Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

As Pastor Micah mentioned last week, I am coming down from a mountain top experience.

Last week, I traveled to Louisville Kentucky to attend the Together for the Gospel Conference.

Over 12000 pastors and ministry leaders were in attendance.

I loving going to conferences not only because of the excellent messages, the tons of books they give, but also the opportunity to see old friends and new friends.

Pastors love conferences like these because of the friendships they develop.

C.S. Lewis said that that the distinguishing mark of friendship is when two or more people discover that they have something in common, or share some common interest, that others do not share, when each person believe he was the only person who felt that way and says, “What?

You too?

I thought I was the only one?!”

I love attend these conferences every year because I get to catch up with my friends and say, “What?

You too?

You have that problem in ministry too?

You preached a bad sermon too?

You saw how God redeemed a broken relationship?

You too?!” Friendship is born when two or three people are side to side, shoulder to shoulder, sharing a common love and shared experience.

And that’s why I titled my message “Gospel Friendships”.

We know the Christian life can get difficult and discouraging, but I believe one of the gifts God gives us to encourage our souls is the gift of friendship.

And what better way to develop friendship than to find people who have a common love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Part of what it means to be human is to have friendships.

Even in the great book Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory of the Christian life, Christian makes his way to the heavenly city because of some good friends he meets along the way: Evangelist, Faithful, and Hopeful.

In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo has his friend Sam.

The first movie is called the fellowship of the Rings.

Even Batman, the lone ranger superhero, now has Superman and the Justice League as his friends.

My little pony has

We need friends when we are down and discouraged.

And Paul writes about his friends while in prison.

His friends are those in the fellowship of the Gospel.

A person’s friends reveal about who they are.

And Paul writes about his friends in the ministry.

Background

We turn to Paul’s closing instructions and final greetings in this portion of Colossians.

We often gloss over this portion of Scripture, but if you look closely, you will see the intimate friendships Paul developed in Gospel ministry.

The only other portion of Scripture that has a large list of names is Romans.

This is the second longest list of names.

Main Proposition: In , Paul writes his final instruction to ten of his personal friends.

And what we learn about this passage, is that we need gospel friendships for our own encouragement, and also to help us to continue to be faithful in our Christian lives.

The big idea of this text is that you need friendships rooted in the gospel.

The first point will be the bulk of the sermon while the last two are really subpoints or concluding thoughts from the big idea.

I.

You need gospel friendships.

II.

You need to have realistic expectations regarding friendships.

II.

You need to have realistic expectations about gospel friendships.

III.

Jesus is our best friend.

III.

You need to Jesus as the best of friends.

Scripture Reading:

I.

You need to have gospel friendships.

The greatest irony of living in a Social Media world is that we are less social.

On facebook, I have 756 friends.

Some of you have over 1000 friends on Friends on facebook.

Some 2000 friends.

On Instagram, I have more followers than I do members in this congregation.

But the irony is that out of my 756 friends or 169 followers, I really have only a handful of true and meaningful friendships.

Out of those “friends” and “followers” I really only get lunch and hang out with a handful of people.

How many of you have real friends?

But not only real friends, but real Christian friends?

The Scandal of the Megachurch

Pastors don’t know names.

People don’t know pastors or each other.

And you leave once service is ended.

Christians are lonely.

Friendships are built on truth, love, and knowledge.

A true friend “knows” who you really are.

A true friend is not one who knows your social media profile, but one who actually knows the real you.

A true friend is one who can speak the truth to you when you are wrong, but also encourage you when you are down and when no one else is there.

And the Apostle Paul mention a few of his dear friends.

We often think of Paul as a lone-ranger super hero type of Christian.

But if you look closely, Paul was a man who had close friends and Paul always did ministry with a group of people.

He always traveled with a group and ministered with a group.

The only time he was not was when he was in prison.

This is a good lesson for us here: we don’t do ministry alone, but we do it with other believers.

Pastors do ministry with other pastors.

Christians do ministry with other Christians.

The body needs each body part to function properly.

Christians should serve with friends in ministry.

And here Paul mentions two of his close friends he is sending to Colossae.

A. Friends Sent to Colossae

A. Tychicus

His name means ‘fortunate’ or ‘lucky’.

He was a Gentile and a native of Ephesus.

He followed Paul on his missionary journeys and was a messenger for Paul when he was imprisoned.

Paul used Tychicus to deliver news about him and was a trusted colleague.

Tychicus would be sent to Ephesus and tell the Ephesians about Paul’s condition:

Tychicus would replace Titus on the island of Crete.

Tychicus was called a beloved brother.

This is a term of affection.

He is also called a faithful minister, one who would read the letters of Paul to the congregation.

He was finally called a fellow servant, meaning he was a fellow co-laborer in Paul.

Tychicus job was to deliver the letter and encourage the church concerning Paul.

He probably may have not been a great speaker, but he was faithful.

He was a dear brother.

And was willing to serve.

Application:

God uses nobodies to do ordinary faithful tasks to accomplish great things.

He just delivered the letter.

He was faithful and available.