Sermon Tone Analysis

Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there.

It is always good to celebrate our Mom’s who pour out love, who work hard.

And we reserve a special day on which to do that.

And how do you do that?

How do you show someone who has sacrificed so much?

Who has loved you from before you were born?

Hallmark says...

For the low low price of $24 (not including envelope) you too can fully express your love and admiration and appreciation by signing your name after a short poem printed in cursive.

Beyond a hallmark holiday, how can you really show you love someone?

The founder of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, actually grew to hate the holiday she created because of its commercialization and she actually died destitute in a sanatorium where, every year on Mother’s Day, she would be deluged with mass-produced greeting cards.

Irony.

The Badger

I have this.

This is tremendously special to me.

It wasn’t given to me on Father’s Day or Mother’s Day.

For the longest time I have called my kids badgers.

Usually “ridiculous badgers”.

I don’t know hwy, I don’t even know all that much about badgers.

I like the shape of the word, but its a ludicrously fierce animal in a small package so… it works.

But Logan hears me talking about badgers all the time, and it comes time to do an art project at school, maybe 3rd or 4th grade.

And he thinks to himself “I am going to make something for my Dad.

What does he love?

Badgers, obviously, the guy talks about them all the time.”

And he handcrafts this badger.

For me.

And he was all mysterious about it, and he presented it to me.

The pride on his face as he presented it to me was only surpassed by the love in me as I received it.

This is my badger.

This is love.

Many Mother’s tomorrow will receive terrible breakfasts made by unskilled hands, objectively awful drawings of stick figures holding hands and misshapen clay somethings.

And they will love and cherish them because they shout love.

The Badger from Logan.

I made this.

Romeo and Juliet (without the suicide).

Star-crossed lovers.

It wasn’t about the skill or the perfection or the result, it was the time and attention and effort that went into it.

Mother’s Day

Woman receiving gifts they don’t want.

That is their badger.

That is love.

The last thing Joshua wants to say

We have reached the very end of the book of Joshua.

(awww).

In the final two chapters of Joshua, Joshua is going to say the very last things he wants to say before he dies.

These are his last words, his final sermon, his parting advice to the nation he has led know in the footsteps of Moses for more than 30 years.

He is 110 years old.

Joshua 23:

What is the last thing Joshua wants to say?

First, he summarizes the story of what God has done for Israel through his life.

Joshua 23:3

Therefore, respond in a very particular way.

Joshua 23:6

He calls them to obedience.

Why?

Well, remember everything God has done:

Joshua 23:9-

Blessed if you do… cursed if you don’t.

And just to make it absolutely clear, he says it all again:

And just to make it absolutely clear, he says it all again:

Look carefully, he conflates three things: love, obedience, and purity.

Racial Purity?

It is obviously a REALLY big deal that the people of Israel not make marriages with the Canaanites.

Why is this such a big deal?

There’s 110 year old grampa railing about racial purity again!!!? That’s what this sounds like, doesn’t it?

Don’t you go around with those filthy Cananite woman with their snares and traps for you.

You’ll get thorns in your eyes!!!

And there are still many Cananite people in the land and so, young people, growing up in cities together, or nearby villages, fall in love, want to get married.

What kind of monster can say know to these beautiful star-crossed lovers, it is Romeo and Juliet here.

But there is an appropriate path to marriage with Gentiles.

We see it in the story of Ruth, who is grandmother to David and in the ancestry of Jesus.

Ruth chooses to follow Yahweh, a God-fearer, and then she marries Boaz later.

It isn’t about racial purity, it is about purity and unity of the heart.

No, there is an appropriate path to marriage with Gentiles.

We see it in the story of Ruth, who is grandmother to David and in the ancestry of Jesus.

Or better yet, it is about

Love and Obedience, particularly obedience in this area of purity from the surrounding nations.

Looking carefully, Joshua conflates three things: love, obedience, and purity.

He says these three things again and again, mixed together, interchangeably.

Look carefully, he conflates three things: love, obedience, and purity.

He said it to the Back East Boys in the last chapter:

Joshua 22:

This is a stack of things… that is really one thing.

Like a stack of pancakes, but it’s all just delicious pancakes all the way down.

Observe the commandment, love the LORD, walk in all his ways, keep his commandments, cling to him, serve him.

Be obedient to the command to love by keeping the commands and always serving/loving.

It’s really all one thing.

Then throughout we see it.

Joshua 23:11-

… then bad things will happen.

Love and obedience, and in particular, obedience in the area of purity from the surrounding nations.

These ideas aren’t new are they?

We use this term righteousness and it means right living in right relationship with God.

It is obedience because you are in loving relationship and that obedience both flows out of the right relationship (you do things they love because you love them) and it feeds right back into deepening and enriching the marriage.

It’s a beautiful upward spiral.

This works in all relationships.

Right relationship which leads to right living which leads to right relationship.

It is effort, being careful to obey, to walk in his ways, but it is effort motivated by love… and it feeds right back into that love relationship.

How much more with God who sees and knows our every action, our every thought, the impulse of our heart.

But that isn’t easy, is it?