Sermon Tone Analysis

*Who died and made you King?*

Before I start I want you guys to know that I truly hate guys with a testimony like mine.

So many time when people give there testimony it becomes this who caught the biggest fish story that the next person is trying to top.

I am by no means proud of my past; it’s full of despicable behavior, blatant sins against God, and hatred and anger not only against God, but also the church, and his people.

However, for the sake of this sermon I am going to share with you a little about how many years ago I fell away from God.

When I came out of high school I was on fire for the Lord.

I had experienced some very unique things witnessing for the Lord during my previous couple year prior to graduation.

I was working with a street evangelist from Detroit and God used us mightily.

I had seen demon possessed people delivered, I had seen the spiritual gifts active outside the four walls of church, and I had seen the type of miracles you hear missionaries talk about in other countries happen in places like a Burger King parking lot, or in someone’s living room.

So when I reflect on my early years within ministry I reflect on them like Luke did when he wrote the book of Acts.

As these things happened and the gospel spread around throughout my high school it came with a price.

The more I became closer with God and lived in a way that pleased him the more relationships in my life seem to change.

Friends that I had grown up with since the age of 5 would no longer hang with me; my girlfriend of 3 years broke up with me because I wouldn’t have sex with her.

During this time also there came out of the woodworks a group of Satan worshipers that were attacking everything I was doing in the ministry always harassing me.

Well to make a long story short, the pressure mounted within our ministry I looked around and I realized I had no real Christian friends.

At the time our church had no real Pastor, and all my closest friends and my ex-girlfriend were always out Partying and having a good time.

During this time I began to analyze there lives and came to the realization that for all the sin they were doing a lot of them never really suffered any real consequences.

But that was my first mistake and the first real time I had let my spiritual guard down.

You see I began to take my eyes off the Lord, because of the weight of my personal needs, and slowly I began to plot intellectually, and in my own flesh I began to figure out how I could provide for my own needs rather then trust the Lord for them.

I now began watching my friends lives rather then keeping my focus, my eyes, my heart, and my mind on the Lord.

I was feeling really down and that’s when the day came that changed my life for fifteen years.

During the entire ministry I was doing during that time my friends called me always trying to get me to go out with them drinking or to a party.

It even became a joke among them to see who could get me to fall.

As I began to hurt and I also began to watch people around me, and slowly I took my eyes my eyes off the Lord and I became to be a lot more “understanding” of what they were doing.

I began to justify to myself there sin intellectually to better understand them and that’s when it happened.

It started on a Friday night.

The phone rang, I was alone, and my friends called me with some exciting news.

They said, “We are at a party down the street.

You got to come hang with us.

Besides that your ex-girlfriend is here and she asked me to call you because she misses the old you.”

After a long pause on the phone I agreed to just come over and see everyone but not to go in.

When I got there they were all waiting for me out side so I parked my car on the side of the road and hung out there talking with them.

*Let me tell you they were happy to see me*.

They began harassing me about how we all used to be boys and they miss that.

They feared I had gone off the deep end and couldn’t understand what I have become.

I sat and listened and began to realize that I really did miss my friends.

Then came the kicker.

My ex-girlfriend came out of the party toward the car looking all sexy, and she came right up to me and plants a big kiss on me, hands me a beer, grabs my hand and begin to pull me into the Party.

It was at that moment the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “Your decisions determine your destiny.

Don’t dethrone God!”

 

When she took me into the Party my friends followed behind and all of them stopped and they wanted to give a toast to my “return as on of them.”

When they raised there beers up and made the toast I knew with everything in me that if I took that sip of beer it would destroy all the ministry that had been done over the last few years in my life, that I would discredit the reality of God to everyone watching, and it would completely ruin my testimony.

It was one of those surreal moments, like a car crash, where everything slows down and your whole life flashes before you.

I knew that this moment meant something.

However, when the toast finished, I looked at all “*I*” was missing and I took that sip of beer and as I did I realized that I had just taken Jesus off his thrown in my life and placed myself in his chair.

Tonight this is what I want to talk to you about tonight.

The title of this sermon is “who died and made you king.”

Turn with me to 1 Kings 1:5-9

 

*1 Kings 1:5*

5 Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, *put himself forward* and said, “*I will be king*.”

So he got chariots and horses ready, with fifty men to run ahead of him.

6 (His father had never interfered with him by asking, “*Why do you behave as you do*?”

He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom.)

7 *Adonijah conferred with Joab son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they gave him their support*.

8 But Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei and Rei and David’s special guard did not join Adonijah.

*9 **Adonijah then sacrificed sheep, cattle and fattened calves at the Stone of Zoheleth near En Rogel*.

He invited all his brothers, the king’s sons, and all the men of Judah who were royal officials, *10 but he did not invite Nathan the prophet or Benaiah or the special guard or his brother Solomon  *

 

As I look over this scripture I see what I call the “*King Syndrome*” prevalent in this passage.

The syndrome is one of the most rampant things I see among young adults and “church people” within the body of Christ.

It is the biggest turn off to the secular world around us, and it is the reason in my view that liberalism, multi-culturalism, tolerance, and the secular progressive philosophy are now so widely spread.

Like some of you I have spent much of my life away from church.

When I was growing up all every preacher spoke about was hell and everything in the world that made you go there.

Stuff like movies, music, radio, MTV, makeup, long hair, tattoos, and so on.

Preachers were real good at telling you what not to do.

The problem was they never could tell you what to do.

They would say, “Be separate from the world!”

And they meant it!

When I look around and see the world and its sin.

I don’t see a world *lost* to itself I see a world *left* to itself.

The church has isolated itself and created its own culture within the culture.

The people have built their foundations based on bad theology, feel good philosophies, prosperity gospels, and law.

In turn a rebellious world did what a rebellious word does.

It has lumped Christianity into the religious pile, because that is exactly how has presented to them.

We as Christians have to become real when looking at why the world is the way it is.

In my view the world is a direct reflection of the failures of the church.

Despite whether it is fair or not people hold Christians to a higher standard and we as a church body have let them down.

This brings me back to our passage of scripture.

Adonijah, grew up in church, his Father was hand picked by God to rule over his people and had a special anointing by God.

There is no doubt in my mind Adonijah knew about the living God, the principles which David his father followed, and the expectations of God’s word.

When I studied this passage of scripture I began to realize Adonijah and I had a lot in common.

Despite the truth about God around us, despite the testimonies of God witnessed, it never became a reality in our life.

I believe Adonijah choose YAHWEH as his God, but *never made him Lord* over his life.

He was more concerned with his concerns then God’s will.

There is a difference then a God we believe and one I make Lord.

When you make Jesus Lord of your life you are in essence saying Jesus you have authority over my life and your will is superior to my desires.

Lordship over our lives in Christ Jesus is the difference between the hypocrisy the world sees in religion, and the power of the Holy Spirit working through a man of faith.

Lordship is the difference between your salvation and the deception of thinking you’re saved just because you believe.

When talking about Lordship I don’t believe it can truly be understood outside of the concept servanthood.

For Christ to be lord in our lives it calls for us to be his servants.

This means our salvation is defined by our obedience to our Lord.

Consider these scriptures:

 

*Acts 6:7*

7 So the word of God spread.

The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became *obedient to the faith*

 

*Romans 1:5-6*

5 Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the *obedience that comes from faith*.

6 And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

*Romans 5:19*

19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the *obedience* of the one man the many will be made righteous.

*Romans 6:16*