Sermon Tone Analysis

/For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea.

They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert/.

Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.

Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry.”

We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did — and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died.

We should not test the Lord, as some of them did — and were killed by snakes.

And do not grumble, as some of them did — and were killed by the destroying angel.

God judged Ananias and Sapphira, members of the Jerusalem church, killing them when they lied to Him.

One wag has commented that if God should decide to kill every Christian that lied before Him, there would be no Christians left to attend services.

I am not so confident as to make such an assertion, but the God I serve is a holy God.

Because He is holy, He holds His people to a high standard.

Perhaps many have been slain in judgement and we are simply too obtuse to recognise the divine justice.

Whether God slays individuals or not, it is patently obvious that He does permit congregations to die.

It was a trip to Saskatchewan which persuaded me to move to Canada.

Travelling throughout the region surrounding Saskatoon, I visited little town after little town without a Christian congregation.

Every one of those little prairie towns had a church building, or in many cases two and three church buildings; but there was no longer a lamp of witness left in those prairie towns.

Some of the church buildings were being used for granaries, some had become private homes, a couple had been transformed into bars, and others were simply boarded up.

Those desecrated buildings said that the heart of the church, the congregations, had ceased to beat long ago.

How does a church die?

Why would God permit the death of a congregation?

Could such a thing happen to us?  Would God actually call us to account with the consequence that we ceased to exist?

Such an event could happen, and if we are not careful such an event may well happen.

We are not immune to embracing sin with the consequent judgement of Holy God.  Paul cautions us through his first Corinthians letter against /setting our hearts on evil things/.

You will note that he uses the first person plural pronoun, including himself in the word of caution.

If the Apostle to the Gentiles was careful to avoid sinning against God, we will do well to take heed to our own lives.

God Does Judge His Holy People — For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea.

They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert.

A false profession is dangerous in the extreme.

To claim relationship to Holy God is to invite Him to judge motives and attitudes as well as actions.

This forms part of the warning issued together with the instructions which are given for observing the Continuing Ordinance.

/Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without recognising the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself.

That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.

But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgement.

When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world/ [*1 Corinthians 11:27-32*].

To claim kinship to the Living God while yet living a sinful life is to defy Him to discipline His own child.

Christian, be aware that God loves you too much to permit you either to disgrace His Name or to harm yourself.

He will restrain you.

Perhaps it will be helpful to review the disciplines of God.

I am quick to state that no one undergoing divine discipline need guess at what is happening.

The relationship between Father and child is broken and the child knows intuitively that the Father is working His discipline.

Whenever you hear someone moan that God must hate them, mark it down that that one is not undergoing discipline.

Divine discipline is recognised as just and proper by the child being disciplined even though they may resent the attention received.

At first God attempts to correct us through mild rebuke.

His Word corrects us and /the Spirit He caused to live in us envies intensely/ [cf.

*James 4:5*].

If we fail to heed the conviction of the indwelling Spirit of God He shall intensify His efforts to turn us from our mad race toward destruction.

If we fail the gentle rebuke of conscience pricked by the Spirit we face the dire prospect of buffeting of the soul.

There is found in Peter’s second letter an enigmatic verse.

In order to understand that verse to which I refer, listen to a brief passage which captures the context.

/If God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgement; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) — if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgement, while continuing their punishment/ [*2 Peter 2:4-9*].

Note in particular *the eighth verse* which states that Lot, identified as a righteous man/, was tormented in his righteous soul/.

We would not know that Lot was a righteous man save for this verse.

Though we might deduce from his relationship to Abram that Lot knew of God, the account of his life given in Genesis is silent concerning his worship of the true and living God.

In fact, we are left with the distinct impression that personal advancement in the social order of Sodom was of greater importance than was righteousness.

This verse further attests that he /was tormented in his righteous soul/.

Literally, /he tortured his righteous soul/.

He was distressed by the enormity of the sin which surrounded him and as a consequence he was grieved to the point of inner torment.

Seeing and hearing the filthy lives of those about him injured him to his soul.

The child of God cannot live in the midst of filthy lives without being adversely affected.

If he attempts to remain silent in the face of wickedness and blatant defiance of Holy God, he will discover that his soul is tortured by a self-induced form of torment.

This is nothing less than the Spirit of God dealing with His wayward child.

If somehow the child of God fails to respond to the inner torment of the soul, God may well touch the flesh.

Perhaps the individual will lose that which is greatly valued and which has begun to compete with love for God in the life of that one.

Perhaps God will touch the body and lay that one of a bed of illness.

Perhaps God will permit financial reversal or the loss of all that seemed necessary in order to capture the attention of the wayward child.

This is perhaps best summed up by the instruction Paul gives concerning an unnamed saint in the Corinthian church.

Having reviewed the awful sin which was flagrantly being paraded before the horrified eyes of the pagan world the Apostle instructed the reluctant church.

When you are assembled in the Name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord [*1 Corinthians 5:4,5*].

There is safety within the church and there is danger outside the fold.

I have mentioned before what an indelible impression church discipline exercised according to the Word made upon me as a young Christian.

A man in the church to which I first belonged had deserted his wife and children so that he could take up with a younger woman.

The church made inquiry and discovered that this sin was actually taking place.

Swiftly the church acted to exclude that man from the fellowship, informing him of the action.

If nothing else the congregation made it clear that it was pure and wanted nothing to do with his wicked actions.

The church had acted quickly before the community to declare herself innocent of this evil.

Weeks went by and from all appearance nothing much had changed.

We knew little of that man’s affairs and he had no contact with us until one night during an evening service.

Nearly six months had passed since I had last heard of that man and here he was in a service.

Requesting permission to speak the deacons granted him opportunity to address the congregation.

That man stood before the assembly to confess his sin and to ask that the people of God forgive him.

By his demeanour and body posture he was a broken man.

One statement he made has remained with me since that night.

Asking that the church receive him again into membership, he said, “It’s cold out there.”

Indeed, there is safety within the church and there is danger outside the fold.

If sifting by Satan is somehow insufficient to gain the attention of the wayward child, God may find it necessary to call the individual home.

As a child there would come a point in my childish rebellion when my dad would find it necessary to simply say, “Get home, son.”

I knew what that meant!

His words were the preamble to some serious adjustment of my attitude.

John, in solemn tone and with frightful words speaks of this ultimate discipline from the Father.

/If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life.

I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death.

There is a sin that leads to death.

I am not saying that he should pray about that.

All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death/ [*1 John 5:16,17*].