Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction:
Today we live in a very fast paced society, a rat race.
It's a feeling often of being driven to the wall with activity--running behind and not being able to get it done.
We can't even think about getting ahead.
There's not enough time in the day, and if we do get time, we’re so tired and worn out that we feel like giving up.
Welcome to 2018.
We're in a state of physical, mental, and emotional overload.
We are running at a furious pace, busy.
Busier than any generation in the past.
Even for those who are here and retired, you know that somehow your schedule never was notified that you are in retirement.
It's almost as if, in the midst of all this, we hear the thundering voice of God, “Be still and know that I am God.
That is our text: Psalm 46:10.
Transition:
There may be a few verses that will startle you like this and challenge you in your life.
Psalm 46 was written during a time of trouble.
The armies were gathering together.
They were preparing for battle.
There was a nervousness in the camp.
The armor was clanging.
Talk of battle was at hand.
Now the enemy upon us, we are ready for war, to rise up, to grab our sword, to run into battle.
Scripture Reading:
And now God gives this command to be still.
How many ways we can apply it to today.
The relevancy of God's word for us today.
Probably no more timely message or challenge that could be for this hour to be still and know that He is God.
Transition:
Out of this whole Psalm, I want to zoom in on the one phrase from verse ten
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
It really comes in two commands.
Very simple outline for taking notes: 1) Be still, and 2) know that I'm God.
The first command to “be still” probably initiates within our hearts a response like, “Yeah right!
How?
How can I be still?
I. Be Still
It’s a choice.
Everything in me--everything around me--is at such a furious pace that I haven't got time to be still.
And you look at us today.
We don’t know how to be still!
The day of smart phones and tablets at fiber optic speeds, satellites, web pages for every single subject known to man.
Has there ever been a generation so busy with plenty of activity and yet so shallow and empty?
So what we've done is we've created the age of multitasking.
“We're really good and advanced, you know, we can do 10 things at once!”
And yet in our lives there is that horrendous shallowness.
The hideous emptiness.
We tell our friends you can reach me by phone, fax, cell phone text, snap chat, Facebook Messenger, or even my own website blog.
I've got answering services: call answering, call forwarding, voicemail, or auto-reply text and email.
So I'm immediately available and burning the candle at both ends.
Yet we're not as bright as we think we are.
We’ve overloaded our lives and lost control.
I'm actually going to use a computer illustration: you may know that when you have too many applications running at the same time, it uses up near all your memory and processor power.
The computer will end up crawling or even totally freeze up as you try your multitasking skills on the computer.
And sometimes all you can do is shut it off (if ending tasks and killing processes doesn’t work).
But that's what's happened.
We've become so busy that we slow down anything meaningful until we shutdown!
Have you ever heard of a heart attack that is a heart beating too fast?
I've always thought a heart attack was just when your heart stops/quits.
Apparently there is a type of heart attack called arrhythmia where your heart doesn’t slow down.
What happens in arrhythmia is your heart beats so fast that can’t pump any blood.
It'll start racing way too fast.
For most, a normal resting heart rate is 60 to at most 100 beats per minute, but the fastest human ventricular rate reported to date is 480 beats per minute.
Your heart is then going so fast it can't pump the blood.
And of course you can die.
So one treatment is that they shock you and put you on a defibrillator.
In fact, you can wear it on your side and put it by your heart so that every time your heart begin to race, this portable defibrillator shocks your heart.
That's what this verse is like.
Some of you, like I've been so many times in my life, running so fast and so furiously, doing so many things, so filled with activity, God is shocking you this morning with this command: Be still.
YHWH wants to get your attention.
You wonder how Christ in his ministry was never in a hurry.
I mean if you were to give me an agenda for the next 3.5 years and say you have all of this to get done in 3 and a half years, I think I’d say, “where do I begin?”
I’d probably begin in a frantic pace trying to get all accomplished but we’d never find Christ that way.
I mean can you picture it.
“Would you guys just get in the boat right now? We’ve got to get on the other side of the sea--we should have been there yesterday!
There are ten lepers I needed to heal and now we’ve just missed them!”
Now I can see myself doing that.
A lot of people do that.
But Christ never did that.
But in reality, what we'd become is a hurried, frustrated, impatient, angry, tired, worn out, embittered people who are unable to sit still.
We are like the proverbial hamster, running on the wheel going fast, but going nowhere.
But think really, what a strategy for satan.
He knows he may not get you to commit some horrendous sin to disqualify you.
He knows that he may not be able to tempt you with laziness.
But he will kill you a spiritual arrhythmia.
He's going to let you be so busy and tempt you to go do more good things so your life becomes a mile wide and a fourth inch deep in order that there's no depth to your life, no relationship with the Lord.
Make no mistake about the fact that satan is alive and well and attacking us at Grace!
But YHWH knows!
He knows this and calls us to be still, to trust, to love.
We see the verse is a call to a people of activity.
People on the run.
But not only is it a call to people of activity it's a call to people in futility.
If you look at the words: “be still”.
A literal translation of the Hebrew here is: “cease your striving.”PAUSE
AND SAY IT AGAIN.a
You know what that means?
It's really an attack on the “make it happen” mentality.
That's the age we live in.
You get on an airplane, you see all the cups you can buy, all the posters you can buy “make it happen.”
We are so prone to do God's work in the energy of the flesh and the problem is we never see it.
We never realize what's taking place.
It's almost like a drug--the activity.
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