Sermon Tone Analysis

My bag of tricks

When I joined the army I had no idea of what was in store for me.

Not often, but whenever there are disagreements in the house or with friends, or colleges, and I sense that my argument is perhaps the weaker argument, I have a bag of tricks I revert to.

In my mind I know I have lost, but my bag of tricks is usually enough to break away from the disagreement and not confront the truth.

In fact, often I have so much to learn.

My bag of tricks enables me in my stubbornness to admit defeat to myself, but not directly admit it.

If I lose argument with the kids, instead of admitting I am wrong I would just say “Because Daddy says so”.

If you are anything like me, you will come up with a plan to attack the day.

If I lose an argument with my mates I could sometimes get away with the “Oh, your breaking up, what did you say…beep beep beep.”

With Laura, I find myself so desperate I misuse Scripture, which compounds the sins I need to repent of.

The go to line when I have nothing more to say is “Get behind me Satan.”

Which is ridiculous.

Day one someone shaves your head and yells at you and you lie there in bed just thinking “What have a done?”

We have our own little world of all the things we will do that day and nothing will stop us from achieving our aim.

It’s stupid.

It’s foolish.

And at every reaction I know and everyone else knows that I am wrong.

And repentance is needed.

But when traffic hits on the way to doing Scripture at Guildford West, I lose my temper in the car.

“How can this person be driving this slowly?”

And the issue here isn’t bad debating skills.

Instead of admitting that my plan failed to factor in traffic or really slow drivers, I sit there and say “Move!”.

My bag of tricks to get out of this situation is limited at best.

In fact I can do nothing but just get angry and blame others.

So what is the issue here?

Is it my poor planning?

Is it the slow driver on the road?

No - it’s me.

The issue here is pride.

Pride in my own goals and needing my plans to be right.

I refuse to admit defeat.

I refuse to admit that perhaps my little world needs have a bigger picture.

But things ease off a bit as you settle in and I certainly settled into the Army culture of mateship, teamwork, integrity, swearing and drinking.

Don’t we all have that?

Isn’t it something we struggle with.

When we get told no to things, don’t we rile against that?

When we have our usual ways of going about things: the seat we sit in every Sunday for church (or at school), the coffee we order every morning at the same time, even the way some of us escape into our phones to play some pointless game until someone interrupts us and we are asked to stop what we are doing and do something else.

We get fustrated.

We get angry.

What we don’t often do straight away is admit that we are not the centre of the universe.

We don’t often admit that our plans for our world and our day need to be changed at the expense of what we really want to be doing for us.

The sins might not be as prevalent, and we might not go to the length of misusing Scripture, but we might often stubbornly still decide to go our own way rather than humbling submitting to anyone else - particularly God’s way.

We have it here in church.

And then after a couple of weeks, something strange happened.

I got invited to my first ever Bible study.

This morning we see two worlds, two kingdoms and two plans at war with each other and only one will prevails.

And this morning is a little confronting because we are placed on the losing side from the get go.

The main perspective we get throughout this morning is not of our hero David, but the tragic perspective of Saul.

And the question posed to Saul and to us is ‘are we willing to surrender our own goals to that of God’s goals?’

Are we willing to fully come to God, fall at our knees and say ‘not my will, but your will be done’?

And it was really nice.

Up until that point my friendships were fairly service level and rough.

But here I was introduced to a group of people whose lives were obviously different to mine.

There was something else.

Now, over the next 12 months, every Wednesday, I heard the gospel a number of times and I was told the importance of telling others and letting it shape your life.

But every Thursday I was out with the boy drinking away the pay packet and generally up to no good.

My relationships at Bible study and in life didn’t deepen further, they just stayed the same.

And I had this bag of tricks I would reach into to give my self excuses as to why I would miss Bible Study here, why I didn’t talk to someone about Jesus there, why I it was ok to chase after girls - essentially why it was ok not to change.

On Wednesday’s I acted like a Christian, but the reality is that I was fighting a losing battle against God himself with my life.

There was no fruit in my life because I would tell God on a weekly basis that I did not need to change.

My core issue wasn’t ability or skill.

My bag of tricks meant that I was articulate and knew what to say in Bible study.

I could present well at times.

No, my issue was that I was not willing to fully surrender my goals and my life over and commit to God’s plan for my life.

And this is our question this morning - are we willing to surrender own own goals for that of God’s goals?

We see this question asked of us with increasing intensity.

It is like a mini series with three episodes.

In episode one we have Saul’s son Jonathan and his clothes so let’s look at the passage.

Episode 1: Saul’s son and his clothes (18.1-5)

Look down with me a verses 1-5 of chapter 18.

Let’s just notice how actively involved David is in this scene.

The answer - not very.

Instead of doing the action, David is the object of the action.

We hear of the response of Jonathan to David and our perspective of what is going on in this scene is less viewing things in line with the hero David, but from the outside.

We hear Jonathan’s affection and loyalty to David.

We their friendship described in a fairly one way manner with verse 1 saying that Jonathan loved David more than himself.

He became one spirit with David (which describes a deep level of friendship).

But we don’t read of David’s reaction to Jonathan within this chapter too much to we?

Jonathan made a covenant with David in verse 3. We don’t get the details of the covenant, or the agreement here, but we do get a hint of what was involved in verse 4.

Jonathan hands David his robes.

There is nothing homo erotic about this, this is a political move more than anything.

The robes of the king’s own son were the robes of a prince.

These were royal robes and a princely sword.

This means that Jonathan aligned himself with David and in many ways says without using words ‘David is the man who should inherit the throne - not me’.

What a move to make! “Here you go David - what you did against Goliath proves that clearly the Lord is with you.

I need to align myself with you” says Jonathan.

It is an interesting comparison to make last week when we say King Saul offer his own armour to David.

The king’s clothes didn’t fit David.

Not only in size - but he was not the king.

Jonathan, the man who should inherit the throne gives up his tunic and they appear to be accepted by David.

We see no hint of rejection of them here.

Here is a very strong indication that although David was not the king yet, not did he pretend to be, he was the king that is to come.

So Saul sends David out on missions and each step of the way, David is successful.

And with each success David begins to show that perhaps he is suited to these clothes that Jonathan has given him.

So Saul sends David out on missions and each step of the way, David is successful.

And with each success David begins to show that perhaps he is suited to these clothes that Jonathan has given him.

Here we see the prince of the land, the son who should inherit the throne see that his plans, his aspirations are not what they needed to be.

Is Jonathan willing to surrender his own goals for that of God’s goals?

The answer appears to be yes.

And it is interesting to note what characterises Jonathan’s response - a willing love.