Sermon Tone Analysis

what is the gap?

the difference between where we are and where God intends for us to be. the gap.

in the parable of the prodigal son, the son is having a moment..a moment of seeing where he is at and....he realizes the gap.

In my Fathers house there is much food, but i am starving!

what a difference!

listen to how another writer puts it.

First: The younger son experienced a crisis of self-identity that led to a radical change (17).

In a moment of self-revelation the son came to himself, which means that for the first time since he had left his father’s house, he began to examine himself critically for the decisions he had made and the way he had been living.

Out of a cycle of suffering and reversal of fortunes he was constrained to conduct this inner review, resulting in the major turning-point of his life.

that explains it.

sometimes it takes a lot for a person to stop blaming others and to take an inward look and see where they are, especially in their heart.

this is scary for most people, so they choose to ignore their inner reality and they place all of their attention on things or other people.

It distracts themselves enough so they don’t look at their own issues.

this coming to oneself means......

literally ‘to come to one’s senses’, represents a Semitic or old Jewish phrase ‘to repent’

do you find that interesting?

I certainly do.

anyone ever heard the term “know thyself”

‘Know thyself’ was the summation of Socratic wisdom in the ancient world, but only the word of God in the gospel of his Son can penetrate the barricades of pride and self-deception that all of us erect against the truth about ourselves.

The gospel is good news only after having delivered us the bad news about ourselves as the ones who have erred, rebelled and persisted in a style of life away from our only God and King.

Confronting ourselves honestly in the full light of God’s justice and truth in the law and in Jesus is the first step back to spiritual health and moral recovery.

Milne, D. J. W. (2001).

The Father with two Sons: A Modern Reading of Luke 15.

Themelios, 27(1), 18.

you know, sometimes we don’t know just how good we have something until we lose it.

and this is that moment for the younger son.

He is in a mess......and he remembers just how good it was at home....how much better it was than what he is in now.

think of what was brought back to his memory.

security, love, wellbeing, all the things he doesn’t have now.

This moment, he saw where he was and just how far the gap was.

It is when we see where we’re at is when we actually realize where we need to go and what direction we need to go in.

question for you.....

Do you know where you are?

how close or how far you are? how big the gap is?

Life is a series of little steps.

We may find ourselves in places that we would have never taken the one step to get there but maybe we were willing to take many little steps and it got us here.

Do we see the gap now?

If we know where were are, we now need to know 2 things.

where does God want us, positionally?

now, I am not talking about a maturity level that we are not at yet......

I am not speaking of a place that we cannot be at yet,

I am speaking of a place that we can be, right now, right here.

it is a place, like a mindset.

what mind frame does He want you to have right now? where does He want your thoughts and heart right now?

and what we need to know 2nd, what direction do we need to go to get there.

God wants you and I in a place with the heart and mind of Jesus.

Close to the Father.

What does that look like?

listening to a Francis Chan sermon the other day, he gave this illustration.

imagine the day you are in the presence of the Lord.

You are face to face with the Lord.....

and you had just gotten done praying to Him because you lived a life of prayer......you might say to the Lord, hey!

I was just talking with You! and You are here!!!

But what about the other story..... you hadn’t prayed in weeks.

You are face to face with Him.

Hi, Lord, sorry, I have been so busy.....

we are talking about closeness, right?

either we are close to the Lord, or we aren’t.

and we are managers of our responsibility in our relationship with the Lord.

He is there.

are we?

He came all the way from heaven to earth to get close to us.

because we couldn’t get to heaven.

See, the work Jesus did here?

the cross? it did it.

He showed us in the cross.

He showed us closeness.

He came so close your sin got on Him.

all of it.

He identified with you so you could identify with Him.

you could take on His identity.

this is key everybody.

listen to this.

we may have been a bad person in the past, we were sinful, but Jesus changed our identity!

He changed us from who we used to be to a person that has sin dealt with because of the cross.

we are people that have been given complete forgiveness, true unconditional love, and if we believe this.....I say if because there may be someone in here that doesn’t believe that right now..... but when we do believe it, it changes our identity.

our identity means so much because it affects what we do and how we think about ourselves in the world.

this is of major importance.

Scripture is clear that a believer has a new life, is a new creation.

what does that mean?

God has given us the very life of Christ.

the very life of Jesus.

what that means is we look at our life and see the life of Jesus.

we no longer look at our life since our life died on the cross.

Paul explains it with an interesting analogy about marriage in Romans 7.

He speaks about how when there is a death, there is a release of the law.....so in other words, if you and I are believers, and there has been a death, it has changed what we are connected with.

He finishes it like this.

4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

it is key for us to see our new position in Christ.

this is a brand new identity.

this is a new way of thinking about ourselves.

who we think we are is really important.

Christ has done the work to change our identity.

but if we don’t recognize it, we could walk around like a beggar when our bank account is full.

how crazy would that be?

what is your identity? in Christ you are perfect and righteous.

you don’t feel that way? you don’t look that way? so, you choose to not think that way.

this is a problem.