Sermon Tone Analysis

8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.

(2016).

().

Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Notes

“You aren’t what you think you are but you are what you think.”

DA Carson quoting a colleague.

These are such lofty verses.

They fit into a larger context, of course.

Paul has been talking about where the peace of God comes from.

Last week we talked about the kind of prayer that leads to the peace of God.

It is practiced prayer, learning to come as a supplicant before the King who has the power to grant your supplication and as a child before his father who has the desire to grant your supplication, tempered, of course, with a higher wisdom that is for your good.

We come with supplication and thanksgiving.

And this kind of prayer, when practiced, produces peace.

The verses from this morning build on that.

It has to do with another kind of practice.

It’s the practice of what you do in your mind, what you put in your head.

And this too is important to experience peace.

Think of it like this: life is filled with all kinds of uncertainties.

And as the years roll on, it seems that there are more and more of them.

What was certain a generation ago, is not so anymore.

For example, fifty years ago most people who went to work for a corporation could plan on retiring from that same corporation.

He was a company man, and officers took interest in him, not just from a work perspective but from a health and family perspective.

And the same was true from an employee.

He had loyalty to his employer and would often go above and beyond to look out for his interest.

That’s faded away.

Layoffs are normal—even expected in today’s corporate environment.

There is little loyalty from employer to employee.

If they can find a way to do the work cheaper, that’s what they'll do.

At the same time, workers have little loyalty to their employers.

If they get a better offer, they disappear, even to the point of leaving their employer in a hard place.

According to Forbes magazine,

“Millennials were three times more likely than non-millennials to change jobs in the last year, and 91% don't expect to stay with their current organizations longer than three years.”

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2017/12/28/the-new-reality-of-employee-loyalty/#51a5adee4cf3

accessed 10/26)

Instability at work and thus, one’s future.

But there is more instability happening as well.

It exists in the moral sphere.

What was once societally accepted as right and wrong has shifted.

For example, sex outside of marriage was shameful from a societal perspective a half century ago.

That has eroded over the past few decades to the point that it’s considered wise to know if you’re sexually suited before you get married.

To get married without knowing that would be foolish.

That’s the new societal standard.

Homosexual lifestyles were not long ago considered not only wrong but a mental disorder.

Now it is celebrated.

Even your physical gender is no longer a stabilizing influence.

Everything is up from grabs.

Society says gender identity is a thing found in the mind and heart, not the body.

So you see, instability is on the rise all around us.

Tim Keller uses a helpful analogy for this.

A physical fact: When you get into a highly unstable environment, if a vessel wants to navigate a highly unstable environment, it has to have strong stabilizers within.

Airplanes and ships have stabilizers to counteract the turbulence that comes in the air or the water.

The more the turbulence, the more important are those stabilizers.

In airplanes the back fins are mainly their stabilizers.

Evidently, the vertical fin is what keeps you from bobbing around right to left, but in particular the horizontal rear fin is what keeps you from bobbing up and down.

The more turbulence in the external environment, the stronger, more effective, the internal stabilizers in the vessel have to be.

That would mean then there has never been a place, never been a time, more than modern Western secular societies the individual will need more deep, strong, effective internal stabilizers.

Most people, most places, most times did not have to face what we face because there were all sorts of external props that kept down the external turbulence.

One of those stabilizers we talked about last week: prayer.

Another important stabilizer is grounded thinking.

What you put in your mind.

The first and most obvious application is just what the text says.

Think about good things.

whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.

(2016).

(Php 4:8).

Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

This is common sense but not common practice.

Instead we find ourselves drawn into critical, angry, despairing, thoughts.

We tend to focus on what’s wrong with the world and we become cynical.

It isn’t hard to see how this contributes to an unstable environment.

When you harbor these thoughts it leads to frantic thinking.

The environmentalist hysteria is a prime example with predictions that the world is going to end in 12 years.

Listen to Trump haters and you would conclude that our country is going to fall apart in less time than that.

Why does the news cycle continue to feed these thoughts?

Because it brings people back again and again.

It feeds a powerful emotion and becomes quickly addicting.

This is why the news focuses on stories that “outrage” you.

It is also why we easily get addicted to pornography and other things that are the opposite of what is true, honorable, just, pure.

lovely, commendable and excellent.

This is why the news feeds on negative stories, fueling people’s anger, mistrust, and cyncism.

It feeds a powerful emotion and becomes quickly addicting.

This is why the news focuses on stories that “outrage” you.

It is also why we easily get addicted to pornography.

What we don’t realize is that it’s killing you.

I heard it compared to what ranchers would do to wolves in Alaska to decrease the population in an attempt to save their animals.

They would take a knife and plunge into a dead animal so that the blood would soak the knife; let it freeze, and do it again and again until the knife and a thick layer of frozen blood on it.

They would take the knife and embed it in the rock so that a wolf would smell it and lick it.