Sermon Tone Analysis
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That Won’t Hold Water
Have you ever used that phrase before?
When I’ve used it I say in the context of an excuse.
For some people, any old excuse will do.
Often times the excuses that are used just make no sense, they “don’t hold water.”
I hear excuses every week.
I hear excuses as to why people do things or don’t do things.
It is one thing for people who are not yet disciples of Jesus to make excuses.
We expect them to make them.
One of the most profound examples was when I was in high school and was spending my second summer as a summer missionary with Child Evangelism.
I was at the Cameron County Fair in Emporium with a friend from my home church.
We spent the entire week there sharing Jesus with kids who came by our trailer.
There was one boy, his name was Michael and I learned he was 12 years old.
He was there with his family and they were camped out at the fair.
I don’t remember why.
He kept coming by and would talk with us if we were hanging outside.
He wouldn’t come into watch the filmstrip stories.
I finally asked him why he wouldn’t come and hear the stories.
He said that he was to old.
He was 12 and he had made up his mind that he was to old to hear about Jesus.
Nothing I could say could convince him otherwise.
He was on my prayer list for a long time.
I’ve often wondered what happened to him.
I wondered if someone else has had the opportunity to share Jesus with him.
He would be pretty close to 60 if he is still living.
There was a song that the Kingsmen quartet sang a long time ago that was about excuses.
The chorus had these words
Excuses, excuses, you'll hear them every day.
And the Devil he'll supply them, if the church you stay away.
When people come to know the Lord, the Devil always loses So to keep them folks away from church, he offers them excuses.
As we look at revival preparation, I want to take a look at excuses as illustrated by Israel.
In the Lectionary, the scripture for today began in verse 4. I had to back up to verse 1 because if we don’t we miss out on why God said what He did to them.
Verse 2 really stuck out to me.
It has always amazed me how no matter how many times I may have read a passage of Scripture that something new pops out at me.
I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover more times than I can remember.
I don’t say that to brag, it’s just a statement of fact.
Even though I’ve read this verse multiple times it has never stuck out to me like it did this week.
God said
Jeremiah 2:2 (CEB)
The Lord proclaims: I remember your first love, your devotion as a young bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in an unplanted land.
God is talking about Israel following God out of Egypt into the wilderness and ultimately into the land of promise.
He uses the image of a young bride going with her new husband into the wilderness.
They were deeply in love, they were devoted that no matter what they were going to face life together.
I think of some of my ancestors who packed up everything they could and moved to the west in our nation when vast areas were opened to homesteading.
It wasn’t easy, going into a new land where there were no towns or villages.
You had to provide for yourselves.
God pictures himself as the groom and Israel as the bride and they followed God into that wilderness, that land of promise.
God says that He remembers their first love.
There is another place in the Bible where we read about that first love.
I pray that Jesus will never say that to me or to this church.
The NRSV uses the word “abandoned.”
The NIV uses the word “forsaken.”
That is a purposeful action, they have let go or abandoned, or forsaken God.
Jesus is saying this to the same church that Paul wrote
In less than a generation, this grand church has forsaken God.
Ephesians 2:8-10 “8 You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith.
This salvation is God’s gift.
It’s not something you possessed.
9 It’s not something you did that you can be proud of.
10 Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things.
God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.”
We are God’s accomplishment yet we can easily be like that church and walk away and abandon God.
We can make up all sorts of excuses.
They didn’t hold water then and they won’t hold water now.
God had brought Israel out of slavery and bondage in Egypt.
God brought them to the land of promise, that land flowing with milk and honey.
There is this concept of God that He doesn’t want us to have any enjoyment in life.
The idea is that if we become a Christian then we have to give up fun and pleasure.
That is a lie from the Devil.
God asks us to give up sin and evil.
Sin is pleasurable for a season, but it pails in comparison to what God has for us.
Remember those spiritual blessings that God has blessed us with.
Why would we want to settle for something less than what God has already blessed us with.
Let’s take hold of those blessings.
God is speaking to all of Israel and says
I’ve seen couples where the husband is confused because his wife is angry with him.
He is clueless as to what He did.
He might ask his wife “what did I do wrong?”
God is asking “What wrong did your ancestors find in me.”
God already knows the answer, but he wants Israel to answer the question.
Obviously, the answer is there is nothing that God could do to cause His people to wander away from Him.
That wandering comes from us.
One of the great hymns of the church has these words in it.
Oh, to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee:
prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it;
seal it for thy courts above.
(Come thou fount of every blessing)
That sealing is by the Holy Spirit.
Paul wrote:
God has sealed us and gave us the Holy Spirit as a down payment.
Wow, if the Holy Spirit is a down payment, can you imagine how much more God has in store for us!
I don’t know about you, but that gets me a little excited.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:33 “33 Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
That is the key to receiving all of those blessings that God has already blessed us with.
We have to seek God first and foremost.
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