Sermon Tone Analysis

He came barrelling out of the mountains of North Carolina way back in the early ‘30's.

For the next 50+ years preaching, pastoring and writing were his primary occupations.

He preached with such spiritual power and passion that thousands were converted.

By the time I heard him, he was well up in his years.

That was in the early 1980's, just a year or two before he died, but even though he had to almost be propped up in the pulpit when I saw him preach at Moody Bible Institute, Vance Havner still preached with such genuine conviction that God used him powerfully.

That’s just the kind of man he was: Quick, witty, passionate and powerful.

It was Vance Havner who said:

Too much of our orthodoxy is correct and sound, but like words without a tune, it does not glow and burn; it does not stir the heart; it has lost its hallelujah.

One man with a genuine glowing experience with God is worth a library full of arguments.

As a pastor, you know I’m saying “Amen” to that.

What the church needs today is not more people in the building, but more passion in the pew!

But I could stand here all morning and give you a passion pep talk, only to have you leave and never change.

Some of you, especially those who have been believers a while, might leave saying, “That’s all well and good preacher.

I know I’m supposed to be passionate about my Christian life, but I’m just not.

Long ago the hot desert of this world evaporated the living water of my spiritual passion and I just can’t seem to prime the pump anymore.”

Now that’s significant because I must tell you that passion is crucial to the great Christian life.

There may be some believers who claim to be good enough Christians who can milk-toast their way through their earthly experience, but there aren’t any truly great believers who do it.

Great believers have passion!

NEED

Yet so few people who call themselves Christians have it.

You might be here today a little mystified.

If I were to ask you in private how intense you are about Jesus Christ you’d have to admit that your heart is not hot for God, but for the life of you, you don’t know why.

I want to give you a hint this morning.

I want to suggest three types of believers who struggle with passion and whom God just may want to speak to through this message.

First, there’s the sinning beleiver who just can’t stop.

He’s beseiged by one sinful habit or another and he is frustrated by his failure.

He may tried many times to change, only to fall again.

With each failure and each repentance, his passion has ebbed away and his heart has only hardened.

He’s lost his passion.

If that’s you I want you to listen.

There is hope for the sinning believer who just can’t stop.

And there’s also hope for the selfish believer who just doesn’t care.

He used to.

He used to give his talent, his time, and his treasure to reach the lost, but he doesn’t anymore.

His life has gotten all wrapped up in himself.

He’s very unhappy because his desires are constantly crashing into the reality of his life and his passion is wrapped up in getting those things that he thinks he needs.

He’s got passion for himself, but very little passion for God.

If that’s you this morning, I want you to listen.

There is hope for the selfish believer who just doesn’t care.

And there’s also hope for the satisfied believer who just doesn’t try.

This person may be you.

You hear me talk about really walking with the Lord and you’re not even tempted.

You hear Tony talk about going on a mission trip and you think, “What for?”

You hear us talk about giving sacrificially to the ministry and missions and you glaze over or rebel.

You hear us appeal for nursery workers and you won’t even make eye contact because you don’t want any part of service.

You’re the satisfied believer who just doesn’t do anything.

I want you to listen today.

Even though you might not even want to change, I praying that God will start a hunger in your soul that you cannot get away from.

I am praying that you will begin to ache for a passionate Christianity that you may have never known.

TRANSITION

And you might be saying, “Rusty, I know that I need to be intense about my walk with the Lord.

I know that I need to grow in my passion, but how can it be done.

What is it that brings intensity in to a believer’s life?

Well, Paul writes about it in Phil.

3.

There he says in v 12

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

That’s intensity!

He’s now sinning; he’s not selfish, and he surely isn’t satisfied.

Paul tells them how they can be passionate.

First he tells them:

DIV 1: INTENSE CHRISTIANS HAVE POWERFUL MOTIVATION

EXPLANATION

Now this passion for Christ has to have a motivation.

It cannot be faked.

O, you may be able to paint on enthusiasm for a while, but after a while the smile wears thin and the glad-handing grows hollow.

Real passion is motivated.

Well, if that is true, what does motivation look like and where does it come from.

Well, the motivation that brings real passion manifests itself in dissatisfaction.

That’s what Paul says.

He begins v 12 saying, Not that I have already attained or am already perfected.

The opponents of Paul who were trying to cause trouble in the Philippian church would have evidently taken issue with this statement.

They claimed to have reached a state of blessed perfection in which some even went so far as to say they had even enjoyed the very arrival of heaven itself.

They claimed to know everything and to have it all together.

Not so with Paul.

He says, I have not arrived; I have not been perfected.

Specifically, Paul is saying that he has not arrived at knowing Christ and fully experiencing Him.

He has tasted Him and he has had this wonderful relationship with Him, but there is so much more to know and he understands that he’s not there yet.

There is a holy dissatisfaction on the inside of him that hungers for more of God.

Did you know that is a major characteristic of people who are passionate about knowing God.

They have a hunger and that hunger drives them to action, just like it did Paul.

He goes on to say, Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected, but I press on . . .

That verb “press on” is in the present tense and it describes an ongoing pursuit that is a strenous attempt to reach the goal which is not yet within one’s grasp.

And what is it that he is straining for?

He wants to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me.

That tells us where this holy dissatisfaction and this powerful motivation comes for.

He is trying to lay hold of the thing that Christ has given Him and for which Christ laid hold of Him.

One commentator says it like this:

Precisely because he has not yet arrived at the goal specified in vv.

10–11, he is “pursuing” it with all his might, which in this first instance is expressed in terms of “taking hold of” the very thing for which Christ first “took hold of” him.

While Paul is indeed pursuing the eschatological goal with all his might, that is only because Christ was there first, pursuing him as it were, and “apprehending” him so as to make Paul one of his own.

Paul’s point, as always, is that Christ’s work is the prior one, and that all his own effort is simply in response to, and for the sake of, that prior “apprehension” of him by “Christ Jesus my Lord.”

My passion for Christ, then, flows out of a dissatisfaction, a hunger in my heart that makes me strain to possess the one who put that hunger in my heart in the first place when He laid hold of me and called me to become part of His family.

Which just brings me to two applications:

APPLICATION

First, the reason that some believers have no hunger for God and, thus, no passion for Christ is that they have never been called.

They have never laid hold of God, and He has not laid hold of them and they are not truly saved.

They may even hang out at church and look spiritual, but they have no passion for God.

Listen to me teenagers: Just because you grew up in a Christian home and are in the youth group does not mean that you really know Jesus.

Just because you went to camp and had your heart emotionally touched by something that happen does not mean that you really know Jesus.