Sermon Tone Analysis

Me:

I want to share a something today I am coming to understand; when I understand who I am, Life is a joy.

I grew up in Mississippi, on a pretty big farm with my family.

The family farm was made up of my grandparents, my dad, and my 2 uncles.

My Grandmother cooked for us all every day so needless to say she had a big garden and a bunch of farm animals, chickens, rabbits, geese, ducks, peacocks, guineas.

I want to tell you about our favorite duck.

His name was funny duck.

We called him that because he was abandoned as an egg.

He was taken in by one of our more compassionate momma chickens, as ‘her’ own.

We tended this to be a surrogate relationship and to transition him back into his family when he was born.

When he was born, we must have been busy, because he spent several days with the momma chicken, so much so that he began to live like her.

He found himself scratching in the dirt for bugs just like momma chicken.

He totally missed his genetics as a duck.

Enter in a bunch of elementary aged kids, me and my 5 cousins who called the farm home and all the animals our own.

Once we realized Mr. Duck was confused, we decided to help him out.

We caught him and went down to the creek to throw him in with the other ducks.

When we did, it was a war.

The other ducks completely attacked him.

They didn’t realize that he was one of them; Funny Duck didn’t even realize he was one of them.

He just thought he was the only rooster who could swim.

His understanding of who he was, a very lucky rooster (because he could swim); affected everything he did, and everywhere he went.

How he ate, where he slept, who he hung out with, even his girlfriend.

His flawed self identity affected who he was as shown in his actions.

He was a very ineffective Duck and a very frustrated rooster.

He was experiencing difficulties between his form, what he was and his function, what he was supposed to do.

Funny duck had a pretty rough life.

For him, there was no joy in life because he didn’t understand who he was.

I too often get confused about who I am.

I get my roles mixed up, I lose my focus, I usually don’t forget my form, but I often confuse my function.

Can I be honest right now?

I often feel like I must do more in order to be effective.

I, as one who seeks follow God, and obey his call on my life, often feels, to a certain degree, it necessary to please people; to be liked and accepted by others, I often take on more than I should to meet the needs of others.

When I must say no, it is not unusual that I think that I am disappointing someone, causing me to become frustrated.

This leads me to fill my schedule with lots of activities and before long I find myself on a never ending treadmill of “what’s next”.

I become a consumer of experiences, rather than really being present in any of them.

I understand this about myself now.

We

When I talk to my friends, whether here at church or in the community, one thing I hear is how busy they are.

It’s often referred to in terms of some kind of crazy achievement to be proud of.

As a part of my appointment to KIUMC, I am able to experience the life of different committees; one of the most recent ones I attended was the Committee on Lay Leadership.

Many of you know it as the Nominating committee.

I was there as kind of an observer more than anything else, but as I listened to the conversations between committee members and church members being recounted, I was struck by how often this problem of busyness came up.

I left to wonder, what’s the source of this? 

Am I the only one who sometimes lacks focus.

What about you, are you one like me who often gets your functions confused?

Do you too find yourself being too busy?

Do you too wish you had more time to do what you wanted?

Do you too feel guilty because you can’t do more?

Is it a matter of not having time to do things for God, or is it a matter of feeling overwhelmed and responsible for doing too many things?

Either way, we become frustrated or ineffective.

The joy in our relationship with God is short lived and easily extinguished, resulting in us needing to find a way to relight the flame over and over again.

As I have begun to understand the Gospel, the Good News and how it works itself out in my life that these things are becoming clear to me.

You see, when we find ourselves living outside of a Gospel Centered Life, we find ourselves to be a frustrated and ineffective, our form doesn’t match our function.

I am convinced that our problems relate to our understanding of the Gospel.

God

Which brings us to today’s reading: 2 Corinthians 5:11-20

*/16/*/ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.

Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

*17* Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

*18* All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:*19* that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.

And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.*20*

We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.  *21* God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

/

What is this new creation they are talking about?

Where does this new life come from?

It’s hinted at in verse 21: the good news, the Gospel.

It comes from us believing and having faith in the message and messenger of the Gospel.

You see, most of you know and understand the teaching of scriptures;

God created the earth and everything in it.

God made a covenant with Adam and eve to live and care for the earth.

They then chose to act in disobedience to God’s covenant, the first sin.

Following that first sin, Man has continually chosen his own way and pulled away from God.

In order to restore the relationship with Man, God chose to come to earth in the form of a man and live a perfect life, and sacrifice himself for the sins of the whole world.

The New Testament teaches that it is in our faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ which restores our relationship with God the Father.

The key to all of this is our understanding that it is by God’s grace that it is all because of God’s Grace.

It is by God’s grace that draws us to him, it is God’s grace which restores our relationship, and it is by God’s grace which we are able to live a life which we can spend honoring Him.

When I was a kid I always watched Tarzan on Saturday’s.

It came on at 10 am in my town.

You remember him right.

The real guy with the monkey Chetah, you just dated yourself.

Not the cartoon or the black and white Tarzan but the one in the ugly colors.

Swinging through the trees, calling out.

YODDLE.

You remember.

Well after it was over, I remember many times putting the knife in my pants, i wouldn't wear a loin cloth, adn swinging in the trees at my grandmother's house, even pretending to have a pet monkey i could even yell like Tarzan.

But even though I could do most of the things he did I wasn’t him.

Same with our the gospel, we can do the Christian stuff, stop cussing, give money to the church, stop drinking, treat my wife well…and never be a Christian.

Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man and is freely offered to all who repent of their sins and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

By His blood, Jesus has obtained eternal redemption for every believer.

We are “saved by grace through faith, not works, lest anyone should boast”(Eph 2:8-9).

Therefore, salvation is the work of God from beginning to end.

Salvation is wholly dependent upon the work of God’s grace.

God credits His righteousness to those who put their faith in Christ alone for their salvation, thereby justifying them in His sight.

We change from having ourselves (MAN) in the center to one which is God Centered, when we begin to live with God’s plan as our purpose, we live as Gospel Centered; we are able to live a life of JOY, real joy.

When we have an incorrect view of the Gospel, it can lead to us legalistic, condemning, or relativistic lives.

Generally speaking, we become frustrated because we live a life in opposition to the new life we have been given.

Legalistic in the sense that if people don’t live out their faith like we do, then they are not really Christians.

We live lives obsessed with doing things according to the “LAW” whatever that means.

When we live condemning lives, we forget what it was like to be a sinner.

We have forgotten what we were like before we knew Jesus.