Sermon Tone Analysis

We are in a series of three messages about three rules for living.

I think, if we get these things right, our relationship with God, with others, and with ourselves will be moving in the right direction.

All of the principles come from 1 Corinthians.

Here are the three rules which should govern how we conduct ourselves:

Don’t do anything that will hurt yourself.

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Don’t do anything that will hurt another person.

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Don’t be mastered by anything.

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Say them to the person sitting next to you.

Last week, we spoke about the principle of not doing anything to hurt yourself.

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

You were bought with the high price of the blood of Jesus Christ.

You are to glorify God with your body.

Therefore, don’t do anything that will hurt yourself.

Today, we are going to look at the second principle for living: “Don’t do anything that will hurt another person.”

Before I go any further in this message, I do want you to understand, when the statement is made, “Don’t do anything that will hurt another person”; I am not speaking of police, law enforcement, military, or the like because the Bible is very clear in teaching about proper use of force in order to protect and serve.

The Bible is not against self-defense.

The life principle of “don’t do anything that will hurt another person” is not a call to passivity.

The Bible is full of occasions where God told his people to use force and even the death penalty.

This is not about the affirmation of a snowflake mentality or creating safe spaces.

Sometimes people need to be confronted with the reality of their situation.

Sometimes people need a firm hand to guide them back onto the right path.

I heard a saying that I have come to believe.

Someone said, “Hard times produce strong people.

Strong people produce good times.

Good times produce weak people.”

As I see the problems facing our nation, I wonder if we haven’t had it so good and so easy that we are going to be facing some hard times because of the type of people we are producing.

When we talk about “not doing anything that will hurt another person”, what are we talking about?

Open your Bible to .

Paul is saying, I am free.

No one owns me.

Paul was free to make his own choices and live his own life, but yet Paul willingly placed his desires and preferences beneath others for the sake of the gospel.

Paul is solely focused on the mission of reaching people with the gospel.

Therefore, he voluntarily places himself in the position of slave to everyone so he can be most effective in reaching people with the gospel.

Paul is willing to serve everyone in whatever way he can in order to have an opportunity to reach people with the message of Jesus Christ.

Listen to the list of things he endured for the sake of the gospel from .

Paul was willing to do whatever necessary to reach people with the gospel.

Paul is echoing backing to what Jesus said in .

Matthew 20:25-27

Jesus did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.

Continuing on in , Paul is going to list examples of those he has enslaved himself to in order to minister to them.

, Paul is going to list examples of those he has enslaved himself to in order to minister to them.

Saint Augustine once said, “A person who nurses a sick man becomes, in a sense, sick himself, not by pretending to have a fever but by thinking sympathetically how he would like to be treated if he were sick himself.”

In essence, this the Golden Rule: “Do unto unto others what you would have them do unto you.”

Paul was willing to do whatever it took to reach people with the gospel.

He was adapting himself to their spiritual condition.

Reach people where they are.

Sometimes people get the impression that they have to change themselves first to be with us.

Perhaps they think they need a new wardrobe.

They think their clothes aren’t good enough to comes to church.

Maybe they think they are of the wrong social status.

Maybe they think they have too many problems.

I have had several people tell me that they couldn’t come to church because they have tattoos.

We need to be removing barriers to the gospel.

The gospel is offensive enough on its own.

We do not need to add any barriers to the life changing gospel of Jesus Christ.

We don’t want to do anything to hurt another person and so we reach them where they are.

Now you might say, “Wait a minute.

People are going to think Paul is a hypocrite because he acts one way around the Jews, one way around the Gentiles, and one way around spiritually weak people, and one way around spiritual strong people.”

You would be right.

Paul is opening himself up to criticism from all directions because of his adaptations; however, to criticize Paul for his adaptations is to misunderstand his motivation.

Paul is not motivated to simply be a people pleaser.

Paul is looking for ways he can adapt himself in order to have an opportunity to reach people with the gospel and minister effectively to the people with whom he is in contact.

The best way to illustrate Paul’s mentality is to look at the life of Jesus in .

In , Jesus is approached at night by Nicodemus and Jesus has an intellectual and theological debate with Nicodemus in order to have an opportunity to bring Nicodemus to an understanding of the nature of salvation.

In , Jesus approaches the Samaritan woman and takes a very different style of approach with her than he did with Nicodemus.

With the Samaritan woman, Jesus speaks in riddles and demonstrates a personal knowledge of her situation.

Then, he reveals who he really is to her by plainly declaring to be the Messiah.

Jesus tailored his interactions with people in order to reach them.

We should follow their examples.

We shouldn’t do anything that will hurt another person because we need to reach people where they are.

You see, we don’t know the hearts of people, so we should position ourselves with everyone with whom we are in contact to have opportunities to reach people at the right time with the message of salvation.

Let me ask you a question.

When you are in crisis, when things are not going well for you, or when you have a serious problem, who is a person you want to talk to?

You want to talk to a safe person.

You want to talk with a person you can trust with you hurts, problems, and needs.

You don’t want to talk to the person who condemns you or is judgmental.

You don’t want to be around a person who hurts you.

We try to guard ourselves from people who behave in those ways; however, we open ourselves up to people who love us.

Reach people where they are and create opportunities to minister to people.

Create opportunities to minister to people.

In other words, don’t do anything that will hurt another person because we want to have opportunities to minister to people.

We try to guard ourselves from people who behave in those ways, however we open ourselves up to people who we think love us.

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Dr. William Barclay said, “More people have been brought into the Church [to Christ] by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world.”

Apologetics, being able to give a defense for your faith, is important, but demonstrating Christ-like love is more important.

Our job is not to intellectually wrestle people to the gospel.

Our job is to love people to the gospel.

I have heard many Christians use the cliche’, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

It is true that we should hate sin.

We hate sin by recognizing it for what it is, refusing to take part in it, and condemning it as contrary to God’s nature.

Sin is to be hated, not excused or taken lightly.

However, often, our hatred of sin is viewed as the hatred or condemnation of people and that is a major problem.

Only God can perfectly separate the sin from the sinner.

We can’t.

We are to have compassion on sinners for whom Christ died.

We love sinners by showing them respect.

We are to have compassion on sinners for whom Christ died.

We love sinners by showing them respect.

Show love through respect.

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We need to remember that every person is made in the image of God.

Everyone, no matter how marred, is an image bearer.