Sermon Tone Analysis

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BY Pastor Glenn Pease
Timothy Eaton became the most successful business man in the history of Canada by the simple virtue of courtesy.
Back in 1869, when he started his first store, he instituted a new policy.
In those days a customer was almost compelled to buy something.
He was coaxed and implored, and even bullied, and insulted, if need be, to make a purchase.
If he did get out of the store without one, he was made to feel like a whipped dog running away.
Timothy Eaton said, "No more of this nonsense."
His clerks would be courteous, and let the customer shop and buy what he was convinced he wanted, and without pressure.
This new idea went over so well that his store was soon the busiest place in town, and before long he was building factories to supply his stores.
He built branches all over Canada, and when he died in 1907, he was respected the world over.
He had to have other virtues as well, but courtesy was one of the keys to his secular success.
Courtesy is a secular word that never quite got converted into a sacred word.
The result is, we seldom deal with it as a Christian virtue.
It was a royal virtue to the ancient Greeks.
It meant, to be friendly minded.
Kings were expected to be friendly to their subjects.
The Athenians considered it a virtue that should characterize every man.
The Emperor Julian, who was greatly influenced by Christians, exalted courtesy to the highest level in government.
He taught that politics and laws were to governed by this virtue.
The fact is, the New Testament is weak in promoting this virtue.
The only two people in the New Testament who are described as being courteous are pagans.
In Acts 27:3, the Roman Centurion, guarding Paul on the way to Rome, showed courtesy to Paul by letting him visit his friends.
In Acts 28:7, the pagan chief Publius was courteous to Paul, and the others who shipwrecked on his island.
Being courteous just means being nice to people, and giving them a hand in time of need, and showing them respect as human beings.
It is a basic secular and humanistic virtue.
Nobody has to be a Christian to be courteous.
Anybody can be, and almost everybody is, to some degree, and so it is a virtue greatly neglected by Christians.
It is the Apostle Paul who rescues this virtue from the domain of the secular, and brings it into the realm of the Christian life.
He does it, first of all, by making it a virtue of God.
In Titus 3:4 he uses the Greek word philanthropy, the same word used to describe the pagans courtesy to him, to describe God's love and kindness to sinful men.
This is the only place in the Bible the word is used of God, but once is enough.
God is courteous, or friendly minded toward men.
That alone puts courtesy on the theological map, but the most powerful witness of Paul to the value and validity of courtesy as a Christian virtue is his personal practice of it.
There is good reason that Paul was treated courteously by pagans.
He was reaping what he sowed.
Paul could very well have another honor added to his impressive record.
He could be considered the most courteous man in the New Testament, next to his Lord.
We know he got this courteous spirit from Christ, for he was anything but courteous before his conversion.
He threw women, as well as men, into prison, and did not hesitate to approve the stoning of an innocent man like Stephen.
The opposite of courteous is rude, rough, overbearing, and tyrannical, which fits Saul of Tarsus to a T.
But look at Paul now, in his A D spirit, that is, after Damascus.
He displays a level of courtesy that rises above the secular level.
Paul gives us a demonstration of Christian courtesy.
He exhibits this virtue in three ways.
First of all-
I. BY HIS COURTEOUS ADDRESS.
Paul actually addresses this mob with the respectable titles of brothers and fathers.
These are the same two words he uses all through the New Testament as terms of respect.
Keep in mind, they had just minutes before tried to reduce the population of Jerusalem by one, and he was the one.
They were trying to beat the life out of him.
It was no brotherly fight, or fatherly discipline.
They wanted to murder Paul on the spot.
Yet we do not hear Paul shouting at them, "You lame-brain idiots, you madmen!"
Instead, he says, "Brothers and fathers," and he says it in their tongue of Aramaic, and the crowd is shocked into silence.
They had to be surprised by both his attitude and his Aramaic.
He was addressing them like they were not his deadly enemies.
I read of a pastor who was asked to inform a man in his congregation, with a heart condition, that he had just inherited a million dollars.
Everyone was afraid the shock would cause a heart attack and kill him.
The pastor diplomatically approached the subject from a hypothetical point of view.
He said, "Joe, what would you do if you inherited a million dollars?" Joe said, "Well, pastor, I think I would give half of it to the church."
The pastor fell over dead of a heart attack.
This mad mob did not fall over dead, but there deafening noise died down so Paul could be heard.
He went on to address them in a friendly minded or courteous manner.
Why?
First of all, because it was a principle Paul lived by.
He taught it to others, and he did it himself.
He wrote in Col. 4:6, "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man."
Words are like food, and a little salt makes them more enjoyable, and people will swallow them easier.
Courtesy is just common sense.
If you talk to others with respect and kindness, they will listen with the same spirit.
If you blast them with a critical spirit, you will get the same in return.
Paul proves it here by getting the most hostile audience a speaker ever addressed to quiet down and give him a hearing.
A hearing, by the way, that has gone around the world, and through the centuries.
Because these hot heads were quiet for a few minutes, you and I, and millions of others, have studied these words they permitted Paul to speak.
Such as the power of courtesy.
We see Paul displaying this virtue over and over again, as he relates to the authorities.
He addresses the Sanhedrin in chapter 23 as, "My brothers."
He does not shout at the Roman soldiers, who are about to flog him, "You numskulls."
He simply, and very politely, asks, "Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen?" Paul shows nothing but courteous respect for Felix, Festus, and Agrippa, who sat in judgment on him.
The point is, Paul did not just write in his great love chapter, that love is patient, love is kind, love is not rude, is not easily angered, but he demonstrated that love by revealing how it works in relation to real people who are not easy to love.
Paul was not only acting on a principle he lived by, he was motivated to be curious, kind, tactful, diplomatic, and just generally friendly minded, because he sincerely loved people.
He was not interested in revenge, and getting even with the Jews.
His goal was not self-defense for his own sake.
He was not concerned about his reputation, but about their redemption.
If he did not care about these people, he would have walked away, or gotten into a verbal bout, and called them names, and told them to go to the devil.
But Paul is courteous, and addresses them with respect, because he wants them to understand that Jesus is their Savior.
Paul tells us just how deeply he feels in Romans 9:1-3.
"I speak the truth in Christ-I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit-I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel."
When you love people as deeply as Paul did, you can treat them with respect, even if they are killing you.
Jesus did this, and prayed, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."
Stephen did this, and prayed as he was being stoned, "Lord do not hold this sin against them."
So Paul here addresses those who just fought to get close enough to pound the life out of him, "Brothers and fathers."
It can safely be said, those to whom you cannot be courteous are those for whom you do not care.
If you care, and you love, you can be courteous even to those who hate and despise you.
Pagan courtesy does not rise to this level.
This is Christlike, and, therefore, Christian courtesy.
But Paul does not stop with a courteous address.
We see that he extends the virtue-
II.
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