Sermon Tone Analysis

I want to begin today by apologizing.

I meant to call several of you but didn’t.

I meant to visit a few of you but didn’t.

I have told poor Arielle like for the last 3 weeks I would get art work to her and I haven’t.

I didn’t always remember to pray for you.

This week I got in an argument at work and I’m still not sure if I was right.

I drive the way everyone you have ever yelled at on the freeway drives.

I have wronged people.

I have sinned.

Perhaps you know this of yourself today.

You know the wrong you have done and the misery you have caused.

Some of you might actually think that if there really is a God and this really is his church than you should have burst into flames or you needed to have a heart attack or something right when you walked into God’s house.

It didn’t happen.

God forgives, but for so many the thought is I have to keep saying “ forgive me” to God every second of every day.

God accepts our repentance which is the request for forgiveness, the commitment to follow Him and the gift of God to make a change but we really, really, really need to see the amazing wonder, freedom and grace that comes from a relationship with God so we don’t get stuck in constantly living in a state of miserable guilt.

I am bad, God is good.

I suck, I am depressed, why even try.

Yes we are not good.

I am not good.

and God is amazing.

He did something glorious which matters in what I think about myself, how I treat others, how I work, how I fight and how I even exist.

It’s true for you too, and we can see it in His revealed truths which are found in the Bible.

Application

You have to understand this verse.

So many miss this verse.

They spend years in churches, make church friends, and then get so destroyed and afraid of God because they believe they are worthless Christians.

They quickly come to a realization that they are so bad why even try.

It’s sad because the truth of God does not leave us worthless.

This is the revealed word of God that can totally transform your life.

Getting into heaven does not happen by you doing good.

Being a Christian is not about never saying cuss words, only having sex with your wife or husband, attending church and not stealing.

How are you made right with God?

By being a good person?

NOOOOO!

If I asked people about the relationship with God, or how is your faith

I almost always get an answer in behavior:

I’ve been praying a lot.

I haven’t been to church in a while.

I read a Bible.

I haven’t hurt anybody.

But let’s read the truth of God, the revealed truth from Jesus, about how we have relationship with God.

Galatians 2:16 (The Message)

16 We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ.

How do we know?

We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen!

Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

You are made right by God by personal faith in Jesus Christ.

Faith means belief and this belief is that Jesus paid the price for your sins, a punishment has to be paid.

Evil, wrong, sin in all it’s forms demands justice.

Today many are rightfully mad that you can walk into a store grab things off the shelf and walk out.

You can shoplift with no one working to stop you.

The likelihood that you get arrested is so low that some people just brazenly do it.

I was at a store this week where minutes before they were robbed by people carrying out shoes.

Our city demands justice.

Actions demand justice.

These actions have to be paid to the government.

In our country that is all of us.

But people get away with stuff.

Some stuff never gets reported to the police.

The awful way people treat other people.

Some times the police never find out who did something horrible.

What about all those people who could have stopped this horrible stuff from occuring?

You know in those facebook posts about the nice person who does something nice for someone so they choose to not hurt themselves or others, they gain hope.

What about all the people who knew the good they were supposed to do but didn’t bother.

They ignored the other person, too snobby, too selfish, or too busy.

The woman who was screaming for help and no one bothered to call.

All of this demands justice.

We know in our souls, from infancy that this demands justice.

Some say Karma, in the American sense, but my friends we see people all the time have the truth come out about the horrible way they lived after they are dead.

We see very wealthy people who do bad things but stay wealthy.

We see wonderful people with little.

Often what you plant is what grows up, but I can’t go up to the person with a disabled child and say obviously you put nails in someone’s tires that is why this happened.

Karma is a horrible, sick concept and has no justice.

It doesn’t exist.

All of this evil, all this good not done, demands that something be done, that justice happen.

God made a way to be right with him.

It is called atonement.

The way to justice with God is through atonement.

Atonement comes through blood being shed.

Sin is serious.

It is horrible.

The loss of blood, death that comes from it, is the final punishment.

God made this way so he didn’t have to kill us instantly and as a testimony to the fact that in his nature of love He created a way to be right with Him.

It is a horrific way.

An innocent animal has to take on our sin as a symbolic act, that we are wicked and the innocent animal’s blood atones, pays the price, settles the score with God.

Yet we all know that people keep sinning right after and keeps going.

God fixes this.

God himself, became one of us in Jesus, he lived perfectly.

He lived an innocent life.

He then allowed himself to atone for us.

He was arrested and he was beaten and crucified, killed on a cross, He took our death penalty for us.

He became the ultimate, perfect sacrifice.

Jesus did it all.

All that is owed to God is paid for because Jesus paid the price for your sin.

Jesus made it right with God for all those who believe that He made it right with God.

A belief of this nature is real.

It is by belief, the kind of belief like you have in the chair you are sitting in right now.

If you didn’t believe the chair you are sitting in would actually hold you, then you would sit with most of your weight in your feet or holding on to something you thought would hold you.

Ever sat in a child’s chair or a folding chair that you didn’t think would hold you, something you had no faith in?

You would barely sit in it.