Real Life Radio

David J: Today, on Real Life Radio.

Jack Hibbs: And God preserved you that night, dude. God preserved you, he preserved you, and he Who knows what would have happened? God knew there was must have been something big and ugly being offered up in the wings to destroy that man's life, and God intervened. Wow. What a tremendous thing. God will not share you, the temple that he dwells in, with idols.

David J: This is real life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's word, the Bible. You ever feel like your Christian values are under constant assault? In a world where biblical truth is often labeled hateful or backward, how do we stand firm without becoming combative or isolated? Pastor Jack Hibbs wants to help you find answers with this month's featured resource, When Culture Hates You. It's written by Natasha Crain, and in this straight talking book, you'll discover how to tackle tough conversations, maintain biblical convictions, and respond to cultural hostility with both grace and truth.

Now, think of it as your essential guide for navigating a world that often views faith as the enemy. You'll learn how to speak confidently on issues of morality, identity, and belief without losing sight of God's love because sometimes the strongest stance is one that balances conviction with compassion. Now, if you're ready to stand strong in a ever shifting culture, look no further. When Culture Hates You, it's available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com/realradio. One more time, jackhibbs.com/realradio. On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack now continues his series called The Parables of Jesus and a message titled Parable of Being the Salt.

Now, whenever Jesus spoke to the crowds, he often spoke using relatable stories with common everyday sort of themes, and the Bible calls those parables. Now, in this parable, Jesus is teaching us how to stay purposeful. You see, when salt loses its flavor, it 's got to be thrown out. In Jesus' time, salt was a perishable commodity and could become polluted if not managed correctly. It's why as Christians, we need to stay salty, alert, and responsive to the Lord's will. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that as Christians, God has called us the salt of the earth, and if we stay pure, well, we have great results.

But if we fall away and allow the world to get into us, our compromise will leave us barren and without any effect. Now, with this message called Parable of Being the Salt, here's pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: If you're in a neighborhood of life, if a church is in a neighborhood, think of it. The gathering right now is a gigantic extension of your own home, if you think about it. This is a big Christian house. And it should have an effect, and according to Jesus, it should be salty. It should have preservative powers as a ministry of believers. Are you with me? And this is a very very wonderful thing to keep in mind because if that's happening, a salt is not idle. It's of It's very powerful. And if you doubt that, you know, go get a paper cut and then pour salt on it.

And you think uh you just got stung by a wasp or something, right? I mean, it's going to get you. Or get salt in your eyes. Now, I don't know about you guys. Uh uh I don't believe in swimming in the ocean without opening your eyes. I hope when you swim in the Pacific, you open your eyes. How many of you put eye drops in your eyes? You ever do that? If you do that, that's just like It's It's better swimming in the ocean than putting eye drops. It's fantastic because the salinity is just perfect.

God designed. So it's wonderful, okay? But you take But listen, if you if you um Well, I don't know about I have If you have a cut, I have a cut this morning. I had to go to court this morning and I was I was late. I looked at my Oh my goodness. And I'm like I'm getting dressed like this and I pull out the old razor blade and And you know, guys, you know what I'm talking about when you're going and your face goes Oh, mama. And then you can feel the blood loss going down the drain.

This looks like a horror movie. And you get salt on your face like I did this morning. It hurts. The application is all important. But with the hurt, it's a good thing that's happening. Did you know that? It doesn't feel good, but it's a good thing. There's something going on. Regarding us being a preservative power as salt, Jesus says salt is good because it has these powers to it. One of them is a great thing of us being a preservative agent to the culture around us. It's interesting to note Listen to this, that salt can arrest corruption or putrefaction in its trash.

If something is putrefying, like rotten flesh, and you add salt to it, it doesn't take away what is already rotten. It stops the rotting from expanding onward. That's kind of neat. Think about it. But what's very cool about what we're talking about is if salt shows up first, it keeps things pure. And I want you to think about that regarding your life and my life. Salt, as it relates to you and I as a preservative, will affect any and every culture that you and I are deployed into. And you think of that. Listen, spiritually, are we are we being salty as a church?

Am I being salty as a Christian in the spiritual realm? I sure hope so. Um the next thing would be physically salty. What does that mean? Just that our lives, the witness of the church, the witness of a Christian, my life, your life is having an effect on people for the good. They They might not appreciate it. Do you understand? They may not They might not recognize that, but the Christian influence in a community is a good thing. Listen, you may be an atheist today, but I I I know for a fact you would probably rather have a very very good Jesus obeying Bible Bible, knowledgeable, spirit-filled Christian as your neighbor than somebody who's not.

Why? Because of their physical presence God honors in the spiritual realm. And I hope they'll be I hope they're good neighbors. Listen, Christian, I'm just talking to Christians now. Christians, we should be the best neighbors, period. We should be the best at everything, period. Best citizens, best neighbors, best workers, best employers, best employees. Christians should be the best at everything. Best in school, best in class, best in show. And then listen, spiritually, physically, morally. The Christian should be a salty, moral witness to a culture that it's been deployed to. Mark chapter 9 verse 50. Jesus said salt Listen, Mark 9:50, Jesus says salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it?

Have salt in yourselves and have peace with one another. Look at that. What a great thing of Imagine, if we operated off the concept of of being aware of and remembering the concept of us being salty people. Salt, salt. Listen, if you're if you're in that, if you keep this word tonight and you think about that, it's going to affect how you interact with people. You know what? Don't answer, but do people respect you? I didn't ask you if they liked you. You can respect people and not like them. Okay, listen, if you have enemies, your enemies don't like you and they they don't agree with your view, but they respect your tenacity and commitment to it.

We feel the same or I feel the same about those who would be my opponent in a certain topic or issue. I don't like their view, but I respect them for the ability they have to argue for their view. Are you with me? And the Christian, it is vitally important, I believe, that when we as a family uh as Christians, we should have a reputation or um a respect one for another uh and even the world should respect us because they see a consistency. We should have that with each other, but how much more so should we have it as we look out at the world around us and as they look at us.

I think it's very important. Salt is a preservative uh factor. Number two, salt is an effect. Salt is an effect. Verse 34 continues. Jesus says, but if the salt has has lost its flavor, and this is interesting, watch. How shall it be seasoned or reseasoned? There's a picture in this parable right here in this portion of that verse, and it's this. Um in Jesus' day, he didn't have the salt that you and I have today. He didn't They didn't have that technology. They didn't have that way obviously to develop salt like we have today. Our salt today is probably 100 or 99% pure.

Uh it's it's amazing. You can take our salt today and you can put it down in the You can pour it a a clump of it in the dirt uh and come back in a few days or I don't know how long. I 've never done this. I'm just telling you what I've read. And if you dump salt out modern day salt and you come back to it, it's still going to be salty. And um that's because we have a almost a perfect pure uh type of salt in in our age. It's been refined or perfected.

In Jesus' day, that was not the case. In Jesus' day, it was extracted um from either the sea, Mediterranean sea, or the Dead Sea where they actually get salt for Europe out of the Dead Sea. Um but it's not pure. And so because it's not pure, watch. Now look, listen Are you listening to me? If we're the salt of the earth and Jesus is salt 2,000 years ago wasn't pure salt, why why is he saying we're the salt of the earth? Aren't we pure? No. We're not. In this world, we're not. Remember, before the eyes of God, we are.

This is very Watch this. The salt of Jesus' day, if it came in contact with the earth, the chemicals, basic 14 elements of the soil, would attack the salt and it would lose its flavor within a 24-hour period. It would be tasteless. Here's the amazing thing. Had no taste, had no sting. You could taste it. You could put it in your eye. Nothing would happen. The interesting thing is because it was worthless now and remember how it became worthless, it came in contact with the earth. It came in contact with the world. It was then thrown off to the side, and what did they do?

The Roman roads were often lined with salt to keep the weeds down from growing in between the great stones. Because even though you couldn't taste anything and it wouldn't have any effect for the good, isn't it interesting it only produced barrenness? And what a great warning this is to us. Jesus is saying, listen, you're the salt of of the earth. You're the salt of the earth, but don't let the earth the world get inside of you. Don't Don't Don't wallow around in the earth. You'll lose your sting. You'll lose your flavor. You'll You'll You won't He's not saying you lose your salvation.

He's saying you will become ineffective. You won't be usable anymore. Very important. And so this picture is a powerful one. I love how he's just announces to us that this is what we are, but we need to be careful about how we live. Second Corinthians chapter 6 verse 16 says, what agreement has the temple of God with idols? The answer is none. For you are the temple of the living God. Who is church? The believers. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people.

Verse 17, therefore, come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean and I will receive you. It's the same concept. Listen, Jesus prayed Remember John 17? We are his. We got saved out of the world by his blood. He has purified us. We've been forgiven, but he deploys us back into the world and he says, listen, on your end, on earth, don't touch that stuff anymore. Have you noticed those of you Listen, if you're a Christian and you have a tendency to gravitate back to the things of your previous life, your BC days before Christ, you go back to BC days.

Have you noticed how miserable you are? Have you noticed how disgusting those sins of the past are to you now? For the moment, and Satan's having a hay day with you. He's going, hey, hey, look at this. And you go, wow. No, I'm a Christian. I'm going to fight that. Can I take one more look? You're setting yourself up and you go stumbling down the path, right? And you And you give yourself over to it and you sin. All the allurements of remember boy, remember the great time we used to have. Oh, remember how fun Oh, it's going to be so much fun.

Oh, just come and and You know, you see a little horn sticking out of the head, but that doesn't seem to stop you. You got a little pitchfork in their hand. That doesn't doesn't seem to stop you, but oh man, yeah, that was sure fun. And then listen, if you're not a Christian and just religious, you can go do that stuff and have a great old time. But if you are a Christian and you're backsliding, you'll have a miserable time. I love I love to see backsliders. They're great to see.

David J: You're listening to real life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And for now, let's get back to our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor Jack.

Jack Hibbs: I love I love to see backsliders. They're great to see. Because a person in the world is kind of like, hey, whatever, you know what, I don't know what. And a Christian who's walking with Jesus, it's like, what an awesome day. Yeah, but your house just burned down. God rocks. Right? And then there's the backslidden Christian. He's not walking with God and he can't stand the world at the same time and you see him, hey, how you doing? All right. They are a candle with no light on it. You know, and that no matter how they try How you doing?

I'm all right. And you can't see them go Trying to produce a little flame. Hey, you want to go worship the Lord? Yeah. You know This is not happening. And they're miserable. They know they should be lit up for Jesus, but they What man, what's the matter? And listen, man, for us oldie Christians, when we see a a Christian that 's that 's fallen away or goofed up or backslidden, I want you to know we You want to know how much we love you. We love you like this. Say, hey, how you doing? You go, I'm fine.

And we know instantly, backslidden. But we don't say, backslidden, huh? We just go, hey, praise the Lord, man. Love you. It's great. It's like And you know, we treat you nice. Inside, we know, Lord, help him. He is in the thick of it. And here's how we pray because listen And this is if this is where you're at, this is a great thing to remember. There are people who love you who's praying like this. Lord, my brother's backslidden. I just pray that you would take whatever he's dabbling in and you would fill him up with it so much that it just starts to come out of his nose.

I mean, he just starts to puke it up because that is fantastic. When a believer cannot find satisfaction in the old way of life, number one, rejoice that it is God's mark upon your life, you belong to him because he will not let his kids stay in the pig pen. He doesn't allow that. You can go play around the pig pen. You can snort and and oink and do all the things you do, but you're not a pig. You're not a pig and you're looking around and everyone's oink oinking at you and you're going, yeah, oink, man, and this just This just doesn't feel right.

And it doesn't matter what it is. I had a guy tell me a couple of is almost a year ago. He said, man, I've come out of a horrible life of drugs, man, major LSD, boom, smack, pow, kaboom, whatever you You know, whatever it is. And uh he got saved. And he backslid. And he went back He went back to his party people and uh he said In fact, listen to this. It was a miracle that drove him back to church. He said he went to this party and he knew, man, I know I know drugs and if I take this, I'll probably die because it took me years to build up to this level.

But man, I'm going to do it. And he did it and nothing happened. He didn't get high. Jesus like Nothing happened. And I told him, listen to this verse. I said, you know what, thank God because God will not share his temple with anything else. And God preserved you that night, dude. God protected you, he preserved you, and he Who knows what would have happened? God knew there was must have been something big and ugly being offered up in the wings to destroy that man's life and God intervened. Wow. What a tremendous thing. God will not share you, the temple that he dwells in with idols and the like.

And one of these things about being salt is an important name because there'll be a great effect in your life. Now, I love this next verse. This is exciting. In Leviticus chapter 2 Now, I say, what's the last time you read Leviticus chapter 2? You read it every year when you go through the 1-year Bible and you only read it probably once. As you go through. Leviticus chapter 2 verse 13 says, and every offering of your grain offering you shall season with what? Salt. And you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering.

With all your offerings, you shall offer salt. How cool is that? See, what Why is that cool? Because God says, here's the deal. Whatever you offer me, salt's got to be in it because salt announces purity. Salt announces cleanliness. Salt announces the fact that listen, God 's words are eternal truth. You are the salt of the earth. Whatever offering you bring to me, put salt in it. I like to look at it this way. I'm making this part up right now. Everything I told you right now is biblical except this part. Are you Are you ready?

Whatever offering I give to God, I want Jack Not you, I'm talking about me. I want it to be this way. Whatever offering it is, if God said I'm the salt of the earth and I come in here tonight and I worship the Lord, Remember, an offering, grain offering is a worship offering. Did you worship tonight? Are you a Christian? Salt was offered up in the offering. What's the salt? What's the salt? What is the salt? Jesus said you are the salt of the earth. Worship. You can't worship God unless you're salty. You can't give God worship unless there's salt in the offering.

And that salt is you. That salt is us. Didn't Jesus say you're the salt of the earth? How many are Christians? Who am I talking to in here tonight? Raise your hand. Okay then. We're Christians. He says you're salt. Worship me. How cool is that? Makes you want to get your salt on. Right? And Yes, bring out the band and the angels and I love that. In Romans 12, very familiar verse. You guys all know this. Romans 12 1 and 2. Listen to the New Living Translation. We'll shake it up a little bit. The New Living Translation Romans 12.

Listen to this. This is salt in the worship. And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Isn't that an awesome motivation to serve God? Don't serve God because somebody tells you to. Serve God because you are so happy about all that he's done for you. You say, Lord, let me do something bad. You see? I hope I hope if you're serving here in this church that that's your motive. Well, I'm serving because you told me to. Then don't serve anymore.

But if you're serving because I can't Listen, it should come out of you like this. I can't take it anymore. God has been so good to me. I got to do something. Oh man, that's salty. That's awesome. He goes on verse Romans 12 verse 1. He says, let them be a living and holy sacrifice, salt, the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Verse 2. Listen. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you which is good and pleasing and perfect.

The whole thing is salty. The whole thing is salty. Have you ever heard me say on Sunday mornings, predominantly sometimes Wednesday nights when this is happening where where people make a decision for Christ? And you know, some people have feelings, some people don't have feelings, some people And it's tough because of You know, some people are getting saved or they're in worship. They're in the And they're like, oh Do you feel that? They're like, Do you feel that? Oh, God is here. And I And I'm I mean, I don't feel nothing. I've never felt nothing.

And I'm like, Am I alive? That guy's crying. He's singing songs and crying or somebody Listen, people come forward to accept Christ. And if someone's crying and they're like, oh Jesus, And that's And that's awesome. I'm not knocking it. It's awesome. But there's a guy standing right here and I'm looking at him and he's And he's like, Do you know what I'm saying? It has nothing to do with that. People emotionally respond to situations differently. Has nothing to do is God in it or not. Has nothing to do with it. And somebody will say it.

I know they mean well. You can feel the Lord here. I don't know what that means. What does that mean? You can feel him here. I don't know what that means. But I can tell you this, wherever the word of God is exalted, Jesus said the spirit will be at work and listen, the kingdom of God is near you. Okay. But how do you feel? I don't know feel. I don't know feel. I don't know. But he said it. He said, listen, it's um with you. Okay then. Goosebumps or not, he's he's true.

David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio with his message called Parable of Being the Salt. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called The Parables of Jesus. It's a series that highlights the teachings of Jesus while he was ministering here on this earth and we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

Guest (Male): You know, in a hectic world, it's hard to find a moment's peace. A beautiful sunrise on a quiet beach gives temporary solace, but daily inspiration that will guide and uplift our spirits is what we need the most. It's why people of all ages are turning to devotions with Jack Hibbs. There's a new devotion each week and previous devotions you can go to to start each day with purpose and hope. Jack Hibbs devotions are available on our website at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com where faith meets real life.

David J: Did you know that along with the radio program, Pastor Jack also has a TV show with more of the Pastor Jack Hibbs content that you like? It's called Real Life TV. If you enjoy Pastor Jack on the radio, you're going to love him on TV. So check out your local listings or visit jackhibbs.com and catch the latest episodes. That's jackhibbs.com. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in his word.

We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.