Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ The pathway to effective “fathering” is to know the Father.

(v.

“. . .

forget not all his benefits . .

.)

James Packer, in his excellent book, Knowing God, writes:

 

Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives.

As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.

The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life with it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God.

Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.

This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.

In the midst of this great coldness toward God there are some, I rejoice to acknowledge, who will not be content with shallow logic.

They will admit the force of the argument, and then turn away with tears to hunt some lonely place and pray, "O God, show me thy glory."

They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God.

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God.

The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate.

The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire.

Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth.

Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people.

He waits to be wanted.

Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

-- From Pursuing the Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer

 

Moses knew God differently than the children of Israel.

Growing relationships move away from fear and formality to intimacy.

(v.

7 “He made known His ways to Moses and his deeds to the people of Israel.”)

A person can be a Christian for many years yet remain spiritually immature.

Therefore it's possible for a new believer to be far more grown up in the Lord than someone who has been saved for 40 years.

A good example of this is found in an incident described by Ethel Barrett in her book It Only Hurts When I Laugh.

She said that when D.L. Moody became a Christian, he developed such a hunger for God's Word, spent so much time reading it, and was so quick to obey it that he became a "menace" to some believers.

His rapid spiritual growth was an embarrassment to certain people who, though they had been saved for years, never grew up in Christ.

Week after week in the church Moody attended, he would share a new experience he had with the Lord.

Finally, some of the older saints who just couldn't stand feeling humiliated by his exemplary life, went to Moody's uncle and urged him to quiet down his nephew.

Ethel Barrett drew this conclusion about Moody:  "His robust spiritual health and bounding energy disturbed their napping; he was just too much.

So, while they were sucking their thumbs, he was growing until he left them far behind; he grew more in a few years than they did in thirty."

See:  1 Cor 3:2-3; Heb 5:12-6:3

 

The true Christian never has to give up anything (of course I am not speaking of sins), but there are a lot of things that will give him up.

They will go one by one.

There will be no grief.

It will be the way childish occupations are abandoned.

I never had to give up playing with tops and marbles.

I never had to come to the place where I said, "Oh I am a big boy now, and big boys shouldn't play marbles.

So I will make a great effort to give up playing marbles."

It did not happen that way.

One day I was playing marbles with a group of small boys and some older boys came by.

They looked at me and said, "Hey, kid, can you field a ball?"  "Sure I can,"  I replied with more vigor than accuracy.

"Well," they said, "we are short a fielder.

Get out there and see what you can do."

I went out and was ready to play my head off to keep up with the older fellows.

When it was my turn to bat I was ready to swing till I burst, and to run till I dropped, and do all that I could to keep up with the bigger company I was in.

And when the game was over and we older boys, as I then classed myself, walked down the street past the little fellows who were playing marbles, I did not go back to marbles.

I had graduated.

I did not give up marbles, marbles gave me up.

-- The Epistle to the Romans, Donald Grey Barnhouse

 

See:  1 Cor 13:11; Eph 4:11-16; Heb 6:1-2

 

High in the Alps is a monument raised in honor of a faithful guide who perished while ascending a peak to rescue a stranded tourist.

Inscribed on that memorial stone are these words:  HE DIED CLIMBING.

A maturing, growing Christian should have the same kind of attitude, right up to the end of life.

See:  Eph 4:15; Phil 3:12-14; 2 Tim 4:6-7

 

I love you, not only for what you are -- but for what I am when I am with you.

I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself -- but for what you are making of me.

I love you, for the part of me that you bring out.

I love you, for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can't help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the light all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.

I love you, because you are helping me to make of the lumber of my life, not a tavern, but a temple; out of works of my every day -- not a reproach, but a song.

-- Roy Croft

 

We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so.

You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

 

We understand the heavenly Father through our own experience as fathers.

(v. 13 – “as a father . .

.

so the Lord . . .

.”)

J.

Wilbur Chapman often told of the testimony given by a certain man in one of his meetings:

   "I got off at the Pennsylvania depot as a tramp, and for a year I begged on the streets for a living.

One day I touched a man on the shoulder and said, "Hey, mister, can you give me a dime?"

As soon as I saw his face I was shocked to see that it was my own father.

I said, "Father, Father, do you know me?"  Throwing his arms around me and with tears in his eyes, he said, "Oh my son, at last I've found you!  I've found you.

You want a dime?

Everything I have is yours."

Think of it.

I was a tramp.

I stood begging my own father for ten cents, when for 18 years he had been looking for me to give me all that he had."

What a wonderful illustration of the way God longs to treat us, if we will only let Him.

See:  Psa 84:11; John 16:15; Eph 1:4-8; Eph 3:16; Phil 4:19

 

We love our own like we love no others.

Although he loves all men there are certain graces reserved for those who know are in relationship with him.

(v. 13 “As a father has compassion, . . .

so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”)

q    He knows where we come from.

q    He knows what we’re made of.

How do I grow in relationship to God? 

 

q    Maintain a current relationship with God.

He needs to be God today and to have permission to involve himself in your life.

q    Become deliberate about the process.

It does not happen accidentally.

q    Discover the elements of spirituality that you respond to more readily than others.

q    Demonstrate and teach – become the priest of your home.

q    Find a place of service

 

 

 

PRACTICE THE "REPLACEMENT PRINCIPLE"

 

 

Here is one of the most unusual illustrations that Jesus ever gave:

 

When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it.

Then it says, I will return to the house I left.