Sermon Tone Analysis

The question was not about what God wanted of all people.

So, I am starting from what God requires of believers.

If you are here and are not a believer in Christ.

If you haven’t surrendered to him as your savior, then you have to start there.

Admit you are a sinner

Believe in your heart that God sent His son, Jesus Christ, to pay the price for your sin and mine.

That He is Lord, that he is extending Grace to those who He has called.

Surrender your life to His Lordship.

Confess Him, Jesus Christ, as Lord.

Professing your belief and trust in Him.

Determine to follow Him.

The first step of obedience to him is baptism.

Only then can you move on to the content of this message.

Offerings Are Not The Point

The people complained that nothing seemed to satisfy God.

No offering, sacrifice or even their firstborn son would satisfy God.

We still battle this today.

We come and we offer things to God.

We say things like;

I come to church every Sunday

I give to the church

I read my Bible

Offerings were never the point

Too often we give things to God trying to win His favor.

God’s favor is given not won through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So, what does He want then?

God wants your heart, not your things.

Not even just your words

To Do Justice

Justice is an attribute of God

We care about justice because all justice is rooted in God.

Deuteronomy

He tells us in His word to model that behavior.

Injustice Against God

And we care about all injustice, especially injustice against God.

Especially — this half of the sentence is intended to call out the practical unbelief of Christians for whom injustices against humans ignite more passion in their hearts and in their mouths than the global tragedy of injustice against God.

And it aims to call out the practical unbelief of Christians who are so anesthetized by the comforts and entertainments of this world that they don’t care about injustice against man or God.

Injustice is to treat someone worse than they deserve from other people.

And the more respect they deserve, and the less we render, the greater the injustice.

God alone deserves the highest respect and honor and praise and love and fear and devotion and allegiance and obedience.

Yet every single human being has fallen short of this worship, and exchanged the glory of God for the creation (; ).

To DO Justice is to act rightly, especially toward, and concerning God.

To Love Kindness/Mercy

We should model the compassion of Christ

he felt compassion on the harassed crowds

on the sick

on the hungry

on the blind

Jesus Cared about all suffering.

He loved Kindness

Christians care about all suffering, all injustice.

We are to be touched.

We are to be moved.

Our hearts lean in toward relief and protection and justice.

If we don’t, we are not acting like Christians.

Suffering and injustice move us.

To Walk Humbly With Your God

In 1908, the British writer G. K. Chesterton described the embryo of today’s full-grown immature culture called postmodernism.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place.

Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition.

Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be.

A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert — himself.

The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt — the Divine Reason. . . .

The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . .

There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . .

The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder.

But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . .

We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.

(Orthodoxy [Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957], pp.

31–32)

We have confused the language.

Now the word “arrogance” is used to refer to conviction and “humility” is used to refer to doubt.

The conviction/firm beliefs of the Christians is now seen as arrogance because we do not doubt the word of God.

When we express a doubt, which is also viewed as wiggle room, in our beliefs, it is viewed as humility.

God has told us five truths about humility.—John

Piper

1. Humility begins with a sense of subordination to God in Christ.

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master” ().

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God” ().

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master” ().

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God” ().

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master” ().

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God” ().

2. Humility does not feel a right to better treatment than Jesus got.

“If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household!”

().

Therefore humility does not return evil for evil.

It is not life based on its perceived rights.

“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps. . . .

While suffering, he uttered no threats, but handed [his cause] over to him who judges righteously” ().

Therefore humility does not return evil for evil.

It is not life based on its perceived rights.

“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps. . . .

While suffering, he uttered no threats, but handed [his cause] over to him who judges righteously” ().

3. Humility speaks truth in service to Christ not simply to win an argument.

“Love rejoices in the truth” ().

“What I [Jesus] tell you in the darkness, speak in the light. . . .