Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro
Good morning!
Before I begin, I just want to say that it is an honor to be with you all this morning.
Thank you guys and especially Pastor John and Chris for allowing me to preach this morning and trusting me to exposit God’s word with you all.
So thank you for that!
Before we dive into the word this morning, I just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself!
My name is Josh Mains, I am a spry 21 years old, and I have the great privilege of being able to lead this team.
As you’ve heard already, we are YouthQuest, a youth ministry team from Liberty University.
We’ve had the opportunity to be here this weekend and serve alongside the students of this church.
A quick history about YouthQuest, we are actually the oldest ministry team at Liberty, serving for over 40 years!
It started as a choir back in 1981, and over the years has evolved into the team that it is today.
We now have a team full of teachers, musicians, actors and actresses, and camera wizards.
Now I don’t know if you could tell by my lack of an accent, but although I currently live in Lynchburg, I am not from here!
I am from the alright state of Connecticut.
For those of you who don’t know what Connecticut is, it’s the state that caused Florida!
I guess people got so tired of constantly warming up inside during the cold winters they thought “Let’s move to Florida where we can constantly cool down inside during the blazing hot summers!”
Growing up in New England certainly shaped the way that I live.
In New England, church isn’t what it is down here.
In Virginia, there are 786 churches listed on the SBCV website.
Between the American Baptist Association of Connecticut, and Converge Northeast, there are about 135 likeminded churches in CT.
To put that into perspective, the population of CT is about 58% smaller, but, based on these numbers, has about 83% less bible believing churches.
Connecticut, and 4 of the other 5 New England states, rank as the 5 least churched states in America by Pew Research.
I tell you this because the thing we need most in New England, are leaders; faithful, Christian Leaders.
But I have good news, we’re all leaders!
God has called us all to lead something.
Now I’m not saying that you need to take your leadership and move up and being a missionary in New England (although if that’s what you want to do, let’s connect afterwards).
What I’m here to tell you this morning, is that you can lead right were you are.
I titled this sermon, “Led to Lead”.
Often times you can see someone and think, “wow they’re made to lead” or “they have the gift of leadership”.
While these both can be true, the great news is that, even if we aren’t called into leadership positions, we are still led to lead.
Before we get into the word, let’s pray.
PRAY
Open up your bible to the book of John, chapter 15; we’ll start there this morning.
But before we do that, I’m going to set up what we’re about to learn together over the next 25 or so minutes.
I’m going to give you all 5 key steps on how we are led to lead!
Each and every one of us, no matter age, male or female, stage of life…none of that plays in!
These 5 steps aren’t the end all and be all and are certainly not the only five steps, but more of a summary.
Let’s read God’s word.
We’ll be reading verse one through 8 this morning.
Here we have Jesus speaking to his disciples.
It is one of His final teachings to them before he departs.
Jesus says here that He is the “true vine”.
He says this because the illustration of a vine was often used to describe Israel, but Jesus is saying that He is the true vine, above Israel.
He tells his disciples that they are the branches of this “true vine”.
This can be applied to us, as fellow believers in Christ, that we must be a fruitful branch of the true vine.
Let’s break this down a little more.
The first three verses say: John 15:1-3
First we see here the cohesion of Jesus and Father God.
Jesus is the vine that we are to branch off from and God is the gardener that tends to the health of the vine.
We see this word “fruit” used a few times here.
The fruit is the end goal of today.
Verse 2 tells us that we, as branches, are to produce this fruit, but how do we do that?
This production of fruit is how we lead.
Before we can lead though, we must be led.
This brings me to point number one.
Now, fair warning, I really went full baptist this morning.
I told you guys I have five points for you, but what I didn’t tell you is that they all have the same form.
We’ll be looking at five “-ate” words.
Our first word and my first point this morning is:
Integrate
Before we can lead, before we can even know how to lead, we need to integrate.
We need to integrate Jesus into our lives.
In this scripture, Jesus is talking to his disciples, the people who followed him closest.
How can we lead and do as he commands if we aren’t even following Him as we should?
So how do we do this, how do we integrate Jesus into our lives?
Well, this is where those classic Sunday School answers come into play.
You know what I’m talking about.
Remember those days of sitting in Sunday School and your teacher asks you a question, but you were definitely half asleep and did not hear what she said?
We all know that there are some key words we could use that would be somewhat of an answer about 90% of the time.
When I was younger, I was that kid.
My Sunday School teacher would call on me, she’d say “Alright Josh, now that we’ve accepted Jesus into our hearts, what do we do now?”
Now since I had just woken up from my weekly Sunday morning nap I was a bit out of it.
My train of thought went, “oh gosh, where am I?” - church - then I start looking for context clues, and I see something sitting on the table in front of me - my bible - “what’s the last thing I remember happening?”
- Pray - “Okay, now what are we talking about?’ - probably Jesus.
BOOM, now just by going through the process of waking up, I have four potential answers to her question: church, bible, pray, and Jesus.
Now since I’m smart, I look at my friend next to me to tell me the answer anyway, but of course he just woke up to so he just shrugs.
So, I just pick one and say a nice overly confident, “Bible”.
And of course, my teacher, knowing full well that I had no idea what I just said, but also knowing that I’m like 7, says “Good job buddy…anyone have another answer?”
I tell you this because those 4 default Sunday School answers, are exactly how we integrate.
It starts with Jesus.
Romans 10:9-13 says this:
We continue to integrate by getting involved here at church!
This is where we find our community of believers.
This is where we are led by our pastors and our fellow believers.
Proverbs 27:17 says,
We are here to not only be sharpened and led, but to sharpen and lead others.
Then we must integrate our personal spiritual disciplines.
Spending time in God’s word and in prayer.
We have a perfect example of how we are to pray in Jesus Christ.
He prayed to God constantly and about everything, seeking His will before his own.
Our personal prayer life, is such a vital part of our walk with the Lord.
For this we have Matthew 6:5-8
Finally, we are to be in God’s word.
We are to commit our time to know and understand this book.
In Psalm 119:9-12 we see the importance of knowing God’s word.
Now that we have integrated these things into our lives, we must assimilate.
This is point number two, We must assimilate God’s word into our hearts.
This is how we are continually led.
Assimilate
This comes from John 15:4
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