Sermon Tone Analysis
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I Am ________
Hungering to Know and Be Known
2022-09-18
Scripture Reading:
(blank)
Introduction
When I was 10 I and my parents moved from Steinbach, where we had lived for 3 years while my dad was in Bible School, to Bagot, 20 15 minutes west of Portage la Prairie.
There, my dad became the pastor of the small Bagot Community Chapel.
What that meant for us was another change of schools and the job of trying to find all new friends.
That fall I entered grade 6. Grade 6 was okay, grades 7 and 8 were not.
Actually, 9, 10 and 11 weren’t great either.
But grade 8 was probably the worst.
The main problem was that I didn’t have any close friends.
Why was grade 8 the worst?
Because, in that grade I finally found a friend.
I’ll call him Bob.
Things were finally looking up.
I finally had someone to hang out with.
Then he turned on me and started calling me names.
One in particular, that made fun of how skinny I was.
It hurt.
Deep.
For years after that I was terribly self-conscious about how weak and thin I was.
I hated gym class.
It was there that my inferiority was displayed for all the world to see.
Why am I telling you this story?
What you think about yourself matters.
It affects your life in countless ways.
Because I thought so lowly of myself, I didn’t try very hard at sports.
You see, I already “knew” I would fail because I was small and skinny and weak.
I believed that to be true, so I didn’t try.
As a result, I wasn’t very good.
Because I convinced myself that most people wouldn’t like me, I didn’t talk to anyone.
Lo and behold, no one wanted to hang out with me.
And as a result, I didn’t have friends.
What you think about yourself will have a huge bearing on your life.
If you believe you have no worth, you’ll never achieve much of anything.
If you think everyone hates you, you’ll be looking around the corner watching out for your life.
You won’t trust anyone.
If you think you’re stupid, you won’t try to learn.
If you think you’re powerless, you’ll simply give in to those with more power.
If you believe that your life has no purpose, you’ll live as if you have no purpose.
What you think about yourself will have a huge bearing on your life.
So, what do you think about yourself?
What is your self-image?
Who are you?
(Pause for a moment for people to think)
Paul’s Identity in Christ
I want to read a passage that I read on Wednesday morning during my time with God. 1 Corinthians 15:1-11.
(read) (blank) Paul is reminding the believers in Corinth that their salvation rests on one simple fact.
Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead, verified by many witnesses.
It verified who he was and sealed the deal.
Because of that, their first identity as people is this, they are saved people if they hold on to this truth.
There is a lot more that goes along with this that I’ll get to a little later, but for now I want to look at Paul and his image of himself.
Paul lists the order in which Jesus appeared to various people.
By the way, the way this section is structured differently than the rest of the passage.
It appears to be a commonly recited statement of belief, like a creed.
Historians date it to 2 to 8 years after Jesus.
What’s important for us this morning is that Paul adds on at the end that he was the last one to have Jesus appear to him as a resurrected person.
He then goes on to state that he was the least of the apostles and didn’t even deserve to be one because of his history of persecuting the church.
In Acts he describes himself as handing people over to their death and approving their death.
Paul was not in denial about what he had done.
He knew who he had been, but he was also clear about who he now was.
(read v10) (blank) “I am what I am.”
He identified himself as an apostle, whether he deserved it or not.
Once Paul understood who he was by the grace of God, his life was never the same again.
His life direction took a complete 180.
Instead of persecuting Jesus, he served Jesus.
Instead of persecuting the church, he served the church and brought the good news of Jesus to Corinth and a bunch of other cities.
This good news had changed him from a bitter, angry, cold-hearted man into a forgiving, patient, warm-hearted man.
Paul’s self-image and identity were completely wrapped up in Jesus.
Jesus was everything to him.
His identification with Jesus transformed his mind and transformed his life.
I don’t know about you, but I look at Paul’s life, I see the kind of person he became, I see his passion and his willingness to sacrifice everything for Jesus and it draws me.
Not always, often I want to live a mundane life and just live for myself.
In fact, far too often.
But other times I long to be like Paul.
To have the clarity of purpose and the spiritual authority that he displayed.
How did this happen?
How did he change so much?
We know it was Jesus.
We know he identified with Jesus, but how did such a deep transformation happen?
Who was Saul before he became Paul?
Transformation of Saul into Paul
Saul was a Jewish man who was born in the Greek city of Tarsus in what is now south-central Turkey.
He was born a Roman citizen; he was raised Jewish in a Greek city.
But he didn’t stay in Tarsus, he went to rabbinic school and taught in the Pharisaic tradition under the teacher Gamaliel in Jerusalem.
He was a rising star in Judaism.
He was zealous for the law.
He was all in for Pharisaical Judaism.
That was his identity and it determined how he lived.
Then, he met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
One minute he’s on his way to catch and haul Jesus following Jews to Jerusalem in chains, the next minute Jesus is blinding him and commanding him what to do.
Three days later, the same amount of time that Jesus was in the grave, Ananias, a Christian Jew, prays to Jesus for him and his sight is restored.
He spent a few days with the disciples there and then began preaching about Jesus.
He grew bolder and bolder and proved to all who would listen that Jesus was the Messiah.
When it got dangerous, he was let down through a window in the wall and he left Damascus.
The text in Acts would seem to indicate that he immediately went to Jerusalem and from there to Tarsus.
According to Paul’s own testimony in Galatians 1:16-18, he went into the desert in Arabia for three years before going to Jerusalem.
Why did he do so?
And what does it have to do with his and our identities?
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