Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Have you ever thought about what you would like your epitaph to read - what you would like on your tombstone?

There have been many interesting and often funny statements made on tombstones.

Consider this tombstone from the early 1900’s.

Apparently they used to put the cause of death on the tombstone.

This young man’s stone read that he died by being stabbed by an ink eraser while trying to evade six young women who were trying to give him birthday kisses.

Rodney Dangerfield’s epitaph reads - There goes the neighborhood - after his characteristically self-effacing comedy.

Talk show host Merv Griffin had “I will not be right back after these messages” put on his stone.

But what would your’s say?

If our epitaph is a commentary on how we lived our lives - as the 19th century cattle rancher and gun fighter’s Robert Clay Allison’s read “He never killed a man that did not need killing” or the 20th century actress Bette Davis whose read “She did it the hard way” - then what would be the summation that could be put on our headstone?

This morning Paul is going to help us answer that question.

And in so doing he’s going to wrap up this intensely personal section of this letter.

You see no one is going to put a reference to your mother, your father, your children or your spouse on your headstone - unless you share a headstone.

But what they are going to put on your marker is related to you.

And throughout this chapter - over the last four weeks Paul has been dealing with each of us as individuals.

Yes, this letter was to a corporate church - but the subject matter in these last few verses have been personal in nature.

Look back at the whole passage with me and circle in your Bible every time there is a reference to you - not where you think you might see yourself but the actual word you or your.

So this morning let’s each listen a little selfishly - I know in light of last week’s message that may seem out of place.

But listen this morning for what the Spirit would want to say to you as we look at these great verses together.

Let’s now move on to Colossians 3:16-17.

On the surface the beginning of this passage would seem to require a bit of permission on our part.

The passage says “Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you” and every major translation has this construction to the sentence beginning with the word “let”.

It’s almost as if our permission is sought as in “if you have room in your life allow the word of Christ to dwell among you” or “if it’s convenient let the word of Christ dwell among you”.

Even the words of our translation seem to contradict everything I’ve said so far about this passage starting in chapter 3:1 until these verses being an individualistic passage.

Even though many of the you’s are taken to be plural as Paul is writing to a church, a group of people yet as we’ve just read each of them could be applied individually as well so while he is writing to a corporate “you” this passage, these verses seem to have a very personal, individualistic application.

The ESV translates this particular phrase as “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” and the NLT translates it as “Let the message about Christ, n all its richness, fill your lives.”

Of all of the translations I think the NASB has it closest to Paul’s meaning here as he says “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you” - it carries a very personal meaning for the word to dwell within each of you individually.

And yet here we are again with the permissive word “Let”.

You might be wondering why I’m making such a big deal about this little three letter word - and the reason is that it is supplied by the translators.

The original Greek manuscripts have no word for “let” associated with this passage.

And so the thrust, the imperative nature of the original language is softened a bit by the permissive nature of “let”.

What Paul originally wrote here is simply “the word of Christ dwell richly within you” - a statement of imperative.

The verb dwell is in the present active imperative sense meaning that it is an ongoing, continuous action that is even now taking place.

And not to take us on too deep of a grammar lesson here but the subject, the agent carrying out the action of the verb, is the word of Christ it is not us.

And so how does the word of Christ dwell within each of us richly?

There are four ways that this takes place and what we will find is that each works independently of the other but also builds on the one before it to encompass all of our spiritual lives.

The four ways that the word dwells within us is through hearing the Word, reading the Word, meditating on the Word and finally obeying the Word.

Hear The Word

What do you come here on a Sunday morning to hear?

When we get together what is the purpose?

I would submit that there are many churches, and in some cases it may even be the case here, where people gather together with an expectation built on what is our pastor going to say today.

This is true in even the most conservative and orthodox churches - people gather waiting eagerly to see how their pastor is going to break down the Scripture and many times they come away with wonder at how he saw so much in that text and how they could never see all of that.

I must confess that there are times that I listen to sermons and I get caught up in that very same mindset - and in so doing I do a great disservice to myself and to the power of the word of Christ in my own life.

And anyone else who comes with that thought process does the same in themselves.

When we come together for a gathering of the body under the preaching of the Word of Christ we should come with the expectation that we are going to hear something from God.

Not that that the preacher is the voice of God - as the Catholic church would suggest in reference to the pope.

Nor that I am going to be somehow speaking some inerrant, inspired addendum to the Scriptures that you should take down verbatim and staple in the back of your Bible.

But what is happening is that you are hearing the Word of God explained and then applied to your life in such a way that it - meaning the Word - forces you to change.

As Ligon Duncan once said - we should come together and listen as if our very life depends on it because it does.

Romans 10:14 says

The key sentence in that progression is “how can they believe without hearing about Him”.

We don’t come together to expound pop psychology or to explain the five ways that Avengers Endgame embodies the Gospel but instead to look into the deep mysteries of the Word of God and to understand Him better through the medium He has chosen to most reveal Himself.

There is great Biblical and historical precedence for this.

The entire book of Deuteronomy is the manuscript of Moses last sermon to the nation of Israel before he dies and they go in to the promised land led by Joshua.

And if you think that that’s only an Old Testament precedent - the book of Hebrews is the same thing - a sermon manuscript from an unknown writer that was included in the cannon of Scripture.

The books of the Law were often opened throughout the Old Testament - just after crossing the Jordan, Joshua again took time to read the Law to the people of Israel despite Moses having just done it.

After the completion of the walls of Jerusalem in the book of Nehemiah, Ezra stands up and reads the Law to the gathered people in Jerusalem and the Levites were “translating and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was read.”

The New Testament carries on the central nature of the sermon as Christ preaches the Sermon on the Mount and we have the sermons that Peter preached on Pentecost and other instances of great sermons throughout the book of Acts.

But there is a key phrase in the Nehemiah passage that has great bearing on our purpose this morning.

“Translating and giving meaning so that the people could understand what was read.”

This is such a key point in how we prepare ourselves when we come together to hear the Word of God.

To know that we can understand it.

In the mid-1600’s the puritan Richard Baxter published his seminal work entitled “Christian Directory” which had an entire chapter dedicated to how to listen to a sermon.

Two of his directions have an importance for our purpose this morning as they explain the two-fold nature of what takes place during the sermon or any time we hear the Word of God.

The first is the admonition to

“Mark especially the design and drift, and principal doctrine of the sermon”.

As a preacher it is my aim to make the main point of the sermon as clear as possible so that you can follow the main idea throughout the preaching.

The second step relates to the preparation of our hearts.

Baxter writes it this way.

“Come not to hear with a careless heart, as if you were to hear a matter that little concerned you, but come with a sense of the unspeakable weight, necessity and consequence of the holy Word which you are to hear: and when you understand how much you are concerned in it, and truly love it, as the Word of life, it will greatly help your understanding of every particular truth.”

In much more economic language Jesus, throughout His earthly ministry, would say “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”

When we come to the Word we must come with an expectant heart that is prepared to hear the Word of the Lord.

When we hear and understand we can appropriate what is being said into our lives and the Word comes to dwell more fully within us.

Now there is a caution to be offered here.

There are many today who say they are hearing God “speak” to them.

It reminds me a bit of the old illustration of the man and the flood.

A river was overflowing its banks and flooding a town.

To escape the rising waters a man climbed on the roof of his house and started to pray for deliverance.

While he was praying a man came by in a canoe and offered him a ride.

He politely declined saying that God would save him.

Next came a man in a john boat and again the man declined the invitation.

As the waters rose around his home and started climbing the roof towards him a Coast Guard helicopter came and hovered overhead.

They dropped a rescue line and offered the man a ride.

He again declined saying that God would save him.

Well you know the end of the story - the man drowned and when he stood in front of God he had the temerity to ask Him “I was trusting you, why didn’t you save me?” God answered him “I sent you a canoe, a john boat and a helicopter and you refused all of them.”

It is the same way with the expectation to hear from God audibly today.

He has already given us 66 books that contain everything we need for life and salvation and we refuse to listen why should we expect Him to speak to us?

It is as many have said “If you want to hear the Lord speak read your Bible.

If you want to hear him audibly read your Bible out loud.” Which brings us to our next way that the Word dwells within us - through the reading of the Word.

Read The Word

This is an area that is deeply troubling in the church today.

The Bible is widely recognized as the best selling book of all time.

The average American household has three Bibles.

And unfortunately in most of them they are covered with dust.

Biblical illiteracy is the worst epidemic that our nation faces.

In April of 2017 Lifeway Research published a study entitled “Americans are fond of the Bible, don’t actually read it.”

The study revealed that the same percentage of people have read through the Bible multiple times as those who have never read the Bible at all.

The largest group, 30% of respondents, say that they have only read selected passages or stories.

Some of the most troubling statistics in this study come from the age group of 18-25.