Sermon Tone Analysis

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Anger
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Anger
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Christmas in July
Welcome to July where the average high temperature hovers around 90° and the low seldom dips below 70°.
The average precipitation is just at 5.35” almost twice what we get in December.
So while we’re enjoying the blessings of a working (or not) air conditioner, I want to talk with you about Christmas.
Now I know some of you are thinking, Elder Bob has finally lost it, but bear with me a moment.
This is not our destination; we’re just starting our journey.
The Christmas spirit is a strange phenomenon.
Every year for a brief period of time people seem to be overcome with a sense of cooperation not in evidence for the rest of the year.
Hostilities are terminated for a set period, feuds are put on ice and conflicts placed on hold, and for a few days or hours an almost surrealistic air of “togetherness” prevails.
This was particularly true in Christmas 1968.
Millions of people around the world, glued to their television sets, (you remember?
Huge 13” screens black and white three channels (ok four if we count the UHF PBS station…the rabbit ears…those were the days!)
They were waiting with bated breath and crossed fingers for the latest word from Apollo 8, the fragile, complex spacecraft in which the first manned lunar orbit was being attempted.
They were amply rewarded not only because they watched history being made but also because they witnessed breathtaking pictures of earth, the tiny planet which the human race inhabits suspended in black space.
For the first time, as man was made aware that the sum total of his differences is lived out on a fragile fraction of the universe, “togetherness” of a totally new kind was experienced.
Born of a sense of awe and cultivated through a sense of necessity, Christmas 1968 fashioned a oneness on earth never known before.
Regrettably, the familiarity which constant exposure brings quickly eroded the sense of wonder.
The global togetherness vanished almost as fast as the annual Christmas spirit does, and the human race got back to the business of disintegration and destruction.
Hopes that new insights into our minuteness would bring the race together were shattered, and many people began to wonder if there is such a thing as a unifying factor.
The Bible however insists that such a factor does exists.
Its components are fourfold.
All Under Sin
(NIV)
9 What shall we conclude then?
Do we have any advantage?
Not at all!
For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery mark their ways, 17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
(NIV)
Having shown at some length the obvious differences between Jew and Greek (or Gentile) and having compared their relative advantages and disadvantages, Paul asks if there really are any material differences.
He answers his own question with a resounding “no.”
Overriding all differences of class, creed, and culture is the somber fact that all are “under sin.”
This statement is presented as a “charge,” that is, a legal accusation presumably made in the name of God against His own created beings.
The awful togetherness of the human race that takes precedence over every other similarity or dissimilarity is that before God we are all exposed in our sinfulness.
The force of the expression “under sin” should be carefully noted.
Paul described the relationship between a schoolboy and his teacher in (read text)as being “under a schoolmaster.”
In he said (read text)slaves were “under the yoke.”
In all these instances to be “under” means “to be dominated by or under the authority of.”
There is a major difference between “sin” and “sins,” so we must be careful not to confuse “doing things that are not right” with the fact that we are dominated by a fundamentally evil dynamic.
The difference is not unlike that which exists between the symptoms of a disease and the disease itself.
When this is understood it becomes obvious that the human predicament is not so much that we have done things wrongly but that we are “in the Christ-less state under the command, under the authority, under the control of sin and helpless to escape from it.”
Accordingly, any solution to the human problem that fails to deal with the root cause of “sin” is no more of a solution than cold compresses on a fevered brow is a cure for the infection causing the fever.
Paul’s all-embracing “charge” requires substantiation, which he wastes no time in presenting.
Drawing freely from the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah, he writes a scathing denunciation in .
We see back in , that “the righteousness of God” is the central theme of this Epistle.
(read text) Righteousness has to do with God always being in the right and, therefore, always doing that which is right because He, Himself, is the only standard of rightness.
In the same way that there is and can be only one magnetic North and that all other points of the compass find their identity in relationship to North, so righteousness is found exclusively in the character of God, and all other standards of righteousness must be determined with reference to Him.
It is against this definition of righteousness that the charge “there is none righteous” () is made and can be readily justified.
The charge is not a figment of Paul’s fertile imagination nor is it a product of his disenchantment with the human race, as he clearly demonstrates by substantiating his position with quotations from Psalms and Isaiah.
It is as old as God’s dealings with mankind, and man’s resentment and resistance to the charge are equally as ancient.
Those people who have no interest in God and those who deliberately live in opposition to God are, if we may press the comparison in our analogy a bit further, heading south from God’s north, and are clearly at odds with Him.
Other people stray from the north in as many directions as there are points on the compass.
But sometimes the people most resistant to the charge of universal, no-exception unrighteousness are those heading conscientiously NNW or NNE.
They may be close and they are definitely closer than most, but they are not heading north where the righteousness is to be found.
To the world in general Paul proclaims, “There is none righteous,” adding for the benefit of those who think they are close, “no, not one.”
The dominating effect of sin can also be seen in the confusion of both individuals and society.
“There is none who understands” means that without exception the thought processes of men and women are so affected by sin that there will always be some degree of deficiency in their grasp of the truth as it is to be found only in the knowledge of God.
This naturally leads to confusion in everything else because all things have their meaning in Him.
The politician who is confused about God will be confused about God’s world, which leads inevitably to a confused world view and inadequate political solutions.
The sociologist who does not adequately understand God cannot thoroughly understand God’s masterpiece—man—so he will be in error at some point in his sociology.
The same kind of thing must be said about all areas of human endeavor which are grounded on a warped or withered understanding of God.
That the mind of man is not so depraved that it is totally incapable of any activity is obvious.
But the extent of the depravity is such that even though it cannot understand God of itself, it can still recognize its own deficiencies and may even be capable of identifying the deficiency as basically spiritual.
This does not mean, though, that man has a natural predisposition to go looking for God to fill the void.
On the contrary Paul insists, “There is none who seeks after God.”
There are people who profess to have a desire to know God but these same people will, after careful consideration, discover that their search is more for a good argument than for a living God.
The Lord Jesus made it clear that those who “seek will find” but Moses said to God’s chosen people (read text)“… you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all thy soul” ().
It is this kind of “seeking” that man does not naturally engage in, as is evident from the word Paul used, which Wuest said means a “determined search after something.”
Sin has left man with a warped will as well as a confused mind.
The predictable consequence of the foregoing is that “they have all gone out of the way” ().
In the same way that an automobile with a twisted axle will have wheels out of alignment giving it a tendency to go off line, so man with his sin-dominated mind and will, has a natural tendency to move from the path of God’s choosing.
Without exception, the human race has a bent toward evil and a bias in the direction of disobedience.
Like a symphony in which the various themes are interwoven, with more and more instruments adding their special contribution to the volume and the tempo accelerating until the tension becomes practically intolerable, so God’s case against human fallenness builds to a crashing climax.
To state that the race has become “worthless,” as in , is to make a most damning indictment.
The Hebrew word used in the Psalm Paul quotes stresses the thought of corruption or “turning sour,” while the Greek equivalent used by the apostle in Romans emphasizes the idea of “uselessness.”
As wineskins that rot become useless because they cannot hold wine, so fallen man through the corrupting power of sin in the totality of his being cannot function as intended.
As meat that perishes and cannot be used for anything and as salt that “loses its savor” has lost its very purpose for existence, so mankind is pathetic in its deteriorated and disintegrated uselessness.
Inevitably this depraved condition leads to the conclusion that is so blatantly set forth—“There is none who does good.”
This thought is violently rejected by many people who see no way that it can be true in the light of innumerable acts of courage, boundless evidences of sacrificial love, countless works of creative genius, and millions of ordinary everyday actions that demonstrate compassion and concern by the masses.
Two things need to be stressed, however.
First, the expression “does good” would be better translated if the word “habitually” were included, and, second, the concept of goodness is defined with reference to God Himself.
This is the goodness that is the essence of His nature rather than the product of human activity however enlightened or noble.
Paul, in effect, says that without a single exception there is not a human being of any shape, size, or form from any culture, environment, or age who has habitually produced a life characterized by undeviating commitment to righteousness and unadulterated goodness.
No, not one!
The rabbis had a teaching method called “charaz” which means “stringing pearls” where they would take verses from a variety of sources and develop an argument from them.
This Paul proceeds to do as he turns from broad generalizations about the human condition and deals with specific human activities.
In the same way that James in his epistle stressed the immense power of the tongue to express all manner of evil and produce all types of chaos, Paul chooses to concentrate on the activities of the human voice to demonstrate human sinfulness.
“Their throat is an open tomb” ( ) is a striking, even disgusting, metaphor.
Yet if we take a moment to consider this, we will see just how such depraved vocabulary, used by so many, allows the unfortunate hearers to catch a glimpse of the barren deadness of the speaker’s experience from which the sentiments of the heart flow.
An “open tomb” is an fitting description of the inner realities of human experience where little remains but the rotting bones and corrupting flesh of once-noble bodies of opinion.
In total contrast, Paul’s second pearl on this string is, “With their tongues they have practiced deceit” (v.
13).
Far from being disgusting and obscene, the speech of some is sweet and smooth.
Sugar-coated statements and well-buttered platitudes expressed in cultured, modulated perfection are no less demonstrations of human perversity because they are designed for deception.
David, whose Psalm Paul quotes at this point, knew from bitter experience with King Saul how devastating hostility could be cloaked in smooth civility.
One day the King said to the young man, “Here is my older daughter Merab.
I will give her to you in marriage; only serve me bravely and fight the battles of the Lord.”
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