Sermon Tone Analysis

Twisted

A Warped World Window

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

September 14~/16, 2007

 

I have a very important announcement to make, so I want everyone to listen carefully.

When you came in, I am sure you noticed the quarantine, thick plastic over the doorways.

We are going to ask all of you to please stay in within this room, because the world outside those doorways in contaminated.

If you need to go the restroom, please just hold it.

If you really just have to go, ask the person next to you to hold your hand and pray for you to be able to persevere.

And please don’t worry about your children, the Kidzone areas are also well insulated from the contaminants outside.

So, if your kid’s number should come up on the screens, please disregard.

It isn’t worth risking your Christian life to get through the hallways back into Kidzone until the whole place can be secured.

I know this raises a lot of questions about how we will live within a virtual bubble, but plans are well underway.

This may sound crazy, but we have plans to have Christian restaurants, coffee houses, bookstores, book clubs, radio and tv stations, sports leagues—anything you might want, well within the bubble.

Oh, wait a minute, we already have all those things, don’t we.

How did that happen?!

 

Now, let’s leave the twist in this twisted series and get back into the real world.

The twist is the twist of the Christian bubble, and it is so easy to become bubble people.

We hardly even know it is happening.

Some of you are tire-kickers as it relates to Christianity and you may not see it quite yet, but once someone becomes a Christian and then engages Christian community and church, it is very easy to join the bubble, to look around after a year or two and realize that hardly any of your friends are outside the bubble of your Christian world.

We create our own parallel universe.

When Jesus came to the planet, the religious people of his day liked it that way.

The word “Pharisee” means “separated one,” and they were.

They looked at a Roman culture that was ungodly and affected by values that were contrary to the way they wanted to live and raise their kids, so they very happily created their own bubble existence.

The key to holiness to them was insulating themselves, playing it safe, from the real world around them.

Jesus came and vomited all over that with the way he lived his life and by the content of his teaching.

To Jesus, true growth in our relationship with God can never happen in a bubble.

The air in the bubble is too stagnant for real growth.

Growth happens in the context of the real world, where we are called not to be safe but dangerous…dangerous in the sense of impacting people around us, seeing lives changed forever…and not isolated but integrated, not scared but bold, not indifferent but loving.

Do you ever find yourself looking at the world out there, glad that you have been reached and have a relationship with God, and yet wondering why God doesn’t do something about what is going on out there in our crazy world?

This week is the anniversary of 9~/11, a reminder of how dark the world can be.

You look at our culture and see the drift away from God, away from solid values, as the culture seems to be going down the drain and we wonder why God isn’t doing something.

Here is the divine twist on all this.

God has done something.

That’s why you and I are here.

He has sent you and me.

If you have a relationship with God, he has sent you into the world because he does care about this crazy world.

That’s why you are there.

In

 

Slide: ______________) John 17: 15-16, 18

 

Jesus is praying to God the Father, and he says/, My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of it…As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world./

Jesus says the same thing in

 

Slide: ______________) John 20:21

 

/As the Father has sent me, so send I you./

You and I have been sent into the world because God cares about the world.

Your greatest ministry is not what happens within these walls, as good and as important as it is.

Your greatest ministry is what happens outside these walls, and it is that opportunity that we are looking at today.

God has you in the world where he has you not by accident but on purpose.

Because he cares about this world, he has placed you in your school, neighborhood, job, team, league, wherever he has you.

We are not called to be bubble people but missional people, and today in Matthew 5:13, one little powerful verse, we are going to see what Jesus means by that, how he wants to impact this world through you.

Here is what Jesus says in that verse/: /

/ /

Slide: ______________) Matthew 5:13

/ /

/"You are the salt of the earth.

But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?

It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” /

 

“You are the salt of the earth…” Let’s talk about what that means.

For one thing, the Jesus-followers hearing it 2000 years ago would have regarded it has a huge compliment, because salt was a very valuable commodity.

Today, it is so cheap that we hardly think about it.

We take it for granted (pour it out).

But then, it was both rare and valuable.

The Romans regarded salt as the most valuable thing in the universe, second only to the sun.

Roman soldiers were often paid with salt, which is where the phrase, “not worth his salt” comes from.

When Jesus said this, the hearers knew that he was saying that they were both rare and valuable, and had a very important function in the world to play.

What is our function?

Why was salt such a big deal?

Why are we such a big deal in this world?

Two big reasons, or Two big functions as salt in this world.

Slide: ______________) How are we to function as salt in this world?

The first is…

 

Slide: ______________) Preservation

 

In Jesus’ day, refrigeration was non-existent, so salt was absolutely crucial.

Without salt to cure meat, it would quickly rot.

Salt was used to prevent rot, to prevent decay, and that is why it was so valuable.

What Jesus is saying is that you and I are the preservative for this planet, that our presence prevents the decay and rot of our world.

Just our presence in this world changes the world, it halts decay and opens up opportunity for God to work in the world through us.

That’s why when we become Christians it is so important not to isolate ourselves, because God has us in key places for a reason.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul has to command the Christians to remain in the situations that they were in when they became Christians, because God had placed them there.

Even just our presence has impact.

Some of you have seen that in small ways, like when people find out you are a Christian, and it affects their behavior.

That happens to me all the time on the golf course, when I get paired up with people I don’t know.

For the first 8 or 9 holes, their language is quite colorful and they make crude jokes, but on about hole 10, they inevitably ask, “So, what do you do?”

I always feel cruel answering the question, because when I say, “I’m a pastor,” they start back-peddling really quickly…letting me know that they normally don’t talk that way.

You can also see the impact of Christians in a very big way by looking at America as a culture.

Though we may be sliding away from our beginnings, this culture is one very deeply influenced by Christians and Christian values.

Most of the founding fathers were Christians, and many of them were also pastors.

Because of their theology, certain values were very important—such as the value of every life and the equality of all people.

We not take those values for granted, as if all people believe that…but they don’t.

All you have to do is travel to other cultures not influenced by those ideas, and you realize how ugly a culture can be without the values of equality and the value of every human life.

God uses us as preservatives and influencers in every area we as Christians live and work.

I’m not saying that we get a whistle and get obnoxious about it, setting ourselves up as values police and imposing our values on everyone else.

(use whistle and play a little bit).

I’m talking about being people who are humble and respectable and influencing where we are because they respect our lives.

Our job is to just to do the right thing and stick up for the right thing, doing so in a non-obnoxious, non-pushy way.

The Christians I am most impressed with are not the bubble Christians, that know how to be good Christians in the bubble.

The ones I am impressed with are those that see their greatest mission and opportunity outside the bubble and who do it well, who love and serve and represent God and influence the organizations and people they work with.

A number of years ago now I went to a week long leadership training opportunity the Disney Corporation.

An organization brought together about 50 pastors around the country to meet with their executive team and some others to create a very unique dialogue and learning experience.

At the end of the week, we had a general debriefing session with the lady who was our host who was a member of the executive team at Disney.

One of the pastors asked a question.