Sermon Tone Analysis

Message

So why the 5?

Over the last few months since we launched this experience in February, we have learned much about how to build a community by millennials, for millennials.

Many of you have given us your feedback along the way, and we’ve been intently listening to you, alongside the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to determine the purpose and direction for the next season of the 5pm.

Tonight, I want to share with you where and how we believe Jesus wants to lead the young adult community of our church for the sake of the city.

My goal tonight is threefold and very simple:

First, over the next half hour, I’m going to answer the question: Why the 5? I want you to know with extreme clarity why this 5pm experience matters so much to our Senior Pastor… to our 5pm leadership team… to our 5pm Community Leader team... to our church… to our city… and ultimately, to Christ and his Kingdom.

Second, I want you to leave here tonight with a memorable, portable, and compelling vision for why we’re doing what we’re doing here at the 5pm so that you can then, in turn, share this community with anybody, anytime, anywhere... because as we’ll hear tonight, this community was meant to be shared.

It’s for you... and It’s also for the city.

Third, I want you to leave here tonight with clarity on how you personally can further set your roots into this 5pm community and bear the good news of Jesus Christ "to a city and a generation who feel destined to live alone, together.”

- Alison Sher

Every generation faces its own unique challenge, and loneliness seems to be ours.

Alison Sher, a Millennial sociologist writes, “I see a generation that is collectively coming to terms with the existential truth that humans are a species that will forever be alone, together.”

Loneliness is a stark reality for many young adults.

Loneliness always feel apparent.

It doesn’t sit quietly in the backseat of our lives.

Rather, loneliness often feels like gasping for air.

It’s desperate.

It’s despairing.

It’s our truth.

Perhaps no other generation in history has experienced this more than those of us in our 20s and 30s.

Connected, but alone.

Well put together, but desperate.

This 5pm experience is our church’s response to this generation’s unique challenge: loneliness.

And perhaps no other narrative from the Bible offers such a compelling vision for this moment of time in which we live right now than a shadow moment from the history of Israel, as recorded in the book of 2 Kings chapters 6 and 7.

Follow along with me as we begin in 2 Kings chapter 6, verse 24, page ? in the Bible located at the seat back in front of you.

The author of 2 Kings begins this narrative with some assumptions that the reader knows about certain names and places, so let me encourage you not to feel snagged by what you don’t know.

Instead, ask yourself this question: how might our city and the lives of your friends and colleagues compare with the circumstances of Samaria?

Keep that question in the back of your mind, because the connecting circumstances may not be so obvious, but the answer to this question may surprise you.

Beginning in chapter 6, verse 24, the author records:

24 Some time later, however, King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and besieged Samaria.

Fact, this happened in history.

25 As a result, there was a great famine in the city.

The siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty pieces of silver, and a cup of dove’s dung sold for five pieces of silver.

At first reading, like I said, the circumstances between their world and ours don’t readily connect.

Anyone recently buy a donkey’s head?

All we know is that "sometime later" after some set of prior circumstances, the King of a nation called Aram located to the northeast of Samaria mustered his army and laid siege to Samaria, the capital city of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

Now, some of you might be wondering: “What is a siege?”

A siege is a military blockade against a fortified place that prevents any resource from going into or any waste from coming out of that place.

At the time, a siege was one of the most effective offensive war tactics that an army could employ against their enemy.

It quite literally strangled the life out of a city to the point of surrender.

And a siege could literally last for years depending on the size and resources of that besieged city.

For a conquering nation with time and patience, though, sieges minimized death tolls and supplies and almost always resulted in defeated surrender.

Kings from the each one of the surrounding nations coveted Samaria.

It was a beautiful, fortified city on a hill with lush land surrounding it.

In fact, Samaria had been unsuccessfully besieged numerous times.

It’s size and supply chain, as well as its geographical advantages, outlasted each one of those sieging armies.

Except this one, at least it seems.

Some scholars estimate that King Ben-hadad’s army laid siege to Samaria for seven years, causing severe famine on the land, economic destruction, disease, chaos and disorder.

In fact, the people within the city gates had become so desperate for food that a donkey’s head sold for 80 pieces of silver.

[show pic of donkey]

Anyone care to feast on that ugly face?

Obviously, no human being would ever want to eat the head of this thing, but furthermore, God’s law forbade it.

According to Leviticus 11:4, the law of Moses commanded for God’s people not to eat such animals.

The Ryan paraphrase of this verse says, “Don’t eat donkeys, because “they nastay!”

Imagine being so desperate, so full of despair, so hungry that you would cash out the modern day equivalent $1324.80 to eat a part of an animal that no one eats, let alone a work animal forbidden to eat by the law of God.

Ever feel so desperate?

Physically?

Emotionally desperate?

Relationally desperate?

Spiritually desperate?

Desperate for that gasp of air to quench your loneliness.

For that glimpse of purpose...

For that rush of love...

Ever feel so desperate that no cost seemed too great to get some relief?

Yeah, me too.

I don’t think anyone gets past young adulthood without feeling desperate.

In this shadow moment of Israel’s history, there was no relief to be had for Samaria.

They were in the thick of it with no hope of overcoming it.

Only a dim reality shared by those confined within the city gates who were coming to terms with the existential truth themselves that they were destined to die alone within a city on the brink of total annihilation.

Do you think any of one of God’s people living in Samaria at the time believed there was any good news left for them in this world?

Ask yourself:

Do you believe that there is any good news to be had by you?

How about your friends and colleagues?

Do you believe there is any good news for our city?

Or what about for our generation?

Sometimes I lay awake at night imagining about young adults who don’t believe there’s any good news for them other than some idea about success as defined by the loudest influences of our culture, which typically amounts to sex and money in some way shape or form.

But is that all?

That can’t be all!

Part of the calling on our community is to ask the question:

What would life mean for young adults who didn’t:

1. Feel alone

2. Equate intimacy with shame.

3. Choose the dollar over character

4. Work dissatisfied

5. Feel insignificant

6. Feel haunted by their past

7. Live imprisoned by their failures

8. Envision a dim future for themselves

Ultimately, each one of us know how desperation ends, and the question this narrative begs us to ask is:

What is good news for a desperate generation?

Your answer to that question is your answer to: “Why the 5?”

What is good news?

Here, the author helps us answer just that question through the eyes of a group of unsuspecting dudes, beginning in chapter 7, verses 3 through 9:

3 Now there were four men with leprosy sitting at the entrance of the city gates [to Samaria].

“Why should we sit here waiting to die?” they asked each other.

4 “We will starve if we stay here, but with the famine in [Samaria], we will starve if we go back there.

So we might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army.

If they let us live, so much the better.

But if they kill us, we would have died anyway.”