Sermon Tone Analysis

! Introduction

I turned 25 the month I started as pastor in The Pas, Manitoba.

I had the affirmation of my home church to be a pastor and I had a piece of paper from seminary that said I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t.

Today I still have affirmation from the church and I still have that piece of paper and I also have 33 years of experience, but often I still don’t know what I am doing.

Two weeks ago I challenged you to servanthood when I spoke about those things which motivate us to servanthood.

I hope that you were motivated to servanthood but I suspect that perhaps you were also thinking, “What can I do when I just don’t have what it takes?”

Paul was responding to criticism in the first letter to the Corinthians and was fully aware of all the things which made him less than adequate for the task.

Many of us are aware of our weaknesses and we wonder, “How is it possible to serve a holy, perfect God when we are inadequate and even sinful?”

In spite of our imperfection and inability God does great things through us when we offer ourselves humbly to Him and trust Him.

When that happens, the glory goes to God because it is evident that it is not our power which has accomplished these things.

This morning I want to speak about serving from weakness in order to encourage all of us to offer ourselves to God with what we have and what we don’t have, and trust God to equip and use us in spite of our weaknesses.

The goal of this message is to encourage each of us to give ourselves to God in service just as we are.

!

I.                   I Am Weak, But You Are Strong

The hymn “Just a Closer Walk” includes the phrase, “I am weak but thou art strong.”

That is the place we will begin as we recognize the many ways in which we are weak, but as we also recognize that God is strong and that in fact offering ourselves to God even in our weakness is very important.

!! A.                 I Am Weak

Acts 13:22 identifies David as a man after God’s own heart.

What puzzles us is that there were many ways in which David did not obey God.

For example, we know that David committed adultery and then to cover up the adultery, because the woman with whom he committed adultery became pregnant, he conspired to murder her husband.

How could he be a servant of God with that sin in his life?

One of the ways in which we are weak is that we sin.

Even though we have had our sins forgiven, even though we desire to walk in holiness, we also know that we still sin.

How can we faithfully and adequately serve God when we are imperfect?

How can we represent Christ to a fallen world when we are sinners?

How can our church be a light to Christ in the world when it is full of hypocrites?

How can we adequately tell our children that they need to follow Jesus when they see that we don’t always follow Jesus?

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is seeking to give aboriginal people an opportunity to speak about the ways in which they have experienced abuse by the church and by the government and one of the things that it will reveal is that the church of Jesus Christ is imperfect.

And it will not do to say that that is true of other churches, but we have it right, we are better than other churches.

You know and I know that that is not true.

Our church is also not perfect.

We are weak because we are imperfect.

We are also weak because we don’t have the ability to do what we are required to do.

When God called Moses at the burning bush, he identified a feeling we often have when he said, “I can’t do it; I am not a good speaker.”

When God asked Jeremiah to prophecy to Israel, he tried the same excuse.

How many of us have used the same excuse?

Who is adequate to the task God has called us to do?

Charles Spurgeon is known as one of the greatest preachers of the 1800’s.

He accomplished a great deal in his writing and preaching.

I have books today that he wrote that I use in my study.

But he was a man who had delicate health and suffered from depression and gout.

Paul writes in Galatians 4:13, "As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you."

Another area of weakness which hinders us from accomplishing much is that we suffer from illness.

Ultimately, we are all terminal.

It puzzles me sometimes that young people have all the energy to accomplish great things, but lack experience; yet older people who have the wisdom of experience begin to diminish in their ability to do all they could in their youth.

So all of us suffer in one way or another from the weakness of our physical bodies.

On top of that we sometimes lack the courage to do what we are called to do.

In Galatians 2:12 we read of Peter’s lack of courage, ”Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles.

But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.”

If we read through much of Paul’s writing we see many examples of the weaknesses he suffered from and was aware of.

He puts it eloquently in 2 Corinthians 4:7 when he says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay…” The treasure of the gospel is great.

We are not great.

We are jars of clay.

We are inadequate morally, inadequate in our ability, in our physical strength and in our courage.

Now we need to be careful that we do not use weakness as an excuse for failing to live holy lives or not taking care of our bodies or not developing our skills to the best of our ability.

But we need to recognize that this is a reality.

We are weak!

!! B.                 You Are Strong

But God is not limited by our weakness.

In Ephesians 3:7, 8 Paul says, "I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.

Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ…” Why did Paul see himself as “less than the least of God’s people?” Probably one reason was that he had been a persecutor of the church.

We read in 1 Corinthians 15:9 “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Yet God was not limited by Paul’s sinful background.

God chose Him in spite of this to be His servant and even an apostle.

When Moses tried to excuse himself from the assignment God had for him by claiming inability, God responded in Exodus 4:11, 12, “Who gave man his mouth?

Who makes him deaf or mute?

Who gives him sight or makes him blind?

Is it not I, the Lord?

Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

God can take our inability and empower it by His Spirit to accomplish His purposes.

Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 2:4, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power…”

God is also not limited by our physical weakness.

One great example of that is Abraham of whom it says in Romans 4:19, “…his body was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.”

Yet God gave them the ability to conceive and so accomplish His purposes.

Even Jesus was not limited by leaving heaven, by taking on human form and even by dying.

God is not limited by our physical limitations!

God is also not limited by our fear.

Jeremiah was encouraged by God in Jeremiah 1:8, 9, "Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘Now, I have put my words in your mouth.’”

And so we see that God overcomes our weakness.

Paul says in II Corinthians 13:4, “For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power.

Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you.”

!! C.                 The Necessity of Weakness

God’s power is greater than our weakness, but there is even more to it than that.

When we study weakness and service in Scripture we find that serving in spite of our weakness is necessary and has some important reasons for it.

!!! 1.                 Teaches Us Dependence

Over and over again in Scripture we find that when people become confident of their own ability or when they are wealthy and powerful they depart from God and don’t follow Him.

In II Chronicles 26:16 we read about one of the kings of Israel.

It says, "But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall.

He was unfaithful to the Lord his God…”

            The same kind of attitude happened to Jacob.

He began with a very strong self image and his early life is a story of a man who, although he was a servant of God, thought he could accomplish the work of God by his own conniving and strategy.

It wasn’t until he met God at the river Jabbok and was weakened that he recognized that he could accomplish nothing apart from the blessing of God.

Paul also acknowledged that the “thorn in the flesh” was given to him to keep him from becoming conceited.

We read about this in 2 Corinthians 12:5–10 where Paul reveals the powerful lesson he learned from this experience to the point that he hears God saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Paul learned the lesson for he goes on to say, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

This is an extremely important and powerful lesson.

I look at it from several points of view.

First of all it is a warning to us not to become too impressed by our own abilities.

When people affirm us or comment on how well we do it is tempting to think that we are really something.

It is a short step from there to thinking that unless we are involved in a ministry or unless we are the one who is asked to serve the thing will not be done right.