Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ Scripture: 1Corinthians 13:1-3

 

If I speak in the tongues a of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, b but have not love, I gain nothing.

[1]

 

LOVE: A PARAPHRASE OF 1 CORINTHIANS 13 \\ \\ If I talk a lot about God and the Bible and the Church, but I fail to ask about your needs and then help you, I'm simply making a lot of empty religious noise.

\\ \\ If I graduate from theological seminary and know all the answers to questions you'll never even think of asking, and if I have all the degrees to prove it and if I say I believe in God with all my heart, and soul and strength, and claim to have incredible answers to my prayers to show it, but I fail to take the time to find out where you're at and what makes you laugh and why you cry, I'm nothing.

\\ \\ If I sell an extra car and some of my books to raise money for some poor starving kids somewhere, and if I give my life for God's service and burn out after pouring everything I have into the work, but do it all without ever once thinking about the people, the real hurting people-the moms and dads and sons and daughters and orphans and widows and the lonely and hurting-if I pour my life into the Kingdom but forget to make it relevant to those here on earth, my energy is wasted, and so is my life.

\\ \\ Here is what love is like--genuine love.

God's kind of love.

It's patient.

It can wait.

It helps others, even if they never find out who did it.

Love doesn't look for greener pastures or dream of how things could be better if I just got rid of all my current commitments.

Love doesn't boast.

It doesn't try to build itself up to be something it isn't.

Love doesn't act in a loose, immoral way.

It doesn't seek to take, but it willingly gives.

Love doesn't lose its cool.

It doesn't turn on and off.

Love doesn't think about how bad the other person is, and certainly doesn't think of how it could get back at someone.

Love is grieved deeply (as God is) over the evil in this world, but it rejoices over truth.

\\ \\ Love comes and sits with you when you're feeling down and finds out what is wrong.

It empathizes with you and believes in you.

Love knows you'll come through just as God planned, and love sticks right beside you all the way.

Love doesn't give up, or quit, or diminish or go home.

Love keeps on keeping on, even when everything goes wrong and the feelings leave and the other person doesn't seem as special anymore.

Love succeeds 100 percent of the time.

That, my friend, is what real love is! \\ \\ --David Sanford \\ \\

How easily impressed are you?

I have to confess that there is something about “slick” that makes me suspicious.

Whenever I think that I am being “played to”, I shrink back.

I can understand a person’s skepticism when they come to church and consider what it is that we do here.

There are so many experiences that shape what we expect and look for when we walk through these doors.

!

Why I don't attend Church

by Stephen Schwambach

 

The Evansville Press 11~/2~/96

 

In my last column I asked those of you who are unchurched if you would be willing to tell me why you don't go to church.

You were willing.

You wrote me long letters, emailed me, faxed me and left detailed messages on my voice mail.

Some of you even asked for appointments to speak to me personally.

Here's just a sampling of the earful you gave me:

 

"I'm disillusioned by Christians who are abusive to others."

"I am very much unchurched and your article intrigued me.

I was always extremely disappointed whenever I would try to go.

Sometimes I would leave before the service was over."

"I hate it when one church promotes its religion over all the others."

"[Church people are] hypocritical, smug, inflexible, self-interested, unloving, insensitive, insecure, ego-fragile, and dishonest with themselves  about it all.

[They are] narrow-minded; uninformed; insular;  petty; and fad-consumer-minded more often than not.

The more fundamentalist the church, the more these qualities evidence."

"I have never been to a church where anyone took a sincere interest in me.

The social niceties and patronizing are not appreciated without sincerity.

In that case I would as soon not be bothered."

"I am really glad to see that someone has taken an interest in the feelings of  us so-called, 'non-churched' people.

My mother-in-law is the person that is in church every time the door is open.

She is on every committee and sits in on every meeting.

But she is also the person that judges people by what they have on and gripes about being on every committee and meeting.

It is  easier to stay away from church than to sit among hypocrites like her."

\\ "When church members fuss and have arguments and split - I don't like the  turmoil.

I get more blessings at home watching TV ministry and reading my Bible and praying."

"Once we attended [names church] on a Sunday morning.

We sat in an empty area and a couple came in and talked so we could hear them.

The man remarked about someone sitting in his seat.

I was uncomfortable and I  could not enjoy the service.

We haven't been back.

I have a real good seat in  my living room and don't bother anyone there."

You told me much, much more, but that's all I have room to share, in this column.

Thank you for being so open and so honest...even when it hurt.

What can I say?

How about: I'm sorry.

In many, many cases, we've let you down.

But more than that, we've let Jesus down.

He deserves better representation than we've given you.

How about it, church-attenders...area pastors?

Should we get defensive...or should we clean house?

I don't know about you, but I'm going to go get my mop and bucket.

Once again, some insight into the first-century world is helpful as we approach what seems to be a very contemporary issue.

/ /

/Tongues.

/In the New Testament we first meet tongues in Acts 2, when on the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit welded the disciples into a new body, the church.

Not only were there miraculous signs of fire and wind but, filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples began to “speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4).

“How is it,” the observers asked in amazement, “that each of us hears them in his own native language?”

(v.

8)

 

Later, when we meet tongues in Acts, they again seem to be foreign languages (see 10:44–46; 11:17).

Coming to 1 Corinthians, we learn that the tongues-speaker himself did not understand what he was saying unless a person with the gift of interpretation explained.

Here interpretation of tongues is identified as a separate gift—a gift often possessed by a fellow believer in the congregation.

Tongues, then, was not used evangelistically in the early church to reach outsiders, but was exercised within the family, and then only when an interpreter was present to make the message intelligible to others (1 Cor.

14:28).

Nothing in this passage ruled out tongues as a valid expression of the Holy Spirit’s ministry through one of God’s children.

Instead, Paul was concerned in these chapters with putting this rather spectacular gift in perspective.

/ /

/Cultural context.

/Perspective was especially important in a place like Corinth.

It was universally accepted in the Hellenistic world that some were especially close to the gods.

Usually this closeness was supposed to be manifested by trances, ecstatic speech, and other unusual or bizarre forms of behavior.

All this was taken as evidence of special spiritual endowment.

A person with epilepsy, for instance, was said to have the “divine disease.”

The oracles at religious centers were often given drugs to provoke their utterances.

The oracle at Delphi, so prominent in the early days of Greece, breathed volcanic fumes from a cleft in the rock of the temple floor, and her unconscious mutterings were then interpreted by the priests.

It is not surprising, given this cultural perspective, that the Christians in Corinth were attracted to the gift of tongues.

Nor is it surprising that they thought of such people as especially spiritual.

But their assumptions led to real problems in the Corinthian church.

And Paul launched these chapters by challenging the assumptions carried over from paganism.

Paul’s very first words were: “Now about spiritual [gifts], brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant” (12:1).

The word “gifts” really should be placed, as I have, in brackets.