Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

How many of you know someone who is a hoarder?

Maybe you are the hoarder!

There are many people out there who simply cannot get rid of things, whether it be pictures, clothes, furniture or documents.

One such example is Kenneth Epstein.

He and his mother had a home in Las Vegas and they were known hoarders who had been cited by the police a couple of times in the past.

Whenever Kenneth’s mother passed away, though, his hoarding problem took a turn for the worse.

He had so many things kept inside his home that there was literally no room for him to walk around his house!

The way that he got around was by crawling on the top of his mountain of stuff.

Whenever the police got word of this, even the hoarding specialists were shocked at what they discovered!

You don’t have to be a hoarder to understand the idea of things building up progressively.

You know this with snow and with mail.

If you don’t go collect your mail, it will quickly add up and clutter your mailbox.

Likewise, if a ball of snow begins to roll down a hill, it will quickly become larger and larger.

Things simply add up.

Sin and guilt are no different.

Think of each and every sin that you’ve ever committed - you can’t do this, it is impossible to remember it all!

Think if all of this sin accumulated over this time period and that you had this massive weight of guilt over your head 24/7.

It would be a crushing weight.

The only thing that keeps this from crushing and destroying you is the mercy of God.

What we saw in was that the people heard the Word of God, they rejoiced and then they obeyed it.

What we are going to look at tonight in is that God’s people continue to gather for revival by reading the Word, praying/confessing their sin and repenting of it while praying for God’s mercy.

If you are a sinner, you can identify with this passage.

The prayer in will be a prayer that will mean something to you if you’ve ever dealt with the “dirty laundry” in your own life.

What we see is that the time of the festival of booths is over and now comes the time to read the law and weep in response to their sin.

The Gathering (1-4)

Again, what we see is that the people gathered on the 24th day of the month.

We think that this would have been October 31, 445 BC.

What the people are going to do is mourn their sin and repent of it.

It is interesting to see, from last week, that the people immediately felt guilty of their sin but they did not express the conviction for a whole month later because of the occasion.

They gathered and celebrated the festival like the law required, and now they came back together to deal with their sin together.

Have you ever experienced this?

Have you ever been convicted of your sin at a time where you can’t really deal with it?

Maybe you were witnessing to a co-worker or a family member and they said something along the lines of Christians being judgmental or hypocrites and you feel convicted yet you cannot really fall on your knees before God and confess your sin because you are in the middle of witnessing to someone who desperately needs the truth of the Gospel.

The point and takeaway for us today as we see this text is that whenever we experience a similar situation, we must go before Him and repent of whatever “unfinished business” we have like the Israelites to here.

In the text that follows, we see that they separated themselves as descendants of Israel and those who are not.

This is crucial because these people are going to confess their sins as the people of Israel.

They will confess their own sins and the sins of their ancestors.

Their prayer will show that they and their ancestors had everything they could have ever needed yet they appreciated nothing at all.

The people are called to bless Yahweh as their God and they did this while they stood and read the Word.

They allow God to speak through His Word - this is extremely important and necessary for revival to break out, our foundation must be the Word of God! Also, we see that they read a lot of God’s Word, not just a section or a brief portion.

There are times where we can read a small portion of Scripture but there are other times where we should read a large portion to understand and get a greater perspective of Scripture.

Praise and Confession (5-37)

One of the most interesting things about the following section of Scripture is that the people praise the name of God by summarizing the entire Old Testament up until this point.

We will see several key stories and passages in this upcoming section.

If you ever are told to summarize the Old Testament, is a very appropriate place to turn to and suggest for someone to read.

We see the following things in this section, creation, God’s blessing of Abraham, the Exodus, the Wilderness story, the Canaanite Conquest, the period of the Judges, the time of the Prophets and the Exile.

Creation: Verse 6 shows a quick summary of creation.

Verse 5 started this passage of praising God for all things and here they praise God for creation.

He created everything there is.

Whenever we talk about the need to praise and honor God, we must start with creation because He made everything.

The people are getting ready to confess their sins and they must first acknowledge who God is and why He is worthy.

The question for us today is do we praise God for His power in creation?

Do we praise Him for what He has provided for us in creation?

Materials for our homes, air to breathe, animals to eat and water to drink.

Covenant with Abraham (7-8): First we saw praising God, next we saw creation, now we see God’s covenant with Abraham.

We know that from that God called Abram and changed his name to Abraham.

Here in verse 8 we see that he was faithful in God’s sight.

We might ask the question, well is Abraham faithful because He believed God or because His heart was faithful?

We see in verse 7 that God chose Abraham.

This happens before verse 8 where we see that his heart was faithful.

This is vitally important for us to understand because we believe that our good works of faith don’t save us, only a relationship with Christ does.

In the Old Testament what we find time after time is that people are only faithful whenever they believe in God.

So, what you might say here is that God chose Abram, changed his name to Abraham and then found his heart faithful.

Sounds similar to Paul.

Then we get into the covenantal part of this relationship.

In we know that Abram cut an animal in half and passed through the pieces.

We read that and think why on earth would someone do that?

Well we see in verse 8 that this was his part of this covenant.

God made a covenant with Abram.

We see from Genesis that God is the covenant keeping God and that is emphasized throughout this text and especially in verse 8 as we see that God kept His promise and is righteous.

God does what He says He will do.

Do we believe that?

Sure, we read about it, but do we believe that in our lives?

We certainly should.

Exodus (9-21): The fourth part here is the Exodus story.

We find that God remembered His covenant with Abraham and He heard the cries and groans of His people in Egypt.

We see in verse 10 that God sent the plagues upon those who had arrogantly treated the Israelites.

These people were facing distress and they cried out for deliverance.

God heard their cries.

This is significant because we see in verse 37 that the people of Israel are currently crying out to God and are in distress.

They are praying for Him to hear their cries.

Next, we see that verse 11-12 talks about the Red Sea and guided the people through the wilderness.

This is a crucial thing for these people to remember - nothing can stand in the way of Yahweh God.

Not a sea, not an army of fierce soldiers.

Not even the most powerful leader in the world!

The only way that these people can have power over God’s people is if God grants the power to them and if He allows it to happen.

Next we see the giving of the law.

We talk about the law being bad because it is impossible to keep it, however it was given as something good.

It was supposed to give the people a way to please Him.

These are good laws and that is what we find here in .

We see in verse 14 that the sabbath was given as well another commands and statues so that people could dive into His Word and worship Him.

We see that God gave them bread, water and He promised them victory in the promised land.

This should have been all that they needed to enter in and conquer because of what He had done for them in the past, yet we see in verse 16 that the people of Israel acted arrogantly.

This was their sin.

and 14 tell us the story of how the Israelite spies went into the land and came back with a report of what they found.

Many said that the land was great but there were giants in the land and that they would not be able to defeat them. 2 spies (Joshua and Caleb) said that they should trust God’s promise.

Yet, the people did not enter the land and they acted arrogantly and became stiff-necked.

What a testimony.

The Egyptians were arrogant against other people but the Israelites were arrogant against Yahweh, God.