Sermon Tone Analysis

Good Morning!

What a blessing to be in the house of God worshipping Him this morning!

I want to take a moment to just tell all you mothers thank you, thank you for the countless hours you pour into your children, thank you for the example you set daily of what selfless love looks like.

I don’t know where any of us would be without the love of a mother.

The prayers of a mother and the values you instill within the children that God has entrusted to you to raise in the fear and admonition of Him.

I pray you all have a great day, and that your husbands let you get a nap, I hope they do whatever you ask of them and I mean whatever you ask of them.

Men you want to show your spiritual maturity then make serving your wife your goal everyday of the year and not just today.

Amen.

Turn with me in your Bibles this morning to the gospel of .

We are going to be talking this morning about the

evidence of spiritual maturity.

The evidence of spiritual maturity, now if you remember last week our Lord was speaking to us about the soils, your remember?

We learned that this soil that Jesus was referring to was the soil of a persons heart and how they receive the Word of God.

We saw that there was really only two types of soil that Jesus taught us about.

The type of soil that produces nothing, that was the first three....

The hard soil, rocky soil, thorny or weedy soil produces nothing.

We learned that these types of heart are hearts in the wrong place, hearts that are shallow, and hearts that are unkept.

These types of hearts can bear no fruit, they don’t hear the truth of the gospel and respond.

Then he talked about a different soil that produced a hundred fold, 60 fold, and 30 fold in terms of fruitfulness.

Then He went on to say the difference between the soils that produce nothing, and the soils that are productive is hearing the truth.

Hearing it in the sense that you embrace it and you have a heart that can receive it and then it produces something eternal in your life.

I don’t know about you but when I die I want to be found fruitful don’t you?

So Jesus was teaching about bearing fruit and that in order to bear spiritual fruit a persons heart makes all the difference.

God doesn’t desire you or I to stay where we are He desire for our lives to count and impact eternity, not just here on Earth.

It was funny how Amy has been wanting me to make her a raised bed and wanting to get some stuff planted and we took to the yard this weekend to get it done and I built her a raised bed and we got some seed in the ground and we had already been growing some seed in a tray and were transplanting some seed that was already in the process of growing.

As we planted them I recalled last weeks sermon, and how God desired to plant something within us, that would produce something lasting and eternal.

But I watched as the kids were excited because we got them in the ground yesterday morning, and by yesterday afternoon after being in the sun we already had some sprouts sticking up from the ones which we transplanted.

I watched how excited the kids were and how excited she was that they were already producing and I thought to myself this is how God feels when His children begin sprouting spiritual things in their lives.

When there is life within something it is evident.

When something is going to die you already know before you put it in the ground, I say all of this to say, when there is spiritual life within you, it is evident you know it and the things of God begin to grow out of your life.

When there is no life within you it is evident as well.

So after Jesus teaches about growing and maturing in the Lord, He gives three short parables and he gives us the evidences of spiritual growth.

ARE YOU GROWING?

Let’s listen to Jesus and find out if we show the evidence of spiritual growth.

(Read)

(pray)

What are the evidence that you are growing in your faith?

Do you illuminate the darkness with the truth of the gospel?

Mark 4:21

Jesus asks a silly question here how many of you would take a lamp light it up and say hmm I really think we should put this under the bed where no one can see it?

of course you don’t the purpose of a candle or a lamp is to bring light into a dark place.

When I was little I remember during bad storms we would get the candles out and sit them on the dinner table, and they would be there in case what?

In case the lights went out, that’s right?

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it?

We all think this is elementary because we know exactly what the purpose of a lamp or candle is, don’t we?

I think the issue is that we understand exactly what a candles purpose is, but I think we forget what our purpose is.

Jesus is the light of the world and you are His candlestick, you are to shine the light and love of Jesus into the midst of darkness wherever you go.

Let me ask you a question, does a candle once its lit, does it begin to decide who it will shine for or who it will go out for?

Absolutely not it just shines it is the nature of the thing, once a fire is put to the wick it just burns and everyone can see it.

Jesus says one evidence that you have spiritual life growing in you is that you shine the light of His love and glory wherever you are.

We see pictures of this throughout the Bible don’t we?

So if we are children of God then the light of Jesus has been planted within us and as a result then we are to have no fellowship with darkness, we are to shine brightly for the glory of Jesus.

DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU ARE ALIVE TODAY?

DO YOU KNOW WHY YOUR HEART IS EVEN BEATING?

BECAUSE JESUS WANTS YOU TO BE A CANDLE STICK.

Ladies it’s mothers day so quick sidenote, how brightly do you shine at home?

This is not meant to demean or diminish, but listen to me there is nothing greater than a woman who reads the truth and then shines forth that truth in her own life, nothing more powerful than that.

It doesn’t mean you walk around perfect all the time with a halo on your head getting everything right and never getting frustrated, I mean come on I know who your married to I would be stressed out too.

But really it doesn’t mean that you have to have it altogether and are living truth out perfectly remember we learned last week, ministry is messy your just scattering seed.

(teachable moments)

I am a firm believer that more truth seeds were planted in me while my mom and I were driving from tallahassee to carrabelle than any sermons I ever heard, and she got frustrated and she was angry and she messed up alot, but you know what she did?

She planted truth in me, she shined it when she would tell me what God spoke to her during sermons, what she felt like God was telling her and then she tried to walk that out in front of me.

That’s shining truth of what you believe and it is also what planting looks like, but ARE YOU SHINING IN YOUR HOME?

EVERYONE ARE YOU SHINING WITH THE GLIMMER OF JESUS?

It is is an evidence of whether or not you are growing in maturity....

Jesus says this stuff I am showing you I aint showing it to you so you can hide it away and never share it, NOTHING I SAY SHOULD BE HIDDEN BUT IT SHOULD BE PROCLAIMED!

Are you Applying the Truth You Hear?

Mark

“PAy attention” or “Take Heed”

This phrase means seek to understand

It speaks of being so intently listening to the truth of God that you are determined to live it out.

He is not just telling you to listen, He is telling you to listen and apply to your heart what you understand about what yuo have heard.

You must learn this anytime Jesus is asking you to pay attention, He is not really just telling you to hear the words.

He says how you listen is important as a maturing believer you must seek to both hear the truth and obey the truth.

to walk in the light you have been given.

Let me ask you a question what good is a religion to believe in if you care nothing for living it out?

It is worthless, it is a waste of time.

This is what Jesus is saying here.

(pharisee/disciple)

“FOR THE MEASURE YOU USE IT WILL BE MEASURED TO YOU AND STILL MORE WILL BE GIVEN”

What does Jesus mean here?

“Measure” this is a unit of measurement it is math terminology.

It means you have heard the truth you have examined the truth and you have calculated how to go about walking it out.

(Holy Spirit)

You might only have a little bit of truth to walk in right now.

(SHINE THE LIGHT OF JESUS IN YOUR HOME/LIFE)

Sit back and calculate what would that look like in my life?

Then you begin to apply it and Jesus says when you take the little bit you know and begin to work it out your gonna get the same amount again and if your faithful with that again and again, EVEN MORE WILL BE GIVEN”

:

Jesus says when we hear the truth of His word and we refuse to acknowledge and listen to it, then what we have will be taken away.

Jesus is saying if I cant trust you to be faithful with a little bit of truth then how am I going to be able to give you the deeper things the bigger things.

You see some of us want deeper sermons, we want to know the hidden mysteries of God and yet we aren’t even applying the truth we know and so the deeper things of God are escaping us, we don’t get it.

This is not to say that you have to constantly be walking around beating yourself up because maybe you have failed to obey something, but instead call out to God ask Him to help you live out the truth you hear, it maybe that you hear one thing in a message that you need to apply to your hearts, so for that whole next week work on that one thing ask God to guide you strengthen you and then keep it in the forefront of your mind.

As you begin to obey the little truths God will open your eyes to a whole new world with Him more truth will be entrusted to you and more truth will begin to transform you!

ANOTHER MARK OF SPIRITUAL MATURITY IS THAT:

YOU TRUST THE LORD TO GROW YOU

Mark 4:26

What is the point here?

The point is not the scattering of the seed, it is the process of how something grows.

It is true that we have to apply truth to our lives and try to live it out, but we must trust Christ to mature us spiritually He is the One who enables and empowers us to do it.

This once again ties in to the previous thought.