Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning

Good Morning to those of you at Fair haven venue, Chapel, Rockford rescue mission & those listening online.

Last week we heard from pastor Luke about this reality that we want to live a life that is Me to We.

We are invited in by our heavenly Father to welcome others into allowing him to be the good shepherd.

We handed out a card and said hey, would you be willing to pick one person, or maybe you as a family will pick one family that you can pray for, that you can love like crazy, that you can be intentional with by inviting to coffee, inviting to the dinner table, or by going out of your way to show your love.

And I think it’s easy to come and listen to a sermon like that and my experience is, honestly, I grew up in church and so we talked about this all the time.

We should go, we should tell, but it always led to this problem.

I knew I should, but I didn’t really know how too.

And so the word we use in church world about telling others about Jesus is Evangelism.

And to be honest, it always kind of this difficult thing that I wasn’t always comfortable with or sure what to do with it.

It just doesn’t seem like a natural thing to do.

It seems like you have to force it.

And as I was thinking about this, I started thinking about the techniques I was given while I was growing up and I started to realize that there were a few basic ways I was taught.

First, I was taught to bring my friend to church or youth group so that the “expert” could show them.

And then we got really sophisticated and had events that were all about evangelism.

So it was my job to just invite them and hope they encountered Jesus in this 1.5 hour program that was usually filled with lots of sugar, loud music, and some crazy game you had only seen on tv to that point.

Second, if the whole evangelism event didn’t work, the next step was that I was supposed to CONFRONT a stranger and present the “Truth” to them and try to win an argument by being prepared to answer all their questions.

And once I answered all their questions, they would have no choice but to decide to follow Jesus.

And if I can be so bold and blunt, sometimes the message that I received from pastors, and leaders was that if I wasn’t confronting people, then I Must not care about people, I must be “ashamed of the gospel” and so what happened was I was guilt tripped into and fear was used to get a desired result.

Now I want to say this is just me, so this might not be a you thing.

I’m just sharing my understanding and experience.

But I realized that after asking “Excuse me sir, if you were to die tonight, do you know for sure you’d go to heaven?”

And then being able to prove that the bible was true, they still didn’t necessarily fall to their knees and confess Christ as their savior.

I realized I couldn’t argue people into the kingdom.

And looking back on all this, reflecting on this, I realized while people might have been well intended, I don’t know if bait and switch tactics, hostile conversations, and hard sell techniques that were filled with fear, guilt and shame, is actually the method that Jesus lived out.

So would thinking about this…The question that always pervaded my thinking was does this mean I’m “ashamed of the gospel?”

Do I just need to get over myself and just try harder?

Maybe?

But I think there is something deeper going on here.

But my hunch is, some of us have felt similar to this.

When you actually got down to trying to evangelize, or tell others about Jesus, you may have yourself, or seen others who were trying to win people by coercive evangelism.

· Sauna example?

So maybe you tried that or you saw that and it kind of felt gross and your like, I don’t know if that was effective.

And so what people do is they then back way off and they simply try to “Connect” with people outside the church.

And you hope that after months and years you would connect with people and they would eventually just kind of become a Christian by osmosis.

You would try a “Sneaky evangelism.”

And so if you’ve done this, you may have realized, that felt better, but it still didn’t really bear any fruit.

So I think the giant question we need to ask ourselves is, what are we supposed to do?

What does this look like?

How do we go about this.

We really only have two tactics and they both have some major flaws.

But here is what I want to propose today.

What if we took these two ways of evangelism that are on the opposite end of the spectrum and we realized that there are elements of both that are necessary to what I want to call “living a life of evangelism.”

(Maybe living as a disciple)

So what we really need in reaching people is connection to people we are trying to reach, as well as distinction from them.

What I want to propose is that is what we want to do is do what Jesus does.

Maybe you’ve never thought about it before, but God is just like Jesus.

Right, if Jesus is God, then it means that Jesus is just like God.

So when we look at the way in which Jesus lived his life, we have an idea of what God would have us do.

Now, I’m not saying that you and I are identical to Jesus.

But I am saying that we can look to him to learn from what does it look like for him to engage with the world.

And from that we can take an understanding.

So today is going to be a little different than most sermons.

Because we want to look at how Jesus enters into evangelism with people, how he tells them about the kingdom.

So we are going to look at a few different passages today, and we are going to do it quicker than normal because there is a lot of ground for us to cover.

(He belonged before he believed)

Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector.

So what you need to know is that tax collectors were viewed as the most despicable of groups because they were Jews who made a living off of exploiting other Jews on behalf of the Roman empire.

So to say the least, these people were pretty despised.

On top of that, Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector.

He was the one who oversaw everyone.

Now it strikes me that it says in verse 3 that “he wanted to see who Jesus was.”

A sinner, a despised sinner, actually wanted to see Jesus.

There was something about him, that was compelling.

Or we could say there was something about him that was distinct that Zacchaeus was curious about.

The second thing I notice is that immediately Jesus, does two things and both have to do with Connection.

He calls him by name.

Now this is just a short abbreviated story, but the implication here is that Jesus is connecting with him.

He is bringing value to him by simply knowing and saying his name.

Second, he says “I must stay at your house today.”

Now, what you need to understand is that in the Jewish culture this was a huge deal.

When you and I share a meal it’s kind of a big deal.

It’s nice, it’s a sign of friendship but I’m not defined in anyway by if you come have lunch with me.

However, during this era, if I were to invite you to my house, or I was to share a meal with you, it meant that I completely affirm who you are.

I am saying that you are one of my tribe.

You belong with me.

This is important, he belonged, before he believed.

Jesus welcomed him and created a place he could belong before he believed.

The question is when we are interacting with people….do

they feel like they belong?

Or do they think they need to change before they can belong?

So the religious leaders find this act completely scandalous.

Vs. 7 says “he’s gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Meaning, how could he! Now this is a constant problem Jesus has.

The religious get mad at him because he is hanging out with people that aren’t’ living up to their ideals.

So instead of trying to understand and learn from Jesus the things they don’t understand, like we are going to do today, what they do is mock and ridicule because what he is doing doesn’t fit their paradigm.

So they actually accuse him of being a drunk and a glutton at one point ().

But to Jesus this is irrelevant.

He is concerned with Zacchaeus.

He is concerned with connecting to him.

It doesn’t mean that he gives in on his convictions, but he also doesn’t have to be fearful that sinful behavior is contagious.

Sinful behavior is intentional.

Not contagious.

And because Jesus lives this way, he can enter in with everyone.

Now notice what happens, Jesus lives a life of high distinction, so much that Zacchaeus is interested in what he has to say.

He also is connected to Zacchaeus and the result is that Salvation comes to his house that day.

He completely receives God’s grace.

In fact, he kind of gets greedy with it.

He’s like oh “so you are going to forgive me of my sin???:” Well I’m just going to give that grace to others then.

I’ll go give away half of my possessions to the poor and if I cheated anyone I’ll give them 4 times back what I owe them.