Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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This last week I was with my youngest son who is the father of the baby that we have been praying about.
Things had taken a turn for the worse and the doctors were beginning to talk about comfort care.
I watched my son trying to hold it together and my heart broke.
I wanted to take the pain away, I wanted to make it better.
I wanted to fix it, but I couldn’t.
I talked to him and told him that I wished I knew the words that would make it all OK but I did not.
I was not enough, I was not sufficient.
I wanted to be enough, on some level I felt like I should be.
I am his father, it is my job to protect and help him, but I just can’t do it.
It is too much for me.
Once again I was faced with a biblical truth that is hard to take.
Turn with me now to Matthew 11:25-30
There have been times in my life when I thought to myself that I was one of the smartest people in the room and there have been times when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was not.
Long ago I became aware that some people were given more mental ability than I was and some people were not.
God did not make us all the same.
Some of us were given more athletic ability and some were not.
I am 6’5” and my daughter in law is 4’10”.
These things do not make me better or worse than other people but they do make me different.
God made each of us different.
God could have made me better looking.
Obviously he made a lot of other people better looking than he made me.
Why did God choose to make us all so different?
I think Adam and Ever were better looking, more athletic, and smarter than all of us today.
I think sin is to blame for a lot of the mess that we are in.
Still, we know that God can eliminate or mitigate the effects of sin but he does not choose to do so.
Sometimes I feel outmatched and overwhelmed by the world around me.
I study the bible and some of the concepts God tries to teach me are hard and I have to really work at them time and time again.
I forget things and remember things the way they were not instead of the way they were.
Things happen in the world that I am not prepared for and they knock me for a loop.
Sometimes it is hard to know what to say or what to do.
Sometimes you just feel overwhelmed by it all.
I had thanksgiving dinner at my moms house in Texas and my brother brought his firstborn baby.
That’s right, he is 64 and just had his first son.
Everyone had to hold the baby and mom had to take a picture of everyone holding the baby.
They were talking about storing the pictures on the computer since the phone was running out of room.
I often feel like that phone.
There is so much to take in and so much to deal with but sometimes I feel like I am running out of room to hold it all.
It can get to be too much.
The first hard drive I ever owned was a huge 10 megabyte hard drive.
I remember thinking that I would never fill up a hard drive that huge.
The computer my son has in his spare bedroom has a 2 Terra byte hard drive.
That’s 209,715 of my old 10 meg hard drives in one computer or roughly 30 10 meg hard drives for every man, woman and child in east end at the last census.
Sometimes I feel like a 10 meg hard drive in a two Terra Byte world.
Every day things come at us from every direction, little bits of information, struggles and trials, memories, things we have to process or deal with.
(Begin pouring little bits of water into a shot glass inside a glass bowl)
Every day we deal with it and process it, we save some, forget some, use some and store some away.
Some days our glass is half empty and some days it is half full.
but some days seem like everything is coming at once and it is just too much.
(pour in enough water to overflow the glass)
Now God could have made us bigger and better and able to process more and deal with more.
(place larger glass in bowl and begin pouring in water)
But the world would just pile more on until even that overflowed.
God could have made me stronger, smarter and better looking than I am.
If he had made me smarter I could understand more of the bible than I do, wouldn’t that be great.
If he had made me stronger and healthier I could have done more ministry, been better at being his hands and feet.
If God had made me more emotionally stable I could have offered comfort to others and done without it myself.
In fact if God had made me perfect I wouldn’t have needed him at all, maybe that is the point.
Hidden from the wise and revealed to infants.
No one knows the father but the son and who the Son chooses to reveal him to.
I will give you rest.
God planned it that way.
God planned for you not to know everything, he chose it to be so.
God planned for you to not be able to handle everything, that’s the way he wanted it.
God never intended for you and I to be self sufficient, needing nothing, able to handle everything ourselves.
God’s plan was for us to need him, to rely on him, to depend on him.
God’s plan is for us to turn to him when we need rest, when we need help, when we are overwhelmed.
God designed us to be insufficient.
God designed us to be unable to cope with life without help because he wants us to turn to him, to depend on him, to cling to him.
Listen to what he told Israel.
Isaiah 41 8-14
The Lord says I chose you, I called you, you are my servant and I will protect you, I will strengthen you, I will uphold you.
It’s not because they are such wonderfully deserving people, he even calls them a worm, they are not overachievers, they are not perfect and God does not want them to be self sufficient.
What God wants is for them to turn to him, to depend on him, to rely on him even when they are overwhelmed ,even when the world doesn’t make sense.
That’s what he wants from us as well.
If you don’t have it all figured out don’t worry, it was never God’s intention for us to have it all figured out it was his intention for us to rely on him.
Do you wonder if you can handle it, if you can fix it, if you can keep it together, don’t worry he never intended you to, he expects you to turn to him for the help you need.
When I saw the pain in my son’s face I wanted to help him, to comfort him, to protect him and it is right that I should do so, but God never intended for me to do it by myself, in my own power.
It was never God’s plan for me to do his job.
He is God and I am not.
Some things are beyond me, above me, too much for me.
Some things drive me to God, to depend on him, to rely on him, to trust him.
I still don’t understand it all, I still feel overwhelmed, I still can’t fix it, I still don’t have all the answers, but I have the one who does.
I am just a 10 meg hard drive in a two terabyte world but I serve a God with unlimited capacity.
It might take 30 times the population of east end with 10 meg hard drives like mine to equal a two terra byte drive like the ones they use today, but I serve a God with limitless capacity.
Every person who has ever been born or ever will be born with every trial or problem that they have ever faced or ever will face would not and does not strain the resources of God.
He never tried to make us in such a way that we could do it all on our own.
He never intended to.
God wants us to lean on him, to depend on him, to cast our cares on him and receive our rest in him.
I cannot give my son what he needs during this difficult time, I just don’t have it to give.
I cannot meet his needs and I cannot comfort him when he is inconsolable, but I know the one who can.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is admit that you can’t do it all, and rest in the one who can.
After all, that is the way he designed it to work.
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