Sermon Tone Analysis

Last week we looked at living in light of the mercies of God.

That is a theme that will continue as we progress through the rest of this letter.

It is the mercy of God you must have on your mind when we are looking at living in light and in the life of Jesus.

As a matter of fact, you cannot proclaimed to be a Christian and deny the mercies of God.

The very fact that you are a Christian is an act of mercy by God.

That is the key to the Christian life.

That is the key to getting through this world is focusing our eyes and our spiritual eyes on the truth of God's mercy.

If you depart from that your mind will be filled with not only negative thoughts but it will begin to wander in destructive directions.

And so it is important too reflect on the mercies of God as our feeble an finite minds are so prone to narrow in on the negative, we don't see how good we actually have it.

And so the mercies of God has to be on our minds every day of our life because it is the moving force for us to do what we will be talking about today.

To help us understand the current state of the American church it would benefit us to do a brief walkthrough in history.

Let's begin with the second great awakening.

Most Christians are familiar with the first great awakening that was influence and driven by reformed theology as defined by the Puritans.

Reformed theology began before Luther, most historians associated with agustine an athanasius because Luther and Calvin were pretty much repeating those guys.

Augustine and athanasius were alive during the 3rd and 4th century.

But Luther and Calvin brought it back to light after it was hidden for so long but they really didn't refine it.

They too are a victim of their culture as we all are.

We are all in a sense, victims of our own time and this reflects in the writings of people like Martin Luther and John Calvin.

And so the Puritans of the 17th and 18th century had more time to refine it and that was the pushing factor of the first great awakening that led many people to Salvation and was a huge foundation for our country when we declared our independence from England.

In the middle of the 1800s we had what they called the second great awakening.

Some people argue that there are third an 4th great awakenings an I think there are even some Pentecostals who are claiming we are now in the 5th great awakening but no real accredited historian agrees with the 3rd and 4th great awakening.

The second great awakening though, was not inspired by reformed theology rather it was inspired by what is called romanticism.

This is where it is highly emotional and all about experience.

And the second great awakening was driven by the Methodist and the Baptist.

This is where tent revivals were beginning to come on the scene and there was a focus on the music and a focus on the experience you have rather than the content of the message.

Now one thing historians agree on the second great awakening was nowhere near as impactful or influential as the first great awakening.

But this is kind of the birth of the emotionalism that wound up dominating Christian culture.

Shortly after you began to see Colts rise up such as Jehovah's witness an Mormonism.

Theology was changing and it was more about the experience rather than truth.

As a matter of fact so much truth was denied or contradicted for the sake of experience and it got to the point where people were saying I know you think that is true but I know what I have felt or I know what I have experienced.

Sound familiar?

But the 1800s was a huge pivotal point in human history.

Darwinism was on the rise, we were at the dawn of the age of science and people thought that science was going to prove all things including what they claim the nonexistent nature of God or prove that God does not exist.

Something they are still working on and are creeping up on 200 years of still working on it.

And so because of this modern age, this science age liberal theology was beginning to come in at the turn of the 20th century.

beginning in the late 1800s into the early 1900s.

And you had certain movements take place in order to defend Christianity one of those movements was the fundamentalist movement where are we now have the term fundamentalist Christian.

Different when it first started compared to what it is today the fundamentalist movement simply meant that we hold to the fundamentals of the faith.

such as the Trinity, The Virgin conception, the two nature's of Jesus, the death burial and resurrection of Jesus , and the imminent return of Jesus just to name a few.

And so the fundamentalist movement defined what is Orthodox biblical Christianity and then agreed apon if anyone departed from this Orthodox view than they were not in fact Christian.

Overtime the fundamentalist movement began to transform into something that broke outside of the lines of orthodoxy.

So if a female wore jeans they would be upset about it and it just grew into that Leagalist type of atmosphere.

So fundamentalism in the classical sense is good but you should know that nobody uses that word fundamental Christian in the classical sense anymore.

We kind of loste the history behind the movement and the importance behind the movement and so instead of saying fundamentalism or the fundamentals of the faith and I will say that from time to time, I say biblical orthodoxy.

Orthodox meaning the traditionally held and established view.

Because we as Christians should want to be at the heart of Christianity not letting it evolve as the world tells us to evolve it but to hold still the truth that we have heard and have been entrusted to.

Fundamentalism though in early 1900s did have a great impact an preserved biblical truth in this country.

But it did turn into this rigid stern type of Christianity that people really didn't care for back then.

I think people kinda miss it today, back then they were getting tired of it so by the 1960s Christianity began to change as America was beginning to change.

America was no longer the whole sum 1950s and early 1960s it once used to be.

There was a hippie revolution taking place an because Christianity hops on every single trend the church hopped on that trend.

And so you have what was called the Jesus freak movement of the 1960s and the 1970s.

And again, this was all about experience.

It was all about experience Jesus in a new way that our parents and grandparents were ignorant of.

All they were really doing was repeating drug induced hippie language and incorporating it into Christianity and thus you have a new liberal movement creeping on through.

And so you have the mid 1800s where emotionalism is on the rise .

But then it kind of dies down but then comes back up almost 100 years later this time it sticks around.

And then you begin to see the rise of televangelist an miracle crusades and so your seed of money so that you will be blessed.

And nobody was really expecting that.

Nobody was really expecting an entire Christian network dedicated to warship and then it wound up being financially successful and no one was ready for the type of teaching that was going to come from televangelism.

What we call the name it and claim it gospel, the health wealth and prosperity gospel.

And so a lot of people believed it and did not question it .

And I mean a lot of people.

We're talking back in the 1970s.

The ones who were speaking out against it were a very small voice in our country.

And this grew And was booming in the 1980s.

Meanwhile churches were designing there are many stories to look like those that were successful.

By the early 1990s you had several Christian stations and several regular stations that were airing church services on Sunday on television.

From there The Internet age came into being an now we live in a time where everybody including us has an online presence , where they can either listen to sermons or watch sermons.

Were pastors all across this country do podcast which is Internet radio.

And so now there is a very common attitude that the church is dead and we can do all of our relationships through an electronic device.

I do not need to go to church on Sundays because I can just watch it on television or find something online.

Today's sermon is going to argue against that.

So lets continue on in this verse we have not yet completed

We now focus on the statement present your Bodies a living an holy sacrifice.

There is a common mistake when this versus red and sometimes that mistake yet is encouraged by preachers.

And the mistake is not completing the picture.

They only give half the picture and it's not the correct half.

I will explain, typically what happens when people read this verse and typically what happens when preachers preach on this verse they treated in the negative sense.

Now I do not mean negative as in negative vibes.

What I mean by negatives is they make it a list of no’s or a list of don'ts.

you shall not do this you shall not do that that is what I mean by negative.

And So how this verse is typically understood by the average reader an by many preachers is you shall not be a fornicator.

You shall not abuse substances.

You shall not lust and you shall not steal or murder.

And we all nod our head and say Yep that's right we will not do such things.

Such things are not practiced by those who are in Jesus.

And all of that is true.

And all of that should be on your mind when you are looking to present your bodies to God.

But the language is positive not negative and so we should not be focusing on what we shall not do alone but what shall we do.

That's the positive side of that.

Now we have to apply context.

This verse is rarely looked at in context.

We cannot forget that word therefore, if you remember last week i said that word therefore ties it all together.

This verse is not meant to be alone, this verse is associated with the first eleven chapters.

And so presenting your bodies a living sacrifice requires the first eleven chapters of this letter.

You must comprehend the essential doctrines of the scripture to be able to present your body.

You do not have to be an expert in all of its but we have to know who we are as sinners, who Jesus is what his work on the cross accomplished and who we are as a new creation.

But Paul's argument is not one must know the first eleven chapters of his specific letter.

That is just the layout of it all.