Sermon Tone Analysis

Turn to the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians.

Before we get started I’ve got one more announcement.

In two weeks, on November 19th we will be taking up a special offering for Stadia.

Stadia is a church planting organization.

Stadia is the organization that planted the church is Ashville.

Ten years ago we helped that church physically when we had members go to Asheville once a month for several months to help with their childcare.

We also helped financially by putting Stadia in our mission budget for the church’s first three years.

That money went to help get the congregation off the ground.

Stadia wants to plant fifteen inner city churches next year and is asking if we will help by taking up a special offering.

These churches will be planted in large cities where there are few churches and few resources.

We can’t drive a quarter mile without passing a couple of churches, but that’s not the case in these larger cities.

Perhaps it was like that once, but today most of those churches have moved to the suburbs leaving very little Christian witness in cities that are filled with poverty and crime.

Stadia wants to help change that by planting fifteen churches next year and another fifteen the following year.

Each new church will receive $15,000 to help train the new preacher for the work and to help the new congregation get started.

These will be small churches meeting in storefronts, businesses, or homes.

Last year there was even a church started in a prison.

Rodney has been incarcerated for fifteen years at the Hutchinson State Prison in CA for being an accomplice to a murder.

His wife, Kelly, started attending a neighborhood church because their twelve-year-old son needed guidance without a man in the home.

The men in the church hung out with Zeke, their son, investing time, love, and encouragement.

Rodney saw the change in his son’s life and how his wife was heartened by the people of the neighborhood church.

After giving his life to Christ in prison, Rodney being to be trained.

As a result of his training, Rodney has started two closed circuit TV churches inside the prison walls and he disciples many of the other prisoners.

Stadia has plans to start another church in a prison in Kansas.

We don’t live in the inner city and hopefully none of us will be prisoners so we won’t have an opportunity to start a church in a prison like Rodney has done, but we can help others to do that through our giving.

In two weeks, on November 19th, we’ll be taking up a special offering to help with this church planting effort.

We are continuing our series titled Surprise the World.

In this series, Surprise the World, we have seen that while we are not all called to start new churches, travel to a distant land as a missionary, or stand on a street corner with a bullhorn, we have all been called to tell others about Jesus.

We may not have the gift of evangelism, but we all called to be evangelistic.

Just hearing those words makes most of us nervous.

The thought of sharing our faith makes us nervous.

Yet it’s clear throughout the New Testament that this is what we are supposed to be doing.

However, the focus in the New Testament is less on what we are supposed to say and more on the life we are to be living.

For example, Paul wrote to the Colossians saying:

2Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.

3And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.

4Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.

5Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.

6Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

(Colossians 4:2-6)

I pointed out earlier in this series how Paul points to two prongs of evangelism.

The first prong is that of the evangelist – in this case Paul – who goes out proclaiming the good news.

The second prong is that of most believers as they live Christ-like lives that will cause people to ask questions.

And when they ask, be prepared to give an answer.

The focus of this series is to fulfill the mission of God with this second prong – living in such a way that will surprise others and make them ask questions?

We’ve been going over habits that we can incorporate into our lives that will help with this.

We’ve talked about blessing people and I’ve encouraged you to find three people each week that you can bless: one Christian, one person you don’t think is a Christian, and then one more.

We talked about eating with people and again I encouraged you to find three people each week that you can eat with: one Christian, one person you don’t think is a Christian, and then one more.

Find someone that could use some fellowship and eat with them.

Then last week we talked about listening to the leading of God’s Spirit as we live in this world balancing between engaging the world without being compromised by the world.

We need God’s help with that.

Today we are moving on to the fourth habit – learning.

Turn with me to Matthew 11.

As we talk about learning there are two types of learning that I want us to think about: learning about Jesus and learning from Jesus.

First, we need to learn about Jesus.

25At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

26Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

27All things have been committed to me by my Father.

No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

(Matthew 11:25-27)

In the prayer Jesus thanks God for those to whom God has revealed information about him.

God had hidden information from some while revealing it to others.

From whom had God hidden information about Jesus?

He’d hidden it from the religious leaders.

God had hidden it because they didn’t really want to know about Jesus anyway.

The Pharisees, scribes, and scholars were ignoring Jesus at best and at worst were trying to get rid of him.

It was the ordinary people like the tax collectors and sinners who were seeking Jesus out.

And it was to those who sought for Jesus that God revealed Jesus.

In Matthew 16 Jesus asks the disciples who they thought he was.

When Peter responded that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus responded by saying:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.

(Matthew 16:17)

It was God that had revealed these things to Peter about Jesus.

So in our passage Jesus thanks God for those who were hearing, understanding, and responding.

Jesus says,

Thank you for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise and clever.

Thank you for revealing the truth to the ordinary people.

How much do you know about Jesus?

The truth is we all need to learn more about Jesus and the things he did while he was on earth.

We already know some things.

We know some stories about his birth, though we often get our traditions confused with the facts as given in the New Testament.

How many magi came to see Jesus?

Tradition says three, but the Bible doesn’t say.

We know a few of the miracle Jesus performed and maybe even a couple of parables he told.

And that’s the point; most Christians don’t really know a whole lot about their Savior they claim to love.

We need to learn more about Jesus.

Why is this important?

It’s important because the more we know about Jesus the better we’ll be able to talk about Jesus when people ask us questions about him.

It’s not enough to just talk to people about their sins and how Jesus died for them.

People need to know that Jesus died for their sins, but we also need to be able to tell people about the kind of life Jesus lived.

We need to be able to tell them about Jesus.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote:

. . . the Church exists for nothing else but to draw [people] into Christ, to make them little Christs.

If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

God became Man for no other purpose.

It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.

It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in him.

We need to learn more about Jesus that we might be able to tell people about Jesus.

Michael Frost tells about a friend of his who’s an atheist.

Michael says this man loves Trotsky.

Trotsky was a Soviet Marxist who died in 1940.