Sermon Tone Analysis

32221Invitation to Worship - Pastor Adam

Worship - Eden

Message - Pastor Adam

In 2017 a Navy seal named Jocko Willink released a book titled Discipline equals freedom - which quickly became a New York Times best seller - the concept being that as you apply discipline to your life, in the little things - you become free to really do the things that you want to do.

If you discipline your finances and don’t spend every dollar that comes through your hands on nonsense, you can do much bigger things.

If you discipline yourself to get up every day at a specific time, you have more time in the day to accomplish the things that you really want to or need to do.

The Bible talks about this at length - and is an even better Best Seller.

In the book of Proverbs, Solomon wrote to his sons - and said this...

Soloman says that he has considered what it means to be lazy.

He has given it great thought.

He has seen what it does to others.

seen it in action.

And it isn’t good.

He went by the field of a slacker.

The slacker owned a field.

They had possession of something that had the potential to be amazing.

To grow crops and provide for a future.

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But this guy was a slacker.

A sluggard.

A lazy, complacent individual.

The fool owned a vineyard.

If he took care of it, it could provide for his family for generations.

The vineyard would provide revenue for generations.

But it takes wisdom to make things grow.

A vineyard does not care for itself - you have to plant and prune and harvest.

And the one who owned this vineyard, wouldn’t.

Because he lacked sense.

The things that he had, would not be cared for.

And so, thistles grew up.

Because they weren’t pulled.

Weeds covered the ground, because they weren’t cut back.

And because they grew up - the stocks became woody.

The roots grew deep.

The work needed to clear them out got more and more difficult.

And so it was put off a little longer.

A little while longer.

Tomorrow.

The walls.. the stones didn’t crumble, God made those, but the part that man was responsible for - the mortar, and the stacking.

The maintenance.

The upkeep - all forgotten.

And the stones aren’t stacked any more.

Just little piles.

They offer no protection.

They offer no boundary.

But we are going to fix it.

Tomorrow.

Next week.

Next month.

you know, we have enough to get through this season, lets just wait till next year.

It becomes a slippery slope that eventually leads to… you know, I wasn’t a very good farmer anyway.

Maybe we should move.

Those grapes never did anything for me anyway - I may as well let those go.

And the weeds grow up.

And the thistles thicken.

They grow harder and harder to cut back.

Solomon considered these things.

He saw the fruit of laziness and a lack of sense and he warned his children against it.

He saw it - and learned from it.

He saw that carelessness, and a lack of discipline caused these once great resources to be wasted and lost.

And he writes this next line to sum up what he had experienced.

He says laziness, a need sleep.. just a little longer.. a need for just a few more minutes.. leads to what seems to us in that moment as instant poverty.

All of a sudden brokenness.

How could we have known!!

Its a total shock!

We’ve been robbed!

Does poverty truly come all at once… No. Poverty comes one poor decision after another.

Need - unless from some true catastrophe, comes from one failure leading to another.

And we have seen some catastrophes.

That apartment building that caught fire a few months ago, left some people all of a sudden in a really bad way.

But more often than not, Solomon is telling us, our condition is a direct correlation to our own actions.

And inaction leads to decay and destruction.

The answer seems to be that discipline equals freedom.

We have to do the things to be able to do the things.

We have to maintain the things to be able to keep the things.

How that correlates to our lives as believers:

Practical:

I believe it is important that we understand this scripture from a practical point point of view as well as a spiritual one.

The reality is if you don’t take care of your things, you lose them.

That is important to understand.

That applies to your fields and vineyards - whatever they may be.. your body, your home, your relationships, your family.

If you can discipline yourself to care for these things - to do all of the things you need to do, then you will likely thrive.

Spiritual:

Then there is the spiritual perspective.

The focus of my message this morning and really hopefully all of my messages is here.

As I was preparing for this message, and thinking about that scripture, it occured to me that I our very nature as Christians is like that of a field or a vineyard.

Our salvation is freely given, a gift from Jesus.

And in that - we become a new creation.

Brand new.

We have it.

Now what do we do with it?

We train it.

We discipline it.

Lest it becomes just like the old creation.

Nature takes back the fields and the vineyards that Christ worked so hard to clear, to plow, to cultivate.

So I want to look at some spiritual disciplines today.

What can we do to maintain what God has done for us.

To keep our stone walls built up.

First we need to understand that Discipline is something that we do, or we very intentionally do not do.

Spiritual disciplines are going to be Derived from the gospel.

You can’t just make them up on your own.