Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Welcome - Harvest Fest Attendees / Live Stream

Kicking off a new series, “Address the Mess”

How many of you have a garage that looks like that?

A closet?

A junk drawer?

Isn’t that where it starts… a junk drawer?

It’s the catch all.

A place for the stuff that has no place.

But then it grows.

Junk draws becomes TWO junk drawers.

Then a closet.

Then we can no longer park the car in the garage, so we build a shed.

And rent a storage unit.

>>> So many of the messes in our life start this way.

Something happens that we don’t have a place or a category for so it gets shoved to the side.

And then it grows....

And now we’re at the point where we’re tip toeing around just hoping not to knock anything over and ignite another catastrophe.

Here’s a phrase that’s been around for a while: Hot mess.

Can anyone guess where this phrase originated?

In the 1800s, a “hot mess” was a reference to food—especially food being served to soldiers (think “mess hall”).

In the 1900s, it was used to describe a dangerous or unpleasant situation in a military context: “Don’t shoot, or this entire situation may turn into a hot mess.”

In the 21st century, with the evolution of the term “hot,” a hot mess now refers to an “Attractive Disaster”: Someone whose life is in obvious disarray but who somehow remains functional and attractive in spite of it.

This has become our goal...

Regardless of what is going on at home...

You show up to work and smile

You come to church and pretend everything is okay

You post picture after picture of your family smiling at the beach, during a sunset, highfiving a turtle, with dolphin jumping in the background—failing to mention you had to scream at your kids 15x just to get them to shut up and smile for the picture so you could prove to everyone that your one big happy family.

One of the reasons some of you don’t like church, and maybe have tried to avoid church, is because you look around the room and it seems like everyone is happier than you; that they have their lives all put together.

I promise you, today, you are surrounded by rows and rows of hot messes.

We’ve all got a mess going on somewhere in our life, we just clean up good.

What Mess?

Our Messes:

Relational mess: dating, live-in, marriage

Family mess: kids, in-laws

Financial mess

Physical mess

Habit mess

A pastime turned out to be a pathway

What started out as social has become a secret.

You may be between messes right now.

But you’ve got one or two in your rearview mirror.

You never know when the next one will materialize.

You are one dumb decision, or someone else’s dumb decision, away from a brand new mess.

Some of you made your mess.

You saw it coming.

I know I shouldn’t… but you did it anyway.

You were warned.

Don’t get involved in that… Stay away from that… Don’t do what I did…

You just didn’t think it would be this bad.

Some of you married a mess.

Your family told you he was no good.

Your friends told you he was no good.

His last three girlfriends took you out for coffee and told you he was no good.

You were in love.

“I’m gonna fix him...” — famous last words right.

That and, “Watch this; hold my drink” — Which got you into a whole-nother mess.

Some of you are parenting messes right now.

You don’t know what happened.

You did everything right.

Some of you are being parented by a mess.

Some of you got dragged into somebody else’s mess.

It was no fault of yours, but it’s your mess now.

>>> The thing we all have common — whether your religious or not, Christian or not — life is just messy.

Sometimes because we create the mess.

Other times we inherit a mess.

But the truth is, life is messy.

We are genetically engineered toward messes.

Our parents were messes.

Their parents were messes.

Your children’s parents are messes…

Here’s the good news: There is always someone whose life is a bigger mess than yours.

You can take comfort in knowing this.

Let’s pray...

Actually, that’s not good news.

That’s mean.

>>> The good news is this:

The mess is our common ground.

It’s not just you.

It’s not just your life, your marriage, your family, your finances, your GPA.

It’s the mess that brings us together.

This is why we should be careful when we are tempted to criticize.

You see a mess coming/brewing on the horizon.

The people in front of you and behind you are navigating messes you don’t know anything about.

You can’t really understand why they do what they do and say what they say until you know the mess they’re in.

We should be students, not critics.

This is also why we should look in the mirror before we judge — because you’re a mess too!

Our messes seep through our attitudes, words, and responses.

Have a tendency to judge others on the areas we don’t struggle.

Yank the Plank.

Jesus told us to first stake the plank out of our own eye, so we can see clearly to remove the speck from our brother’s eye.

Jesus told us to first stake the plank out of our own eye, so we can see clearly to remove the speck from our brother’s eye.

5. Our mess is also why we need one another.

It’s rare to meet people who were able to clean up their messes all by themselves.

How many have had someone reach down and help pull you out of a mess?

This is to be our response when we discover someone else’s mess.

Not to stand and judge, point fingers and laugh, but to roll up our sleeves and start digging.

Imagine the reputation Christians / the Church would have if we got this one thing right.

The Mess that brings us together (the thing we all have in common) is the mess that brought God near.

For God so loved the mess… For God so loved the messy people of the world…