Sermon Tone Analysis

Asking The Right Question

A Pocket Paper \\ from \\ The Donelson Fellowship \\ *______________*

*Robert J. Morgan \\ *March 5, 2000

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/You shall camp…by the sea.

For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, "They are bewildered by the land; the wilderness has closed them in."

Then I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord."

And they did so.

--/Exodus 14:2-4

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In 1946, author Gertrude Stein felt very tired and ill during a car journey.

Rushed to the American hospital at Neuilly, France, she was diagnosed with an advanced state of cancer.

The surgeon operated, but it was too late.

Gertrude passed away in the evening of July 27th.

Her last words baffled those who gathered around her. "What is the answer?"

she asked.

When nobody replied, she laughed to herself and said, "Then what is the question?"

Many times we can't find the answers to our dilemmas because we're asking the wrong questions.

Perhaps, like Gertrude Stein, we find ourselves diagnosed with an incurable disease.

Or we have a child in crisis, or we are facing a terrible legal problem.

Maybe the money isn't there for college, or we're in a difficult relationship.

Perhaps we've just been jilted by our girlfriend or boyfriend.

Our natural instinct is to ask:

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How can I solve this problem?

How can I get out of this mess?

How much longer can I endure such pain?

How can I make this go away?

Why did this have to happen to me?

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Though natural, those may be the wrong questions to ask.

There is a better one--one that results in an entirely new way of looking at difficulties, puts our problems into a different context, and creates a new paradigm for dealing with tough situations.

Do you remember when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem the last time?

As He rode his little colt up the Kidron Valley and through the Golden Gate of Jerusalem a spontaneous parade developed.

Ecstatic crowds cheered him like a conquering hero, shouting "Hosanna!

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!

Hosanna in the highest!"

But Jesus didn't share their exuberance, for He knew He was only days from the cross.

A dark cloud of anguish gathered around his heart, and He cried in John 12:27: "Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say?

'Father, save Me from this hour'?

But for this purpose I came to this hour.

Father, glorify Your name."

In other words, in facing the most impossible and excruciating moment of His life, Jesus didn't ask, "How can I get out of this?" but "How can God be glorified?"

That is the approach we need to have.

That is is the question we need to ask.

"How can God be glorified through these impossible circumstances?

What solution to my problem would bring most glory to Him?"

In John 9, the disciples came upon a blind man.

He had been blind from birth, and the disciples began asking some interesting questions: "How did this man get into this situation?

What fate decreed his blindness?

Why did it happen?

Who sinned, his man or his parents, that he was born this way?"

Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question.

This man was born blind so that the power of God could be displayed in his life."

And for two thousand years, his story has been read by millions of people and preached in thousands of sermons.

*Rule #2*

That brings us to the second Red Sea Rule for handling tough situations.

The first rule says, Recognize that God has either put you here or allowed you to be in this situation.

Nothing happens to us by accident, for we travel an appointed way.

Rule #2 says: Be more concerned for God's glory than for your own relief.

Let your first concern be glorifying God.

Notice the way it's brought out in Exodus 14: /Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: "Speak to the children of Israel, that they turn and camp before Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, opposite Baal Zephon; you shall camp before it by the sea.

For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, 'They are bewildered by the land; the wilderness has closed them in.' Then I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord."/

The NIV says, /I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh; and all his army./

That is, after all, what our lives are all about.

For His glory we were and are created.

The first question of the Westminster Longer Catechism asks, "What is the chief and highest end of man?"

The answer: "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."

I can imagine someone saying, "I have a real problem with that, for it makes God out to be an ego-maniac.

It sounds like He is hoarding all honor and glory for Himself at our expense, like a selfish, demented tyrant.

Why should He allow me to suffer just so He can be glorified?

If He is so concerned about humility in His people, why doesn't He exhibit some Himself?"

But God, being God, has every right and reason to demand and expect glory.

Think of it in terms of a wheel.

You are I are little nails or tacks in the rim.

We have our job to do, and we're very busy trying to hold things together.

Sometimes we're stopped dead in our tracks; other times we're going around in circles.

But as long as we're doing the job for which we were made and making forward progress, we are fulfilled.

But God isn't a little nail or tack in the rim.

He is the hub, the absolute heart and center of the whole operation.

As in any wheel, as long as the hub is the center of attention and as long as all the spokes are tightly connected to it with perfect symmetry, the rotations will be smooth.

But if we fail to keep the hub in the absolute center of things, our lives grow wobbly, unsteady and unstable.

God and God alone is the heart and center, the source and secret, of the universe, of the world, and of our lives.

To Him along belongs the glory.

"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Your name give glory," says Psalm 115, "because of Your mercy, because of Your truth."

The children of Israel didn't understand this, so they cried, "How did we ever get into this mess?

The sword is behind us, the sea is before us, and we're doomed!"

They should have been asking, "How will God gain glory through this situation?"

The writer of Psalm 106 made this very point: "Our Fathers in Egypt did not understand Your wonders; they did not remember the multitude of Your mercies, but rebelled by the sea--the Red Sea.

Nevertheless He saved them /for His name's sake"/

How, then, did God take an impossible situation, flip it around, and use it for His name's sake?

There are five ways here in which God was--and is--glorified.

First, God gains glory when His enemies are defeated:

*When His Enemies Are Defeated*

Verse 4 says, /I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army….

/And in the next chapter, Exodus 15, after their delivery, the Israelites praised the Lord for His victory.

/Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and spoke, saying: "I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously!

The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea."/

As Paul said in 1 Corinthians, these things happened as examples for us.

Once upon a time we were all enslaved by Satan just as certainly as the Israelites were enslaved by Pharaoh.

We "walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind" (Ephesians 2:2-3).

Without Christ, we cannot help but sin.

We are slaves to all that is self-destructive.

According to Thomas C. Reeves in his book about John F. Kennedy, /A Question of Character, /JFK became very promiscuous after the deaths of his brother and sister, Joe and Kathleen.