Are You an Influencer or Just Influenced? (Chester UMC)

There's a piece in this whole story of the destruction of

Sodom and Gomorrah that I think often gets overlooked, and it is

the the the absence of Lot's ability to influence anyone in

the entire region of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Apparently here, here's a lot. He's a nephew of a Brahm who

becomes Abraham, the father of many nations through whom all

nations on earth will be blessed.

And his his nephew travelled with him.

His nephew left their home country with him.

He heard, I'm certain he heard the stories.

He knew why they were gone. He knew that they were going to

a land that that they didn't know until they got there.

And God said this is it. He'd heard all of those things

from his uncle and when he goes and lives in the Jordan Valley

and and sets up house near the city of Sodom and then

eventually moves into Sodom after he's been there for, I

think this has been about 10 or 15 years estimate he's had.

He's become a leader. He's one of the judges of the

city. That's why he's at the gate when

the angelic visitors come to visit Sodom and check things

out. That's why he's there.

He's become a leader in the city, but he has absolutely no

influence, at least no influence for good among the people of

Sodom and Gomorrah. He had a chance.

He had an opportunity to influence the people around him,

the community around him, the atmosphere around him in a way

that might draw them closer to God and God's way, but had zero

impact, not even any impact on his own family.

Now in a day when influencer has somehow become an actual

profession, I still haven't figured out how that happened,

but but it's a job now being an influencer.

Social media is involved with it.

I'm I'm not terribly influential and I'm not terribly good at

social media. So that's out for me is a career

choice. But in in that mindset, I think

it's worth asking ourselves, asking yourself, I need to ask

myself as I'm interacting in the culture and the the circles in

which I interact, which you interact, are you an influencer

or are you just being influenced?

Are we? We have been given the gift of

the Holy Spirit as followers of Jesus Christ.

The very God of the universe dwells in US and among us as the

body of Christ. Are we making any impact?

Are you making any impact? Are you influencing people

around you in a way that draws them closer to God and helps

them become more and more like Jesus Christ?

Or are we simply being influenced by the culture that's

around us? It's a question we have to ask.

This is what happened with Lot. Abram became Abraham lived in

the land of Canaan and while Lot lived among the cities of the

plain and pitched his tents near Sodom.

Remember they had a choice. They were there were stayed

become so prosperous and and so wealthy as a as an extended

family that they didn't have enough land to graze all of

their animals on their various sheep and goat herders were

fussing and fighting with each other.

So Abraham gave Lot the choice. Lot look down at the Jordan

River Valley where Sodom and Gomorrah and some other cities

where he said that's a really, really fertile happening place.

I'm going to go live down there and he lived near Sodom.

That was lots to he chose to put himself and and his family in

that environment and in that cultural context.

And in like 15 years later, God wipes the whole place out.

God couldn't find even 10 people in the entire region that could

be described as righteous living their lives in a way that was in

right relationship with God and with the people around them and

wiped them all out. After all of that time, Lot had

had no influence at all. He failed to influence his

community. He failed to influence his

family. When you look at this whole of

chapter 19, you see even his family hadn't been influenced by

anything like faith in God from Lot.

When when the angels tell him, hey, you know, we're going to

wipe this place out. If you've got any family, get

them out now. And so Lot goes to his future

sons in laws. He's got two daughters and he's

he goes to their their intended husbands and says God's going to

wipe this place out, let's go. And they just laughed at him.

Lot had so little credibility with him, so little influence on

them, that when he tried to save their lives and warn them of the

coming wrath of God, they just thought it was a joke, thought

he'd lost his mind. As they're fleeing the city and

they're making their way to the mountains and, and, and, and

burning sulphur is raining down from the sky.

Whether it was like showers of sulphur or whether it was some

sort of, you know, I talked about last week, perhaps a, a

near earth explosion of a meteorite that wiped everything

out of it. But as the destruction is

happening, Lot's wife that is so longing for this city that was

so corrupt and so broken and so far from God, that as it's being

destroyed, she turns and longs to return to that way of living.

Lot had no influence, no meaningful impact on his wife

for the good. And then when they get in the

mountains and and his daughters are all that's left of his

family and his wife is dead and their intended husbands are

dead, they decide to take matters in their own hands.

They get their father drunk and they get themselves pregnant off

of him so that they can have sons and daughters to carry on

the family. That's how little impact for

good that Lot had on the people around him.

I think Lot's story is, is a story of one of the greatest

failures, not just in the Bible, but in all of human history, to

have known the stories of God, to have known the power of God.

That God through his uncle saved Lot and his entire family when

they were taken captive as political prisoners.

That got God through, that God saved Abram and saved Sarah from

countless difficulties. That blessed them and multiplied

their wealth over and over and over again.

And Lot had experienced first hand all of this and failed to

pass it on to anyone that he knew with any degree of

credibility or influence. His family so completely steeped

and influenced by the culture around them that they were

simply part of that culture and no one in the community would

even listen to him. Lot failed to influence his

family. He failed to influence his

community. Why?

I think one of the main reasons, maybe the reason that Lot failed

to influence his family and his community is because he focused

on the wrong thing. Lot we see and we don't, we we

get a hint at it. We don't get it developed and

explained in any great detail. But we do know this.

When Abram gave Lot the choice, did he want the Highlands or the

lowlands? Did he want the mountainous

area, the hilly area or the fertile plain?

That Lot chose the fertile plain because that's where he could

get richer. The land was better there, the

nightlife was better there. It was more wealth there, and

Lot never went into that environment to influence the

people there. He went into that environment to

make himself rich, to add to his own status, his own wealth, his

own position in the community that was around him and in the

culture that was around him. He was focused on the wrong

thing. Lot looked around and saw that

the whole plain of the Jordan towards Zohar was well watered,

like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt.

So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and

set out toward the east, and as we read earlier, pitched his

tent near Sodom. Lot failed to influence because

Lot failed to focus on the right thing.

Brahm was focused on God much of the time.

Brahm was not a prayer, and we even after he became Abraham, he

made mistakes. He lost his focus along the way

at times too, and bad things happened every time he lost it,

lost his focus on God and started focusing on himself and

on his circumstances, on what he could do to fix things and make

things better. Every time he did that, things

went bad. But Abram kept coming back to

God, kept repenting. Lot lost his focus and he never

seemed to get it back. He never seemed to get it back.

And when he when we lose our focus on God, when we lose our

focus on why we are here. And God was clear with Abraham,

This is why you are here. I'm going to bless you so that

you can be a blessing to the people around you.

Every nation on earth eventually will be blessed by you and

through you. That's your focus.

That's your why. That's why I called you out of

your homeland. That's why I brought you to this

new homeland so you could be a blessing to others.

Lot went to the Jordan Valley so that he could be blessed by the

resources that were there. Do you see the difference?

One is an attitude of service that is willing to endure

suffering for the sake of being a blessing to others.

One is an attitude of selfishness, which says these

folks exist to make me better and build me up.

And Lot and his whole family got caught up in that.

He lost his focus. Let's compare Lot to another

real life person who had a a highly contrasting attitude

toward Lots. And by the way, I found out

earlier, I've been saying a lot wrong my whole life.

Apparently it's actually pronounced Lote.

I was determined to do it properly this morning and it

didn't happen and it's not going to happen.

I give up. Eric Little.

I'm pretty sure I'm pronouncing his name right.

If you don't, if you know that name, it's probably because

you're old and you watch the movie.

Chariots of Fire, one of my favorite, I think maybe the

greatest sports movie of all time.

I, you know, just my opinion based on the true story.

Eric Little was one of the main characters in that he was in

training in university in Edinburgh and Scotland to become

a missionary to China. He was also incredibly gifted as

an athlete. He was a great rugby player.

He played for the Scottish national team and did well with

them. And he was very fast, a very

fast runner. And so we qualified for the

Olympics for the United Kingdom to go to Paris in 1924 and

compete in the Olympics. When he got there, he discovered

well before he got there, his sister, who was also of a

missionary mindset, and and other family and friends were

deeply concerned that Eric had lost his focus, that he was

leaving behind the calling that he had to the mission work of

God in order to pursue the glorious life of an athlete and

rugby and in Olympic running. And they thought he'd lost his

focus. And Eric said, no, I haven't.

I haven't talked a little bit more about that in the later.

Exactly what he said. He said I haven't lost my focus.

And then the test came because he was part of a team, the track

and field team, and the event he qualified for was the 100 meter

dash. That's what he was going to run

in. That's what he was going to

compete in. He was one of the favorites to

win a medal, maybe even the gold.

But one of the qualifying heats for the 100 meters was on a

Sunday. And Eric said I can't run on a

Sunday. I can't do that.

He was already on the Olympic team.

He was already in Paris. The Olympics were already

starting when he announced to all of the PII can't compete.

And if it can't compete in the qualifying heat, he's out of the

race entirely. England loses a chance to

meddle. It's done for them in that

event. And the leaders of the British

Olympic team, we're not happy about this, including the Prince

of Wales, the Crown Prince of England.

And at a celebration just before the Olympics were about to

begin, they had this conversation with Eric.

Paul 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 cabin 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.

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 enough 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 little. The impertinence lies so with

those who seek to influence a man to deny his beliefs.

Our country little We're appealing to your beliefs.

No country, no 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. Little, 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.

Sir, God knows I love my country, but I can't make that

sacrifice. Little shared a lot in common

with Lot. They were both living and acting

and and engaging in life and business and relationships among

people who did not share their values, who did not share their

beliefs, who had different goals, aspirations, and agendas.

But Lott lost his focus. Lott's focus was on what can I

do to get myself blessed? What can I do to increase my

status, my position, my privilege?

And Little's focus never wavered from what can I do to serve God?

What can I do to bear witness into the world of the power and

love and importance and significance of God and

faithfulness to God. And in Eric's version, brand of

Christianity, honoring the Sabbath was a very, very, very

high level priority and value. And he said no matter what, not

for king, not for country, not for glory, not for fame.

I will not go against what God has called me to in order to

pursue what you're offering me. Glory and fame and status and

privilege and honor and all of the things that go along with

it. Eric, unlike Lot, never lost his

focus. Here's interesting thing about

Eric Little. Eric ended up competing in the

Olympics because one of his team mates who had qualified in two

events had already won a medal in one of those events, and so

he gave up his spot to Eric for the 400 meters.

I'm not a track and field person.

You're not surprised by this, but my understanding that

running 400 meters, that's four times as long as 100 meters,

right? Again, I'm no expert in track

and field. When you train for 100 meter

Sprint, you're not ready for a 400 meter run.

Eric ended up winning the gold in the 400 meters in 1924.

The next year he went as a missionary to China, where he

lived and where he died. 20 years.

He was there. He was there when World War 2

started. He was there when the Japanese

invaded. He was placed in an internment

camp, a prisoner camp by the Japanese, not a good place to

be. And while he was there, he led

Bible studies and he preached sermons, and he gave up his food

and his medicine to people that were hungrier and sicker than he

was. And he eventually died serving

God in a prison camp in China. As a missionary, Eric never lost

his focus. And the impact he had in China

and around the world is extraordinary.

Extraordinary because rather than being influenced by the

culture around him, he chose to keep his focus on God and

influence people around him. Lot's failure had a massive

impact both horizontally and vertically.

I want to skip that slide other than to say this, that the

children that his daughters bore through him became some of

Israel's greatest enemies. 400 years later.

They violently fought against Abraham's descendants as they

were coming out of Egypt and back to the promised land.

Lots descendants stood in their way and tried to block them.

Watts failure had a massive horizontal impact.

All the family that he knew was corrupted and destroyed in one

way or another. By the culture that surrounded

them while they were in Sodom and Gomorrah, and by the

judgment that God placed on that horizontal massive failure, the

entire region destroyed because of the lack of 10 people, 10

people. Let's think about Lot, his wife,

his two daughters, and their two sons.

If just, you know, there's six right there.

If I counted correctly, 6 right there.

They only needed four more people to influence.

Lots failure of influence contributed to the destruction

of an entire civilization, and lots of failure to influence had

effects for generations, for hundreds of years to come,

because he allowed himself to be influenced instead of keeping

his focus on God. What does this have to do with

us? It's an old story.

And if you're not an Olympic runner who's also a missionary,

what does this? What does this have to hear?

Some practical implications for us.

Beware of your own limits, including your capacity to

influence. It's not really fair to put all

the blame on Lot's failure to influence.

The failure of focus was really the biggest problem because if

Lot had been focused on God and right relationship with God, he

might have recognized the possibility, in fact

probability, of what would happen to him and his family if

he moved where he moved and lived where he lived and did

what he did. We have to beware of our own

limits. Sometimes we want to have

influence and we can't. It's quite possible that lot

went down there with great intentions and really did want

to influence and simply failed. It was beyond him to do that.

It was he was too easily seduced by what they had to offer and so

was unable to influence them meaningfully, unable to keep his

focus. We need to be aware of our

limits when it comes to influence and our capacity to

influence others. There is a tension between

Jesus's example and his call to be a friend of sinners and Lot's

example of pitching his tent near Sodom.

This is a challenge that we have to constantly work out in our

faithful following of God because Jesus said, go be among

the sinners. Don't build isolated

communities. Don't build walls around

yourselves, your families and your churches.

Don't bubble wrap everyone so that nothing in the world around

them can ever touch them or reach them.

Live in these insulated communities, insulated mindsets

and, and, and, and little silos so that you're not, you're never

affected like Lot and his family were.

Jesus said, that's not the way I want you to live.

Go out there, be among the world, be a friend of sinners,

have dinner with them, go to their house, invite them to your

house, go out to lunch with them sitting near him at the ball

game, Have conversation with them, build relationship with

them. Jesus, that's part of what Jesus

commanded. That's part of what he the

example that he gave us. That's how Paul lived his life

and his mission life. And then you have lots example

of the dangers of pitching your tents near Sodom, of being

influenced rather than being an influencer.

That's a constant tension that we have to live with and it

can't be resolved by simply creating rigid rules that says

we're never going to hang out with those folks, We're never

going to invite those folks. We're never going to live in

those places. We're never going to let those

people in our community that that, that that kind of solution

is out of bounds because it violates Jesus's example and

call for us to be a friend of sinners.

But Lot is a warning to us. And as a matter of prayer in our

own lives and in our own faith, we have to be aware of where we

can and where we can't be effective influencers because

there's too great a risk of being influenced.

Simple example, someone that's three years sober from drugs and

alcohol probably shouldn't make the local bar their mission

field, right? You, you got to be aware of

where your triggers and your land mines and your trip UPS are

likely to be. And say, you know what?

That's going to need to be someone else's mission field.

I'm not going to live in a silo. I'm not going to bubble wrap

myself and my my family. But but I can't go there and I

can't hang out with those folks. Sometimes it's, it's a

relationship with family or a person or people and say every

time I get around them, I just just everything goes bad.

When I spent a lot, I spent a lot of time working with kids in

juvenile jails and, and they would leave and they would come

back and 9 times out of 10 when they came back, the story went

something like this. Everything was going great.

And then I started hanging out with my old friends and I was

like, I'm not going to hang out with him.

I'm not going to do the drugs this time.

I'm not going to smoke the weed this time.

I'm just going to hang out. And I was hanging out with him

and then I was like, I'll just do it once.

And then I was doing a lot and then I'm stealing stuff for my

parents and I'm doing this kind of thing because they put

themselves back in an environment where they could not

possibly keep their focus, where they could not possibly be an

influence. And this is a balance that we,

there's no law for it. It's a matter of prayer and

discernment. We're between ourselves and God

and wise people around us that help can help us see and say,

yeah, no, you're fooling yourself.

Don't go there. Stay away from those folks.

You go over here and do that instead.

Don't isolate yourself, but don't put yourself in a in a

situation and in a context where you're almost certain to fail.

So we have to ask ourselves, to what degree can we keep our

focus on Jesus and his call in any given situation?

That's it. That's just part of the life

that we live. That's part of following Jesus,

choosing the difficult path of neither, total isolation as some

Christian groups have chosen, and total immersion, which leads

U.S. Open to being just repeating

Lot's failure. And so it's a prayerful balance,

someone that I think is living out that balance.

It's at this point tremendously well as Maria Carino Machado.

Carina Machado, if you follow the news, I suspect you've heard

her name a lot in the past few weeks.

If you don't follow the news, let me tell you about her.

Maria Carina Machado recently won just a couple weeks ago the

Nobel Peace Prize 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

She is living and hiding in Venezuela right now.

She, by profession is an industrial engineer.

She comes from a professional family in Venezuela and and she

had no interest in politics. She wanted to be a businesswoman

and she wanted to be an engineer.

And that's what she was well on her way and being that and doing

that. And politics got worse and worse

and worse. And in Venezuela and Maduro, the

the dictator there was making life worse and worse and worse

for more and more people. And so finally, Machado entered

the realm of politics and became a professional politician.

And she spoke and wrote and taught and gave speeches and

tweets and social, all of the things that, you know, I'm no

good at. She was doing really, really

well against the powers that were there until she was accused

of multiple crimes just to get her out of the way.

And she wanted to run for election in 2024 as a president.

They were having elections. She wanted to run.

They said she can't run. The powers that be.

Maduro said you can't run. So she convinced an old guy to

run on her behalf, and he ran on her behalf.

And everyone knew that he wasn't running, that he was just kind

of a stand in for her because her name wasn't allowed to be on

the ballot. She got 90% of the vote in

hiding, and she's now in hiding No one.

She's still in the country, but no one knows where she is.

Most of her supporters don't even know where she is.

And she still insists that Maduro's government's going to

fall. Her family had to leave the

country. Her children are in danger now.

Her family's in danger. She's in danger.

She has continued and and she has continued to push for

democracy and peace and freedom in the country of Venezuela.

And she's a staunch Christian, acting out of her faith.

Her particular brand of Christianity is Catholicism, and

she walks when she was free to do so, went through around her

country, praying everywhere she went for her people, receiving

gifts to remind her to pray everywhere she went.

Rosaries were often given to her, and rosaries just a tool

for prayer that that many Catholic folks use.

And her faith is a tremendous part of what has motivated her

to put her own life at risk and even her own family at risk.

But here's the thing. She could have gone the other

way. She could have simply bent the

knee to the powers that were around her, gotten along to go

along, going along to get along to to fit in, to reap the

rewards, to do all of the things that you need to do just to, you

know, get the favor and the blessing of of the powers that

be that are out there. And she chose not to do that.

And it was great danger in that. There's great risk in that, and

a lot of people that give into the cultural influences around

them, they do it seeking a sense of safety.

They want to protect themselves. They want to protect their

family. She chose to risk herself and

she chose to risk her family. Here's the simple fact, there's

a lot went along to go along and his entire family was destroyed.

There's not necessarily any safety in that.

And here we have a real life person in our world right now

who is seeking to be an influence rather than simply to

be influenced by the culture around her.

And her faith is part of that and she's making a difference.

I, you know, maybe one of us in this room will one day win a

Nobel Peace Prize or or some other prize.

I can, I can guarantee you it's not going to be me.

I just just know that. But these big level things,

they're great for us to view as examples.

For the vast majority of us, the question is not at the scale of

international politics. It's at the scale of our family,

our school, our workplace, our community, our county, maybe our

state and our country a little bit.

But are we being an influencer or are we being influenced?

Are we keeping our focus on God? We're allowing our focus to

drift into what can we do to serve ourselves?

These are the questions that Lot and Eric and Maria, they all ask

us to reflect on. Let's do that in Jesus name,

Amen. Amen.