Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
We are far too easily pleased.”[1]
What is the all-consuming desire at the center of your universe?
What do you think about more than anything?
What consumes your thoughts and overwhelms your mind more than anything else throughout the day?
What do you spend the most time on throughout the week?
What do you invest the most energy, money, and emotion on from minute-to-minute?
What holds all the planets of your life in orbit?
Relationships?
Sports?
Video games?
Education?
Career?
Yard work?
My primary goal in preaching through this text is /exploding/ the trivial, weak, ineffective, non-consequential ideas and misconceptions we have about a King and His Kingdom.
We want to see Jesus Christ placed at the center of your personal universe as the red-hot, all-satisfying, all-worthy, all-powerful, all-consuming fire that everything is aligned on so that in the end we can say that everything else that this life has to offer was nothing compared to the all-surpassing greatness of knowing and trusting and loving and enjoying Jesus as our ultimate, unending, always-satisfying, trustworthy, pricelessly valuable, and captivating treasure.
Our aim is that of the Apostle Paul: *Philippians 1:18b-26*
“We have settled for a home, a family, a few friends, a job, a television, a microwave oven, an occasional night out, a yearly vacation, and perhaps even a new personal computer.
We have accustomed ourselves to such meager, short-lived pleasures that our capacity for joy has shriveled.
And so our worship has shriveled.”[2]
*Christ Made Large*
v. 20 – “it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be */honored/* in my body, whether by life or by death.”
Honored = “made large”
            Whenever we count Christ as greater than ourselves, he is honored
            John 3:30 – John the Baptist: “He [Christ] must increase, but I must decrease”
So what Paul is saying is that his great hope and passion is that whatever happens with his body, whether he is living or if he has died, that Christ will always be seen a glorious and worthy of everything.
In life and death, Paul’s mission is to magnify Christ - to show that Christ is magnificent, to make Christ known as glorious, and to demonstrate in his life that Christ is great and life-changing and incomparable to /anything/ this world has to offer.
/“I will have no shame, I will have no longing or desire or passion, I will have nothing worth pursuing outside of living and dying in a way that makes Christ look like the great and glorious reality that He is.”/
Verse 21 describes the experience and pursuit of life that gives Christ his rightful place in the world of a person who has no desire outside of the worship of God.
Look at “death” in verse 20 and “die” in verse 21 – without talking about life, those 2 together would be “it is my eager expectation and hope that Christ will be exalted in my body by death, for to me to die is gain.”
In other words, if I look at my death as something that is to be /gained/, if death is /gain/, than Christ will be exalted in my dying – Christ will be given his rightful place in my life if I view my death as gaining something in my seeking after ultimate joy.
Why does he say that?
Why is death gain?
            v.
23: “my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”
Greater than mud pies in the slums is a holiday at sea – Greater than money or fame or sex or food or big houses, nice cars, good careers, stable relationships, world travel, books, televisions, video games, safety, good health, comfort, or /anything/ else we pursue in this life is Christ – and to be with Him is /far better/ than even the greatest day and experience in this earthly life.
Do you love Jesus this much?
Do you love him so much that to lose everything in order to be with him would be gain?
This is what it looks like to put /all/ our hope in the gospel and not in the world.
If the gospel is true, and if we put our hope in its promises, then to live is Christ and to die is gain.
If you live for Christ, you gain /everything/.
If you don’t live for Christ, you lose it /all/.
Now, look again at comparison of v. 20 to v. 21:
“my eager expectation and hope is that Christ will be honored in my body by life, for to me to live is Christ.”
To live is Christ is to live each and every day searching for ways and doing hard things that make Christ look infinitely glorious to the world around us.
When a hurricane or a tornado takes away all I’ve got, I say “praise the Lord!”
When robbers steal and destroy, and fires burn, and haters of God put me on trial I say “I will rejoice because everything of worth is found in Jesus Christ, alone.”
To live and experience life in this manner is to live “worthy of the gospel.”
*Phil.
1:27-30*
Don’t forget the gospel
            Not as much about getting into the Kingdom as it is about day-to-day life
 
The gospel is not ABCs of faith – it is the A-Zs of our faith.
We are saved by the gospel and grow and bear fruit as we learn how to apply the gospel to /every/ area of our lives.
It’s the good news that we are saved, and it’s also the good news, that we are being saved and how we are going to grow in our life in Christ.
Whether you have been a Christian two days, two years, or two decades, what you need is the gospel.
If you are struggling with suffering, you need the gospel.
If you are hopeless, you need the gospel.
Whatever your issue is, you need the gospel.
Living in light of the gospel is living an /unwavering commitment to the gospel/
Paul is saying “Let your life be worthy of the glory of Jesus Christ who is the image of God – let your manner of life be worthy of the glory of God in the face of Jesus.”
This means:
Striving – fighting – pushing yourself to live a life of war against sin and going after joy in doing the things that please God
 
Unity: “Side-by-side”:
Acts 2 – Believers were so tied together that if someone was in need, everyone else did whatever it took to meet their needs.
They felt like everything they had and were gifted to do was for everyone’s needs.
They would sell their stuff and use the money to meet the needs of the poor people in the church.
They were living as a community that cared for one another – they were “striving side-by-side”.
*T*his is very threatening (scary) to us.
We own a lot of things and we tend to be very personal people.
This is a very difficult thing for wealthy, middle and upper class Americans.
It is so easy to look at it and say, “NO WAY – it can’t mean this – it can’t mean that I actually have to give up anything – striving side-by-side can’t actually mean that there might need to be some change in my lifestyle or that I have to share something or that starving Christians in Africa and China might have something to do with my lifestyle” and we are VERY defensive about this.
We do not instinctively desire to live in community, /especially/ in unity.
In fact, one of the most difficult places to find unity is in the church.
Sinners working together to live godly lives – the Church, in a lot of ways, is the perfect recipe for warfare:
Sinful people, Holding each other accountable, Sharing each other’s burdens (suffering alongside), Giving to each other, Knowing all about each other – yet, we are commanded to live in “one spirit” with “one mind, striving side-by-side for the faith of the gospel”
Living in light of the gospel also means to live life /unfrightened/: “not frightened in anything by your opponents”
 
Living a life worthy of the gospel is to live without fear of enemies or death because we have greater hope in the life to come – remember “To live is Christ, to die is gain”
 
You can torture me, you can spit on me, you can call me names, take away my possessions, destroy my property, kidnap my family, or even kill me – I will not be frightened because my hope is great in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Matt.
10:28: “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.
Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
* *
*How?
You must know the gospel and what it means for each day – Aligning on the gospel*
By sheer willpower, many people who call themselves Christians think they have been changed because they don’t cuss anymore, don’t cheat on their wife or husband, or look at pornographic material anymore.
They might read the Bible sometimes, and go to church most Sundays, but the reality is that most of these people really /haven’t/ changed because they have reversed the gospel!
They are motivated by fear and guilt because they don’t truly /know/ the gospel.
This is the fear that if we don’t do these things, we will be rejected and unloved by God.
But when you become aware of the love of the Father for you as a believer in Christ, only given by grace and only received by faith, you become a totally new person.
Your entire outlook on life changes.
The way you treat people changes.
The way you think of God changes, the way you live your life changes because you become a person of joy who lives out of loving thankfulness to God rather than to be accepted by God or man.
When you truly understand what God has accomplished in Christ for you as a believer, you will be driven to glorify God in the way that he deserves and desires, and you will be filled with a joy that exists beyond human understanding – this is the work of the true gospel.
To understand and know and live and trust the gospel is to understand and know and live with the reality that you are undeserving of Jesus.
Aligning on the gospel is a /Going Hard after God!/ That is essentially Paul’s command to the Philippians in *2:12-18*.
The fact that God has rescued you from His own wrath should cause your relationships and lifestyle to be a reflection of the worth and value you put in Christ – If you truly understand and believe and /love/ the fact that you will spend the rest of eternity worshipping God, free from His wrath and destruction, it will be apparent in your life.
You will be working out – you will be working to show – your salvation with a healthy fear of God, trembling at the fact that he has let you so near to Him.
There is a proper emotional effect that comes with understanding the devastating reality of the wrath of God.
I want to give you a quick taste of what Paul is referring to when he is calling us to be /fearful/ and /trembling/.
In Revelation 19:15b the Apostle John describes Jesus when he comes again – in the second coming: “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.
He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.”
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