Sermon Tone Analysis

John 8:48-59

Introduction

This morning, we are going to finish up our series on the core truths and commitments of the Christian faith by looking at how we can honor Christ in the world that we live in today.

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that there are very few things that are sacred in our society.

And to some degree, the contemporary church is at fault.

Often times the way we approach worship and the way that we live out our relationship to Christ is less than honoring, less than respectful of who He is and what He has done.

We often laugh with the world as they dishonor Christ and the notion of living to bring him glory and honor has become a foreign concept to many Christians.

Jesus is seen as this doting figure, that solely exists to console us, to make our lives comfortable, and to help us deal with our guilty conscience.

Without even being aware of it, God exists for my glory and not the other way around.

And this has been disastrous for the health of the modern church and ultimately our witness to the world has become incredibly weak.

(If we will not honor Christ, how can we expect them to take Christianity seriously.)

Early in my growth as a Christian, I was taught to study the biographies of men and women whose walk with Christ made a difference in the world.

John Piper has whole series of messages entitled “Of whom the world was not worthy” where he chronicles the stories of some of the most important people in church history.

And you’ll notice that as you go through their life stories, there is a common thread that ties them all, each one of them, regardless of situation, culture, or time in history understood what it meant to honor Christ in their generation.

A great example of this can be found in the life of Henry Martyn.

He was a missionary to the Muslims in the 1800s and one day he was presented with the image of Christ kneeling before Mohammed because the Muslims had just killed hundreds of Russian Christians.

Henry Martyn became stricken in his heart and when someone asked him what was wrong, these were his words, “I could not endure existence if Jesus was not glorified; it would be hell to me if he were always so dishonored.”

In this passage, we can readily see how the world continues to dishonor Christ and through that we see how we can practically honor Christ in our day to day.

The three ways to honor Jesus are:

To stand firm in the truth of His word

To rejoice in our relationship with Him

To live out of holy reverence for Him

Each of these points can rightfully be a message of their own but I do want to give us a broad picture of how we can exalt Christ in both our private and public lives.

The place that we all need to start is keeping his word, which would include knowing it, living it, and when necessary defending it.

I want to focus in on this last part because I know that in our current political and social climate, it is so much easier to remain quiet about our beliefs and to not hold a strong positions on matters of faith and ethics.

When I first moved up to the Bay Area, I immediately felt this reluctance to share certain aspects of Christianity that I judged to be offensive.

I was perfectly fine letting people know that I was a Christian and even a pastor of a church and I reasoned to myself that was enough of a witness.

I though, at least I’m not like those other undercover Christians who never reveal their identity.

But I found myself getting into some awkward conversations that seemed to warrant a stronger response than simply identifying myself as a Christian.

For example, I remember going on a field trip with my daughter’s school as a chaperone and I started up a conversation with one of the other parents.

And generally these conversations lead to the questions of what brought you to San Francisco and what kind of work do you.

So I told her that our family came up to start a church in the city and I’m the pastor.

From there I asked her if she went to church and she shared that she occasionally went to this Episcopal church for mediation and to spend time in their garden.

I then asked her what she liked about the church and she said, “I like the fact they don’t push any one religion, you can believe whatever you want and find your own path to God.”

To use a baseball analogy, this was a fastball right down the middle.

It was a perfect opportunity to ask her if she had ever considered that there might just be just one way to God but I completely froze.

For some reason those words would not come out of my mouth and all I ended up doing was nodding politely.

That evening and for weeks after, it killed me that I had missed a clear chance to be able to share the gospel.

Now, I have heard enough messages about not being ashamed of Christ to be pretty motivated to be open about my beliefs but there is something in the religious climate in the Bay Area that makes it incredibly difficult for Christians to stand firm in the truth.

And here is what I believe is the main reason in a nutshell.

In a place that sees truth as largely relative, the pursuit of truth is not only unimportant, it is greatly discouraged.

And the way that it is discouraged is through one unspoken rules that seem to govern everything that we say and do.

The new golden rule in our society is that intolerance is the greatest evil.

But there is a problem in that that we fail to realize that there is no such thing as a completely tolerant society.

There are lines we need to draw in terms of what we tolerate and what we refuse to tolerate.

For example, we should not tolerate pedophiles and rapists and for the good of society, that type of behavior cannot be tolerated.

If I said, every sex offender should be appropriately punished, no on would charge me of intolerance although that is in effect what I am being.

Therefore, it is an unavoidable fact of life that every society has to draw lines of the things they will tolerate and things that they will not.

Tolerance is the greatest good

Intolerance is the greatest evil

In this post-modern, post-Christian socio- political climate, those lines are being drawn arbitrarily on people’s opinion.

In fact, the only thing that it seems we will not tolerate is anything we judge to be intolerant.

Remember I had mentioned that the unspoken rule of our society is that intolerance is considered the greatest evil, the unforgivable sin.

If you screw up even one time with a racist, sexist, or homophobic comment, you are shunned as a pariah of society.

Now I am completely in favor of less racism, sexism, and homophobia in our world but not when that end is achieved through lies, coercion, and manipulative force.

(That will never change a person’s heart.)

For all the short term gains that we have made in the areas of race, gender, and sexuality, it has come at the sacrifice of the very things that can help change the hearts of people and that is the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the pursuit of truth.

The right to be able to freely exchange ideas without the fear of reprisal is the pillar on which the Western Christian ideal of tolerance was born out of.

DA Carson in his thoughtful but somewhat boring book on the evolution of tolerance points out that:

The classic definition of tolerance is to accept the right for people to have different views and opinions from your own.

(A quote that is attributed to Voltaire illustrates this classic view of tolerance.

“I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death, you’re right to say it.”

The new definition of tolerance is the acceptance of different views and opinions (as being equally valid and as right as your own).

It is a subtle change but an incredibly important one because to judge another’s person’s belief is tantamount to intolerance.

You can no longer disapprove of another person’s viewpoint on politics, ethics, or religion with one key exception and that is when it has been deemed that a viewpoint is intolerant.

The charge of intolerance has become the gatekeeper of our society and it is what Carson call’s the defeater belief.

Once something is categorized as intolerant in the public conscience, it is no longer up for meaningful public discourse because anything that is considered intolerant is quickly dismissed as evil and untrue.

People may be listening to you politely but inside they think you are dead wrong or ignorant or worse.

And increasingly it is the Christian views on religion and ethics that have fallen under the label of intolerance and in the greatest of hypocrisy, it has become okay to punish Christianity with ridicule and vitriol that is not permissible against any other group.

For example, in a public safety drill for active shooters, the Burlington Police Department in New Jersey depicted the terrorists as Homeschooled Christian Fundamentalist.

There was a little of frustration expressed by some local churches but it died down very quickly.

Could you imagine if the mock terrorists in this drill were depicted as turban-wearing Islamic jihadists?

The outcries of intolerance and Islamaphobia would have reverberated around the country until someone was fired.

The inconsistency of this new tolerance is growing everywhere.

Let me give you one more example.

Duke University, which was founded as a Methodist University, had a long standing tradition of giving all their graduates a copy of Bible at the graduation service.

But because some Jewish faculty and students considered this to be offensive, there was a protest and the school ended the practice in the late 1990’s.

Dennis Prager, a conservative Jewish talk show host, called out his fellow Jews with these words:

One of the best words to describe this attitude is actually a Hebrew/Yiddish one - chutzpah.

Another word might be ingratitude.

We American Jews are probably the most fortunate Jews in Jewish history.

We live the freest, most economically secure lives in Jewish history in a country that not merely tolerates our religion, but has always honored it.

And who made such a country possible?

Men and women, nearly all of whom were Christian, who regarded Judeo-Christian values as the basis of this society, even as many of them fell short of these values.

Brothers and sisters, we should not forget that Christianity was forged out of the evils of intolerant religion as well as an intolerant Roman empire.

I think it is sufficient say that our Savior knows firsthand the pain and the evil of real intolerance and against those evils, he has taught us how to be tolerant, “Love your enemies, pray for them.”

Win them over with the truth of his word because is the only thing that can change a person’s heart.

Jesus is the most idealistic realist that I have ever seen.

He knows that every society will be comprised of those who we consider our friends, and those who we would consider our enemies.

The key to a truly tolerant society is to love our enemies as if they were our friends, and to pursue the truth with kindness and civility.

In the face of this hostile and intolerant crowd, he stood firm on the fact that His knowledge came from God and that His charge was to keep his Father’s word.

That is the example that we are called to follow!

Now what does this have to do with honoring Christ?

Well, the polar opposite of honoring someone is being ashamed of them.

(Makes sense, it you are ashamed to be connected to someone, it becomes one of the clearest forms of dishonor.)

In the Gospels, Jesus extends the warning against being ashamed of Him to also include being ashamed of His words.

D. A. Carson.

The Intolerance of Tolerance (Kindle Locations 953-956).

Kindle Edition.

I had heard enough messages out of the gospels to know that being ashamed of Christ came with a frightening warning.