Sermon Tone Analysis

Understanding the Presentation and the Prospect

Working for the Unconverted is a Specialty

Many would be willing to work if they were taught how to begin.

They need to be instructed and encouraged.

Every church should be a training school for Christian workers.

Its members should be taught how to give Bible readings, how to conduct and teach Sabbath school classes, how best to help the poor and to care for the sick, how to work for the unconverted.

There should be schools of health, cooking schools, and classes in various lines of Christian help work.

There should not only be teaching, but actual work under experienced instructors.

Let the teachers lead the way in working among the people, and others, uniting with them, will learn from their example.

One example is worth more than many precepts.

Grace

The Introduction

Grace: It is very important to establish the fact that eternal life is a gift, that we cannot earn it by anything we do and if indeed we earned any part of eternal life it would no longer be a gift.

The Bible texts on this point are very clear.

Typical Texts:

Other Good Texts:

Titus

Paul’s repeated expression of “free gift:”

“Free Gift”: 3 times.

“Gift”: 3 times.

Paul refers to salvation as a gift from heaven 6 times in 4 verses.

Also see:

is especially clear:

Philp 3 9

The Living Bible paraphrase of Philippians 3:9 is especially clear; “I have put aside all else, counting it worth less than nothing, in order that I can have Christ, and become one with Him, no longer counting on being saved by being good enough or by obeying God’s laws, but by trusting Christ to save me; for God’s way of making us right with Himself depends on faith—counting on Christ alone.”

You can help people grasp this by asking how they would feel if upon bringing a birthday present to their best friend the individual would want to pay for part of the gift.

“I have put aside all else, counting it worth less than nothing, in order that I can have Christ, and become one with Him, no longer counting on being saved by being good enough or by obeying God’s laws, but by trusting Christ to save me; for God’s way of making us right with Himself depends on faith—counting on Christ alone.”

This would obviously spoil the whole idea of its being a gift.

Man

The whole point of this is to establish the fact that man is a sinner by nature and also by choice.

Nature:

Nature and Choice:

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For those who seem quite self-satisfied with their goodness, it is appropriate to challenge the idea with stating the difficulty of even a sincere Christian living through a single day without some selfish act or thought or the omission of a good deed that they ought to have done.

Sin is no only defined as “what we do” .

Sin can also be “what we fail to do” .

We are sinful not only because we do wrong things;

But we are sinful because we fail to meet the righteousness of law expressed in love.

We miss the mark:

This one verse describes man’s situation:

“All have sinned”: We have violated the divine law;

“Come short of the glory of God”: We have “missed the mark” of God’s righteousness; we have failed to reach, attain, or experience the glory of God, or in being like Him in character.

It is important to stress that if our eternal life depended upon our record we would have no hope.

We are guilty of having sinned and the wages of sin is death.

If we had to pay the penalty for our own sins we would have no chance for eternal life.

Of course, we use the Bible texts that tell us “all have sinned” and “there is none righteous, no not one”.

If any further Bible evidence is needed and on-wards can be studied in detail with the prospect.

There is a time or moments when all of us thought ourselves “pretty good”, and this was the case for Paul “I was alive without the law once” but this changed “when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.”

God

There was a time when people’s concept of God was His justice in punishing sin was the overwhelming concept.

Today’s concept of most professed Christians is the reverse.

Their concept of God is about His overwhelming love and grace, and even this to excuse sin to greater or less degree.

The other concept for non-professors of Christianity is that God is not a personal God who is interested in man’s affair.

They justify this concept when disasters and tragedies happen where human life is taken or compromised and ask “Where is God in all of this?”

In presenting this gospel presentation first: talk of God’s love and mercy and His desire to save us, then second: spend most of the time in this section in showing from the Bible that God must also be just, - that part of love is justice and that God must punish sin.

This concept in our time is not a popular concept of God, but this must be realized by the prospect or he will not sense his lost condition.

Christ

We can help a prospect understand this by discussing our reactions to a local judge who would repeatedly turn loose upon society criminals who break into homes to steal, and who kill and rape,—excusing his actions on the basis that he was merciful and gracious and hated to punish anyone.

It isn’t difficult for them to see that such irresponsibility would be anything but love, on the part of the judge, tor the society ne was supposed to serve.

It is also helpful to point out that if God should tell us that sin doesn’t matter, and excuse it, He would be telling a falsehood.

Sin does matter, and by its very nature it destroys.

It makes people selfish and covetous and finally leads to stealing and rape and murder and war and all the other tragic aspects of sinful humanity.

A God of love must punish, and finally eradicate sin.

Spend Time at the Cross

It is very important for people to realize the great sacrifice that was made in Christ.

How can we do this?

We need to make very clear that Jesus is truly God as well as man.

Many people do not understand that Jesus existed with the Father before He was born as the Messiah.

Helping them to understand this from such passages as the first chapter of John’s gospel will make a great impression upon their hearts regarding the sacrifice made for them.

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We want to impress others with the truth that it was really Deity, One who was equal and eternally God took our sin and gave His own life to pay for our penalty.

If we can do this effectively, the heart is won to God’s love in a mysterious way.

phil 2 5-

It is equally important, of course, to help them to realize that Jesus truly became guilty for our sins.

The concept that is generally entertained on this subject is very shallow.

Most Christians believe that Jesus merely accepted our punishment.

Many illustrations that have been used in preaching on this subject have really impoverished the truth—the idea of a friend stepping in to take a whipping for someone else, etc.…

We must realize that what Jesus accepted for us was far more than punishment.

He actually became guilty of our sin and it was that guilt that crushed His life.

To realize that miracle power was exercised in making Christ to be sin for us, is a real revelation to most people.

They can be helped to understand this by realizing that the same miracle power is used in bringing us pardon.

That, just as surely as we can feel forgiven, Christ felt our guilt.

It would be difficult to spend too much effort on this part of the presentation.

It is at the foot of the cross that men’s hearts are changed.

Serpent, Sin, and Jesus

Some time should be spent explaining the meaning of .

To help others understand what it means that Jesus was made “to be sin for us” we can tell the experience of the children of Israel and the fiery serpents of the wilderness, when their look of faith at the serpent of brass which Moses lifted up was enough to save them from the deadly effects of those fiery serpents.

It is a sobering realization that Christ was symbolized by the serpent, a symbol of sin, while he hung on the cross.

Elsewhere throughout the Scripture, an innocent victim symbolized Christ … a lamb, a turtle dove, etc.

But because he had taken our sin and become guilty of our transgressions in a very real way, because he had become “sin for us,” He was now symbolized by a serpent.

Having suffered the death and the wrath of God that sin deserves, He now has eternal life for us, and it may be ours if we will but look to Him in faith, even as the children of Israel looked to the brazen serpent for deliverance.

This story never fails to have a moving effect upon one who will hear it with an open mind.