Sermon Tone Analysis

Here we go with three weeks left till we begin the season of Lent.

And I want to take these three weeks to lay the groundwork for some visionary behavior.

Here is what I mean by that.

Sometimes we talk about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and we have a vision of what we want that to look like.

I have some kind of a picture in my head of the kind of Christian that I aspire to become.

This is true for us as a church.

As a community of believers we carry a vision of what desire for all of our members in this church family to grow into and embody as a part of our identity in Christ.

Or to put it another way, we have a vision of what discipleship looks like.

And I want to break this down over the next three weeks in a way that makes this vision of discipleship clear and understandable.

This is why; often we over-complicate religion and make discipleship a complex and confusing system.

It shouldn’t be that way.

We proclaim through scripture that we are saved by grace through faith.

This means we proclaim that God himself has done the complicated part of religion.

Our part of following Jesus as his disciples shouldn’t be so complicated.

And so, I am calling this series “simple.”

Let me be clear about what I mean by simple.

Simple does not necessarily mean easy.

No one ever said that following Jesus is always easy.

But following Jesus should be clear.

I ought to have a clear picture in my head of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

That’s what we mean by simple.

Now let me tell you what my earnest desire is for all of us here.

I want our picture of Christian discipleship to be so very clear that if anyone ever comes in to visit this place and asks anyone here what it means to be a disciple of Jesus here at this church, we would all give the exact same answer.

Because we know; because we all have a clear picture—a vision—for what following Jesus here in this place is all about.

That’s what we mean by simple.

It means we all get it; we all understand; and we are all on the same page together and all moving in the same direction.

The first disciples all had that.

The very first followers of Jesus who led the church forward after Jesus ascended into heaven had a clear picture of what it meant for them to continue on as followers of Jesus and become the community of faith.

And the church grew and expanded because they all had a clear simple vision of following Jesus together.

Here we go, then.

In the next three weeks let’s unpack three clear, simple dynamics of following Jesus together, of what it means for us to be the community of faith living in discipleship together.

Discipleship Directions

The first thing I want to do is give us a road map for the next three weeks that will help make this memorable.

Because I want a vision of discipleship to be clear and simple for everyone here, then it should be something that we can all easily remember.

So, in your notes is an outline with a triangle on it.

For those here who are visual learners, maybe it helps to have a picture to go along with this.

Here is what we are going to do.

In the next three weeks I am going to take our church mission statement and show how it fits in the three directions of this triangle to give us a clear and simple vision of following Jesus here together as a community of faith in this church.

Our mission statement says this: that Fellowship Christian Reformed Church exists to love God, to grow in relationships, and to serve our local community.

Three actions: love God, grow relationships, and serve community.

Today we look at the first one of those actions, loving God.

And we are placing it in the triangle picture as the upward direction of discipleship.

This is the part of following Jesus that looks upward to God as he reaches to us in relationship.

In the next two weeks we will be talking more about the in and the out directions that have to do with growing and serving.

But for today, let’s just focus on the upward piece of discipleship that is about loving God.

To be a disciple of Jesus means that we love Jesus.

This is not a surprise.

We sing about it all the time when we gather for worship.

Our worship songs are filled with language that expresses God’s love for us and our love for God.

A loving connection with God is at the heart of our mission.

The first disciples knew this clearly.

And today I want us to focus the rest of our time on what it means when we say that we love God.

The apostle John writes about this in the book of Revelation.

It is the message of Jesus to one of the seven churches addressed in Revelation 2. He writes this.

At the very beginning of a relationship with God is a clear vision to know his love for us and to respond in love to him.

I cannot love God if I do not know God

Embracing God’s love for us and responding in love to him is at the heart of our upward discipleship.

But here is the central thought of this upward movement.

I cannot love God if I do not know God.

In order to love God, I first need to know God.

When I first got to know Laura way back before we were married, it was a relationship that first grew as a friendship and became closer the more we got to know each other.

This is true of all close friendships (not just married partners).

As we grow closer in friendships with others it comes with opening up and knowing one another.

In those early months when I met Laura it was a relationship in which I was getting to know her.

I got to know her hobbies and interests.

I got to know her family.

I began to understand how she responded and reacted to certain situations; the things she liked and the things she didn’t like.

This is all part of the process in getting to know someone.

And our relationship of love today still draws heavily on the ways that we know one another.

I could not have a relationship of love with Laura if I did not know her the way that I do.

I could not have close friendships if I didn’t take the time to get to know the lives of those other people.

Love means I have to know something about who you are.

This takes time.

I’ve been here in Michigan now for a year and it feels like there is still so much I have to learn about so many of you here.

Getting to know a whole bunch of new people takes time.

And our relationship with God is something that grows over time as well, as we get to know him and know his love for us.

We work at it.

Knowing God is a continual process.

It is an ongoing process.

It is always there before us.

This is why we define it as part of our mission statement.

This is why we picture it as a direction and action of discipleship.

As followers of Jesus we always want to keep this in front of us.

Knowing God is not a mystery.

God wants us to know him.

God reveals himself to us so that we can know him.

All religions struggle with this question.

All religions ask, who is God and how do I know him?

The pagan religions of the ancient world struggles with this question because they chased after idols and made up mythologies in which their gods could not be known.

In the pagan religions of the ancient world the gods did not reveal themselves.

The gods could not really be known.

And because the pagan gods did not reveal themselves and could not be known, the people who followed those religions never exactly knew what it was their gods wanted.

The pagan religions were never built upon any kind of love because those false gods could never be loved.

Those gods could never be loved because those gods could never be known.

But our God—the true God—shows himself to us.

The triune God of the Bible is a God who reveals himself.

This is a God who can be known.

And because God reveals himself and because we can know him, we can live as followers of God who can in fact embrace a true love for God.

He has revealed his love for us and we can know this love ourselves.

This is the clear and simple upward direction of our mission and our discipleship.