Fidelity Matters Series

Character Counts! Fidelity Matters

(Proverbs 6:32-33)

Theme: The Church is God?s prophetic voice. It must speak God?s message to the culture.

Purpose: What do I want to happen in the hearer when I preach this sermon?

A. Increased knowledge. After I preach this sermon, the hearer should be able to state:

1. To a degree television reflects the culture. It merely reports what is already going on within the culture.

2. People have been engaging in homosexuality and immoral sexual behavior since the beginning of time. Therefore, television depicting these things is merely reflecting the culture. We agree with this?to a degree.

3. Television also shapes the culture. If this were not true no one in his or her right mind would pay a red cent for advertising.

4. Hollywood has an agenda to shape the American culture AND IT IS WORKING!

B. Increased insight. After I preach this sermon, the hearer should be able to see that Christians are being duped:

1. Our culture tells us that the greatest sin is to impose our views on others.

2. We sheepishly buy into this lie and then sit back in the security of our church houses and do nothing as the culture around us plummets to its destruction.

C. Changed attitude. After I preach this sermon, I want the hearer to determine to get involved in the mission of the Church:

1. To seek and to save lost people.

2. To warn of the consequences of rejecting God.

Need to be

Surfaced: Our culture is in trouble. It is plummeting to its own destruction and no one seems to care enough to wake up and speak up.

Solution to

be Offered: The Church of Christ is God?s prophetic voice in this culture. We must wake up and speak up before it is eternally too late.

Introduction. (Get attention, surface need, make a contract to deliver a solution.)

A. A comparison:

1. Turn on the television and what do you see?

a) It?s an early January evening in 1967.

b) With the dinner dishes cleared, the nuclear family settles in around the Magnavox black-and-white.

c) Samantha seethes at Endora for turning Darrin into a donkey on the night before an important presentation.

d) Sister Bertrill, the Flying Nun, has gotten herself into trouble again, trying to raise money for the orphanage.

e) The Riddler is leading Batman and Robin on a wild-goose chase -- wham! -- through the streets of Gotham City.

2. Now fast forward 30 years:

a) An early January evening in 1997.

b) The Domino?s pizza boxes are in the trash and what?s left of the nuclear family clicks on the 27-inch Sony and hunkers down for some prime-time tube.

c) On The Nanny, Fran, in a skintight mini, teases her handsome boss with not-so-veiled allusions to her sex life.

d) On Men Behaving Badly, Jamie runs out of coffee filters and uses his underwear to make coffee for a woman he is trying to pick up.

e) On The Jamie Foxx Show, the comedian jumps out of a cake half-nude, Chippendale?s style.

f) A promo for Spin City promises that Michael J. Fox?s character will be impotent with his live-in girlfriend.

g) Not to mention, Will and Grace, Sex and the City, or Married with Children.

B. Outline of Our Lesson:

1. A call to attention: we are flirting with disaster! Somebody had better wake up before it is eternally too late!

2. A call to remembrance: God demands fidelity! Somebody had better speak up before it is eternally too late!

3. A call to repentance! The church needs to wake up and speak up before it is eternally too late!

I. A Call to Attention: We Are Flirting with Disaster!

A. Some say that television merely reflects the culture.

1. That is true?to a degree.

a) People have been engaging in homosexual acts and committing adultery for centuries.

b) Therefore, these people would argue, just because there is more immorality depicted on television does not mean that we are, as a people, less moral!

c) Hogwash!

2. Because television also shapes the culture and Hollywood knows it!

a) If television merely reflects the culture then advertising is the single largest waste of time and money ever invented!

b) All those ads are merely reporting the facts:

(1) The truth is that more people drink Coca Cola than Pepsi.

(2) That?s why we just spent a million bucks for a 30 second ad during the Super Bowl.

(3) To report the facts to the American people.

(4) Give me a break!

c) No my friends, the truth is that television affects the way we behave!

(1) It shapes our worldview.

(2) To some degree it helps determine our values.

(3) As it changes our values it changes our behavior.