Sermon Tone Analysis

*Three Habits of Highly Contagious Christians*

 January 26th, 2003

 

Well, we’re devoting the first series of this year–the next four weeks–to what I believe is the heartbeat of this church.

We’re going to talk about three habits of highly contagious Christians.

And I want to tell you right at the outset why this series means so much to me personally.

I can remember, it’s been about 11 years ago now, and I was still working at a church in California.

It was about this time of year, in February I think.

I think it was about 70 degrees out there.

And I got a tape.

As best as I can remember, it’s the first tape I ever got from Willow Creek Community Church.

And the title of it was "The Seven-Step Strategy of Willow Creek Community Church."

I remember listening to that tape.

You know, the first three steps on it were about getting crystal clarity.

There was this church that I’ve never been to that was so serious about it’s mission from God that it would devote itself to developing relationships with unchurched people.

It was devoted to sharing the story of faith, sharing a verbal witness, and having a place where they could come and learn more.

It was getting out and crossing the line of faith.

I got so fired up listening to that tape.

No kidding.

I’ll bet I listened to that thing 10 times.

Just to think that here was a church that wasn’t just paying lip service to evangelism.

They had really gotten serious about reaching irreligious people.

They developed a strategy, and they were working at it, and they were actually seeing it bear fruit.

That was more than a decade ago.

I never dreamed that I would end up here.

But you know, to be a part of a church that really, seriously devoted itself to reaching people who were outside the church–who were far from God–I’d give my life to that.

I’d give my life to that.

Well, over these next few weeks, we’re going to devote ourselves to this.

These three habits of highly contagious Christians, we’re going to drill them in our minds so clearly that you and I will be able to say them in our sleep.

And more than that, we will do them.

And I just want you to know, at the outset, it matters that we do this.

It matters because if we don’t this church or any church that doesn’t do that will become real focused on it’s own comfort and it’s own convenience, and it’ll start to die.

It matters because this country and this world is full of churches, and full of church leaders like me, who are desperately hoping there is someplace that’s making serious headway in a broken world for the redemption of men and women.

It matters to every human being far from God, who lives within the range of this church.

And there are thousands and thousands and thousands of them who may, yet, be redeemed from a Christless eternity.

They may yet be redeemed.

It matters to our heavenly Father who gave up the very best that he had — the life of his Son — to buy back the human creatures that, for some reason known only to him, he loved so much.

It matters more than you and I can imagine that we devote ourselves to what we do over these next weeks and months.

And I just ask you, without apology, just commit yourself to being here and to putting into practice what lies right at the heartbeat of who we are as a church and more importantly, who we’re going to be.

*Now this morning, we’re going to look at habit number one — that highly contagious Christians develop significant relationships with people far from God.*

I want to ask you to turn in your Bibles to Act 16.

And as you’re doing that, I want to start by asking you a few questions about how influence works in human lives.

How does influence work in human lives?

For instance, imagine a total stranger calls you out of the blue, and says, "You need to refinance your house, and I’m the guy to do it with."

How many of you would likely sign up right on the spot?

Or suppose somebody you’ve never met walks up to you and says, "I know the person you should spend the rest of your life with — my cousin.

And I’ve set up a blind date for the two of you this Friday, the day he gets out on parole.

You can trust me.

He’s the one for you."

Are you likely to go ahead?

When it comes to what matters to us — our finances, our relational lives, our futures — we don’t usually put ourselves in the hands of total strangers.

We listen to people that we trust.

Friends influence friends.

And if this is true in general, and I think it is, it is most especially true when it comes to the ultimate issue in life: people’s spiritual destiny.

If people are going to be reached for Christ, for the most part they will not be reached by strangers.

They won’t be reached by televangelists.

They won’t be reached by the radio.

They’ll be reached, primarily, through friends.

Now, there’s a real important pattern in the New Testament that I want for us to be clear on.

So take a look now at Acts 16:14.

Now just look at a couple of passages right around this area of Acts.

I want you to notice one word in particular that occurs in each one of them.

"One of those listening" — to Paul on a missionary journey — "was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God.

"The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.

When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home.

‘If you consider me a believer of the Lord,’ she said, ‘come and stay at my house.’

And she persuaded us."

And then a little later on in the chapter, Acts 16:31, Paul and Silas were in prison.

And you might remember, they had an opportunity to leave because of God’s deliverance.

But they stayed.

And the jailer is astounded that they would stay out of consideration for him.

And he asked them, "What must I do to be saved?"

They replied in verse 31, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved — you and your household."

Now, look at verse 33: "At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized.

The jailer brought them into his house."

Then just turn the page to Acts 18:7.

It says, "Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God.

Crispus, the synagogue ruler, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard it believed and were baptized."

And the word that keeps occurring is ‘*household**.’*

The gospel keeps spreading through households.

Now, the household in the New Testament was not quite the same thing as in our day.

We tend to think just of parents and their children.

In the first century, the word for household was the word /oikos/, and it had a broader meaning.

It would include that, but it also would include extended family members.

It would include servants.

It would include slaves.

It would include people connected to each other by family ties, economic ties, vocational ties, what we would call in our day "networks" — circles of people with whom you work, play, live, relate, do business.

And that’s how the gospel spread.

The kingdom of God is never spread primarily by preachers speaking to crowds of unconnected strangers.

It is never spread primarily by mass media.

Who do you think mainly listens to Christian radio and reads Christian magazines and books and watches Christian TV stations?

Mostly it’s Christians.

The kingdom spreads now the same way that it has spread for 2,000 years.

When one Christ follower gets so convinced that the life Jesus offers really is the pearl of great price, then he or she gets contagious, and a whole /oikos/ — a whole network — the whole web of relationships gets touched one life at a time.

That’s how it’s been happening for 2,000 years, from the Book of Acts right to our day.

But here’s the problem.

The problem in our day is far too many churches are filled with Christians who spend virtually all their time with other Christians.

They’re not significantly connected with people who are far from God.

In too many cases, they try to design their lives that way.

They try to arrange things so that in their work, their neighborhood, recreation, wherever, they’re just surrounded by Christians.

That’s not a good thing.