Sermon Tone Analysis

4 New Year’s Resolutions that will impact eternity.

1.

To Find Pleasure in God

Absorbed in the Sunset

A mother had called her five-year-old son to dinner five times.

He was slow responding.

Impatiently, she declared, “This is the fifth time I have called Billy to dinner.

I will have to see about this, and I will spank him and teach him a lesson.”

Running from the dining room towards the front porch, she found her son standing there, absorbed in contemplation.

Young man, why don’t you come to dinner?

I have called you five times.”

“But Mother,” he replied, “I only heard you three times, and, besides, I am watching God put the world to bed.”

Our desire as believers is to be one with Christ in practice as we are one with Him in standing.

Becoming One with the Foundation

1 Corinthians 15:28; Ephesians 4:15; 1 Peter 2:6

Preaching Themes: Character, Union with Christ

In the old Roman walls the mortar seems to be as hard as the stones and the whole is like one piece.

You must blow it to atoms before you can get the wall away.

So is it with the true believer.

He rests on his Lord until he grows up into him, until he is one with Jesus by a living union, so that you scarce know where the foundation ends and where the upbuilding begins; for the believer becomes all in Christ, even as Christ is all in all to him.297

Finding and Loving Him

In A Twentieth-Century Testimony, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote: “The true purpose of our existence in this world‚ which is, quite simply, to look for God, and, in looking, to find Him, and, having found Him, to love Him, thereby establishing a harmonious relationship with His purposes for His creation.”2

Let Jesus In

Once I heard this story concerning King Edward VII of England.

He and his queen were out walking late one afternoon when suddenly she stumbled and sprained an ankle.

In great pain, and with considerable difficulty, she limped along, holding to her husband’s shoulder.

At dusk, they approached the home of a humble man.

The king knocked on the door.

“Who’s there?” came the query.

“It is Edward.

It is the king.

Let me in.”

The man on the inside shouted back, “Enough of your pranks now.

Be off.…”

The king, not being accustomed to such language, was shocked.

He hardly knew what to do, but he knocked a second time.

The cottager inquired, “What do you want?”

“I tell you it is the king!

It is Edward, your king.

Let me in.”

In anger the man shouted, “I’ll teach you to torment an honest man trying to get his sleep.”

He threw open the door in disgust, only to see that indeed it was his king!

With profuse apologies the laborer invited the royal visitors in and sent for help to attend his queen.

Years later, when the Britisher was too old to work, he would spend much time rocking on the porch and visiting with neighbors.

He took great delight in reviewing that experience, always concluding with the same words: “And to think, to think, I almost didn’t let him in!

To think I almost didn’t let him in!”

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev.

3:20).

Not until you open your heart and let Jesus in will you know what God is like.

Let us commit in 2023 to make our relationship with Jesus our supreme priority.

2. To Live as a Sacrifice

1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching (Three Dollars’ Worth, Please)

Three Dollars’ Worth, Please I would like to buy three dollars’ worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.

I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.

I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.

I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.

I would like to buy three dollars’ worth of God, please.

We are not called to a life of ease.

We are not called to a life of worldly pleasure.

We are called to

bodies, not just hearts and minds.

You can’t have sacrifice your heart to Christ without sacrificing you body to Him also.

Abraham is a good example.

1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching (Incredible Obedience)

Incredible ObedienceTake your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you (Gen.

22:2).Abraham turned pale, sick.

This was not only the son of his old age but the one designated to be his “seed.”

Had God lied?

Was this the demand of a rational God? Surely old Abraham, bubbling with emotion, longed to talk it over with someone.

Why not Sarah?

But as Professor Roland H. Bainton has suggested, had he discussed it with anyone, “he would be dissuaded and prevented from carrying out the behest.”The

designated spot for the sacrifice, Mount Moriah, was some distance away.

Abraham rose up early in the morning, saddled his ass, strapped the prepared wood on the beast, and with two servants and his son Isaac, started the sad journey.

Not even those of us who have lost a son can begin to know the impact of the command to offer a son as a “burnt offering.”

One’s blood turns cold, the demand is inconceivable.

Everything in Abraham died, except his obedience.

The agony lasted three days!Arriving at the place of execution, preparations were made.

All the while Isaac was asking heartbreaking questions.

Faithful Abraham built the altar, placing the wood on it, and finally his bound son.

With trembling, upraised hand Abraham drew the knife “to slay his son.”

The boy was horrified!

If God had winked, Isaac would have been dead.But in that awful moment an angel cried out, “Abraham, Abraham!”

And he said “Here am I.” The angel said, “ ‘Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God’ ” (Gen.

22:12).

3. To Not Conform

Example: Daniel

Let Down Your Bucket

An unforgettable experience of my college days was to hear a series of lectures by George Washington Carver.

His life is a chronicle of sacrifice, humility, brilliance, good deeds, and dedication.

He stated his personal philosophy in these simple words, “Let down your buckets where you are.”

He encouraged us and everyone not to go through life dodging issues, complaining, and criticizing, but to contribute something.

This was illustrated time and time again in Dr. Carver’s own career, but never more dramatically than when he was offered one-hundred-seventy-five thousand dollars a year to work with Thomas A. Edison, and declined.

His reason: “I felt that God was not through with me in Tuskegee; there was still plenty of work to do for Him there.”

An Unpurchasable Person

Dr. Reid Vipond of Canada shares a story of an oil company that needed a suave public-relations man for its office in the Orient.

After interviewing several candidates, the officials decided to ask a local missionary to take the position.

Company executives met with this man of unusual gifts.

Whatever their proposition, his answer was always “No.”

“What’s wrong?” asked one interviewer.

“Isn’t the salary big enough?”

The missionary replied, “The salary is big enough, but the job isn’t.”

Hands Too Full

Saint Augustine declared: “God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there’s nowhere for Him to put it.”