maybe alluded to in Ezra somewhere, that salt binds uh an agreement or demonstrates that I am going to be loyal to this agreement that we've made. I don't know, it could be. I read some other stuff somewhere and I couldn't tell you where it is, that some extra-biblical writing talks about uh salt as being associated with wisdom. You know, having a sense of one's salt or feeling one's salt could mean uh vigor and a willingness to get out there and confidently do stuff. And then the other super obvious application for salt in the ancient world would of course be as a preservative, and you pack something with salt and it can last longer. So that kind of encompasses all of it. It purifies it from things that don't taste good. It would give it certainly a lot more flavor, packing something with salt, and it would also have that, you know, preservative factor making something last longer. And again, not that we need some kind of smoking gun for this, but Pliny's natural history and obviously extra biblical Roman writing points toward that as a use for salt. So we run through the options here, and I don't think it's too tough to nail this down. It can't mean the sports thing. That doesn't make any sense. I mean, we're not bitter and acrimonious here, and that's why the kingdom citizens go out into the world. That doesn't fit with anything Jesus is saying, and the Beatitudes can't be that. The idea that this is the proliferation of wisdom seems a little bit thin. It doesn't seem like going out and saying things that are wise would make people want to burn you down. So I don't think it's that. The idea that this is a statement of loyalty. Well, I mean, are you going out to be loyal to a world that doesn't like you and where you feel friction? It doesn't seem like that would be what Jesus is driving at here as well. I think the strongest case is all kind of summarized in that preservative approach that we talked about last. There's the triple function of preserving, of flavoring, and of purifying that happens when you use salt to treat meat or something else that I guess could go bad. And given what Jesus says next with this whole you're a light of the, you are the light of the world, a city on a hill cannot be hidden, which we'll break down more later on. It would seem that the summary is in the same way, let your light shine before men. The idea here is that that this metaphoric salt somehow interacts with the world and has a positive effect on it, flavoring maybe a little bit, but especially purifying and preserving. So the way I read this, and the way I'm going to operate moving forward into the next chunk, is that Jesus' instruction here is to say, hey, if you sign up for this kingdom and this is what you're a part of, you're going to be salty. And your role as being a salty participant in this world kingdom is you go out into that as a dual kingdom citizen, as an agent of the truer, realer kingdom, your job here is to preserve and to purify. And maybe not everybody is going to respond positively to that, but this is what you do in the meantime, in this world, in this lifetime, in this phase of things. And there's this warning that goes with it. If you don't have any preserving, flavoring, or purifying effect, what do you do with salt like that? Well, if we're assuming that salt is being used in this way and that that would be the most natural thing that his audience would have thought of, well, of course you take salt like that. And it would be like, oh yeah, yeah, obviously you throw it out. Oh, you're right on that one, Jesus. Are you right or are you right? Yeah, that's salt's worthless. Oh, wait, I wouldn't want to be worthless. Whoa. So my role here is an active one, and I would have to do something. Also, the neighbor dog says hello. So it's nice to hear from him. And we'll consider that warning that comes at the end a little bit more as we break down the second half of this passage with the light of the world stuff. So, simply put, whether somebody thinks Jesus is great or not, I think we can agree that this looks like a cohesively put together speech, one where the person delivering it is competent and would have understood the way his audience would have been thinking. And in light of that, I think they would have connected quickly on this idea of salt and probably wouldn't have had to have worked to figure out what this meant as hard as we have had to work to understand what it means. But we'll flesh that out more as we get into the next stuff. Hey, thank you as always to everybody who supports the program at patreon.comslash the tmbh podcast. That really keeps things going and can't express my appreciation enough. Let's get after more of this Matthew 5 stuff, manana. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again soon.