Sermon Tone Analysis
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The theme of our conference is “Press On”
This is a time to come together to be strengthened and encouraged in you faith.
I hope that through our time here you will have fresh vision, fresh courage and fresh ideas with which to serve the Lord.
When I hear the words “press on” I think of Paul’s exhortation to the Philippians.
When I am studying a passage of scripture, I ask questions as I am reading and then through prayer and further reading of the scripture, I seek to answer them.
As I am reading this passage, I have three questions:
What is the goal that Paul is talking about?
What am I pressing toward?
What is my motivation?
If I am to press on like Paul, why would I do this?
What is compelling me?
What does it mean to press on?
It reminds me of where Paul speaks about running a race.
So how do I run that race well?
As you can see, I am not just treating these as Paul’s words, but I am seeing myself in the scripture.
What Paul says for himself is meant to be an example to all of us.
So lets see ourselves in this text and answer the questions together.
What is the goal? - fresh vision
What is my motivation? - fresh courage.
How do we run? - fresh ideas.
What is the goal?
A goal is a mark or a target that you aim for.
I grew up on a farm and learned to drive the tractor from a young age.
When my father was teaching me to plow, he would make the first row through the field to make sure it is straight.
Then when he saw that I could follow his row, he taught me how to make the first row.
“pick an object on the opposite side of the field, maybe a tree or a large rock and drive straight toward it, keeping your eye only on that object.
If you look at anything else, you will wander.
If you are going to “press on” you must know what you are pressing toward - what is the goal?
If you take your eyes off of that goal you will wander from your course.
You may even loose focus or loose sight of what you are doing.
Paul is not just talking about his personal goal, but the goal of faith, the goal of ministry and the goal of his life.
To understand what that goal is, we will begin wide and narrow it down to the mark that we are to be looking at.
The goal of God is redemption.
The story of the Bible is the story of God redeeming mankind.
The first two chapters of the Bible show a perfect creation.
And the last two chapters of the Bible show a restored creation.
Everything in between shows God preparing the world to receive His redemption.
God chooses a man - Abraham and teaches him to walk by faith.
God chooses a people - Israel and delivers them from bondage and teaches them how to live in relationship with him.
That people wanted a king, so God chose David, a man after his heart to be their leader and to establish a family line from which he would send the true king - the messiah.
Do you see how God chooses individuals and them works through them to multiply and establish a movement?
Going back to creation, that has always been God’s plan.
God created the world out of nothing, light out of darkness, beauty and order out of chaos.
He blessed it and said that what he created is good.
And then he made everything to reproduce after its kind.
And the idea was that His beauty and goodness would multiply and fill the earth.
Each good seed producing good fruit after its kind.
Then He created man in his image.
The image of God means that man is designated to represent God and to reflect God’s goodness.
Mankind was supposed to reproduce and fill the earth with God’s goodness, beauty and order.
You know what happened - man chose to disobey.
Now there is evil in the world along with the good.
The good seed and the bad seed are all mixed together and we cannot tell them apart.
Only God can judge, we must wait for the harvest at the end of time.
But what we do judge is the good and evil in our own hearts.
We must learn to recognize that because of sin, we are now divided.
We have both the image of God and the sinful nature at work in each of us.
That is why Jesus came, died and rose again - to give us the possibility of regeneration -
literally dis-empowering the sinful nature.
overcoming sin, sickness and death.
defeating the powers of darkness and taking back authority on earth.
This is the story of redemption
Paying the price for sin with the death of God’s son.
Reversing the curse that was upon mankind and the world.
Turning the tide in the spiritual battle which surrounds us.
If you understand the struggle that we are engaged in as humanity, then you should also know that God’s goal is redemption through Jesus Christ.
Our goal then, it to align with God as His people in his work of redemption.
The goal of the church is restoration.
So if the story of the Bible is redemption, then where are we in that story?
I told you that God chose a man - Abraham.
And from Abraham, He chose a people - Israel
And from Israel He chose a family - David
And Jesus the Messiah is the long awaited fulfilment of God’s promise to redeem His people.
But which people - only some people?
many of the Jews made the mistake of thinking that because they were chosen by God, that God was being exclusive.
But they were chosen so that God could reach the whole world.
God’s plan from the beginning was to fill the earth with His goodness.
But evil is multiplying right along with the good.
In order for His plan of redemption to be accomplished his focus became narrower until we come to Jesus Christ, then from Jesus it becomes broader as sin is dealt with, the multiplying begins again.
Jesus entrusted his message and his authority to 12 people.
But then in the Upper room there were 120 filled with the Holy Spirit.
That was the birth of the church, which soon numbered in the thousands.
Jesus also told his disciples to multiply geographically, not just in numbers.
And they are to multiply, not just numerically and geographically, but now they are also going to the Gentiles.
The people of God now describes not just Israel, but people from every tribe, tongue and nation on earth!
The church is God’s means of restoration.
Do you see what has happened?
Through Jesus Christ you participate in the promise of God - the promise of redemption.
The promise to Abraham - as a chosen race you belong to God.
The promise to Moses and Israel - as a royal priesthood you can come into the presence of God.
The promise to David - as a holy nation under the rule of Messiah.
What about all of the divisions?
It is difficult to imagine the church bringing about God’s restoration when we are so divided.
There are over 40,000 different denominations of Christianity in the world today.
Even among those denominations there are many cultural differences, language differences and even differences of practice.
It makes it even more difficult when we disagree even as to the sinful nature and what is good or evil.
There is only one way that the church will accomplish its God-given goal of restoration - through Jesus Christ.
To the extend that Jesus Christ is the head of the church and we are his body we are able to be restored and to restore.
When we try to do the work of Jesus without connection to the head and without His Spirit in us and working through us, we accomplish nothing.
Jesus is Lord! and His Spirit is in us to empower us to do his work.
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