Sermon Tone Analysis

REVIEW

The Journey

Know God

Find Freedom

Discover Purpose

Make a Difference

1182 γινώσκω (ginōskō): vb.; ≡ Str 1097; 1. know, recognize, be aware fem.; 2. learn, acquire information, implying personal means;

6 KEYS TO FINDING FREEDOM

1 - Understand the purpose of the law.

4080 παιδαγωγός (paidagōgos): Str 3807; guardian, custodian, supervisor

The purpose for law; not to produce righteousness, but to produce sinners, who could then come to Christ to find saving faith.

2 - WALK IN THE LIGHT

Sin is progressive; it first blinds, then binds, then damns, then destroys.

The sooner you stop sin in the process, the easier it is to get free.

Confession vs. Repentance

We repent once when we turn from a sin habit in our lives; but before we repent, we must confess.

Once we find freedom through repentance, we continue to confess to stay free.

There is only one way to heaven; to be “found in Christ.”

3 - BE AWARE OF DARKNESS

Andrew Delbanco, a secular scholar at Columbia University, whose book The Death of Satan argues that “a gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources available for coping with it.”

He argues that many secular people understandably attribute all human cruelty to psychological deprivation or social conditioning and, in so doing, trivialize the terrible wrongs people are capable of.

Delbanco recounts the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who along with many of the American elites during the Holocaust gave “no priority to the rescue” of the victims.

Late in the war, after the evidence for the atrocities became too great to disbelieve, the president was given Kierkegaard to read and said that, for the first time, the Christian philosopher gave him “an understanding of what it is in man that makes it possible . . . to be so evil.”

Delbanco avers that secular liberals (a group of which he considers himself a member) had lost any concept of “radical evil.”

Keller, Timothy.

Preaching (pp.

108-109).

Penguin Publishing Group

The generational effect is that of consequence, not share sin.

Jesus breaks the generational momentum of sin and darkness in a family line.

When I accept Christ, I embrace a new inheritance; a new destiny, free from generational curses and sin.