Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION:

I would like to begin this morning by talking about boy - who naively deprived himself of the best.

One night, a mother fixed a special meal for her family: turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green beans, cranberry sauce, and apple pie for dessert.

It was everyone’s favorite meal, especially when it came at a time other than Thanksgiving.

The aroma filled the house, and as the children came in from playing they could hardly wait for dinner to begin.

The last child appeared only a few minutes before dinner time and sat through the meal without eating, even though he especially loved those foods.

Why?

Because he had filled up on peanut butter at a friend’s house.

In settling for something good, he had lost his appetite for the best.

The same applies to our spiritual appetites.

Some people don’t have much of an appetite for spiritual truth because they have satisfied themselves with lesser things.1313

Moody and a number of missionaries have been noted as saying -

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”

(D.L. Moody and others)

And the implied idea of that quote - we would succeed at that which -

Doesn’t matter to God

Doesn’t matter in eternity

Is meaningless - As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes; “Vanity of Vanities”.

Oh what a failure it would be to be widely successful at “vanity of vanities”.

One of the greatest dangers in our Christian lives is not that we would fail - but we would be widely successful at something doesn’t matter in eternity.

It is so easy to get caught up in the wonders and pleasures of this world - and forget that this world

is 2nd best.

And according to - will utterly be destroyed and made new.

And thus miss the wonders of what is best - the riches of Christ, which will endure into eternity.

Our text this morning is one of the great prayers of Paul.

In fact - a great book to read is: Praying with Paul - A Call to Spiritual Reformation by D.A. Carson.

It walks you through the prayers of Paul and helps you reevaluate our priorities in this life.

What I hope to do this morning is to -

Remind us about what really matters.

Describe what a mature Christian looks like.

And challenge us to live in ways that continual put ourselves ever increasingly under the Lordship of Jesus and the riches of Christ.

**************************Pray*********************************************************

Based on Paul’s Prayer -

PROP: We ought to be growing in our faith

TRANS: This text gives us a challenge to do so and 7 categories for how we should be growing in Christ.

So let’s first look at the -

1) Call to Grow in the Gospel - Paul’s Prayer Request.

(v. 9)

We live in a world where the will of God is a confusing, subjective, mess.

ILLUSTRATION:

Sometimes we feel like it would be easier to run for President then to know God’s will.

But part of the problem is what we are asking.

Many Christians - have limited God’s will to questions of

What college do I go to

what job,

where do I live,

what house do I buy.

AKA - the American Dream.

And when we limit our search for Gods will to those questions, … no wonder we are all confused.

Because Scripture doesn't emphasize these temporary questions.

But the Spiritual and eternal questions.

And - I am not saying we should not pray to God for those needs.

After-all, the Lord prayers says -

Luk

So we ought to pray for our daily needs.

But,

Observe the Spiritual, Gospel, eternal focus of Paul’s Prayer.

a) This was Paul’s Prayer.

According to our text - we should be

a) Filled with the Knowledge of the Will of God, which means we can know the will of God.

In other words, God’s will is not abstract monkey we can’t get a hold of,

but a tangible truth that we can know.

Recognize how this is the opposite to how often we live and think about God's will.

We treat God's will as something that is hard to know and find.

Yet Paul teaches us that it is knowable and discernible.

Yet Paul teaches us that it is knowable and discernible.

The real issue is whether we obey it?

Hence the idea of being filled with the knowledge of God's will.

What Paul is teaching here is not that we can't know it,

but we need to be filled with it.

One of the reasons I know that this is not about subjective filling of the Holy Spirit is because -

found after hours and hours of prayer,

About my job, house, and where I live is because

About my job, house, and where I live is because

The Holy Spirit is not mentioned here.

First – the Holy Spirit is not mentioned here.

Is not to say we'll need the Holy Spirit,

but I would suggest that not every time Scripture says being filled is not always a reference to the Holy Spirit.

And in this case we are to be filled with the knowledge of God's will – primarily found in wisdom and understanding.

What wisdom and what understanding is being described here?

And given the reference to the gospel before verse nine

and the clear reference to the gospel in verses 12 - 14 teaches us this wisdom and understanding

>>>>>is the wisdom and understanding of the gospel.

>>>>>is the wisdom and understanding of the gospel.

Which means -

b) The Will of God is found in the Wisdom and Understanding of the Gospel.

APPLICATION/EXHORTATION:

At this point, I want to make another major observation about how we understand the will of God in our lives.

Because we often equate the will of God with early life decisions…

- We often neglect to emphasize this to our young children because they are not there yet.

- And as we grow older we often think less about the will of God in our lives then when we were young.

It is true - that young adults need to know the will of God,… But are we who are older and past those early life decisions beyond the will of God?

You see the problem when we equate the search of God's will with only these temporary and pragmatic questions.

>>>>It has a profound impact on our life… We forget to continue to search the will of God as we get older and we neglect the teacher children to search the will of God when their younger.

It has a profound impact on our life… We forget to continue to search the will of God as we get older and we neglect the teacher children to search the will of God when their younger.

Andrew Murray, said this in his book"waiting on God" -

" I had felt that we needed to train our people in their worship more to wait on God, and the make the cultivation of a deeper sense of his presence, a more direct contact with them, of entire dependence upon him, a definite aim of our ministry."

(Waiting on God by Andrew Murray)

In other words, regardless of age or Christian maturity – we all ought to be aiming to more and more know and be filled with the wisdom and understanding of the will of God… The gospel of Jesus Christ applied to our lives.

Paul's prayer should represent a repolarization to our lives centered on knowing and living the will of God.