Sermon Tone Analysis

Two weeks ago, if we remember, it was about doing all things without complaining and disputing.

I wonder how we have done over the last couple of weeks.

Have we been more thankful?

Have we been more content?

Have we trusted God who is in full control?

If so well done.

For me these thoughts have been continually with me especially as I have not been feeling well.

I mean, is God in control?

The fact I couldn’t make it last Sunday through sickness is so unusual for me.

In fact, I think I may have only ever not been on one other Sunday in 38 years due to illness.

But perhaps, partly, it was so you could hear messages by John Kissack and by our own Rev. Gareth Matthias.

God is in control and I am supremely confident of this even if the world now tore itself apart.

Our habits of complaining or despairing, or not trusting of God can take time to change and this change comes if we are continually interacting with and being transformed by the Word, meditating on what He says day and night.

Scripture is clear that meditating upon Him changes us and we become more heavenly minded, more like citizens of Heaven than citizens of this world which is corrupt, crooked and perverse.

We are reminded of the words of:

That one, James says, will be blessed in what is done.

The promises of God are yea and amen.

Do these things and you will be blessed.

15

So it is all the more important that we take note when Paul writes that we obey and do, therefore, all things without complaining and disputing so that as we can see in verse 15 and we will be those who shine as stars.

It is when others see what God is doing in us that they will glorify Him.

We are reflectors of God and His glory.

So let us look more carefully at verse 15.

That we may become...not that you are already – but if we leave behind murmuring and arguing then you are on the way to successfully shine as the lights we ought to be.

Let’s look a little closer at this.

There are three things that are required:

Blameless

Harmless

Faultless

for we are children of God.

We are children of God if we have received Jesus into our lives so that we live for Him.

The cross before us the world behind us.

Plenty claim to be Christians and have gone to Church all their lives or think that because they were christened that they have no more to do and there are others who think that on balance they have lived more good than bad and therefore will go to Heaven on that basis.

I know that many millions believe themselves to be Christians but is simply not true.

I know that you know that we cannot be born a Christian as some think but we are born again to new life.

And we have been given the Holy Spirit who testifies that we are new creations:

What is interesting about becoming lights is that the Bible says we are already!

We do shine as light whether we intend to or not!

You are light already but we still need to be told ‘let your light so shine’.

But this brings us back to being blameless and harmless.

The fact is we could actually shine brighter than we do.

Those three words again are negatives in the Greek:

Blameless

Harmless

Faultless

Let’s look at the first of these:

Blameless

free from fault and censure; to be faultless; above reproach and rebuke.

The believer is to live a blameless, faultless and pure life, both in the church and in the world.

No one is to be able to point to the Christian and accuse or blame him with anything.

The Christian is to be clean, unpolluted, spotless, holy, righteous, and pure before man and God.

This is a tall order, right?

None of us have yet made this.

The Philippians hadn’t.

Being complainers marred the blamelessness they had in Christ which gives us an idea of the standard being set here.

2. Harmless

This word means innocent and pure.

We can see the meaning of this word as it is only used in two other places in the Greek:

The word simple meaning innocent concerning evil.

Harmless as doves means for us to be as innocent as doves which are symbols of peace.

This verse has come up a lot recently so perhaps the Lord is really saying something to us about this.

How can we break this down further?

It means to be pure, unadulterated, unmixed as flour that has gone through a sieve to take away the impurities.

It is to be single-hearted, single-minded, wholly after the Lord with nothing of the world interfering.

3. Faultless

It means to be free from fault or defect.

When we buy something in the shops whether clothing, or a TV or a washing machine or a computer or soap or anything; we would expect that it would be free from any faults and any defects.

This is what we are to be.

This idea comes from the Torah, the law, and even in our readings in Deuteronomy that offerings to God were to be made with animals that were without even a blemish.

It is He who watches us and sees what we really are.

We see where we really should be.

God does not accept our worship when it comes from defective, guilty, and reproachable lives.

I can leave us all convicted here and down about the fact we do not live up to God’s expectations.

I do not live up to it.

I fall far short.

But are we sorry enough to change?

Because it is up to us.

Paul is not telling us things that are completely out of our reach but to care about how we live our lives before a God who sees.

Do we need to make radical changes about what TV we watch or books we read, hobbies we have and so on?

It is easy to make excuses.

Can we stop ourselves complaining and disputing?

Just how different are we from the world for surely this is the mark of the light of God shining through us.

We live in the world, as crooked and perverse as it is, shall we, then, leave it just as dark as we found it?

For every generation is a crooked and perverse generation for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

As proof of this we can see in Scripture in different generations the same thing:

In Moses’ day:

In Jesus’ day:

In the Apostles’ day:

A revealing illustration of the corruption of men is in this:

There is a tradition to the effect that Noel Coward sent identical notes to the twenty most prominent men in London, saying, “All is discovered.

Escape while you can.”

All twenty abruptly left the town.

We are lights for this generation – how bright we shine is up to us.

When we murmur and complain, when we fight with one another, when we do not live blameless and harmless lives, it is at those times when we place our light under a basket.

We make our light useless.

So we need to shine.

And in a corrupt and perverse generation – need I remind us that this is the case - when fornication, homosexuality, abortion are all accepted without question and now the latest things up for non-discussion; transsexualism and the choosing of ones own gender.

Up until less than fifty years ago we called these things sin, now we call them alternative lifestyles.

Those who still hold to the morality in the Bible are called religious fanatics, old-fashioned, dinosaurs or homophobic but the greater the darkness the more we shine.

Let others see the good works we do in the Lord and give glory to our Father in heaven.

To the extent we live in the light we shall be light.