Sermon Tone Analysis
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This marks the sixth week we have been looking at what we are describing as our core values.
The sheets you have been given lay out for us a clearer picture of what we are aiming for as a church.
We know that there are more nuances to what it means to follow Jesus than we can put in a few bullet points, but these summary statements will help us move in the right direction.
By way of review, what is our key verse?
Thus far, we have seen that our goal is love for God and others in our family, church, community, and world.
We defined that love as a sacrificial response to and concern for another individual.
We also said that our love is only a reaction and response to the love God has for us.
We have specifically arranged these in order of priority.
We start with loving God before and above anything else, which involves everything we are and everything we have, as we see that we are called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
We also see that we are called to love others by noticing, caring, and investing in their lives.
That love then pours out into our homes and our families as we look out for their physical, emotional, and especially their spiritual needs.
From there, we broaden out another level to loving our church family, where we learned, in part, that loving our church means spending time with and challenging each other to grow in Christ.
Jesus specifically said that the love we have for each other as believers is one of the clearest signs to the outside world that we have been changed by Him.
This morning, we shift again and move one more layer out.
If you remember when we looked at the story of the Good Samaritan, we saw that we are called to love anyone and everyone around us.
Although our love for our church family is critical, it cannot stop with those within these four walls; we have to love those around us who are not yet believers.
That’s why, this morning, we acknowledge that part of our goal is that we would love our community.
What I am about to say shouldn’t surprise anyone here: Do you realize that the majority of people in Christiansburg, Blacksburg, Montgomery County, and the NRV likely don’t have a genuine relationship with Christ?
In findings released in April 2015, the Barna Group found that only 2 out of every 5 Americans say they have confessed their sinfulness and professed faith in Christ.[1]
Although that is now 3 years old, I haven’t seen a sweeping movement of God in revival that seems to change that.
Here’s how to put that into perspective.
Next time you are out at a restaurant or the mall, start counting.
First two people you see, mentally right “Saved” on their forehead.
For the next three, put “Lost”.
I know you don’t know them and you don’t know their heart; this is just for illustration.
Go around the room, and let it break your heart.
See the husbands and wives and teenagers and older adults, and recognize that at least 3/5 of them are destined for a real place called hell if they don’t get saved.
How are they going to know about Christ?
How will they know that they have sinned against a holy and loving God and are dead in their sins?
How will they know that they are on the wrong track and that Jesus has died to provide them the hope and the peace and they desperately need?
The only way our community will come to know Jesus is if we love them enough to tell them.
If we are going to see God bring us to reach our goal of love, then we must be loving our community.
Here’s how we have articulated that in our core values:
We pursue opportunities to join Christ at work in the lives around us. ()
We tell others about Jesus with a sense of urgency.
(; )
We seek the good of our community as we work with and develop relationships with those outside the church through any means, including work, hobbies, and volunteer opportunities.
(; ; )
We have a great example of this in Scripture, and that’s what we want to look at today.
Guys, to be honest, I believe this is one of our greatest challenges as a church.
We gather weekly to express our love for God, we are putting structures in place to help families, and we have even taken the Gospel around the world last year through our work in Zimbabwe.
Yet, on the whole, we really have not engaged those around us in the hopes that we will see them come to Christ.
When was the last time we saw someone over the age of 18 come to faith in Christ?
Although we recently had the privilege of baptizing several people, they were either children and youth or had made previous decisions to follow Christ.
We rejoice when anyone comes to faith in Christ, but if 3/5s of the people walking around us may not know Jesus, then shouldn’t we see more people coming to know Jesus in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond?
When was the last time you or I even shared our faith with someone whose salvation we weren’t sure about?
Maybe you think that is someone else’s job, and they must be doing it, right?
Let’s ask this question: when was the last time someone tried to share the Gospel with you?
If no one is sharing with you, and you aren’t sharing the Gospel, then who is?
That’s why we need to look this morning at one example of how God worked in lives of believers who have gone before us to draw out some ideas of what He wants us to do.
Turn in your Bibles to .
Here, we have both examples to follow and commands to obey as we hear Paul talk about his ministry and also as he encourages the church at Colossae to engage their community.
Although Paul and the church at Colossae were in different places with different challenges, their goal was still to show those around them that Jesus came to save.
Read the passage with me…
I want us to draw four principles this morning out of this passage that will help us to love our community.
They are not necessarily finessed, but that is the point.
Loving others doesn’t have to be complicated or even programmatic.
In fact, we love our community best when we start as individuals and families where we are and build from there.
Before we begin looking to reach out, we have to start where Paul starts:
If you are going to love your community, you must…
1) Devote yourself to prayer.
Look again at verse 2…
If you are critiquing my sermon writing today, you might be tempted to dock points for lack of creativity.
To be honest, I couldn’t think of a better way to say what needs to be said here.
I thought about saying, “Begin with prayer”, but that gave the wrong impression.
We have such a tendency to underemphasize prayer.
In a world that marks success by how many widgets we make in an hour, prayer is horribly inefficient.
Often, it feels like our prayers are simply bouncing off the ceiling or we never see them answered that we give up.
Sometimes, we start praying for something, it starts to work out, so we think we can handle it from here and we quit praying.
That’s not what Paul is calling us to…Instead, he is calling us to a lifetime of prayer.
Why?
As Dr. Jerry Falwell Sr. used to say,
“Nothing of eternal significance is ever accomplished apart from prayer.”
Prayer is essentially acknowledged helplessness.
It is coming before God and saying, “I don’t know what is best.
I am not strong enough to do what you are asking me to do.
I need You to do it because I can’t.”
Paul said we are to be devoted to a life of prayer.
The ESV translates it as saying, “Continue steadfastly in prayer.”
The picture is ongoing, life-altering talks with God about who He is and who we are and what is wrong in our world and how He wants to use us to reconcile the world to Himself.
Does that characterize you and me and our church?
If not, we will never be able to love our community well.
Although our devotion to prayer is more than simply praying for our community, it certainly includes it!
We will not love our community like Jesus does if we are not asking God to show us how.
We all have too much going on in our lives, are too tired, are too scared, are too sinful, whatever, to do this on our own.
Did you notice that there were more qualifiers here?
We have to stay alert as we pray!
We will miss what God is doing around us if we don’t stay alert, watching for Him to show us whose hearts He is drawing and what doors we have open to honor Him.
We will fall into temptation and get sidetracked if we aren’t watching for how Satan is trying to disrupt the work of God.
Not only that, but we need to pray with thanksgiving, acknowledging that God is always at work, even through the most difficult situations we face.
If you and I are going to consistently love our community the way God calls us, we will first have to devote ourselves to prayer.
Then, as we see God working in the lives around us, we must…
2) Talk about Jesus.
Read verses 3-4 again.
Did you notice what Paul was asking them to pray?
He made two requests.
First, he asked the Colossians to join him in praying that God would give him an open opportunity to proclaim the Gospel.
You and I desperately need God to give that to us.
Our world is growing increasingly hostile to the things of God, and yet we need the truth that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the grave to show that He had overcome death itself more than ever!
As you pray for your community, pray that God would open up opportunities for you to share your faith.
You may be amazed at who God puts around you when He starts opening doors.
In the heat of the debate over fetal stem cell research, I had the opportunity to share the Gospel with a woman who worked in the provost’s office of one of the nation’s leading universities in stem cell research.
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