Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro*

Wow, what an interesting service last Sunday!

I don’t know about you, but it was one of the best, if not the best, services I had at EFC to date.

For those of you who weren’t here, due to a really bad storm last Sunday, the fire alarm went off during the sermon, followed by losing electricity (though it came back up shortly) and firemen walking around the sanctuary.

I love the way the Lord gets our attention!

I was on the second point, “Be obedient in the impossible.”

And I felt here that He wanted our obedience in the midst of the impossible!

So I kept preaching through it all.

Interestingly, since I could not hear myself think, I resorted to just reading my notes.

This is what I was reading: “If anyone was sleepy up to this point, not anymore!

A burst of adrenaline blasts through their weary bodies and every concentration is now focused on the catch.”

I thought that was hilarious!

I want you to know that that message was something the Lord had really moved in my heart to preach for us at this church and I guess He wanted everyone to listen up! Anyway by the end, the Spirit of God really moved in my heart.

Blessing follows obedience.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I felt I was being carried by His love.

He is not done with this church folks!

He has something up His sleeve, so to speak, and wants us to draw near and ask Him for big things.

He wants to take us into deeper waters and to experience the net-breaking fullness of His power!

AMEN.

On that note, let’s get into another encounter.

This one is found in Matt.

11:28-30.

It is not necessarily an encounter with anyone in particular, but more of an invitation for an encounter.

I want to start with some questions.

Question 1: How many of you would agree with the following statement.

The Christian life is best summed up as, /trying hard to keep God’s commands/.

How many strongly agree?

How many somewhat agree?

Actually in a survey to born-again Christians in the US,[1] 57% of people strongly agreed and 25% somewhat agreed.

This means 82% strongly or somewhat agreed to that statement.

Question 2: How many of you would strongly or somewhat agree to this statement: “I feel like I don’t measure up to God’s expectations of me?” 58% in survey (28% strongly, 30% somewhat) said yes.

So think about what this means.

82% of Christians think the Christian life is merely about trying hard to obey God and another 58% of people think they are doing a horrible job at it!

This may shock some of you, but this is a WRONG way of thinking.

IT’S A LIE! I ask these two questions because many Christians are trapped in something called legalism.

Listen to this one woman share her experience:

“I was plagued with condemnation for the first two years after I came to the Lord.

It was preached at our church to pray and read the Word an hour a day, to share your faith each week, and so on.

Not to mention being told to not listen to "worldly" music, not seeing "worldly" friends, and on and on the list goes.

This was good advice but it was pre­sented in such a way as to become a burden, and I felt like if I didn't keep up in these areas, I would lose my salvation.

My heart was to please the Lord, but feeling judged was really painful.

I tried to make everything look good on the outside, but I just couldn't do all the things I was supposed to do, and the pressure from others in the church was too much.

I saw others trying in their own strength to conform to the image of Christ.

I tried to do the same, though I knew I couldn't do it.

Yet I questioned myself.

Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough and that was why I was failing.

Ultimately I did that I just couldn't keep up with it all.

The condemnation that I dealt with even after leaving that church was relentless.

Finally I learned that all my efforts at changing myself are wood, hay and stubble.”

[2]

Does that sound like you?

How many times have we perhaps tried to get up to pray, but we only get five minutes in and if someone asked us if we did our quiet time that day, we would say no (because  in our mind, we need at least a solid 30-45 minutes to “count”).

Are we driven to redouble our efforts in order to do better “next time”?

Or has it ever gone through our mind the thoughts of “man, one day I’m going to settle down and read my Bible every day and not get angry so much or give up this habit or the other...” But right now you feel God looks down at you and shakes His head saying, “Are you in this pit again?”

How do you react if you /don’t /do the things you feel you should do or need to be doing in order to be a “good Christian”?

Do you feel condemned?

Do you feel like a failure in God’s eyes?

Do you tend to evaluate your spirituality by how regularly you are keeping up with or measuring up to certain standards?

Do you feel like God loves you more when you perform certain Christian practices?

Do you feel a disheartening sense of disapproval from Him when you don’t?

If I were to ask you, “Does God love Billy Graham (fill in the blank of any famous Christian you know) or me more?” and though you may say “He loves us all the same”—deep inside you feel like Man, he must be pleased with her more than he could ever be pleased with me!

If the answers to these questions are a resounding yes bursting through us right now, perhaps we have fallen into something called legalism.

The Bible says a lot about legalism and the scope of it can cover a whole year’s worth of messages.

But this morning, I want to address this lie that sucks away our freedom and joy in Christian life.

Jesus had something to say to those who are feeling burdened under the weight of legalism and you will find that in our text.

He is inviting us to an encounter that can set us free from it.

Turn in your Bibles, if you haven’t already, to Matthew 11:28-30.

Now upon first glance, you may be wondering, “What does this passage have to do with legalism?”

Hopefully I can show that to you.

I want to share this here because it is easy, especially for a lot of us who come from an honor and shame based culture, to fall into.

But let’s begin with a definition.

I am going to borrow this from a wonderful book called /Breaking the Bondage of Legalism/.

Here is how the authors define legalism: /Seeking to attain, gain or maintain acceptance with God or to grow spiritually by keeping a written or unwritten code or standard of performance.*[3]*/

I think because most of us who have grown up in a performance-based culture with our parents can easily fall into a performance based relationship with God.

For some of you, you may relate to this illustration.

Imagine a ladder.

At the top of the ladder are your parents.

You are climbing the ladder to please them.

Get the right grades.

Pick the right marriage partner.

Get the right job.

Your knuckles are bleeding and you are sweating getting to the last rung.

But as soon as you get there, you find they are three rungs higher.

When you become a Christian, instead of your parents being at the top of the ladder, you put God there and there you go trying to please Him and perform for Him, but you never seem to get there.

You picture God shaking His head in disgust as you fail.

When you live this way, these are the results.

There are four products of legalism.[4]

First of all, people who live this way are often in 1) despair.

They cannot keep the rules, so their self-esteem plummets and the Father’s love has evaporated from under their feet.

Legalists also can become very 2) proud.

You can keep some of the rules and think you got it in with God. 3) Judgmental.

Because you can’t keep all the rules, you see people as breaking the rules all the time.

4) Control.

You have your rules and you try to get everybody in your life to conform to those rules.

As long they don’t mess up and break the rules, you are happy.

Of course they never do and you hate losing that control.

Instead of becoming a dynamic believer which is growing in grace and becoming expansive in your soul and growing richer in compassion and wisdom as the years go by, you become mean, angry, harsh joy-killer Christian.

This is why Jesus was so angry with Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day.

If you notice He is not so angry with the prostitute or the tax collector as he is with the religious elite.

Let’s look at Matt. 23: 1-4, especially Matt.

23:4.

The same word “burdens” is the same word used here in Matt.

11:28.

They were experts in being proud, judgmental and leading people into despair.