Sermon Tone Analysis

Do you know that 75% of young people who go to Church today will not be following Jesus when they are 29?

That was a stat from 2011, so I’m sure it is worse today.

What’s going on?

What is stopping them from going on in the Lord?

I have a few ideas but they are not limited to them:

· There’s a world of temptation

· There’s no challenge and no sacrifice

· There’s no immersing in the Word

· There’s no meeting regularly with other Christians

· Entertainment & fun has replaced God and the Church.

But this is no new problem; the world of the New Testament was not much different to today: The Roman world was full of entertainment - they had the coliseums where games of all sorts were played, there were all sorts of activities, social clubs – and they had sex on tap to boot.

If you became a Christian in those early days you could expect there to be demands made upon you by the Church: you were expected to be world-denying and self-denying – there were high expectations for a holy life.

Then authorities also had demands of a different sort: Pliny the Younger wrote to the Roman Emperor Trajan:

in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed

And Jesus also has demands: Jesus just asked too much of his disciples – he had a whole crowd following him and then he just ruins it – He asks them to love him more than their families, more than their lives, and said things hard to understand, eat my body and drink my blood – so, then came the great falling away….so,

how many disciples did he have in the end?

Where is commitment to Christ?

What is it going to cost?

Commitment to Christ means to have commitment to the Church, his people.

The church is his body – the divine organisation that God has put on the earth to continue the witness of Christ.

Without the body we are dismembered – like an amputated hand or leg.

So many leave the church thinking that somehow they will make it in this world but that is not God’s way.

It is hard enough within the Church.

The greatest danger for any one of us is that we try to go it alone – without other Christian brothers and sisters around us for support, for prayer, for serious Bible study.

The moment we are alone we want to go our way – not God’s.

Satan wants us on our own because then we are easy to attack.

Being alone is the opposite of what a Christian should be.

[The moment we go to College or university or to work we gain new friends but really we find ourselves in enemy territory and the only way to cope is to also surround ourselves with other Christians and be part of a Church that wants to put God first and will stand on his Word.]

What is commitment to Christ?

It’s a massive challenge – deny yourself – that’s right, deny yourself; deny your rights; deny your flesh; deny your decisions – deny having things your way – deny yourself daily.

In fact we are to be looking out for God’s right to our lives.

Commitment to Christ and his people means finding the way to have all things in common.

That nothing that we own belongs to us but is for the people of God.

Our bodies.

Our lives.

Our computers.

Our possessions.

Our families.

Our friends.

Nothing belongs to us.

Everything we have and are, they are loaned to us by God and are to be used for His glory and His people.

This is no easy Christianity – surely we already have the realisation that there is a day coming when we have to give an account of our lives to God? Surely we know that life is too short to be consumed with gaining wealth or reputation?

Compare our lives now with the length of time called eternity.

Why are the young people leaving Church?

Because they do not realise that it costs everything to follow Christ; it costs us our lives.

If we told them that then they are more likely to stay!

But compromise is the watchword in the Church.

Instead we are content to tell those who come that everything will be great – that it is an easy life – that we try to keep them by entertaining them – and that in competition with the world – the world has greater entertainment – we can’t beat them at their own game – we can’t beat the Tom Jones, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Manchester United, Swansea City, Eastenders, Corrie, Love Island, World Cup etc, etc – the world has got the entertainment world sown up.

The outward show.

There’s nothing wrong with entertainment in itself but there is something wrong with it when it takes the place of knowing Jesus and his word.

Jesus demands everything because he demanded everything of himself – and he paid for it in his own blood.

He paid for you and me with his own blood.

That is love!

That is commitment!

There are people around the world becoming Christians and then they are put into prison or beaten up or being killed just to become a Christian – and we take it all for granted.

What is the worst that we actually get right now in the UK?

Where is our commitment to Jesus?

What about the challenge of reaching the people of this community?

Does it not matter anymore that Jesus went to the cross for them too?

What are we afraid of?

Why don’t we rise to the challenge of following Jesus?

This whole passage is about what is in our hearts.

We actually want religion.

Christian history shows us that we’ll come up with a symbol for something, then change it to a ritual which we think is a sign our inner spirituality.

Are there examples in our Church of such a thing that we think is Christian and biblical but nothing of the sort?

What if I said we should change the pews to chairs, or our hymns to modern songs, or change the seating arrangement so we are in a circle, or change our communion to a single cup that we all drink from just as a few examples of things which we do that are tradition and not biblical, not that what we’d change to is biblical but these are not essential Christian things.

How many hairs stood up on the back of your necks?!

The strength of feeling we have for tradition reveals how much we treat rules we have created as something that God created but Jesus points out very clearly the danger of this replacing God’s things for ours.

The heart is interesting.

It can pump good and bad blood around our system.

A friend of mine had leukaemia and bad blood being pushed around his body resulted in his early death.

The heart is the source of sin.

The Bible passage we read in verse 21 and 22 gives a list of 11 things that can defile us because they are in our hearts:

It creates evil thoughts, devising plans to sin, which where all the following comes from and through

adulteries, fornication, [unlawful sex relations – or to look on another lustfully]

murders, [anger]

thefts,

covetousness, [greediness for gain whether material or position]

wickedness, [those things that lead to hurting people]

deceit, [lying, half-truths]

lewdness, [sensuality]

an evil eye, [selfishness, stingy]

blasphemy, [slander against God – or slander against another who are made in God’s image]

pride, [God’s biggest hate]

foolishness [works done without respect to God or others]

All these afflict all of us – there isn’t anyone here who can claim they are innocent even as Christians.

When tempted we sin or cause the devil to flee – the memory verse on the bulletin this week is:

There is another part that we are to do:

If we know His Word then we have some of the equipment that we need in the fight - who here is reading their NT or following the 3 year reading plan?

Did you know that in less than 1 hour you can read 7 letters of the NT from James to Jude?

This is pure spiritual milk – how will you ever get to the point of meat if you don’t start with milk?

– How will we hear the Holy Spirit whispering to us his good, acceptable and perfect will – How will hear his voice saying this is the way – walk in it?

We are not called to be children or babies but the Church is absolutely full of them.

How will we ever know whether we are being taught as God’s commands the commandments of men?

And here we must teach as Jesus taught and this was entirely radical in His day: the outward performance does not convert the heart.

Jesus is making it clear that the heart of man is not intrinsically good but evil.

There is a bent in us to do wrong.

Hear Scripture’s witness to it:

C. S. Lewis refers rightly to our “permanent, and permanently horrified perception of one’s natural … corruption.”

Even today some focus on outward conduct to the neglect of the heart.