Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Fear
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Conscientiousness
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Tone of specific sentences
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*21 Days of Fears, Jeers, Tears, and Cheers*
*Tears*
*Text: Luke 19:41*
*I. **Introduction*
*Illustration: *Homer, a handsome dude, walks into a sports bar.
He sits down next to this blonde at the bar and stares up at the TV.
The 10:00 news was on.
The news crew was covering a story of a man on a ledge of a large building preparing to jump.
The blonde looks at Homer and says, " Do you think he will jump?"
Homer says, "You know, I bet he’ll jump."
The blonde replied, "Well, I bet he won’t."
Homer placed $20 dollars on the bar and said, "You’re on!"
Just as the blonde placed her money on the bar, the guy did a swan dive off of the building, falling to his death.
The blonde was very upset and handed her $20 dollars to Homer and said, "All is fair.
Here is your money."
Homer replies, " I can’t take your money, I saw this earlier on the 5 o’clock news and knew he would jump."
The blonde replies, "I did too, but I didn’t think he’d do it again!
*II.
**What we have become*
*A. **The church of Christ has become elitist*
The church in America has become less open to ‘outsiders’ - those who do not look like us, talk like us, believe like us.
Providence has a varied and diverse group.
Look around.
We have people from numerous walks of life.
We have different racial~/ethnic, denominational, educational, socio-economic backgrounds.
*B. **Not open to the mess of ministry*
*Matthew 9:36 - *When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd
Too many times ministry is done when it is convenient.
It requires little or no sacrifice.
Commitment is minimal.
*Illustration: *We do not want to be bothered with ministry if we think it will take time or money or commitment.
Certainly we do not want to minister to the person in the next cubicle at work who is so annoying.
We do not to share of ourselves with the mean neighbor next door.
We do not have a heart for the friend who wronged us.
What if we had a different heart?
What if we decided that there was a deep need in a person to relate with there Creator that was not being met?
For that reason the person was not able to relate well to others and so was annoying.
What if we decided that there was a need in the neighbor to know how to treat people the way Jesus did.
We could teach them by example and show them Jesus.
It would better to be neighborly with the neighbor rather that isolate them.
What if we recognized we have all wronged someone deeply.
Yet, the One who was wronged was willing to give up His life to reconcile the relationship and we did the same?
*III.
**What we need to be*
*A.
We need to weep for our community.*
Did you cry over the homes of unchurched people as you drove by them on the way to church this morning?
Was there a burden in your heart that said this person needs Jesus?
Are you affected by the lostness of your neighbor hood or place of employment or the restaurants~/stores you frequent?
*Mark 1:41* - Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man
*B. **We need to be in our community*
People know what a church building is and have at least some little idea as to what goes on inside.
The problem is people do not really know Jesus.
They do not know what He looks like.
We must show them Jesus.
*James 5:11 - *…The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
*IV.
**Conclusion*
Compassion is the most powerful antidote for hatred and bitterness that the human heart can find.
It’s the one way to restore love to a broken relationship.
The most powerful story I’ve ever heard about this comes from Byron Deel, college basketball coach in Nashville, Tennessee, who grew up with an alcoholic and abusive father.
Byron had two brothers and three sisters, a large family, but his dad spent the family income on alcohol, and he drank and ranted and raved and cursed and threatened and hit them.
And then he left them.
When Byron was twelve, his father walked away from the family, and did absolutely nothing to support them.
There were no child care payments.
No alimony.
No cards at birthdays.
No gifts at Christmas.
Nothing but hardship and abandonment.
Six years later, he showed up again, two weeks after Byron had graduated from high school.
It was an awkward meeting.
He stayed about half an hour.
And then he left again, and this time there was no contact for sixteen years.
Byron told me, “My attitude toward my dad was everything that it shouldn’t have been for a Christian.
He had robbed me of a happy childhood.
He had failed me at every point.
He had abused me.
I hesitate to say that I hated him, but perhaps hatred isn’t too strong a word.
There was a bitterness there that was almost a loathing.
Whenever anyone asked me about my dad, I’d shut them off pretty fast.
As I grew older, I put it all out of my mind, and there was just a blank spot there.
I didn’t think about it.
I could go for years without once thinking about my father.”
Then out of the blue Byron’s aunt called him and said, “Your father is in Bristol, Virginia, very sick and close to death.
It would mean something to him if he could see one of his children.
He has cirrhosis of the liver.”
None of the other children wanted to see him, and Byron lived the closest to Bristol.
So he got in his car and drove up there.
He said, “I had a ton of thoughts.
Not a lot of strong feelings, just a sense that someone should do this.
I didn’t want to, but it seemed like I should.”
He walked into the Intensive Care Unit and there was a seventy-one-year-old man, connected to monitors, tubes inserted into his body, surrounded by medical equipment.
Byron hadn’t seen him for sixteen years, but he recognized the man.
And something strange happened.
As Byron saw his dad lying there helplessly, dying, strung about with wires and tubes and monitors and machines, all the years of hatred and anger melted away.
He walked over and stood by the bedside.
The man opened his eyes, saw Byron, and began to cry.
Byron said, “I wept, too.
It was almost as though I could see going through his mind waves of regret for the wasted years.”
Byron spent that day and the next with his dad, and he was surprised to find that he had a lot of feeling for the man.
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