Sermon Tone Analysis

ATTENTION

Well, here we are at the end of missions month and, for some of you, it’s been very successful!

You started out with this philosophy: I don’t care how many pictures they show me of snotty nosed, cantolope-bellied, emaciated children; I don’t care how many times I hear the term, “Great Commission”; I don’t care how many times I hear the Choir sing “I Will Go”; I ain’t going and you can’t make me.

And, so far, you’re right.

You began the mission’s conference unmoved and you’re planning to end it that way.

So, contrary to what you might think, I’m not here today to make you feel guilty, I’m here to help you out.

Let me tell you the top six ways you can avoid becoming a missionary.

Here they are.

Some of you have never taken a note in a message before, but you’re about to start writing because I’m finally saying something you think is important.

So here goes.

Here are the top six ways to avoid becoming a missionary:

6 Worry incessantly about money.

That one will stop you right there because becoming a missionary means you really have to depend on God to sustain you, and who would want to do that?

After all, He’s only the sovereign God and sole owner of the Universe.

Want to avoid the mission field?

Then worry incessantly about money.

5 Always imagine missionaries as talented, super-spiritual people who stand on lofty pedestals.

Maintaining this image of missionaries will heighten your own sense of inadequacy.

Convincing yourself that God does not use ordinary people as missionaries will smother any guilt you may feel about refusing to even listen for a call from God.

4 Stay away from missionaries.

Their testimonies can be disturbing.

The situations they describe will distract you from embracing whole-heartedly the materialistic lifestyle of the United States.

3 Get married to somebody who thinks the "Great Commission" is what your employer gives you after you make a big sale.

After marriage, embrace the socially accepted norms of settling down, establishing a respectable career trajectory and raising a picture-perfect family.

2 Focus your energies on socially legitimate targets.

Go after a bigger salary.

Focus on getting a job promotion, a bigger home, a more luxurious car, or future financial security.

Along the way, run up some big credit card debts.

1 Ignore Jesus' request in John 4:35 that we take a long hard look at the fields.

Seeing the needs of people can be depressing and very unsettling.

It could lead to genuine missionary concern.

(John 4:35 "Do you not say, `Four months more and then the harvest'?

I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields!

They are ripe for harvest."

NEED

It is that very passage of scripture we’ve been looking at together this month and it bears listening to.

You see, while you may want to avoid the whole “missionary question,” you really cannot!

The Great Commission isn’t the “Great Option”.

Jesus didn’t say that we were to be witnesses for Him if we felt like it, or if we just happened to attend an evangelistic church.

He told us to be witnesses.

So we as believers have no choice, not if He is Lord.

We must obey His commission.

And just what is it that makes that so hard to obey?

Just why do we so often run from becoming a missionary, here or around the world?

Well, for one thing we have no VISION.

See, I know that’s the case of so many of us here, even today.

If you have no vision, this missions conference has been a big bore.

You just don’t get it.

You’re the guy who hears about a mission trip and asks, “Why are perfectly normal people giving up a week of vacation, spending thousands of dollars and endangering their health and safety to travel to Peru and help build a church on the Amazon?

Why is a perfectly healthy church interrupting the pastor’s riveting series (Ok, I know that’s real self-serving, but I’m the one preaching ok?) Why is a perfectly healthy church interrupting the pastor’s riveting series to bring in missionaries to make us feel guilty.

You don’t get it because you have no vision.

You need to listen this morning.

Others of us run from the whle missionary thing because we have no strategy.

All you can see is a big mass of people who need help and you won’t allow yourself to really look at them because you just get overwhelmed.

You’re the kind of person who, when the “Feed the Children” commercials come on, you just turn the television.

Now you’re not cold hearted.

In fact, its just the opposite.

You’re so tender you can stand to watch another bloated bellied child.

You know you need to do something but you don’t know what that something is.

You need a strategy.

Others of us run because we have no power.

We’ve tried to witness and we’ve fallen on our faces.

We’ve talked with others only to have them laugh.

It seems like we’re getting nowhere and we often wondered, “Hey, If God’s so powerful and if He has commissioned me to win the lost, why doesn’t he show up when I need His power?”

I want to tell you, His power waits at the end of a couple of very specific changes that He wants you to make.

You see there are three very specific changes that must happen before you can truly become His missionary.

The first one is this: Becoming a missionary requires:

DIVISION 1: A CHANGE IN PERSPECTIVE

EXPLANATION

Now you’ll notice quite a contrast in our text between those who should have been missionaries and those who actually were.

The disciples had spent time with Christ . .

.lots of it.

They were the ones who had the most intimate, long term contact with Christ, but they are not the ones who are concerned about reaching the world.

For one thing, just like we talked about a couple of weeks ago, they were prejudiced against Samaritans and didn’t, frankly, care if they went to hell or not!

Besides that, they didn’t have their eyes on the fields but on the food.

They were all about eating.

Which just makes this woman’s reaction so poignant.

Vv 28-29 say:

The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, 29 “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did.

Could this be the Christ?”

This woman forgets her water pot and goes on a mission trip.

Someone has written that leaving your natural occupation so that you can tell someone else about Jesus is the mark of a true disciples.

How ironic!

The “true disciples” can’t see the harvest and aren’t witnessing to anyone, while this lady, probably not yet fully convinced that Jesus really is who He says He is, wants to tell everyone about Him! Hey, if she got it, why didn’t they?

Well, Jesus tells us their problem in v35.

He says, Do you not say, “There are four months and then comes the harvest?”

Now you must understand that this saying, “There are four months and then comes the harvest” was a proverb of that day.

It was used to tell someone to be patient.

It was like saying, “Rome was not built in a day.”

So you might say to someone in that day, “Hey, I know you want to buy a new chariot, but you have to save your money.

Remember, there are four months, then comes the harvest.”

Jesus, however, contradicts this flawed wisdom.

He tells them, “Don’t say there are four months and then comes the harvest, Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields.

They are already white for harvest.”

And one writer says that, when Jesus told them to lift up their eyes and look that it could be that at that very moment that Samaritan woman was returning with the men of the town (dressed in white) to meet Jesus.

Jesus was telling them very emphatically here that what they needed was a drastic change in perspective.

He’s saying “Get your eyes off your materialism and see the world; get your eyes off your needs and see the world; get your eyes off of your toys and see the world; get your eyes off of your fears and see the world; get your eyes off your retirement plans and your 401-k’s, and your next new car, and your pursuit of your own pleasure and see the world!”

And that’s how you become a missionary.

You have a change in your perspective.

Can I tell you that this is the major reason that we sponsor mission trips here at Peace Church!