Sermon Tone Analysis

This morning I brought some things that I’ve been given over the years, and each one of them has a story.

Egg Cooker - No use for it.

I cook eggs in a bowl.

However, my wife and I got 6 of these as wedding presents.

It was given to us by some family friends.

Egg Cooker

Mariner’s autographed baseball - This was cool, but it was so cool I didn’t want to use it.

Its a decoration.

My late grandpa gave it to me.

It has more sentimental value to me now that my grandfather has died, and it was he who gave the ball to me, but it serves no practical use apart from the emotional attachment and the memories I associate with it.

Mariner’s autographed baseball

Matchbox 57 Chevy - My uncle gave this car to me.

Now this I played with alot.

It was my favorite car when I was a kid, and I wanted a real on when I grew up.

That didn’t work out.

I ended up with a Pontiac Phoenix (quick story).

Guess Who Greatest Hits Cassette - This gift has the best story.

My mom gave this to me when I was maybe 10 years old.

I was already into bands like The Beatles, Buddy Holly, the Monkees, and stuff like that, so she bought me this cassette (tell the young ones what cassettes were).

I hadn’t heard of the Guess Who before, and I didn’t recognize any of the songs.

How could this be a greatest hits album if I don’t know any of the songs?

Granted, I was 10 years old, but I thought I had heard every song that mattered up to that point in history.

So I put it in a drawer and left it there.

I didn’t even take it out of the plastic cellophane packaging.

It wasn’t until I was 21 years old that I would eventually open the cassette and listen to the songs.

And what I heard was AWESOME!!!!. (play some samples).

But I digress.

This was like the best kept secret.

How could I have ignored this for so long?

Its so good!

Isn’t the Word of God and the Gospel much like that?

How many of us have left God’s richest truths in the plastic packaging, put it in a drawer or on the shelf, and then decades later we take another look at it and find out how amazing God’s truth really is.

How many of us tend to forget that its not the church that gives us God’s Word, it’s God Himself!

God Himself is both the giver AND the gift!

And God has commanded us, that is, the recipients of the gift, to be like Him, to be like the giver so that we might share Him, the gift, with others.

Today’s message is called New Year’s Revolution because I believe that’s exactly what God wants to do in through all of us here at West Side Church so that we might win some in our community to Christ in 2018.

A revolution is not a resolution.

A resolution is something that I decide to do to change me.

A revolution is a powerful force that transforms me.

And of course that powerful force is Christ Jesus.

And today we are going to examine 3 sections of Scripture and see how they connect and how they are God’s blueprint for a New Year’s Revolution in you and me.

Before we get too far into this, I want to give you the broad stroke of where West Side Church will be headed through the first half of 2018.

(Read supplemental page - marked section)

We want to be desperately intentional about proclaiming the Gospel in 2018 as a church body.

Its very easy for believers to leave the Gospel wrapped in plastic and put it in a drawer, or to put the Gospel on the mantle and only use it as decoration, because we forget how amazingly powerful, how amazingly awesome, how amazingly merciful, how amazingly essential, how amazingly truthful, how amazingly faithful, how amazingly wonderful, and how amazingly amazing the Gospel is.

Its easy for us as Christians to piggy back on the evangelistic work of others and say that because that person shared their faith, and I go to the same church as that person, and since we are all one in Christ, that I am active in proclaiming the Good News, when really I’m just passing the buck.

And in that mindset we have clearly forgotten that every time we pass the buck, we pass on an opportunity to point someone who is under God’s wrath to rescue in God’s love and mercy.

Its easy for us as Christians to write people off and declare them un-savable.

Maybe they have wronged us greatly and we don’t want them to be saved and grow in the knowledge and love of the Savior.

Maybe we disagree with their politics.

Maybe we dislike them as a person.

Maybe we dislike people like them.

Maybe we dislike their sin more than we do other sins and thereby dismiss them as too far gone.

Its easy to be afraid of proclaiming the Gospel because we think we don’t know enough.

Do you know Jesus?

You know enough to proclaim Him then!

Its funny.

Jesus said “Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

But we get too caught up in wanting to make a point about Christ rather than making a disciple of Christ.

God has given us such a gift in Christ, but He has also equipped us spiritually to be able to proclaim Christ, and our responsibility, then, is to do something with what God has given us, just like how God gave us the gift of Himself, we are to be like the great giver and share Him with a lost and dying world.

I’m not talking about using the talents that God has given us, I’m talking about doing something with the treasure that is Christ Himself.

Because is it precisely Jesus Himself who gets drowned out amidst the noise of our talents, and preferences, and so-called human intellect.

The American Christian has become embarrassed of Jesus, and we’ve become deceived into thinking that He is not enough.

That’s why when we do an outreach, we spend more money on bouncy houses and bratwursts than we do on getting a Bible into the hands of every single person who attends.

We think we have to spice Him up or people won’t want to hear about Him.

We want church to be exciting, we want to be personally all-knowing theological Jedis, we want to provide the best worship experience, when what need to do is help people experience Jesus Himself.

Are you with me?

So, as we examine the Scriptures today:

We will see exactly how beautiful the Gospel is by investigating just what the Gospel is.

We will see what God has gifted us with to be able to sow the seeds of His glorious Truth and Life

We will see what our biblical motivation needs to be if we are going effectively Follow-Connect-Share, and in the case of 2018, Share, that is Proclaim the salvation of Jesus to those who have ears to hear.

Let’s pray as we open our Bibles this morning.

Verses 1-9 contain the parable of the sower as taught by Jesus.

This whole section begins and ends with a warning to listen to this parable very carefully.

And we are about to find out why.

Most often, when this passage is taught, the emphasis is the response of the recipient soil, and Christians, then, debate as to what kind of soil they are, and whether or not that soil is actually saved and so on.

And its true, the response of the soil is an important part of the text, but I suggest to you that its not the point of the text.

In the same way, it is important that we take a look at ourselves and consider whether or not our roots of faith are too shallow, or whether or not we are too worried and distracted by ourselves and by the world to obey God, the giver, and for the seed to actually blossom and we might bear the fruit of the Spirit.

But again, I suggest to you that that is not the point of the text.

Take a look at this if you will.

(Gorilla video)

Some of you may have seen that before, but I know that many of you were like, “holy smokes!

i cant believe i missed a GORILLA!!!”

Well, get ready, here’s God’s Gorilla.

In verses 3 and 14, Jesus tells us what the parable is about: The Farmer - God.

In the same verses, Jesus tells us what the farmer does: sows seed.

And from those same verses we know that the seed is the word of God.

Jesus is talking about evangelism.

The soil, then, is other people, lost people, and there are examples of how different people receive the Word, and the results thereof.

Now, the great emphasis of the parable is the act of sowing the seed rather than on the soils into which the seed is sown.

A theologian by the name of Lane notes:

“The Kingdom of God breaks into the world even as seed which is sown on the ground.

In the details about the soils there is reflection on the diversity of response to the proclamation of the Word of God, but this is not the primary consideration.”

While the parable emphasizes the act of sowing, the interpretations, as I mentioned, emphasize the responses that are given to the proclamation of the Gospel.

Verse 15 shows the most shallow of hearers, who are easily deceived by Satan.

16-17 shows that persecution and trials will hinder proper reception of God’s Word.

18-19 talk about how often the distractions and worries of life get in our way.

I would suggest that alot of believers fall into this category actually.

We trust false securities all the time, don’t we?

Our money, our health, our intellect, our strength, our capability to understand a situation, etc.