Sermon Tone Analysis
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*The Relevant Church*
When I announced the last class of Step 2 Graduates a couple of months ago, I told you they were helping us toward our goal of becoming like every church ought to want to become the most spiritual church in America.
Today we are going to test how well we’re doing.
We have a little quiz for you to take.
We have a prize for the person with the most right answers.
We have 7 words for you to define from a list of multiple choice answers.
Just right down your answer on your bulletin.
Here goes:
1.
Amen - a) Let your kingdom come b) Let it be c) Lord hear this d) Let’s eat
2. Blessed - a) healthy, wealthy and wise b) gifted c) favored by God d) the english word for “gesundheit”
3. Disciple - a) a person who goes to church b) a student of church history c) a learner~/follower d) redneck for “this apple”
4. Maranatha- a) come quickly b) be accursed, c) a mountain in Judea, d) Hiawatha’s brother
5. Repent - a) tell a story b) continue steadily on course c) a change in mind, heart and action d) the war cry for Wake Forest’s Demon Deacons
6. Hosanna - a) save us, b) O great God, c) a third century martyr, d) spray water on Anna
7. Hallelujah - a) I’m so happy b) one of the names referring to God c) praise the Lord d) heb.
for “yaba-daba-doo”
The reason we wanted to go through this little exercise is to realize how easy it is to be uncertain or unclear even about things we talk about in church all the time.
If we’re confused about these things, no wonder people in the world have no idea what we’re talking about.
God wants us to reach our world, but we won’t reach them if they can’t understand us.
In order to reach our world we must be relevant, but we need to be careful with this idea of relevance.
There are religious people who want to justify all kinds of behavior in the name of being relevant.
In the Bible the apostle Paul says, “I have become all things to all men that I might save some.”
He says, “to the Jews I became a Jew that I might win Jews,” but we must understand this concept has limitations.
He did not say, “to the criminals I become a criminal so I might win criminals.”
He doesn’t say, “to the drug addict I became a drug addict that I might win drug addicts.”
When I say God wants us to reach our world by being relevant, I mean we have to connect with people and communicate in the circumstances where they are.
God expressed how concerned He is about relating to our world when He gave us His Son Jesus.
Theologians call this the incarnation-- God made into the flesh of humanity.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
[John 1:14]
The apostle John says people understood God when they saw Jesus.
Jesus lived right with them and He was wonderful--full of grace and truth.
God still wants to reach the world in the same way through us.
God wants us to reach our world by communicating understandably, practically and appreciably.
This concept of reaching the world in a relevant manner was demonstrated early in Jesus’ ministry when He healed a paralyzed man.
You probably remember this occasion when Jesus was at a house in Capernaum in Galilee.
He was teaching and people had come from all over to hear Him.
There were even religious leaders from Jerusalem and there were so many people that it was crowded far outside the door of the house.
Some men came to the house carrying a paralyzed man on a stretcher hoping to see Jesus and to ask Jesus to heal their friend.
Since they couldn’t get anywhere near Jesus, they carried their friend to the roof of the house, made an opening through the roof tiles and lowered their friend down to Jesus.
Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “Your sins are forgiven,” and the religious leaders thought Jesus was being blasphemous in claiming to forgive the man.
Jesus knew what they were thinking and said that He made that statement so everyone would know He has the power to forgive sins.
Then He told the paralyzed man to get up and walk away, and the man did.
Everyone was amazed and said, “We have never seen anything like this!”
Jesus gave us the example that to reach our world we must first ...
*State God’s Message Understandably*
In the situation of the paralyzed man, Jesus was not just making a broken body well.
He was communicating to all those people that He is the forgiver of sins.
Jesus could have done what He did many times later by simply touching the sick person and restoring their health without even saying a word.
Jesus wanted the people to know that He was not just a compassionate man or a good doctor.
Jesus wanted people to know He is the Savior of the world and He clearly communicated that to them by the words He chose for that moment.
All their lives the people who were gathered in that house had believed that a person’s sickness was the result of his sin.
When their ancestors first settled in the land God gave them, they had the blessings and curses of God read to them from Mt. Ebal and Mt.
Gerezim which they all stood between.
God said to them that if they kept all His commandments and laws, they would experience His blessings-- success, peace, prosperity and health.
The blessings specifically stated that they would have none of the diseases that God had brought on Egypt if they kept God’s commands.
God would be their healer.
But if they disobeyed, they would be cursed with all the diseases of Egypt that they dreaded.
Even when Jesus’ own disciples saw a blind may, they asked Jesus who is the one who sinned--this man or his parents that caused him to be born blind.
So in that house with the paralyzed man before Him, Jesus didn’t tell the man he was healed from his paralysis.
Jesus said he was forgiven of his sin.
When the man got up and walked away, the people knew that the man’s sins had been forgiven because the paralysis which they understood to be a curse for disbedience was gone.
At that moment they clearly understood that Jesus was indeed the forgiver of sin.
Jesus was not just relaying words, He was communicating His message.
And that’s what we must do if we are going to reach our world.
The people at that house understood what Jesus was communicating because of the words He chose and they way in which He presented them to the situation.
Christians and churches have not always been very good in communicating like Jesus.
Too many times we have simply relayed religious words to the people we speak to.
When Christians say things like, “hallelujah” “blessed” and “saved” the world wonders what that’s supposed to mean and they supply their own definitions.
And let me tell you.
It doesn’t matter what you think you mean when you say something to someone.
When you say it, the only thing it means is what the other person thinks it means when you say it, because that’s all they get from it.
Their background, education and experience have already supplied a meaning to the words they hear.
This is the problem of translating meaning into language.
In order to state God’s message understandably we have to know what our audience understands.
Here’s a simple example.
I could say to a 6 year old, “You need to extricate your olefactory orifice occlusion” and his eyes would glaze over.
The words are English.
I have used them correctly and I know what I mean, but what’s that to him?
If I want him to understand me I’ll have to say, “You need to blow the snot out of your nose.”
The Bible says...
“If you don’t speak in a way that can be understood, how will anyone know what you’re saying?
You will be talking into thin air...” [1 Corinthians 14:9, God’s Word]
For a whole lot of people in the world when Christians talk it sounds like those big words sound to that 6 year old.
Christian talk often sounds like so much churchy babble.
Saying Jesus is our Lord and Savior is time honored phraseology for church people, but calling Him Leader and Forgiver makes more sense to others.
There is always a need to update our language because both language and people change.
If you’ve been here very long, you have noticed I quote from a lot of different translations of the Bible.
The reason is because language and people change, and because meaning is what is important--not just familiar sounding words.
I became most convinced of this when I carefully studied how Jesus and the apostles quoted the Old Testament.
They were not worried about absolute word for word accuracy in their quotes.
They were concerned about communicating the meaning of the Bible.
I hear a lot of people tell me that when they read the Bible, they just can’t understand it so they don’t read it much.
That’s not the way Jesus spoke to people.
When He spoke, people easily understood Him.
The Holy Spirit wrote the Bible clearly and understandably.
I always tell people to get a Bible they can read and understand.
Some church people think that’s wrong.
They think that different translations somehow dilute the Bible and make it no longer God’s book.
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