Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Introduction:

Luke 18:31-19:10 is what we have listed as the Scripture for this am.

But we’ll only dip into the story of Zacchaeus in 19.

As you’re turning there…have you heard of John Newton?

You’ve likely heard of John Newton.

He’s known as the guy who was an atheist and the captain of a slave-ship, is caught in a violent storm.

He cries out to God for rescue.

The ship is delivered and so is a young John Newton.

Upon hitting the shores of England, Newton gives up his career as a slave-trader and becomes a preacher—laboring not only to proclaim the gospel but also the abominable slave-trade in which he was involved.

Oh, and somewhere in there he also wrote a song called Amazing Grace about the whole thing.

I think that’s how most people imagine the life of John Newton.

But it was far from this.

The storm on The Greyhound was in 1748.

His slave-trading days didn’t end until 1754.

His “conversion” helped him to be nicer to the slaves but he did not consider it to be an abominable practice.

Newton, in his Authentic Narrative, doesn’t even list his participation in the slave trade on his list of grievous sins.

As one of his biographers notes, “participation in the cruelty of the slave trade did not yet seem even to trouble his conscience”.

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It was not until 1788 that Newton wrote out his Thoughts on the African Slave Trade.

Now that wasn’t the first time he considered it to be a horrible practice.

His embracing abolitionism was a slow movement.

But here is what I want you to picture for just a moment so you can feel the weight of this...

Remember that line in Amazing Grace… “I once was blind but now I see...” I’ve been saved.

I now see things as they are.

I view the world the right way now.

I no longer view Jesus wrongly, or my sin the wrong way, I’m on the right side of heaven.

He saved a wretch like me...

“Hey, buddy, let’s tighten those thumb screws that slave looks like he’s about to try to run away.”

Friends, Newton is but a slice.

Read this week of George Whitefield.

Known as one of the greatest preachers ever.

Once was blind…now he sees.

Goes to preach in the Bermudas—one of the key places where the British would steal men and women for the slave trade—and he feels the difficult of this.

Here is how Whitefield said it:

“I wanted to touch the negroes, yet not to give them the least umbrage to slight or behave imperiously to their masters".

He wanted them to hear the gospel but not in such a way that made them want to really be free.

And then he says that his text led him to speak against the Masters as well…but listen to what he says, “

Blessed be God, that I was directed not to say any thing to masters at all, though my text led me to it

The text of Scripture, if he’d have let it speak would have spoken to the slave masters.

And it would have spoken of freedom for captives.

But Whitefield, muted that, and came away with a message that slaves were supposed to be certain to obey their good masters.

I once was blind but now I see...

Last week we left off with the story of the rich man who walks away from Jesus.

And we have the disciples astonished because they thought if anybody got the kingdom, if anybody was going to be saved, then it was certainly going to be this dude.

At the end of those verses Peter, the spokesman for the group, says, “See....

That’s him saying look at this.

I’m seeing something…do you see it everyone…would you look at that?

He says, “we’ve done what that guy didn’t…we left everything.”

We once were blind but now we see...

And then Jesus says, “There is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”

It ends on a high note.

Do the disciples see?

Listen in as the story continues...

Sermon Introduction:

Did the disciples see?

What Luke is doing here is contrasting the disciples with a blind beggar.

Who can really see here?

Even before he can recover his physical sight the blind beggar can see better than the disciples.

What do we do with this?

What do we do with someone like John Newton being saved by God and then continuing to be a captain on a slave-ship?

What do we do with Whitefield, preaching revivals and yet being one of the leading causes of slavery coming to the US?

I think it’s a little like this...

A guy is driving on the interstate.

He needs to merge.

So he checks his rear view mirror, checks his side mirrors, nothing.

No cars around him.

He wakes up in the hospital because he hit a car as he tried to merge into the next lane.

What happened?

There was a car in his blind spot.

He didn’t check his blind spot....he just trusted his mirrors…and so it was costly.

The same thing, I believe, was happening with Whitefield and Newton.

It was a massive blindspot.

It’s such a big blind spot that it causes us to ask things like, “How in the world could you talk about freedom in Jesus, think you’d been redeemed, and then steal men and deny them freedom?”

That’s the same thing happening in our text here today.

I read verses 31-34 and it is baffling.

Notice the wording here that Jesus says...

Peter had just said, “See....we’ve left everything..”

Now Jesus says, “See....we are going to Jerusalem and everything that is written about the Son of Man (they’d have agreed at this point that he’s talking about himself…they got that) by the prophets will be accomplished.”

When they first hear this…when they “see” this one they get all excited.

All that the Scriptures said are going to be accomplished…you’re gonna be made a king!!!! Woohoo!!!

But that’s not what Jesus is talking about.

He proceeds to say that he is going to be “delivered over to the Gentiles…mocked…shamefully treated…spit upon....and then after being flogged…he will be killed…and on the third day he will rise”.

Is that not incredibly clear?

Like, if you close your eyes as I read through that you can probably picture something like this.

You could rehearse this.

You could maybe see the scenes in The Passion of the Christ or the Jesus movie playing through your mind.

But they are hearing this for the first time…and they cannot comprehend it.

Verse 34 says, “But they understood none of these things”.

The word there for understood means “to bring together”.

It’s the light bulb moment.

When finally it all makes sense…but they are hearing this kind of how I hear directions…you can give me 3 things…after that I just go blank.

Go this way, turn left, then turn off on the ol’ Johnson farm…that’s as far as you’ll get me…my eyes glare over and I don’t hear anything you say after that.

This is what is happening to them.

In fact, Mark tells us a little more about this story in Mark 10.

He has James and John coming to Jesus kind of cornering him.

The word that Mark uses is one that indicates they aren’t asking a question but more like cornering Jesus—getting him off to the side quietly whisphering not letting the others in on the secret…and basically asking, “Dude, if this goes really south and something happens to you…can we have your stereo”.

They start by asking Jesus to write them a blank check.

He doesn’t do it but his response is incredible.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Clearly the Son of Man did come to serve as he will say a few verses later.

He probes a bit more into their question and what he says is brilliant.

His question to them has a tendency to lay them bare.