Sermon Tone Analysis

Outline

Pre-Introduction: Who was worthy to approach the Throne of God? None?

The only one worthy to approach the throne is the One who can bring the unworthy to the throne.

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Introduction:

My favorite all time movie is Forest Gump.

It’s a movie that no matter how hard I try, I know at some point in the movie I am going to start crying.

I know I am going to lose it.

I am always interested in what makes a statement go viral.

Two years ago a party in the Bahamas goes Viral called the Fyre Festival which turned out to be a complete con.

This last time we watched this movie I lost it at the very end of the movie.

Forest is bedside his wife, Jenny his childhood sweetheart and she is dying.

She is dying because of her own mistakes but Forest loves her despite all of her past.

She asks if he was scared in Vietnam, He says “yes” but then he starts to recount the beauty that was there, the beauty of shrimping in LA, the beauty of the mountains and sunrises when he was running and she says, “I wish I could have been there with you” and he says to her “you were.”

The scene faded and there is Forest at Jenny’s grave and he says, “You died on a Saturday morning.

And I had you placed here under our tree.

And I had that house of your father's bulldozed to the ground.

Momma always said dyin' was a part of life.

I sure wish it wasn't.”

Right there, I lost it.

You may think I am trying to weigh in to the current political drama but I am not.

What amazes me is that an eight word statement by a somewhat popular Jewish radio host could go viral and create a range of reactions from American to Europe to even Israel to just one eight word statement.

What gets me every-time at this scene is That overwhelming sense of love, of what love will do for another person in life and even beyond life.

Have you experienced God’s love in your life as an overwhelming experience?

If you are a mom or dad maybe you felt it when your children were born after the months of pregnancy and hard hours of labors there is this beautiful child, a gift from God.

If you are a husband or wife maybe it was when you stood under the chuppa or at the altar and said, “I do.”

If you are a student maybe it was at a summer camp or when God came through for you on that application to college or to school.

The story of Forest Gump is heart gripping because know matter the person, know matter how nice or how rude, Forest’s love just will not stop, no matter the defiance or rejection, His love just will not stop.

The characters in the movie are often confused, abused, single-minded, thinking they are going the right way in life but often going the wrong way.

Characters who are overwhelmed by an experience of love and left asking “Why?”

Why would you wait, care, come-back for me?

Something very similar is happening at the throne of God right now.

Angelic beings, cherubim, seraphim, all of the created order are celebrating an experience of love in the face of God’s overwhelming holiness and majesty.

The Throne of God is now an experience of love that is threatening to the self-righteous but inviting to the unrighteous.

People who are nothing like this Holy God, people who are not worthy are accepted, loved, and protected by this Holy God.

This experience of love shows that God is not at all uncomfortable having his throne surrounded by a redeemed cast of characters that are confused, abused, single-minded, who think they are going the right direction in life but they are not.

In essence, John is taking out prime time advertising during the Super-bowl or World Series so that people neither then nor now nor in the future will ever forget the greatest priority of all of heaven at God’s throne.

What is that highest priority?

The highest priority of all of the non-human created order is to give glory to the Lamb of God..

The world is full of a cast of characters that are confused, abused, single-minded, sinners, unrighteous and unwanted.

They feel like, the know they are not worthy to approach this throne.

They feel the weight of their mistakes, sin, and failures and know that they are not wort

He creates an experience of love that is so monumental that all of heaven changes its tune, literally changes it’s song.

, At that very moment, God the Father, established an important precedent: The throne of the Holy God will always and forever be and expression of the Grace of God in Yeshua.

There is a question we must answer, “So what?

All of heaven is giving glory to the Lamb but I got some pressing issues here on earth.”

Okay, I get it Forest Gump is fictional and a bit idealistic.

And, sometimes this whole religious imagery can also seem fictional or only user friendly to the ultra-religious or those looking for an escape from reality. .

Let the angels sing His praise, I have things I have to get done?

Let the cosmos sing and sing, I have got bills to pay, credit debt I am ashamed of, I don’t live in the area I want, my kids are amazing but I did not know being parent would be this hard, I can’t fit into my skinny jeans anymore, I get that giving glory to God should be my highest priority but if I am being honest right now I got a few things that are pretty pressing if not definitely competing.

Are you telling me that when bad things happen to good people I am just supposed to start singing His praise?

Really?

Are you telling me that when I am caught in the middle of a fierce emotional storm just shout Hallelujah and it all gets better?

Really?

Are you telling when my heart is broken by a false start, or when I keep getting passed over for a promotion, or forced to resign from my job I am just supposed to forget everything and worship the Lamb?

Really?

This question is an important question because when it is answered it might just be the key to experiencing the overwhelming love of God.

The Need for the Lamb - Apart from the lamb of God, God’s purposes for salvation and judgment would not come to pass.

We would not know what real love is.

Who is worthy to Open the Scroll?

The Scroll -

The Challenge -

The Search -

The Tears -

Only the Lamb of God is Worthy!

The Fruit and the Root -

The One Who Died and Is Alive -

The God-Man -

The Sufferer and the Sovereign -

Restate: John’s vision is communicating to us within the drama of apocalyptic vision.

He is saying that none of the pseudo-saviors of this world are not worthy to carry out God’s purposes in salvation and judgment.

None of the emperors, none of the angelic hosts, none of the so-called gods of this world, none of the things that man thinks he can trust in.

All have fallen short of the glory of God accept the suffering Lamb.

The Lamb who died is worthy to carry out God’s redemptive purpose.

The sign of our victory, of the One who is worthy is the Lamb who is dead but alive.

Illustration: This was an important message for John’s audience.

We are all tempted to think that the path to what we need most comes through more money, more power, more influence.

In C. S. Lewis’s children’s book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of the main characters is a young boy named Eustace Scrubb.

Eustace clearly had a lust for power, but he expressed it in the mean, petty ways that only a schoolboy could, in teasing, torturing animals, tattling, and ingratiating adult authorities.

One night Eustace found an enormous pile of treasure in a cave.

He was elated and began to imagine the life of ease and power he would now have.

When he woke, however, to his horror, he had turned into a hideous dragon.

“Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”

Becoming a dragon was a “cosmic natural consequence.”

Because he thought like a dragon, he had become a dragon.

When we set our hearts on power, we become hardened predators.

We become like what we worship.

Eustace was now an enormously powerful being, far more powerful than he had ever dreamed, but he was also fearful, hideous, and completely lonely.

This, of course, is what power for its own sake does to us.

The shock of his transformation humbled Eustace and he longed to be a normal boy again.

As his pride faded, the idolatry in his heart began to be healed.

One night Eustace the dragon met a mysterious lion.

The lion challenged him to “undress,” to try to take off his dragon skin.

He managed to peel off a layer, but found he was still a dragon underneath.

He tried repeatedly but made no further progress.

The lion finally said:

“You will have to let me undress you.”

I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now.

So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.