Sermon Tone Analysis

Have a Good Trip

Last night we invented a new family game.

Logan started.

He ran across my bedroom, leaped face first through the air and landing completely flat on top of my bed.

So what do I do.

Run immediately after in, face first, and land completely flat on top of Logan.

So what does Dylan do?

Run and land on top of me.

Arabelle was laughing too hard to make the jump.

So we start taking turns running and landing on the bed.

But there is a new twist.

Dylan runs to jump on the bed and Logan takes him out with a pillow.

Like takes him out out, he was going this way then BAM and now he’s going this way.

After the brief hesitation to make sure he’s alive, we are all crying with laughter.

The game continues, but now whoever is running to leap on the bed is navigating past the other three throwing or swinging pillows to take you out before you make it to the bed.

Hi-larious.

And here is the true miracle: I then called a halt to the game before anyone got seriously injured.

There can be miracles.

Welcome to Next Step Christian Church.

We are going to play a new game.

;-)

We have this idea of next steps after Jesus, next steps into Christian belief, maturity and ministry.

Next steps into God’s more preferable future.

And we are encouraging and equipping one another to take those steps.

This is what we do here, this is our DNA, this is who God has called us to be.

But as we are taking those next steps into God’s more preferable future… what sometimes happens?

BAM! Pillow to the face.

Something sweeps out our feet from under us… and we are knocked to the ground.

Our “next step” gets interrupted.

What is the number one way to mess up your next step into God’s more preferable future?

This is the great mystery and I will reveal the secret answer at the end of the sermon...

Just kidding:

It’s Sin

Shocker.

Spoiler!!!

Sometimes we know how and why it happened to: it was our own sin and stupid.

We said something or we did something, or a compromise we made with sin had its consequence and just ruined it.

Or this is terrible: someone else sinned or did something stupid.

And it destroyed my day or my plan.

You messed up… but I am affected by the consequence of what you did!

Why did you do that???

We can’t say it is always my sin or his sin, sometimes it seems like crazy random circumstances (which could be spiraling consequences of unseen sin) and sometimes it really seems like divine providence and we just misunderstood our next step in the first place.

But a guaranteed way to mess up your next step into God’s more preferable future is to compromise God’s commandments on your life.

And this gets all too real… so let’s forget about our own mistakes for a bit and watch someone else mess up!

Those silly Israelites...

What is the big deal?

A Future So Bright...

Following Joshua, at the beginning of the book of Judges, everything is looking fantastic!

What’s going to work?

Teamwork.

Things are off to a great start!

They are winning and taking greater hold of the Promised Land.

Judges 1:1-

Winner!

Gruesome… but another huge win for the people of Israel.

This is a win writ large.

What follows in the chapter is a story of a win on the smaller family scale within Caleb’s family.

Judges 1:4-

They conquer on the tribe level.

They win on the family level.

They are taking huge next steps into God’s more preferable future.

What could go wrong?

What are they going to do with their victory?

The Compromise

Judges 1:27-

They did not drive them out.

They enslaved them.

The command: Drive out all the Canaanites.

The compromise: Enslave the Canaanites instead.

They are the instrument of God’s judgement upon these lands, a judgement he has been “storing up” (as God told Abraham) for 400 years until “their iniquity is complete”.

They are the instrument of God’s judgement upon these lands, a judgement he has been “storing up” (as God told Abraham) for 400 years until “their iniquity is complete”.

This isn’t a minor issue.

This is the big one, the one that God, that Moses and then Joshua stressed over and over.

They knew this would be a tempting area of sin and so they repeated it over and over.

For the Children of Israel this is not a gray area.

This compromise is the alcoholic saying “I suppose one drink can’t hurt...”

This is the porn addict who says “It doesn’t count if it’s HBO...”

Fill in your biggest temptation to sin, your biggest distraction from loving God with all your heart, mind and soul.

This is where they are compromising.

It reminds me of Adam and Eve in the garden, just don’t eat the fruit of that one tree.

And, I expect they heard that same whispering in their ear...

They are the instrument of God’s judgement upon these lands, a judgement he has been “storing up” (as God told Abraham) for 400 years until “their iniquity is complete”.

Did God Really Say?

The devil’s oldest line.

Did God really say that we were supposed to drive them all out?

Isn’t enslaving just as good as?… with the added benefit of having slaves to then do our work for us?

We don’t know the justification they made, or the words of the temptation.

But we do see the compromise.

Tribe after tribe choose to compromise God’s command.

And that compromise came with a consequence.

Every sin comes pre-packaged with its consequence

If you think your sin is just harming you, you are fooling yourself.

The stakes are high here.

It wasn’t that first generation that really suffered.

They had taken possession of all the land they could hold at the time and they had their slaves and a life of ease.

It is the next generations that will be ensnared by the culture and religion of the Canaanites.

Every sin comes pre-packaged with its consequence… and sometimes the stakes are ludicrously high, so far beyond what we would expect.

God gave them a clear next step into a more preferable future.

They compromised and walked into a less preferable future.

The Sentence

Judges 2:1-5