Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

The world is full of interesting stories about numbers.

For example, why does the President get a 21 gun salute.

It all began in 1776 when Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, noticed that if you add up the numbers in 1776 they come to 21.

He said to himself, why not a 21 gun salute to our President?

He submitted his idea to congress and they liked it.

It has been in use ever since.

David Barrett set out back in the 60's to find the answer to a question.

How many different Christian denominations are in the world?

He estimated that the number would be around 5000.

By the time he traveled to almost every country on earth he came up with a number exceeding 20,800.

In 1982 his massive book, World Christian Encyclopedia was published, and for 95 dollars you can find numbers for every kind of Christian in every land on the planet.

His numbers show that a decade ago there were 780 million dedicated Christians in the world, or about 18% of the world's population.

We have come along way from the day when Jesus said to His followers here in Luke 12:32, "Do not be afraid little flock."

The flock has grown to the point where Jesus the great Shepherd needs hundreds of thousands of under shepherds to keep the flock from straying.

When Jesus spoke these words His flock was indeed little.

If the second coming would have taken place shortly after the resurrection, and if Jesus would have taken His bride to heaven with Him in the ascension, it would have been just a little flock.

But Jesus died for the sin of the whole world, and His plan involves big numbers.

Peter says that the second coming is delayed because Jesus wants everyone to come to repentance.

He is not anxious to come and end the chance of millions more coming into the kingdom.

His goal will not be achieved until there are people out of every tribe, tongue and nation who are a part of His flock.

So what we have in the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New Testament is a great number paradox.

The paradox is this: God loves and chooses the small rather than the big, and yet His goal is to reach large numbers.

So which is the best-the big or the small?

The answer is both.

Of course it is impossible for two opposites to be true, but God specializes in the impossible, and the biblical facts make it clear that God's plans are always big, but His means for getting His big plans achieved are always small.

The David and Goliath battle is in God's mind all the time.

He loves to achieve big victories through small resources.

A major theme of the Old Testament is God getting His will done through the small group.

Every time God's people got to be a large flock they forsook Him and went after other gods.

He had to judge His people and reduce the flock to a faithful remnant, and then start over with that small group.

The flood story is repeated over and over with variations.

The masses are eliminated and God starts over with the few.

The tree is pruned way back, and with a few small branches God begins again.

It never bothered God to work with the small group.

It was His delight in fact, for the small group was always more faithful in responding to His will.

I can remember being captain of the team and getting to choose the people who would play.

I always went for the biggest guys first and the little guys last.

This is called the desire to win, and it is a part of my cultural conditioning.

But God is apparently un-American, for He is not so conditioned.

In fact, He leans the other way and deliberately chooses the little, the weak, and the ones least likely to win.

God says in Deut.

7:7, "The Lord did not set His affections on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples."

Now be honest, what would you think of a captain of a team who got first choice and he by passes Mr. America and chooses Casper Milktoast?

Someone trying to psychoanalyze God might conclude that he has a shrimp fixation and a fear of success, for he seems to specialize in sure losers.

After all the folly of the Old Testament you would think He would have gotten over that fixation on the inferior, but not so.

We come to the New Testament and its rerun time again.

Paul writes in I Cor.

1:26-28, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called.

Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are."

God is certainly in a rut.

He enjoys nothing better than sponsoring an underdog.

God could have chosen the Babylonians to be His people.

He could have chosen the Persians, or the Greeks, or even the Romans.

God had His choice and He could have chosen any of the great people who built world wide empires.

But instead, He chooses none of these Great Danes, German Shepherds, or Alaskan Huskies, but rather, a mere Poodle to carry out His plan in history.

If God only did this occasionally, you could say He was just experimenting, but God does this habitually.

There is no other area of life where God's ways are not man's ways more conspicuously.

Everybody except God knows this is not a good strategy.

Nobody could convince God otherwise, even though they tried.

When God came to Gideon and told him to go and save the people of Israel out of the hand of the Midianites, Gideon thought it was important to point out a flaw in this plan.

He says in Judges 6:15, "But Lord, how can I save Israel?

My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."

With any other General planning a war this would have created a crisis and an emergency meeting of the Chiefs of Staff to figure out what confounded computer error advised putting this pip-squeak in charge.

But with God it was no problem at all, but just a conformation that He had the man who met His qualifications, for he was the least likely to succeed.

Had Gideon said that he was next to the weakest God may have reconsidered replacing him with someone who was in last place, but since he was the weakest, he was God's man.

To get a job with God your resume needs to convince Him that you are the most unqualified of all the applicants, and the least likely to do the job well.

Samuel knew God's strange ways, and that is why he knew he had found the right man to be the first king of Israel when he heard Samuel respond in I Sam.

9:21, "But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin?"

Men are always using their insignificance for an excuse not realizing that from God's point of view that is their chief qualification.

Everybody who is nobody can be somebody with God.

In fact, Jesus made it a point to identify with nobodies.

He said in Matt.

25:40, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

And in verse 45 he said, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."

This preference for the little and the least was inherited by Jesus.

Like Father-like Son, and so Jesus made it clear that the value system of the New Testament is not different from that which we see all through the Old Testament.

The small is significant with God.

You can't spell it out any plainer than Jesus does in Luke 9:48.

"Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.

For he who is least among you all-he is the greatest."

Therefore, it ought not to be surprising to hear Paul, the man most considered the greatest of the Apostles, saying what he does in I Cor.

15:9, "For I am the least of the Apostles and do not even deserve to be called an Apostle..." By now, of course, we know that is what made him qualify for the job in God's eyes.

Had he deserved it he would have been passed over.

It was his being the least that made him so great.

Now the reason I have pursued this theme through the Old and New Testament is because it is a theme so contrary to our culture and the value system that guides us in our thinking, and also plays a major role in our sense of worth and self esteem.

To get a better picture of the contrast between the biblical and our cultural value system let me share with you why the bigger is better theme came to dominate the American way of life.

As a nation we have moved from a rural to an urban culture.

As people left the farms and gathered in the large cities everything went from the small to the bigger.

The small school for the few went to the large school for the whole community.

The banks got bigger; the stores got bigger; and the gas stations got bigger.

You name it, and it got bigger, and so did the churches in the big cities.

So the church just went along with the changes in the culture.

As the malls across America have developed, and bigger and bigger centers for shopping were the in thing, so church growth became the in thing.

The idea of masses of people all going to one spectacular church where every need could be met fit right in with the American way of doing things.

Nobody asked if this was the biblical ideal, for all that mattered was that it was the American way, and it was working.

People flocked to the malls and to the mega-churches.

Big was king.