Sermon Tone Analysis

January 10, 2010

By John Barnett

Read, print, and listen to this resource on our website [[www.DiscoverTheBook.org]]

We are starting a look through the Scriptures at the most written about person in the Bible.

Other than God the father, Son, and Spirit, there are more chapters recorded about David’s life than any other Biblical figure.

We know more about David than the New Testament church planting missionary Paul; and more than on the chief apostle Peter; and more than about father Abraham, or Daniel.

God has chosen to give us David: examined from more directions, recorded in more situations, and captured in more passages than anyone else.

Why would God devote so much of His Book to this man?

Think about how often you go to the Bible and see the verses but then say: yes but I am alone, or single, or unemployed, or old, or tempted, or super-successful, and so on.

And think, but the Bible doesn’t speak directly to me.

But that can never be said about David.

He was all those things and so much more; and God’s record of his life covers every era and age he went through.

There are Psalms from his youth and boyhood, from his prime and peak, and from his older and fading years.

God covers all the bases with a man and young man who lived in each era of his life “after God’s own heart”.

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Serving God in Every Season of Life

This means that a study of the Life of David leads us on a journey that will shows us what God wants us to know about /Serving God in Every Season of Life/.

No matter who you are today, you can relate to David.

* How about all the challenges of /being a teenager/?

David was the youngest of 8 boys in a tough family.

He was overlooked, ignored, mistreated, misunderstood, and even neglected.

David was a man’s man, he had every passion and drive that a man can have, and yet he demonstrates what God wants to see in a teenager.

God had him write from the heart and mind of a teenager what a teen after God’s own heart would act like, think like, and talk like.

* If you are /alone and single/, so was David and from that time God speaks through him to each of us who have ever been alone and single, and tells us what will please God from our life in that season.

* If you are /out of work/, have lost your job, and have expenses unmet and family to support, David went through that very situation.

God had him write down the meditations of a man who loves God but is unemployed, and the lessons are profound.

* How about when you are so /busy you can’t think/?

David writes about how he followed and served the Lord as the wealthiest man on Earth, the most successful soldier of all tie, and a best-selling author and musician.

David lives God and serves God’s purposes in every stage of life.

He sees God’s Hand in each situation, and he learns how to please the Lord no matter what he faces.

That is the key to his life.

Pleasing God, doing what God wanted.

When we get to the final New Testament explanation of David’s life we find something amazing.

The last time God explains David’s life He tells us that David served God as His SLAVE.

One word that sums up David’s life, is captured by God in Acts 13:36.

God says David SERVED as a SLAVE the purposes of God.

David served God as His slave.

Listen to this summary:

[[Bible:Acts 13:36]] (NKJV) /“For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and saw corruption;/

David served literally means he acted as a slave.

The actual word describes one of the types of slaves that were around in Christ's time.

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Bond-slaves of God

We have softened the New Testament word used to describe David, and also used by Jesus over and over to describe us.

The word is SLAVE.

A servant in Christ's time was a person who could be hired, paid, and could quit (and grumble) like the parable Jesus told in Matthew 20.

But a slave in Bible times was *bought*, so he was totally owned by another and had to serve.

Slavery means giving up all independence, losing all freedoms, and abandoning personal rights.

The slave was totally dependent upon the owner for all provisions.

Turn onward to [[Bible:I Corinthians 6:19-20]]:

/Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s./

We all have an appointment to stand before Jesus Christ and watch Him sift through all the days of our lives.

He will be looking for what we did in our lives as His servants.

When our lives are finished, God has said He will sift each moment of our life into two piles: moments connected to God and lived to please Him; and moments connected to anything but God that were not lived to please Him (I Corinthians 3:10-13).

The parts of life disconnected to God burn up.

Since most early believers were poor and many slaves, their lives were nearly empty of discretional time.

That is why Paul says, “Whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do ALL to the glory of God “ (I Cor.

10:31).

Paul encouraged those early believers with the truth that they could do their work for their masters and be rewarded in Heaven, if they did all for the Glory of God.

When we do something for the glory of God we are attaching what we do to Him.

We are redeeming the time.

So Acts 13:36 explains how David did what he did.

David was a life long slave to God.

Now, think about this truth.

One thing will matter more than anything else at the judgment seat of Christ, and that is—who you attempted to please with your life.

Now look at who gets the prizes in Heaven.

Jesus explained that in Matthew 25:21-23:

/His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.

Enter into the joy of your lord.’

22 He also who had received two talents came and said, ‘Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.’

23 His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.

Enter into the joy of your lord.’/

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Life Reduces to Two Choices

A camp director friend of mine has a chant for each year’s staff.

They keep repeating this chant until it sinks in, and then starts to come out in every choice they make.

It goes something like this:

“Only two choices on the shelf, pleasing God or pleasing self!”

Jesus once knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He was crushed under the weight of the sin of the world, and was sweating great drops of blood.

The words of His prayer are short and to the point.

He explains that life has two choices, and He had made His choice.

Look at what He said:

I often take pilgrims to this very spot.

There by an olive tree I encourage them to kneel and read this passage, and then actually do what Jesus did.

Affirm to God that they have two choices each day: pleasing God and doing His will, or pleasing self and doing my will.

Luke 22:40-42 /When He came to the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

41 And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”/

Verse 42 starts with the word saying, in Greek this is a present active participle which is a big way to say that He was repeating this over and over.

Jesus didn’t say once that He wanted God’s will, not His own: Jesus repeated that over and over.

I would encourage you to be like Jesus.

Say over and over as you go through life, Your will not mine.

I want to please You Lord, not myself.

It really is as simple as that.

There are only two choices for each of us on the shelf of life: pleasing and serving ourselves or pleasing and serving God.

We please the one we serve; and we either go through life thinking and seeking first what we want, or what the Lord wants.

That takes us to David’s life and the question—

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What Do You Want on Your Tombstone?

This fall we spent time as a family in New England’s colonial towns.

We spent an hour in one old cemetery in Vermont reading the inscriptions on some of the weathered, two hundred year old grave stones.

One of the most fascinating branches of history is the study of tomb inscriptions or epitaphs.

Most famous among these are the Pharaohs and their pyramids and their gilded remains among intricate inscriptions hidden away among the rock hewn tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

ep·i·taph [noun] Definitions: 1. *inscription on a tombstone*: an inscription on a tombstone or monument commemorating the person buried there; 2. *speech or writing commemorating a dead person*: a short speech or piece of writing celebrating the life of a recently deceased person.

What would you like to have written as the epitaph of your life, on your tombstone?