Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
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Anger
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Tone of specific sentences

Tones
Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
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Announcements:
Prayer
We are fastly approaching the end of this sermon series, and I hope that as we've gone through this series..
...we've begun to change... ...to pray for change in our own lives... ...and to live out that change in our own lives...
There's always a danger when you come to church on Sunday mornings...
The danger is - to come week after week, and to simply "Learn" new things...
But to never apply those things in our lives... To live this way is to DECEIVE ourselves...
How many of you have ever played a sport...or had a hobby that you at one time were DEDICATED to?
If so, you know what it's like to discipline yourself...
maybe you were on a diet for good amount of time..
maybe you worked out for a year straight...
Maybe you trained for a race... Learned to play an instrument...
Whatever it was - it took discipline...
It took Intentionality
Being intentional about the choices you made, for a desired outcome...
*Knute Larson (Work out your own salvation for God is working in you)
Olympic athletes (given talents by God - but they WORKED them out…)
And so when we come to our topic today of - Self-Control...
we have to know that Self-Control doesn’t JUST HAPPEN!
This thing needs to be WORKED out in our lives...
We’ll get into how we pursue Self-Control...
But first let’s look at what the Bible says about Self-Control in terms of what areas of life this affects in us...
SLIDE: Self-Control - How Much Do We Need It?
Self-Control
The Bible is FULL of scriptures that show us our NEED of Self-Control....
And it really does affect the WHOLE person!
SLIDE: Self-Control: and the physical life
Self-Control
If we really think about it, the Christian life is a life lived - CONSTANTLY saying “NO” to our flesh...
What are some areas of life where the flesh tries to trip us up?
Lust/Sexual Immorality
This doesn’t just apply to us guys…but, if anyone needs to hear this....it’s the guys
So here we see Jesus equate LUST with Adultery...
Heavy stuff...
Sounds like it can be an impossible mountain to climb, especially for the guys...
Guys, we need to know how to battle against these things..
How to have Self-Control in this area...
What is this saying - It’s saying yes - the body has CRAVINGS...
What happens when you get REALLY hungry - and there’s no food to eat??
Some people call it - Gettin HANGRY!
Right - the nicest person in the world, if HUNGRY…without food to satisfy that desire...
will get - HANGRY!
Food finds it’s purpose when it’s consumed.
The stomach CRAVES the food.
It’s a physical parable that points to the Spiritual.
Our bodies are not merely physical entities that need merely physical satisfactions...
God says - our bodies are meant for the Lord…and the Lord for our bodies...
SLIDE:
As much as our stomachs CRAVE food, so our souls should SO CRAVE Christ, that we obey Him with our bodies...
Sexual sins are sins where we abuse our own bodies, and use them in ways they were never meant to be used...
It’s clear from Scripture that we are to maintain SELF-CONTROL in these matters...
in the physical life
But also...
SLIDE: Self-Control and the thought life
Self-Control
We also see in Scripture the need for us to maintain Self-Control in the mind...
How many thoughts have you had since you woke up this morning?
And Paul says - take EVERY ONE captive…to obey Christ...
WOW - this kinda flies in the face of the American Christian culture doesn’t it...
“THINK Christianity ALL the TIME!!????”
Too often those attending services on Sunday are thinking mainly about themselves...
…and we see it in how quickly people are to jump ship and go looking for something that SATISFIES
It reminds us of Romans 12 doesn’t it?
Do you see how both the Physical Body and the Mind are connected?
If we are transformed by the renewal of our Mind, then it will lead to us presenting our Bodies as a living sacrifice...
And so to be SELF-CONTROLLED in the Mind, we must be TRANSFORMED ...
and there's only 1 other place, in the gospels, where this same word is used (transformed)....
And it's in Matthew 17:2
The transformation we're after, is the same word used here, but translated as transfiguration in Matthew...describing Jesus.
And so we should know that this transformation we're after (Self-Control), is not some elementary thing... It's a glorious....miracle...
It is not the replacement of a list of bad behaviors, with an external list, of new, better behaviors...
This transformation is not about being a "better-list" keeper...
This transformation/the SELF-CONTROL we’re after is not about switching from the To-DO list of my flesh....to the To-DO list of my moral effort.
No, His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light...
When Jesus rejected the works of the Law, He didn't replace them with the works of the Spirit....no instead what we find are "FRUITS of the Spirit...
Biblical Self-Control is not man-powered!
It’s Holy Spirit powered!....and we’ll get more into that in a bit.
But as we see, we’re called to not only be Self-Controlled in our physical bodies, but also in our mind...
Not only that, but the Bible makes it clear we’re also to be Self-Controlled when it comes to our tongues...
SLIDE: Self-Control: in speech
Self-Control
Many warnings here, especially in James, that we are to be careful in how we use our tongues...
The words that we say can - destroy
December of 2004 – 1 million users
December 2012 – 1 billion users
Twitter:
· 400 million tweets per day
· Equivalent to writing a 20 million-page book every day.
· Why are these online environments so popular?
· Because they give us a voice, and not just a voice,
· but a platform so grand, that when we do speak, the WORLD can hear us,
· and that’s enticing.
The problem is....
When we play with the tongue, we’re playing with fire...
Hence the reason we see that SELF-CONTROL is so important regarding how we use our tongues...
NOW - we’ve seen that Self-Control deals with...
the Physical body
the Spiritual Mind
and also - specifically, our tongues
BUT HOW do we pursue, as Christians, SELF-CONTROL in these areas!
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