Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

Face Time

Excited to step into this new series called Facetime.

And point I want to make is this...

The God of the Bible is not a God who stands far off, leaving us to grope in the dark concerning His character and His desire to know and live in relationship with us.

- “if you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father”

- Jesus is God’s greatest revelation of Himself

Jesus tells His disciples in The Gospel of , that seeing Him, they “have seen the Father.”

The writer of Hebrews says Jesus is God’s greatest revelation of himself () and shows us what it looks like when God engages with His creation.

So in this series, Facetime, we will be walking through the encounters Jesus had with different individuals in the Gospel of John to see how lives were changed, and can be changed, when we find ourselves face to face with God.

One of the ridiculous claims of Christianity is that God not only created the world and stepped back to watch (that is called deism)

One of the ridiculous claims of Christianity is that God not only created the world and stepped back to watch (that is called deism)

but that after creating the world he actually engages with it.

Grab your bibles

So the first thing I want to talk about is Jesus (God in human flesh coming face to face with His Creation.

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Prayer

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet Cosmonaut became the first person to go into space.

Nikita Kruschev who was the premier of the Soviet Union at the time, leveraged this in his stance on atheism.

At a conference sponsored by the state's anti-religion campaign, Kruschev says, "We sent a man into space and didn't see God there."

C.S. Lewis who was alive at the time responded to that comment.

In an essay, he wrote that if you wanted to relate to God, you wouldn't relate to him like a person living on the first floor would relate to someone living on the second floor.

C.S. Lewis said that's not how it works.

If there was a God, you wouldn't relate to God the way a person living on the first floor would relate to a person living on the second floor.

That would be like Hamlet trying to find Shakespeare in his attic.

And the only way Hamlet could know anything about Shakespeare is if Shakespeare wrote himself into the play.

PAUSE

Dorothy Sayers was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford and also a writer of mystery novels.

Her main character was an aristocrat named Lord Peter Wimsey.

At one point, the main character meets a woman named Harriet Vane.

She's not that good looking, she was a writer of mystery novels, and she was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford.

They solve a few mysteries together and eventually marry.

And the character gets rescued from his troubled life.

Many people have said that Dorothy Sayers looked at the world she created, she looked at the man she created and loved.

But she saw that he was lonely and needed someone to save him.

So she wrote herself into the story.

That is the only way that all that her characters needed could possibly be revealed.

Please turn with me in your Bibles to our passage for today.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

4 We write this to make our[a] joy complete.

In these opening verses, John writes about the event that he believes changes everything - Christ who was God, took on flesh and lived among men and women so they could hear his voice, see his face and feel the touch of his loving hand.

God came into the world so that fellowship and intimacy could be restored.

Now here is the the thing..

If God, through Jesus, wrote Himself into the story, how ought we to respond?

First I would say this:

I. TAKE JESUS ON HIS OWN MERIT

When I saw some of you upon arrival, I made some judgements, I came to some conclusions… (I wont share them).

Some of you looked at me, every week, and then you make judgements as well.

You decide certain things at a glance.

And then you maybe speak to me and they are confirmed, dismissed or they adapted.

And even in the last few minutes as I’ve given you a very short introduction and welcome to church, as I began to talk to you your judgements changed.

for better or for worse I do not know.

Maybe its best I don’t know.

PAUSE

It is the same when you and I , or anyone for that matter approaches Jesus!

He is just a name from history.

He is a kind of religious guru.

He was a crazy man.

He was just a nice philosopher that Christians have made into something he never thought about himself.

Or For those of you growing up in church you know that there are 2 answers that cover every Sunday school question, they are and...Jesus.

So.What do you look for when you look for Jesus?

And ask the question What do you look for when you look for Jesus?

What do you look for when you look for Jesus?

Because if we are honest we all look for something different.

Because if we are honest we all look for something different.

A fix, a philosophical idea, a moral example, or is it something more intimate- a brother, a friend, a marriage fix, a saviour.

()

It will change how we approach him and how we respond to him.

Maybe for those who didn't grow up in the church or in Christian community, or worse grew up in unhealthy church and unhealthy christian culture, you have a view, an idea, a false god really created in the minds of men or in our own minds and it is what we walk with when we think of Jesus.

And if thats the case it is also how we decide what God the Father is like, because if we have seen Jesus, as he said, we have seen the Father, Jesus says.

And they would all kind of nod their heads and then go, "yeah yeah we get it Jesus,.....so, where is He?"

Thankfully Jesus followers have become much more astute in 2000 years,

So if people have a tainted idea of who Jesus is they are going to have a tainted idea of who God the Father is and so I think it is important that when people explain to us their distain for Jesus we simply ask the question, "What Jesus is it that you don't like?"

Where did you learn about this Jesus?

Because if you and I are honest, most of us don't like the Jesus they are rejecting either!!

Maybe you are one of those:

I would encourge you

Also I would

I mean is it any surprise that people have distain for Jesus when his name is on the same placards and bread boards that proclaim the damnation of all homosexuals and abortionists.

I mean half the stuff I see posted on facebook by Christians (many of them well meaning) is just embarrassing.

And I often find myself wanting to post clarification and explanation or simply a harsh word to a fellow-christ follower.

(that’d be a full time job)

It used to be we laughed at the crazies yelling hell and damnation on the street corners and now they are in our computers and we cant get them out!!

So the image, the idea, the person of Jesus can be tainted by 2000 years of gunk and pushed far below the surface by culture, and agenda, and media and charasmaniacs.

But if God, through Jesus, wrote himself into the story: We need to take Jesus on His Own Merit

If he is the image of the invisible God, than we cannot dismiss him because of bad press.

Also, if God, through Jesus, wrote himself into our story, then we need to Give Jesus His proper place....

II.

GIVE JESUS HIS PROPER PLACE

PAUSE

What John is doing in this text is taking things back .

within a few decades rumours and misunderstanding had arisen, so John wants to clear the air and say, I don’t know what you’ve heard but this is Jesus.

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John the Baptist when his disciples were feeling threatened by the fact that Jesus disciples were baptizing near by, and all those that should be approaching John and his disciples are now going to Jesus.

And approached John and said, "What are we going to do?

We are losing our clientele!

Our ministry is in trouble because people are going to Jesus.

You actually have the word Baptist in your name!!

This cant be right!

And John simply reminds them that the ministry he has was given him by God, and it serves its purpose for a time and then will be done.

And ultimately the goal is that "He must increase.

I must decrease" v 30