Sermon Tone Analysis
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Good morning Brush Creek!
I hope your week was good and your weekend even better!
This morning I will be
Teaching on the Barbarian Way.
It’s a shorter title to a book by Erwin McManus called the Barbarian’s Way out of Civilization.
It’s about
How we have domesticated Christianity to the point of making it unrecognizable.
We are so comfortable in our lives
We no longer look like the people who represent God.
Charles Spurgeon put our current condition in this way...
How can I look to be at home in the enemy’s country, joyful while in exile, or comfortable in a wilderness?
This is not my rest.
This is the place of the furnace and the forge and the hammer.
Charles Spurgeon
Does this explain your current condition?
Has your faith became domesticated over the years?
I think most of us have lost a step
Or two in this way if we were to be honest.
We are so comfortable in our lives that we forget to pray.
We only pray when bad things come our way; otherwise
We are silent in that regard.
So when was the last time you had your faith challenged with something that caused you to lose sleep?
Because Warren Wiersbe put our current state of comfortably this way
Comfortable Christianity is opposite the life of faith, for “pilgrims and strangers” must face new circumstances if they are to gain new insights about themselves and their Lord.
Which begs the question....
Have you ever experienced something that shook your faith?
I mean shook your faith to its core?
For me it was when my mother committed suicide and called me to tell me she was doing it.
I still remember it like it was yesterday.
I was 13, sick at home from school when I heard a faint ringing of the phone.
I slowly woke up and I answered it expecting nothing much to happen.
But boy was I wrong.
What I heard on the other line was my mother.
Her voice was weak and she was filled with emotion.
She called to tell me that she was killing herself because the new man she married was cheating on her.
And she didn’t want to live anymore because of his actions.
Nothing was more important to her than that.
Not even her kids!
The last words she uttered to me were, “Mark remember I will always love you.”
I simply replied that if in fact she did love me, she wouldn’t be doing this.
In fact no one should do this to their child.
That was the last thing my mother and I communicated to each other and it….
It utterly broke my heart.
I didn’t cry at all for around 6 months because I was in shock.
I was the only one at the funeral that wasn’t crying.
I was hurting, but I was in too much shock to let my emotions show.
This experience taught me/revealed
A great deal about the faith I had in Christ.
My faith was definitely tried and I
Eventually came out the other side better and closer to God, but that doesn't always play out this way; in fact it’s quite the opposite usually.
And it took years before God would heal me.
Not that He couldn’t have healed me sooner.
It’s just that God’s processing is different than ours.
It usually doesn’t follow the timeline we’d like.
But God is faithful even when we are not.
And....
Like me, John the Baptist had his faith rocked/challenged
By what was happening to him while he was stuck in prison.
And with this in mind,
We turn to Matt 11:1-6=
Some translations say verse 6 a bit differently, “And blessed is the one who doesn’t fall away on account of me.”
YOU SEE Jesus didn’t fit into the Jewish understanding of the Messiah.
They believed
The messiah would rescue them from Roman rule and restore them to their former glory.
This included the reconstructing of the temple.
In that Jesus would be the supreme ruler/priest like king David or Solomon, but better.
His reign and rule would be the envy of the nations.
But Jesus here
Was starting to set the tone of how the Kingdom of God will be played out differently in Him.
He was not going to rescue them from their captors, the Romans.
So with this in mind, it would be natural for John to worry that Jesus may
Not be the One/Messiah.
Because if he wasn’t the one, John would be in prison for nothing and Jesus’ and John’s followers would still be lost and so would we.
You see it’s
How you answer this question of Jesus being the one will determine your allegiance to Him and your outlook on life.
Whether
You live for his glory or whether you live for your own wholly depends
On Jesus being the one or not.
But before
We get into anything more deeply, we need the background to what is going on, and
How John eventually got into this predicament?
You see….
John’s early background/ministry was that of preparing the way for the Messiah.
It says in Matt 3:1-12...
Matthew 3:1–12 (ESV)
1 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea,
2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
3 For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’
”
4 Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.
5 Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him,
6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers!
Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
8 Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
10 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.
Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
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