Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ /" /*/Again/**/ the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord/*/, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.//

//Because the *power of Midian was so oppressive*, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds.//

//Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country.//

//They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys.//

//They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts.

It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it.//

//Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.//

/*/When the Israelites cried to the Lord/*/ because of Midian,// /*/he sent them a prophet/*/, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.//

//I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors.

I drove them from before you and gave you their land.//

//I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; *do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live*.’

But *you have not listened to me*.”// //The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress *to keep it from the Midianites*.//

//When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “*The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.*”//

//“But sir,” Gideon replied, “*if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us*?

Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’

But now *the Lord has abandoned us* and put us into the hand of Midian.”//

//The Lord turned to him and said, “*Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand.

Am I not sending you?*”// //“But Lord,” Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel?

My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”//

//The Lord answered, “*I will be with you*, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.”//"

(Judges 6:1-16, NIV) *[1]*/

 

The story of God’s people during the period of the Judges was a story of cyclical behavior.

They had clear direction, ahead of the fact.

They did what they knew they shouldn’t do.

God allows consequence to become the teacher.

When we prefer to go our own way, God opens the door and allows us the freedom to stray.

They cried to God when their situation was desperate enough.

He sent them a deliverer.

They enjoyed peace for a period.

Things began to drift once more and they moved toward their oppressors.

Sin is a spiral downward.

Why in the world do we expect God to act on our behalf or protect us from harm while we are living at odds with His will for our lives.

How much of the difficulty that we face in life comes from a failure to listen to God?  We’ll listen to Oprah, Dr. Phil, E.F.

Hutton or a thousand other voices.

But God?

I don’t think so.

Why because we don’t like what He has to say.

We don’t like what we see.

We suspect that turning to Christ means turning from ourselves.

So we ignore him or style our religion to our own liking.

Until something happens that our self-styled religion cannot process.

Until the gods of pleasure throw their hands in the air at our misfortune.

In his book Why Prayers Are Unanswered, John Lavender retells a story about Norman Vincent Peale.

When Peale was a boy, he found a big, black cigar, slipped into an alley, and lit up.

It didn't taste good, but it made him feel very grown up ... until he saw his father coming.

Quickly he put the cigar behind his back and tried to be casual.

Desperate to divert his father's attention, Norman pointed to a billboard advertising the circus.

"Can I go, Dad? Please, let's go when it comes to town."

His father's reply taught Norman a lesson he never forgot.

"Son," he answered quietly but firmly, "never make a petition while at the same time trying to hide a smouldering disobedience."

-- Kirk Russel, DeForest, Wisconsin.

Leadership, Vol. 4, no.

4.

 

If we reflexively blame Him when things go wrong.

Then do we have some wrong concept of who He actually is and what role He plays in our lives.

God has done something wrong but we have done nothing wrong.

We rarely recognize or imagine the possibility that we are the problem when we experience circumstances in life that are not to our liking.

Perhaps there is much that we might remedy simply by looking at our lives and evaluating any obvious reasons that God’s blessing may be removed.

*/1.

/**/Many of our problems begin when we stop listening to God?/*

 

Unfortunately we find this truth most evident in retrospect.

When we look back we begin to see where we went wrong.

In George Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan, Joan of Arc is always hearing voices from God, and the king is angered by this.

He complains to her, "Oh, your voices!

Your voices!

Why don't your voices come to me?

I'm the king, not you."

"They do come," she replied.

"But you do not hear them.

You've not sat in the field in the evening listening for them.

When the Angelus rings, you cross yourself and have done with it.

But if you prayed from your heart and listened to the trilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do."

-- Ben Patterson, "A Faith Like Mary's," Preaching Today, Tape No. 87.

Maybe you are able to recognize patterns, spiritual patterns in your own  life.

Out of distress you have come to God and experienced some sort of deliverance.

Once the pain or worry or anxiety is gone you relax – you are thankful that you’ve had an answer to prayer and vaguely conscious that God had a hand in it.

So you fail to explore this relationship to any greater depth.

Once more your passions and interests revolve around self.  God graciously steps out of your way and leaves you to what you have chosen.

Did you ever try to communicate with someone who will not set their task aside?

What impressions do you have?

They are too busy to talk to me right now.

The truth is that the things that they are busy with are more important to them than you or the things that are important to you.

A word of balance – the more you respect people’s time, the more time people will have for you.

The thing that people in pain lose perspective over is the fact that life demands something from others as well and people have cares and situations of their own that need their attention.

Do we know how to set our tasks aside to listen to God?

And what was Gideon’s problem.

He was a victim perhaps even a party to the sin of his nation.

The same might be said of us today in this nation.

We may be victim’s of God’s dealing with us as a nation.

How is God dealing with nation of Canada?

Perhaps as he deals with many of us.

He steps back to allow us to fashion what we feel to be preferable.

He is leaving us to ourselves.

We have leadership that is truly representative of our society.

A godless society produces leaders who have little to no regard for God.

It’s not that they perhaps are wicked – just that they have no regard for God.

So perhaps we suffer from this plight.

The answer is never to find another leader.

What happens politically will never redeem a nation.

But what happens in you might.

And what happens in you, . . .

and you . . .