Sermon Tone Analysis

A NEW CREATION

Do you know what I find amazing about the human race — and I don't mean amazing in a good way.

It's amazing that we appear to have the potential — and even the capability — to live in global peace and global prosperity, in which all people have equal access to food and water and work and healthcare, and in which we could all live together in peace and harmony.

We could have it that way ... but we can't.

It's not that we lack the material resources to provide for everyone.

We have more than enough.

But the malady of the human race is that we have never been able to live peacefully with one another.

We see this between nations, and it's obvious.

But we also see this malady at work on a local level and on a personal level.

We have a hard time getting along with one another, and we especially have a hard time getting along with ourselves.

It's not hyperbole to say that most people's lives are a mess — at least in some areas.

And *some people's lives are a mess in every imaginable area.

I used to think that messy lives were the exception and not the rule, especially in the church, but after almost four decades of ministry I've discovered that the opposite is true.

Most people's lives are right on the edge of spinning out of control.

And the reason for this, most often, is some kind of self-sabotage.

People's lives spin out of control because they just don't have the ability to keep them in control.

On the surface it all seems so easy: Get a job and give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, live within your means, don't over-extend yourself financially, be good to your spouse and your children, eat right and exercise, don't take anything that doesn't belong to you, keep your word, and play fair.

It seems so easy, but we've never been able to pull it off, have we?

Instead we live with financial stress and self-imposed health problems and divorce and rebellious kids and conflict with neighbors and dishonesty and crime and fear and despair.

We should all be able to live the good life, but the good life proves to be elusive for the overwhelming majority.

It remains always just beyond our grasp.

The reason for our failure to live in peace and harmony on a local level is the same reason we're unable to experience peace and harmony on a global level.

To an outside observer it would seem that we should be able to do it ... we certainly appear to have the potential ... but still, we just can't.

Or, maybe you could say, we just won't.

For this reason, the majority of the population lives — as Thoreau said — "lives of quiet desperation."

And the rest of the population, except for a small percentage, live lives of noisy desperation.

Jesus promised much much more than this.

He said...

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

( KJV)

That's what Jesus promised, and it's what so few people experience.

Today I want to talk about why life is so difficult to master, and I want to talk about what it takes to get on the road to mastery.

In order to begin this process, there are two inescapable truths we need to confront.

The first truth — the reason why life-mastery is so elusive — is because...

1.

We are sinners both by birth and by choice.

The Bible says that sin entered the world through one man — — and, of course, he's talking about Adam.

You know Adam's story.

He and Eve partook of the fruit in the garden of Eden and sin became part of the human experience.

This is why David said in ...

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

()

We're all born sinners.

It's inevitable.

But here's the catch.

Every sin that you will commit, that I will commit, that anyone will commit ... every sin that has ever been committed since the beginning of time ... has been committed by choice.

You didn't have to lash out in anger.

But you did, and you did it by choice.

You didn't have to tell a lie, or take advantage of another person, or think those awful thoughts.

But you did, and you did it by choice.

We're all sinners by birth, it's in our nature, but sin is never an "ooops" situation.

It's not an accident, like inadvertently knocking over a glass of milk at the dinner table.

It's a choice.

Always a choice.

A deliberate choice.

This means, then, that we can't blame anyone — not even Adam — for the sin in our lives, because we all sin by choice.

Now this sinful nature that hounds each one of us — it's bigger than you and me and the rest of the world put together.

It has the power to destroy nations, and communities, and businesses, and marriages, and families, and friendships, and churches, and individual lives.

That's all sin know how to do: destroy.

It wreaks havoc everywhere it goes, and it takes its job seriously.

So the first inescapable truth is that we're all sinners by birth and by choice.

It's a universal problem.

Here's the second truth we all need to come to grips with.

2. Because of sin, we are all broken beyond repair.

There's a saying I've heard repeated in the south from time to time:

You can't make a cucumber out of a pickle.

Once a pickle is a pickle, it's a pickle, and it can never again be a cucumber.

I suppose you're aware of the pickle making process.

It's pretty simple, from what I understand.

You take a cucumber and dip in vinegar, and keep it there long enough, and it becomes — irreversibly — a pickle.

And, from there, there's no turning back.

It cannot be fixed.

You can't use a pickle to make cucumber salad.

You can only use it to make a pickle salad, and pickle salad isn't very tasty.

If you chop up a cucumber and place it in a pitcher of chilled water, it will give the water a cool, fresh, exotic flavor.

Like something you might be served at a health spa.

But if you chop up a pickle and place it in a pitcher of water, your water is going to taste like vinegar.

It's not exactly a gourmet beverage.

What's my point here?

Like that pickle that can't retrace its steps, we are in a similar pickle.

We're sinners by birth and by choice, and we're broken beyond repair.

We can't un-pickle ourselves.

Even though we may aspire to someday become the person we might have been ... we just don't have it in us.

No matter what we do, we're still soaked in vinegar.

This is why the prophet Isaiah said...

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.

()

I realize that, so far, this may not sound like the most uplifting message I have ever preached.

Stay with me.

There's hope for us, but before we can get better, we have to come to grips with these first two inescapable truths.

We're all sinners by birth and by choice, and we're all irreparably broken.

That means that we have to get past the idea that with just a little bit more effort, we can fix ourselves.

We need to get past the idea that if we just try harder, we can somehow will ourselves into goodness.

But we can't, because we're soaked in vinegar.

I see this problem inside the church and out — that people think by their own effort, they can become good.

They think: I just need more discipline.

I just need better habits.

I just need to want it more.

I just need to be more sincere.

And on and on.

Now, all these things are good: discipline and good habits and desire and sincerity will serve you well down the road — but they're not enough when you're stuck in the pickle stage.

After Paul had been a believer for more than two decades he wrote about the frustration of not being able to be the good man he wanted to be.

In he said...