Sermon Tone Analysis

Jesus is...

When I was a youth pastor I had used a clip from a popular movie to illustrate to students how people in the world think of Jesus.

I’m not going to show it here, it wouldn’t be appropriate for the Sunday morning gathering, but I will explain....

Ricky Bobby is sitting down at dinner with his family and he wants to say grace, “To thank the good Lord of his blessings”, It goes something like this...

“Dear sweet baby Jesus...”

He is interrupted by everyone at the table, “why are you praying to a baby?”

“I just like the baby version of Jesus the best”

“But he was a Man, he had a beard.”

“Well its my house and I like to pray to Baby Jesus”

“Dear sweet little 8lb 6oz baby Jesus, so peaceful in your golden fleece diaper, yet so omnipotent...”

Everyone laughs, because so many people see Jesus this way.

He is either a sweet little baby we celebrate at Christmas or the man of sorrows who was bloody and beaten on the cross we see at Easter...

While Jesus was certainly both of these pictures, the problem that has plagued the church is seeing him as only these things… Or one more picture, which is most certainly our favorite picture of Jesus… The very Anglo version of Jesus that speaks english in a soft manner… Long brown hair with a well groomed beard.

Standing in a white gown with a purple sash carrying a baby lamb under his arm, while speaking softly to the crowds…

This also is not Jesus… He is a man of middle eastern descent who would’ve most likely had darker skin complexion.

So I am going to these lengths here to show us that our mental pictures of Jesus can sometimes be all about something that has nothing to do with who Jesus is.

So as we work our way through this text let’s see who Jesus is, and then what our response to him means...

First please notice the tone with which the Apostles John writes to us with.

My little children… Later he will call us Beloved and addresses young men and fathers to include all ages… He is speaking as one who we can trust because of his great care for us.

He is not trying to come off as angry because of false teachers he needs to combat against.

He is not upset because of sinful patterns that brothers fall into.

He addresses us with the care he has received from Christ himself.

He sets a tone of love and care even when correcting us from sinful patterns that are destructive.

He tells us his point in writing is so we may NOT sin.

After hearing what he just wrote about confessing sin and God being Just, (listen to last weeks message if you missed it), he tells us that the point is for us not to sin… not just that we can be assured of forgiveness when we do sin, so sin as much as you want.

That would not be the mindset of a true believer.

John will go on to tell us about obeying Christ, he will mention the words “know” and “keep” when talking about our relationship with God, but he is first addressing the issue of Sin among God children.

And in his gentle tone he is not condemning us for having sin but he is careful to not encourage us to be careless about sin either.

So he writes to us so that we would not sin… (ugh, we feel tension here already because we know we have sinned).

YET, is anyone does sin.

What is sin?

Some have said, Sin is a term used in archery and it means to miss the mark.

Which is true but it is the poorest explanation of sin we could use and fails to show the serious nature of what the Bible means when it talks about sin.

To sin is to commit an immoral act or transgress against God’s divine law.

Sin is not oopsies or mistakes.

Sin is defiance against God, and before we know God, before we are reconciled to him, before we are made new by believing the Gospel, we are not just people who sin but it is our very nature.

I’ve said it before that sin is not so much what we do as it is who we are.

Sin is not external it is internal, and we need to have our internal nature changed before we can talk about our external behaviors.

But we still lack some understanding of sin, so let me try to help us think about it deeper.

Here are some examples...

Parents with little children… Your child hits you and says no.

They break your commands and act out in immoral ways.

What should the punishment be?

Maybe a spanking or a time out.

Parents with teenagers… Your kids refuse to clean their room and obey the house rules.

What should their punishment be?

Grounding, take phone away, mandated chores?

Legal aged adults in society… You walk up to someone on the street and you attack them, you hit them and you take something from them.

The police are called and they catch you.

What would your punishment be?

Go before a judge and be convicted of crime, probably serve jail time and have some probation.

How about someone who runs up to the president and punches him?

What would their punishment be?

Life in jail...

Do see how these behaviors may be similar but at different levels they become far more serious?

Well what to think sinning against the creator of the universe who is Holy and Perfect would mean for the one who commited the sin?

Because God is the ultimate authority in all of life, even the smallest sin would mean death.

And God would be a righteous judge for condemning a sinner to death.

So when John says, Im writing this so that you may not sin, but if you do sin… We should stop right there and understand that this means we would deserve death for what he is talking about, and we already acknowledged that we are all having some serious tension because we know we have sinned… Yet look at what he says...

We have an Advocate with the Father… Jesus Christ the Righteous!

Our sin deserves death and he is writing us so we will not sin and have to fall under God’s wrath for sinning… But if we do...

WE HAVE JESUS!

What is so amazing bout this is what we learn about Jesus...

Jesus is Righteous!

What does it mean for Jesus to be righteous?

Righteous means to be free from guilt and sin and to have acted in accord with God’s divine law!

To be righteous means to be in right standing with God.

What does it take to be righteous then?

It would mean to perfectly follow the law of God and to never sin.

The bible calls Jesus our high priest and it says he never sinned even though he was tempted...

Jesus, he is fully God and fully man… he is divine and he really walked on this earth and lived amongst his creation.

he was tempted in his flesh and never sinned.

He was tempted as we are...

To say Jesus is righteous means he did what we could never do, he never sinned and is perfect in his standing before God.

How about you? and Me? Are we righteous before coming to Jesus?

Have we sinned?

YES! that means we are unrighteous.

Jesus is righteous… And while that is amazing, he is something else too.

He is not just the perfect one we could never truly be like, he is not just the perfect sacrifice that God would accept for us dirty sinners.

Jesus is our Advocate!

Jesus is our Advocate!

Do you know what an advocate is?

The greek word here is Parakletos, which means helper in a legal matter.

In our court systems an advocate speaks for the rights of his or her client.

Like an attorney who knows all about the law and how it applies to us, an advocate represents us before the judge.

God is the Judge and we are the defendant who is obviously guilty.

God’s righteous law pronounces us guilty on all counts.

We have violated God’s standards, rejected His right to rule our lives, and continued to sin even after coming to a knowledge of the truth.

The only just punishment for such wickedness is an eternity in hell according to God’s word.

Look at his word condemning the sinner...

1cor6.9-10

If we are to stand before God without an Advocate, we are guilty of these things and more...

Yet Jesus died for our sins to be taken away from our record as we stand before God… and So the rest of that verse says this...

And this sums up what it looks like for Jesus cover our sin… Yet John is saying here, that if we still sin, remember we can confess it and be forgiven… WHY???

Because Jesus is our Advocate… which means that he stands before the judge when we sin.

He pleads our case with the Righteous Judge.

We may imagine the conversation going something like this: “Father, I know Dave Leandre has sinned and violated our commands.

He is guilty as charged.

However, you have said that my sacrifice is sufficient payment for the debt he owes.

My righteousness was applied to his account when he trusted in me for salvation and forgiveness.