Study Guide: "What Will Be Your Influence?"

Today is Grandparent's Day across the country.

Grandparents have been found to be influential in some of the fundamental aspects of their grandchildren's lives, namely in helping them form their identities and in transmitting values, ideals, and beliefs to them. These areas have been described in family research over several decades.

Grandparents can influence their grandchildren through the roles they assume in their grandchildren's lives. Based on interviews of 300 grandchildren, Kornhaber and Woodward suggested a number of direct roles played by grandparents, including the following:

1) Family historian. Grandparents who act as family historians inform current generations about the experiences of their progenitors and the origins of their family lineage. Grandparents often remember more about family history and are able to provide continuity in family traditions.

2) Mentor-teacher. As mentors and teachers grandparents take time to teach a moral principle or skill or instruct in some meaningful way.

3) Nurturer. Another role that provides important opportunities for grandparents is that of being nurturers of grandchildren's emotional and physical well-being.

4) Role model. With the state of today's deteriorating society, grandchildren are often in need of positive role models in their lives. Adolescents and young adults are continually searching for people to emulate.

5) Playmate. Finally, grandparents can serve as playmates in the lives of their grandchildren.

Bottom-line? Grandparents have great influence on their grandchildren.

READ Matthew 5:13-16

What you have in these very simple four verses is the picture that our Lord gives of the Christian in the world, the function of the believer in the world. If I could reduce it to one word, it would be the word 'influence.' Our Lord is saying that the Christian who lives according to the Beatitudes is going to influence the world as salt and light. In all that a person does and is (or is not), the sum total of our character, consciously or otherwise, affects other people.

Years ago, Elihu Burritt wrote this, "No human being can come into this world without increasing or diminishing the sum total of human happiness. Not only of the present, but of every subsequent age of humanity. No one can detach himself from this connection. There is no sequestered spot in the universe, no dark niche along the disc of nonexistence to which he can retreat from his relations to others, where he can withdraw the influence of his existence upon the moral destiny of the world. Everywhere, his presence or absence will be felt. Everywhere, he will have companions who will be better or worse because of him. It is an old saying," says Burritt, "And one of the fearful and fathomless statements of import, that we are forming characters for eternity.

One other writer put it this way, "You are writing a gospel, a chapter each day, by deeds that you do and words that you say. Men read what you write, whether faultless or true. Say, what is the gospel according to you?"
What will be our influence?

Influence. Every believer is an influence on others.  The question for us is, “What Will Be Our Influence?”  What message do you leave the world? When you pass by, what are you saying?

The final Beatitude in verses 10-12 is transitional. We see, in verses 10-12, the attitude of the world toward the believer, and in 13-16, the attitude of the believer toward the world. The world is going to hate us, but we still have to be salt and light to influence them. The important truth is revealed that the people the world hates are the very ones they desperately need to be influenced by.

I. Our Identity as Believers Is To Be Influencers.
We alone are the salt of the earth; there is no other. That's it, just us. If we lose our saltiness, it's lost. We are the light; that's it, just us. Nobody else. If our light is under a bushel, there is no other alternative.

In verse 13, "You are the salt," and verse 14, "You are the light," the pronouns are emphatic. You only are the light, you only are the salt, no one else! You're it, and if you don't positively influence the world, if you don't bring the light to bear on the world, there will be no redemptive influence and no light.

So the saved are the salt. The verb here, este, stresses being. The stress is on being, what we are and what we continue to be. We are the salt, we continue to be the salt, and we are the only salt in the world.

The idea isn't, "Please be salt," it's, "You are salt." The only question is whether you're salty. You are light; the only question is whether you're on or not. That's all. If you are a believer, you're salt. If you're a believer, you're light.

We are the light and the salt. That's just the way it is.

II. Our Potential Positive Influence is Profound.
What does it mean for us to be salt?  Let me give you some thoughts about salt.

1.   Salt was an important commodity in the ancient world.

1)   In the Greek's day, salt was considered to be divine. In fact, they called it theon, they called it divine. Salt was very important. The Romans said nothing was more valuable than sun and salt, because in a day without refrigeration, the only way they could preserve meat was to salt it. They would literally rub the salt in. You've read about the old times when they traveled across the sea and kept their jerky in big barrels, soaked in brine, or even just salted and left hard and stiff. You see that in stores today. Salt was a preservative.

2)   Roman soldiers were paid with salt, did you know that? If you were a lousy soldier, you weren't 'worth your salt,' that's where that phrase came from.

3)   Salt was used throughout the ancient society as a sign of friendship. There were salt covenants. Today in the Arab world, if a man partakes of salt with another man, if two Arabs today partake of salt, that means that they are under each other's care. Even if a worst enemy came in and ate with a man, and ate his salt, that man would be obliged to care for that enemy as if he were his fast friend. I think there has been something of a holdover with that today, when people throw salt over their shoulder when they make a promise in some societies.

4)   Salt was used to season food. In fact, food without salt, let's face it, has something missing.

5)   Salt had healing properties when placed into an open wound.

So you can see how just the statement 'you are the salt of the earth' could open up to the minds of the people a lot of thoughts, a lot of things that were possible.

2.    All of the above properties could be applied to the believer’s influence:

1)   We are to preserve Christian values in a world that is increasingly antagonistic toward them.

2)   We are to provide flavor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers." Robert Lewis Stevenson once wrote this in his diary, "I have been to church today, yet I am not depressed."

3)   We are to promote healing.

4)   We are to produce thirst.

a.   Some writers say that salt's primary purpose is to create thirst. Salt is in your body because it creates thirst and makes you drink, and you have to drink in order to stay alive. If you don't drink water, you get bloated and die, and salt is involved in that.

b.   One writer said this, "The primary function of salt is to create thirst. Without salt in food, there would be an improper intake of liquid. Where there is an improper intake of liquid, there would be dehydration and death, or severe sickness. This would be particularly true in the desert countries around the land where our Lord was speaking. An essential part of every traveler's baggage was a sack of salt to prevent dehydration; eve in our day, those who labor manually in the summer use salt tablets."

Our primary purpose in this world is to live such lives that we make others thirst to know our Savior.

CLOSE:
What about your influence? What's it like? What happens when you walk by?
(Dr. Dane Fowlkes, Pastor)