Real Influence

Real Influence - a sermon

Laguna Niguel Presbyterian Church

September 27, 2026

INTRO

We’re finishing a series of messages here called “This is Us, For Real”. We see in the later parts of Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus is teaching his church how to be THE church; that is, how to be a faithful vision of a Jesus people. Today’s story wherein Jesus challenges the religious leaders of his day may be the most challenging of the four stories we’ve read together, in part because it may be less clear where to find ourselves in it. How is this us, for real? Let’s look together at Matthew, chapter 21, verses 23-32. Before we do, will you pray with me the prayer of illumination? Let us pray

PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

READ MATTHEW 21:23-32

CORRECTING AN EPITAPH (O)

In 1867, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel awoke one morning to read his own obituary in the local paper: “Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died yesterday, devised a way for more people to be killed in a war than ever before. He died a very rich man.” Actually, it was Alfred’s older brother who had died. A newspaper reporter had made a mistake. But the account had a profound effect on Alfred. He decided he wanted to be known for something other than developing a means to kill people efficiently and amassing a fortune in the process. So Nobel initiated the Nobel Prize — an award for scientists and writers who foster peace. “Every man ought to have the chance to correct his epitaph in midstream and write a new one,” Nobel said.

Alfred Nobel was given a gift in the form of a mistake, and it caused him to re-evaluate his life and change his trajectory. He experienced a reorientation and renewed sense of direction – a change at the core level.

That’s a good description of what we call Christian conversion When Christ calls us to himself, he calls us to change our trajectory. When we begin the spiritual journey with Jesus, we experience a renovation of our entire way of perceiving, thinking, loving, and living.

BUT, often missing in our understanding of Christian spirituality is the constant to change, again.  

I’ve had the opportunity to tell my own faith story in several ways to several different people. When I tell it, I point to a defining moment in my life during my junior year of college. My faith at that point was very marginal to my life. My faith didn’t shape my moral and vocational imagination. But several relationships helped me re-examine the claims of Jesus. And when I did, I everything changed: my goals changed, my heart changed, my thinking changed, my life trajectory changed.

Since that life transformation, since that renovation of my heart, my perceiving, thinking, living and loving has drifted away Jesus, not dramatically, but subtly. There have been times, even in ministry, when I have taken my personality or individuality more serious than I have Jesus. There have been times when I have taken my role or my authority as a religious leader more serious than I have Jesus. There have been times I have taken my knowledge of the Bible, church history, or principles of effective leadership more serious than I have Jesus. There have been times I have taken my hopes for my church or organization more seriously than I have Jesus. Don’t hear me wrong: my personality, role, knowledge, and hopes all have value, but it’s easy for those values to become more important that knowing, loving, and following Jesus.

So, at certain points in my life, the Holy Spirit has reminded me that true success and real influence is not primarily about personality, knowledge, a role, or the size of my ministry, but the ever-present call to change trajectory so as to more fully align my heart, mind, and soul with the way of Jesus.

The call to re-evaluate, change course, and realign our lives with the way of Jesus is not only a call to individual Christians, but to entire churches.

In the podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, Mike Cosper tells the story of Mars Hill in Seattle, under the pastoral leadership of Marc Driscoll. The church grew from a small bible study in 1996 to one of the most influential mega churches in America in just over a decade. Driscoll’s strong preaching, focus on biblical authority, and ability to reach those disillusioned with traditional church culture was wildly influential. When it held its first public worship service October 1996,160 people showed up. That’s a modest success. By 2012, just 16 years after that Bible study, mars Hill had multiple campuses across multiple states and attendance was in the tens of thousands. Driscoll was a best-selling author, speaker, and had launched an international church planting movement.

Then, in less than two years, the entire church collapsed. Driscoll resigned in October 2014, and Mars Hill was dissolved in early 2015. Its satellite campuses either closed or became independent. What happened? The list includes allegations of bullying leadership, authoritarian decision-making, a culture of fear, and an unhealthy concentration of power around a single individual.

On the one hand, Mars Hill Church Seattle is a cautionary story about the temptations of success and influence. However, it’s also a story about the inability of an entire church to name what we happening and wonder together – is this the way of Jesus? Does our life together reflect the heart of Jesus? What needs to change to more fully align ourselves with the will of God reflected in the person of Jesus Christ?

JESUS & JOHN’S CALL TO CHANGE (A)

Jesus’ fundamental message throughout the Gospels is a call to change, (SLIDE) “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. (Mt. 3:2). This is the same message declared by the forerunner of Jesus, John the Baptizer. John the Baptizer had called people to repent and be baptized. John had called not only especially immoral people among God’s people, Israel, to repent and be baptized – not only cheats, and crooks, and prostitutes – but ALL God’s people to repent and be baptized – even good, Sabbath-keeping, synagogue-going, morally upright people. For John and for Jesus, it wasn’t enough to be a “good person”, what was needed was a radical reorientation and renovation of perceiving, thinking, loving and living. What was needed was radical change.

This put both Jesus and John at odds with the most morally upright, good, Sabbath-keeping, synagogue-attending people, the scribes, elders of the people, and teachers of the law. In other words, it put them at odds with what today we might call “good church leaders”.

At this point in the story, the good church leaders had witnessed the incredible rise of Jesus fame and spiritual authority. They had to do something to undermine his call for them to change:  

 (SLIDE 2) Jesus is recognized by crowds of people as someone who taught with authority (7:29). Jesus claimed to have the power or “authority” to forgive sins (9:6). By Matthew 21, Jesus is being heralded as a king in David’s line and a messenger from God (21:9). He enters the temple and sees exploitation of the poor, so he overturns the tables of money changers and calls the scene “a den of robbers” (21:12). This only expands his influence, as crowds gather the next day to listen to him teach in that very temple (21:23).

This leads to this conflict with the “scribes and elders of the people” in our story today. This is not the first conflict between religious leaders and Jesus.

At this point in the story, the scribes and elders of the people are so at odds with Jesus that they want him to fail. They want him to lose favor and influence with the people. So they try to entrap him with a question, “Where did you get your authority? Who gave you this authority?” The religious leaders are not really interested in discovering what makes Jesus so influential. They are not truly curious about whether Jesus is really God’s messenger. They ask this question because they know Jesus’ answer before a crowd of people in the temple could jeopardize Jesus’ influence.

Jesus can’t say that he is his own authority. That might work today on Instagram, but it could delegitimize Jesus’ institutional status before a crowd of people. If he says “he’s on a mission from God” like the Blues Brothers, this could delegitimize his status for the same reason – the mission of God involved God’s chosen leaders. In the words of scholar Warren Carter (SLIDE 3), “If he claims his own authority, he admits to having no institutional or cultural legitimation and appears to have acted against God's purposes If he claims God's authority, he blasphemes and violates their jurisdiction.” Even today, any wild-eyed preacher on the beach or on public transportation can claim to be on a “mission from God” (I’ve seen my fair share), and that claim doesn’t increase their viability or influence.

Jesus’ response to their entrapping question is pure genius. First, he responds to their question with his own, “I’ll answer your question is you answer mine first: was John’s Baptism from God or was it just his own thing?” The baptizing ministry of John the Baptizer was wildly influential. John was recognized by the crowds as having a prophetic presence, the first prophet to emerge in Israel for centuries. Almost everyone present had experienced or had at least heard about John’s baptizing ministry. John’s entire public message was a call to God’s people to turn back to God, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Mt. 3:2) This is exactly what Jesus had also preached from the beginning, the call to change and turn toward God.

The scribes and elders can’t say that John’s baptizing ministry was "from God” because, while they could never have ignored John, they had never endorsed and validated John the Baptizer. They had never taken him seriously. Jesus’ question not only avoids their trap, it also unmasks their real concern. They aren’t interested in changing their ways for the sake of discovering and doing God’s will, they are really interested in maintaining their way of perceiving, thinking, and living.

Unable to answer, and with things now wildly off balance, the scribes are completely outwitted. But Jesus follows this with a profound challenge using a simple story: A father has two sons. He tells the first, “go work in the vineyard” and that son says “forget it” but then later changes his mind and goes. The King James version of the Bible uses the word “repent” for the “changing of mind” which is a nice touch, “but afterward, he repented, and went” (21:29, KJV). The Father asks the second son to do the same thing and that son says “Sure thing, dad” but doesn’t go. Jesus then asks the leaders, “Which son did the will of God” and they say, “the first”.

Now comes the defining teaching for these leaders and for us, the church (SLIDE 4), “Tax collectors and harlots are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you because they believed John and repented, but you didn’t.

Every Christian and every church has to stop here and ask themselves the question – which son in the story reflects me currently. Have I said “yes” to Jesus but slowly drifted off course? Have I made public promises to renounce evil, and follow Jesus as my Lord and Savior at baptism but resisted change from God later? Even if I’m a good church going, Scripture-reading Chrsitian, have I evaluated my priorities and found that knowing, loving, trusting, and following Jesus has taken a back seat of fallen lower on the priority list? If so, how can I be more like the first son? What needs to change in me today?

Peter Scazzero, the now retired pastor of New Life Fellowship New York, once defined the church’s success as doing God’s will “nothing more, nothing else, nothing less”. That is the question for any and every church. It’s the same question as “Which son am I?”

Here is the story of a different church. The Seattle church was tragic. This one is better. This one takes place on the other side of the world in Syndey, Australia. A young seminary student named Alan received a call to pastor a church in South Melbourne, Australia, an older mainline church with a 150-year history about ready to shut its doors forever. Alan was the church’s last-ditch effort to turn thing around. I don’t know exactly how they met, but Pastor Alan met a fellow Chrisitan named George. George had been a drug dealer and had spent ten days in the public jail not for selling drugs, but for refusing to pay his parking tickets. As a true seeker, George was exploring various philosophies and religions and it just so happened that at the beginning of that ten day stint in prison, Christianity was up. So, George had taken a King James Bible and over that ten days, God encountered George and George gave his life to Jesus. When George got out or prison, he called his brother, John (an equally mad radical) and John also fell in love with Jesus. These Greek brothers then called every drug dealing client in their network not to sell them drugs, but to tell them about their newfound faith in Christ. They had nothing beside their KJV bible and a copy of the now terribly outdated video Late Great Planet Earth (This is the late 80's). They probably knew more about the video than they did about the Bible. But within six months, over fifty people had given made public commitments to Christ through George and John. The brothers began bible studies in various houses including the "main house" which had been a local brothel. Eventually this ragtag misfit group of druggies, ex-druggies and prostitutes meet Pastor Allen friend, the pastor of South Melbourne Restoration Community. And they decide to merge - the two communities, the old dying church and the thriving community of ex druggies and prostitutes.

What followed, in the now pivotal words of Alan Hirsh, is “crazy, chaotic, unstable change”. In that moment, the congregation in South Melbourne had a choice that could be framed around a simple question: how seriously do we take Jesus? Do we take our versions of success more seriously than we do Jesus? Do we take our knowledge of the Bible and church history and deeply cherished traditions more seriously than we do Jesus? Do we take “the way we do things around here” more serious than we do Jesus? Or to put the question differently, are we more interested in our version of success and influence or discovering and doing God’s will?

Today, South Melbourne Restoration Community exists. Pastor Alan probably never gained the kind of following that the pastor of Mars Hill had in the early 2000’s, but his legacy at this point is far deeper and beautiful. He is provocative and challenging, and sometimes he upsets my own sensibilities, which is why I love to read him. I do resonate completely with how he defines repentance on his website, “True repentance is not merely feeling sorry for our past mistakes; it is… a fundamental, structural renovation of our entire way of perceiving, thinking, loving, and living.

The reason this story in the gospels is about us is because the call of the church, whether the scale of its influence is tens of thousands or ten, no matter the size, every church and every Chrisitan is called to change and rediscover what it means to seriously follow Jesus and radically do God’s will. There are plenty of churches and Christians who think they want change, but who don’t want repentance.

The good news is that no matter how exciting or uncomfortable Jesus’ challenge sits: Whether it means changing the way we lead, like we wish Driscoll had learned, or changing the way we invite into our midst wild-eyed Jesus freaks, like many in South Melbourne community had to learn, we have to remember the two sons in Jesus’ poignant story.

It’s not enough to say yes to God with our confession or in our songs, we have to say yes to God’s will in reality - living out the message of Jesus in everyday relationships believing that he is the centerpiece to human history.

And if looking at our lives we have yet to say “yes” to God. In fact, if we’re honest with ourselves and seen that we take our role, or our knowledge, or our individuality more serious than we do Jesus, there remains still an opportunity to turn around, to repent.

Just ask the tax collectors and prostitutes in Jesus’ day. Or ask the druggies and prostitutes in South Melbourne Community. Just ask Alfred Nobel. Or even ask religious people who have grown so attached to their influence or lack thereof the that they have lost touch with Jesus. We can still change our mind, turn around, and go to work in the vineyard. And let’s remember, the fruit of the vineyard, now that’s real influence. Amen.