Sermon Tone Analysis

Mark Dell“Good morning, my name is Mark Dell, Senior Pastor here at Legacy Bible Church.

I would like to welcome all of you here today.

And I would also like to welcome those who are listening online too.

INTRODUCTION (10 minutes)

Jab 1

Have you ever believed in something, I mean really believed in something only to find out later that you were wrong?

It’s not that you are trying to be difficult, I mean you have the best of intentions, you are just wrong?

There is a group of people that are, I believe completely wrong about something and you are not going to convince them otherwise.

There is a society out there called the Flat Earth society.

Yes, there are people out there that belong to this club of people that believe that the earth is literally flat.

That is right, flat.

They believe that all the evidence we have to support the fact that the earth is round is all an elaborate hoax made up by NASA to keep the truth from us.

They believe that there is a 150 foot ice wall all around the pancake shaped world and that there are armed guards from the military to keep people away so that they don’t climb it and fall off.

Now, I need to tell you that they really believe that they are on to something here and that it is the rest of the world that is wrong and that they are the ones with the truth.

And they really believe this.

They aren’t lying, they truly believe it.

Jab 2

Now the nice thing about the flat earth society is that they are a non-violent group and their belief doesn’t really do anything to hurt anybody.

But sometimes what someone believes can be downright dangerous.

Most of us know of George Washington who was the first president of the United States.

Washington was an incredible man who served his country in many battles.

He survived much war and finally was able to retire.

About 2 and 1/2 years after he left the presidency and retired, Washington came down with an illness.

His throat was terribly sore, he had a fever and he was having trouble breathing.

Earlier that day he had been out in the cold rain and hail supervising some work that was being done on his property.

That night a doctor was called in.

The doctor gave him some medicines and took about 12 ounces of blood from Washington.

This is how Dr.s would treat patients, especially with inflammation.

They thought that if there was pain due to inflammation then if you removed some of the volume of blood then you would get relief from the inflammation.

Well, this would prove to be trouble for Washington.

Over the next 12 hours there would be 4 episodes of bloodletting removing 80 ounces, or 2.3 liters of blood.

That would be 40% of Washingtons total blood volume.

In the end, we don’t know how exactly Washington died, but losing 40 percent of your blood surely didn’t help him.

It is interesting.

If you read all about what the Doctors did, their treatments, their remedies, their medicines it would make you cringe.

It would make you think that what killed Washington was the doctors!

And we would probably be accurate if you think that.

But here is my question; did the doctors mean to hurt Washington?

Of course not.

They were not trying to end the life of the first American President.

They were not trying to end the life of the Father of our country.

No, they were just doing what they thought was right and in the end it would cost the life of George Washington.

Right Hook

Jab 3

George Washington.

Right Hook

You can be sincere and be wrong can’t you?

Have you ever been wrong—even though—you were sincere?

This is our last week in The Lives God “ruined” series where we have been looking at the interaction God has in the lives of His people and what He/God accomplishes through what may look to us like ruining.

But the ruining that God has for us might just be exactly what He has for us so that we can glorify Him through our lives.

And God may choose to ruin you in order to actually help you even if it doesn’t always look like it or feel like it.

I want to talk about a character in the bible, one of my favorites who was very ambitious, who was very smart, who was incredibly zealous for the Lord.

This guy gave his whole life over to the will of God.

His name was Saul of Tarsus.

Saul would have been the poster boy for Jews.

He had it all going on.

He was climbing the ladder to success and success for a Jewish man during this period of history would be to become a pharisee.

A pharisee was a leader in religion and law.

Now those terms basically meant the same thing.

Here in this country we have religion and government which are separate.

But there was a period of time when religion and law were the same thing.

The 10 commandments were commandments that were lived by.

And if you broke any of those laws you were a law breaker.

The pharisees would interpret the scriptures, the laws and were the ruling group in this area.

Saul was one of these guys.

He studied under one of the best pharisees, Gamaliel.

He was hungry and he was motivated and he was qualified.

He was set up!

He was set up!

And listen, he was zealous for the Lord.

For the Lord!

Saul was wanting to do what was right by God.

You know, very often when we talk about the Pharisees in the New Testament we usually don’t have a lot of good things to say because of Jesus’ criticism of them.

And there were some really bad Pharisees, there were selfish, greedy and bad Pharisees AND, there were also some very good zealous Pharisees that wanted to do what was right by the Lord.

Scripture introduces Saul in Acts when the Christian movement was really just getting started, getting some momentum.

And it was getting really excited because people were really coming to this understanding that Jesus was the Son of God and that Jesus was the one who was prophesied to come and Jesus WAS Raised from the dead!

Even some of the Pharisees were coming around and surrendering their lives to Jesus.

In there is a story about a young man named Stephen.

And Stephen is arrested because of his faith in Jesus.

He is accused and then he gives a beautiful speech that goes through the whole Jewish history over the years about how God called the Jews his special people and he talks about Abraham and Moses and King David and then he gets to the Prophets and he quotes the Prophets who had made prophecies about Jesus and calls them out.

He calls out the Pharisees and the Scribes and he lumps them in with their forefathers who had turned their backs on God!

And then he became the first Christians martyr.

That’s right, he was killed because of his belief in Jesus Christ to be the Son of God.

Acts 7:58-8:

What a terrible guy right?

How dare you do this to Christians! How dare you rise up against them and put them in prison.

Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him.

And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

59 And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

60 And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Saul Ravages the Church

8 And Saul approved of his execution.

And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

2 Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him.

3 But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

is the first verse where we are introduced to Saul.

Now, just wait, just wait one minute.

Saul was actually defending God.

Stephen was—as far as the Pharisees knew—blaspheming God.