Sermon Tone Analysis

State:

We are called to be a family- not an organization.

Living within a family can be challenging....WHY?

You don’t get to choose your family

You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family.

God decides who will be your brother and sister

As a family we are called to love one another

Loving someone requires truth…sometimes hard truth…correction/direction

Christians who see correction from other people as judgement are not walking in the full knowledge of God’s love for us and his instruction for church.

First: We are called to judge each other

But there is a condition

Make sure you have the facts and not just speculation based on appearances

we just others according to our perceptions

we judge ourselves according to our intentions

Second: When we cannot hear truth about ourselves and resort to saying we are being judged as our defense, we are not complete in God’s love

We are the ones who decides if we are being condemned

If we feel condemned when someone tells us the truth about us

Our understanding of God’s grace is broken somewhere.

We need to go back to Romans 7 to see where this statement is coming from

Romans 7:5–6 (NLT)

5 When we were controlled by our old nature (have no knowledge of God’s option to live righteously), sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death.

Romans (2.

No Longer Condemned by Law (7:1–25))

By nature rebels oppose restrictions.

When placed under law, people instinctively find themselves at odds with the lawgiver and act accordingly.

The response of their sinful passions is to rebel against authority.

Opposition to God inevitably ends in death

Example: Look at how you were as a teenager- or- even an adult without Christ

Don’t go over speed limit

Don’t trespass

Don’t steal - raiding gardens

The construction site in Kline Heights

If we persist in rebelling against the law we will go to jail

If we persist in rebelling against God, we will go to.....hell

6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power.

Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

Our eyes are opened to our rebelling

and

We are given the desire to do good and the power (Holy Spirit) to do that good

We no longer are following man-made laws about what is good or bad

We are simply told to “Love our neighbor as our selves”

Back to the topic of someone correcting us

The awareness of our sin is God’s gift to us

The greater the sinfulness seen, the greater is the salvation that forgives it.

Adam and Eve hid from God (shame)

The prodigal was coming back from grave sin but had a wrong attitude about God’s love- He presented himself as a sinner not worthy of grace or love

He really did not understand his Father’s love and opinion of his children

The elder son presented himself as an ignored servant, because he did not understand his relationship with his Father.

His Father would have given him anything he asked for…but he never asked ?

Why?

Did not have the confidence to think his Father would give it to him.

So he waited and did not ask.

He did not have the right understanding of his Father’s love

Ask and it shall be given

To those who knock it shall be opened

It is the Father’s joy to give us the Kingdom (not the world)