Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning Harmony!

I hope you have had a good couple of weeks now, even with the weather that moved in on us.

All day last Saturday I was back and forth watching the weather and just praying about what we should do.

Then I got a call asking if we were going to have church, and so not really sure of what to do I called Glenn and discussed with him the weather and the concerns for the roads re-freezing overnight, and we both agreed that for safety purposes that we should just not meet last week in person, and I shared my plan for an alternative, and that was the direction we went, we called it all off and went with plan b.

Now I had already kinda in talking with God come to the conclusion that last week wouldn’t be the message that I originally had planned, because today’s message that was prepared for last week is important and it is part of our mission statement series, so knowing the weather and that some people were not going to be able to make it in to church, I had an alternative plan in the works when we came to this conclusion.

But even then, after making that decision to not meet in person, I was struggling with that decision a bit, considering just a few months ago I had said we wouldn’t cancel church, we’d do it online, etc. SO first I struggled with that concept, and it just came down to needing to have everyone together for this message series.

Then there was the struggle with the actual weather part of it as the parking lot seemed very clear, so I was kinda like “why did we call off church for this”?

Then a couple of hours after we cancelled our services, Kristin looks out the window and sees about 5 or 6 emergency vehicles pulling into our parking lot.

A pickup truck had hit a patch of ice or something on the interstate, slid down the embankment on its side, and then back upright onto the pavement of Spruce Rd.

From the sounds of things the driver was ok, and I talked with the mother just briefly, and I was able to pray for the young man.

I was also able to see the confirmation in the decision to not meet last week, given that all of this happened right in front of the church.

So now that we’ve had a snow or ice day, the last couple of weeks before all of this we talked about getting started and then about the first word in our new or updated mission statement, authentic.

This week we’re going to talk about the next word, connect, a familiar word because it is a carry-over from the previous mission statement.

But before we do that, let’s pray.

Today we’re talking about connect, and the vision for this part of our mission statement is this:

We desire to connect others to Jesus.

–

Jesus came to provide freedom from the bonds of sin through a relationship with Him.

So, how do we connect things?

There are a lot of examples out there we could use.

Legos.

Legos connect by putting them together.

Bricks are put together with mortar.

If you’re putting two boards together there are numerous ways to do that, with nails, screws, you could use glue or a special joint cut on the ends.

When it comes to cars there’s nuts and bolts and screws - and a failure to connect things properly in any of these situations can result in a failure of some sort, right?

If we’re trying to build a lego house, we can’t just stack one lego on top of another, with both legos and real bricks there’s a certain pattern that we have to follow in order to get all of this to work.

When it comes to lumber not cutting the boards correctly can lead to problems in the structure or the piece.

With cars failing to bolt things in correctly can lead to things not working or a reduced life span of the part -

So while there are many different ways to connect things together, it’s also important to remember that connecting things the wrong way or connecting things that aren’t meant to be connected in that way can lead or will lead to some issues later on.

So here’s what I want everyone to do right now.

I want us all to take everything that we have ever learned about how to witness, and put it on the shelf for a moment this morning.

We’re not getting rid of it, there’s nothing wrong with them, but maybe today we’ll learn some things that may modify our methods or maybe some new ways to reach people for Jesus.

The great commission tells us

And I think one key thing that we should have learned last week is that in order to do any of that, we have to be authentic in our walk with Christ.

We have to be in an authentic relationship with Christ.

Ane when we do that, we see three things really emerge from this - number one,

1. WHO WE CONNECT:

with.

Who we connect with.

The first set of verses we come to that support our vision is John 3:14-21 -

So from these verses we begin to see who it is we as authentic believers desire to connect to Jesus - the world.

Now I know there are different viewpoints on who and how people come to a saving relationship with Jesus, but I feel that John 3:16 tells us God’s desire, which in tern should be our desire, to see the whole world come to Jesus.

We know not everyone will end in that relationship, but what we do know is that it is God’s desire for them to know.

We connect them by convincing them that Jesus loves them and that He wants to be in a relationship with them.

His desire is that no one would wind up condemned.

And just as a side note, we also need to remember what we learned a coule of months ago in Hebrews 10:24-25:

We should be gathering together in order to be connected in our relationship to God and each other.

Connecting with each other is a way to be better at connecting with others.

The second thing we see is

2. WHY WE CONNECT:

Now obviously we can all point to the Great Commission as a reason for why, but take a look at 2 Corinthians 5 with me -

Since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to pursuade people.

It’s really kind of self explanatory here, since we are in a relationship with God, we live out our lives, it’s normal for us, and we tell people in what we say and do.

The love of Christ compels us - we have to do these things because we - as we discussed last week - are a new creation and being that new creation means that we cannot help ourselves from spreading the Gospel - it’s indwelt in us, it’s built in, that we want others to know the freedom found only in Christ, that’s why the second supporting verse for our vision statement is John 8:34-36

Jesus sets people free.

When we look at why we should be desireing to connect people to Jesus, the key principle that comes to mind is that Jesus sets us free.

We’re free from sin, we’re free from being sin’s slave.

When we think slavery, we think back to America’s history and how terrible that was.

And it was - it was terrible and wrong.

But when we compare that slavery to the eternal slavery that happens apart from Jesus we have a different perspective - because I guarantee that the slavery that sin creates for the non-believer is far worse than any slavery that has occured in our past here on earth.

Some may be listening to this and saying how could you say that - again, I’m not discounting the slavery of the past, what I am saying is that if you thing that was bad, the slavery that comes from not knowing Jesus is far worse and eternal.

We as authentic believers want what God wants, everyone to come to know the eternal freedom that comes from knowing Christ.

Bearing in mind the results of not knowing Jesus and being new creations in Jesus presses us to desire to connect others to Jesus.

Its built in, its part of who we are in Christ.

Now let’s turn our attention to

3. HOW WE CONNECT:

others to Jesus - and this is the part where many of us get a little bit nervous.

What if I say the wron thing or they ask me something and I don’t know the answer?

What if they yell at me?

What if they ignore me?

So right here, let’s get some things out of the way.

1, if they reject what you say or if they yell at you or if they whatever and it feels personal, remember, its not personal against you.

When Jesus sent out the 72 disciples to bear witness about Him, he gave them some pretty specific guidance in this repsect -

and then when they returned:

What can we take away from these verses?

We will have people who reject the message of Jesus - that part is inevitable.

But note the response when those 72 came back - they returned with joy.

Satan lost power.

Most importantly their names were written in heaven.

Focus on the prize, not the rejection, because they aren’t rejecting you.

When we do that, seeing one come to Jesus becomes exciting, it causes us to bubble over, and we stop worrying about the rejection and start focusing on the next soul.

You’re like Dersmond Doss in Hacksaw Ridge - give me one more Lord, just give me one more - because the excitement builds and your desire becomes more focused.

So now the how.

I’ve brought this toy up here, most if not all of us know what this is, right?

you put the matching shape into the corresponding hole.

I’ve been telling leardership to think outside the box when it comes to how we want to do outreach as a church, so this is the example I have come up with.

Now if you look at this, you should be able to see two boxes theorhetically.

One is the outside box, or the overall shape of the box or cube.

The second one is this smaller, square shaped hole in the box.

So let’s take the first box, the larger box, and say this is the Word of God, okay, because we aren’t going to do anything outside of the Word, because that would be sin or manipulation or whatever, and that’s not where we want to be.

But we have all of these folks that are outside of the Word - they’re lost.

They’re trying to do anything they can to get to God on their terms, but they can’t.

So it’s our job to tell them how they can get to God - we tell them about Jesus.

Now I don’t want to discourage anyone here, because at the end of the day that is what we are supposed to do - it doesn’t really matter how, as long as we’re being obedient and telling people about Jesus.

And what has happened in the past is usually someone will tell you that this method or that method is a proven method that will lead people to Jesus - right?

So what happens is you get into this style or method that basically is your go to method for telling others about Jesus, and you do it for so long that it becomes natural and it just begins to work - so we don’t want to change that per se.

But what can happen is we begin to place square pegs in square holes.

We’re leading some to Jesus, because they can connect with that method or that method works for their generation.

But then we get someone that that method doesn’t connect with.

They’re a different shape - they connect differently than what you are trying to do - and we can get into this habit of ignoring their way of connecting.

Sure, some may go into the square hole, but only if we manipulate how they connect or if they don’t grasp the fullness of the message that you have.