Sermon Tone Analysis

RECORD

As some of you may already know my heritage is that of French Canadian

For at least 3 generations both sides of my family lived in the Eastern Townships of Quebec in the Sherbrook area

But my Parents left Quebec for Ontario shortly after getting married and despite a lot of vacation time spent there as a child my French is very limited

By limited I mean the only French I speak fluently is French Fry, French toast, and poutine

That is until a number of years ago when, with our two small girls we uprooted from Oshawa and moved to Quadeville up in the Ottawa valley which is most famous for being the hiding place for Al Capone and for being the blackfly capital of the world

You see at schools in the Ottawa Valley kids begin taking French in kindergarten and so immediately our kids started learning French

Then came the day when the notice came home that the kids would be putting on a play that they learned in French class and all the parents were invited to see and hear Trois Petite Cachon, or The 3 Little Pigs for you anglophones

So off we went to see what I thought was a school play but alas I was wrong for Trois Petite Cachon only has 4 parts in it, the 3 pigs and the wolf and so each class got to present the play…as many times as it took for everyone in the class to take part

For what seemed like an eternity I sat through version after version of “Petite cachon, petite cachon, je vue entre, je vue entre” and “Je ne sue pas fue fue fue”

French that I will NEVER get out of my head no matter how much therapy I get!

But I am not here this morning to teach you about Trois petite cachons, instead I want to switch to a different language, but one that I still speak as about as well as French, and that is Greek, ancient Koina Greek to be specific, the language that the New Testament was written in so that we can consider The 3 Little Verbs of so we can destinguish how it is that God wants us to live

But before we get into the Greek let’s read it through in the English

Romans 12:

Now just like those three little pigs forever altered my life, if we will take the time to learn them and apply them the three little verbs in this verse can forever alter the way that we live but in a much more dramatic way

The first of these three verbs is the word “conform” which comes from the Greek word “syschematizo” (sis-chem-at-is-o)

Try and work that into a conversation this week, I dare you

This word only appears twice in all the N.T. and the word means “to fashion in accordance with” or “to assimilate” or “to be made the same as”

I, like many of you in the past couple of weeks, have changed my car over from having winter tires to summer tires

Now when I bought my winter tires I didn’t just tell the parts guy (who happens to be a good friend of mine) to give me whatever he had in stock

I purposefully ordered tires that were the same size and dimensions as the tires that I already had

My winter tires had to conform to the pattern (not tread) of the tires I already had, they had to be the same

Now before we get to far we need to take notice that Paul adds the words “Kai un” in front of our verb turning it into a negative meaning “Do not conform” Do not become the same as” but what is it that he is warning us against becoming like?

Simple “the pattern of the world” or the way that the world has become so that it can fit into place just like my summer tires do

So what is that pattern?

Well let me point out a few key points

1 Corinthians

It is in the pattern of the world that decides that it is through human knowledge and understanding that we make our decisions about God

The pattern of the world says if it exists than it must be understandable to the human mind and if the human mind cannot understand it and categorize it and explain it to others than it cannot exist

Systematically we have therefore denied not only the EXISTENCE of God but anything that has to do with Him, His moral code, His ways etc.

That’s why Paul states in

The world doesn’t want to hear about faith, the world wants science and Paul says that we cannot conform to that, we have to be different and learn to trust in what we do not see and perhaps even what we cannot understand

Now please do not misunderstand me, I am NOT saying that we need to do away with all science and knowledge and put ourselves back into the dark ages which I will more to say about when we get to the third verb

What I AM saying is that we are created as beings of faith, everything we do has an element of faith to it

When we drive across that bridge we have faith that the engineers knew what they were doing and that the construction workers that built it were competent and that it won’t collapse under us

The choice that we need to make is whether we will let faith in only that which we can know and understand determine who we are and what we become

One look at this universe tells you that it can’t be limited to our brain power, one look inside the human body, and we’ll do that in tonight’s video, will tell you that there has to be something more and something greater

Another Pattern of this world can be seen in

The “Standards” of this world, like we just did with the previous pattern let’s look at a few examples

Like we just did with the previous pattern let’s look at a few examples

Well perhaps the most obvious one is that the world’s #1 standard to to look after yourself, to take care of number 1

There can be no denying that the number one priority by worldly standards is the preservation of self and to put your own needs above that of everybody else

We live in what has to be the most narcissistic time that there has ever been where people will do whatever it takes to make sure that they come out on top and let no one stand in their way

Yet the Bible gives us a very different standard to live by and that is to put others first and, as Paul so eloquently put it, “die to ourselves”

Jesus Himself told what the standard expected of us is in Luke’s gospel

But the worldly standard would say that that is not natural and that it should be the survival of the fittest

Yet all through the scriptures we are shown that life is meant to be lived in the service of others and that it is not about serving ourselves

Perhaps nowhere is this more dramatically emphasized than in the words of Christ in when He tells the parable of the sheep and the goats

Just in case you’re not familiar with it let me summarize it, Jesus said that on the day of judgement the thing that is going to count what we did for others, for those who couldn’t do anything in return for us, for the marginalized and the despised and the forgotten

A life lived in the service of self has no meaning for when when it is all said and done it will all be gone but a life lived in the service of others lives on in them and through their actions

Matthew

Which brings me to my third example of the standards we are NOT to live up to

The standard set by the world is for instant pleasure, gratification here and now and don’t worry about the consequences

I’m probably going to get in trouble for this but there is an expression that has been quite popular with the younger generation that us “older folks” are not supposed to use “YOLO” (DAB)

It stands for You Only Live Once and what it represents is the idea that all risks must be taken and all chances are worth it because there might not be a tomorrow

But let’s not just blame this young generation because such a sentiment has been around in EVERY generation and although some of us “older folk” have grown and matured we are still living life based on temporal thrills, on things that aren’t going to last

The problem is that we were never intended to only live once, we were intended to be born again and to live forever and so why waste our precious resources on things that will expire with the expiration of this world when there is coming a world that will never expire

I want to touch on one more pattern of the world that we are not to conform to and it encompasses both of these that we have touched on and others besides and that is the old way that you used to live, which is a life of sin

Colossians 3:

What I am about to say is no longer considered politically correct and in many ways is already illegal for me to say in our country, and that is that morality is not subjective and what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong

And while I will give people the freedom to live however they desire to live, we cannot allow ourselves to conform to the idea that it is somehow acceptable or we will get lulled into that same lifestyle

While I am not a huge “fan” of Bill Hybles and we disagree on a lot of points, several years ago he wrote a book that I thought was excellent and the book is called Holy Discontent

The premise of the book is that the Church (big “C”) has become comfortable with sin and in doing so we have allowed it to creep into our own lives to the point where the church and the world look the same

What do you call it when something takes on the look of something else? Conforming.

The church has conformed to the pattern of the world and found lots of ways to excuse it

But there really is no excuse, listen to what Paul said to those in Ephesus

Ephesians 2:1-

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world” that is the first of the three little verbs that will change your life if you will let it

Next week we’ll look at numbers 2 and 3 and I pray that they will stick with you just like that French play has stuck with me

Let’s pray