Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

The things that can go wrong in Christian service could fill an encyclopedia.

Tal Bonham has recorded just a few.

A note in the bulletin said, "Ladies don't forget the rummage sale.

It is a good chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house.

Bring your husbands."

He tells of a pastor who preached on Samson, and unknowingly called him Tarzan through the whole sermon.

Another pastor, when he asked, who had special prayer requests to raise their hands, had his mind on the previous business meeting, and he said, "All those opposed, same sign."

Another pastor introduced the new choir director by saying, "We are delighted he is coming to lead us in our sinning."

Even Billy Graham has made his occasional slip of the tongue.

The police chief of Memphis, Tenn.

asked him to help promote their traffic safety campaign.

So Graham pointed to the large neon sign which said 150 days.

"You see that sign," he said, "That means that there has been 150 days without a fertility."

His mistake was not a fatality, but it was terribly embarrassing.

Several world renowned clergymen almost fell off the platform in hysterics.

Chuck Swindoll preaching on Joshua at Jericho meant to say, "They circumscribed the wall," but it came out, "They circumcised the wall."

It brought the house down.

The point is, you have got to be an optimist to believe God can use such a fallible creature as man to accomplish His will on earth.

Paul was just such an optimist, and the main message of his letter to the Philippians is that everyone who is a believer in Jesus Christ is obligated to be an optimist.

Paul says, "Rejoice in the Lord always," and just in case you didn't hear, he says it again, "and again I say rejoice."

Pessimism is one of the greatest sins of the Christian, and Paul fights that negative spirit in this letter.

It is a sin for a Christian to be ever gripping, complaining, and grumbling.

Behind every silver lining some Christians can find a dark cloud.

Their pessimism becomes a bad habit.

It is like swearing.

Some people do it so often they don't even realize they are doing it.

So it is possible to think negative so often that you don't even realize you are being a pessimist.

Like the persistent pessimist who grumbled to his neighbor, "My hen hatched out 12 chicks, and all of them died but 11."

The negative had distorted a positive reality into a negative feeling.

This habitual focus on the negative leads to the unconscious prayer of the pessimist-"Give us this day our daily dread."

If you are going to focus your attention on the problems of life, then anyone can be a pessimist, for problems are part of every life, and Paul the optimist was no exception.

He was not writing this letter of joy from his yacht in the Mediterranean, or from a luxury villa in Rome.

It was written from a prison, and not from the warden's office either, but from the dungeon.

He was there unjustly for serving his Lord, and blessing people with the good news of the Gospel.

Yet, out of this unfair and unjust suffering Paul does not fire off a bitter letter of anger, but a letter of joy and optimism about the church and God's plan for it.

This optimistic letter has been used of God to comfort, encourage, and challenge Christians all through history to be optimists in a fallen world.

Gene Daille, the great French expositor told of how deeply the Indians of the new world were impressed by the white man's ability to put marks on a piece of paper, and then convey it to another at a great distance, and thereby, bear a message to them.

Letters were magic to them.

It is marvelous to us too when you think of it.

By means of letters the Apostle Paul, long dead, can go on speaking to the church all over the world, and urge them to rejoice always, and be incurable optimists.

Paul was the first in a long line of Christian writers who wrote Christian literature in prison that influenced the church to be optimistic in spite of problems.

We have to face this reality, however.

Paul had more reason to be optimistic about the Philippians than other churches to which he wrote.

We need to see honestly that Paul had a different relationship with this church then other churches.

There was a loving friendship here that was not the case with others.

He had to scold and blast the Corinthians, and focus on their many defects in ways that do not happen in this letter.

Paul Rees, the one time great Twin City preacher, wrote, "Philippians gives us a Paul we do not see, for example in Galatians or Corinthians.

It is natural that we wonder if the theologian has not been swallowed up in the friend.""

Professor David Smith calls it, "The sweetest and tenderest thing to be found in all of Paul's correspondence."

The only church Paul ever accepted a gift from was this church of Philippi.

They supplied him many times, and he writes in 4:16, "For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid again and again when I was in need."

William Barclay, the great New Testament scholar, wrote, "Paul was closer to the church of Philippi than to any other church."

Listen to his loving terms in 4:1, "Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends!"

In one verse they are called his brothers, the ones he loves, his joy, his crown, and his friends.

Here are 5 terms of endearment in one verse.

So let's do a reality check, and face the facts.

You are more likely to be an optimist when you are dealing with people you love, and who love you, then with people who rub you the wrong way, and irritate you by their indifference or opposition.

The fact that Paul is most optimistic with those he most loves and enjoys makes it clear that relationship is a key factor in the degree of your optimism about people.

Your optimism about God and His plan should not be affected.

That should be on a high degree of intensity no matter what.

But on the human level the degree of optimism is determined by the level of Christian love that exists between Christian people.

One of the reasons Paul had such a good relationship with this church is because it was mainly Gentiles, with only a few Jews, and so his enemies who poisoned the minds of people against him did not have much of a foundation in this church.

There were only a handful of Jews, for when Paul first came to Philippi there was even a synagogue, but the people met by the river.

Lydia, a Gentile, was converted, and the church met in her home.

Then the Philippian jailer and his family were converted, and he too was a Gentile, and so the church had few people that Paul's enemies could confuse.

In chapter 3 Paul still has to warn them about the Jewish legalist who would take them back to the law, but it is a small part of his letter compared to others.

So we see that where Christians are on the same wavelength as to theological convictions, there will be greater peace, joy, and optimism.

Paul is writing as a Christian friend, and not as a theologian.

The valuable lesson to see in all of this is that Christians are like anyone else when it comes to relationships.

When they have good ones there is joy and positive vibes.

If there is conflict and disagreement over theology and values, there can be a wall that makes friendship difficult if not impossible.

That is why you have Christians who are friends, and Christians who are only acquaintances.

Then you have Christians that you will not even bother to get to know better until heaven.

There we will all be able to love everyone in the body, just as Christ does.

Until then, like Paul, we will have better relationships with some than with others.

God used the bad things that happened to Paul in Philippi to bring forth good, and so every memory of even his bad times made him joyful.

He was harassed by the demon possessed girl; he was arrested, beaten, and thrown in prison, but God used all of this to lead the Philippian jailer and his family to Christ.

It was a bad day in the life of Paul, with a lot of rejection and pain, but in the end it was one of the best days of his life, for a whole pagan family was now in the kingdom of God, and a part of the Philippian church.

Paul was an optimist about what God could do with a day where all was going wrong.

He could say amen to the poet who wrote-

The inner side of every cloud

Is bright and shining.

I therefore turn my clouds about,

And always wear them inside out

To show the lining.

Paul did not pretend that all the bad stuff was good.

Just because God used all the bad to lead to a good end did not make the bad good or right, and so even when it was all over, and the Philippian jailer and his family were baptized, and the officials came to release Paul and Silas from the jail, Paul protested the injustice of what had been done.

He demanded that the magistrates who put them in prison come and apologize for their unjust decision.

Paul did not say that it was okay because God used it for good.

It was still wrong, and a bad decision.

It was an injustice that needed to be corrected, and not merely forgotten because God used it for good.

This is important to see, so that we can recognize there is more than one kind of optimist.

Wrong and evil and injustice are not made good just because God can use them to achieve good goals.

They are still bad, and those who do them are held accountable.

Evil does not become good no matter what good God can bring out of it.

It is still evil.

A superficial optimist makes a major mistake of thinking that if God uses bad things for good, then the bad things become good.

Wrong!

Paul was no superficial optimist that says, all is for the best.