Sermon Tone Analysis

We all have been called to serve!

We live in a service society today.

Serving is everywhere!

there are people that serve us food, wait on us at the store, sometimes fill our cars up and wash our windows.

and then we have the people on the T.V. and the radio that are actually serving us entertainment or news.

think about it.

so many serving.

they may like doing their jobs but they are primarily serving us to make money for themselves.

they are serving us for themselves..... it is business, and big business at that.

do you serve anyone?

who do you serve?

When we think about serving in light of the church, we see it is not simply about an earthly pay off, but for some very different reasons as well.

scripture is clear on our purpose for serving and today we will get into it.

First though, I would like to look back a few weeks and recall what we have heard from God’s word.

two weeks ago, we discussed God’s love.

last week we discussed gifts that God gives.

this week we are talking about service.

there was a purpose behind my sermons, and this week I will clarify what that purpose is.

If you like puzzles, then maybe you were putting it together, but I didn’t share with you yet as to why I am preaching what I am preaching so if it didn’t even connect at all, I understand, but I do have a motive to my madness.

God has been working in some people here at CBC to work towards developing a vision statement that would put words to our ministry process.

We have had some really productive meetings and we are getting closer to putting on paper what God is showing us.

Ultimately, we are looking from a 30,000 foot level at the church and envisioning how we do church, in light of scripture.

Just how does someone come to the Lord, grow in Christ and mature to the place of serving the Lord?

good question, isn’t it?

Think about your experience when you first believed and came to Christ.

When you knew you were transformed in your heart and you would never be the same, the old you was gone and the new you was born.

were you excited?

Did you want to tell someone?

did you want to go to church? were you wondering what was next?

How about this, were you out serving the Lord first thing, to go on a missions trip or to preach to a church?

did you become a deacon the day after your salvation? of course not, there is a process of growth within ourselves and the church.

I would say, the natural progression of a Christian would be similar to a natural born person.

we all start out young.

we all start out with needing others to help us eat, to love us like Christ, to show us around.

We all need to be raised up by the more mature Christians around us. this is part of the focus as we have been looking at vision.

How did it happen for you?

How does it happen here?

do you know how we do it?

our vision will spell it right out clearly.

With young and old Christians, God’s Love is so needed.

but especially when a Christian is young in the Lord, at those times, they are extremely vulnerable.

they can fall easily, can miss steps and can go in dangerous places without understanding what we are doing.

the seed, or word of God can be stolen from them quickly.

So we need a lot of help.

We need a Paul, or more mature Christian in our life.

Did you have a Paul in your life? or were you on your own when you were a young Christian?

Ever seen a toddler, on their own, no parent around, and they just walk out into traffic?

it is heartbreaking because we know that they don’t understand what they are doing.

Just like the new Christian who doesn’t have someone more mature in their lives, the can get on a track that hurts them or others.

I have seen well intentioned young Christians, bashing people over the head with scripture verses trying their hardest to get the other person to understand.

(take a book and try to put it in someones ear) We know that helping someone understand scripture doesn’t work like that but at the maturity level of that young Christian, they don’t know.

they are just trying to do their best and they want other people to know God too!

As younger Christians, we can also, with good intentions, do damage to other believers.

We might think that we are doing something right by what we are speaking to each other about another but look at what scripture warns....

Scripture warns us.

the tongue is a powerful weapon.

we can backbite, gossip and slander another brother or sister in the Lord that actually affects both the listener and the speaker.

And it can bring about a disunity that will destroy the works of God.

You and I can do that if we are not careful with our tongue!

we must learn to mature with our words before we do damage.

hurting others is not serving God but the enemies purposes.

as believers, as Christians this is a warning for us....we need to grow and mature, so we can understand how we affect the rest of the body, so we can understand what God want us to do and what He doesn’t want us to do. it is in a way like the self awareness we grow in and we grow up.

when we were babes, we had little self awareness, but as we got older, we discovered our body, our mind, our feelings, our thoughts, and our reality.

We were growing up!

we are in a growth process that is raising us up to become more like Christ!

This needs to be just as intentional as the process as the physical process, we can starve ourselves physically and we know it, but we can starve ourselves spiritually and not even know it.

What do I mean?

if we go to church, and that is the only time we hear the word of God, we are starving ourselves.

Equate the word of God to food for our soul.

if we understood that, everyone would study their word daily, so their soul would have food, so their spirit would not starve but it would grow.

If we don’t know how to feed ourselves, we need another to feed us.

so we seek out a teacher or someone to disciple us, to learn from and to feed off until we grow and learn to feed ourselves.

that is the process, like a physical one.

we go from being a young Christian, needing another to feed us, to feeding ourselves, to feeding others.

make sense?

now, put yourself in that process to know how mature you are.

are you not feeding anyone but yourself?

you are like a teen.

are you only being fed by others?

you are young in the Lord.

Are you feeding yourself and others?

You are like a spiritual parent.

It’s not about where you are on the maturity level, it is about growing from where you are.

what is your next step?

Looking at Jesus, was He mature?

lol, of course! the most mature!

but did Jesus ask to be served by everyone?

or

Was Jesus a servant Master? of course, and this is what He said.

the kingdom of God has been called the upside-down Kingdom because of this verse and others like it.

Why would I say that?

well....

What’s the way of the world? the way of the world is the greatest one in the world is the one who is served by all others, like a king.

But the Kingdom of God, what Jesus says, the greatest one in the Kingdom is the one who serves the most people!

Serving?

I thought we were free?

we aren’t servants Kel!

we have freedom alright, freedom to serve!

Freedom to be the greatest servant!

listen to this.