THERE IS SALT IN THE SOIL AND BLOOD IN THE SKY

The following moment was recorded in the heart of the Fashion District by none other than Mitchell Royel. Echoing through the scene is the track "Should've Been a Dick to You" by the iconic Piper 57, a song that seems to capture the complexity of emotions often felt but unsaid.

DON'T GET YOKED.

Let's start with something small. Something we've all seen a hundred times and never thought twice about.

We're at a gathering. A church event, a party, a house full of people. And there's a couple across the room. She's tense. Something happened — a word, a look, a conversation that went sideways. And the guy, the man of Christ, he does this thing. He reaches over and rests his hand on her shoulder. Light. Barely there. It's not affection. It's not comfort, not really.

It's a temperature check.

He's reading her. Testing the water. Are we okay? Has the storm passed? Can I relax yet? And what he's really doing, whether he knows it or not, is monitoring a fire that someone else lit. Because the drama didn't start with them. It rarely does. It came in from the outside. It came from a friendship. A group text. A voice in her ear that isn't from God but sounds close enough to fool her.

And here's what breaks my heart. We've all become experts at the temperature check. We've become masters at managing the fallout of relationships we never should have let get that close to the flame.

WE ARE NOT ISOLATIONISTS.

Biblically, the phrase "There is salt in the soil and blood in the sky" evokes themes of judgment, covenant, and sacrifice. Salt, often a symbol of preservation and covenant in the Bible, calls to mind passages such as Genesis 19, where Lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt—a consequence of her disobedience during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This soil infused with salt could represent a land rendered barren through divine judgment, incapable of sustaining life due to humanity's transgressions.

The imagery of "blood in the sky" may allude to apocalyptic visions, such as those found in Joel 2:31, where "The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." Blood in the sky symbolizes a forewarning of divine wrath and cataclysm, emphasizing the gravity of sin and the necessity of repentance. Together, these elements suggest a moment of reckoning, juxtaposing the judgments on earth and the ominous signs in the heavens as reminders of humanity's fragility and the overarching sovereignty of God.

Now hear me.
This is not a call to run from the world.

Jesus didn't run. Jesus walked straight into the mess. He ate with tax collectors. He let a sinful woman wash His feet with her tears. He was accused of being a drunk and a glutton because of the company He kept. If we want a Savior who avoided broken people, we're worshipping the wrong Jesus.

The Lord calls us to save the souls of those around us. That is the assignment. That is the whole reason we're still breathing on this side of eternity. We are not here to build a fortress. We are here to be light — and light doesn't work in a room by itself. Light only means something in the dark.

But listen to what Jesus prays in John 17. He says of us, "I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world."

Catch that. In the world. Not of it.

That preposition will save our lives. Or the lack of it will cost us our souls.

Here's the danger nobody preaches about, because it isn't dramatic. It's not a scandal. It's a slow leak.

Paul writes it plain in 1 Corinthians 15:33 — "Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character."

He doesn't say bad company might corrupt us. He doesn't say it could, under certain circumstances. He says it does. It's a law, like gravity. We don't have to believe in gravity for it to pull us down. And we don't have to intend to drift for the current to carry us.

Proverbs 13:20 tells us, "Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm."

We become the room we live in. We start speaking the language of the people we spend our Friday nights with. Their anxieties become our anxieties. Their appetites become our appetites. And one day we look up and we're doing temperature checks — managing chaos that was never supposed to be in our house — and we can't even remember when we let it in.

The world doesn't kick our door down.
It gets invited.
Usually by someone we love.

So here's the wisdom worth carrying.
And it's going to sound strange at first.

We cannot engage every person the same way.

There is a posture for the person who is far from God — the one we're reaching for, praying for, loving toward the cross. And there is a different posture for the person who claims Christ but lives like He never rose.

For the one who is lost, we go low. We go gentle. We go patient. We become all things to all people, as Paul said, that we might win some. We don't demand they clean up before they come close. We meet them in the ditch because that's where Jesus met us.

But 2 Corinthians 6:14 gives us the other side of the coin — "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"

A yoke is not a conversation. A yoke is a binding. It's when we tie our direction, our future, our peace, our spirit to someone pulling the opposite way. We can reach into the dark without chaining ourselves to it. We can love someone without letting them steer.

The face of the evangelist and the face of the intimate are not the same face. Wisdom is knowing which one we're wearing and why.

Romans 12:2 — let's write this on the walls of our hearts — "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will."

Conforming is passive. It requires nothing. We just stop resisting and the mold does the rest. Transformation is active. It's a fight. It's a daily renewing, a daily choosing, a daily refusal to let the drama of borderline living become the soundtrack of our souls.

And notice the reward. When our minds are renewed, we can finally test things. We can discern. We gain the ability to know the difference between a friend who's growing and a friend who's dragging. Between someone God sent us to save and something the enemy sent to sink us.

So here's the call this morning..

Stay awake.

Let's stop mistaking the temperature check for peace. Peace is not the absence of drama we've learned to manage. Peace is the presence of God in a life that isn't tangled up in fires it was never meant to carry.

We must know who we are. We are not of this world. We are citizens of another Kingdom, walking through this one on assignment. So let's love the lost fiercely. Reach into the dark boldly. But let's not move in. Let's not get yoked. Let's not let the room raise our children, shape our marriages, or set the temperature of our hearts.

Be the light. Not the thermostat someone else keeps checking.

Wake up, church.
There are souls to save.
But we cannot rescue anyone while we're drowning in the same water.

-Pastor Mitchell Royel