Len Sweet noted to us in a chat this week a scripture from 1 Thes. 5:21 “Pay careful attention to everything . . “ “Semiotics”, he said, “is the art and science of paying attention”. As I said in a previous post, Semiotics is the study of signs.
In Matthew 16, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for their inability to read the signs. He says, “And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:1-4, ESV)
When Jesus stood, in Luke 4:16-21, before the synagogue to announce the beginning of his ministry, he read a passage from Is. 61. Note what his ministry calling consisted of: signs. Signs of what? Signs of the kingdom. These signs were announced in the Isaiah passage as demonstrating the one who would come and lead the people out of exile. When Jesus sought to begin his ministry, he announced it using sign language.
When John the Baptist was in prison, about to get his head handed to the queen on a silver platter, he sent messengers to Jesus. His question? “Are you really the Messiah?” Notice how Jesus answered him: “And Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.’” (Matthew 11:4-6, ESV) How did Jesus choose to let John know that he was indeed the Messiah? Via signs.
In Matthew 25, Jesus identified people would enter into his kingdom in the following way: “I was hungry, and you gave me food…” Again, signs.
These activities were all kingdom activities. These were signs that the exile would be over and that the Messiah had come. These were signs that the exile was over. Unfortunately, the religious people missed it. All of it.
Reminding us again of Matthew 25, seeing the Christ in others is how we will one day be judged: Mt. 25:50 . . “As you did it unto the least of these, you did it to me.“
The gospel in Jesus’ day was communicated by signs. Compare that to how we are trending in our communication of the message of Christ: verbal. But images and signs are much more powerful communicators in our image-rich culture. So what images do we create with our word choices? Using what you know of the many gospel presentations, (EE, CWT, FAITH, the Roman Road, etc) let’s examine this for a moment:
We want to share the good news, but do our best to talk about hell. I am not arguing that hell doesn’t exist or that we shouldn’t talk about it, but think of the image we are creating by sharing good news with images of hell. Is it really good news? Even more importantly, we should ask this question: When Jesus shared the gospel, did he speak of hell?
We communicate the reality that if we trust Christ as our savior, we will spend eternity with him in Heaven. Think about this for a moment. What are we communicating? We are communicating that Christianity is all about getting great seats into that holy, heavenly stadium. We are communicating a “then and there” message and neglecting the “here and now”. Is there any wonder that since the verbal images we create do not communicate involvement in the community of Christ we have so few in our churches?
We communicate that all we have to do is believe certain facts about God and confess them. What images and signs are we communicating? Christianity is an intellectual assent that doesn’t really have much to do with how I behave or how I am transformed.
Can their be any other conclusion that the signs we introduce when we verbally communicate the Christ message is creating a void in our churches? Is there any reason to think that the methods we use strip so much of the true message of Christ out that the effects we long for are non-existant?
Maybe it’s time to reject the patterns we have learned and begin to be a sign to the world. Maybe if we recover a signing mentality, with people seeing Christ, we will see people become fellow pilgrims on the journey to Christ-likeness.
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David is an entrepreneur, pastor, coach, and author. He has his doctorate from George Fox Seminary where he studied under Len Sweet, his M.Div. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and has done post graduate work in communications from the University of Alabama and the University of South Florida. He lives with his wife Brenna Phillips in Smyrna, DE. 
