When I was graduating from high school and people were talking
to me about careers, not a single person asked me if I
wanted to be an influencer. I'm not sure if anyone here got
asked that question. John, were you ever asked?
No, you don't. It's influencing it.
It is a reality that that is now a profession.
I don't. I still don't quite understand
that. But that's all right.
It's not my generation. There are folks out there who
knows. Gavin, do you think you might be
a social media influencer by career, one of these?
No, no, no. How about you, AJ?
You. You're going to be a social
media influencer. No, maybe not.
Did you say that's all right? Yeah.
You're going to be a social media influencer when you grow
up. No.
OK.
How about you going to be a social media?
No, no. All right.
We've got no future social media influencers in this crowd.
Except maybe Anne. I think.
I think you will. OK, Aiden, Aiden's going to do
it. He's going to lead the way for
us. The rest of us will will not be
that. It's weird to me that that's a
profession. The fact that it's weird to me
is nothing says nothing other than that I'm getting old.
But the simple reality is the question of whether we're going
to be an influencer or whether we're just going to be
influenced is something that every single one of us has to
wrestle with and deal with. And, and it's it's not a
question that stops that. It's true.
Wherever we go ongoing, it's a renewed question that we have to
keep asking ourselves, are we going to be an influencer or
just influenced. And I think there are some
respects is that this is one of the often untalked about aspects
of the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and and
particularly of Lot's role and place in all of that.
If you recall, Lot and Abrahm were fighting over land for
grazing flocks, and Abrahm gave Lot the choice.
Lot decided to go to the Jordan Valley and pitch his tent near
Sodom. Abrahm lived in the land of
Canaan, while Lot moved among the cities of the plain and
pitched his tents near Sodom. When he did that, Lot could have
gone in with a particular mindset.
The mindset could have been, you know what, I know there's a lot
of things going on down in Sodom that they are, that there's a
lot of wealth, but there's also a tremendous amount of
indifference to the poor and the needy.
And even though they are very, very prosperous, they do nothing
to care for the vulnerable among them.
That's a problem. But because I've heard from
Abraham, well, Abrahm, then at that point I've heard from
Abrahm and I've traveled with him.
Abrahm left. We left our homeland because God
promised Abrahm to take him to a land that he would show it.
And God did. And God told Abrahm that all the
nations of the world would be blessed through him.
And I'm part of that promise. And I've seen it work because it
well, though it would not at that point because he hadn't
been captured, but he eventually did see it work.
He could have gone down to the Jordan Valley and said, you know
what? God has shown himself to be
powerful. God has shown himself to be
faithful. I want to, as much as I am able,
influence folks around me to faithfully follow God in return,
to live their lives God's way, including sharing the good
things God has blessed us with. Being a blessing to others.
That's that's the essence in some respects of God's promise
to Abram, that his life is about being a blessing to others, not
just accumulating blessings for himself.
That could have been Lot's mindset.
If it was Lot's mindset, we have absolutely no evidence of it.
What we do know, what we do know is this, that Lot failed to
influence his community or his family as he lived first in the
plains of Jordan near Sodom and then in Sodom.
He became a leader in the city. He was a judge in the city.
That's that's why he was at the gate.
That's what the leaders did. They stayed at the city gates.
They welcomed the gusts. They, they resolved disputes
that would people would bring to them when multiple leaders
gathered, they would make decisions.
And and that's what Lot became a leader in the city of Sodom and
yet failed to have any real impact or influence for good in
that city, and not just in the community, but in his family as
well. So let's talk about family
first, because that's where influence starts is how do we
impact our family and the folks around us?
And, and there's a lot. His family was small, His wife,
he had two. They had two daughters and they
had two sons in law. They weren't married yet, but
engagement, what we call engagement now, the promise to
be married was a much more formal relationship and that
part of the world in those days. So, so that's why they can say
that they were his sons in law even though his daughters were
not yet married to them, but very close.
Their families had already started the important process of
uniting. And when the angels told Lot,
God's going to wipe this whole area out.
If you've got any family here, go tell them so they can get out
too. And he goes to his sons in law
and they laugh at it. It's a joke to them.
This is crazy. Whatever Lot may or may not have
told them about God. And by this time got Lot had
seen it first hand when his whole family was taken as
political prisoners and God through Abram set them free from
that and brought them safely back to their homes.
But they laughed at him. They thought he was a joke.
When they're fleeing, they're fleeing.
And now it's just Lot and his wife and his two daughters.
They're fleeing. They're getting to the
mountains. They're turning back.
They're well, they're getting the mountains.
The destruction is happening behind them.
And Lot's wife turns back. And this is more than just she
just turned around to take a look.
The implication there in that is, is that she was yearning to
go back, that that she didn't want to lose the life she had
there. And this corrupt civilization
which was so intent on the wealthy being wealthy, that's so
indifferent toward the needs of the vulnerable among them.
And that's the life she wanted. That's the life.
She was already missing that life.
And then they get into the mountains and now it's just Lot
and his daughters, and they're the only ones left, and they
don't have their husbands anymore.
They've been killed in the destruction and they don't have
their mom anymore. And so they do unspeakable
things to their dad so that they can have children of their own.
Lot had no influence for the good on anyone, as far as we can
tell. It seems that instead of Lot
influencing his family, that his family simply adopted the
culture that they were in, the culture that was around them.
Get what you can for yourself, who cares about others.
Lot had no influence, no influence in the community, no
influence with his family. And why was that?
I think it's because of the reasons why Lot went there to
begin with. Lot was negatively influenced
because he was focused on the wrong thing.
You remember why Lot went to the Jordan Valley, why he pitched
his tent near Sodom. Lot looked around and saw that
the whole plain of the Jordan towards Zohar was well watered.
It's like the Garden of the Lord, like the Garden of Eden,
like the land of Egypt, the most prosperous nation in the world.
So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and
set out to go. E Lot went to the Jordan value.
Lot went to Sodom because he wanted to get in on the
prosperity that was already there.
He didn't go to be a blessing. He go, we went to get a blessing
to get something for himself. He was chasing wealth, he was
chasing status, he was chasing prosperity.
And so instead of going to that area and saying how can I be a
blessing here, he went to that area because he wanted the
blessing of that stuff. He wanted to get in on the
wealth too. And because of that, instead of
influencing the people around them, he just adopted the
culture. He was influenced by the people
around him. Let's get a counterexample here.
Anyone know the name Eric Little?
Do you know that? Anyone know that name?
I've had one person do. If you if you like old sports
movies, there's a movie from the 70s called Chariots of Fire,
which in my humble opinion, one of the greatest sports movies
ever made, one of the greatest movies ever made.
That's just my opinion. That's not a thus saith the Lord
thing. It's a true story about and Eric
Little is one of the main characters in the in the movie
Eric Little at the opening of the movie.
He is, he is in university and this is in the 1920s, nineteen
20s. He's in the University of
Edinburgh and Scotland training to be a missionary to China.
But he's also a tremendous athlete and he's played in
multiple games for the Scottish national rugby team and he's
very fast and he competes in track and field and he's very
successful. He's so successful that he makes
it on to the British Olympic team for the 1924 Olympics that
it will be held in Paris Now his sister and some of his friends
are very disturbed by Eric's. What they see is obsession with
sports, and they believe he's being distracted, that he's
losing his focus, that that he should be focusing on his
mission work, not on these silly games and not on the glory and
the fame and the publicity and the status and the position that
can come from being a successful athlete even then, even at that
time. But Eric assures them that he
hasn't lost his focus. They're not so sure.
But the test comes after he makes the team.
They're actually travelling to Paris by ship when the word
comes out Eric qualified to compete in the 100 meter dash.
That's what he's going to be competing in.
The only event he's he's he's scheduled to compete in the 100
meter dash. And they find out on the ship on
the way there that one of the preliminary heats for the 100
meter dash is on a Sunday. And one of the key tenants and
Eric's, you know, tradition of Christianity is observing the
Sabbath. And you don't do anything but
worship and spend time with family on the Sabbath, nothing
else. And so here's the test.
Is Eric going to be an influencer or will he be
influenced? And he declares at that point
that he will not compete on the Sabbath and therefore he has to
withdraw from the 100 meter dash.
This, he was one of the favorites.
This does not go over well with the British and the leaders of
the Olympic team. And they bring Eric in to have a
discussion with him to really to browbeat him.
And and they use all of the power at their disposal.
high-ranking people, people of wealth and position authority,
including the Prince of Wales, the Crown Prince of England is
there to persuade Eric to compete for the sake of national
honor and dignity. We're going to watch a slide.
You're probably, we might need to restart this.
The it's pretty quiet. You might need to push up the
volume a little bit above normal for us to hear this,
particularly at the beginning. So let's watch this
conversation. Lord Birkenhead has advised us
as to your attitude towards your participation in the 100 meters
heats little Or would your non participation be more accurate?
It would say yes. We were also consulted as to the
correct manner in which to approach the French.
Something we just can't allow to happen.
Going cap and hand to the frogs of all people, simply out of the
question. Simple matter of national
dignity? Little being a patriot, I'm sure
you understand. Well, I must say so I felt it
was an impractical suggestion from the start.
Why did you say so man? As an athlete, you value economy
of effort. I wanted to run.
I was desperate not to try anything.
Well, all that being understood, we decided to invite you in for
a little chat to see if there's any way that we can help resolve
the situation. There's only one way to resolve
the situation, that's for this man to change his mind and run.
Don't state the obvious, Gadagan.
We have to explore ways in which we can help this young man to.
Reach that decision. I'm afraid there are no ways,
Sir. I won't run on the Sabbath, and
that's final. I intended to confirm this with
Lord Birkenhead tonight, even before you called me up in front
of this inquisition of yours. Don't be impertinent, Needle.
The impertinence lies so with those who seek to influence a
man to deny his beliefs. For the country, little We're
appealing to your beliefs in your country and your king, your
loyalty to them. Yeah, here in my day it was King
fest, God after. Yes, and the War to End wars
bitterly proved your point. God made countries, God makes
kings, and the rules by which they govern, and those rules say
that the Sabbath is His, and I for one intend to keep it that
way. Mr. Liddle, you're a child of
your race, as I am. We share a common heritage,
common bond, a common loyalty. There are times when we're asked
to make sacrifices in the name of that loyalty.
And without the my allegiance is worthless.
As I see it, for you this is such a time.
So God knows I love my country, but I can't make that sacrifice.
And Eric didn't make that sacrifice.
He chose not to run. Now what happened was really
kind of cool. One of Eric's team mates who had
qualified in two events and already meddled in one of them,
gave up his spot in the 400 meters so Eric could run in the
400 meters instead, which did not have a heat on Sunday, and
Eric ended up winning gold medal.
Rather extraordinary story if you stop there, which is where
the movie stops. But when you also add in the The
next year, 1925, Eric left England and went to China as a
missionary, where he spent the rest of his life, which turned
out to only be 20 years, where he had a tremendous impact, not
in terms of mass conversions, but in terms of influence in
individual people's lives. He was there in China when World
War 2 started. He was there in China when the
Japanese arrived and he, along with many Chinese, was placed
into a prison camp. Not a good place to be.
And while Eric was in the prison camp, do you know what he was
doing? He was was playing rugby when he
could. He was teaching Bible studies.
He was preaching when there wasn't enough food, he gave his
food to people that were hungrier than he was.
When there wasn't enough medicine, he gave his medicine
to people who were sicker than he was.
And before the war ended, he died in that camp.
Polar opposite of Lot Eric Little.
Lot focused on prosperity. What can I get for myself?
How can I improve my position, my status, my privilege, my my
place in society? And Eric Little how can I be a
blessing to others? How can I serve others?
How can I lift up others? One of them was influenced and
shaped and became just like the culture in which they lived.
The other influenced those around him without cutting
himself off from the culture in which he lived.
Lot's failure was huge on both a horizontal and a vertical level.
Horizontal level. We've already talked about that.
Everyone that he knew was either destroyed physically, died in
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or were so shaped by
the culture of that place that it destroyed them as people.
Particularly thinking of his daughters here and himself in
many respects, but vertically as well because the children that
his daughters had that were also his children ended up leading
two of the nations that violently opposed the Israelites
as they left slavery in Egypt and were returning to the
Promised land. They stood in their way and did
everything they could to prevent them from receiving the blessing
that God had for them. Hundreds of years after Lot's
failure to influence, his decisions were still having a
negative impact. This question is important for
the same reasons for us, because our ability to influence or our
capacity to be influenced, we'll have positive or negative
consequences not just around us now, but for generations to
come. So let's talk about that.
Some of the practical implications here, because
chances are, chances are, none of us is going to compete in the
Olympics, probably chances are none of us is going to be die in
a prison camp in a foreign land. Chances are.
So what does all of this have to do with us?
What does all of this have to do with us?
It has to do with this. We need to be aware in our own
daily lives of our own limits, including our capacity to
influence. Maybe the best decision Lot
could have made in his entire life was when Abrahm said you
pick where to live. If, if Lot had said, you know
what, I really like what's happening down there in the
Jordan Valley. I like it so much.
I don't think it's a good idea for me to go there.
Even if I want to influence them.
I, I, I, I don't think I have that in me to do that, to
recognize our own limits. Because for all of us, there are
places where we can be of influence and there are places
where we can't. 2 simple examples to illustrate this.
Someone's two years sober from alcoholism.
The bar is probably not your mission field.
Right, Because you go there, there's our good chance you're
just going to go back to doing the stuff that made you in such
a bad position to begin with. Guys I worked with so often
about girls and guys at the juvenile detention center in
Seneca County when I lived up there just were repeated
examples of this. It would come in to jail.
They would swear off everything. They were determined they were
going to do life better after they got out so they would never
have to come back to jail. They were, some of them didn't
care, but a lot of them were absolutely serious.
They would leave and 6 to 12 months later they were back.
And I would say what happened and their story inevitably, like
9 times out of 10 was something like, well, I got to hanging out
with my old friends again. 1st. I wasn't going to, but I went to
hang out when I was like, I'm going to hang out with them, but
I'm not going to do the stuff that they're doing.
And they hang out with them And they started doing, well, they
were, you know, well, they're passing a joint, but I, I'll
just pass it. I'm not going to partake when it
comes to me. And they would partake when it
came to them eventually. And they eventually just went
back to the same pattern of behavior, influenced by the same
group of people that had helped them fail before.
They had zero chance of having a positive influence and an almost
guaranteed chance of being negatively influenced.
And we all have situations like that, places that are our
Achilles heel relationships, context settings, where if I go
there, I know I got almost zero chance of being a positive
influence and a 99.9% chance of being negatively influenced.
I got those kind of situations. It's like I just can't go there.
I can't. I can't try to help that person.
I can't try to be a friend of that.
I can't. And sometimes it is.
It's just a relationship too. When you know, it's like friends
and family say you know, when you're around that person,
you're a completely different person.
You should stop being around that person.
That person is not helping you and you are not helping them.
Let them go. Let someone else help him.
Pray for him, but you these are the kinds of things I'm talking
about. Now here's the thing.
This principle, this notion of being aware of our limitations
of being aware that there are some people in some groups, in
some situations where we just don't have the capacity to be a
positive influence. That's in tension with some of
the things that Jesus taught us lot story is in tension with
Jesus example of being a friend to sinners because Jesus made
Bible makes it clear. Jesus hung out with the quote UN
quote bad people. He hung out with the folks that
were doing the bad stuff. He went to their house, He had
dinner with them. He invited them to have dinner
with him. He made friends with them.
He invited some of them to be part of his inner circle and
that's intention. Jesus's example and call to us
to be a friend of sinners is in tension with lots pitching his
tent near Sodom and the one of the ways that some people
resolve that and some churches resolve that is to say we've got
to have a silo. We'll be in the world, but not
of the world. You know, we'll, I, I, we'll,
we'll, we'll be there. But, but we're going to put a
layer of bubble wrap and we're going to put a wall around us
and we're going to make sure that those bad people out there
don't influence us and our families in here.
We're going to have a whole separate subculture.
It has as little to do with those folks as possible.
We'll be the shining city on the hill.
But you better be like us before you get inside the gates.
Jesus's teaching an example completely disallows that.
We don't get to do it that way. But the other way we don't get
to do it is just whoo, Hoo. We'll just join in with
everything and do whatever they do, and we'll have fun.
And we'll be just like they are, and there won't be any
difference between US and them. That's what Lot did.
We also don't get to do well, We yeah, we can do either one of
those things. It just doesn't work well and
doesn't work out well. The middle course is much more
challenging, which is prayer and discernment.
And that we, we, we pray and we talk with God and we talk with
people that know us and love us best.
And we say, what about this person?
What about that situation? What about that relationship?
Because I feel like, you know, I, I feel like I can have an
impact there. And sometimes God and our
friends that know us and love us will say, yeah, go for it.
Sometimes they'll say, you know what?
I don't think you will. I think I think you will just
get dragged down. I think you won't make them
better. I think they'll make you worse.
And that's the route that we have, the difficult route of
prayerfully discerning. Can I have an impact?
Can I be an influence? Or will I simply be dragged down
in that situation, in that circumstance?
And we ask ourselves in prayer with them, to what degree can I
keep my focus on Jesus and his call in any given situation?
There are some situations I will not put myself in.
God bless the people that are in them.
They need to know that someone. They need someone to go and tell
them that Jesus loves them. They need someone to go and be
their friend without manipulating and exploiting
them. But there's some situations
where I am just not going to be able to be that person because
if I go there, I'm done. I'm done.
That's why it's great that we're part of the body because other
people can go there and they'll be all right.
Now I can go places. They can, I can go to a bar, I
can have a drink and it's going to be all right.
But there are places that I can go and that I won't go.
And and there's some folks I got good friends that are like,
don't ever take me to a bar. I can never be a good positive.
To what degree can we keep our focus on Jesus in any given
situation? I want to close with another
concrete modern day example. Someone you might have heard
this name a lot recently, and particularly if you follow the
news a lot, Maria Carina Machado.
Have you heard that name? I love that.
I don't know that I just, I love that, love the name Maria Carina
Machado is the the most recent recipient of the Nobel Peace
Prize. She just received it a couple
weeks ago. She could not go pick it up
herself because she is currently in hiding.
Most of her allies don't even know where she is.
She is a citizen of Venezuela and she, like every other person
in the world, was given the opportunity and the choice.
Do you want to get along to go along or go along to get along?
Or are you going to stand against something in the culture
that is negative? Can you be an influence here?
And she chose to be that. She grew up in a wealthy family.
It would have been easy enough to just kind of go along and use
the wealth to gain political favor and Curry political favor.
For whatever reason, she chose not to do well, not for whatever
reason. She has said her faith is one of
the reasons she's doing what she's doing.
She's a staunch Catholic and and deeply committed to to God and
to prayer. She's also an industrial
engineer, very well educated. She's also a competent and
capable business person who was convinced to go into politics.
Politics is one of those places where I don't think I could ever
survive. I'm not, you know, just saying I
think I would be too easily corrupted.
She has not been. She's been threatened.
She's had her life threatened. She's had her family threatened.
She's been accused of multiple crimes.
She was last year in 2024, she was going to run for president
was an election. She was going to run for
president of Venezuela against Maduro, A dictator president, a
name dictator in fact. And, and, and the Maduro regime
declared it illegal for her name to even be on the ballot.
So she convinced an old guy to run as her proxy.
Everyone knew that a vote for this guy was not a vote for him,
but was a vote for Machado. You know how what percentage of
the popular vote she got running when she wasn't allowed to run?
90 percent, 90% of the popular vote.
And she lives in hiding. And she still lives in hiding
and she still prays for her people.
She still speaks, she still leads.
She still, she does a lot on social media now.
And she's still convinced that one day democracy and freedom
will return to Venezuela. She's choosing at great risk to
herself and to her family. She's choosing to be an
influencer rather than simply to be influenced.
I think she's a tremendous example, someone going into an
environment that for many people would be corrupting.
And for her, she's being an influencer.
This is the choice that we all have.
Most of us probably will not have an opportunity to run for
president and a country struggling against dictatorship.
Most of us probably not going to have an opportunity to win a
Nobel Peace Prize. Although I think I think Aidan
might win 1, maybe you could, you could feel like you could.
Yeah, I do think this that although our the scale of impact
open to most of us is much smaller than that of Eric Little
or Machado or even Lot. But we all have this opportunity
to be an influencer in our family, in our school, in our
place of work, in our community, in our county to influence folks
for good to see. How can I be a blessing in this
situation? How can I help others?
How can I lift others up? How can I be a shield and a
protection for folks that are vulnerable and are in need?
How can I do those things versus how can I just adopt the values
around me and get along and go along and get what's best for
myself and who cares about everybody else?
We have that choice to be an influencer or to be influenced
in Jesus name. Let's choose to be influencers.
Amen. Amen.