Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

A woman leaving church said to the pastor, "Thank you for that sermon, it was so helpful."

The pastor said, "I hope it was not as helpful as the last one."

"Why what do you mean," she asked.

"Well," he said, "that last sermon lasted you three months."

On the other hand, there's a pastor who told a woman how glad he was to see her so faithful in attendance each Sunday.

"Yes," she said, "it is such a rest after a hard week to come and sit down and not think about anything."

These two cases are extremes, but nevertheless they are typical attitudes which are happiness killers for many professing Christians.

A poor appetite means trouble in the body, and a lack of craving for spiritual food is a sign of an unhealthy soul.

Jesus says in order to be happy we must hunger and thirst after righteousness.

It is not enough to nibble at it at your convenience.

To hunger and thirst is a painful experience which motivates a person very strongly.

A craving for food and water makes a person desperate and leads to revolutionary action.

Nothing matters to the person who is starving or dying of thirst but the satisfying of that burning desire.

David entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence which was unlawful, but he did it because he and his men were so hungry.

The Bible tells of two mothers in Samaria who, when the city was besieged by Benhadad, made a pact to eat their own babies.

This has happened many times in history, and even here in America.

The Donner party on its way to California in the frontier days got stranded in the mountain snows.

Even though they represented the best of American life, hunger drove them to eat the flesh of those that died.

Thirst also drives men to desperate measures.

People who heard Jesus knew more about real thirst than we do.

The hot sun in the desert made water more precious to them than we can realize.

Rider Haggard in King Solomon's Mines tells of three men and their guide who are running out of water.

The Zulu guide says, "If we cannot find water, we shall all be dead before the moon rises tomorrow."

One of the men reflecting back on the torture of thirst and the hallucination it created said, "If the Cardinal had been there, with his bell, book, and candle, I would have whipped in and drunk his water up, yea, even if I knew that the whole concentrated curse of the Catholic Church should fall on me for so doing..."

Men become desperate when they hunger and thirst, and all the energy of their being is concentrated on one goal-to satisfy their need.

This sounds like misery, and it is, but it is in the spiritual realm another example of the paradoxical misery that leads to happiness.

Without hunger men will not crave what they need.

If the Prodigal Son had not ended up eating husks being fed to pigs, he may never had returned to his father.

The misery and hunger motivated him to go home, and to the spiritual banquet of forgiveness, as well as the physical banquet of food.

Happiness through hunger is the next logical step in the beatitudes of Christ.

The first three have been downward.

We must be emptied of self; dependent upon God, and submissive in humility before we can be filled with the righteousness of God.

Those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, and are meek are sufficiently detached from self, and now ready for this new direction in which we are to climb.

Empty of self-righteousness and ready to be filled with the righteousness of Christ.

There are three attitudes that will characterize us if we have arrived at this point, and truly hunger and thirst after righteousness.

First there will be:

I. THE ATTITUDE OF ADMIRATION.

Admiration is the appetite of the soul.

Sir John Suckling said, "Tis not the meat, but tis the appetite makes eating a delight."

To be happy in hungering and thirsting after righteousness we must have an appetite for righteousness.

If we do not admire the righteousness of Christ, and men of righteousness in history are not our heroes, we will have a hard time being a happy Christian.

A happy Christian who does not admire righteousness is as contradictory as a gourmet who is repulsed by food, or a clown who does not like laughter.

If the Christian still finds sin very appealing, he will not hunger or thirst after righteousness.

The man who does not mourn over sin, and long for the sanctified life that Jesus can give can never find the happiness of this beatitude.

He's hung up back on the negative beatitudes, and is yet full of self-satisfaction.

To such a person the righteousness of Christ is as unappealing as a full course meal to one with the flu.

Dr. William S. Sadler wrote, "I doubt if the highly self-satisfied and conceited person is capable of genuinely admiring anything or anybody.

And we must not overlook the fact that when we enlarge our capacity for admiration we at the same time increase our capacity for joy and happiness."

Admiration is an admission there is something better than what you have, and it stimulates hunger.

What you admire you desire.

This, of course, can lead to good or evil, but it is necessary if we are to go anywhere.

If you admire the movie stars, you will hunger and thirst after fame.

If you admire the wealthy you will hunger and thirst for money.

If you admire Christ likeness, you will hunger after righteousness.

The whole Sermon On The Mount focuses on the inner man as the realm of true happiness.

Whatever you admire in the inner man is what you will become.

If you admire the proud and arrogant who get their way by force you will not be poor in spirit nor meek.

If you admire the Casanova who deceives women you will let your lust be the controlling factor in your inner life, but if you admire the man who cherishes his wife and is faithful to her as long as they both live, then you will be guided by that admiration to be just such a man yourself.

We must be aware that we are ever becoming what we admire.

Nobody wants to be a doctor unless they admire doctors; nobody wants to be a pastor unless they admire pastors, and nobody wants to be a better Christian unless they admire those who are better Christians.

Everybody is going in the direction of their admiration.

It all starts on the inside where you develop your appetite.

The history of a fisherman starts with a boy admiring his father, or some other man catching fish, and he desires to do it too.

He develops a taste for it and just loves catching fish, and he aspires to become good at it, and thus begins to commit time and money to acquire all that he can to reach this goal.

He buys tackle of all kinds, electronic gear for the boat he has purchased, and he is filled with anticipation of landing bigger and better fish.

This is the normal pattern of life for the happy fisherman.

The same pattern is what Jesus is saying is essential in the spiritual life.

Whatever wins your admiration wins your appetite, and becomes the motivating factor in your life.

Jesus does not want His followers to miss out on all the blessings of admiring music, art, sports, and numerous other values, but He demands a priority in our admiration.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you."

In other words, the higher and nobler the object of our admiration, the higher will be our happiness.

The ultimate is an attitude of admiration for righteousness.

The second attitude that is essential is-

II.

THE ATTITUDE OF ASPIRATION.

Aspiration is reaching out for what you admire.

Richter said, "There is a long and wearisome step between admiration and imitation."

Many people admire Jesus and the life He lived who do not aspire to be like Him.

It would be all right with them if they could attain some measure of righteousness, but they do not hunger and thirst after it.

These will never know the blessedness of being filled.

Only those whose aspiration is like that of the Psalmist will be: "As the heart panteth after the water brooks so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God...." And elsewhere he cries, "O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee, my soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land..." And again, "My soul longeth, yea, fainteth for the courts of the Lord, my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God."

Here is a man whose appetite and thirst for God was unquenchable.

He wanted more and more, and more yet.

This is the kind of aspiration that will lead to fullness and happiness.

The paradox is you have to be always hungry to be filled.

You must be ever dissatisfied with what you are to find satisfaction.

Perpetual discontent is the only way to contentment.

We must feel like Tennyson when he wrote-

An Oh for the man to arise in me,

That the man I am may cease to be.

Andre Kostelanetz, one time the most listened to conductor on earth with such orchestras as The New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and The Boston Symphony, tells of how important inspiration is to him as a musician.

He writes, "It is, I think, a sense of discovery, a keen appetite for something new.... Someone has described the whole feeling as a divine discontent."

You can see how all that has gone before in these beatitudes are the foundation for this one.

You have to be poor in spirit and meek to go on perpetually admitting you are still deficient and far from the goal of righteousness.

The only way to keep moving along the road to perfection is to be ever conscious of our imperfection.

We tend to feel our dignity demands that we level off and be content with where we have gotten.

If we are fine respectable people that should be good enough.

We don't have to go to extremes.