All That Jesus Taught : Bible Study Part 14 | Zac Poonen

We continue our study today in ‘All that Jesus Taught’ based on Matthew 28:20 where Jesus commanded us to go in to all the world and every nation. Make disciples and teach them everything that he commanded. And since it’s my own feeling that a lot that Jesus taught is not been demonstrated by Christian leaders and not taught sufficiently. I felt it would be good to do a study on this and that’s what we’ve been doing these past few sessions. We come today to Matthews 5:13, teach the disciples to do all that I commanded you. We need to understand all that he taught, to understand behind his teaching, The Commandments of Jesus Christ. He turns to his disciples. Remember the Sermon on the Mount that we read in Matthew 5 is primarily to his disciples (Matthew 5:1). His disciples came to Him and He taught them, the multitude sat around listening. To his disciples he says, you are the salt to the earth. He didn’t say that to the multitudes. The multitudes are certainly not the salt to the earth. They don’t have any salt but the disciples are to be the salt of the earth.

Jesus was a great master of word pictures and he left it to us to understand the meaning behind them as we seek for the inspiration and revelation of the Holy Spirit. You are the salt of the earth but the salt has become tasteless. How will it be made salty? It is good for nothing anymore except to be thrown out and trampled on the foot of men. So, what is the purpose of salt, particularly in our food? He is talking about taste here. Salt is used for many other reasons like to preserve fish and other things like that for long periods they put in salt but He’s not speaking here the preserving power of salt. He is talking about taste. We can’t preserve the world from becoming rotten. It will become rotten because mans heart are fully set on evil. In the church he’s talking about the disciples who have regained the taste of heaven in their life. That means when you come in touch with this disciple you will taste something of heaven which is so different from what you see in the average person who tastes of this earth. What do I mean by tasting of heaven and tasting of the earth? A lot of people when you meet them all they can talk about is what’s happening on the earth, and what’s the latest price of the stocks and shares, and calamity is happening here, and what evil Is happening there and etc., all the latest gossip concerning other people, all the evil that you can find about people and to share that/ air that with others. Now, this is the taste of the world. The taste of heaven is something that brings life, and joy, and peace, and goodness. It is very rare to find people like that who got the life of Jesus bubbling up in them. They are like salt that give taste to their surroundings. Just like in a bowl of food. You need very little salt. You don’t even need 1 spoon of salt, it would be too much. In a bowl of curry and food you will need very little salt to give taste to the whole food if the salt is really powerful and good but if the salt is tasteless then even if you put 20 spoons it’s not going to make any difference in the taste.

The point here is not quantity but quality. If the salt has become tasteless, he’s not talking about quantity of salt here at all. Thereby he is showing us that his disciples will always be small in number. Here you got a plate of rice and curry. How much salt are you going to put in that whole plate of rice and curry? Not even a half of teaspoon. You need very little to make that whole plate taste right.