Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome back this morning to week 3 of our new series “Satisfied”.

If you have been able to join us in a service or catch up on our website, you know, that we are learning how being grounded in the Gospel leads to contentment.

We are seeing how the scriptures drive home the truth and the ability to be:

Content with our Possessions

Content with our People

Content with our Position in Christ

Last week we gave you a homework project called the bowl of blessings, with the intent to battle comparison with contentment in the blessings of God in your life.

I’d like some feedback.

Two Questions this morning:

Was it difficult to write out your bowl of blessings?

Name one thing that you wrote down this week.

Opening Illustration:

I Read a story this week of a man who:

While walking through the forest one day, a man found a young eagle who had fallen out of his nest.

He took it home and put it in his barnyard where it soon learned to eat and behave like the chickens.

One day a naturalist passed by the farm and asked why it was that the king of all birds should be confined to live in the barnyard with the chickens.

The farmer replied that since he had given it chicken feed and trained it to be a chicken, it had never learned to fly.

Since it now behaved as the chickens, it was no longer an eagle.

“Still it has the heart of an eagle,” replied the naturalist, “and can surely be taught to fly.”

He lifted the eagle toward the sky and said, “You belong to the sky and not to the earth.

Stretch forth your wings and fly.”

The eagle, however, was confused.

He did not know who he was, and seeing the chickens eating their food, he jumped down to be with them again.

The naturalist took the bird to the roof of the house and urged him again, saying, “You are an eagle.

Stretch forth your wings and fly.”

But the eagle was afraid of his unknown self and world and jumped down once more for the chicken food.

Finally the naturalist took the eagle out of the barnyard to a high mountain.

There he held the king of the birds high above him and encouraged him again, saying, “You are an eagle.

You belong to the sky.

Stretch forth your wings and fly.”

The eagle looked around, back towards the barnyard and up to the sky.

Then the naturalist lifted him straight towards the sun and it happened that the eagle began to tremble.

Slowly he stretched his wings, and with a triumphant cry, soared away into the heavens.

It may be that the eagle still remembers the chickens with nostalgia.

It may even be that he occasionally revisits the barnyard.

But as far as anyone knows, he has never returned to lead the life of a chicken.

From Theology News and Notes, October, 1976, quoted in Multnomah Message, Spring, 1993, p. 1

This morning we are going to look at what God says about our Identity - The facts of who we are as believers in Christ.

Who are we, and where do we find our identity, satisfaction, and contentment.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we often feel insecure.

Those who hide it best often feel it most.

But our insecurity is an invitation from God to escape the danger of false beliefs about who we are and find true peace in who he is.

Some people have a hard time (like the eagle) to fully respond to who they are and what they were created for.

Others don’t: I read about:

Christian Herter was running hard for reelection as Governor of Massachusetts, and one day he arrived late at a barbecue.

He’d had no breakfast or lunch, and he was famished.

As he moved down the serving line, he held out his plate and received one piece of chicken.

The governor said to the serving lady, “Excuse me, do you mind if I get another piece of chicken.

I’m very hungry.”

“Sorry, I’m supposed to give one piece to each person,” the woman replied.

“But I’m starved,” he repeated, and again she said: “Only one to a customer.”

Herter was normally a modest man, but he decided this was the time to use the weight of his office, and said, “Madam, do you know who I am?

I am the governor of this state.”

“Do you know who I am?” she answered.

“I’m the lady in charge of chicken.

Move along, mister.”

There is a temptation to forge our identity around what we earn, what we buy, and what we own.

But Jesus said,

There is equal temptation to forge our identity and satisfaction on the people we know and the positions we hold.

But as we will study out Paul’s letter to Ephesus this morning, we will see that, as John Piper says,

“Christian selfhood is not defined in terms of who we are in and of ourselves.

It’s defined in terms of what God does to us and the relationship he creates with us and the destiny he appoints for us.

God made us who we are so we could make known who he is.

Our identity is for the sake of making known his identity.”

- John Piper

You see:

“Uncle Sam’s armies of statisticians don’t really ask questions about the cleanliness of the old man’s flannels,” an article in NEWSWEEK writes, “But they do ask about the state of the arches in our feet (2.6 million are flat or fallen)… They can expound on life and its quality and on death and its causes.

They can analyze gender and birth, divorce and income, crime and eating habits.…

As a result, America knows more about itself than ever before.”

That may be true—yet people are still confused about who they are and the roles they are to fill.

Could it be that in the thousands of questions, the census takers have overlooked the most important ones'

Story from Jeff Manion’s Book Satisfied: Discovering contentment in a World of Consumption:

I ran into Tony at the fortieth birthday party of a mutual friend.

The party was hosted at a gorgeous home, and guests mingled on the spacious patio overlooking the manicured lawn and pool.

It was a beautiful setting for a midsummer gathering.

Tony and I had not connected in years though we attended college together and live in the same city, and we welcomed the opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives.

Our small talk quickly moved through the usual paces, sharing about work, children, and what we’d been up to recently.

But then it took one of those rare and refreshing turns toward honest vulnerability.

Tony confided that he and his wife, Karen, were suffocating beneath a weight of financial pressure.

This was not simply a temporary setback; they faced the very real prospect of financial ruin.

The number of guests milling about made the patio an awkward atmosphere for such an intimate conversation, yet I felt his brutal honesty welcomed further dialogue.

When I asked if he was interested in continuing our conversation over coffee, he seemed eager to talk.

I suspect he had been carrying this weight for some time and was relieved to unburden himself in trusted company.

The following Monday morning we met at a downtown Starbucks a block from Tony’s office.

Thankfully, we had the outdoor seating area to ourselves and could converse freely and without interruption.

As Tony chronicled the financial drama they were facing, it became clear that adequate income was not the problem.

Both Tony and Karen were employed and earning strong salaries.

The issue, as Tony explained it, was an inability to keep spending under control.

Tony confessed that the responsibility for runaway spending was overwhelmingly his fault.

He felt an urgent, inner compulsion to keep up the appearance of someone who is well off.

This compulsion drove not only his choice of a home but what kind of vehicles they leased, their expensive taste in clothing and restaurants, their decision to purchase a summer cottage, their desire for a country club membership, and plans for costly vacations.

The sum of these commitments was enough to capsize their financial stability.

Tony had amazing clarity as to what was driving his consumptive lifestyle.

He described a childhood of scarcity, shortage, and embarrassment.

His father moved out when he was six, leaving his mother to support three children on an income that fell below the poverty line.

One of Tony’s most painful memories was being mocked by other kids in seventh grade for wearing pants that were way too short.

He had experienced a growth spurt over the summer, and there was no money available to purchase clothing for the new school year.

The ridicule took the form of that well-worn joke that Tony’s pants were so high because he was preparing for a flood.

This in turn led to the shorthand nickname “Flood” (or in some cases “Noah”) — a moniker he wore throughout middle school, even after better-fitting clothes were purchased.

There were other memories — an empty refrigerator, subsidized school lunches, and his mother’s constant fretting about overdue bills.