Northside Church - Sydney
Cont Series: Impact…Making Your Life Count Week 6: What is the Extent of My Influence?
I got a bit excited a couple of weeks back because I'd heard that Jay-Z was the most influential person in the world and then I had to do a double take because it was Jay-Z, not Jay-Z. I'd missed heard what they had said and Jay-Z is a rapper from the United States, not the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I was a little bit put out but it inspired me to go and investigate who Time magazine regards as the 100 most influential people of all time. And it was quite surprising when I looked through the list, particularly at the top 10 of the list. I mean, I'm sure there are characters coming to your mind right now but you could think of some of them. Yeah, what about that guy that crawled up the sandstone steps of the Washington Monument and on that corner while looking over a crowd and behind him, that reflective pull and that famous monument? And he proclaims, "I have a dream." He was top 10, Dr. Martin Luther King, and yet behind that man was another man that had influenced him. And then there was a mathematician who's renowned for writing down the formulas of gravity and he was a great mathematician, so Isaac Newton, and yet you'd be surprised to find as I was that he was more prolific in his writing of Christian theology than he was of his own formulas. And that man was another man of influence. And then there was a funny, this guy's now, we're getting top three now, I know you're getting excited. There's this other funny, odd-looking, oddball guy from a couple of thousand years back and he was a short, ugly, statured man, and number three on the list was a funny little guy called Paul of Tarsus, who single-handedly threw these funny little communities, as they would have described it, revolutionized the face of Europe and turned the world upside down and on its head, and yet behind that man was another man of influence. And of course it's the one that we hear from in these words, the spawning, when that man says you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? You are the light of the world. And when we hear this passage, and we listen to this, I'm sure most of it's fair to say when I look out at faces that I know well this morning, that this is not new news to us. But I think our approach this morning, the challenge with this passage is that it's not so much an issue with our knowledge of this verse, but more so it's application. I mean I think Christians are like those funny little dogs with, you know, they've got too much skin, and they're all, what are those dogs called, anyone a dog lover, what are they? Sharpies. Sharpies, I thought a sharpie was a black pen that you're right on the whiteboard with. I think Christians, Christians when it comes to this statement are like sharpies. There is an identity, there is a skin, there is a calling that has been placed upon every single person that calls them a follower of this most influential person, that we, whether you are eight or 80 years of age, you're still growing into it. And so one might wonder is this, when we ask, here's the question we're asking this morning as we finish off this series called Impact, the question we're asking this morning is what is the extent of my influence? And when we look at some of these great influences, whether it's Paul or Newton or Dr. Martin Luther King, many of us would write it off straight away and say, look, I'll never be like one of them. I can't speak like that. And yet might I put it to you that for these guys, they weren't responsible themselves for this extent of their influence. So therefore the actually underlying question underneath that is what is the nature of my influence? And so what does this passage teach us? First of all, it teaches us the nature of the world around us. And then it gives us the formula for a life of positive influence in the world. So the first thing we learn is that when Jesus says you are the soul to the earth, you are the light of the world, what he's really saying here is left to itself, the world will decay. That Jesus's declaration is not just a declaration of who his followers are or your salt and light, but it's actually a commentary on the very nature of the world around us that left to itself, the world will go dark, that human societies will lose their way, that thinking will become muddled, that wrong becomes right if it feels good enough. That will become vulnerable to fads, that will run towards the latest flicker of light that promises healing and happiness and warmth, that it's saying that there is utter darkness that the world, even the way that Isaiah says it, who do they turn to, they turn to their own gods, is a sense of spiritual vertigo going on in the world, that the world by itself is decaying. I mean who couldn't help but think that with the news that we've had this week, with a young British soldier, finds himself hacked to death in the middle of a luncheon street. I mean the world is left, left to its own devices, will decay, and you'll agree with this principle, and you have agreed with this principle, any time you've said to yourself, what is the world coming to? Don't you love how real Jesus is, don't you love how real the Bible is when you see passages like this? What he's saying is that the world left to itself will have greater levels of disorder and dislocation and disintegration, and of course it will. It's the second law of thermodynamics, I love my science. The universe is in a state of entropy, that is the universe is always moving from a state of order through to chaos, that it's always cooling down, that the universe itself is decaying, that the universe itself has no life within itself, and it's a dark place, and it's not just cosmic entropy, but we know all too well it's relational entropy, right? How many times are relationships moving from a state of order through to chaos? That relationships are constantly pulling themselves apart, that the races can't get along together, here's the point, the world's dark, and yet light has broken into the darkness. You know people are left, if we left it they're going, what hope is there for the world when people are getting hacked to death? The good news is that God won't leave the world to itself, and the good news is that the God provides salt and light, you know there was a famous Roman saying that says there's nothing more useful than sun and salt. One wonders if Jesus is having a little bit of a joke here, bit of a play on words, because what he's saying here is that this Sermon on the Mount is not just a set of ethical prescriptions, but it's a message of hope, Jesus is saying I've come here, I've bringing together this next stage of creation, a true community called my church, and the part of the reason all the relationships of the world have been unraveling is because the relationship with God is unraveling, and as a result the work is a dark place, and I'm sending light into that place, and guess what? The light is you, it's you my little sharpies. Is it me or have we got some growing up to do? Light and light, the first thing we learn is that the world is a dark place, and yet light is coming into the world that there is a solution for this, Jesus is saying I've come to weave you in this morning, weave you into society as a counterculture, as a community, now here's what he's saying essentially, he's saying this morning through his word, you were to be an influencer, that is Christians are both, and this is where we're going now, Christians are both to be attracted to the world, and we're to be attractive to the world, we'll see how this unfolds, first one, but the Christians are to be attracted to the world. As I said I love science, I love science as a kid, I used to do all sorts of scientific tricks, deconstruct fireworks, just for the sake of understanding how pyrotechnics work, but in year 12 science we had an experiment where we had to take all of these middle filings or bits of metallic rock or something, I don't know what they were, but they had this inherent characteristic within it, and we were going to take it, and you go and throw it at these metal bits amongst all these other little metal bits of shavings, and then you go and get a car battery, and you hook up some wires to either end, and always brings you great joy in year 12, because people are trying to electrocute each other, anyway, back to the experiment, and what would have you, you would throw these shavings in, and when you would close the loop on this particular battery, a field would be generated, and those inherently magnetic little bits of metal amongst all the rest of it would suddenly align, into the most wonderful and glorious pattern on the desk, and not only would they align, but they would take all the other bits of metal shaving with it, isn't that exactly what Jesus is saying here? I mean, he didn't have a car battery back there in 1st century Palestine, but here's what he's saying, he's saying to be a Christian is to have your polarity reversed to the world around you, see, if something is magnetic and it's attracted the world, it means it's inherently different to the world that is around you, and look, here's the proof in the pudding, it's a known fact that in AD50 Rome went through a series of terrible plagues, in fact it was so shocking that the Romans began to pick themselves up out of the cities, gather their belongings, and they ran for the hills, and as they were going out through all of the cobblestone, the cobblestone roads, and they were heading for the hills, they saw a crazy bunch of people running backward in towards the city, you know who they were, they were the Christians, it was the salt, it was the light running back into sickness and poverty and degradation and decay, salt was entering into the world, not just at the risk of their life, but at the cost of their life, and as a result, Christianity exploded after that point as people saw what was happening there, are we getting this, why would they do that, verse 13, you were the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth, Jesus is saying the world is decaying here, but I am sending you into that, look at the imagery, what does salt do, I mean what does salt do, modern day terms, salt gives you a heart attack, just be careful with it, but in those days of course salt was there to preserve, salt is there to enhance, and so Jesus is wonderfully clever in his imagery, isn't he, what a wonderful teacher, in saying, my followers are to go into these arenas of life, into the sickness and into the decay, and they are going in there to enhance and preserve the decay that is happening around them, you are salt, you are light, and so look here is what it means for you, you know salt and light expose the darkness and preserve the decay, in other words that is your life should be so beautiful that it should show up the world for what it really is, that your life should reveal the gossip for what it really is, that your life should reveal the promiscuity for what it really is, that your life should reveal the racism for what it really is, your life should reveal the immorality for what it is, your life should make the racism look like darkness, and your life should make the gossip look like darkness, and your life should make the promiscuity look like darkness, now you say, okay what does that mean, we've got to go act like superheroes amongst all of this, you know, we know what's happened when Christians take this a little bit too far, we get another characteristic about us, it's called being obnoxious, and I think the world's had enough of obnoxious Christians trying to tell the world how to live, and you know what, there was never Jesus's plan in the first place, there's genius to how this influential person works, he's saying, you know, you must remain close to me, your salt and light, but all throughout the script he says is I am the one true light, so in other words just by living his character, by exuding his character in your life, by the way that you take criticism, by the way that you make decisions, by the way that you deal with a horrible boss, by the way that you raise your kids, if you live like Jesus Christ and you can't help but show the darkness and the decay for what it really is, it's like the little girl traveling around Europe with her mum goes into this massive cathedral, she looks at this giant stained glass window at the end, all these people on it, and she said, "Mummy, who are they?" And the mother said, "Well honey, that's the saints." She says, "Ah, now I get it, the saints are the people who let the light shine through them." I think her comment is at the heart of what, and the why, and how we are the salt and the light in particular, the light of the world, in other words, the saints have a transparency about them. And that's the question for you, do you have a transparency about you in each of the different areas in your family life and in your public life? Does it match what your life would be like here on a Sunday in this auditorium? This hark back to what I said week two of this series when we talked about having an identity in Christ, an identity is to have that which is identical about you. In other words, you are the same in every single context. The way that we can stop being obnoxious is just by being transparent, by allowing the light of Jesus Christ to shine in the darkness of the worlds around us. Look, here's the objective in being salt and light is not to consciously change what we do or say, but salt might have their own characteristics about them. I mean salt doesn't think I'm going to actively be salty today. It is salty. Light doesn't say I'm going to try being a little more light-like. It is light. And so for us, Jesus is saying that it's don't try and be like me. No, learn from me to be the sort of person where my character or my deeds naturally flow from who you are. That's how you will let the light shine through. Now I'll still put it. What Jesus is saying is the character of my influence in the world will actually be the influence of your character in the world around you. The character of my influence in the world will be the influence of your character. In other words, you're like a metal shaving. And you think being light is a lonely process? No, look, we're all gathered here today. This is all part of the experiment, but in 20 minutes time and a half an hour of time, the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit is going to thrust his church right out, right out into open bland desk number four of level 23 of the Chiffley Tower on Monday morning. Or it's going to throw his people out into 6D of primary school in the inner West. Or it's going to throw us out into a young mum who's seeking to raise her kids the best way she can. Or it's going to throw us out into a set of grandparents who are trying to raise their grandkids the best way it can. Or it's going to throw us out into someone who is at a management level, senior to board level, and not agreeing really with what is going down here and it's having the decision to say yes. This is not right, I need to say something. That's our church. You are metal filings. And here's the great way that he's going to set this up. Because when he does fling all of this back out there again, when each of us come back to the Word through the power of the Holy Spirit, you know what God's doing through the Holy Spirit, Jesus really did have a car battery. And he plugs it in and the people of God instantly align and bring all the other bits of metal shavings with it into the wonderful pattern that is the life of Jesus Christ. You are light, you are salt. And my question for you this morning that is if the world is decaying and somehow through this passage where the hope of the world is your life so beautiful that it's showing up the darkness and the decay around you, that is the quality of your character will be the secret to your influence. So in other words, you need to be attracted to the world, you need to be moving into the world. But here's the other thing, we also need to be attractive to the world. What does Jesus say here? You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl, instead they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. I love the imagery here, I love to imagine, I wonder if it was just on the hill or maybe Jesus was always telling his boys that they were a city on a hill. And they were sitting around cooking a bit of Galilean fish over the fire and it's the glow of the coals, be the only bit of light in the darkness that they had as part of their evening meal and Jesus on the edge of the lake says to them, you are the light of the world, you are a city on a hill. Now the Sea of Galilee was only 14 kilometres wide in length and there were a number of giant cities around the outside of this various lake. He can't help but now see what Jesus was getting at, that the only thing that stood on the horizon for these guys were the pinpricks of the lights of the cities. The thing that got me this week as I was studying through this is this recognition of this here. Take this way if you haven't seen this before, that I think we read the Sermon on the Mount way to individualistically. We think, I'm the light of the world, I'm a holy glow stick, I'm thrust out there and this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. I just got to go do my own thing and then Jesus says here, no, no, no, no, you're the light of the world but you are a city on a hill and it got me thinking, you know what? It's very hard to be a city on a hill by yourself. Can you see what he's saying here? He's saying, it means you cannot extend the sort of influence that I'm talking about apart from community, apart from my church. And part of the reason why is that look, you know, an individual hero will have all sorts of influence. I mean, there are atheists that have had incredible influence in the world. There are passionate individuals, exceptional individuals who have lots of influence in the world, but they're not very inviting, right? I mean, have you ever been next to an exceptional individual? They're daunting. They're demoralizing. Just can never seem to live up next to their mind-numbing intellect or just the holiness that exudes from them. You know, almost if they're a church person, you almost feel like you need to go home, read your Bible a little bit more. You never know those sorts of people? You see, someone who is individually exceptional of influence is actually quite daunting but an exceptionally loving community on the other hand. People say, I want to be part of that. But a group of people who are radically different from everything else, I want to be a part of that. So can't you see that you could go and be the light of the world and say to everyone in your sphere, whether it be work or family or your kids, you need to love Jesus Christ until you're blue in the face. But it will never get them anywhere unless there's something that you can show for it. Because what I'm doing this morning, this is the proclamation of the gospel. Everything that I do and study before a Sunday is to come here and to argue that Christianity is true. But our job as a community, as the church, is to prove that it's not only true, but it works. And when people move into this place and see exceptionally loving people getting together and unity across the races and across the socio-economic divides, people say, I want to be part of that extraordinary community. And that's what Jesus is saying. He's saying, my visible community, the city on the hill, is to be a demonstration of the reversed polarity of the world. He says that earlier on in the sermon, he says, blessed are the poor, blessed are those who hunger now, blessed are those who weep now, blessed are those who are hated and insult you and reject you because you believe in me. The value is the world of things like power and comfort and success. And Jesus is saying here, you read through the sermon, his value is a weakness and sacrifice and grief and exclusion for his name's sake. I'm thinking, what is a great sales pitch? What a great sales pitch for his community is saying, if you come into my community, the things that the world love, I don't care about that and the things that I love, the world doesn't care about, but I want you to be passionate about things like weakness and sacrifice and grief. And what he's saying is that when no one wants to come into that, that's not easy to do. But he's saying when you enter into relationship with me, when you enter into my community, I'll give you a radical freedom, you're so that power and that comfort and success will have no power over you. It doesn't mean you won't be successful. But he says, I'm the one who's giving you the power to live this reversed polarity. It's so different from the rest of the world. And once you get it in your head and your heart, it changes all of your social relationships and it changes our relationships as a church. For a start, you'd be able to love your enemies. Jesus is saying, my community is so radically different that if you come under me and my power, my resources, you'll look at your enemies not as inferiors, but as equals and even friends. Can you imagine a community like that that's so tight knit, so wonderfully loving, so wonderfully unified that people who aren't even Christian look at it and go, how the heck does that happen? Wouldn't you love to be a part of a place like that? I call it the Mac is principal. I'm sure you've been there before. It's hot Christmas time. You've been stuck in a traffic jam for four and a half hours through the stinking heat of the day. It's now gone on twilight and dusk. You might have had the kids screaming in the back of the car with you, put all sorts of horrible different biscuit mashed through the back seat. They're screaming, they're hungry. You know that the very thing that will save you will be a cardboard box and a little plastic toy that will somehow placate them. You know, as far as your own hunger is concerned, that there is something out there that can really solve the problem. As you eventually power through the darkness of your long drive, there it is in the distance. This golden glow, these golden arches, almost as if it were the star of Bethlehem guiding you to shore salvation underneath its geographical location and excitedly the kids run out and you get everything out of the car and you walk in and the automatic doors open and there is a waft of cold air that hits your face as if it was heaven itself. Your mouth begins to water as you know that the frying machine is going to produce little golden delights of potatoes and that once unrecognizable piece of chicken will taste fantastic now that it's been slapped between two bits of bread. And as you walk in there, your heart is fluttering, isn't it? You get there and you walk up there and then suddenly there's a girl there with a net that's supposed to be on her head half hanging out, her hair's down her face. She's hunched over, chewing, gum, what do you want? And those once golden fries are suddenly soggy and disgusting because they've been sitting for five minutes and the chicken is still unrecognizable and your heart sinks and you're disappointed. Church can work exactly the same way. You see part of the success of the Mac is principle is that a big Mac and the whole experience should be exactly the same in St. Leonard's as it is in Raymond Terrace. And sometimes we've been through those experiences where we know it's not and yet what I'm trying to say to you this morning is when the Jesus says you are the light of world but you are a city on the hill that the part of the quality of our community will be the secret to our mission. I guess my question for you this morning is how do you know that there isn't someone who's had the spiritual holiday trip from hell and has seen this place called Northside Community Church and it brings the same hope and the same sense of excitement as those funny golden arches as a person who's driving through all the traffic. Friends what is the impression that we give off as a church? That Jesus saying just by the very nature of coming together and being in unity and being in harmony together will actually be the very thing that sets people's hearts on fire. And so therefore being a city on a hill is not an overly complex thing to do. I mean some of the ways that we could be a city on the hill is maybe just maybe next week we talk to someone we've never spoken to before. Maybe it's maybe next week. That person who received their free little coffee voucher but sitting on the brown lounges all by himself could be thinking that this experience is not what I thought it was supposed to be living up to. Don't get me wrong if any of the feedback from visitors and guests to our churches anything to go by we're one of the most genuine and authentic and welcoming churches in Sydney. That's not me being full of ourselves. What Jesus challenges you and I with this morning is that there's always an opportunity to be part of the process of building a city on a hill. A community that's so loving and open and warm and genuine and exceptional that even if you believe in Jesus Christ or not and you happen to be in these doors this morning the people go that's what I expect of the church. And I think that I don't know about you. I think that's what the world wants right? That the world wants a community that is open and welcoming and not exclusive. That the world wants a community where your race or ethnicity doesn't determine whether or not you get in the doors. The world wants a community where it doesn't matter whether you're the cleaner or whether you're a CEO that you've got equal standing and equal footing in your pardon at all. Wouldn't you agree? I think the world wants that and so Friends and Mac is principal. Do we live up to that? Of course there's always room for us to grow isn't there? You sharp-haze. We do it well. We do it really well here. But Friends I think Jesus is always challenging us to grow in that area. And so therefore the quality of our community will be the secret to your influence. That's what I want you to take away. You cannot extend your influence apart from the community of God. We are the ones who are influencing our culture, not just individually but corporately. And the quality of our community will be the secret to your influence in the world. Now we need to be attracted to the world and attractive to the world. I guess the big question is why should we? Why should we go and do that? You know there was one who already modelled that. Matthew 2028 says, "The Son of Man has come not to be served but to serve." In other words the Bible says Jesus first was attracted to the world in the purity and the wonder and the holiness and the brightness of heaven. Jesus the gospel says transcended the universe and came down and moved to a bunch of people who were radically different from his own. You know what he was doing? He was going into the plagues. He was going into the decay, into the relational and the physical decay. He was the true light who said, "I've come not to serve, not to be served but to serve." And so Jesus was attracted to the world but also Jesus was attractive to the world. John chapter 3 says that when the Son of Man is lifted up he will draw all people to him. And so when we as Christians look to the cross, now we start to understand the influence behind the most influential person in history. The Son of Man is lifted up. It's one thing for a great person to be in their presence. It's another for a great person to say that they're going to die for you. And so when he dies for each and every person in humanity he gave rise to a message called the gospel that continues today. And as Time Magazine says in all their paragraphs of how people are, "Well Jesus Christ, I guess two billion people can't be wrong." The reason why we should be attracted to and attractive to the world is because Jesus was attracted to and attractive to the world. He's the model for us. And so that is if you want to ask this morning, what is the extent of my influence on other people's lives, my question back to you is what is the extent of Jesus' influence on yours? The degree to which you are influenced by history's most influential person is the degree to which you too will influence history. You are salt. You are light. This skin that you and I need to grow into today, we've heard this before. It was never a matter of our knowledge of this passage. We've all heard it, but we need to grow into it. Maybe John Wesley, one who had a lot to say about slavery, another great influence of the world who was influenced by this man behind the influence, says this, "Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the souls you can, in every place you can, at all the times you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as ever you can." Let's pray. [BLANK_AUDIO]