Sermon Tone Analysis

Last week, we started talking about choices.

We looked at Deuteronomy 30 at Moses’ speech to the Israelites before they crossed over into the Promised Land.

In Genesis 15, God had promised Abraham that he would have many descendents and that they would one day enter into a land that God had promised to them.

We briefly looked at the history of Israel and saw that it was quite circular—they followed God for a while, took His blessings for granted, began to compromise their commitment to Him, totally turned from Him, were judged for their actions, repented and returned to God—only to start all over again.

With the Israelites poised to enter the Promised Land, Moses, remembering Hebrew history and speaking on behalf of God, put a choice before the people:  life and prosperity or death and adversity.

He told them, “Choose life, that you and your descendents might live.”

Speaking for God, Moses reminded them of how God dealt with their waywardness in the past:  judgment.

He told them that they would perish if they did not follow through with their promise to follow God.

Here was their choice:  COMMITMENT or CONFORMITY.

They could either choose to follow God or they could conform to their culture as they had many times before.

The path to conformity was easy to follow.

All they had to do was this:  seek God’s hand instead of His face.

What does that mean?

They wanted the blessings without the commitment.

Israel wanted a “one night stand” type of God, a disposable God, an X-Box God that they could get enjoyment out of and then put back on a shelf until they needed Him again.

Some of you may look at Israel and say, “That’s me!”

If so, you might be a “bar-code” Christian.

A “bar-code” Christian is one who is has accepted Jesus as Savior but not as Lord.

They’re citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, but they live like Hell.

If you look at the outside, it looks like they aren’t even a Christian at all.

But if you “scan” them, the read-out says “Christian.”

A “bar-code” Christian is like a carrot.

If you put a carrot in boiling water, resembling the pressure to conform, it gets soft and pliable.

The carrot had been affected by the water, but the water had not been affected by the carrot.

Moses was urging them to be committed to God and to affect their culture.

He wanted them to be like a tea bag.

When you put a tea bag in water, the water doesn’t just affect the tea bag, but changes in color, taste and smell show that the tea bag has affected the water.

This is the challenge issued to the people of God.

In this room, there are probably those of you who can’t be considered to be the people of God because you don’t know God.

Your decision isn’t between COMMITMENT or CONFORMITY because you haven’t decided to commit to God at all.

Your decision is this:  COMMITMENT or CONDEMNATION.

That’s the honest truth.

John 3:16-18 says it this way:  “For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.

The one who believes in him is not condemned.

The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.”

Your choice is between COMMITMENT and CONDEMNATION.

I pray that if this applies to you, you will make that decision today, because nothing else I talk about will matter—it will be putting the cart before the horse.

In this case, that is impossible.

If you have already decided to commit to God, then last week’s message challenged you to choose God, to choose life, so you might truly live.

This talk assumes two things:  that you have become a Christian and that you have chosen COMMITMENT over CONFORMITY.

You aren’t looking for a “get out of hell free” pass.

You’re not looking for cheap grace.

You don’t want to use a fire extinguisher on your clothes as you enter heaven.

You want to walk the walk and talk the talk.

You want to be a tea bag.

Tonight, we are going to talk about another choice.

If you choose to commit instead of conform, what are you choosing?

To follow God, right?

But how are you going to do that?

Do you have a list of don’ts that you are following?

Do you have things that you plan to do for God?

If you have chosen COMMITMENT over CONFORMITY, your next choice is this:  RELIGION or RELATIONSHIP.

Are you going to rigidly adhere to a set of do’s and don’ts, or are you going to be like Moses?  Exodus 33 says that God spoke to Moses like a person would speak to a friend.

Is that what you desire in your relationship with God?

Take your Bibles and turn to Matthew 23.

In this chapter, Jesus is confronting the Pharisees and scribes, the religious people of the day, about their “religion.”

(v.

1-7, 13, 15, 23-28, 33; talk about history of Pharisees)  Why was Jesus so angry at the Pharisees?

They were “religionists” and “legalists.”

What was their focus?

What were they looking at?  Right, sin.

I have heard it said this way:  Focus on the problem and the problem just gets bigger.

Focus on the solution, though, and the problem goes away.

By focusing on sin, the bulk of their effort was on managing sin in their life.

They managed it by avoiding things and they managed it through the sacrificial system, sacrificing animals to atone for their sin.

How do you know if you chose RELIGION over RELATIONSHIP?

You think about avoiding sin or about doing things for God to make up for sin.

The key word here is GUILT.

GUILT is the motivating factor in being religious.

As a motivating factor, GUILT can only take you so far.

GUILT may take care of the outside, so that, like the Pharisees, you look righteous on the outside for the public audience.

But GUILT does nothing to attack the problem at its source—on the inside.

At some point, you either don’t care about your guilt, or you are too embarrassed about what you’ve done to think that God will forgive you, so you give up.

Choosing RELATIONSHIP means choosing something different.

Relationships are built on trust, commitment, loyalty, and love.

That is the key word in RELATIONSHIP—love.

We read in John 3:16 that God so */loved/* the world.

You don’t reciprocate love with actions that are disconnected from love.

Imagine if I showered my wife with gifts, flowers, candy or whatever, and then spent no time with her or showed her no affection at all.

I spent time hunting, fishing, golfing, watching football with friends, or whatever.

The only time I would spend with her was spent in order to meet my needs, without giving her needs any consideration at all.

That relationship would crater before too long.

I would be treating her like an object to be manipulated instead of like a person to be loved sacrificially.

How did you come to Christ?  Was it by doing good works or by faith?

When you encountered the love of God evident through the life and death of Jesus Christ, did you think, “Boy, that’s something I need to get.

Guess I need to figure out what I need to do to earn that.”

If you did, whoever shared the Gospel to you didn’t explain it to you right.

I suspect that is not the case, though.

I suspect that you were told Ephesians 2:8-9:  “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast.”

You came to Christ by faith.

You were overwhelmed by the fact that God loved you in spite of your sin.

You realized that you couldn’t earn your way to heaven, and you accepted Christ on the basis of faith, not of works.

Listen to Paul in Galatians 3:1-3:  “You foolish Galatians!

Who has hypnotized you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified?

I only want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Are you so foolish?

After beginning with the Spirit, are you now going to be made complete by the flesh?”

Paul is saying, “You experienced God’s love through Christ, saw that works weren’t going to help you, and accepted Christ in faith.

Why in the world are you going back to works?