Sermon Tone Analysis

Characters

Over the years I’ve watched my share of children’s television.

What you notice with kids TV is that the characters are very simple.

The good guys are good, and the bad guys are bad.

You can always tell who is who, because the good guys look good, and the bad guys are usually ugly and disfigured.

Now as TV shows and movies start to aim at older audiences, the characters will start to get a bit more complicated, as in, the good guys will have a bit of bad, and the bad guys will have a bit of good, but I find we still like to box each character into a certain category.

I think we do this because life is so much easier when things are simple.

If we can box people into certain categories, then we know how to deal with them.

For anyone that’s had or looked after young children in the last decade or so, I’m sure you’ll be aware that the ABC has two channels for kids.

The first one, originally just called ABC2 but since re-branded to ABC for Kids, is aimed at preschool aged and early primary school.

The other, is aimed at upper primary and into high school age.

Unfortunately, this is usually how racism starts.

That is, we’ll box a whole race of people into certain characteristics, then we can deal with the entire race in a particular way.

Now, what I love about the shows aimed at the really young kids, is that everything is so simple.

There is usually a parent figure who is always good and reliable.

Then there is a child figure, who usually tries very hard, makes a few mistakes but with the apr

The reason this is so wrong is because everyone is an individual, and as individuals we don’t neatly fit in a these boxes we create.

For t

Now there are lots of different types of boxes we might have for people.

Boxes like - one for nice people, one for funny people, another for organised people, and then of course the box for weird people.

When we box people like this, we lose the uniqueness that makes them who they are.

Interestingly, we also do this for historical people as well.

Sometimes this is necessary because for some figures we only know a certain amount of information so it’s hard to figure out too much.

But often we’ll box historical people in, to either make them an ally to our contemporary cause, or an enemy of that cause.

The same is true with Jesus and God in the bible.

You see, we gain a certain worldview, and then we will fit Jesus and God into that worldview of ours.

The problem is, we’ll emphasise certain attributes and downplay others.

Two boxes for God

So I want to suggest two boxes that we usually place God in.

Box of love and mercy

The first box is a box of love and mercy.

Now this box is filled with some solid truths of the bible.

God is love - in fact that is exactly what we looked at last week.

From his love comes mercy.

This was most powerfully demonstrated when God sent his one and only son to earth, to become one of us, so that he could take the punishment that we deserve.

As a result of this mercy, we no longer get the punishment that we deserve for our sin.

As I described last week, without the unconditional love of the Father we have nothing.

So this is certainly an important aspect.

Holy Box

The other box however is a what I’ll call the holy box.

This is the box where we focus on God’s purity, which also means his hatred for sin.

Now this is actually also based on solid biblical truths.

You see, God does hate sin.

Sin is completely detestable to God and consequently he can’t let it go unpunished.

In the Old Testament this is made very clear.

We see God’s righteous anger flare up on numerous occasions, and when it does the results are significant.

In my Bible reading plan I’ve recently read through some passages in the book of Numbers where in the 40 year period of Israel wandering after coming out of Egypt, God wiped out large swathes of them for sinful behaviour.

But while it might be more in-your-face in the Old Testament, the New Testament is not a stranger to a God that hates sin.

The problem

So we’ve got these two boxes which we can categorise God, and as I’ve shown, they are actually based on some important truths, but what will hopefully become apparent, is that when we try to put God in one of these boxes, we end up with deep problems.

You see, just like when we place a person into the - ‘oh, he’s the funny guy’ box, we lose sight of all the other aspects that make up that person.

You see, God is full of love and mercy, but he also detests sin.

But let me show you what happens when we lose sight of this more complete picture.

When we set up this box of love and mercy, God’s hatred for sin begins to fade to the point that we start to see God as not being bothered at all how we live.

As a result, we sadly see many Christians living lives that look remarkably similar to the non-Christian.

And so, while this box may be formed from some solid biblical truths, the box sadly pulls us away from who God is.

But, the other box is just as troubling.

You see, I showed how the understanding of a wrathful God is based on biblical truths, however, it fails to see that God has a plan for us.

It ignores the fact that God sent Jesus to pay the price for our sin.

As a result, people who have placed God in this box won’t live with the peace God provided, but instead will be constantly fearful of a God that is going to punish them every time they put a foot out of line.

So the question for us this morning is: how do we sort through this mess and ensure we have a biblical balanced view of who God is?

Finding a holy God

Well, as we’ve gone through this series of ‘Who is the God I Know?’, we’ve explored a number of different attributes of God.

Today’s attribute is God is holy.

Each week I’ve given a false narrative which leads us away from a true understanding of God.

Well today, we actually get two false narratives.

You see, these two boxes that I’ve just been talking about actually lead to two false narratives.

The first being that God doesn’t care about sin.

And the second that God is just pure wrath, ready to punish any false move you make.

Now, unlike in my other messages where I then turn to a teaching of Jesus that corrects the false narrative and instead shows us the God Jesus knows, this time it is a little trickier because to correct these two narratives, what we need to do is consider the whole sweep of what he has to say.

Jesus and sin

Well, last week I covered the theme of God is love, and Jesus’ ministry is often characterised by his mercy and compassion, so I won’t just repeat a lot of what I’ve already said.

But it’s interesting to consider the some other aspects of what Jesus said, which shows his disdain for sin.

Let’s start with where we see Jesus having one of his little stoushes with the Pharisees.

Jesus is essentially calling them out for their hypocrisy, but then adds:

Matt 12:

If I can paraphrase Jesus, he’s saying, the sin in your heart is expressed through your words, and this matters!

Let’s jump a few chapters and get to the end of chapter 16.

This places us just after the episode when Peter makes the great confession the Jesus is the Messiah.

Jesus then gives some teaching about what they can expect next stating:

Matt 16:

In the NIV we get the word reward, which seems to emphasise the positive aspects of this end time judgement, but the word translated as reward more generally means, paying back.

In other words, Jesus is saying, what you do, that is, your actions, have eternal significance.

And on a number of occasions Jesus speaks about enduring God’s wrath.

He often used the phrase “they will throw them… where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.

The reasons I’m pulling out some of these references is to show that this idea that Jesus loves us somehow means he doesn’t care about sin is just not true.

Jesus instead was keen to move us towards a place of holiness.

One of the stories I love about Jesus which illustrates this point is the story of the woman caught in adultery when Jesus says the famous line ‘let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.

Now that set up a really powerful moment, but it is the last line of that story that we can easily leave out.

You see, when Jesus concludes, neither do I condemn you, he then adds “Go now and leave you life of sin”.

What I love about this is that while this is a beautiful picture of mercy, there is a clear direction to it, and that is to move away from sinfulness.

Jesus was not apathetic to sin.

In fact quite the opposite.

Jesus was very concerned about the way people lived.

God is Holy

Well what I want to do now is to show that this correction is essential as we come to the understanding that God is Holy.

What is holiness

But first, it’s worth considering what we mean by holiness.

You see, I think over time we have somehow skewed the meaning of holiness.

The word holy has somehow taken on almost the meaning of religious.