Sermon Tone Analysis
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By Pastor Glenn Pease
A purchasing agent had been given a bottle of rare old scotch for the holidays.
It was a gift typical of the values of our day, and symbolic of the kind of happiness implied in the phrase, "Happy New Year!"
He carefully pushed his precious package into his pocket and headed for home.
On the way into the house he tripped over a child's toy wagon and tumbled head over heels.
He landed on a patch of ice and slid into a tree.
The first thing he felt was something warm trickling down his leg.
"O no!" he groaned, "I sure hope that's blood."
The thing that makes a story like this funny is the shocking truth of it.
The truth that many men do value the bottle so highly that they would sacrifice their own blood rather than it.
Their own blood they would rather lose than see the loss of a bottle of booze.
Many will try to really live this year by getting all they can out of a bottle.
The poet describes one-
A dashing young fellow named Tim
With his mind by wine made dim,
Drove his car with a great deal of vim.
Said he, "I'm renouned
For covering ground."
But, alas, now the ground covers him.
Others will not be so foolish as to gamble their life away like this on New Year's Eve.
They have to much to live for.
They intend to really live in the coming year.
They anticipate acquiring all the good things of life that will bring happiness.
Their value system says, the best things in life cost money, and so to really live all you need to do is get more and more of that stuff which is tender when you have it and tough when you don't."
Every little bit helps to boast us to the level of real living.
Again the poet has captured the essence of this philosophy.
Ah, life is suddenly brighter, sweeter,
Fortune no longer fickle,
Here's time left on a parking meter
From somebody else's nickel.
For many the joys of the coming year will be in relationship to the gaining of more possessions.
All of this is fine, but the facts of history and contemporary life, plus Scripture, all bear witness that this road does not lead to happiness.
On the contrary, it leads to much anxiety.
Jesus knew this and gave warning against the system of values that keeps you in a constant stew over things, even essential things like food and clothing.
Get wrapped up in this system and you become a slave, and destroy real living.
One of the oddest things about modern life is the number of people who are spending money they haven't got for things they don't need to impress people they can't stand.
It is a futile way to seek happiness, but millions will continue to try in the coming year.
Others will seek by involvement in innumerable trivialities to find happiness.
Horace Walpole has written, "When a great empire is in its decline, one symptom is that there is more eagerness upon trifles than upon essential objects."
Dean Briggs of Harvard experienced an illustration of modern devotion to trivia.
He observed a group of Americans who were on their first visit to Rome.
Morning after morning opportunities of a lifetime awaited them in the Eternal City.
The Forum, the Coliseum, St. Peter's, and the whole city fabulously rich in historical association.
Yet, each day they settled down in the hotel for a long morning of bridge.
"What business had such people in Rome?" he asked.
The coming year is filled with infinite potential for expanding our horizons and launching out on fresh new trails of discovery, but masses will be content to settle down and be preoccupied with respectable trivia.
This is real living according to them.
To dine, to dance, to call, to break
No canon of the social code,
The little laws that lackeys make
The futile decalogue of mode.
How many a soul for these things lives,
With pious passion, grave intent,
While God in gracious bounty gives
The things that are more excellent.
These are the things we want to consider this morning.
Not the trifles of the world, but the tremendous gifts of God.
Jesus shows us a more excellent way to really live.
Jesus offers an alternative to the futile value systems of the world.
There is a choice to make that makes a difference.
All of the choices the world offers come to the same blind alley and dead end.
Every choice is a loser.
Any decision you make on the level of the world's values will not lead to real living.
They are all unsatisfying, and will lead you to feel like the hen pecked husband whose wife gave him two ties for Christmas.
One was a bright green and the other a brilliant yellow.
At the risk of ridicule he wore one the next day to try and please her.
He chose the green one and came down to breakfast.
His wife looked at him and said, "So you don't like the yellow one huh?"
His alternative was really not a choice, for either choice would lead to the same end, and so it is with the world's values.
They all fail to bring real happiness.
Jesus offers us an authentic alternative, and it is one that really makes a difference for both now and eternity.
I stress the now, for it is a common error that supposes Christianity is a religion of hope for the future only.
A kind of pie in the sky on high by and by when we die sort of hope.
This is only one aspect of the truth.
Jesus came to bring part of the pie of eternity into time.
He came that we might have life now, and life more abundant.
Doctor Zhivago said, "Man is born to live, not to prepare for life."
He is right, and it is a false view that says we are here on earth just to prepare for eternity.
Life does not begin in eternity.
Even eternal life begins now, and now is the time to really live.
Jesus gives us the alternative that leads to really living now in verse 33.
First notice that it is-
I. AN AUTHENTIC ALTERNATIVE VALUE.
Jesus is stating his system of values in contrast to the values of the Gentiles where the heathen, or in our context the value system of unbelievers.
Jesus has been talking about the material aspect of life-the life of physical needs.
He says this sums up the level on which the world seeks.
There time and energy; their thought and skill, are devoted to the physical.
Jesus says that God knows we need these things, but notice he does not condemn the search for the necessities of life.
He knows that we cannot live without food and clothing, but he says we are not to put these things as number one on the list for life.
Instead, we are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all these things will be added unto us.
To really live we must put God even before the necessities of life.
Jesus does not eliminate the physical.
He just puts it in its proper place.
He adds it on to the primary values of the spiritual.
He makes it the caboose instead of the engine on the train of life.
Jesus recognizes the physical, but makes it clear that it is not primary.
The value systems of the world are not false values, but they substitute the good for the best.
They fail to make a distinction between what they live by and what they live for.
Jesus puts the emphasis on what to live for.
He stresses the goal and purpose of living, and not the mere mechanics of it.
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