Sermon Tone Analysis

*GET UP, MAN - St Luke 17:10-17*

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Deal with Creation

 

That the way God revealed himself is that he first decided to create.

He made man in his own image.

Man – Created by God in God’s image and likeness.

God personally formed and shaped Adam.

To be created in his image and likeness is to mean that we are God’s top merchandise.

There is no better image to be made after that is higher than God You can be inspired by all of the wonders of God’s creation (The mountains, the stars, the vast oceans and size of this planet and the others but still God’s greatest creative work is when he created me and you.

Then to know that the God that created me loves me and values me.

Psalms 8 – What is man that thou art mindful of him, the son of man that thou carest for him-

 

You are not an afterthought but the pinnacle of God’s creation.

God loads us daily with his benefits, material, physical and spiritual.

Psalm 139:13-14 for you created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Your eyes saw my unformed body.

All of my days are ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! Have vast is the sum of them!

When I awake I am still with you.

You really don’t know how much God has invested in you, man.

Even when he made the earth, he put everything in the earth so that you could be sustained.

Trees that have seeds that reproduce themselves for you physical sustenance.

Water for cleansing, oxygen for you to breathe.

God invested a whole lot to get you to walk with him.

So when we say man we say Man:  Producer, Protector, thinker, ruler,

 

St.

Matthew.16:

24- 27

Psalms 103

 

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?

Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

The Art of Denying Ourselves – The Cost of Discipleship is having the ability to say No.

 

How can we deny ourselves the things that we want.

I could have been more successful if I had said no

I could have been closer to my destiny had I said no

I could have had more finances if I had said no

 

The problem is that I said too many times yes when I should have said no.

There were ten of them with the same issue.

Ten is usually the number of God’s order.

There are ten commandments.

Here there are ten who are out of order:

It starts with a white patch of skin that becomes numb, so much so that the victims cannot even feel a needle piercing that spot.

The patch begins to spread all over the body and often manifests itself on the face, so the disease is impossible to hide.

It then begins to form spongy tumors on the face and, at the same time, attacks the internal organs as well.

The tissue between the bones in the hands and feet deteriorate and disappear, causing them to become deformed and unusable.

At the same time, the nerve endings become numb so that the victim cannot tell when something is hurting him, like an animal biting him.

And since these lepers had to live out in the deserted areas outside the city so animals would sometimes come at night and begin to chew the flesh of their infected limbs and they wouldn’t even know it.

This type of leprosy is eventually fatal, but more often lepers died from diseases.

Too many of us keep reminding ourselves of our past mistakes.

Leprosy was especially bad because:

  it was repulsive to all who saw the person

 

  it was incurable by human means

 

  it was isolating - lepers were confined outside the city limits - many times to the city dump - probably because they could find food and other things there.

  it would cause you to become unclean ceremonially if you touched a leper (even if you didn’t catch the disease).

They wore clothes that were torn and a rag that covered their faces.

  it was the physical counterpart to the spiritual problem of sin.

It was the model disease for sin.

You were determined by the church to be uncleaned and so you were unfit to worship.

Anyone who came around you was also afraid because if they got with you they could be told that they were unclean as well and not be able to go to the temple.

That is why when a leper is healed it is called a cleansing instead of a healing.

  When a leper was healed he was to go to the priest and be pronounced clean before reentering society.

  Not since Elisha healed Naaman the Syrian in 2 Kings 5: had someone been healed of leprosy.

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Press toward the mark of the high calling which is in Christ Jesus

 

You can do all things through Christ that strengthens you.

!! The purpose for the individual

!!! /1.

Physical healing/

!!! /2.

Restoration into the community/

Sending the ex-leper to the priests was as much for the man’s benefit as it was a sign for the priests.

!!! /3.

Spiritual awakening to who Jesus was./

Jesus responded to the man’s faith and healed him.

If there were any doubts in the man as to the identity of Jesus, they were erased.

  Genuine compassion has no limits.

True compassion reaches even to the lowest level.

Compassion is always necessary when working with people because we all fail.

We make terrible mistakes, commit terrible sins, etc.

It is our natural inclination and the easiest to move toward contempt of the down and outers (like the Pharisees did).

But we need to move toward compassion, like Jesus did.

When we don’t have compassion, it is because we think that we are better than others.

We think that they are in their situation because of some fault of their own and we wouldn’t have done whatever it was that got them in that position.

So, if we don’t have compassion, the reason may be pride.

  The lepers said, Lord, Have Mercy on Us.”

Mercy- Most of the time in scripture it means to have pity or compassion.

Here it means to be overly lenient.

I just don’t want you sympathy, but I want you to do something that no one else can do.

God has the ability to heal (or do whatever), but we also need to recognize that He has the right not to do anything.

We need to recognize that we don’t know what is best.

He does.

  Sometimes it is easier to believe in God’s power more than His mercy.

Sometimes we don’t believe he wants to heal us.

If I can make a generalization: Charismatics go to far in one direction (claiming that God always wants to heal us) and Cessationists go too far in the other direction (often not really believing that God wants to heal us.)

  Jesus not only has the ability to save, He has the authority to command.

Therefore, we learn about Jesus’ power as well as his authority.

  Faith needs to be followed by obedience.

It is not enough to be just cured or cleansed.

The spiritual parallel is that it is not enough to be saved.

  Obedience is preferred over impulse.

  Disobedience hinders God’s work.