Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

When I was teaching High School math, can anyone guess what question I had to deal with every week?

“When are we going to ever use this!?”

Bright students did not just want to learn a list of steps, they wanted to see how it fit and why it fit.

They could learn the steps for a single test, but if they never understood why, they would never remember for the midterm or the final.

God did not design us to memorize disconnected facts and steps.

He made us in His image with a remarkable capacity to understand and we get really frustrated when we don’t.

As we fall into this weird gap between Christmas and the first sermon of the New Year, I decided to do a stand alone sermon.

If you are new here, I normally preach in series through books of the Bible, because we think that the Bible was written by God, and every word is put in every place in a particular way to convey the message God wants to send.

Good preaching does not come up with ideas and make you think “Wow, isn’t he clever!”

Good preaching exposes what God has said, so that you may say “I have never seen that before,” but you will be able to say “I see it now.”

Going through books of the Bible lets me train you to read the Bible for yourself, so that you don’t have to eat my secondhand slop.

Next week, we will pick up in and enter into some of the most practical teaching in the Bible and work through it, line by line for about eight weeks.

It will challenge you, it will inspire you, and prayerfully it will shape you.

Today, we are taking a different approach.

I am going to take a passage of Scripture that, if you grew up in church, you have probably heard abused.

Many sweet Sunday School teachers, looking for a good way to encourage those no-good-rotten kids these days to use their manners, have turned to and found a story about 9 ungrateful people, and one grateful one.

The grateful one gets an attaboy from Jesus, and so - she told you - you ought to use your manners too.

I love manners.

I say “sir,” “thank you” and “excuse me” to kids, dogs and sometimes inanimate objects I kick inadvertently.

But that kind of interpretation ought to have a big red flashing “No!” above it.

The Bible is not written to bring you some advice about how to live, even if it is good advice.

The Bible is written to show you who God is, and who you are.

When given a list of “do this” and “don’t do this,” like the Emily Post of the Kingdom of Heaven, we get as frustrated as my kids did in Pre-Calculus.

But if you will give me a few minutes to really let you see what God is doing in this rich story, I promise that it will change your whole perspective, your whole attitude, and get you ready to face the new year.

The reason your Sunday School teacher felt the need to approach the text in that way is that kids are snotty, ungrategul brats (present company excluded).

They do not recognize what has been done for them, and so they do not respond as they should.

But before we come on them too hard, are we any different?

Do we really see the big picture of what God has given us in comparison to what we deserve and respond accordingly?

Our big idea this morning is simple, and might seem as moralistic as the Sunday School version.

But don’t tune me out.

Let’s take the time to prove that:

Big Idea: Look to Jesus and He will change you from a scoffer to a worshipper.

Turn to , toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, between some different disputes with the religious leaders of His day.

He is going to die on a cross for the sins of the world, but on His way, stops for a gang of lepers.

Would you stand with me if you are able for the reading of God’s Word?

Prayer

Explain

Imagine the scene.

Jesus, with His face set on Jerusalem to go and to die, is passing through this predominately Gentile territory, swinging through the border around Samaria.

In the distance, ten men are shouting.

Their bodies are covered in deep, contagious sores.

They are scarred and deformed, partly because of the disease itself and partly because the disease destroys nerves, so people - insensitive to pain - burn or injure themselves without realizing it.

Under the Law, they were required to shout “Unclean!

Unclean!” to warn people of their passing.

Thabiti Anyabwile wrote: “How difficult it must have been to be required to be the prophet of your own uncleanness, the herald of your own unworthiness before God.

Imagine the burden of having to tell everyone you encountered that you were “unclean.”

Imagine the scene.

Jesus, with His face set on Jerusalem to go and to die, is passing through this predominately Gentile territory, swinging through the border around Samaria.

In the distance, ten men are shouting.

Their bodies are covered in deep, contagious sores.

They are scarred and deformed, partly because of the disease itself and partly because the disease destroys nerves, so people - insensitive to pain - burn or injure themselves without realizing it.

Under the Law, they were required to shout “Unclean!

Unclean!” to warn people of their passing.

Thabiti Anyabwile wrote: “How difficult it must have been to be required to be the prophet of your own uncleanness, the herald of your own unworthiness before God.

Imagine the burden of having to tell everyone you encountered that you were “unclean.”

For obvious reasons, people with leprosy were not able to work to provide for themselves, and lingered outside of cities, far enough away to avoid contagion, but close enough to beg.

As they cried out “Mercy, mercy!”

Some of the people walking by might drop or throw coins or food for them to live on.

Probably many more figuratively rolled up their windows and refused to make eye contact.

But when they see Jesus, and call Him “Master” or “Lord” and beg for mercy, they are asking for more than money.

They believe this is the one who is able to heal them, even though they cannot get close.

Everyone else rejected them, but they believed that Jesus would not.

There is the first point in your notes:

Thabiti Anyabwile, Exalting Jesus in Luke (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2018).”

The Unclean Turned to Jesus

This is the theme over and over again of Jesus’ ministry, but in his classic book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey tells a true story from a worker with the downtrodden in Chicago that illustrates the disconnect between Jesus and His people:

The Unclean Turned to Jesus

Illustrate

This is the theme over and over again of Jesus’ ministry, but in his classic book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey tells a true story from a worker with the downtrodden in Chicago that illustrates the disconnect between Jesus and His people:

“A prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter.

Through sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her daughter—two years old!—to men...”

He continues: “At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help.

I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face.

“Church!” she cried.

“Why would I ever go there?

I was already feeling terrible about myself.

They’d just make me feel worse.”

What struck me about my friend’s story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him.

The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge.

Has the church lost that gift?”

Argue

Argue

Let me take it from Yancey’s words to our situation.

The lepers, like the notorious sinners, knew that they could find acceptance in Jesus, if nowhere else.

In Alvin, is that the way people think of AMBC?

Or do they think of us at all?

The unclean turned to Jesus and they ought to turn to us.

Yet, most of us would be more comfortable at a dinner party with the Pharisees than the places Jesus went.

We would want to shower if we rubbed elbows in the places Jesus seemed to be some comfortable.

His enemies called him a drunk and a glutton, although He was not, and a friend of sinners, which He was.

But those who were pushed away by everyone else were drawn into Jesus.

And how natural that they should fall in love with the One who loved them so much that He came to give up His life for them.

Apply

If you are not a Christian, I want you to know that you ought to feel drawn to Jesus.

There is no disqualifyingly grotesque sin, where He will not hear your cry.

It makes no difference what people think of you - you only need to identify the person and cry out “Jesus! Lord! Have mercy on me.”

As a church, we must let that idea catch fire in our hearts.

The body of Christ is a port for the storm tossed with nowhere else to flee.

As individual Christians, are we aware of those that we push off?