Sermon Tone Analysis

Whatever Happened The Good News?

!! /Be Joyful . . .

./

It is said that as Benjamin Franklin concluded a stirring speech on the guarantees of the Constitution, a heckler shouted,  "Aw, them words don't mean nothin' at all.

Where's all the happiness you say it guarantees us?"  Franklin smiled and replied, "My friend, the Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness; you have to catch it yourself."

People are like potatoes.

After potatoes have been harvested they have to be spread out and sorted in order to get the maximum market dollar.

They are divided according to size ‑ bit, medium, and small.

It is only after potatoes have been sorted and bagged that they are loaded onto trucks.

This is the method that all Idaho potato farmers use ‑ all but one.

One farmer never bothered to sort the potatoes at all.

Yet he seemed to be making the most money.

A puzzled neighbor finally asked him, "What is your secret?"

He said, "It's simple.

I just load up the wagon with potatoes and take the roughest road to town.

During the eight‑mile trip, the little potatoes always fall to the bottom.

The medium potatoes land in the middle, while the big potatoes rise to the top."

That's not only true of potatoes.

It is a law of life.

Big potatoes rise to the top on rough roads, and tough people rise to the top in rough times.

Tough times never last, but tough people do.

(Robert Schuller

 

 

 

 

I believe that one of the great needs today when it comes to our ability to impact the world with the gospel message is for Christians to find and manifest the joy that we ought to know with regard to our faith.

Unfortunately the message that we communicate non-verbally is often so loud that it overrides the words that we have to say.

What we say in non-verbal ways is always the more powerful message.

We communicate:

 

q       Paranoia

 

q       Suspicion

 

q       Legalism

 

q       Dead Orthodoxy

 

q       Condemnation

 

q       Disgruntled with life

 

q       Joy-less-ness

 

Kaufmann Kohler states in the Jewish Encyclopedia that no language has as many words for joy and rejoicing as does Hebrew.

In the Old Testament thirteen Hebrew roots, found in twenty‑seven different words, are used primarily for some aspect of joy or joyful participation in religious worship.

Hebrew religious ritual demonstrates God as the source of joy.

In contrast to the rituals of other faiths of the East, Israelite worship was essentially a joyous proclamation and celebration.

The good Israelite regarded the act of thanking God as the supreme joy of his life.

Pure joy is joy in God as both its source and object.

The psalmist says, "Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fulness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures forevermore".

(Psalm 16:11)

 

 

q       Negativism

 

\\ How You Can Tell When It's Going To Be A Rotten Day

 

‑You call suicide prevention and they put you on hold.

‑You see a "60 Minutes" news team waiting at your office.

‑Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles.

‑Your son tells you he wishes Anita Bryant would mind her own business.

‑You turn on the news and they're showing emergency routes out of the city.

‑Your twin sister forgot your birthday.

‑You wake up and discover your water bed broke and then you remember you don't have a waterbed.

‑Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.

‑Your boss tells you not to bother taking off your coat.

‑The bird singing outside your window is a buzzard.

‑You wake up and your braces are locked together.

‑You call your answering service and they tell you it's none of your business.

‑Your income tax check bounces.

‑You put both contact lenses in the same eye.

‑Your pet rock snaps at you.

\\  

 

There is real weakness when there is no joy.

Joy is the spontaneity factor.

It frees people to follow their hearts.

That is not to say that they lose their heads.

Merely to say that reason does not always need to be our central guidance system.

It would be neat if that were the case.

However there are times when God calls us beyond reason.

It is probably in this area of life where God delights in showing his power and his glory.

It is here where man loses himself and his respectability and god takes over in power.

(I'm not sure that I will ever be able to preach this because there are so many who would not exercise balance?

Help me Lord to be more concerned with seeing your power at work in me than in having people applaud my staid behavior.)

Joy is something that exists independent of circumstance.

Our immediate mood may be affected by external circumstances but never controlled.

One of my good spiritually interested buddies told me the other day that in his mind Christians needed to learn to show the world that a person could be a Christian and still have a good time.

I am convinced that he is right.

\\ / /

/Even after Constantine had made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, there came to the throne another Emperor called Julian, who wished to put the clock back and to bring back the old gods.

His complaint, as Ibsen puts it, was:/

/"Have you looked at these Christians closely?

Hollow‑eyed, pale‑cheeked, flat‑breasted all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition: the sun shines for them, but they do not see it: the earth offers them its fulness, but they desire it not; all their desire is to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die."/

/As Julian saw it, Christianity took the vividness out of life.

Oliver Wendell Homes once said, "I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers."

Robert Louis Stevenson once entered in his diary, as if he was recording an extraordinary phenomenon, "I have been to Church today, and am not depressed."

/

 

*BE JOYFUL!* 

 

Don’t tell me what to be.

You don’t turn emotions off and on with the snap of a finger.

If the idea of being joyful is an emotion then this is true.*

However, I see it as a choice that we make.

It is an attitude that will determine the quality of life that we enjoy.*

It is totally up to you as to your degree of contentedness in life.

Make the right choice.

! Attitudes of the Christian

/ /

/   It is the "advance man" of our true selves./

/   Its roots are inward but its fruit is outward./

/   It is our best friend or our worst enemy./

/   It is more honest and more consistent than our words./

/   It is an outward look based on past experiences./

/   It is a thing which draws people to us or repels them./

/   It is never content until it is expressed./

/   It is the librarian of our past;/

/   It is the speaker of our present;/

/   It is the prophet of our future./

/   What is it?/

/ /

   It's our attitude!