Sermon Tone Analysis

Question: What attracts you to Christianity?

Seriously, take a minute and think through this as you open your Bibles to .

Why are you attracted to Christianity?

Why did you join (or are thinking of joining) a church?

Why are you serving within the church?

Why do you avoid serving within the church?

When you think of Christianity and attempt to describe it, what comes to mind?

I want us to ask and answer this question: WHAT IS MEANINGFUL ABOUT CHRISTIANITY?

In truth, there are only two answers to select from:

1. Christianity is meaningful because it abides in God.

2. Christianity is meaningful because of what it offers outside of or from God.

Though the distinction made appears subtle, with a little deep examination we will see that a great chasm of difference exists between these two choices.

Stated a little differently, we either pursue a Christ-centered Christianity or a Christ-less Christianity.

1. Christ-centered = Everything is moving towards Christ.

2. Christ-less = Everything is moving away from Christ.

Let me explain what I mean by this distinction.

Christ-centered Christianity has the Lord at the center of its focus.

Because God is the focus, life becomes an epic pursuit of seeing, knowing, and engaging God more clearly and sincerely.

The Lord is the nucleus of our life; or, as Paul quoted in

, “For in him we live and move and have our being.’

As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.”

Thus, Christ-centered Christianity aims to know, glorify, and enjoy God because its very life is owed to God’s nature and work.

When we make Christ and His glory the center aspect of our life, we experience deep joy.

John Piper summarized his understanding of the Bible’s instructions and promises in the following manner: “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him.” (John Piper)

In the same vein, let’s take a look at the first three questions of the Shorter Catechism—these questions and answers are quite enlightening:

Q. 1.

What is the chief end of man?

o Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Q. 2. What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?

o The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.

Q. 3. What do the Scriptures principally teach?

o The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.

The generations before us clearly understood the crux of Christianity is God.

To depart from God, His glory, and His word as the primary aim of our efforts equated into vanity and pursuing idolatry.

However, today, the modern understanding of Christianity seems to be one that is primarily Christ-less or, at the very least, an illicit solicitation of God’s gifts while divorcing itself from the God it is married to!

Why is Christ-less Christianity so popular?

Why is it rampant within the American church?

Why do we pay lip-service to the centrality of God while, excruciatingly, giving ourselves over to the pursuit of blessings divorced from abiding in God’s presence and direct glorification of Him?

Christ-less Christianity is Popular for Two Reasons:

1.

Our great needs in life;

2. Our great ignorance and confusion of our God and our life.

Christ-less Christianity is appealing because of our overwhelming needs:

1.

We lack understanding: It offers the hope of knowledge and understanding about life

2. We lack emotional security: It offers the hope of emotional peace and stability in life

3.

We lack a sound ethic: It offers the hope of being a good person through sound morality

4. We lack physical resources: It offers the hope of provision and care

5. We lack prosperity: It offers the hope of success and triumph over life

6.

We lack meaningful relationships: It offers the hope of community and friendship

Such needs are real and are really overwhelming.

Death, sickness, financial strain, relational difficulties, emotional instability, and scores of problems absolutely overwhelm EVERY person that has the breath of God within them.

This reality propels us toward a solution.

Our God offers the solution to our problem; however, many misunderstand the solution and, in turn, pervert the solution to the point that it becomes an additional problem.

How so?

In truth, all of these desires find merit and fulfillment in Christ and His church; however, it is also possible for churches to push these things devoid of an intimate relationship with God.

Instead of an intent focus on the Lord, we begin to focus on the things we get from God. Numerous church leaders who truly cared about helping others inadvertently took their eyes off of worshipping Jesus in order to utilize Jesus as a formulaic solution to the problems their congregations faced.

Look at the following illustrations of this subtle substitution:

1.

In order to “feel better” as we leave a worship service, we’ve changed the focus of the songs we sing from declarations of God’s nature, attributes, and work to how we feel and what we want.

We are a people insanely obsessed with our emotional state far more than we are with God’s character—we would rather sing how we feel than praise God for who He is!

2. In order to help people with their relational problems, we’ve adopted psychoanalysis and extreme vocalization of the problem, the parties involved, our feelings, our assessment of others, and “what we think” instead of communication of, submission to, and accountability to God’s written instruction.

Our expression matters more than God’s declaration.

3.

In order to help others fit into our “church body” we’ve: 1) dumbed down biblical preaching; 2) we no longer exercise church discipline; & 3) we gear everything we do towards fun and enjoyment rather than the worship of God.

We are a people obsessed with pleasure instead of the worship and glorification of God.

Look, I don’t think we do this because we want to be evil, I think we do this because we are inherently evil.

Our inherent evil is the result of the fall—and no one lives this life unaffected from the fall.

The church leaders who turned their churches into venues of self-expression, pleasure factories, and spiritual daycare centers most-likely did so out of a desire to help and not hurt.

However, whenever the focus of the church shifts—even subtly—from the Lord to anything else, the consequences are huge.

A church comprised of several couples living in broken marriages can easily transition the message of the gospel from Jesus is magnificent, to Jesus fixes marriages, to Jesus fixes marriage in the following ways, to here’s how you can be like Jesus, to here’s how you can fix your marriage.

Ever so subtly the message of the church transitioned from the glory of God to practical “how-to” steps for a better… whatever.

A church filled with great musicians and immensely creative individuals can ever so subtly shift from the direct worship of God into outright heresy.

We started singing orthodox theology to the best of our musical ability, then we started changing a few lines and adding a few licks, then we wrote new music based upon Scripture, then we wrote new music based upon how the sermon or the old music made us feel, then we started writing new music based upon our thoughts, then we started writing new music based upon the viewpoints of the world.

Over a period of time we’ve moved from artistic expression of truth (a very good thing), to artistic expression of self (very shallow), to artistic expression of contradictory confessions (a very evil thing).

How?

How does this happen?

How do we move away from sound faith to a weak faith, and from a weak faith to a useless faith.

I believe the apostle Paul gives us the answer in when he shows us His aim compared to the aim of others,

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

Three things about Paul’s ambition in serving God by preaching to others:

1. Paul had conviction about what to do = “For I decided to know nothing among you”

2. Paul had a clear message = “Jesus Christ and him crucified”

3. Paul had a clear goal = “so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

The theologian Leon Morris summarizes these three things in the following: “Preaching the gospel is not delivering edifying discourses, beautifully put together.

It is bearing witness to what God has done in Christ for our salvation.”(Leon

Morris) [1]

The truth is this, the Great Commission () was issued to all of us.

As believers, God commands us all to be proclaimers of His glorious love and work.

However, many of us have fallen into the trap of letting the “professionals” glorify Christ—this is sin!

It is the testimony of God that matters, not the arrangement and the beautification of the words we use to describe God.

When we submit ourselves to viewing Christianity—especially our life within the corporate body of Christ—in the manner that Paul did, we find a Christianity that is deeply refreshing and satisfying.

I am not opposed to the wondrous blessings and gifts God gives to us; rather, I am opposed to us exalting our blessings above God.

The basis of the Corinthian correspondence is just this.

Look, the church at Corinth was about as messed up as any church you could think of to compare it to today.

Let’s briefly familiarize ourselves with the problems Paul had to address within this church throughout the book of Corinthians.

Problems Within the Corinthian Church:

1.

They divided over the skill of the preachers and who they were baptized by (1:10-17)

2. They boasted of themselves (1:26-31)

3.

They argued over maturity and wisdom (ch.

2)

4. They were incredibly immature (3:1-4)

5.

They misunderstood how maturity happens (3:5-16)

6.

They were ignorant of true wisdom (3:18-23)