Sermon Tone Analysis

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring what it means to become more spiritually mature through a sermon series titled, “The Next Steps”.

I designed this time as a follow-up to the Vitality Days program that we have also just completed and as a way for all of us to begin thinking in terms of what’s next for us individually and as a community of faith together.

Being together now for nearly 3 years, it is time for us to begin focusing on what is to come rather than on where we have been, if we truly desire to do more in this world.

A Recap...

With that being said, let’s take just a moment to look over the last couple of weeks…the first week of the series, we shared that God wants us to grow in spiritual maturity.

Don’t mis-hear me here, God loves us just the way we are, but God doesn’t want us to stay right where we are.

God desires for a deeper relationship with us and for us to have a deeper relationship with God.

And so, we said that in order to grow, it’s about TRAINING, not TRYING.

Like preparing to run a marathon, you do not just get up off the couch and go do it, you need to spend time preparing your body, your mind, and your spirit to endure the long hard road that lays before you...we also said that merely trying isn’t enough when it comes to marathons.

The same is true when it comes to growing spiritually.

Spiritual disciplines are tools that help us grow further into who God made us to be.

A Recap...

Last week we spoke about the one spiritual discipline that we must start doing in order to fully become who God intends for us to be…and that is spending time alone in prayer.

We reflected that while the Bible is the primary way God speaks to us, prayer is the primary way we speak back to God.

So, we focused our time on how to overcome Spiritual A.D.D., i.e. how to get our minds focused upon what God desires for us to do and be in this world.

In this the final time of reflection on this series, we will spend some more time talking about growing in spiritual maturity and growing closer to God, but before we do that, I wanted to address the elephant in the room: Why do we so often struggle with making time with God a priority?

B - U - S - Y

I’ve yet to meet anyone who responds to the question, “How are you?” with the reply, “Well, for starters, I’m not very busy.”

I recently took a quiz to see just how busy I am, and I want to give it to you this morning to determine your busyness as well.

One caveat and a bit of a warning: it might be little challenging and possibly convicting.

There are seven questions for you to reflect on…no need to answer out loud, just keep your answer in mind.

Ready?

Here we go, first question...

Are you haunted by a fear that there are not enough hours in the day to do what needs to be done?

Do you find yourself nodding along and maybe even faster when listening to someone else who encourages a speaker or person driving in front of you to accelerate?

When approaching a stoplight and there are two lanes, do you find yourself guessing which lane will get going the fastest?

At the grocery store, if you have a choice between two checkout lines, do you find yourself counting the people in line and estimating how many items are in their cart?

Then do you watch the line you did not choose just to see if you picked the right one?

Do you check work emails and phone messages at home?

Do you find yourself, when you have a moment of down time, looking at your phone and therefore, your email to see if anyone replied to that important email you sent before you left work on Friday?

Has anyone ever said to you, “I didn’t want to bother you or trouble you, because I know how busy you are or that they did not want to give you more to think about?”

If tomorrow evening, you were unexpectedly freed up, would you use it to do work?

If you answered “yes” to any of these, then I would say that you are probably an extremely busy person…and I know a lot of us might be thinking, “Yeah yeah yeah.

I know I’m too busy, and you are going to say some things that are going to make me feel guilty about being busy, and I’ll get convicted to slow down to make time for God.

That will totally work until tomorrow when my life happens.

Pastor, you just don’t know all the stuff I have going on.

I can’t just stop being busy.”

I’ve got some good news.

I’m not going to lecture anyone on how to be less busy.

Take a deep breath and put down the rotten tomatoes or anything else you might be considering throwing at me; I’m not taking us on a guilt trip.

Here’s the reason why, Jesus was a really busy guy too.

One Day in Jesus’ life...

In fact, today we hear Mark relate just one 24-hour day in the life of Jesus and I would think that the day we just heard about might just put your busiest days to shame.

Regardless of what you believe about who Jesus was, there is no denying that he was a man that got stuff done.

I want to see anyone today try to, in the course of three years, start a movement that would last for over 2,000 years, grow to over two billion people and, oh yeah, also pay for the sins of all mankind so that they could spend eternity in Heaven.

Here’s the thing though, as busy as Jesus was, I’m fairly confident he would also have said “no” to every one of the questions I asked earlier.

How is that even possible?

Well, today we are going to look at one of the most incredible passages in the Bible and learn one principle that, if we apply it to our lives, could be the game-changer in how we see life and our interaction with God.

The Story...

We are going to look at Jesus’ first day of public ministry according to Mark.

Just to place us physically in the life of Jesus, this takes places in a village named Capernaum.

Read the excerpt from Mark...

The passage starts with, “when the Sabbath came”.

So, this means that all of this activity happened on a Saturday.

Here’s what we know so far...Jesus got up and went to church.

While there, he stood up to speak and people were amazed at how good he was as a preacher.

Then, right in the middle—as he’s gathering some momentum, Mark tells us that “a man in their synagogue...” got up and challenged Jesus.

We can tell from Mark’s retelling of the story, that this guy was a part of the regular community.

Here’s the most interesting part…Jesus doesn’t rebuke the man or tell him to sit, he just looks at him and says, “Be quiet.

Come out of him.”

And the spirit comes out of the man.

If Jesus didn’t have people’s attention yet, he had it then.

This story of Jesus is extreme, but I think we can relate a little bit…think of it this way, sometimes we get busy with the urgent.

For example, maybe you are in the middle of something important and you get a call or an email or a demon-possessed guy starts yelling at you.

What do you do?

If you are like most people with whom I am associated, you just drop everything that you were doing and deal with whatever presented itself.

All other things stop until the situation that has come up is dealt with, right?

If this ever happens to you, trust me, Jesus can relate.

Next Jesus, instead of going out for brunch or sitting on the porch for the rest of the afternoon, moves on.

Just listen to what happens next.

Upon entering Peter’s mother-in-law’s house; Jesus recognizes that she is ill.

She had a fever.

So, Jesus just walks in, grabs her by the hand and she is healed.

In today’s world, sometimes we are busy with family responsibilities.

Jesus is helping out his buddy Peter here.

If you’ve ever sped on the freeway or went through a light that was 1 percent yellow, 99 percent red to get to your kids’ game or dance performance or a family dinner, I think Jesus can relate.

We move from there to the evening of that same day...

Here’s what we have here…after sunset, the whole town comes out.

News has spread fast that Jesus is in town and he is doing some pretty amazing things.

The Bible says that Jesus was fully God, but it also says that God was fully man in Jesus.

And we read in a bunch of places in Scripture that Jesus grew weary.

We have to think that this might have been one of those days.

We read in other accounts that when Jesus would do a miracle, power would come out from him.

I’ve never done a miracle before—but I can imagine it must be extremely draining.

We don’t know how late Jesus stayed out, but I would think quite possibly it was well after midnight and he had just seen the whole town.

Jesus’ evening was filled to the brim with everybody else’s needs.

Ever felt like all you do is help one person after another?

If you are a parent, I guarantee you do.

If so, Jesus can relate.

Can you picture Jesus and his disciples finally walking or maybe even staggering away to where they were going to sleep that night?

“Man, I’m exhausted but THAT WAS AWESOME!” That’s quite a day, huh?

If someone says to you Jesus wasn’t busy, tell them they should read the Bible.

Check out the next few verses; here is where we find out about his secret.

The next morning, Jesus got up while it was still dark, maybe after only a couple hours sleep.

He got up, left the other disciples—who were no doubt out cold in the middle of their REM cycles and went to a solitary place.

He got away to a place with no distractions where He could really concentrate.

Jesus isn’t that much different from us…for Jesus, this time was not just helpful for Him in life; it was imperative for him if he was going to live out the mission that he was on the planet to live out.

Jesus needed that time to recharge to be re-energized and to be changed so that he could live out that calling of being the savior of the world.

Here’s what I am hearing in this part of the story…if you actually slow down to be quiet, then God will start changing you from the inside out.

If we apply three simple principles to our lives, God will start changing us to become more and more like what God intends for us to be.