Sermon Snippet – “Whom Are We Trying to Impress?”
INTRODUCTION – The title of the message is in quotation marks because I am quoting what someone said to me. The words were not a criticism but an affirmation that we need to keep our lives as Christians as simple as possible.
1. JESUS DID NOT TRY TO IMPRESS PEOPLE
Isaiah 53 is a precise prophetic passage about the promised Messiah. Jesus perfectly fulfilled these verses in His ministry, including in His death and His Resurrection. Verse 2a tells us that He made no attempt to impress anyone with His physical presence: “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.” Jesus could have walked this earth as the most handsome man ever, but He disdained that approach, focusing on spiritual attractiveness. Many of us like to put on our Sunday best for worship services, but we view that extra effort as an act of consecration, of setting apart worship as special, because it is. We do not need glitz and glamor.
2. PAUL DID NOT TRY TO IMPRESS PEOPLE
The troubled, vain Corinthian church was intent on impressing people, including each other. The dissension of I Corinthians 1:12 was really an arrogant assertion of greater spirituality, of a higher level of Christianity. Paul employed his apostolic authority when necessary (including in writing this pointed epistle), but he insisted on deflecting attention from himself: “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? … For while one saith, ‘I am of Paul’; and another, ‘I am of Apollos’; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (I Corinthians 1:13; 3:4-6). Probably all of us have been in a service where a time of testimony turned into something like a boasting contest. Paul warns against that danger.
3. WE SHOULD NOT TRY TO IMPRESS PEOPLE
Romans 16:19b is one passage (there are many others) that tells us to avoid trying to fit in, to impress the world: “I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple [guileless] concerning evil.” We do not need to be experts in “evil” in order to reject it and flee from it. As Vance Havner said in his unique and pithy way, “You don’t need to dress up like a clown to go to the circus.” In other words, we do not need to adopt the ways of the world to reach the world. Rather, we need to be distinctive. One crucial area of distinction is our belief system: we need sound doctrine – not entertainment nor back-flipping excitement – in our churches. Writing again to the immature Corinthian church, Paul warned about the subtle dangers of poor theology, challenging these weak Christians to learn “the simplicity [singleness of devotion] that is in Christ” in order to be equipped against false teaching (II Corinthians 11:3-4). Someone who attended our little church for the first time said afterward and approvingly, “It’s just church,” meaning that there were no meaningless frills nor fillers, just plain worship. Those words were a great encouragement to me. Sometimes we can be overly enthusiastic about something that agrees with what we already believe, but in this case the emphasis on simplicity is Biblical and thus not merely a personal preference.
CONCLUSION – Central to our shared faith is the simple Gospel message that Jesus, God the Son, died for our sins as our perfect substitute, rose the third day as the Lord of life, ascended to His rightful place in heaven to prepare a place for each believer, and promised to return one day for His people. May each one of us be certain of salvation through faith in Him. Since all Christians are brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, we can then change the acronym KISS to something far better: “Keep it simple, sibs.”