Sermon Tone Analysis

Richard E. Powell

June 2, 2008

You can listen to this sermon by visiting http://www.pastorrickypowell.com/life_matters_with_pastor_/2009/02/here-is-a-sermon-i-preached-at-1st-baptist-church-newnan-ga.html

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Scripture Introduction:

I recently read about a college student who went on a hunting trip into Canada with a couple of friends.

During a blinding snow storm the young man became disoriented and was separated from his buddies.

He tried but could not find his way back to the trail or to his friends.

After a few hours of wandering in the wilderness he found an old cabin and took shelter in it.

Tragically, by the time the cabin was discovered by the rescue party the young college student had died.

The Royal Mounted Police found a note in the cabin he had left for his mother.

It read, “Dear mother, I am hungry and cold.

I am afraid I am going to die.

The only question I can’t answer is this, “Will God forgive me.”

Lonely, cold, and afraid, facing his own immortality this young man wanted to know if he could experience God’s forgiveness for his sins.

The actor Chris Farley of Saturday Night Live fame was once quoted by Rolling Stone magazine as saying, “There is only one who is in control.

He’ll take me when He wants me.

I don’t want to know about it.

It’s none of my business.

I just hope He’ll forgive my sins.”

Maybe this morning you wonder the same thing.

You wonder if God can forgive you.

You say, “I have made a mess of my life.

I know I am a sinner.

I know I have done things that are wrong in God’s eyes.

I wonder if He could ever forgive me?”

Transition: One of the greatest assurances in the word of God is that God promises you pardon.

He offers to you forgiveness.

And He does that in such a dimension that it exceeds all human understanding.

God makes an irrevocable, categorical promise that He will forgive you of your sin if you will forsake it and return to Him.

Many of life’s promise are not and cannot be kept.

Preachers promise to not preach very long, but often those promises aren’t worth much!

Most of the promises politicians make cannot or will not be kept!

How can you tell when a politician is lying?

His lips are moving.

But God’s promises are sure and trustworthy.

God’s promise of forgiveness is a little island of certainty in a vast sea of uncertainty.

Surely above all promises, we need to hear and heed the promise of God to offer mercy and abundant pardon on sinful people.

Let us hear God’s promise and the conditions of it from the Old Testament book of Isaiah 55:6-9.

You can find this text on page ________ in the maroon Bible under the seats around you.

/Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; And to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts./

(Isaiah 55:6-9)

If you ask God for forgiveness, can you be sure He will grant it?

What are the qualities to which God responds?

First, Isaiah says you can experience God’s forgiveness if you…

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I. Seek the Lord Without DELAY.

The Bible declares that we are to… /Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near./

(Isaiah 55:6)

The word “seek” as the prophet uses it means, “to follow or to pursue something of value.”

It means to press toward God.

This is no trivial pursuit we’re talking about.

We are talking about the gracious and glorious grace and forgiveness of God.

You are to seek the LORD without delay.

The tone is one of priority and urgency.

Therefore, to seek the Lord without delay is to…

!! A.Seek the Lord ACTIVELY.

Seeking the Lord is not to be a secondary pursuit.

It is to be a primary pursuit.

The number one priority of your life ought to be to seek the Lord so you can be forgiven and pardoned, so that you might be in a right relationship with Him.

Since God is God He deserves the position of priority #1 in your life!

We find this to be true in many of life’s pursuits of lesser importance.

All eyes are on the nation of China as it prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

An Olympic athlete competing for the gold medal knows he or she must make winning the medal the number one priority in their diet, their training, their exercise regimen, and in their use of time.

They stand no chance of winning the gold medal if they give way to lesser priorities in life.

Instead, Olympic winners have an obsession that compels them to focus on what is necessary to win.

In every area of life’s worthy pursuits, it calls for that same type of discipline, direction, and active pursuit.

How much more so if we desire to be forgiven and pardoned of our sins?

We must seek the Lord actively.

God welcomes that kind of active seeking.

He says in Jeremiah 29:12-13, “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (NIV).

Do you want to be right with God? Do you want Him to forgive you and pardon you of your sins?

Then actively come to Him, pray to Him, call on Him and do it with all your heart.

I believe some of you are here today because you are seeking the Lord.

You know that you are lost and undone in your sin.

You know that you are not right with God.

You know that you are in need of great mercy and pardon and forgiveness.

Your very presence in this worship service this morning is an active pursuit on your part to find the Lord.

Well, I have good news for you today.

The Lord is here and He is still in the forgiving business.

Don’t be satisfied with just showing up here today.

Actively seek the Lord and do not let up until you have the assurance of God that He has forgiven you!

To seek the Lord without delay is to seek Him actively, but also urgently.

!! B.Seek the Lord URGENTLY.

/Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near./

(Isaiah 55:6)

In my 21 years of ministry I have only met a couple of people who brazenly said, “I have no intention of ever seeking the Lord.”

I have met very few men and women in my life who said I never intend to seek God.

It is not that kind of statement that I have heard.

Instead, I have heard many men and women and teenagers say, “Pastor I intend on seeking the Lord, I intend on asking for His forgiveness, I intend on seeking His pardon for my sins, SOME DAY!” I have met very few people smitten with the spirit of atheism, but I have met many people afflicted with the spirit of apathy.

And both conditions will send you to Hell, unforgiven, without mercy and without pardon!

It seems to me as I preach and minister and witness that many people live in a sort of spiritual doldrums or listlessness.

They are unaware of the eternally dangerous position they are in without Christ.

They are not conscious of the fact that to die without being forgiven and pardoned by God is to go out into a Christ-less eternity, separated from God.

Or they are aware of the fact that they need to get right with God before they die, but death seems so far away.

I can hear some of you right now thinking, “Here we go again, another preacher trying to use death as a scare tactic.”

Friend, I am not trying to use death as a scare tactic.

I am speaking about a reality of life.