Sermon Tone Analysis

Obstacles to seeing God’s love in a broken world

Our understanding of our problem

We understand our problem to be outside of us.

This leads us to believe the answer to our problem is God fixing our surroundings.

We can’t reconcile God’s love and the evil that surrounds us because we think God could fix all our problems if He would correct our environment.

This leads us to understand faith as trusting God to act outside of us rather than within us.

Our understanding of the greatest good

Peace, prosperity, wealth, freedom, self-determination and unrestrained self-expression define the American culture’s idea of good.

We believe that if these things would become reality we would be satisfied, happy and full of joy.

Our understanding of love

Love in the perverted sense serves my ends, my desires, my goals - ultimately we define love as the willingness to unconditionally serve and work toward whatever I determine is good.

If you love me, you commit to make me happy regardless of your feelings.

To limit my self-determination or to condemn any form of my self-expression is hate not love.

Our understanding of individualism

d.

Our understanding of individualism

Our understanding of individualism

What is Love?

My definition: Love is finding joy / delight / pleasure / satisfaction in the joy / delight / pleasure / satisfaction of another.

18  “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen,

my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4  Delight yourself in the LORD,

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

See also , , ,

How we operate

We desire - We assess - We act - We find satisfaction - We experience pleasure, delight and joy - We rejoice

***You cannot be satisfied by what you first do not desire.

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

God’s love is seen in that...

Truth #1 | He finds joy in our joy

13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

2 For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. 2 For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained?

3 And I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. 4 For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.

Truth #2 | He pursues our joy by pursuing His glory

17 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.

26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Truth #3 | He exposes the objects of our desires as unsatisfying

Be appalled, O heavens, at this;

be shocked, be utterly desolate,

declares the LORD,

13  for my people have committed two evils:

they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

broken cisterns that can hold no water.

21  “Agree with God, and be at peace;

thereby good will come to you.

22  Receive instruction from his mouth,

and lay up his words in your heart.

23  If you return to the Almighty you will be built up;

if you remove injustice far from your tents,

24  if you lay gold in the dust,

and gold of Ophir among the stones of the torrent-bed,

25  then the Almighty will be your gold

thereby good will come to you.

22  Receive instruction from his mouth,

and lay up his words in your heart.

23  If you return to the Almighty you will be built up;

if you remove injustice far from your tents,

24  if you lay gold in the dust,

and gold of Ophir among the stones of the torrent-bed,

25  then the Almighty will be your gold

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.

(2016).

().

Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.