Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

In a particular philosophy class, it was time for the final exam.

The professor came, greeted his students, and said to them, "this final exam is essay format.

I will write my question on the board, and you have 2 hours to write your response and turn it in."

He then proceeds to write a one word question on the board, and walks out.

The students begin.

Some spend 30 minutes writing, others spend 1 hour, still others write until the final exam is over and turn in what they have.

But 3 students, 2 who were registered and 1 who was auditing the class because he liked one of the other 2, took less than 15 minutes to scribble down their answers and walked out.

The next class the professor goes over the essay responses.

Visibly frustrated, he scolds and berates the students for writing so many as 9 pages on a one word question - "Why?".

He said he only handed out 1 A and 2 Bs, and the A went to the guy who was auditing the class.

For the A student, his response to the question "Why?" was "Why Not?"

For the 2 B students, one responded "Just Because", and the other Because I'm hungry."

Then he asked the guy who got the A, the guy that's not even a registered student, the guy that's taking the class solely because he liked one of the other students, to share with the failing students why he answered "why not?" on the final exam.

He said, "Professor, when you ask 'Why?' without sharing a frame of reference, without providing any additional context to properly answer the question, "Why Not?" is the best, the most logical response."

Now I'm not sure how I would've fared on that final exam, whether I would've been smart enough to answer "Why Not?", or "Just Because", or would’ve been so sleep and food deprived to answer "Because I'm hungry", or would’ve been so over-analytical to answer a one-word question with a 9 page response.

I'd probably be more keen to have 9 points and a poem than 9 pages, but I am sure of this one thing: that when God has placed a call on your life, and you ask God, "Why Me?" without sharing the same frame of reference, the same context that only God has access to in order to call you, the best, most logical answer you can get from that exchange, not having the access to His omniscience and sovereignty is "Why Not You?"

There is no adequate explanation an infinite God can give for Himself that a finite mind can fully contain.

We're not working with the same frame of reference.

You refer to your life in the frame of the here and now.

Your current struggles, your current unworthiness.

Your current excuses.

And God, Who is eternal, has seen the end from the beginning, not excluding yours.

Two frames of reference.

In the time it would take for Him to try to explain why He called you, you could've answered and lived out your call.

Some people have spent their entire lives asking God why and waiting until they got an answer before they responded to His call.

They didn't understand that they would've been closer to an answer had they responded and not resisted.

They didn't understand that "Life," as a wise preacher once said, "is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived."

They didn't understand that the Word of God says that "The just shall live by faith", not answers.

Faith.

So Here's my aim today: to get you to trust God more than any answers He could give you.

Because The Word of God says in 1 Corinthians 8:1 that "knowledge puffs up, but Love edifies."

Which means that if you knew the answers to the questions you ask in life instead of trusting the God who loves you, you'd get in the way of the Love of God that's trying to edify you, build you in the call He's placed on your life.

And so I label this message "The Logical Call" – not because at the end of this message your call is going to make sense to you, but maybe in this exchange we might can get a glimpse of why calling you made sense to God.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Jeremiah 1-1-5:

And it reads as thus:

The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin.

The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile.

The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

before you were born I set you apart;

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

In this text I just read into your hearing God is calling Jeremiah to the prophetic ministry to declare what “Thus saith the Lord” concerning the incoming judgment on Judah.

They have been sinning in a major fashion and God has now taken all he could stand of their wickedness.

It’s judgment time.

So he calls Jeremiah for this what would turn out to be the most unpopular job at the time – prophesying that his nation would be carried off into exile by the Babylonians, and the Jerusalem temple destroyed.

Let me pause parenthetically and ask Has God ever made you do something unpopular?

Especially at a time when there seems to be more peace with just going with the flow, He has you make a stance?

Such was in Jeremiah’s case.

God calls him to declare an unpopular message, to make one last stand for God in the hopes that God’s chosen people would truly repent and His judgment subside.

But as God calls Jeremiah in particular, I believe there are 3 universal truths, 3 eternal principles that I’d think you’d like to know so you can see where it may make sense to someone like God to call someone like you.

Would you mind if I share?

Awesome, I was going do it anyway, but figured it’d be nice to ask.

God is the Authority on You

An authority is someone with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject.

In other words, an expert.

A specialist.

A guru.

A virtuoso.

A Master.

Oprah Winfrey is an authority on media.

Nikki Giovanni is an authority on poetry.

Cory Henry is an authority on the Hammond organ.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an authority on astrophysics.

Cornel West is an authority on philosophy.

Notable preachers like H.B. Charles, Ralph Douglas West, and others are authorities on preaching.

Any of these people are worth sitting at their feet and learning what they have to say about their particular craft.

But when it comes to you – when it comes to figuring out your life – I wouldn’t recommend you sit at any of their feet to hear anything they have to say.

God is the Authority, the Expert, the Specialist, the Guru, the Virtuoso, the Master on you, and when it comes to calling you to a particular work for Him, God is superlatively more than qualified to make the call!

Two ways God lets Jeremiah know that He is the Authority on him.

First, let’s look at His Claim.

God’s Claim to His Authority

God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb…”

No one has more right to speak on the invention than the Inventor.

No one has more right to answer on the design than the Designer.

No one has more right to shed light on the creation than the Creator.

God has exclusive claim to you because He invented, designed, and created you.

God says, “Before I formed you in the womb…” God is your Source and Sustainer.

Yes, your father provided the seed.

Yes, your mother provided the soil.

But it was GOD that supplied the spirit!

Eccl 12:7 says the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

You are not a human being having a spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being having a human experience.

Which means your origin can’t be found on your birth certificate.

It can’t be found in your baby photo album.

It can’t be found on Ancestry.com.

It is only found in God.

And since your origin is only found in God, it also means His prescription, His opinion for the direction of your life is the only one that matters.

Now it’s good to seek wise counsel and it’s smart to consider the warnings and encouragements of others, but if it directly conflicts or contradicts with where God is leading you, if it is not providing food for thought so as to add wisdom to walking out His call on your life, toss it aside.

This is why it is of chief importance to develop a solid relationship with God where you’re daily in prayer and in His Word communing and communicating with Him to recognize His voice so you won’t be led astray by what other people think or what you think what you should do with your life.

That way, whatever you hear on the outside will be met by the filter you’ve developed on the inside.

What is that filter?

The filter of God’s Word.

The filter of His fellowship with you.

The filter of your sense of His call on your life.

That’s the filter.

And nobody can do that work for you.

And as a result, sometimes following that call will cause you to make some hard and near impossible decisions.

Consider Jeremiah, a Levite, a son of a priest.

He was raised up having been taught and embedded in him the importance of the temple of Jerusalem, since his birth.