Sermon for 10/27/2002
The Sermon
Introduction:
A. Pavlov’s Dog experiment. Worship becomes that way sometimes.
B. People who go to worship services that are liturgical. Don’t ours get that way from time to time?
C. (Mat 6:7 NIV) And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
D. Greg Cummings- People haven’t lost interest in God. They have just given up on churches that have lost touch with the real world and that merely go through the motions of worship.
E. The same old routine can become mundane. Mindlessly go through the motions. Mix it up the next several weeks.
F. In the Bible there is no one set way of doing things in a worship service; praise, prayer, Lord’s Supper, Offering, special music, invitation, etc. No formulas. Elders have to be here and deacons have to be there, people have to be sitting or standing, preacher must wear robes or must wear a suit, etc. As a matter of fact Jesus spoke about how the Pharisees set up certain ways of doing things and made those ways law.
G. In the Old Testament there were ways of worship that were very outlined, in books like Leviticus. In the New Testament there are certain things we do to worship but none of these are given great detail. Just do them.
H. Many times we are consumed by our idea of what church should be. Not always interested in what God wants or how we can worship better. Let’s walk through the parts of our service and see what we find and how we can improve our worship.
WBTU:
A. Three boys in the schoolyard were bragging about who had the better father. The first boy says, “My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, and they give him $100.” The second boy says, “That’s nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, and they give him $1000.” The third boy says, “My Dad is ever better than that. He scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, calls it a sermon, and it takes (6 or 8) men just to collect all the money!”
B. Yes, the sermon is today’s topic.
C. Why preach? Why have sermons?
D. The church was started with a sermon on the day of Pentecost.
E. The Jerusalem church devoted themselves to the apostles’s doctrine. Apostles preached.
F. The first threat to the growth of Christianity was the command to quit preaching. After that threat, the church met to pray. The people prayed that God would indeed consider the threats and that He would enable His servants to continue to speak His word with all confidence.
G. Everywhere the disciples went they preached and taught about Christ.
H. Did Jesus believe in preaching? He surely did! When He got back to His hometown synagogue after His baptism, he declared: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.” Jesus main concern was to teach and preach.
I. Many ways to proclaim the message, but preaching most clearly presents the message and then demands a response.
Thesis: To have an effective sermon it must be full of words, full of power, full of conviction, full of life.
For instances:
I. Full of words.
A. Basic, it must have words to be communicated. (1 Thessalonians 1:5)
B. Full of understandable words.
1. Must use the language of the crowd.
2. Some people love to be heard for their much speaking. Use such high scholarship that the ordinary man cannot understand it.
3. If we talk about words like propitatiation, sanctification, or eschatology we need to be able to explain these words and concepts in ordinary terms.
4. Some people like to be known as educated. Look at me, not look at Christ.
5. The world does not understand our terms.
6. Called a person for technical support.
C. Full of meaningful words.
1. (Prov 25:11 NIV) A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.
E. Full of understandable words and full of meaningful words. What are meaningful words? Can have a lot of words but mean very little without these next points.
II. Full of power (1 Thessalonians 1:5)
A. Full of Scripture.
1. (Isa 55:10 NIV) As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, (Isa 55:11 NIV) so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
2. (Heb 4:12 NIV) For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
B. Full of the good news about Jesus Christ.
5. Preach the Word, Peter tells us. What is the Word? Most importantly, it is Jesus Christ according to John. God the Father was having trouble getting through to us, so he sent his Son, the Word, to come and tell us God’s message. The ultimate Word.
6. “We preach first Christ, and last Christ, and always Christ,” declared Martin Luther. “That may seem like a monotonous theme but we are never at the end of it.” “I have one passion in life,” said Count Zinzendorf. “It is He, it is He!”
7. Paul said in (1 Cor 2:1 NIV) When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.(1 Cor 2:2 NIV) For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
1. (Rom 1:16 NIV) I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
2. It is the dynamite that breaks down the walls, that softens the sinner’s heart.
3. Where does the power come from? The gospel story of Jesus and his love.
C. Full of the Holy Spirit.
1. (John 16:7 NIV) But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.(John 16:8 NIV) When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:(John 16:9 NIV) in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me;(John 16:10 NIV) in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer;(John 16:11 NIV) and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.(John 16:12 NIV) "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.(John 16:13 NIV) But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.(John 16:14 NIV) He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.
2. As the Scriptures are being preached, it is amazing what the Holy Spirit does.
3. People who take sermon differently. I never said that, but the Holy Spirit took that text and applied it to their lives. People with a far away look, 3 reasons:
a. Sometimes sleeping,
b. but sometimes the Lord might be taking them to a different place.
4. I often pray, Lord, may I say what they need to hear and not what they want to hear. Sometimes I say things that are not in the notes. Where did that come from?
III. Full of conviction (1 Thessalonians 1:5)
A. Full of belief, full of assurance of the truth.
B. We need to be convinced of some things with all of our hearts:
1. There is a God.
2. The Bible is God’s Word.
3. The blood of Jesus and its cleansing power.
4. The new birth.
5. The evil of sin.
C. How do we strengthen our convictions?
1. Lynn Anderson- Do I really believe all of this stuff?
2. Thinking about how these truths affect our souls.
3. Are our sins forgiven? Do we have a hope in heaven?
4. Fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
D. How are we to display our conviction?
1. My personal beliefs about preaching. In your living room.
2. Speaking with sincerity.
1. By the sacrifices we are ready to make. Our preaching must not be snoring. There must be power, life, energy, vigor. We must throw our whole selves into it, and show that the zeal of God’s house has eaten us up.
B. How do we strengthen our convictions?
1. Lynn Anderson- Do I really believe all of this stuff?
2. Thinking about how these truths affect our souls.
3. Are our sins forgiven? Do we have a hope in heaven?
4. Fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
C. Do not be scared to be deeply convinced. Most people in our day do not hold any believes very tightly. If we truly believe, people will follow us.
D. Ask your children.
E. Believe but do not act. No conviction of it.
F. Some sermons that I will not preach. Too personal to me or it has little meaning to me. All good sermons.
G. If it does not stir my soul then it probably doesn’t need to be preached?
IV. Full of life (1 Thessalonians 1:5)
A. A man once said to Rowland Hill, “It has been 65 years since I first heard you preach, and the sermon was worth remembering. You remarked that some people are offended about the manner of a minister preaching; but then you added, “Supposing one is hearing a will read, expecting to receive an inheritance, would you use the time in criticizing the lawyer’s manner while reading it? No, you would give all your interest to determine if anything were left to you and how much. Let that, then, be the way in which you listen to the gospel.”
B. Preaching= Proclaiming the Word of God through personality.
C. However, my life should be a witness to my preaching.
D. In my preaching, I like to preach about a quiet time. Why? Because this is what I practice.
E. Sometimes I am a hypocrite. My wife can find many examples.
F. Edgar Guest- I’d rather see a sermon than hear one, any day; I’d rather one would walk with me than merely tell me the way; the eye’s a better pupil and more willing than the ear. Fine counsel is confusing, but examples always clear, and the best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds, for to see good put in action is what everybody needs.
G. Preacher, are you up to it? To be an effective and faithful gospel preacher you must study up to know what to preach, pray up to be prepared to preach, stand up to preach, speak up to be heard as you preach, shut up when you have finished preaching, and follow up to reap the results of your preaching, as well as live up to what you have preached. Yes, are you up to it?
Conclusion:
A. We need preachers.
B. However, we preach sermons every day.
C. Words to preach sermons about Jesus Christ, or no words to preach about him.
D. We feel the power of the gospel in our hearts and know that power that leads to salvation, or we don’t know that power.
E. We feel and live and express our convictions about the Savior, or we do not have any convictions at all.
F. We are living the Christian life, or we are not.
G. For some people we could have people in the pews really into the sermon, into the worship, we could have the best preachers, we could have the greatest presentations, but it would matter.
H. I said that people have 3 reasons for a far away look. Third reason is this; they don’t want to hear the sermon. A preacher who had a lady at a snow Sunday.
I. Matthew 13:14-15
