Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

​Psalm 1:1–2 ESVBlessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Last week’s message was strong; it wasn’t the kind of message that one expects to hear right before Christmas.

We looked a which is the story about the three wise men seeking out and finding the messiah.

That story includes the interaction between Herod and the wise men.

It also includes the death of Herod and his son then taking over and the fact that the hatred that Herod felt toward Jesus was passed to his son.

I made three points last week, all of which carried a negative tone.

One: God’s people missed Him.

God’s own people, who had all the information and people set aside to speak to and hear from God, missed Him.

I made the point that we, like the scribes, have all the information.

We understand what it means to walk with God, yet we have become complacent with where we are.

As a result of that complacency, we are on the verge of creating a new flavor of dead religion.

Two: God’s people hated Him.

After waiting for countless years for the promised Messiah to come, He arrives and the response is to condemn him to death.

We talk a lot about abiding in Christ and obeying what He says, but by ignoring when he calls us to do something we don’t like, we too are expressing the same sentiment.

We would rather see the death of his work than allow him to make the required changes in our lives.

Three: God’s people passed down death.

The habits, attitudes, and responses to God’s prompting will be passed on to future generations.

Every day, we set the tone for our families and church, by the ways we respond to God.

If we choose to live in disobedience, we will pass that down.

If we choose to abide in all things, we will pass that down.

On the heels of that message, I had a church member text me.

This person asked some really good questions and their sentiment was that they wanted to grow in their relationship with God and fulfill their role in the body.

But in response to the message and our repeated pleas from the pulpit to do our ABCs, this person asked; “What does it even look like?”

Some may be judgemental of that question, but I was encouraged by it.

Let me tell you why.

All God wants and all I want is for us to know Him.

This person wants the same thing and was brave enough to ask me for clarification.

That is so encouraging because this person was taking the time to reflect on their own life and asking God for direction.

What was being communicated is that they heard what God was saying.

There is something missing and they want to know what it is so that they can fix it.

That was the final point of the text.

Tell me what I need to fix so I can fix it.

Which I loved because I’m a fixer.

However, that is not what I need to be doing.

What I explained is that it is not my job to nitpick anyone’s life.

When I preach, I’m asking God what He wants to say to the church and I do.

He gives me the text, the perspective, and the words to say.

I know you all know that and have heard me say it many times before.

However, the question was framed in such a way that the person was thinking that perhaps I saw something particular in their life that I could point to and say, “change this thing”.

First of all, no one wants that.

lol

What I mean is that no one wants me to call out their sins from the pulpit.

Secondly, all of us are in different places in life and in our relationship with God.

Because of that, I have to speak in very general terms and then rely on the Holy Spirit to do the work in each of you of speaking specifically what He wants to say.

On any given Sunday, we may have some very seasoned people, brand new believers, those that are seeking, and everything in between.

We all know that none of us are perfect and therefore, there is room for improvement in all of our lives.

That means that the message will always be relevant, but the degree of action may be different for all of us.

This isn’t the first time that I have heard questions like this either.

Over the years we have had very similar conversations in our life group.

We have to remember the varying degrees of difference in our attendance on any given Sunday.

What God has me saying may be for someone

But again, the goal is that all of us are on a continual upward plane of growth.

If at any point you think, “oh, I got this already.

I can zone out.”

you don’t have it.

So, what does it even look like?

What does it look like to live out the ABCs?

When we were doing our core group work as we planted the church and as you should remember from our church distinctives that we discussed in new member training, our mission is to lead people to know God by experience.

However, there were many of you that weren’t yet part of the church and missed out on some of that detailed training.

Today may feel like a lot of reviews, but my goal is to cover the material and give some examples of what we mean so that you can make application as directed by the Holy Spirit.

Abiding is a continual growth process.

One of the reasons that we always talk about abiding, is because that is what a relationship with God is.

Abiding is the process by which we know God.

Just reading your bible, studying, and gathering a bunch of knowledge isn’t enough.

The Scribes and Pharisees had all of those things and they missed what God was doing over and over again.

This is a step in the process, but unfortunately, it is where a lot of people stop.

They never continue forward through the rest of the process.

There are four steps in the abiding cycle, but we don’t often talk about the results of those four steps.

1. Increasing in the knowledge of God.

This is a point that Paul made often.

Just knowing about God is not sufficient.

He knew as much if not more about God and the scriptures than any of his peers, but it was not until God revealed himself that it meant anything.

Gal 1:

We need to study the scriptures, we cannot know God without doing so.

David says the same thing in the first Psalm.

The point of scripture is to reveal God and then to know God through His revelation.

We have to be careful though that we don’t get hung up in any one area of the abiding cycle.

We have a tendency, because of our history, to stop at this point.

We make the assumption that simply having deep bible studies is enough.

While that is beneficial, it doesn’t allow the Holy Spirit to work any of the scripture through us and make us more like Christ.

Paul, again, is a great example of this.

Knew scripture and could recall it from memory, yet completely missed that Christ was the son of God.

In that error, he was working against God, not with or for God.

This is a tactic of the enemy.

He allows us to get all puffed up with knowledge, our pride takes over, and pretty soon we have made it all about us.

So, as we study scripture and engage the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us, God is revealed to us.

2. Being filled with the knowledge of His will.

Listen closely, because this is different from the first.

The first was knowing God and the second is knowing His will.

If we are to be in a relationship with anyone, including God, it is important that we know what the other half of the relationship wants.

Imagine being in a relationship where the other person was obsessed with knowing about you but didn’t take the time to learn what makes you want.

Jesus makes it clear to his disciples that there is more that he wants them to experience.

This passage comes right after the teaching on the vine and the branches and Jesus explaining that they will face many hardships for following him.

John 16:12-15

So, not only do we learn about who God is through his word, but we also discover what He is doing in our lives.

Not only what has happened and is happening, but also what is to come in the future!

Jesus told us and we are witnesses to the fact that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us.

He speaks to us and reveals himself and his ways so that we can walk with Him.

We have moved from head knowledge to actual experience because, in addition to knowing about God, we are asking the Holy Spirit to work in us and are thereby we are conformed into Christ’s likeness.