Understanding The Hard Sayings of Jesus
Lesson Overview
You Are the Salt of the Earth with Dr. Michael Youssef
This standalone message is given by Dr. Michael Youssef, founder of Leading the Way ministries and pastor of the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta. Born in Egypt and now reaching a global radio audience, he preaches a stirring call from Matthew 5:13, “you are the salt of the earth,” urging believers to stop living small and to take up their God-given responsibility to change the world through the gospel. Use this overview to review the key points after watching the full video. (Note: this talk is a sermon on being “salt of the earth”; if you were expecting a study of Jesus’ hard sayings, this file covers the salt-of-the-earth message actually delivered.)
Sugar Water or Change the World
Youssef opens with a story from the business world. When Steve Jobs was trying to recruit the Pepsi executive John Sculley to Apple, Sculley resisted leaving his secure, successful career, until Jobs asked him the question that changed his mind: “Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water, or do you want to change the world?”
Youssef turns that question on every believer. Computers may change how we live, technology may speed up business, medicine may prolong life, but only the gospel of Jesus Christ can change hearts, transform the world, and give eternal life. He presses the listener not to sleep until answering: what am I doing with my life, my gifts, and the resources God has placed in my hands?
An Order, Not an Option
When Jesus said “you are the salt of the earth,” Youssef stresses, He was not offering a suggestion but giving an order. In that single statement Jesus placed on ordinary believers the responsibility of proclaiming the gospel, the authority to make Him known, and the commission to keep the world from rotting in immorality. To be salt is to speak life where there is death, peace where there is turmoil, freedom where there is tyranny, light where there is darkness, and love where there is hatred.
God Specializes in Using the One
To the objection “what can one person do?”, Youssef answers that the very question insults the God who commissions us, because God never commissions anyone to failure. Scripture, he says, highlights that God specializes in using the one who is committed, who fears nothing but sin, and who seeks nothing but God’s glory.
He runs through the examples: Abraham interceded and Lot was saved; Joseph, faithful, preserved the known world from famine; Moses, obedient, delivered a nation from slavery; Joshua, unwavering, led the people into the promised land; Esther, courageous, risked her life to save her people; Daniel, committed, changed the course of history; Paul, counting his life as nothing, turned the world upside down. God can use one committed person, and Youssef offers his own life as evidence, saying that if God can use a donkey and can use him, He can use anyone.
The Value of Salt
Youssef explains what “salt” meant in Jesus’ day. It was so valuable that Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in it (the origin of the phrase “worth his salt,” from salary). The Greeks called salt divine; the Romans prized the sun in the sky and salt from the sea. So when Jesus told ordinary fishermen and tax collectors that they were the salt of the earth, He was declaring them that valuable to the world.
He underscores that these were ordinary men, not bishops, theologians, professors, or executives. There is nothing wrong with education or position (Youssef notes his own PhD from Emory, joking that a friend told him PhD stands for “piled higher and deeper”), but the point is that the sole qualification for being salt is being sold out to Jesus Christ: believing Him completely, trusting Him wholeheartedly, surrendering to Him totally. The qualification for changing the world is a refusal to count the cost of discipleship.
A Distracted Church While the World Rots
The sharpest part of the message is Youssef’s lament that God’s people are preoccupied while the world decays. He argues believers are often more concerned with their net worth than God’s glory, debating the finer points of theology, fighting over styles of church music, and going from convention to convention, while millions die without Christ.
His historical illustration: in the early 1900s, while the Bolshevik Revolution raged and blood ran in the streets of Moscow, the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church were reportedly in their convention debating the color of their vestments. He offers this as a warning of what happens when the church busies itself with trivialities in a moment of crisis. Society left alone, without the gospel as salt, carries within it a seed of decay.
Within this section Youssef also names what he sees as the serious challenges facing the nation, including terrorism, secular ideologies, and moral confusion where right is called wrong and light is called darkness. He speaks as an Egyptian-born Christian and shares his testimony about the long historical decline of the Christian population in his homeland under centuries of pressure, which shaped his urgency. (See the note for students regarding some of the specific claims in this part of the talk.)
The Cost, and the Audience of One
Youssef opens his heart about his own ministry. As pastor of a large, comfortable congregation, he could simply preach each Sunday and rest, which he says would be a good and honorable thing that many faithful pastors rightly do. But he cannot, because he could never stand before the “audience of One” and say he was too busy to seize the opportunity to reach the world. He takes no income from Leading the Way, its books, or its tapes, a commitment he made years ago.
He challenges pastors with the question of Oswald Smith of the People’s Church in Toronto, whose congregation gave more to missions than whole denominations: “Is it right for anyone to hear the gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?” This, he says, is why he sleeps four hours a night and gives everything to spreading the gospel, describing his multilingual radio broadcasts that reach people (including in closed countries) who tune in to learn English and end up hearing about Jesus.
The Closing Charge
Youssef ends by hammering the point that Jesus did not say you can be the salt of the earth if you feel like it, if it is convenient, or if circumstances are favorable. He recalls telling a young man who wanted to enter ministry only if all the circumstances were favorable to stay away from ministry entirely. Being salt means being ready to preserve, to sting a wound, to create thirst, and to remind people that God’s judgment is coming.
To be salt in the nation, he says, is to influence the schools, the government, the courts, and the culture, not by political ideology or by changing “a few measly laws,” but by lifting up Jesus, who alone can change the world. His repeated final cry is simply, “lifting up Jesus.”
Key Terms
Salt of the earth: Jesus’ image (Matthew 5:13) for the believer’s role in preserving the world from moral decay.
Sold out to Christ: Youssef’s phrase for total surrender, the one qualification for being salt.
The audience of One: the reality of one day giving account to God, which drives Youssef’s urgency.
Losing its saltiness: Jesus’ warning that salt which loses its savor is good for nothing.
The one: the single committed person God delights to use, illustrated by figures throughout Scripture.
Verses to Know
Matthew 5:13, you are the salt of the earth. Matthew 28:19-20, the Great Commission (the responsibility Youssef says salt implies). Esther 4:14, for such a time as this (the courage of “the one”). Philippians 3:7-8, counting all things loss for the sake of Christ. Luke 14:28, counting the cost of discipleship.
Takeaway
Youssef argues that Jesus’ words “you are the salt of the earth” are a commission, not an option, and that the world decays when God’s people are distracted, so every believer, however ordinary, should stop “selling sugar water” and give themselves fully to Christ to change the world by lifting up Jesus.