Sermon Tone Analysis

* *

*Romans 7: 14 *We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

*15 **I do not understand what I do*.

For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

*16 *And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

*17 *As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

*18 *I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.

For I have the desire to do what is good, but *I cannot carry it out*.

*19 *For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

*20 *Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

*21 *So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

*22 *For in my inner being I delight in* God’s law*; *23 *but I see *another law* at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of *the law of sin* at work within my members.

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

* *Over and over we seem to battle the same things.*

* How many of you battle this helpless feeling?

* Two Laws

* God’s Law

* Law of Sin

* Why would I do what I don’t want to do?

* What keeps me trapped in this way of life and thinking?

* If it feels good, it may bring me happiness.

\\ \\

*Sometimes the answer is something that seems totally unrelated.*

\\ For example, in the middle of winter when your feet are cold, you may try putting on thicker socks or a blanket.

Still your feet may be icy.

One secret to warm feet is to stop focusing on your feet and look at your head.

That's right, go to the other end of your body and put a hat on.

Although your neck and head have only 10 percent of your body surface, in the cold that's where you lose a whopping 30 percent of your body heat.

Having nothing on your head is like opening a window in your house in the dead of winter.

If you keep that heat in your body with a hat, your blood will carry it down to your toes.

\\ \\ In the same way, when people have problems, spiritual leaders often recommend that they do something that sounds unrelated—such as *read the Bible, pray, go to church, or focus on serving other people*.

These seemingly unrelated things *bring grace to help overcome problems*.

* Just like this example about heat leaking from our heads, *I believe we are leaking in our spirit too*.

* We are in a spiritual battle for our hearts and minds.

* We can either feed our spirits or our lower nature.

* How do we feed our lower nature?

*Acts 17: 16 *While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.

*17 *So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.

*18 *A group of *Epicurean* and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him.

Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.”

They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

*19 *Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?

*20 *You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.”

*21 *(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

*22 *Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens!

I see that in every way you are very religious.

*23 *For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: *TO AN UNKNOWN GOD*.

Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

* This life is all that counts and man should make happiness his main purpose in life.

Happiness might be gained for some by practicing sensual and sexual pleasures and to avoid any pain.

* Others might attain happiness from mental and intellectual pursuits.

* If death is the end, why not satisfy the flesh today?

Sounds like the motto of today!

Where did this come from?

Is this a modern thought?

Yes and No! Epicurus said this for 2300 Years.

This philosophy was a *system of atheism*, and taught men to seek as their highest aim a pleasant and smooth life.

The Epicureans, who followed Epicurus (341-270 B.C.), said the chief end of man was pleasure and happiness.

This pleasure, they believed, is attained by avoiding excesses and the fear of death, by seeking tranquility and freedom from pain, and by loving mankind.

They believed that if gods exist they do not become involved in human events.

* If any man says that there is no difference between the good and expedient /(good for me NOW, convenient),/ that a thing is good simply because it is expedient; or, if he should say that there is no difference between holiness and sin, we can only refer to our own consciousness and to the common consciousness of all men.

* i.e. example by CS Lewis (man taking seat on a bus)

* We know, therefore, from the very constitution of our nature that the right and the expedient are not identical ideas.

* And we know from the same source, and with equal assurance or certainty, that happiness is not the highest good; but on the contrary, that *holiness is as much higher than happiness, as heaven is higher than the earth* or Christ than Epicurus.

* Every question which comes up for decision is answered, not by a reference to the law of God, or to the instincts of his moral nature, but by *the calculations of expediency*.

* If happiness is the greatest good, and whatever seems to us to promote happiness is right, then God and the moral law are lost sight of.

Our own happiness is apt to become the chief good for us, as it is for the universe.

* *

* *This country is based on this kind of thinking and living.*

* *Situational ethics*

* I am against wrong except where it benefits* ME!*

* *Corruption is accepted as normal and OK.*

* Everyone does it; you have to, to survive.

*When the individual man adopts either principle, his inward and outward life is determined by it*.

Spirit, soul and Body!

The devil says “Go ahead and do it, everyone else does, God understands, he wants you happy, the government is corrupt so your small wrong is not that bad, do it, God will forgive you, it’s normal, natural, feels good, etc…

 

* The answer?

* A devotional pattern that places us starkly in awe before a fearsome God.

* A God-angled view of sin and its consequences.

* A habit of escaping the pressures of Christian work for relaxation and renewal — activities that don’t violate the holiness of God.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw