Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro: Equipping
Verse for 2022 is Matt 24:13
Our job as a church is to equip the Saints
The culture has changed dramatically in the last 5 years
While the answer remains the same the questions have changed
Issues like progressivism, Critical race theory, Gender Ideology, and others have taken over the landscape
Christians are getting bombarded with claims and questions that didn’t exist 5 years ago
We want to equip you with an understanding of the topic and give you ways to address it
Same kind of different
Imagine having a conversation with a coworker or classmate and you both discover you are Christians
This makes your heart leap because of having likeminded people
You start to have conversations during breaks
You ask where each goes to church, how long they have attended
As the days pass by you start to notice some differences
At first you don’t pay attention because everyone is different
Then as you talk about what your churches are doing you realize there is something wrong
When they talk about their church they talk about inclusivity, righting the social wrongs, and blessing services on things that shouldn’t be blessed
There is never talk about reaching people for Jesus or discipleship
You bridge the subject by bringing up a scripture in the Bible and they say “The Bible isn’t all true, it’s God’s ideas through man’s mistakes.”
They go on saying that the god they believe in would never send their son to die for others because that would be divine child abuse
They believe Jesus was a rebellion leader against oppression from Rome and he died a martyrs death and wasn’t resurrected
It’s at that moment you realize you aren’t anything alike
How do you talk with these people?
What do you say when they bring up these claims?
I want to address some of the major issues with progressive Christianity and give you evidence to back up your beliefs
What is Progressivism?
Progressive Christianity is making inroads to the evangelical church
It started taking over Mainline churches in the early 1900’s and completed the takeover in the 1990’s
Now we are starting to see it infiltrate typical conservative churches
What is progressive christianity?
They Don’t Want to Be Defined
What you need to understand is that they don’t want to be defined because that’s what they rail against the traditionalist churches and they want to evolve with the culture
Comes from the idea “To make progress”
Its a thinking of building and moving on from old ways
Ascend to a Higher Learning
Most progressives hold to the idea that they have ascended to a Higher learning and thinking and only the enlightened have realized it
Christian Infancy
You wouldn’t expect a brand-new baby to know everything when he is full-grown.
Why would we expect people of a newborn religion to have the same understanding they would have two thousand years later?
Know more than first century Christians because of better understanding of God's Word and lived experience
They don’t take into account eye-witness accounts and the move of the Holy Spirit
3 Progressive terms
Lived Experience:
Personal knowledge about the world gained through direct, first-hand involvement in everyday events rather than through representations constructed by other people.
I was abused in a church
I don’t agree with all of the Bible because I have a loved one who is gay and they are a good person and no god I believe in would send them to hell
The church needs to do more for the poor, destitute, and homeless
Deconstruction
Tearing down of one’s faith and beliefs
Immanuel Kant
The problem with deconstruction is that it gives you the satisfaction of tearing down all things you don’t like but leaves you with the feeling of hopelessness because nothing is left standing
Example: Demo day on HGTV
Social Justice:
Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.
Starts with building wells for tribes in Africa and feeding the homeless in major cities
Turns to activism on issues like gender, race, and
History (Nothing New Under the Sun)
Agnostics
Gnosis means knowledge
Jesus didn’t come to die for our sins but to impart special knowledge
The only real sin is ignorance
Progressives believe the same thing
This is why they treat you like you are stupid when you disagree with them, because they have a higher knowledge
Anti-Supernaturalism
The Enlightenment dominated the 17th & 18th Century
Science and Reason ruled thought
This affected the field of theology because some prominent German theologians began to deny the supernatural acts by Jesus
This was mainly directed at the resurrection but applied to his miracles
Their reasoning was that Science proved and denied the possibility of miracles
These “myths” helped early believers to keep the faith
They started to emphasize Jesus’ moral teachings
Liberalism
In 1920 these theologians came to America and caused a split in churches
Liberalism was born because they wanted to focus on doing good deeds and taking care of the oppressed
Note: This was the same time that socialism and marxism of places like Germany and Russia were taking hold
Those are atheistic beliefs and Christians tried to mold the two together
They denied the inerrancy of Scripture
Social Justice vs. Fundamentalism
In the 1940’s & 1950’s there was a major pushback and it created the fundamentalist churches
These churches held to infallibility of the Bible
Emergent Church
Liberal and fundamental churches stayed apart until the early 2000’s
The Emergent church appeared
Wanting to be relevant with the culture it started to deconstruct everything about the church
It became more about community than congregations, feelings over truth
The emergent church was enveloped into the liberal church and became the progressive church
Three Areas of Difference:
Bible
Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible, inerrant word of God
We believe that the Bible was given to men by God and that it is the same today as was back then.
There are no errors
Progressives believe that the Bible is an ancient document of what Jews and Christians believed about God
You have to look real hard to find the word of God in it
It’s up to you to decide what parts work for you
They also claim that there thousands of errors and we don’t have the original documents
Textual Criticism
This is the discipline that helps us verify and determine ancient documents like the Odyssey, Plato, and the Bible
Copying the early letters
Earliest is a fragment of John
Size of a credit card and dates 50-100 from original
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