Sermon Tone Analysis

JESUS AND SATAN ARE HAVING A CONVERSATION...

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on his computer.

They had been going at it for days, and God was tired of hearing all of the bickering.

Finally God said, "Cool it.

I am going to set up a test that will run two hours and I will judge who does the better job."

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.

They moused.

They did spreadsheets.

They wrote reports.

They sent faxes.

They sent e-mail.

They sent out e-mail with attachments.

They downloaded.

They did some genealogy reports.

They made cards.

They did every known job.

But ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, the rain poured and, of course, the electricity went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.

Jesus just sighed.

The electricity finally flickered back on and each of them restarted their computers.

Satan started searching frantically, screaming "It's gone!

It's all gone!

I lost everything when the power went out!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours.

Satan observed this and became irate.

"Wait!

He cheated, how did he do it?"

God shrugged and said, "Jesus saves."

ha-foke bah

ha-foke bah

Introduction

New message series:

Big Idea: The right nudge from the right source at the right time will get you to the right place.

Story: The world of Science says there is a universe of activity going on in the human body every minutes that is nudging you in a certain direction.

Yeshua taught his disciples there was an unseen world nudging you and your choices.

A world that, like the world of our DNA and Neuro systems, has the potential to nudge us and have massive impact and influence on our visible world

We don’t need a microscope to determine the reality of this unseen world of nudges and prodding.

We simply need a rearview mirror.

Some people are able to avoid or resist the wrong nudges and seem to successfully get nudged in the best directions.

Why don’t we just look at the statistics or the headlines and resist getting nudged in the wrong direction?

Why do we allow ourselves to get nudged in a direction our heart, mind and will knows will lead us away from where we really want to be?

Yeshua believed in this unseen world that is constantly nudging you and impacting what you feel, what you think and what you choose to do.

His explanation of this unseen world is a bit unsettling.

You may push back on this.

I do at time.

You may think, “and that is why you are all cookoo.”

I do at times also.

This raises as many questions as it does answers, but that does not mean it is not true.

It just means we can’t thoroughly explain or understand it.

Personally, I’m okay with that.

This morning I got up and sent out an e-mail.

I do not fully understand nor can I fully explain this mysterious thing called the internet and how it works.

I use it.

I depend on and utilize things all the time that I don’t understand.

I’ve yet to see a neurotransmitter carry information across a synapse to the next neuron.

But I know this is happening because when I stub my toe that information travels through my body and out my mouth.

In Matthew 16, Yeshua finds himself engaged in a question and answer session about His identity and purpose.

Matthew 16:13

Yeshua carefully chose Caesarea Philippi as the location for this Q & A.

These were the famous gates that in pagan culture acted like a portal from the world of demonic spirits to our world.

This is like Yeshua choose to stand outside of a supposed “haunted house” for this discussion.

Panias was the ancient name of this site, contemporary times it is called Banias, was the location of soul destroying prods.

The pagan temple Yeshua and his disciples were standing at had three layers: The Greek god Pan, and ancient Arcadian god half-man and half-goat celebrating fertility.

The greek god Hades who ruled over the dark world of death and there was a Roman Temple to celebrate the rule of Caesar.

These represent the three nudges of: uncertainty, fear and conformity.

Matthew 16:14-15

He has given them more than enough evidence to believe he is from God.

But the majority of his people, keep falling back on what is easy to believe or the most Jewish thing to believe.

He knows the majority of people are just saying what they have been told to say.

This is easy believes.

That is the easy thing to say.

He is asking them something deeper, “Who do you say I am?”

This is the question that Yeshua knows will reveal the unseen world inside of them.

It is like take a meath thermostat and putting it into a thick slab of meat.

What I can’t see or know the thermostat tells me.

This question is the thermostat into the unseen world of his disciples.

Matthew 16:16—17

Peter is giving voice for the rest of the apostles.

Yeshua says that the fact that they do recognize him as having come from God as Messiah and Son of God is evidence that they are being nudged by the unseen world of God’s Spirit.

If they were just being nudged by what everyone else was nudged by they would never know who Yeshua really is, they would not recognize that he came from God not as a prophet nor a holy man but because God’s Invisible Spirit was working in them they were also seeing the unseen world of who Yeshua is.

John 14:16-17 The Helper and the Truth

Yeshua believed some people are nudged by what is visible and others by the One who is unseen.

Matthew 16:18

The nudges of the unseen Spirit of God are our strongest defense against every other unseen nudge, prod or poke.

Yeshua promised he would build his ecclesia against this rock face with all its etchings and niches devoted to gods and goddesses, all of which represented crushing falsehood.

Nudging, eroding and poking people in all the wrong directions.

The unseen activity of the Holy Spirit revealing the Messiah would be an offensive against the destructive world views that rob people of life and hope.

These gates would collapse as unseen Spirit of God moved forward with power in women and men’s hearts.

He makes a statement that shows how easily we can be nudged by a darker more sinister unseen world.

Matthew 16:21-23

You don’t understand how I will be who I am.

Is it the disciple’s hearing?

No.

The reason you can’t recognize the obvious is because you have been confused and deceived.

There is something/someone else at work.

There is an invisible influence that is influencing your understanding.

Matthew 16:23

He describes who is nudging Peter’s understanding of how the Messiah would be Messiah but not only who was nudging Peter but who had been nudging people all along in the wrong direction.

He names him: Satan.

This is not a figure of speech to refer to evil in general but the personal name of a real being.