Sermon Tone Analysis

ATTENTION:

Many in this room have had the experience: You’ve stood at someone’s front door, or waited in some business man’s office, knees knocking, breath shallow with anticipation, waiting for that “moment” to arrive.

You were selling something and this person was a potential buyer.

It might have been magazines, or cars, or insurance, but, whatever the product, the fear and the anticipation was the same.

For me the product was pharmaceuticals.

I’d arrive in some doctor’s office unannounced.

I’d get my 30 second shot at the doc, in between patients or a five minute session with him over the lunch I’d brought in.

I promoted several products, but the top two were an anti-inflammatory and a high blood pressure medicine.

It was like the tale of two cities.

The anti-inflammatory went great.

It was a great drug that really worked and almost everyone that tried it swore by it.

I increased market share substantially and was highly commended for its success.

The High blood pressure medicine was a different story.

I tanked!

Why?

Well, it was a new product that had a great side-effect profile, but it had a huge drawback: It had to be taken three times every day.

Let me ask you a question: How many of you have ever had to take an antibiotic that was dosed 3 or 4 times a day.

How many of you forgot to take a dose?

Yep, that’s right!

Chances are some of you still have some old bottles of anti-biotics sitting around in your medicine cabinet that you never took, right?

Why is that?

Because of its dosing.

It’s just too hard to remember.

That’s why that drug didn’t sell.

It was used to treat a condition that they call the “silent killer” because it usually has no major symptoms.

It was dosed several times a day and there were other drugs dosed once per day which were just as good.

Simply put, it was a hard sale, and I never really made it.

Why not:?

I was trying to sell something nobody wanted and I knew it.

For that reason, I wasn’t very passionate about it.

By now, you’re probably saying, “As fascinating as this is, Rusty, what does it have to do with anything?

I really don’t care what drugs you used to sell.”

Ok, I understand, but I do have a point to make: The reason I could sell the anti-inflammatory and not the anti-hypertensive was that I was passionate about one, but not the other.

Now listen carefully: You and I are believers, at least most of us in this room would claim to be.

As believers in Christ, we have been given the job of bringing others to Him to receive eternal life, but now, be honest: We’re often like I was about my blood pressure drug.

We’re just not too excited about what we’re selling.

Now our apathy comes from a lot of places.

While we may personally love Jesus, and our salvation is “working” for us, we’re not so sure that our Jesus would work for our neighbor who has everything and seems to have no problems.

We’re not too sure, on the other hand, that Jesus can really take our friend’s drug habit away or deliver our fraternity brother from his sexual addiction.

On top of that, we live in a culture that, when it comes to hearing the gospel, puts their hand to our faces and says not so politely, “Been there, done that.

Don’t need to hear it.”

In fact, George Barna reported that people 16- to 29 exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life.

In fact, in just a decade, many of the Barna measures of the Christian image have shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people.

For instance, a decade ago the vast majority of Americans outside the Christian faith, including young people, felt favorably toward Christianity’s role in society.

Currently, however, just 16% of non-Christians in their late teens and twenties said they have a "good impression" of Christianity.

As a result 91% of evangelicals like you and me believe that Americans are becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity.

As a result many of us are reluctant “salesmen.”

BACKGROUND

But this reluctance creates a dilemma.

You cannot read the New Testament without realizing that turning non-believers into disciples was the focus of Jesus’ ministry.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus told us to go and make disciples.

That message is re-emphasized throughout the rest of the NT.

Which brings us to our text for today: It begins in 1 Pet 2:9: But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

The action of this verse is found in its last phrase.

We are God’s special people for a specific purpose: That we may proclaim the praise of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

We are told to “proclaim” and that is a strong word.

It means to “herald” or to “publish.”

It’s the idea of shouting the latest news in the town square so everyone hears.

So, I am to shout the praises of God so that everyone hears about Him calling out of darkness into light.

That’s my job.

I am to tell it.

So here’s the dilemma: While the world is becoming more and more hardened against the gospel, we’re supposed to be shouting it from the roof top.

Tough sale, huh?

It’s kind of like selling refrigerators to eskimos.

It seems like we’re hawking a product nobody wants.

And because we feel that way, we have very few people who share their faith, or even want to.

NEED

So what’s the problem.

What is it that we’re missing in this whole “evangelism” thing?

Well, in the first place, understanding is missing.

You see, our analogy is all wrong.

We are not salespeople!

Not at all!

Our job as followers of Christ is not to sell the gospel but to tell the gospel.

I think witnessing our faith is so difficult for us because we think that if we don’t actually win the person we’re talking to to Christ, we’ve failed.

I’ll tell you, you will not find that in the scripture.

In fact, in our text it says that our job is simply to proclaim His praises.

And because we have the wrong target, we feel unsuccessful and we often stop sharing our faith.

We lack passion because we lack understanding.

But we also lack passion because our love is missing.

We look at evangelism as an anonymous exercise.

We seem to think we’re supposed to come out here on a special night each month, go knock on the door of someone we don’t know and convince them with our logic that they need to change their whole life.

We feel convicted and hypocritical when we do that because we know that we really don’t have love for the person, and the worst part of it is that they know it too.

The experience is painful and fruitless, and, after repeated failures, we decide not to repeat it.

We lack passion because we lack understanding and love, but there’s something else that costs us our evangelistic zeal: We lack reality.

Whether it’s because we’re not walking with the Lord or because we have just never really had a dynamic, living relationship with Christ, there’s something about our relationship with Christ that just doesn’t ring true.

In our heart of hearts we know it, and when we talk to other people about the Lord, they know it too.

It’s like we’re trying to describe Wikiki when all we’ve done is read a travel brochure.

We can talk about some details, but we have no passion.

TRANSITION

So, is it possible to turn the corner on this whole evangelism thing?

Is it really possible to lose the guilt and gain passion.

Can we really go from a tortured, check-the-box approach to sharing our faith and really share Jesus with a gleam in our eye and a real joy in our hearts.

You see, I believe that would really make the difference.

I believe that, if we could do that, we would see a difference in the results our evangelistic efforts bring.

So how can we do that?

How can we become passionate about this message we have to share?

Well, I believe that part of the answer at least flows out of our understanding of who we are in Christ and what He has done for us.

I say that because that is what is stated in our text.

Peter talks about who we are in Christ and what He has done for us and, in that context, tells us that we are to proclaim the praises of who Jesus is.