Sermon Tone Analysis
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By Pastor Glenn Pease
Gigi is Billy Graham's daughter, and she writes about one of those days she wishes she could wipe off the calendar.
It all started with an experience some of you have had.
It was flood damage to their house.
The carpet men were there replacing the water ruined carpet.
She was trying to do some cleaning up of the mess and overdid it.
By suppertime she was totally exhausted.
She got the kids into the car and headed for McDonald's.
She stopped at the bank while her husband ran in.
She was doubled parked.
She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw a large older model car pull up behind her.
It was driven by an older woman with flaming red hair.
She started to blast her horn, and now we read Gigi tell what happened.
"I don't know what possessed me, but after my whirlwind day, this was the last straw!
I decided not to move.
She gave another long, loud blast which just reinforced my stubborn refusal to budge, and I motioned for her to pass me.
As angry as she was, she managed to maneuver the big car around and pulled up beside me.
Then she lowered her window and began to yell.
I blew her a kiss.
That did it!
She screamed, then stuck out her tongue.
By this time she was out of her car, threatening me and calling me names, attracting the attention of people passing by.
Suddenly I wanted to crawl into a hole.
The red-headed grandmother returned to her car, and Stephan appeared, wandering what the commotion was all about.
We continued on to McDonald's, but I was too distraught to eat."
She could not sleep well for several nights, for she felt she had been so unlike Christ, and she wished she could apologized to the woman.
She had let her tiredness and anxiety drown out the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit, and let her stubborn human nature take control.
The point is, it happens to the best of Christians at times.
We loose a sense of awareness that we are Christians, and that we are to be different from the world by demonstrating a power of self-control that is superior to what is natural to man.
The Christian is under constant attack and without self-control is always at risk of blowing it, and demonstrating to the world that they are far from a finished product.
The point that Paul stresses is that a Christian leader is to be one who has a great deal of self-control so that he does not let his actions or emotions go to extremes.
He does not dominate, lose his temper, or go off on a binge of drinking to escape the pressures of life.
He is one who has other ways than the world has of dealing with the stress of life.
He is not controlled by the circumstances, but is self-controlled.
Food, sex, and money are all important elements in his life, but he is not controlled by them, for if he is he will lose his credibility as a leader.
Again, we need to see that people who are excessive, domineering, and obsessed may be very successful people, but Paul says they do not qualify to be leaders in the church.
A well known pastor was counseling the son of one of America's great industrialists and he concluded that his drinking problem was due to the domineering actions of his father.
He confronted the father and almost got kicked out of his office because the father went into such a rage.
But later the man called and said he reflected on what had been said and it was true.
He ran an empire all day and it was hard to shift gears when he came home to his family.
He began to cry and admitted that unless God helped him he could not change.
God did help him, and in time he learned to be different with his son.
Here was a man greatly qualified to lead a major industry, but Paul says he was not qualified to lead even the little church of Crete.
The church has higher standards than government or industry.
In these secular realms there is a demand for leaders who will do almost anything to succeed.
Violence in behavior and the pursuit of dishonest gain are not vices in the dog eat dog world of competition.
Human nature has not changed.
These things were popular in Paul's day as well, but a Christian is to be different.
A Christian leader is not to be violent Paul says.
He writes the same thing to Timothy, and adds a word to clarify what he means.
I Tim.
3:3 says the church leader is to be, "not violent but gentle."
No man or woman is fit to be a leader who treats people in an ungentle manner.
The Christian who is abusive to their mate and children, or to anyone is not a good reflection of the spirit of Christ.
A Christian leader is one who is always sensitive to other people's feelings and does not trample on them.
You can see that this would take considerable self-control when working with people who are lazy, lying gluttons like they were in Crete.
The impulse to treat them like the evil brutes they are would be always tugging at your emotions.
It would take great self-control to resist.
The immature Christian will surrender to this impulse and lost their temper.
They may even try to compel people to be better by force.
This will not work, for people must be led and taught and persuaded.
Only the self-controlled mature Christian has the patience to put up with this slow process without exploding in frustration.
The mature Christian feels the same frustration and negative emotions as anyone else.
The difference is that they do not let their behavior be controlled by their emotions.
They are self-controlled.
They choose how they will respond rather than being dragged along by their feelings to do what they don't want to do.
Self-control is their major virtue, for it is one of the fruits of the Spirit.
It enables them to choose the will of God rather than the desires of their human nature.
Without self-control the Christian will not be a whole lot different from the non-Christian.
They will be at the mercy of circumstances.
A Christian leader is one who can demonstrate they are not slaves of circumstance.
They can choose to act or react to life in a way consistent with their knowledge of God's will.
They are not people who are controlled by whims and desires.
Such people tend to be impulsive, and so they overeat, overspend, and just lean toward excessiveness in all they do.
They do not react gently, but violently to those who block the way of self-indulgence.
They may be great people in many ways, but Paul says do not choose them as church leaders.
Self-control is the key to defeating Satan.
It was the key Jesus used to remain perfect in a fallen world.
Imagine having a billion dollars but not buying a hamburger when you are famished and as hungry as you have ever been.
Even this illustration does not match what Jesus did.
He was starving, and yet with the power to turn stones into bread He did not do so.
That was self-control, and by it He defeated the temptation of Satan.
The whole point of the temptation of Jesus was to make Him loose self-control and do something out of God's will.
That is the point of all temptation.
It is to get you to surrender your control to another force.
Once you loose self-control you are under the control of some other force, and it is usually an evil force.
Self-control is essential to be a good Christian, and especially to be a leader of Christians.
What is not under control is out of control, and this leads to extremes.
Any Christian who tends to be an extremist is not a good leader, for leaders need to examples of balance.
It is pretty much a universal belief among all people's of the world that the person who has learned self-mastering is the wisest of leaders.
Cato the pagan could say, "He approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent even though he knows he is right."
Jesus had this kind of control before his accusers.
This is hard to do, but it is what Jesus expects leaders in the church to do.
Why is this so important?
It is because the world in which the church is to serve is one of two major extremes.
There is the pagan life-style of eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
The excessive lust for pleasure at any cost.
On the other hand, there is the ascetic life-style of the Gnostics and other cults that snared many Christians by their self-denial philosophy.
They refused to enjoy the pleasures of life that God gave to man.
Both extremes make a Christian unfit for leadership, for they both reject the balance life that the Bible reveals to be God's will for man.
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