Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

In 1949 the Honorable Harold R. Medina was the judge who presided at the trial of 11 communists charged with plotting to overthrow our government by force.

In his book Power To Become Lewis Dunnington gives an account of an interesting sidelight to that great trial.

For 9 months the judge was plagued with every possible trick to cause a mistrial.

Insolence and disorder were common in the courtroom, but judge Medina with great patience refused to do anything to cause a mistrial.

Then the communists learned of a weakness he had.

He was afraid of high places.

He had had acrophobia all his life, but had kept it under control even though his courtroom was on the 22 floor of the courthouse, and his apartment was many stories up as well.

Nevertheless, it was a real fear, and the communists took full advantage of it.

Shortly before the trial began Secretary of Defense James B. Forrestal had jumped to his death.

You can imagine judge Medina's shock when he came to the courthouse and found pickets walking back and forth chanting, "Medina will fall like Forrestal."

Only those with a phobia can appreciate the problem this caused for the judge.

As this continued day after day he could not escape his fear, and it became an obsession.

He asked his wife, even on hot summer nights, to keep the bedroom windows closed.

In court one day, after hearing the chant again, his head began to swim.

He quickly recessed the court and went to a couch.

He prayed as he never prayed before that he would gain control of himself, and escape the control of his fear.

His request was granted, and with renewed confidence he returned to court and saw the trial to a conclusion, which put the communist behind bars.

It was a victory for the nation, and a personal victory for judge Medina.

He had courage and he had knowledge, but without self-control all could have been lost.

All the boldness and knowledge in the world will not keep a man from going down in defeat if he lacks self-control.

The Apostle Peter knew this to be a fact from personal experience, and that is why he urges Christians to add to their courage and knowledge self-control.

Lacking this virtue in his own earlier experience, he denied his Lord, and several times rushed ahead of Christ and needed to be rebuked.

Another Peter, Peter the Great, was a bold conqueror and a man of knowledge.

He passed many laws for the protection of his subjects, but he was often subject to maniacal outbursts of anger.

In fury he struck and killed his gardener and his own son.

With great sorrow he said, "Alas!

I have civilized my own subjects, I have conquered other nations, yet I have not been able to conquer and civilize myself.

Anyone of us can be greater than Peter the Great, for the truly great ruler is the man who is king of himself.

This is a truth that has been universally recognized.

If we turn to the Orient we read Lao-Tsze who wrote, "He is strong who conquers others; he who conquers himself is mighty."

If we turn to the Greeks we read Aristotle saying, "I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self."

If we turn to the Romans we read Seneca saying, "He is most powerful who has power over himself.

If we turn to modern statesman, philosophers, and poets, they all agree that self-control is an essential quality for success.

Shelly and one of his sonnets writes-

Man who man would be,

Must rule the empire of himself, in it

Must reign supreme, establishing his throne

On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy

Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.

Self-control is so essential to the success of any pursuit that it is even a virtue among evil men.

Successful crooks are those who develop self-control.

They have to be able to remain calm as the night watchman makes his rounds, and as they hide behind merchandise.

They must have nerves of steel when the alarm goes off in the bank.

As soon as a thief loses his nerve and lets emotion take over, he kills or gets killed, or makes foolish moves that lead to his capture.

You cannot even be a successful crook without the virtue of self-control.

Satan encourages his troops to add this virtue to their equipment, just as Christians are urged to add it to theirs.

Whatever your goal, it is easier to reach it through self-control.

Burns expressed this in A Bard's Epitaph.

Reader, attend!

whether thy soul

Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,

Or darkling grubs this earthly hole

In low pursuit.

No prudent cautious self-control

Is wisdom's root.

We would expect to find we would expect to find this root of wisdom in the wisdom literature of the Bible, and it is there in Prov.

16:32, "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city."

This was written in a day when taking a city could be a long drawn out process of out witting and out waiting its inhabitants.

But Scripture agrees with thinking men everywhere that the greatest victory is to conquer and rule ones own spirit.

Caroline Le Row in True Heroism writes,

But I will write of him who fights,

And vanquishes his sins,

Who struggles on through weary years

Against himself and wins.

Peter is not trying to be original when he urges Christians to add self-control to their character.

He is not coming up with anything new for victorious living.

He is calling for us to take up a universally recognized value essential to the doing of anything effectively.

There is no need for something new when the old is the best thing available.

You can't improve on what is an absolute essential.

Nothing can take the place of self-control.

The old word for it was temperance, and this you can improve on, for the word temperance has too limited a meaning today to give us the biblical meaning.

Temperance refers to self-control in regard to alcohol, but the biblical word takes in control over all of the emotions and appetites of life.

To be temperate in all things is to avoid all excess so that one's reason is always in full control.

The fact that Peter urges Christians to add this virtue to their lives implies that people do not naturally possess it, but have a tendency to be a slave to their passions and appetites.

The New Testament is filled with passages that indicate Christians can be swept along by their lusts and desires into disgrace and judgment.

That is why they are constantly being warned to walk in the spirit and make no provision to fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

That is why they are warned about connections with their old life of sinfulness.

That is why they are warned about the false prophets who could lead them into a false liberty in which they would again come under the bondage of the flesh.

The whole second chapter of this letter deals with the judgments of God upon those who lost self-control, and it warns Christians not to add themselves to the list by forsaking the truth of God in giving themselves over to the lust of the flesh.

The simple fact is, there is just no chance of living the Christian life without self-control.

Depravity is written into the very nature of the fallen universe, and our tendency is ever downward.

If our self does not cooperate with the higher laws of God, we will follow the laws that lead to degeneracy.

Control of the downward tendencies is so basis to success that it even has to be applied in machines.

Cybernetics is a field that is rapidly growing.

Norbert Weiner, professor of mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, coined the word cybernetics from the Greek word which means steersman, and from which we get the word governor.

A governor controls the speed of a motor, or controls the operations of a state as a steersman controls a ship.

Cybernetics is a science dealing with control of communications.

Cybernetics is a fascinating field for the Christian to study, for it is filled with facts that show biblical principles apply even in the realm of machines.

There is a sense in which we can talk about sin and depravity in machines.

Man creates a machine in his own image by giving it sense organs so it can distinguish light from darkness.

He cannot trust his machine, however, to always do what he wants it to do.

There is a mechanical tendency toward disorganization, which is equivalent to sin in the human realm.

Man has to devise monitors to control the machine, or to warn him when it is being bad, and not taking orders.

If an elevator was left to operate without controls, the light could come on pointing down, the door would open, and you could step into an empty shaft.

That is the kind of dirty trick a machine will play on you if it is not controlled.

So men are constantly devising control methods to prevent machines from being evil to their creator.

By evil we mean being out of harmony with the will and plan of a superior being and intelligence responsible for their existence.

If only man could see that he is to God what the machine is to him-a creature gone astray, like a machine gone haywire and not responding in the way it was built to respond, and, therefore, in need of complete rebuilding.

In Christ a man is renewed and brought back into harmony with his Maker, but without controls he will tend to go back again into the state of disharmony.