Sermon Tone Analysis

STARTER QUESTIONS

Intro yourselves - names, what you do for the church.

Start by talking about how there are essentials of the faith and where there is room to have wrestle with things and have varying opinions

LEVITY/STARTER:

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1.

Is it okay for Christians to be on dating apps?

(Gray)

Let’s talk through it.

Does the bible explicitly forbid dating or dating apps?

Obviously not!

Dating did not exist then, and obviously there were no smart phones.

There were more or less arranged marriages.

You were betrothed, like a vamped up engagement, then marriage.

Romantic relationships, biblically, seem to be confined to those settings - engagement and marriage.

So it’s less about it being “okay” in the sense of “is it sinful or not,” and more a matter of “is it wise for me?”

1 Corinthians 10:23-24, 31

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial.

“I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.

24 No one should seek their own good, but the good of others. . .

31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

So in the first place, how do you date to the glory of God?

I would say, biblically, it would need to be aligned towards God’s view of romantic relationships — which is to say, moving towards monogamous, covenantal marriage.

Not giving your heart or your body to lots of people all the time.

Dating in a way that honors the other person, respects them, and their future spouse.

It also means dating in a way that you’re committed to God’s design for sexuality, which is also intended to be experienced only in the context of that covenantal relationship of marriage.

Can you date folks off a dating app to the glory of God?

Sure, but it will look different than what’s common out there.

You won’t be going on those apps for hook ups or quick flings.

You’ll be going with a different posture, looking to date in a different way, with different priorities and boundaries.

If you personally can’t use dating apps in a way that glorifies God (because of temptations or whatever else), I’d say it’s not okay for you to be on it.

—> So yes, dating apps are okay, but for you, personally, is it wise?

That’s the question you have to answer.

EXISTENCE OF GOD/FREE WILL V. SOVEREIGNTY

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2. If God created Earth and all things then what or who created God? (Daniel) -- 5 minutes

At some point there has to be a first cause, an uncreated origin.

Christianity at least provides a good answer.

Theoretical physicists point to a big bang, but don’t have an answer for what created the big bang.

I think theism makes much more sense of the world and the questions we have about where it came from.

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3. Why did God make man & Free will when Gods omniscience knew man would choose sin? // How can we be predestined but also be able to make our own choices?

(Daniel)

What do we mean by the phrase free will?

Many times we mean “absolute freedom from all external forces or limitations.”

But that’s not real free will — nobody has that kind of freedom but God.

We’re all limited — by our need for oxygen, by what our bodies can and cannot do, by the laws of the universe.

So we really are free in a sense, just not absolutely, and God is more free than we are.

If we are equally as free or more free than God, then either he isn’t really God, or maybe we’re all gods and goddesses too.

Both of those are clearly not the case, either in reality or in the way the Bible teaches us.

The Bible affirms both God’s absolute freedom to rule over his creation (his sovereignty, leading to predestination) and human freedom and moral responsibility.

It’s not a contradiction so much as it is a mystery.

God must have reasons that we don’t understand to allow man to sin even though he knew it would happen — reasons that show that this world is better than any other possible world that could have existed.

That’s probably a good segue into the next question.

EVIL/SIN/SALVATION

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4. Why does an all good (omni-benevolent) all powerful (omnipotent) god allow evil and suffering?

(Gray)

I don’t know.

Let’s move on...

I do not know the answer to this question.

I do know what the answer is not...

1) It can’t be that he isn’t really all powerful.

We established God as the sovereign creator of all things.

Once you accept that, you have to accept that He’s powerful enough to intervene and remove evil if he wants to.

Then the question becomes: Why doesn’t he?

Is he not good?

2) It can’t be that he really isn’t all good, that he doesn’t care, or that he doesn’t love us.

The climactic moment of history - of the biblical story - is when God steps into his creation in the person of Jesus, suffers unjustly, is nailed to a Roman cross, experiences the depths of betrayal and loss, dies, and is buried.

The Christian God, unlike the so called gods of other religions, is the only God who has Himself gone through suffering and come out the other side.

The whole crux of the story is based on a historically verifiable event — the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

The New Testament authors help us understand why God would do this: because he loves us.

Because he wanted to save us from evil, pain and suffering.

And that the only way to do this was to defeat the power of sin that causes all evil, pain and suffering, and to forgive us of our sins which add to the vortex of evil in the world.

So I hold onto this truth: that when I suffer or see the suffering around us in the world, that God Himself is not far off in the sky, unconcerned and unwilling - or unable - to help.

God Himself has suffered.

And He promises that there will be a day in the future where he rids the world of suffering once and for all, and wipes every tear from our eyes (how intimate that picture is from Revelation 21!), and recreates and renews and restores all that’s been broken or lost in this world.

But why does he allow it?

It must be that he has reasons that we cannot understand for allowing it.

Romans 8:28 “28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

If he is all powerful enough to allow it or stop it, if he is good enough to suffer Himself so that we can someday be freed from suffering, then I think we have to agree that he also can be wise enough to have reasons for allowing suffering that will somehow work out for our good in the end.

So we can trust Him.

What if that future world will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost?

If such is the case, that would truly mean the utter defeat of evil.

Evil would not just be an obstacle to our beauty and bliss, but it will have only made it better.

Evil would have accomplished the very opposite of what it intended.

(Keller, 117)

See what this means?

Yes, we do not know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, or why it is so random, but now at least we know what the reason is not.

It cannot be that he does not love us.

It cannot be that he does not care.

(Keller, 121)

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5. I know God doesn’t cause bad things to happen, like natural disasters.

But then when you read in the Bible about God’s discipline, especially in a book like Hebrews, it confuses me a bit.

What is the difference between God’s discipline and bad things happening because the world is full of sin? (Gray)

Great question.

I think this can work as a partial answer to the previous question as well - why God allows pain and suffering.

Here’s the passage this person is referring to:

Hebrews 12:3–11 (ESV)

3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.