Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

The last sermon I preached, as I am sure you will remember was on being the Children of God based on 1 John 3:1-3.

The section I am going to preach on today is near the end, so what I want to do quickly this morning is to go through the middle bits so you have an understanding of everything up until the verse I will be focusing on.

I will apologize in advance, as we will be jumping around scripture and reading a fair bit of it, so please bear with me, as I believe it to be very important we hear from God.

But then again, should I apologise for reading the Bible in Church?

I encourage you to write all the references down, and look them up yourself, and check me out.

John introduces his readers to the concept of being children of God, and this is how we read the rest of the passage - as children of God.

John then moves the narrative back towards the topic of sin, which he has previously explained, but is now explaining it to us as children, and God as our Father, and the grace he bestows on His children, as the redeemed of God by the blood of Christ.

John now does a contrast on sin, between the believer and the unbeliever, compares sin and righteousness.

Let us read 1 John 3:7-8

John, I think significantly tells us first that if we practice righteousness we are righteous, just as He is righteous, but if we are not under the new covenant that sealed with Christ’s blood, and we sin, we are of the devil.

This is just another way saying what Christ said in Matthew 7:16-20

If we show the fruit of righteousness, we are of the Father in heaven who is the righteous tree, however if we sin, live in sin without repentance and the covering of Christ’s blood, they are of the devil, because our fruit is unrepentant sin.

John then switches gears.

He tells us that the entire purpose of Jesus Christ’s mission on earth was to destroy the works of the devil, and nail sin to the cross of Calvary so that we might have the free gift of grace by faith in Jesus Christ birth, death and Resurrection.

He tells us that Christ loved us first, and died for us who were yet in sin.

He tells us this is the message we have always heard, “that we should love one another”

The next verse is my key verse for this morning, 1 John 3:11-12 , and its about the love we have for one another as God’s Children.

It all centers around the commandment to love one another.

John tells us a little bit about what this means for us in the church in 1 John 3:11-12.

Further more he’s told us, this has been the commandment right from the beginning!

I think [Slide 1] envy and jealousy amongst believers is at the cancerous heart of some strife, [Slide 2] and I think the thing that hurts the cause of Christ the most today more than anything else.

How many preachers are jealous of other preachers?

Churches of other churches?

Do we covet numbers or preachers of others?

The definition of envy is: discontent or uneasiness at the sight of another’s excellence or good fortune, accompanied with some degree of hatred and a desire to possess equal advantages.

How often does this happen between men and women, between people serving the church?

Are we serving Christ or our own interests?

Look at Cain, his sacrifice wasn’t accepted by God’s, but his brothers was.

Such was his jealousy, Abel was murdered by Cain.

Brothers and sisters, just like Cain and Abel, if one brother is doing what is pleasing in God’s sight, and God blesses it, and you look at what you are doing and do not see blessing, it is likely you need to examine what you are doing and testing against the Bible, see if you are doing as God as asked, in the way that God is asking?

What I mean is not blessing in the way that is commonly If Cain was driven to murder due to jealousy, is it any wonder the envy amongst brethren in the church could be a focal point for backbiting and strife amongst believers?

Remember what I was saying last week about the Kingdom of God?

It means that God is King in our lives, in the life of the Church.

We do not get to descide what is good and which way is the best to do it, but we find that in the perfect will of God.

It is our jobs in our own lives to make sure Christ sits on the throne of our hearts, and not self.

I want to illustrate the point a bit for you, by going through what a few people down through history have thought about envy and jealousy, so you can see, that this too is a constant problem throughout history, right back to Cain and Abel.

Envy can ruin reputations, split churches, and cause murders.

Envy can shrink our circle of friends, ruin our business, and dwarf our souls.…

I have seen hundreds cursed by it.—Billy

Graham

Envy is rebellion against God’s leading in the lives of his children.

It’s saying that God has no right to bless someone else more than you.—Erwin

Lutzer

It is never wise to seek or wish for another’s misfortune.

If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang.

Charley Reese

The curse of life is that we are all self-centred.

We live for self instead of for God, and thus we are selfish, we are jealous, and we are envious.

James 3:14

Remember what John was saying that we ought to love one another?

This is what Paul had to say in 1 Corinthians 13:4-13

Envy and jealousy are not of God, but are the product of this flesh, and as Paul says here, of the sinful nature.

In fact Peter also has a bit to say on this.

Please turn with me to 1 Peter 2:1-3

Sermon Exercise - 5 mins

I want to tell you a story I have made up about what envy is like.

Envy and Jealousy is like my lawn.

This story starts in winter time, where there is an abundance of water, and the sun is not too hot, and my grass grows for a season.

It grows well, I mow the lawn and I feed it fertiliser for it to grow.

This represents the easy times in our Christian walks with each other, the growing conditions are ideal, and the lawn doesn’t require much care to prosper other than weekly mowing and fertiliser probably once in the beginning and once in the end.

The real story however lies in the past and in the future.

The summer before, it was really hot and dry, and sun was merciless, and my grass started to die, mainly because I was absent in South Africa, and it didn’t get watered very much.

As a result a weed started to grow, this weed is called Flaxleaf Fleabane.

It is a horribly tough plant, and it has a huge taproot, and when it flowers it produces all these white fluffy seeds that travel a long way.

I neglected to get rid of these weeds, and their roots went down, deep down and drained my soils of all goodness.

That is water and nutrients.

This represents worldiness and sin, and particularly jealousy.

This sin feeds off the goodness of life to produce unrighteousness and gives way to flowering, affecting small sections at a time.

See fleabane usually starts in one spot, and depending on the how strong the winds of worldiness are in our life will depend on how fast it will spread to other parts of our garden.

Now imagine this - 1 plant per m2 will produce over a billion seeds, but these seeds are small and only lie on the surface.

The interesting thing about this plant, is that it can only germinate on the surface, and it spends most of the beginning part of its life developing it’s long tap root, to get down and rob you of life to put life into itself instead of the lawn.

Sin, and particularly envy has a tap root that goes deep down and robs you of God’s joy, and like sin, if you don’t pull this plant out by the roots, it will re-shoot.

The funny thing about fleabane is that it is a tough thing to kill.

It has a tough waxy and hairy outer layer that makes chemical control very very difficult.

Sin like this plant needs to be dealt with early, but because it is in a lawn, there are not short cuts, no chemicals.

You have to pull them out while they are young so they don’t spread their seed.

Like in our lives and in the life of the church, we cannot have jealousy take hold, or it will spread.

As in 1 Peter here, envy and slander go together.

When envy is at its worst, it overflows into slander.

As James 3:6 says

It burns everything around us. James continues in verse 9, James 3:9-12

Again we are brought back to another metaphor of fruit and fruit trees.

If we are saved through new birth, and we do all of these evil things, can we really say we are of Christ, who is righteous?

Of course we all stumble, but in that stumbling, do we have remorse for what we have done?

Do we ask forgiveness from God first and then to those we have hurt with our tongues?

This is the fruit of righteousness, though we are sinners, we repent and turn from our sins.

This is the way we ought to be with one another, that we love one another, for if we do this, would we want to be envious or sin against one another and tear each other down as well as the Church?

Isn’t this what we see the world over?

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression at what I am about to say, and I want to be very clear on it.

I believe people quote the following verse out of context, to appeal people to compromise, rather than stand united in God’s Word.

Remember God in His Word has never ever said that we ought to compromise what He has said for the sake of unity, but that we ought to submit in unity to what He has said.

Remember the Kingdom of God - Christ is the everlasting King, and He is sovereign.

Matthew 12:22-28

The Kingdom of God is has come when God rules.

Don’t misinterpret that a house divided against itself is a call to put aside our differences to unite, no its a call to put away our own selfish desires and unite around Christ as was preached by Christ Himself and by the Apostles.

So this then is the remedy not just for envy and strife, but all sin.

New birth in Christ Jesus, that we might might desire the sweet milk of the Word.

Remember how I said that fleabane is a surface germinator?

Its funny, you can control this weed very easily (I won’t go into some of the more technical details but for the purposes of the analogy we will keep this simple), so you can control fleabane very easily, you can cultivate the land and bury it, it won’t germinate and eventually will become unviable.