Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Men are trying to have babies.

Some are experimenting with the idea of surgically implanting an embryo into the male and then surgically removing the child when it is grown enough to love on its own.

But there are things even more bizarre.

In 1978 science writer David Rorvik wrote In His Image.

It is about an American millionaire who goes by the code name Max.

He wanted a child created from one of his body cells.

In other words, he wanted to be cloned.

He found a willing scientist and set up the lab, and the attempt was successful.

Max is now the proud father of a son make in his image.

He is a carbon copy of his father, and has only one genetic parent.

This stirred up a great controversy that went all the way to the U.S. Congress, but nobody knows if it is was a hoax, or if it was true.

Nobel Prize winning geneticist Joshua Lederberg said of cloning, "There is nothing to suggest any particular difficulty about accomplishing this in mammals or man.." In other words, it may very well be a reality that a man has had his own baby.

Hoax or not, it reveals just how desperate people become to reproduce.

There are so many infertile couples who want babies that they have created a whole new world of baby making science.

Not a day goes by that there is not a baby conceived outside the human body.

In vitro fertilization is conceiving of a baby in glass.

It is often called a test tube baby.

The first such baby was born on July 25, 1978 in England.

Until Louise Brown was born every human being had begun their existence deep in their mother's body, but Louise began in a glass dish.

Yes Solomon, there is something new under the sun.

But he was right in that the ingredients are the same and the process the same.

They had to have a mother's egg and a father's sperm in that dish or she never would have been born.

The dish was merely an artificial womb.

All life demands an egg and a seed, or fertility and verility.

This is true for those born into the family of God as well.

In our last message we looked at fertility and the need for the proper soil for sowing the seed.

Now we want to look at the second element which is-

II.

VIRILITY.

All the fertile eggs in the world will not produce a baby without seed, and so fertility and virility are the twin elements that must come together to make any baby possible.

Vir is French for man, and virility means masculine and manly vigor.

In the spiritual realm it applies to both sexes for in Christ all are part of the bride of Christ and can reproduce.

When we looked at fertility we looked at the nature of the people Paul preached to.

They were the synagogue people who loved the same God and the same Bible that Paul did.

They were open to new light on the Messiah and so were fertile soil.

Now we are focusing on the seed which must penetrate that fertile soil to bring forth babies for the kingdom of God.

Fertile soil will not necessarily bring forth fruit without vigorous effort.

When Paul found fertility he still had to demonstrate virility.

He had to go through tough labor to bring forth new life.

We look at verse one and it sounds like an afternoon stroll in the park as Paul passed through Amphipolis and Appellonia.

But it was not so, for it was 33 miles from Philipi to Amphipolis, and this was a journey taken after Paul and Silas had been beaten and spent the night in prison where they were up most of the night.

Like so many mothers do, Paul gave birth to babies for the kingdom in the middle of the night.

The Philippian jailer and his family believed in Jesus and were baptized.

It was a hard night and after some refreshment in the home of Lydia they took off for a new adventure.

It was just like the old stories of the women who would be working in the fields.

Her baby would come and she would lay down in the grass for a brief rest after her delivery, and then get up and keep on working.

This is what we see Paul doing in the realm of having babies for Jesus.

After 33 miles to Amphipolis they had another 30 miles to Apollonia, and then another 37 to Thessolonika.

It was a hundred mile journey.

This is not much in our day but it was no small effort for Paul, and it took the better part of the week.

Paul had to spend three Sabbaths in reasoning and explaining and in proving that Jesus was the Messiah.

It was hard physical labor to get there and then he had to labor hard mentally to get the seed to penetrate the minds of those who listened to him.

He had to work hard to get them pregnant with the Gospel.

Virility had to be combined with the fertility of the soil.

You cannot just cast the seed out and hope for results.

Had Paul given up after two Sabbaths he could have lost all his labor, and there would have been no one born anew there.

There are many infertile couples who do not have the baby they desperately want because they give up too fast.

There are dozens of options available today to help people have a baby.

It is the same in the spirit realm.

People fail to see the seed they sow bring forth new life and so they quit sowing thinking they just do not have the gift.

Even though the Bible says all God's children have His sperm, they are convinced they have such a low sperm count that they cannot reproduce.

The real problem is the lack of understanding.

They are trying to sow in the wrong soil where there is no fertility.

They buttonhole strangers, or give tracts to strangers, and do all sorts of witnessing to people they have no positive relationship to on any level.

This is ineffective for the most part even though there are some outstanding examples of such seed that does produce fruit.

It is usually futile to sow that way, and it leads to discouragement, and Christians give up altogether and never do it the right way.

They also lack persistence when they do press on to find the right soil, which is the person who likes them in some way.

The people liked Paul, for he was a Bible expounder and that is why they were in the synagogue.

But they did not just accept everything without question and a great deal of skepticism.

They did not just jump on his bandwagon.

It took a lot of persuasion to convince them.

We need to realize that people have a right and an obligation to be skeptical of any religious message.

There is so much false teaching and foolishness in this realm of life that we need to be very cautious and expect others to be also.

Accept people's doubts as legitimate, and seek to give them all the evidence they need to believe.

Virility means that you hang in there and persist with vigor to persuade people of the truth.

Christians often give up too quickly and lose the babies they might have had.

The key to successful fertilization is focus.

You will notice Paul did not get into the 1000 and 1 issues that Jewish theologians debated.

Out of 200 million sperm only 1 penetrates the egg and determines the nature of the baby.

The sperm that Paul wants to succeed in this tremendous competition is the seed of Christ.

Paul had a narrowly defined target and his focus was on the cross and resurrection of Christ.

He did not get off the track on minor issues.

He had his convictions on many subjects, but the only sperm that will produce babies for Jesus is the truth of the crucified and risen Savior.

Christians get off on so many side issues that will never produce a baby.

If all you ever do is try and persuade people that your denomination is the best, or that some pet doctrine is true, you will never have any spiritual kids.

The new birth comes only by people trusting in Jesus as their Savior, and no other truth will enable it to happen, and so success in persuading them of any other truth will not produce new life for the kingdom of God.

Only one sperm can fertilize the egg, and only it will be honored by the Holy Spirit to produce new life, and that is the truth of the crucified and risen Savior.

So this has to be our focus if we expect to have a baby for Jesus.

Paul had to cover some common ground with the philosophers when he preached on Mars hill, but he vigorously stuck with persuading them concerning Christ as his primary goal.

You will also notice that being vigorous does not mean threatening people and being high pressured with tactics that rob people of their free choice.

Paul reasoned and explained the good news and what this could mean to people.

He did not once in this chapter preach hell fire and brimstone.

People say there is not much preaching on hell these days, and they are right.

It was also true of Paul's preaching.

It is true these people were going to hell without Christ as Savior, but that was not his message.

His message was that all could be saved because of Christ's death and resurrection.

Paul had a positive approach.

The negative is real, but it is not a part of the good news, and seldom does it have a place in effective evangelism.

Evangelist who use the negative approach to scare people into a decision often see their so-called converts disappear as fast as they come forward.