Sermon Tone Analysis

Wow.

What a powerful image...

How many of you have little brothers and sisters?

Have you ever noticed that little kids love to ask, “Why?”

Tonight I want to focus on that phrase in the third verse of the passage we just read together.

—To give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes—

Let me ask you something...

Have you ever broken something that belonged to someone else?

How did you feel afterward?

What did you do?

How did they respond?

If you haven’t broken something, hurt someone, or did something that wasn’t right by now, you will.

But I think it’s safe to say, we’d all admit we’re not perfect, right?

Take a look at this short video clip from the movie Kicking and Screaming.

(Show Video Clip “Coffee Outrage” - Kicking and Screaming)

So Will’s sittin’ in the back of the line at the coffee shop and clearly we see that people aren’t perfect as his impatience turns into yelling and then other people start yelling and then lying and eventually a fight breaks out.

What I want you to see is that it’s not just that we aren’t perfect, it’s that this is what brokenness looks like.

This is ashes of sin.

This is how broken people really are.

This is how the world really is.

We are surrounded by reminders that things aren’t right.

Road rage, gossip, bullying, lying, cheating, stealing, bad attitudes, nasty addictions… Just scroll through any social media news feed and you’ll find all sorts of clues that our world is broken...

I wanna read a portion of again.

Do you see what happened there?

In the beginning there was God’s voice.

And then there was the serpent’s voice.

The bible tells us that the Serpent is the devil and he is a liar.

Adam & Eve listened to wrong voice.

The voice that whispered...

Do what you want...

Do what makes you feel good...

Do what makes you happy...

The voice that made them question God’s character...

Did God really say?

God lied to you...

God wants to keep you from experiencing all that life has to offer...

When humanity sinned against God by listening to the lies of the serpent, we broke what God had made beautiful.

Some of you still don’t buy this.

Some of you still think is a joke.

Some of you just can’t believe that God is real.

Let me just put a thought in your head...

Take God out of the equation and what do you have left?

The same thing.

The only difference is that all you’ve got are ashes and no hope.

Pretty much everyone would agree that things aren’t the way they should be.

Pain

Suffering

Diseases

Anger

Frustration

Anxiety

Sadness

Sin fractured creation so that everything is in pieces, fragmented, shattered.

Yeah, we gotta talk about sin, because the good stuff won’t make sense and you won’t take it seriously if you don’t understand the problem.

Everybody say “SIN”.

It’s dark.

It’s ugly.

It’s broken.

Nobody wants to talk about, but we gotta talk about it...

We used to say “Sin is rebellion against God” And it is, but the word rebellion has been hijacked until it no longer holds the weight of what it really means.

You may have heard it used to describe doing your own thing or just being a teenager.

Perhaps a better word to describe sin would be mutiny.

Sin is mutiny against God!

In a mutiny, people who were charged with following the orders of an authority figure decide to take matters into their own hands.

They cease obeying their leader because they think their plan is better.

Usually they attempt to overthrow the current person in authority and replace them with someone from the rebellion.

I know it sounds crazy to tell the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe that we know better than Him, but we do it every day.

We’ve mutinied.

We’ve replaced God as the leader of our lives and the results are disastrous.

Sin breaks our relationships

One of the primary ways you may see the effects of sin in the world around you is in your relationships.

Maybe you’ve heard someone say something like, “Who cares what I do if it doesn’t hurt anyone?”

This kind of statement completely underestimates our ability to influence others.

Its easy to see the domino effect of sin play out in our everyday lives.

Think of it this way…you promise a friend to keep a secret, but then you share that with another friend.

It goes full circle until you’re confronted about it.

You lie, saying you never gossiped, and then quickly have to find the friend you told so they can back up your lie.

When God confronted Adam and Eve about their original sin (), they hid from him (a futile effort with someone who is all-knowing).

They no longer trusted God enough to be honest with him.

When they finally responded to God, Adam immediately blamed his wife for his own sins.

Then she passed the blame on to the serpent.

They cared more about protecting themselves than they did about each other.

Their relationship, which God had created good, was fracturing already.

Your sin does the same thing.

Whether you talk behind someone’s back, lie to their face, or take credit for something they did, your sin destroys your relationship with other people and with God.

But that’s not all!

Sin leads to guilt and shame.

Sin doesn’t only impact our relationships with other people; it eats us up from the inside.

Once we realize the weight and consequences of our sin, guilt and shame are quick to follow.

That’s why Adam and Eve hid from God—they knew they were guilty.

This is the first time they were aware of their nakedness, and their guilt led them to experience shame for the first time in history.

They wanted nothing more than to cover up what made them feel shameful, but their efforts didn’t do any good.

Guilt and shame only serve to drive the wedge in a broken relationship deeper.

For example, you get caught in a lie, so you avoid the person you lied to and the person you lied about.

But avoidance doesn’t relieve guilt.

It eats away at us until we become cold and calloused.

God doesn’t want us to feel shameful; he made us to be free and joyful.

Yet when we try to replace him as the leader of our lives, we lose many of the good things he provides for us that we can’t provide for ourselves: security, peace of mind, and true freedom.

We lock ourselves in a cage of shame.

Illustration: The Weight of Guilt.