INFLUENCE WEEK 4
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INFLUENCING MY PEOPLE
INFLUENCING MY PEOPLE
INTRODUCTION
My people! What is up ya’ll, happy MDWK!!!
WEEK 1. YOU HAVE AN INFLUENCE. ARE YOU USING THAT INFLUENCE TO BE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.
WEEK 2. LOGAN PREACHED ON ONLINE INFLUENCE WITH A SERMON CALLED MY PROFILE. TALKING THROUGH WHAT YOU PUT OUT INTO THE WORLD, WHO IS FOLLOWING YOU AND WHO ARE YOU FOLLOWING.
WEEK 3. YOU HAVE AN INFLUENCE THAT REACHES. ZACH WALKED THROUGH THE GREAT COMMISSION AND HOW WE ARE THE CHURCH TAKING THE GOSPEL ACROSS THE STREETS, STATES, AND SEAS.
Tonight we are going to talk about Influencing your people. The people that you say are in your circle.
Your family, your friends, the people you have close proximity too and talk to often.
So if you would turn your Bibles to the Gospel of Mark chapter 2 and following along with me.
**READ***
13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. 15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
***PRAY***
In this bit of scripture we are going to look at what we should be influencing our people towards, who are people should be made up of, and how do we influence our people.
First up is what we should be influencing your people towards. This shouldn’t be a shocker as we have basically been covering this now for the past 4 weeks. You should be influencing your people towards Jesus
INFLUENCE MY PEOPLE TOWARDS JESUS
Ultimately this is the central point to this whole series. How do we influence people to Jesus. Well as always Jesus is our best example of how to do this.
So how did Jesus influence people?
13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
Jesus always kept the main thing the main thing. The way He lived, the actions He preformed, the words He said all pointed to God’s glory. He never said something that wasn’t backed up by the way He lived. WORDS MATTER! And how we live our life can either reinforce or destroy what we say.
Think about if I was up hearing saying it is your job to love people, be kind to people, care about the words you say to them to matter if you like them, love them, can’t stand them or whatever. Love, be kind, care about what you say no matter who it is.
McDONALDS ORDER: Then you saw me in McDonalds and I ordered a Spicy McChicken add cheese, light mayo, large fry and a large sweet tea. But McDonalds missed up my order. They gave me a McDouble instead of a McChicken, they gave me a medium fry instead of a large fry and the fries were cold, to top it all off they gave me an unsweet tea. (Which by the way, there might be something wrong with you if you drink unsweet tea but that is a topic for another time.) Once I got this order I was ticked. Let’s say I took that McDouble and through it at the person behind the counter and I started to yell at them, curse at them, and tell them how bad they are at their job.
Let’s say you saw all of this take place. Would those actions affect my previous words about loving, being kind, and caring about every word you say? OF COURSE!!!
Jesus understood this and knows this better than anyone. That is also why God’s Word calls us to live out our life in 3 steps… listen to God, live out for God, and speak out for God.
Who was Jesus listening to? God The Father.
Who was Jesus living is life out for? God The Father.
Who was just speaking out for? God The Father.
Some may say, Jesus was speaking out for Himself not the Father. But that is 100% false.
49 For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.
So we need to influence people towards Jesus the way Jesus influenced people. He listened and obeyed the Father, He lived out His life for the glory and honor of the Father, and He spoke about the Father’s and the Father’s will.
Students we need to do all 3 of these things to influence our people towards Jesus.
We need to LISTEN to God.
We need to LIVE OUT for God.
We need to SPEAK OUT for God.
LISTEN: The greatest way to listen to God is to read His word.
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Know your stuff! How can you influence those around you for the sake of Christ, if you don’t know what the Word of God says about Christ?
15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,
LIVE OUT: Don’t just listen to God’s Word though, We have to live it out.
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
SPEAK OUT: The calling to influence our people towards Christ does not stop with listening to God and living out our lives for Him. We also need to share it.
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
Students, Jesus influenced people to the glory of God. We should chase after the model He has set before us and influence people towards the glory of God too, which is the very life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
We should also care deeply about who we are influencing. Your circle, your people shouldn’t only be people that agree with you, believe what you believe, talk how you talk, act how you act, look how you look…
MY PEOPLE SHOULD BE MADE UP OF BOTH THE BELIEVERS AND THE UNBELIEVERS
15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.
Students we are called to be the light of the world as we have preached about the past few weeks. How can we be the light of the world. If we are only around those who are filled with light. Light with more light is good but that light needs to be around the darkness. Light shines the brightest in the dark.
This is one of the trickiest things to preach about. Mainly because it seems like two conflicting ideas but it is not. It turns into that when you don’t fully listen and understand what is being said. So please listen carefully and seek to understand what I am saying and what the Bible speaks about.
Jesus has two groups of people in His life: Believers (Disciples) & Unbelievers (tax collectors/sinners)
UNBELIEVER:
Explain a tax collector to the students.
Tax collectors were some of the most hated people in all of society at the time.
Take Matthew the tax collector for example. Matthew was a Jew and a tax collector. His job was to enforce and collect tax dollars from the Jewish citizens. Lets say the “national tax percentage” was 10%. For every 100 dollars you made, you would owe 10 dollars to the government and Matthew would be the one to collect this tax. But what tax collectors were known for is changing/raising the tax percentages for each person and then pocketing the extra money that they would make off of you. They were stealing money from their own people. THIS IS WHO JESUS WAS EATING WITH!!!
Would you be willing to sit down and eat with someone like this?
Think about your life… Do you have people in your life (Family, friends, teammates, neighbors, etc.) that are lost and need Jesus?
GOD IS AN INTENTIONAL GOD:
YOU HAVE BEEN INTENTIONALLY AND CAREFULLY CREATED BY GOD ALMIGHTY. BELIEVE THAT! KNOW THAT!
I HAVE SAID THIS MANY TIMES… YOU WERE MADE ON PURPOSE FOR A PURPOSE.
YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN SPECIFIC GIFTS, TALENTS, INTERESTS, AND PERSONALITY TRAITS.
YOU HAVE ALSO BEEN PUT INTO YOUR FAMILY, YOUR FRIEND GROUP, YOUR TEAM, CLUB, ACTIVITY, NEIGHBORHOOD, CHURCH… FOR. A. PURPOSE!!!! GOD CREATED YOU IN YOUR SITUATION TO BE A LIGHT RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. IT’S NOT AN ACCIDENT!!!
Roman the football stud or Joyce the Olympic volleyball player. God says go and leverage the talents I have given you to go and make disciples.
Quinn the future broadway dancer, God says go and leverage the talents I have given you to go make disciples.
Owen baseball
Sarah and Jonathan theater, acting and singing
Marching band
Robotics
I could go on and on and on with all of you in this room. If you are in this room tonight and you know Jesus as you Lord and Savior. You called to use who you are and the talents you have to influence people towards Jesus. You are called to be the light of world.
If you don’t have unbelievers in your life that you have proximity to… go make new friends. That’s what Jesus did.
Now here is the second half of this. As we have stated influence works 2 ways. What you put and what you take in. The goal is to friends who are unbelievers so you can influence them with the light of Christ. However, you also need people to walk with, you need people to lean on, you need people to trust, people to seek wisdom from, people to help you follow Jesus, people that will influence you towards Jesus.
We influence those who live in darkness and we are influenced by those who in the light.
BELIEVER:
STUDENTS, WE ARE CALLED TO HAVE GODLY COMMUNITY, CHRISTIAN FRIENDS, PEOPLE TO POINT YOU TO JESUS AND HOLD YOU ACCOUNTABLE…
20 Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
Why are life groups so important? You need people to be speaking truth into your life!
You need people praying for you!
You need people who are going to encourage you and hold you accountable!
THE ENEMY WORKS BEST WHEN WE ARE ISOLATED! THE ENEMY HATES GODLY COMMUNITY.
Milo and the 9th grade Bible Study. Sarah Turner starting a bible study at school.
We want the enemy to hate us. We want the enemy to be worried about what God can do through us and the Godly community we are in.
Tony Evans says it like this: “when we wake up in the morning, the enemy should be like oh crap their up!’”
It is great to have lost friends, but they should not be your only friends!!
If that is you, make some friends that are right here tonight. I will personally help you make friends right after MDWK.
No matter if you are influencing believers or unbelievers you have calling and a mandate to share the truth. But there is an important thing I need to add to that, that scripture is very clear about. You need to be sharing the truth in love…
INFLUENCING MY PEOPLE HAS TO BE DONE WITH SPEAKING THE TRUTH IN LOVE
16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Imagine being at that dinner, sitting there and Jesus begins to defend why He is having dinner with tax collectors and sinners. And He says, these people are sick… they are the ones who need a doctor. I don’t know what their reaction was to that comment. It isn’t recorded in the Bible and it honestly isn’t important. If it were me though sitting there, I would look around and then whisper to the person next to me, I ain’t sick, you sick? What’s this dude talking about? Then Jesus says, “I have come not to call the righteous but sinners, people like this.” Then I would be like, NO HE DIDN’T, did you hear that? He called me a sinner. That’s hate speech right there.
Which oddly enough if God choose to send Jesus into the world now for the first time and said all that is recorded in the gospels. Man people would be screaming from the roof tops that He is filled with hate and all He does is use hate speech.
1st, I want to make a point to say that hate speech is not speech that you hate. A lot of times people hear the truth and the truth can be hurtful because it isn’t what we want to hear and we are I like, I hate that! That’s hate speech. No, and sadly I don’t have time to get into this but hate speech is not speech you hate. But just like today, people thought the same thing when Jesus was here on Earth. They would pick up stones to stone Him, they would run Him out of cities, and they eventually crucified Him for what He said.
Jesus never said anything hateful. He said things people hated. He said the truth. But how can we know the truth without hearing the truth?
17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
2nd, I highly doubt anyone there responded this way. They all probably knew they were sinners because the Jewish people made them outcasts. They were probably there because Jesus was the first Jew to see them, to care about them, to love them just as they are. He didn’t call them to change. He called them to be with Him.
As people were with Him and as people followed Him, He would share the truth with them, but He shared it in love. Which is what the Bible calls us to do.
15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ.
Now this passage in Ephesians 4 is talking about how we are to keep unity amongst the Body of Christ, the Church. However, this principle applies to everyone.
We are called to love those who Know Christ and those who do not know Christ. The best way we can show love to those who don’t know Him, is to share with them the truth of the gospel. Apart from Christ, people are dead in their sins and destined for an eternity in hell (John 3:16–18; Romans 6:23). But in Christ they can receive new life and eternal salvation (Romans 10:9–15; 2 Corinthians 5:17). . We share the gospel because we love the people for whom Christ died. We speak God’s truth because of His love and in a way that clearly and unapologetically communicates both truth and love (1 John 4:10–12).
But students hear this… the gospel is offensive.
There is far more about this book that I don’t know, than what I do know. I have been studying this book for 15+ years now. I am honestly not sure I even understand 1% of it. But that is so beautiful to me. That the Word of God is alive and active and while it doesn’t change, when I read, seek to understand it, devote myself to it, I am changed.
But one thing I do understand about the Word of God is it is offensive.
How could it not be? It tells us we will never be enough, we can save ourselves, we are not good people, the way you feel does not hold candle to what God says and commends.
The Word of God tells us we can’t do whatever we want too, we can’t do what feels the most comfortable, we can’t do something or live a certain way because it’s how we were born. We can’t do something because it is convenient or easier.
What the Word of God also shares is that there is a creator, a God that we rebelled against.
We are the ones who brought darkness into the world. But through our rebellion, through the evil, through darkness Jesus cut through it all to bring life. He did this by sharing the truth in love and doing what no one else could do.
What we should do, like always is follow the example Jesus has set before us and share the truth in love.
It is important to say that,
The most loving thing we can do… is share the Gospel, point out sin, and point to hope.
The most hateful thing we can do… is ignore, don’t share, and let people go to hell.
The time is now to influence our people for the sake of Jesus.
CONCLUSION
Students this has always been the case but our world is in a desperate need for Jesus.
***Charlie Kirk***
Charlie believed in Jesus as His Lord and Savior. He stated it hundreds if not thousands of times.
His wife and family while grieving and are extremely angry they have responded in hope… this doesn’t make sense to world.
But Charlie has a beautiful quote: “All death can do is deliver me to Jesus.”
This is an essential time to share… people are sensitive and many are listening that never have before.
Charlie was a man with ideas, opinions and beliefs that people didn’t like. But what many don’t understand is that ideas, opinions and beliefs don’t stop with the death of one man. And when that death takes place because of his beliefs, that mans ideas, opinions, and beliefs spread and grows like a wild fire.
The most popular opinions and beliefs that have stood the test of time and are in the world today are because someone was martyred for their beliefs.
Christianity is the largest growing belief in the history of the World? Do you know why that is? It is because Jesus was martyred. The difference between Jesus and every other martyr is that every other martyr is still died.
Jesus is the only martyr in the history of the world to die and come back to life. That to me is worth sharing. That to me is worth influence my people for the sake of Jesus.
AFTER LAST SONG:
Last week Zach challenged you to think about the people in your life you need to commit to sharing the Gospel with. I am going to take it a step further. I have these cards. At the top it says Influence and then it has a space for 3 names. These names are the people in your circle that need Jesus. The second half of the card lists the commitment I am going to challenge you to take.
*Read card*
THE CHALLENGE: The team has printed and made enough for all of us but here is the deal. I didn’t put them at your seat, I am not going to hand them out. Once we close service they will be right up here on stage. You will have to make the choice to come forward and grab one of these yourself. Publicly declaring I am going to influence my people for Jesus.
The question is students, do love God enough to obey Him and follow Him and do you love your people enough to influence them for the sake of Jesus?
