Sermon Tone Analysis

What is Atonement?

Atonement is God’s restoring men to himself through sacrifice.

Illus: I remember one of the lessons I learned from my dad was that nothing is free.

This lesson became clear soon after I learned to drive.

I had not been watching the inspection sticker on my car and it was out of date.

One day when I was leaving a sporting event, the police were doing spot checks on registrations and inspections.

As the officer approached my vehicle, he clearly saw my out of date sticker and wrote me a ticket.

A few weeks later my dad took me to the courthouse so that I could show I had updated my tags and have the ticket removed from my record.

I don’t remember how much it cost, but I do remember telling my dad that it was not much.

He looked at me and said, “it cost far more than the price of the ticket, how much is your time worth, how much is mine worth”

nothing is free.

When we sin, we may not think that there will be repercussions because of our sin, but every sin is an act of rebellion against God.

It further separates us from God.

For us to be made right with God atonement needs to be made, somebody needs to pay the price for our rebellion.

The day of atonement was given to point men to Jesus.

It was a time to help the israelites realize the costliness of their sin.

The Day of Atonement was a deliberate time to dwell on the costliness of your sin.

Illus: Every year you should have a regular physical.

You need to go to the doctor to have him look over you.

At the physical, the doctor is not looking to see what is right with you, he is looking for anything that should be wrong.

It is with this purposeful look that he can diagnose any diseases in you.

We need a regular spiritual physical.

We need purposeful times to remove the noise from our lives, and dwell on our sins.

How can we remove the filth from our lives, if we never deal with it.

God made time for the Israelites to deal with their sin.

We need that time too.

Wait! God wants you to practice self denial?

We struggle to sabbath, intentionally set aside time for God, because we have embraced an always entertained culture.

Illus: Think about what normal life looks like.

We wake up, check our facebook, instagram, snapchat to see if we missed anything durring the day.

Soon after waking we turn on music or tv to get ready to.

We get in the car, more noise.

All the while we have our phone close by us checking it constantly.

After work is not much different, we sit in a living room staring at glowing screens “conecting with people” all the while ignoring those we are in the same room with.

We have a constant stream of information and images being pushed infront of our faces 24/7

And then we wonder why we don’t hear from God.

God desires us to sabbath so that we hear from him.

For us to truly experience sabbath, a spiritual renewal of being restored to God, we have to be willing to turn off distractions that keep us from listening.

I know, this sounds crazy, but your can’t have a relationship with God when you are constantly distracted.

We struggle in denial because we have embraced a “treat your self” culture.

Illus: We really do live in a treat yourself culture.

Our world teaches us to do whatever would make us happy no matter the cost.

Just a few examples, we can stream thousands of TV shows wherever we go.

We are inundated with adds about how the next car, electronic, food will fulfill our needs.

If you can’t afford the luxury you want, credit card companies are ready to help you live beyond your means.

We don’t know denial… yet scripture teaches that you can’t really embrace God without knowing denial.

Coming march 6th, the season of lent starts… and I know we as baptists don’t traditionally practice lent… but what if you gave up social media, online shopping, a Netflix, something that you would feel for the month and a half before easter as a way to feel denial, and in that longing turn to God.

Our hope is a savior who embodied denial.

Jesus serves both as the fulfillment of atonement and as the example of sacrifice.

Illus: As we look to the day of atonement I want you to see Jesus in two ways here.

1. Jesus is our atonement.

We are called to take time to recognize our sins, and then look to the sacrifice.

2. Jesus is the model of denial in our lives.

The call to sacrifice is central in scripture… when was the last time you intentionally suffered, went with out, took up a cross for Jesus?

Question 1: Is it important to dwell on your sins?

Question 2: What place does denial have in the christian life?