Sermon Starters: "Sticky Christians"

Preaching tomorrow. Here are some notes others can improve on, if they feel led.

[Now it was yesterday. Here's the podcast if you're interested in listening]

Supporting Text: Genesis 41:1-16
Key Text: 1 Peter 2:11-17

Introduction

• People like me shouldn't be allowed to own houses.
• I don't mean that Christians should be irritating (several church members mentioned by name as examples... just kidding ;-).
• Larry Osborne's Sticky Church
• God made Joseph a sticky person of God.
• Key Text: "Live such good lives among the nations that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us" (mostly TNIV).

1. Not Everyone Sticks

• Context of 1 Peter: "though they accuse you"
• 3:15-16, not about apologetics but testifying to faith while on trial
• Scot McKnight: a "defensive strategy"
• Be careful about applying the specifics of 1 Peter to today.
• 1 Peter 4:17-19--judgment begun with the household of God...
• 1 Peter--slave masters who don't stick; husbands who don't stick
• Not everyone will stick, and it's a mystery why some do and some don't.
• Movies where it doesn't all work out...
• Our job is to be faithful.

2. Abstain from Sticky Wickets

• What in the world is a sticky wicket?
• "Abstain from fleshly desires" (2:11)
• DeNeff has been preaching on this topic, so I'd better not say much.
• Cover the pitch at night so it doesn't get wet in the first place (stay out of sticky situations)
• KJV of 1 Thess. 5:22 "abstain from all appearance of evil"--the old timers were wrong on the meaning of the verse but mostly right in the application--don't play with fire
• Pray!
• Practice Batting (just say no)
• Reset the wicket
• Practice Bowling (Virtue as a habit, practicing the virtue--footnotes to DeNeff)

3. How to Be Sticky

• Respect everyone (you know the drill)
• Love fellow believers (not necessarily "like")
• Fear God
• Submit to human authority (including the emperor)
• This last admonition is all the more striking since Peter died at the hands of the emperor.
• Pray!
• Practice batting
• Reset the wicket
• Practice bowling

4. Conclusion

• Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt
• What am I going to do about it?