The Salt Of The Covenant

 

"Every cereal offering you shall season with salt,
symbol of preservation; neither shall you allow the
salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your
 cereal offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt."
(Leviticus 2:13)

Wheat growing in Israel

(2013)

Photograph courtesy/ Exploring Bible Lands

"For everyone shall be salted with fire. Salt is good,
beneficial, but if salt has lost it's saltiness, how will 
you restore the saltness to it?  Have salt within
yourselves and be at peace and live in
harmony with one another."
(Mark 9: 49, 50)

"It appears, then, that salt was THE SYMBOL OF THE COVENANT.

When God made a covenant with David, it is written: "The Lord gave
the kingdom to David forever by a covenant with salt"-by which was meant
that it was an unchangeable, incorruptible covenant, which would endure as
salt makes a thing to endure, so that it is not liable to putrefy or corrupt.

"The Salt of the Covenant" signifies that, whenever you and I are bringing 
 any offering to the Lord, we must take care that we remember the covenant.
Standing at the altar with our gift, serving God with our daily service, as I trust
 we are doing, let us continually offer the salt of the covenant with all our sacrifices.

Here is a man who is doing good works in order to be saved. You are under
the wrong covenant, my friend, you are under the covenant of works, and all
that you will gain in that way is a curse, for, "Cursed is everyone that
continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them".
(Galatians 3:10)

"Therefore," says the apostle Paul, "as many as are the works of the law are
under a curse."  Get away from that, and get to that other covenant which has
salt in it, namely, the covenant of grace, the new covenant, of which Christ is
the Head.  We must not come to God without the salt of faith in Christ, or
our offerings will be sort of antichrist.  

A man who is trying to save himself is in opposition to the Saviour. He
that thinks of the merits of his own good works despises the merit of the
finished work of Christ.  He is offering to God that which has no salt
in it, and cannot be received.

We want this salt of the covenant in all we do, in the first place, to
preserve us from falling into legality. He that serves God for wages
   forgets the word-"The gift of God is eternal life." 

 It is not wages, but the gift, in which you are to live. 

 If you forget that you are under a covenant of pure grace,
 in which God gives to the unworthy, and saves those who have 
no claim to any covenant blessing, you will get on legal ground
and once on legal ground, God cannot accept your sacrifice.

With all thine offerings thou shalt offer the salt of the covenant
of grace, lest thou be guilty of legality in thy offering.

The covenant is to be remembered also that it may excite gratitude.
Whenever I think of God entering into covenant, that he will not depart
from me, and I shall never depart from him, my love for him overflows.
Nothing constrains me to such activity, and such zeal in the cause of God,
as a sense of covenant love.  Oh, the gratitude one feels for everything
which comes to us by the covenant of grace!"

"Salt For Sacrifice"
(January 23, 1887)
An excerpt from a sermon by
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
(1834-1892)
English Particular Baptist Preacher
Known by many Christians as,
"The Prince of Preachers"