Sermon Tone Analysis

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Series: Impact: Changing the World from Your Kitchen Table

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Title: You Can’t Fix It Until You See It

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SLIDE - Pic - Kitchen Nightmares

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You’ve probably seen it on TV.

The host, Gordon Ramsay, a world-class chef, visits restaurants that are struggling.

Well, let’s be honest, they are Kitchen Nightmares, hence the name of the show: Kitchen Nightmares.

The restaurants are typically on the verge of closing and in desperate need of help.

What's interesting is that sometimes the restaurants look appealing from the outside.

Often, large amounts of time and money have been spent finding the right location and creating a welcoming atmosphere.

But in every episode, the real problem is the same: the food is nasty.

One of the most intriguing and, often, funny parts of the show is how Ramsay tries over and over again to let the workers realize that they are on the verge of closing.

The owners are realizing their position and want to get the workers to know it too, so they invite Ramsay in for a dose of reality.

Actually, brutality would be closer to the truth.

Chef Ramsay is brutal.

Many times the owners are in denial about the quality of their food because they are consumed with running a restaurant and managing the staff.

It usually takes half the show for them to really get honest about the things that need to change.

The problem?

They are so busy serving bad food they don’t have time to cook good food.

Because they are so busy, they don’t see the problem and the simple truth is this: Until you see the problem, you can’t fix the problem.

You can’t fix it until you see it.

It is often like that in our personal lives and in our homes.

We are so busy playing house that we don’t spend much time figuring out the kind of home we’re creating.

So today I want to ask a very important question to us: What kind of home really pleases God?

What would it be like if you were to live in or visit that kind of a home?

Take a look at our text for today.

I believe it describes an atmosphere that has been invaded by the Holy Spirit and I also believe it draws us a picture of what our homes should be like:

And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of God.

BACKGROUND

BACKGROUND

Last week we introduced the concept of being filled with the Spirit as a means to empower the decisions we make as families and discover His specific will for our lives.

This week I want to talk to you about how this filling of the Spirit should impact the very atmosphere of our homes.

I want to show you, from this text, what your home can look like and feel like that will produce the world-changing results we’ve been talking about.

But even as I do that, I realize that we’ve probably got a “kitchen nightmares” problem right off the bat.

No! I’m not talking about your spouse’s cooking!

I’m simply saying that we are prone to be so close to the struggles of our homes that we may not even be able to identify them.

And I have to say right off the bat that one of the greatest roadblocks to the Spirit-filled home could be our idea of the “Christian” home.

NEED

One of the main reasons I want to address the atmosphere of a Spirit-filled home is because I believe we have been so confused about what our homes should be like as Christ-followers.

We have thought, perhaps, that having a Spirit-filled home should be AUTOMATIC.

We’ve thought that, as long as everyone in our home was a believer, we have a Christian by virtue of that fact.

But, just as being filled with the Spirit is not automatic for a Christian, having a Spirit-filled home is not automatic either.

Some Christians may have also thought that a Christian home just has to be REALISTIC.

By “realistic,” I mean that a Christian home isn’t much different from a non-Christian home.

After all, we all have the same issues as people and the home isn’t to be a place where we work, it’s supposed to be a place where we relax.

It’s supposed to be a place where we can “drop our guard” and “be ourselves.”

We have bought into the lie that a Christian home really isn’t much different from anyone else’s.

That’s why I want you to forget about having a “Christian” home, whatever that means.

Today, I want us to focus on how we can have a Spirit-filled home.

I say that because I firmly believe that when a “Christian” home becomes a Spirit-filled home, things drastically change.

What’s that change like?

Well in the first place, in a Spirit-filled home there will be:

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In a Spirit-filled home there will be joyful worship that focuses attention.

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V19 reads, Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

In these verses you see worship.

I think it is clear from this verse that we are talking about WORSHIP here.

It says that we are speaking to each other in psalms.

This would have been the continuation of the Jewish practice of actually singing the psalms from the Old Testament.

It says that we are also speaking hymns.

These are songs of praise to God that do not necessarily repeat a Bible verse, but do express Biblically compatible praise to God.

It says that we are speaking spiritual songs.

This doesn’t refer to another type of song as it does to the source of the music.

They come from our spirit; they come from our heart.

We are talking about worship here.

When you look at these verses you see worship and . . .

In these verses you see joy.

When you look at these verses you see JOY.

The mere fact that we are singing implies joy.

Other religions have songs, I know, but there is something peculiarly Christian about singing.

The church of Christ has always been a singing church because the church of Christ is a joyful church.

In the same way, the Spirit-filled home is to be a place of joy because it is a place of worship.

When you look at these verses you see worship and joy and because you see those things you also see . . .

In these verses you see focus.

FOCUS.

V19, again, reads: Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody IN YOUR HEART TO THE LORD.

Do you see the focus?

We are focused on the Lord.

He is the object of our worship and the source of our joy.

The home is to be a place of joyful worship that focuses our attention on God.

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SLIDE - Pic - The throne of the third heaven

Over a period of twenty years, James Hampton completed this piece of art.

Through his own experience of God’s word, he created a work entitled, The Throne of the Third Heaven, depicting what he envisioned heaven to be like.

Using ordinary elements like the cardboard and plastic he found around his rented carriage house, he created the work.

He collected old furniture, jelly jars discarded light bulbs, wine bottle, aluminum foil and many other mundane items and fashioned them together using glue, tape, tacks, and pins.

The most amazing part of the story is that no one even knew about the work until after Hampton died in 1964.

When they opened his garage and found it, they found a Bible verse he had copied on the bulletin board.

It was : Where there is no vision the people perish.

He believed that people needed a vision of God’s glory, so he set out to single-handedly give it to them.

May I tell you, that is to be a picture of our homes.

They are to be places where our vision of God transforms the mundane events of life into the very throne room of heaven.

Our homes are to be a place where joyful worship focuses our attention on God.

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And I must tell you that this focus on God is critical to the kind of home we have.

I say that because of how we’re wired.