A WORD FOR TODAY, February 4, 2026
Peggy Hoppes
We pray you have been blessed by this daily devotion. If you received it from a friend, you can see other devotions and studies by visiting our website at www.awordfortoday.org.
Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, February 4, 2026
Lectionary Scriptures for February 8, 2026, Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany: Isaiah 58:3-9a, Psalm 112:1-9, 1 Corinthians 2:1-12 (13-16), Matthew 5:13-20
“You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted? It is then good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men.” Matthew 5:13, WEB
We are two weeks from Ash Wednesday, and I’m sure some of you are beginning to consider what you’d like to fast for the season of Lent. The discipline is a good thing, but the fasting should also lead to positive changes in our lives of faith. Does it do any good to give up something for seven weeks and then gorge on it on Easter Day? Lenten disciplines have no purpose if they don’t make us better disciples. Too often we use our fasting as a way of showing off our righteousness, which is less about being right with God than being right in our own minds.
The people in Isaiah’s time were acting righteous, but they were not in that right relationship. The same is true of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day, and in the religious lives of so many today. They were going through the religious motions while ignoring what God was calling them to do in the world. The religious rituals that are mentioned in Isaiah were commanded by God, but they had become something much different than God intended. The people saw their actions, their obedience, as the source of their salvation and their blessings. They did all the right things, so they must be righteous, right? Jesus said, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, there is no way you will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Too many people are confused by the word righteousness. The world thinks it means being good, doing good things. Like those in Isaiah’s day, they think being righteous is doing all the right religious practices. “I fasted, so I deserve to be blessed.” The religious leaders in Jesus’ day were the same. “I keep the Law, so I deserve to be blessed.” Today people work so hard to be right with God and never realize that the things they are doing will never make them right with Him. We can’t work our way into righteousness: that’s called self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is the very thing that divides us from God and from one another. When we think we are being obedient, following all the rules, then we think we deserve favor from God.
People of every age think that it is enough to go through the religious motions and then go on to do whatever they want to do in their daily lives. They think it is alright to cheat or hurt their neighbors if they repent with the right rituals. It is no wonder that God did not hear the prayers of those in the text from Isaiah. He calls us to be merciful, to be just, to be compassionate and to be generous. He calls us to sacrifice from the heart, not the flesh. God cannot be manipulated, and too many people then and now think that if they just appear to be faithful, then God will bless them. God sees behind our masks; His grace is not a reward for good works. He looks to the heart.
While our works will never make us righteous, God calls us to be the people He intends us to be. He isn’t looking for religious folk who fast when they are supposed to fast or who sacrifice when they are supposed to sacrifice. He is looking for believers who use their gifts for His glory. He is looking for people who will humble themselves before Him, fasting and doing good works because we are being obedient to Him, not because we want to prove ourselves to be righteous.
God was addressing the cries of His people in the text from Isaiah. They thought they were doing everything right and deserved to be blessed. Unfortunately, they did not see that their worship was false. Their worship was not God-pleasing but was manipulative and man-centered. They fasted, but they exploited their workers. They humbled themselves, but their fasting ended in hypocritical religious activity. God said, “Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul?”
How many of us grumble through Lent because we miss eating a piece of chocolate, drink a cup of coffee, or playing a video game? Do you spend Lent craving the thing that you have given up, but do it anyway because in the end, we’ll be able to put a checkmark next to “fasting” on our spiritual to do list, never realizing that it wasn’t a true act of worship from our hearts, but was a path to self-justification. It never glorifies God because in the end we want our selves to be glorified. We fast outwardly, but inwardly we scheme to do what we want, pointing to our “righteousness” so that no one will see our sin.
See, they thought that it was enough to go through the religious motions and then go on to do what they wanted in their daily lives. They thought it was alright to cheat or hurt their neighbors if they repented with the right rituals. It is no wonder that God did not hear their prayers. He calls us to be merciful, to be just, to be compassionate and generous. He calls us to sacrifice from the heart, not the flesh. God cannot be manipulated, and too many people then and now think that if they just appear to be faithful, then God will bless them. God sees behind our masks; His grace is not a reward for good works. He looks to the heart.
The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees is manifest in the person who is in a relationship with Jesus. That’s what it means to be righteous: in a right relationship with God. The people in Isaiah’s time were acting righteous, but they were not in that right relationship. They were going through the religious motions while ignoring what God was calling them to do in the world. The same is true of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day, and in the religious lives of so many today. The Gospel lesson tells us what it would mean to be a Christian once Jesus fulfilled the Law. The question is, “What is our focus?” Unfortunately, when our focus is on being good or righteous, we tend to do things that will manipulate man and God. God desires the kind of fasting that will glorify Him.
I worked as a manager for a large retail company a long time ago. We visited a distribution center as part of our training program. A distribution center is a place where merchandise is received, sorted, divided, and released very quickly. The process was fast paced and overwhelming. The merchandise arrived constantly on trucks that come from the port or local manufacturers. There were always trucks in the bays with employees unloading merchandise. Meanwhile, in another set of bays, trucks arrived constantly to be filled. The items were sorted and most were sent immediately to the waiting trucks. Few items stayed in the warehouse for more than a few days, and a quick turnover was even more important for food stuffs, because it would get stale or moldy if it sat in a warehouse for even a few days. Merchandise is worthless in a warehouse. It must be distributed.
A bible study leader once asked, “Are you a banker or a distribution center?” In other words, when you receive gifts from your heavenly Father, do you hold on to them, or do you send them right back out? An item is not nearly as valuable sitting in a warehouse as it is being sold in a store. A loaf of bread will perish if it is not offered for sale quickly enough. So, it is with our gifts. Withheld from the world, our gifts are useless. We are blessed to be a blessing, gifted to share what we have been given. That’s how we, as salt, flavor the world.
Did you know that only about 6% of the salt produced around the world is used for food? More salt is used to condition water (12%) and de-ice highways (8%). Another 6% is used in agriculture and a whopping 68% is used in manufacturing and industrial processes. Did you know that they use salt to make PVC, plastic, and paper? It is also used to make aluminum, soap, rubber, and pottery. It is used in drilling, tanning hides, and dying fabric. It is also used as a preservative.
There are many different types of salt. It used to be easy to buy salt at the grocery store, since there were usually just a few choices. Now you can buy regular table salt, but there are so many other choices. Kosher salt is used for all types of cooking and contains no additives, so it has a better flavor. Sea salt is coarse to be used in cooking or flaky for use at the table. Fleur de Sel is a specialty salt and is considered the caviar of salt. It is used at the table for a wonderfully melt in your mouth experience of saltiness. Pickling salt is used for preservation. Rock salt is used in making ice cream and can be handy on icy winter days. Salt comes from both land and sea, some harvested by evaporation and others through mining.
Salt is no longer just white; you can buy salts that are red, pink, or black. It comes in coarse and fine. It can be cheap or you can spend a fortune on it. Each type of salt has a specific purpose; some are added during cooking and others are designed to enhance the flavor at the table. Salt does add a salty flavor, but it is also used to enhance the other flavors of food. Salt controls yeast growth in bread so that it will rise properly. A little salt on a margarita makes the tequila pop and it suppresses the bitter flavors.
I’m sure we could talk for hours about the qualities and purposes of salt. We know that too much salt is not good for our health; it leads to heart disease and stroke. I don’t use much salt in my house, a practice that would quickly get me kicked off most of the cooking shows. The judges are constantly complaining about the lack of salt. I don’t avoid salt completely, but I use it sparingly, because we get so much salt in so much of our foods these days. I found it interesting that animal products have a naturally higher salt content than plant products. We can’t live without salt; it is a necessary part of our diet. We just have to learn how to balance our need for salt and how we get it.
Salt has always had a spiritual or religious dimension, too. Salt is often found on an altar or is used in ritual. Salt is used to ward off demons or to honor gods. According to some, salt is one of the four blessings from heaven, which include fire, water, iron, and salt. Salt is the center of hospitality. In ancient religions, the value of salt made the offering a covenant between people. If someone ate the salt at your table, they became your responsibility while you were in their home. You had to protect them from any harm.
You didn’t know salt was so important, did you? It is hard to put a high value on a commodity that we can purchase so cheaply and that we use so unsparingly. After all, how could something we just throw on the sidewalks to melt ice be so valuable that the use of it at the dinner table offers a promise of protection and goodwill? In some places salt was so valuable that it was minted into coins and used to pay soldiers. As a matter of fact, that’s how we get the phrase, “He is worth his salt” and the term “salary.”
I came across all these facts about salt because I typed in the question, “Does salt really lose its saltiness?” This is a question that often comes up during bible studies focusing on today’s Gospel text. After all, I’ve never known salt to lose its flavor. According to my research, this is true. Salt is a very stable chemical, and it is only by a chemical reaction that it can lose its saltiness. However, it has been discovered that some salt, especially that which is harvested from marshes along the seashore, can lose its saltiness when it is in contact with the ground or is exposed to rain and sun. It isn’t that the salt itself loses its saltiness, but that the salt is contaminated with impurities collected with it. It is likely that this is what happened to the salt that they would have eaten in Jesus’ day, as their salt generally came from the shore of the Dead Sea.
There are dozens of websites trying to explain what Jesus meant when He told the disciples that they are the salt of the earth. They knew the importance of salt, its rarity, its significance, its value. They also knew that if salt were left drying too long on the side of the sea, it would be useless. It was not only useless, but it could also be hazardous. They could not keep this salt in the house because the impurities might be harmful, and they could not throw it into the fields or gardens because it would destroy the plants. It was good only to be trampled underfoot, so it was thrown into the streets.
We don’t usually throw our salt into the street, but those who have had to walk on ice covered sidewalks are thankful that the salt can make it a little easier and safer. The same is not true of the salt to which Jesus refers.
Jesus is warning the disciples that they have a purpose and that they should not wait around too long before they go out to do that work. See, we are tempted to wait too long. We want to be ready. We want to have all the information. We need to be smarter. We think we need to know the scriptures better and overcome our sins. We think we need to be perfect to go out into the world to share the Gospel message, but Jesus warns the disciples that if they wait too long, they will no longer be of value. While they are trying to make things right in their own lives, they succumb to cares and worries of the world. Or they fall for the temptations that abound. Or they conform to the ways of the world around them. These are the impurities that make us, as salt, worthless.
Paul wrote, “Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” It doesn’t make sense to our natural man to live the Christian life. We want to follow rules and earn our reward. We want to get what we deserve. We think we are entitled to God’s blessings because we are righteous. So, we do what we do to earn our place in God’s kingdom, like fasting in Lent. However, we can never earn our place; we can’t manipulate God into giving us what we want. Righteousness is not a matter of works; it is a matter of heart.
Unfortunately, many have a worldly understanding of what it means to be spiritual. That might sound like an oxymoron, but I once read an article that defined someone who is spiritual as one “whose highest priority is to be loving to yourself and others. A spiritual person cares about people, animals, and the planet. A spiritual person knows that we are all One, and consciously attempts to honor this Oneness. A spiritual person is a kind person.” This is not what Paul means when he talks about being spiritual.
The author of the article suggested that one could follow different types of religious practices like attending church and doing yoga and not be spiritual. This is true, but as many in today’s world, the author used scripture but removed God completely from the equation. Paul tells us that we need God’s Spirit to know the things of God. That’s what it means to be spiritual. The worldly definition of spiritual makes it about works, about doing good things to and for others.
Paul is not referring to the spiritual man as being non-religious. He is talking about those who are focused on God, who live lives that glorify Him. The man who lives by faith will live according to God’s Word, doing what God calls us to do, living the life of discipleship. The spiritual man is the one who lives the Christ-centered life, who has the mind of Christ. The world would rather remove Christ from the equation, reducing Him to some sort of great force of which we are all a part. The world would rather be self-righteous rather than right with God.
There are many things about God that we will never know or understand, but what we know comes from the Spirit of God. God has prepared so many good things for us, has given us incredible gifts. Both Isaiah and the psalmist show us what it is like to live a spiritual life. We are blessed when we delight in God’s commands. He will bless those who dwell in a right relationship with Him. We will not be moved or shaken when our hearts are steadfast and trust in God. The humble one will be heard and God will answer.
The writer of the book of Hebrews goes on for several chapters talking about the faith of those who heard the promises but never saw them fulfilled. The promise to Abraham was that his offspring would dwell in the Promised Land, but it didn’t happen for hundreds of years. His offspring would be as many as the stars in the sky, but he was a very old man when his son was born. The writer lists many promises given to God’s people and then says, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and embraced them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” Many of those promises were fulfilled in some way in their day but they all pointed to an even greater promise. They saw God’s work but could only hope for the salvation that would come. They believed anyway, not because they saw the fulfillment but because they were in a right relationship with God.
We look to the Old Testament to see what God has promised, but we are blessed with more than hope because everything has been complete in Jesus Christ. Of course, this isn’t so obvious to those who do not believe. They think our hope is foolishness because they can’t see or hear the Gospel as it has been made clear to us by the Holy Spirit. We have faith and therefore we rest in the knowledge that God has prepared something beyond this world for us, but the world does not understand. They don’t understand because they aren’t in a right relationship with God.
The whole message of Christ, the message of forgiveness and mercy, is beyond our vision. The idea of God the Father giving His Son for our sake is just crazy. Why would an all-powerful God do that? Why would He have to? Though there are still things about the spiritual realm that we do not fully understand, we have a wisdom that is greater than anything in the world because we have a connection to the source of all wisdom. The Spirit of God dwells in our hearts and reveals to us that which God would have us know. We no longer live in the flesh, but in spirit. We are no longer uncertain but have confidence in the promises of God. We don’t live in darkness, but in the Light. We aren’t worthless salt good only to be trampled underfoot, but we are the salt that will enhance and flavor the world.
The author of that article was wrong about what it means to be spiritual, but she was right that ultimately it all comes down to love, peace, joy, truth, and kindness. The difference is that she contends it is by our power we can heal and change the world, but we know that it will only come about through God’s power. We are salt because He makes us salty and we are light because He shines in us. It is by faith, trusting that God has given us all we need, that we can go out into the world to share the Gospel in word and deed. We are spiritual because we have been given His Spirit, and we can trust that God will answer when we call, accomplishing His great works through our lives.
As you think about the Lent practices you will follow beginning two weeks, consider fasting and devotions that will draw you closer to God. We grow in faith and discipleship by living in God’s Word daily. This is what it means to have righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees. It is about having a right relationship with God. By faith His Spirit dwells in our hearts and reveals to us the promises of God and helps us to know Him through His Word and our fellowship with other Christians. We no longer live in the flesh, but in spirit. We have confidence in the promises of God because He has revealed Himself to us. We don’t live in darkness, but in the Light. We aren’t worthless salt good only to be trampled underfoot, but we are the salt that will enhance and flavor the world.
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