ahavafriend: A Salt Covenant (via Mowser)

Jesus' familiar teaching to cut off your hand or foot, or gouge out your eye, if it causes you to sin lest you be condemned to hell is concluded in Mark's account with the statement: "Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other" (9:49,50). The later phrase can be expounded by Col 4:6, "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." And it is now fairly common knowledge that salt is no good once its saltiness is gone. But the most interesting phrase is the first one. What does it mean that we will be salted (verb!), and that by fire? There's the baptism of fire mentioned in other verses (Mat 3:11, etc). But how does fire "salt" us?

Numbers 18:19 explains that the priests were to have the meat brought as a sacrifice by the Israelites. The verse specifically states, "It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord for both you and your offspring." This covenant was irrevocable. And when the kingdom was divided after Solomon's reign, the King of Judah went to battle with the King of Israel and declared in the hearing of all the soldiers, " Don't you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?" (2 Chron 13:5). This was a reminder that God would never revoke his promise/covenant with David. No matter how many armies marched against Jerusalem, David's throne was secure.

The only other verse in the Bible that mentions a covenant of salt is found in Lev 2:13 "Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings." So what is a covenant of salt? It seems this was so well understood that it never required any further explanation. But what can we conclude today?

I remember seeing a Martha Stewart show a long time ago (pre-prison). She took a plate with various kinds of food around the edges and a pile of salt in the middle and burnt it in a stove. When she pulled the plate out, all the items on the plate were completely black, except the white pile of salt in the middle. It's interesting to note that the salt did not burn (I'm thinking of Jesus in the fiery furnace with the 4 Hebrew men). Salt was the one component that marked God's presence among the sacrificial system. Salt had many practical purposes, and is actually the only substance of a rock/mineral that we eat directly (again, God is our rock!). The parallels to God and salt are plenty. And as bountiful the uses, there are equally sufficient analogies.

So if salt was the indicator, the authenticator of a true sacrifice, the sign of a non-consumable, never-ending presence that what has been said will always be true, whether the removal of offense or the fulfillment of a blessing, than is it possible that the New Testament indicator is fire? The salt-factor will be fire. Where there is fire, there is God. The fire will confirm. (And then we have the day of Pentecost and the tongues of fire that confirm God's promise of the Holy Spirit was true). So the analogy shifts from salt (at least in this one instance) to fire.

Or is it simply saying "salt purifies meat, and fire will purify you"?

ahavafriend

A Salt Covenant

0 comments:

News Links

Church and Culture

Friend's Links

Labels

Resources

Archive