Sermon Tone Analysis

One of my favorite books of all time is “The Chronicles of Narnia: The lion, the witch, and the Wardrobe,”

And in it, the land of Narnia is under an evil curse, which is described as:

“Always winter and never Christmas”

And if you think about that: “Always winter and never Christmas” it’s not just true for the world of Narnia,

It’s actually true for our world too.

Yes, not literally - though sometimes Minnesota Winters do make us wonder...

But if you look at the sad state of life in this world, it becomes quite obvious that we too are under a miserable curse

that often makes things feel like it’s “Always winter and never Christmas”

Why?

Because of things like sickness and disease

Things like drought and famine

Things like difficult relationships

Which often end in misery, separation, and, as we are painfully reminded of today

Death.

And yet, we are forced to live our lives under the shadow of death knowing that one day soon, all of our joys will turn to ash.

And yet, we continue to celebrate birthdays all the same, fully realizing that each year of life is but another year closer to death.

Another year closer to the day when our loved ones will be taken from us or us taken from them.

And why?

Because like Narnia, our world is under a powerful curse which eventually strikes us all.

And it is a curse called death.

But... though our world is under a terrible curse,

Like Narnia, thankfully there is one who has come to break the curse.

An Aslan figure who has come to end the spell and free us from the curse of death!

And so, though today we come to together to grieve the loss of Lynette,

We don’t grieve as those who have no hope.

Because for Lynette, the curse was powerfully broken!

And because it was broken, death is a but a shadow that she has passed through into everlasting life!

Which is something we too can one day do if we are freed from the curse just as she was!

But… for that to happen

There’s something to be done

There’s a prescription to be taken

There are steps that must be taken

And the first step is:

Knowing the power of the curse (2:1-3)

In Ephesians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul tells about the power of the curse, saying:

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

In these verses Paul describes what the curse of sin has done to us,

and it’s not just bad - it’s REALLY BAD.

Paul says it made us:

spiritually Dead (v. 1)

spiritually Disobedient (v.

2-3)

spiritually Doomed (v.

3b)

He doesn’t say we are spiritually limping and just need some crutches

He doesn’t say we just need some spiritual medication,

He doesn’t say we are on spiritual life support,

What Paul is saying is that because of this curse we are all born into spiritual death

That means there was NO SPIRITUAL LIFE IN YOU WHATSOEVER!

But is Paul exaggerating here?

Like are we really all that bad off?

“Surely it can’t be that bad?”

“Look, I’m not Mother Theresa, but I’m not Adolph Hitler either!”

How can you say the curse resulted in my spiritual death?

“Sure I’m not perfect!, but I’m a pretty good person!”

Well, on one hand you’re right, you’re not as morally bad as you possibly could be, but on the other hand you are missing the fact that even your good works are done with WRONG motives attached to them.

And in the book of Matthew, Jesus makes it pretty clear that doing the right thing for the wrong motives is still wrong!

For right actions without the right heart motive is NOT COMMENDABLE before God, it is CONDEMNABLE.

And what is our heart’s motive?

Look at verse 3:

"… we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,” Eph 2:3.

When Paul uses the word flesh, he isn’t talking about our physical bodies.

He’s talking about our selfish desires.

What he’s saying is - we all used to orchestrate our lives to satisfy our selfish desires.

He’s saying that we used to look at this world - all the people and things in it, and say: “How can I conduct them to play the music I wanna hear?

What the curse did was warp our hearts into being like little computer processors who automatically analyze everyone and everything in the world and try to figure out a way to make them serve us.

Which the Bible calls idolatry - which is sin

And why is idolatry wrong?

Because not only does God say so in The Ten Commandments

But it’s wrong because we are made to worship the CREATOR not the CREATION.

In fact, our hearts were originally created by God to love Him supremely!

Which is why Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, AND the second is to love your neighbor as yourself!

But sin’s curse reversed this,

and instead we now put ourselves in the place where only God deserves to be,

and not only does this not work - but it leads to disintegration, death, and destruction!

Which is actually what the system of our entire world is built upon.

We live in a “ME’ culture

We’ve been told this ever since we were a kid:

Burger King told me I could have it my way

Disney told me “all my dreams would come true and I could live happily ever after”

Bon Jovi told me: “It’s MY LIFE.”

We even have decorations that say: “Follow Your Arrow” - which simply means to follow your heart!

But what is the problem is with following our heart?

The problem is, according to the Bible, our hearts have been warped by the curse so badly that “my way” is Hell’s way, not Heavens.

The problem is our dreams conflict with God’s commands!

And our lives are not even ours, for they completely belong to HIM!

And so following the arrow of our heart only leads us through the guard rails and over the spiritual cliff to fiery destruction below!

And so Paul tells us that we must not follow our flesh or the world which are hell-bent upon this destruction!

So that’s the flesh and the world, but what about the devil stuff?

Well, that’s a MUCH bigger conversation than we have time for this morning, but in 1 Timothy 3 verse 6 Paul warns against becoming conceited - or puffed up.

And the reason he gives is that those who do so will face the same judgment as the devil.

And this is actually quite profound, because it means that the same problem that led to the devil becoming the devil is the same problem led to our spiritual self-centered “deathness.”

I know that word is made up

But, technically all words are made up - so why not.

But here’s the point

No one really has a problem with the idea of God sending the devil to hell.

Like if anyone’s got it coming, he’s got it coming!

But do you see what Paul is telling us?

The same poison that makes the devil the devil lies is within every single one of our hearts.

And this poison is absolutely deadly to us

In fact, it leads to our spiritual DOOM