Sermon Tone Analysis

Love God.

Love people.

Make disciples.

Ever heard that?

Bringing In the Sheaves?

Remember that old song.

None of us knew what it meant.

As we saw on Wednesday, it is a reference to the Jewish Festival of Weeks (or Pentecost), which was a celebration of the harvest in Old Testament times.

A sheaf of wheat was waved before God to offer thanks.

It came to represent the spiritual harvest of souls that is the task of the church.

Gather those sheaves (that harvest) and bring them in!

Is relevance enough?

The contemporary church is all about being relevant.

Attracting the crowds.

The lights.

The band.

That’s what draws a crowd, and we want a crowd.

The lights go down low, the smoke machine creates a fog, the band cranks it up.

Every note is in tune, and it sounds great.

The congregation dances and moves…it feels so good!

Let me ask a question: where is our focus?

On that awesome music or on Jesus?

After 30 minutes or so, the speaker offers some Biblical advice on making the most out of life.

Being the best you that you can be.

Yes!!! I’m charged and ready for another week.

Let me ask another question: where is our focus?

On myself and my own life, or on the One who we have gathered to worship?

Contrast that scene with this one described by author Jay Kim about a mission trip to Haiti.

On our first full day in (Haiti), we woke up at 4:30 a.m. and shuffled into a small van.

We drove about half an hour on unpaved dirt roads in the pitch black of night, until we pulled up to one of the smallest villages I’d ever seen.As we stumbled out of the van, jet-lagged and groggy, we heard what sounded like a thousand voices filling up the darkness.

We followed the sound until we arrived at a small dirt patch where about seventy-five people from this tiny little village were huddled together.

Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren, all gathered to sing before the sun brought its heat.

For nearly an hour, they sang.

No band, no lyrics projected on a screen, just the sound of many voices, young and old, as one.

Song after song, they sang of their desperation and longing for Jesus.

The singing stopped only for a few brief moments as one of the men opened his Bible and delivered a short sermon in their native Haitian Creole.

The community was engaged and responsive, clapping and cheering to spur the man on.

After the sermon, they continued singing.

They sang one song longer than the others.

For several minutes, they sang the same beautifully melodic words on repeat.

The sustained mantra lost no momentum or energy over that time and instead, sounded truer with each passing moment.

I asked what they were singing.

Our host told us they were singing, We need Jesus, We need Jesus right now.

A. W. Tozer “Worship is no longer worship when it reflects the culture around us more than the Christ within us.”

The necessity of the Holy Spirit