Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Scripture Introduction:
deer fighting and lion attack
“I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord”.
Philippians 4:2
The apostle Paul is concerned that his beloved church at Philippi could end up like these deer.
They are a relatively healthy church.
They are still giving to missions, still focused on the gospel, from all indications they aren’t caving to the Judaizers who have been spitting heresy in their region (though Paul warns here too).
But the disunity bug has hit them and their starting to become infected with this virus.
You’ve got two-ladies locking horns and a roaming lion seeking to devour them.
So much potential at Philippi.
So many good things going for it.
But the whole thing can come to a screeching halt if they forget the roaming lion and lock horns with one another.
So how do you pray for such a congregation?
How do you ask God to help them?
Read Text
You see the church at Philippi, just like any local church, is key to the advancement of the gospel.
Not just in their own context but to the ends of the earth.
The enemy is roaming about like a lion waiting to devour.
Sermon Introduction
So I’m going to let you in on the irony of my sermon prep this week.
I think the text necessitates that the main point of the sermon be about being motivated by love so that we choose what is vital and don’t end up wasting our lives.
The key here for our cultural moment is that we have a ton of choices.
And there are so many different ways to preach this text.
So I struggled with choice in a sermon about choice.
But I’ll tell you why.
I think this sermon is incredibly important and it’s important for two reasons.
First, is what I would call the Netflix effect.
I understand that not all of you will have Netflix but maybe you’ve had a similar experience at the grocery store trying to buy cereal.
On Netflix you have a choice between thousands of shows to watch.
A majority of them are silly and not something which we would even consider watching.
But there is plenty there and if you’ve got a couple hours and you want to watch a show you have plenty options to fill that slot.
But what happens is you spend about 30 minutes scrolling through everything and then deciding on nothing.
Here is why this matters—and why this happens.
Touch the pulpit from where you are.
You can’t do it.
Why?
Because you are finite.
You have a limited amount of time, and you know this.
You also are limited by space.
You can only do one thing at a time (even if you’re a mom and that one thing involves serious multi-tasking).
Our technology has tried to convince us that we can do multiple things and be multiple places at once.
But increased coffee sales would indicate otherwise.
You are one person, with a finite amount of time, resources, etc.
You can’t fix everything.
You can’t do everything.
And you know this.
That’s why you stare at Netflix for 30 minutes because you know if you say yes to that documentary on underwater basket weaving you are saying no to that comedy about the sneezing pandas of Algeria.
So part of what I believe this text is doing is giving you ammo to be okay with being finite.
With trusting God with your life and your being and your choices etc.
And also crying out to us not to waste our lives.
So it’s vitally important on an individual level.
But this text is also important on a church wide level.
What I mean is that what Paul is doing in this text is connected to an underlying theme throughout this whole letter.
As I mentioned earlier there is a bit of disunity going on at Philippi.
We don’t know any details but it’s centered around these two ladies we read about in chapter 4. What Paul says here in his prayer is very much connected with them.
We don’t know the details of their squabble but we don’t have to.
We know that it is not some serious doctrinal error for one of them.
Nor is this a matter of one of them living in outward sin and rebellion.
Otherwise Paul’s admonishment would have been similar to what he said to the church at Corinth.
What we have here are two ladies who are taking up arms on a non-essential.
Strange question for you...
If you desired to destroy a local church how would you go about doing it?
Here is how I would do it if I were you.
You have to start by building relationships with everybody.
Be a good friend to everyone.
Then get yourself a Sunday School class or small group or something.
And in this class start digging into the really tough topics.
The key thing to do on step one is to begin focusing on minor things as if they are major things.
Assume the gospel.
Your goal here will be to get people’s eyes off the gospel and the kingdom of God and onto these “important issues”.
I would spend the first year or so building good relationships with a diverse number of people.
My goal would be discovering what the church is most passionate about.
During this time I will “become all things to all people” so as to destroy the whole lot.
Their passions would become my passions.
With such passion it shouldn’t be difficult to move into a leadership position, like teaching a Sunday school class.
Now you know that in any local church you try this out on there is going to be a few differences of opinion.
You’ve got to start exploiting these differences.
Lead people to view these different expressions as unfaithfulness instead of simply differences of opinion or personality.
It doesn’t matter what side you take on these “important issues” so long as you can divide people on them.
With my new Sunday school class I will begin by digging into the really tough topics.
We will lead our class through seeing what the Bible says about them.
During this time I will focus on minor things as if they are major things.
The gospel will be assumed.
My goal will be to get people’s eyes off of the gospel and the kingdom of God and onto these “important issues”.
Just as in any church there will be natural differences of opinion within the body of Christ.
I will devote my energy to exploiting these differences.
In time I will lead people to view these different expressions as unfaithfulness instead of simply differences of opinion or personality.
Just as in any church there will be natural differences of opinion within the body of Christ.
I will devote my energy to exploiting these differences.
In time I will lead people to view these different expressions as unfaithfulness instead of simply differences of opinion or personality.
If you are successful people will begin falling into certain camps.
At this point you have to take the super spiritual position and lament all the disunity in the church.
At this point you take peoples eyes of Christ and start focusing on the problems at hand.
You can even start prayer meetings and asking God to help with all the disunity, preach on disunity, work through creating unity.
But through the whole thing you have to keep people’s eyes away from the character of God.
You can’t allow people to view these trials as opportunities for growth.
You have to make this a battle of good between evil.
And at this point you have one more thing to do and you’ll blow everything up.
Donate a large amount of money anonymously and designate it.
The only stipulation is that the money has to be used to advance the ministry of the church and it has to be used within the next two years.
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