Sermon Tone Analysis
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I’m excited for us to continue our series tonight, called Salt and Light.
This is our 3rd week as we talk about how Christians should live in this culture.
There is a white board over there with topics and questions you’ve written, and each week we’re tacking a couple of them.
The first week, we talked about how we are to be the salt of the earth; meaning that we should preserve this world just as salt preserves meat; and that we should add flavor to life, or make it better.
We then talked about being the light of the world and letting our light shine so that others may see it and that our Father would be glorified.
Last week, we talked about how we should respond to people swearing or taking God’s name in vain.
You may remember that we talked about responding with grace and truth.
This isn’t going to be the last time I use this verse; you’ll find that as we respond to different situations and people in our culture, I’ll reference back to grace and truth.
I argued that we should lead with grace rather than truth.
I wanted to give you a heads up that it’ll be a little different for the rest of the series, including tonight.
Because we’re going to start getting into some more sensitive topics, I’m changing the way we do our discussion groups.
Instead of breaking into connection groups at the end, I’m going to keep us as a large group.
I’ll have questions mixed in and want to make these messages more interactive.
That means we’ll be staying as a large group until we finish, but won’t be breaking into smaller groups.
Some of the things we’ll be talking about can be difficult for adults to lead, nevermind student leaders.
I want to be able to lead these conversations, and help answer questions that may be beneficial for all of us to hear.
Cool?
and wanted to give you a heads up that it’ll be a little different tonight and the rest of the series.
Because we’re going to start getting into some more sensitive topi
Your Questions:
How should we defend our faith?
How should we witness to Muslims?
How to Witness to Muslims
The first thing I’d like to do is to talk about the difference between defending our faith, and witnessing to others.
I’m curious to hear form you about the difference between the two?
What does it mean to defend something?
What does it mean to witness about something?
To help with that, I’m actually going to have you guys help me.
DEFEND THE CANDY BAR!
I need 2 volunteers to come up here, choose a candy bar, and defend why you believe that candy bar is the best.
Whether it’s actually the best or not, I want you to defend it.
Use ingredients, logic, price, brand, whatever.
BE A WITNESS OF THE CANDY BAR
Ok, now I want you to be a witness of what this
I want us to think about this just as we would think about a lawyer and witness in a case.
A lawyer has facts, does his or her research, and proves a point.
It all comes down to a final decision on whether they proved the case well.
A witness in a case though, tells their story.
They explain what they saw, a lot of times with raw emotion.
The hope of having a witness in a case is to give clarity to something that was seen
Which one do you think is more important to do as it relates to our Christian faith?
The primary passage that gets used for the importance of defending our faith comes from .
This is a great verse that clearly says that we should be prepared to answer questions people have and properly defend our faith.
I want us to catch with this, as well, that we are to give the reason for the hope that we have.
What I’d like to do, though, is read this verse in context.
I want to back up to verse 8, and read verses 8-17.
After I read this passage, I’m going to ask what the main point of this passage is.
Now, it’s important to know that the context of this passage is that it’s in a letter that Peter wrote to churches experiencing persecution.
Church as a whole was around 35 years old, and he most likely wrote this right after Emperor Nero’s persecution of Chritians in 64-67 AD.
This letter was born in a time of great suffering, and was reminding people that it shouldn’t be strange for Christians to suffer.
Just as Jesus suffered on the cross, we can expect to suffer as people telling people about Christ as well.
Verse 8 - Peter urges Christians to be like-minded, sympathetic, love one another, compassionate, and humble.
then in verses 10-12 he quotes from talking about the importance of not repaying evil with evil.
In the second half of this passage, he switches to how we should respond when suffering.
He says even if we should suffer, always revere Christ as Lord.
Be prepared to give an answer so everyone knows your hope.
Verse 8 - Peter urges Christians to be like-minded, sympathetic, love one another, compassionate, and humble.
then in verses 10-12 he quotes from talking about the importance of not repaying evil with evil.
In the second half of this passage, he switches to how we should respond when suffering.
He says even if we should suffer, always revere Christ as Lord.
Be prepared to give an answer so everyone knows your hope.
This passage is not saying that Christians should be leaving their houses, looking for people that don’t know Christ, and to defend their faith.
It’s in the midst of suffering where we ought to defend our faith.
Now, remember how we talked about the difference between defending our faith and witnessing?
I want to be clear; I believe it is important to defend Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but being a witness of Him comes first.
I believe that imitating Christ is more important than defending Christ.
That doesn’t mean defending Him isn’t important, but that if we don’t love Him and love others just as we’re commanded, we’re off base.
I want to do an experiment to show you what I mean.
I want you to raise your hand if you had the opportunity to defend your faith within the last 24 hours.
Now, I want you to raise your hand if you had the opportunity to show Christ’s love to someone within the last 24 hours.
As a youth pastor, one of my concerns is that we get so focused on wanting to defend our faith and study apologetics, that we lose sight of the importance of loving one another.
The word in Greek for “one another” is used around 100 times in the New Testament.
Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and that the second one is like it; to love our neighbor as ourselves.
My simple answer to the question of how we should defend our faith is this: In Love.
I know that’s not super helpful for you, so I want do want to spend time in a passage that gives us 6 things we should point to when defending why we believe what we do.
There are more than this, but I think this is a passage that can be helpful for us.
Ready?
When sharing our faith:
- Our approach should be gradual.
The goal isn’t for someone to move from not believing in God to giving their life to Christ in the same conversation
- Primary focus - Who is God?
People tend to push God away, and we’re trying to help others know the truth that God is personal, and because He is personal He can make himself known which He has done through Jesus Christ.
See each individual as a whole person.
They won’t be motivated by just rational arguments, but by needs and emotions as well.
How do we witness to Muslims?
Spectrum of Religions and Religious Beliefs
There is a wide range of religions and what people believe.
Concept of God
Montheism - one transcendent God
Dualism - two gods
Polythesim - many gods
Atheism - no god
View of Humanity
Awareness
What’s different about Christianity and our Gospel?
JESUS!
1. Jesus lived in history - “among us” and “into the world”
while other religions are oriented primarily toward teachings and practices, Christianity is oriented toward the actual saving work of Jesus Christ.
If Jesus didn’t live, die, and rise from the dead, then Christianity has no foundation.
If you look at Buddha or Muhammed, though, they are not essential to the truth-claims they made; anyone else could have made them.
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