Influence
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
The name Bert Decker is probably not a household name to many of you, but I got to know him when I was in seminary. Decker is the founder and the CEO of Decker Communications. He is a communications expert. And he coaches senior business executives and their managers on how to transform their business communication. Not just platform kind of communication, but even down to emails and phone calls and just hallway conversations. I got to know him, as I said, while I was in seminary because Decker is also a believer in Jesus Christ. And one of my preaching professors in seminary assigned a book that Decker had written to our reading list, and that’s how I first got to know Bert Decker. That professor was also writing a book with Decker on communication aimed at pastors. So for many, many years I’ve kind of kept up with Decker through his blog, through his website, through the books that he’s written and through his twittering. And we still keep in touch from time to time that way. The other day I was on his website, decker.com, and I was fascinated by the tagline he uses for his company. It’s Decker Communications, and he says, “Moving from information to influence.” And I thought that’s a great thing for communicators to think about, that we’re not just in the business of disseminating information. That’s one thing. But when we move from information to influence, then we kind of understand what we’re about as communicators. And I thought it’s important for us to understand that as a church as well.
0:02:01.5
We’re kind of in the communication business, aren’t we? We’re in the proclamation business, we like to say. We’re in the business of proclaiming the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to the world. And as Immanuel Bible Church, one small part of the much larger church of Jesus Christ, here from the corner of Braddock and Backlick, we are in the business of proclaiming the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not for the purpose of simply disseminating information, but for the purpose of influencing the world around us for the cause of Christ.
0:02:39.8
Now, in Matthew 5:13-16, Jesus lands up on this notion of influence that His followers are influencers in this world. And He borrows two metaphors, the metaphor of salt and light, to communicate this. If you have your Bibles, follow along as I read verses 13-16. Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”
0:03:46.7
Now, today I’m beginning a brand new series of messages titled “Lessons from the Sermon on the Mount.” And it’s really kind of a continuation of our study of the Sermon on the Mount that we began over the summer as we focused on the Beatitudes, the first 12 verses of Matthew 5. What we’re gonna find in our study of the Sermon on the Mount is, well, much like what we found with the Beatitudes, this is kind of an upside down approach to life. And the kingdom principles that we learn in the Sermon on the Mount, well, they’ve confounded people for generations. We’re going to come to some places in the Sermon on the Mount where we may be tempted to throw up our hand and say, “How in the world can we put this into practice? How are we to live this way?” Like, for instance in Matthew 5:44 when Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Now, I don’t know how you receive something like that, but I’m saying to myself, How in the world am I gonna do that?
0:04:47.6
One author describe the Sermon on the Mount this way. He says, “The Sermon on the Mount is an impossible enigma to those who have never experienced this miracle of salvation. No matter how religious they may be or how sincere, if they have never been transformed by God’s power, they can never live the transformed life described in this sermon.” He says, “It takes a miracle.” And it does. And the first question I want to ask you this morning as we launch into this study of the Sermon on the Mount is, have you been transformed by Jesus Christ? Have you experience the miracle of salvation? Because if you haven’t, as we work our way through the Sermon on the Mount you may reach a point of frustration, saying, “I don’t have the resources in me to live out the kingdom principles that are mentioned here.” And you’re absolutely right. Apart from Jesus Christ, not a one of us in this room can live this way. Not a one of us in this room can love our neighbors and pray for those who persecute us. And so it takes this miracle of salvation, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, depositing within us the resources that we need to live out the kingdom principles. Not only the principles that we learned in the Beatitudes, but all these principles that we’re going to learn in the Sermon on the Mount.
0:06:13.7
Now, last week we finished our study of the Beatitudes, and we ended on kind of a somber note. We talked about, of all things, persecution. Jesus said in verses 10-12, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” And it reminds us that the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world are in conflict with one another. And the follower of Jesus Christ who takes seriously the ethics of the Beatitudes and lives them out, he will experience or she will experience persecution. But Jesus goes right on to say in verses 13-16 that those same followers of His are influencers in this world. And if you're like me, you’re kind of scratching your head and saying, “Wait a minute. You mean these people who are described in the Beatitudes are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, influencing the world today? People who are poor in spirit, those who mourn over their sin, those who clothe themselves sin meekness? They don’t appear to be the influencers in this world. They seem to be the influenced.” But we don’t understand Jesus’s perspective. And here is the first turning point as He goes on in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says absolutely, those who live out the ethic of the Beatitudes, those who are pure in heart and merciful, the peacemakers, yes, even the persecuted. “They’ve got all the right stuff to be my influencers in the world today.” In fact, He says emphatically to His followers, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” He didn’t say, “You should be the salt of the earth.” He didn’t say, you know, “If you work real hard you might one day be able to be a little light in this world.” No, He says, “Whether you realize it or not, whether you accept it or not, whether you like it or not, you're it. You’re the salt of the earth. (You’re it.) And you are…yeah, you’re it. Just like the little boy…he’s got it. He’s figured it out. You are the salt of the earth.
0:08:34.9
And in light of these two simple metaphors that we’ll take some time to unpack, there are two things, by application, that we need to do today as we leave this place. We need to shake our salt, and we need to shine our light. Let’s land upon the first metaphor, this salt metaphor in verse 13. Jesus says, “You are…” Let’s read it together. “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.”
0:09:17.1
Now, the first thing we need to do is to understand what He means by this metaphor, salt. What is He talking about here? Well, contextually, we are right here on the other side of the Beatitudes. So the salt that he is talking about by way of metaphor is the character of Christ that is in us as we live out this ethic called the Beatitudes. And Jesus is quick to tell us, “You are the salt of the earth. Your character, the character of Christ in you, is like salt in the earth.” But He is quick to tell us that the salt can lose its saltiness. Now, some of you chemists out there will say, “Well, sodium chloride never really loses its taste, its salty taste.” And you’re right. But in the first century when they would use salt, sometimes they would take big loads of salt. And they would toss is onto the ground, and the salt would kind of get mixed in with the dirt and the impurities of the ground. And that’s kind of the picture that Jesus has in mind here, where the salt loses its saltiness. So they would take that salt mixed with the dirt of the world, and, well, they would use it on the walking pathways. And they would just kind of scatter it out where people were walking. And that salt would literally be trampled underfoot by men.
0:10:41.0
Now, make the connection here with the metaphor. If the salt is the character of Christ as we live out the ethics of the Beatitudes, when our character crumbles, friends, when our character crumbles, our salt loses its saltiness. And the reputation of Jesus Christ becomes trampled on by the world. And how does our salt crumble? Well, it’s when we get kind of mixed up in this dirty, sinful world in which we are and our character is not the pure and holy character of Christ, not the pure in heart that He talked about. But that our salt is kind of mixed in with the impurities of this world. We lose our testimony, we like to say. We lose our effectiveness. We love our influence in the world today. And we see it all the time when high profile politicians or pastors or whoever it might be, their character crumbles. And, “Oh yeah, that was one of those Christians.” And the reputation of Jesus Christ is trampled on by the world. And Jesus warns us about this. Dr. Wiersbe said, “We cannot change what we are. We are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world.” But he says, “We can waste what we are. The salt can lose its saltiness, and the light can be put under a bowl.”
0:12:25.7
Now, one thing that we need to understand, and this is kind of self-evident. Salt is a valuable commodity, at least it was in the 1st century. It was valuable. And it has some value to us today, but it’s a commodity. It’s common. It’s common today. It was common in the 1st century. And that tells us something about what Jesus thinks about us, His followers, being the salt of the earth. He didn’t say, “You are the gold of the earth.” He didn’t say, “You are the silver of the earth.” That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But those are rare. Those are not commodities. Those are rare and precious jewels in our world today. He said we are the salt of the earth. And the implication here is that Jesus delights in using common, everyday people like you and me to wield uncommon influence in the world, uncommon kingdom influence.
0:13:20.4
I was thinking of what the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. Listen to this. He says, “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong; and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.” I’ll never forget when I was in seminary…I think it was Dr. Swindoll, when he was the chancellor there, stood up in chapel one day and was preaching from this passage to a group of esteemed seminary students. And he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, consider your calling. There are not many wise in this room. There are not many mighty or noble. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.” Made us feel about this big, you know. Sinclair Ferguson says, “With the influence of the gospel, Christians, like salt, may seem small and insignificant, powerless in a power-mad society, yet they have the ability to influence every segment of it and to permeate the whole world.” Think of the far-reaching influence in these metaphors. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” We are Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ living out the character and the ethics of the Beatitudes, even the whole Sermon on the Mount, we have far-reaching kingdom influence. Far more than we perhaps ever give ourselves credit for.
0:15:23.9
Now, with the salt metaphor there are three things that this metaphor tells us about the world in which we live. Number one, we live in a decaying world. Back in the 1st century they didn’t have refrigeration. Frigidaire and, I don’t know, all these kinds of things that you find at the Sears store and the Home Depot store…they just didn’t have refrigeration. And so if you were a fisherman, for instance, and you went out on the sea and you caught all this fish and you had to take it from your boat to the market, the first thing you would do with that fish is you would pack it in salt because salt has a preserving quality to it. Likewise, if you were a butcher, you would take salt and you would rub that salt into the meat as you brought it to market. Because everyone knows that dead things decay very quickly unless you refrigerate, freeze it, or, in their case in the 1st century, they would pack it in salt.
0:16:24.7
One of the dangers that may come upon us as we think about the world around us is we think that the world is basically good and will get better and better as people evolve morally and socially. That’s one view some people have of the world. That isn’t Jesus’s view. Jesus’s view is that this world is decaying. And we see that all around us. Decay politically, socially, morally, sometimes spiritually. In fact, if you want to know what the Bible really says about the world in which we live and who we are as human beings, Ephesians 2:1 really describes the inhabitants of this world. And this world is sort of like a graveyard full of people who are...and here is the phrase from Ephesians… “dead in their trespasses and sins.” In other words, you’re born into this world very much alive physically, but dead spiritually. And dead things decay until they are brought to life again by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Until they are “born again,” the scripture says. But until that happens, we are in a state of spiritual decay. And it’s believers in Jesus Christ who have been born again and brought to life again who become preserving agents in the world in which we live. The Holy Spirit living inside of us is a preserving agent. When the rapture of the church takes place and the church is gone and Holy Spirit is gone, incredible decay and tribulation will take place on this earth. But until then, we are the salt of the earth, inhabited by the Holy Spirit Himself. And we are a preserving agent in the world today. Sinclair Ferguson says, “Without the influence of the gospel, society will suffer moral decay and become putrid, unfit for the consumption of good men and women.” That’s just the reality, and a reality from Jesus’s perspective.
0:18:36.2
Secondly, this metaphor tells us that we live in a tasteless world, a flavorless world. Salt is a seasoning. Some of you are gourmet chefs, and you are aware of all the different kinds of salt out there. You know, a novice like me, you know, I know basic table salt. But I learned this week there is also kosher salt and (0:19:00.0) Celtic salt and all kinds of varieties of…sea salt. Now our potato chips have seat salt on them. All kinds of different kinds of salt. It’s a seasoning. And as the salt of the earth, we, as followers of Jesus Christ, are also here to flavor and to season the world around us.
0:19:21.2
Hold your place here in Matthew and turn with me to Colossians 4:6. Paul picks up on this idea as it relates to our speech. Colossians 4:6, Paul says, “Let your speech always be with grace.” Isn’t that a great statement? And then he qualifies it a little bit. He says, “As those seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should (0:20:00.0) respond to each person.” Is your speech, is what comes out of your mouth a tasteful and palatable seasoning in the world in which you live? Our speech is like salt. A little bit goes a long way, doesn’t it? And if you over salt your food, you ruin the food. Sometimes when we blabber too much with our mouth and our tongue and we don’t have control of our tongue, as James would teach us in James 3, as Proverbs says, when our mouth is full of gossip and slander and backbiting or cursing or all kinds of evil that comes out of our mouth, which is a reflection of our heart, we’re not seasoning this world. We’re not acting like the salt of the earth. But, oh, what an opportunity we have to use the tongue and our mouths and our lips to be salt in the earth with our speech, that our speech is seasoned with grace and our words are filled with grace.
0:21:03.4
There’s a third thing that this metaphor tells us about the world in which we live. And it suggests to us that people are thirsty for eternity. How many of you went to a movie recently and you bought some popcorn. You know that buttered, salty popcorn that we all like to eat when we’re in the movie. You know, the butter makes you fat, but the salt makes you thirsty, all right. And the movie theaters know that. That’s why they salt up their popcorn, because they want to sell you a drink too. Salt creates thirst. And the idea here is this. Is there anybody you can point to in your life, in your neighborhood or your community or your workplace or your family, who is thirsty for Jesus today because of your presence? Jesus was at the feast of Tabernacles in John 7:37. And He said these words. He said, “If anhyone thirsts, let him come to me and take a drink.” As the salt of the earth, you are a little grain of saltiness in Jesus in somebody else’s life. Are you creating that thirst by the way you talk, by the way you live, by the way you respond to difficult circumstances? Are you making anybody thirsty for Jesus today?
0:22:27.4
One more thing that we need to consider about the salt metaphor. Salt doesn’t do any good if it stays in the salt shaker. Maybe some of you will go home today, and you’ll open up your pantry. And you’ll find a big thing of iodized table salt. And it’s unopened and in your pantry. Salt cannot preserve anything, it cannot flavor anything, it cannot create thirst in anything as long as it remains in the pantry or inside the salt shaker. And Rebecca Pippert picked up on this idea years ago when she wrote a bestselling book titled, Out of the Salt Shaker. And she borrows this imagery from the Sermon on the Mount. She’s an evangelist, and she goes around to churches actually training churches in evangelism. And she had some insights from her travels. She writes in her book, “The most common objective I hear when training churches in evangelism is this- ‘All of my friends are Christians.’” Hmm, sounds familiar? “With work, parental responsibilities and church activities, there is not time left to form a friendship with a seeker.” She goes on to say, “What an insidious reversal of the biblical command to be salt and light in the world.” She says, “The rabbit-hole Christian…,” a term that she borrows from John Stott. She says, “The rabbit-hole Christian remains insulated and isolated form the world when she is commanded to penetrate it.” And then she asks this provocative question. “How can we be the salt of the earth if we never get out of the salt shaker?” And that’s a great question for us to remember and to ask ourselves this morning, friends.
0:24:21.0
I was thinking this week of our strategic plan here at Immanuel Bible Church, a plan that was written in 2005. I arrived in 2007. We’re approaching 2010. And you often see these phrases that reflect our mission here at Immanuel to seek Him constantly, to serve Him faithfully, to share Him boldly. I remember when the search committee called me, and they said, “Here is our strategic plan.” And that strategic plan said we’re doing a pretty good job here at Immanuel of seeking Him constantly. We’re doing a pretty good job of serving Him faithfully. But in this season, written in 2005, we want to emphasize sharing Him boldly. And I thought to myself this week as I was reading Matthew 5:13-16, that’s an out-of-the-salt-shaker kind of initiative and kind of plan. And it’s comfortable inside the salt shaker, isn’t it? It’s comfortable even inside the pantry, kind of in our holy huddles where we all kind of know each other and we’re all hanging out with people who are already convinced of the things that we’re already convinced of. But that’s not the picture that Jesus gives here. He says, “You’re the salt of the earth. Go shake your salt in your neighborhood, in your community.” If you don’t have any friends that are not Christians who are already convinced of the things you’re convinced of, shame on you. Shame on me. We need to be out in the world. We need to allow God to rub us into the meat of this world without becoming influenced by the world, but so that we become influencers in the world. That’s the idea here. You are the salt of the earth. I am the salt of the earth. Let’s get out there and shake our salt. Oh, it’s fine to hang out in our holy huddles. But it’s time to get out of the pantry. It’s time to get out of the salt shaker, says Rebecca Pippert, and be influencers in the world today.
0:26:40.1
Well, let’s move on to this second metaphor, the light metaphor. Jesus says in verse 14, “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.” Put your faith on display, He says. The world needs to see that this is a reality. And in the process make sure you “glorify your Father in heaven.” This metaphor, interestingly enough, is one that Jesus picked up later on in His ministry. And here He says, “You are the light of the world.” He stood up before the world and said, no, “I am the light of the world.” And it reminds me of what John says in his gospel, John 1. Remember that fantastic passage of scripture, John 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God; the Word was God.” He was in the beginning with God. Verse 4, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” It’s one of the first things John said about Jesus, that He was the light of men. “And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness did not comprehend it,” did not overcome it. Why? Because light, even a small little light…if that’s all you’ve got is “this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” that little light dispels darkness. This metaphor tells us that we live in a dark world, friends. And your little light and my little light matters in this world in dispelling the darkness.
0:28:45.9
It also tells us though that the world is watching. Did you see that at the end of verse 14? “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” In other words, when followers of Jesus Christ embrace this idea that we are the light of the world, we are like a shining city on top of a hill in the midst of a dark, dark place, and off into the distance travelers come toward it because they see hope in this shining city on a hill. I love this imagery of a shining city set on a hill. And others throughout the history of our nation have picked up on it as well. In fact, John Winthrop was on the Arbella in 1630 when the colonists came over from the mother world and established the new Massachusetts colony, the new Massachusetts Bay Colony. Winthrop was a preacher. And just before they arrived in the new world here, he preached a sermon called “A Model of Christian Charity.” And he grabbed this image of a city set on a hill as he exhorted the colonists as they were just about to go ashore. And he said to them, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” The world is watching. Watching the church, watching Christians and wondering, Is this for real?
0:30:22.4
Centuries later, President John Kennedy elect gave a speech on January 9th, 1961. It was the first modern day reference to the Winthrop speech. And after quoting Winthrop, who quoted Jesus, President Kennedy said, “For we are setting out on a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arbella in 1630. Politicians love this imagery. And if you will indulge me, Ronald Reagan loved the image of the shining city on a hill too. He used it throughout many of his political speeches, not the least of which was his farewell speech to the nation on January 11th, 1989. Our former president said, “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind,” the president says—and I love the way he paints a picture here—“it was a tall, proud city built on rocks, stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with all kinds living in harmony and peace. A city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls,” he said, “the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I see it,” said Reagan, “and see it still.”
0:31:57.9
And for those of you who are Reagan fans, if you don’t mind, I want to take his words that were political in nature…and Jesus wasn’t about politics here. No, He was about the church and the influence of His followers in the world. I just want to take Ronald Reagan’s words and turn them in the language toward the church. Listen to this. I see the church as a tall, humble city, built on a rock, stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of kinds living in harmony and peace. A city where people are free in Christ, with ports humming with authentic worship, community, love and service to our savior. Oh, and if there have to be walls in this church, the walls have doors. And the doors are open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. And there are doors so the people of God can leave this place and go out into the world and shake their salt and shine their light. That’s how Jesus saw it. And I hope that’s how we see it too.
0:33:19.2
Jesus said in verse 16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” If the salt metaphor, friends, is about our character, the light metaphor is about our conduct. Now, listen to this. We have real kingdom influence when our character and our conduct glorify God. I don’t know about you, but I can take that to the bank. And I can meditate on that in my heart and pray through it for a long, long time.
0:34:06.5
So here’s your homework today as I give myself some homework as we leave this place. And by the way, the doors are kind of doors that swing in and out. For people who have the heart and the will to get here, we’re gonna do things like start a Saturday night service so we can make more room for people. We had 362 people here last night. That makes a lot of room for folks on Sunday morning, doesn’t it, for those that have the will and the heart to get here. As we go out from this place and shake our salt and shine our light, pray that the God of heaven will put us in contact with people whom He has sovereignly chosen to become His followers. And we have an opportunity to influence them, influence them for the cause of Jesus Christ. Let’s pray together.
0:35:02.7
Our Father, thank You for Your Word. And thank You for the way You challenge us. Thank You for the way You convict us. We’re just getting started in this, Your Sermon on the Mount, and we’re already finding that it’s raising the bar on what it means to be one of Your followers. Father, help us this week to shake our salt, to shine our light. Help us to be men and women of godly character and conduct. We pray for an opportunity this week to have a conversation with somebody out in the world, somebody that You know by name, somebody You created in Your image. Where we can have a conversation with them about the Savior. Where we can be that salt-like and light-like influence in a person’s life and have it influence the earth, the world. Father, I pray that we might always be mindful of who we are and why we exist here on the corner of Braddock and Backlick. And that we might always be willing and able as we think creatively about ways to shake our salt and shine our light. That we never get so comfortable, Father, that we forget our mission. Father, for the person who might be here today who has never trusted Jesus Christ as his or her savior, I pray that this would be a day that they find their way to the cross where Christ died for our sins. And He was buried and He rose triumphantly from the grave to deliver us from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin so we could live an overcoming life and one day from the presence of sin in a place called heaven where there are no tears. There is no darkness. Where the light of God shines in radiance in that place like that city set upon a hill. May today be a day of salvation, Father. And may we never forget that our Father is always working, and we’re in business with Him. In Jesus’s name we pray, amen.
0:38:27.9