Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

After World War II there were five army dumps in France full of machinery.

It was too good to throw away, and yet not good enough to hall back to the United States.

It was a major problem.

The Quakers saw an opportunity for service, and so they offered the United States Army 200,000 francs for the machinery, and then they made an agreement with the French government.

They offered to sell to the French people the desperately needed equipment of spades, saws, axes, trucks, and motorcycles at a fraction of the cost if the government would provide free transportation on the French railroads, and give them 200 German prisoners to help.

Everyone went along with the idea, and everybody benefited.

The United States solved a problem and got some money.

The French got needed equipment.

The German families of the prisoners who helped the Quakers receive money, and the Quakers used the money they got to build a hospital in France to go on doing good and meeting needs for generations to come.

With the motivation of love man can turn problems into blessings and bring order out of chaos, and harmony out of discord.

By cooperation men can make plans where everyone comes out a winner.

The key word is order.

God is a God of order, and the whole universe is a precision made work of order.

Out of darkness and chaos God brought forth light and order, and order is the sign of life and intelligence.

Disorder and discord are signs of sin and death.

There is no such thing as a wrong note in itself.

All notes are good and a part of the harmony of music.

A note is wrong only when it is out of place, and not in the order of the laws of harmony.

ABC is right, but BAC is wrong, even though there is no difference in the content.

The same three letters are there, but in the second series they are in the wrong order.

AB and C are always right.

They are always legitimate letters, for there are no wrong letters, but there is a wrong order of letters.

A word that is misspelled does not have any wrong letters, but just letters that don't belong.

They do not fit, for they are out of order, and it is this lack of order that makes the word wrong.

The difference between a messy room and a neat room may not be in its contents at all, but rather in the order of those same contents.

1-2-3 is the proper order of counting, and so 2-1-3 is out of order.

Math, spelling, music, and all of life are based on rules of order.

Business meetings in churches usually go according to Roberts Rule of Order because it is God's will that the church do everything decently and in order.

Order is a key factor in all of life.

Dirt is just matter out of place.

In the garden, and in your pots for plants it is good, for that is its place.

But on your floor or face it is out of order.

What I am driving at in all of these illustrations is the paradox of how the same thing can be good or bad depending upon its place, or proper order.

Sin is often something good, but it is out of order, and that makes it bad.

Sex is not wrong until you get it out of order.

Anything good can become bad just by being out of order.

My telephone number begins with 754, but if you dial 745 you have used the right numbers in the wrong order, and the result will be you will not get my phone to ring.

How can the right numbers lead to the wrong number?

It is because they are the right numbers out of order.

The point is that a lot of good things in life become wrong, and their value is not only lost but ruined and turned to a negative by being out of order.

Jesus here in Matt.

6 deals with three good things the Pharisees ruined and turned into negatives by getting them out of order, and they are giving, prayer, and fasting.

How can you go wrong with all of this good stuff?

The same way you go wrong with good letters like ABC, and good numbers like 1-2-3, you get them out of order.

There is nothing wrong with giving, prayer, and fasting, but they are good things that can be used in such a way that they throw God's entire value system for man out of order.

Jesus makes it clear in 6:33 that man's first order of duty is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all else will fall into place.

If you start wrong here it is like getting your first button in the wrong hole.

All the rest will also be out of order so that nothing fits right.

Believe it or not, everything religious can be out of order if it takes priority over your relationship to God.

Relationship must come first, and then religious activity can be good, but if you reverse that order, then religious activity can be bad.

The best things in the world can be bad when they are out of order.

Listen to what Jesus says in Matt.

7:22-23.

"Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles.

Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you.

Away from me, you evil doers."

This doesn't make sense until it is seen in the light of our theme on order.

How can all these things be evil.

They sound like powerful good things.

To prophesy, cast out demons, and do miracles sounds like spiritual power we would all love to have.

This is not commonplace religion, but spectacular religion, and yet Jesus says it is evil.

Why?

Because they had religion, power, glory, crowds, reputation, and who knows what all, but it was all out of order because they had no relationship to Christ.

He said that He never knew them.

Their religious life and activities were not for the kingdom of God, but for self glory.

T.S. Elliot said, "The last temptation is the greatest treason, to do the right deed for the wrong reason."

That is what hypocrisy is all about, the doing of the right thing for the wrong reason.

Hypocrisy reverses the order of God's plan.

It does not seek first the kingdom of God, and then have all things added.

Instead, it seeks first all things being added to them, and then, hopefully, the kingdom of God will be thrown in as a bonus.

Jesus says this whole scheme of things is out of order, and it makes all the good values of the religious life bad things, and enemies of the kingdom of God.

Religious practices can be the greatest enemies of the kingdom of God.

The paradox is that in their proper place and order the same religious practices are a vital part of the kingdom of God.

So what we have is the same things being both bad and good.

Our giving, prayer, and fasting good things?

The answer is yes and no, says Jesus, for it all depends on the motive.

We only see that something is done, but God sees why it is done, and the why makes all the difference in the world.

We may see a man give 5 dollars to a blind man, and we are impressed by this good deed.

What we do not see is the why, or the motive for his giving.

It could be:

1.

He wanted to be seen by you and others watching so that you think he is very generous.

2.

He may have stolen the blind man's cane the day before, and is now easing his conscious by giving him some of the money he got from selling it.

3.

He may be repaying the blind man for a loan he received from him 6 months earlier, and with not a penny of interest.

4.

He may have been asked to help the blind man get to his mother's house to visit, but he was too busy, and so he just gave him cab fare to go alone.

5.

He may feel grateful to God for his own sight, and he is moved with compassion to share some of his blessings with this man to encourage him.

The act is the same in any case to the observer, but whether it is good, or merely selfish, or even evil, cannot be seen.

It is the motive that determines the value of the act.

It is because we cannot see the motive that Jesus tells us not to judge, for we have no idea whether the motive is good or evil.

J. P. Morgan was too cynical when he said, "A man always has two reasons for doing anything-a good reason and the real reason."

There is enough truth to this to make us realize that it is important to examine our own motives.

That is the essence of what Jesus is calling us to in this chapter.

The only way you are going to keep life's values in a proper order is to keep on evaluating your motives to make sure the primary motive behind all your religious activities is that of pleasing God.

This is to be the master motive that prevents the master sin of hypocrisy.

Motives come in three categories: The supreme, which is pleasing God; the social, which is pleasing others, and the selfish, which is pleasing self.

These three correspond to the three relationships of the truly righteous and religious life, and they are God, others, and self.

All of them are vital, and none can be left out or balance is lost.

The Pharisees had all three, and yet Jesus was condemning them.

Why?

Because the arrangement of their motives was out of order.

The proper order is supreme, social, and self.