Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Elizabeth Eliot tells of the hardship she and Jim went through in being missionaries in Ecuador.

Shortly after their marriage they were asked to teach a group of 18 children.

The entire class was for the two wives of one man.

They lived in a leaky tent for 5 months.

They had only two seasons-the rainy and the rainier.

She said that the tent was probably owned by someone who was going to throw it out, but then decided that the Lord laid it on their heart to give it to the missionaries.

It was not much of a honeymoon.

He got hepatitis that lasted for 6 weeks, and living in a leaky 16x16 tent with nothing much to do was not enjoyable.

The roll-away bed began to sink into the mud floor to add to their stress.

Jim spent a year trying to rebuild a dilapidated old building that had been abandoned, but a flood came along and carried it away.

If you think people in the will of God just have one continuous victory after another, you have not read much about the price that missionaries pay to reach the people of the world.

Jim, of course, was one of the five who was speared to death by the Auca Indians.

He paid the ultimate price in his commitment to serve God.

Dr. Samuel Zwemer had such a love for the Arabs that he took a steamer and was dropped off on the Eastern side of Arabia, and he spent 40 years of his life in that land.

He wrote at the end of his famous career, "There is only one reason that I was able to stay 40 years in Arabia and see only as many converts as I can count on the fingers of one hand.

I did it because I loved Jesus and I wanted to please Him."

These are examples of those who master motive was to please God.

If success and fame came with it, well and good, but whether they came or not, their goal was to please God.

This was Paul's master motive as well.

He said in I Thess.

2:4, "We are not trying to please men but God." Pleasing God is what motivated Paul to endure all of his hardships.

He writes in I Thess.

4:1, "Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God."

This is the purpose of Christian education.

It is to help people learn how to please God.

In contrast, the master motive of our culture is conformity.

The Bible has good reason to warn us about being conformed to this world.

It is one of the strongest pressures of life to be conformed.

Studies show that only 28% of the people who were surveyed drank alcohol because they liked it.

The rest drank it for social reasons to conform to the norm so they would be liked and accepted.

Millions of youth engage in sex because of the peer pressure, and not because they are convinced it is the road to happiness.

People go places and do things because they feel compelled to conform to what is in.

Very few escape the pressure to please others for the sake of status and acceptance.

Some very rich people can escape some pressures, as did the former Shaw of Iran.

When he was visiting England he was invited to the races and he declined saying, "I am well aware that some horses run faster than others."

Everyone can escape some conformity, but the only way to consistently do so is by having a master motive to please God in all things.

Jesus said in John 8:29, "The One who sent me is with me, He has not left me alone, for I always knew what pleases Him."

This is the Master's testimony to the master motive of life.

Anybody can be somebody in the kingdom of God if their motive in life is to please God.

The entire 11th chapter of Hebrews is about the success of faith.

You could write another chapter about all of the follies and failures of the same people in this chapter.

They were sinners to be sure, but God welcomed them all into His hall of fame because of their master motive.

Heb.

11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God, but all of these people had faith, and the end result was that the please God and their lives counted for Him.

The Old Testament people of God either kept the Sabbath and pleased God, or they violated the Sabbath and displeased God, and then experienced His judgment.

Their own happiness and prosperity revolved around how they pleased God on this issue.

Isa.

56:2 says, "Blessed is the man...who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it."

In Isa.

58:13-14 we read, "...If you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord's day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way, and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find joy in the Lord."

But unfortunately the people of Israel did not put pleasing God as a top priority on their agenda, and the result was that God had to say often what He did in Ezek.

20:13, "..they utterly desecrated my Sabbath.

So I said I would pour out my wrath on them..."

They had the potential to be the happiness people whoever lived, but they became famous for their sorrow and suffering because they refused to please God by honoring His special day.

The paradox of it is that the day was given for man's happiness, and not God's.

God does not need a day of rest for restoration.

The whole point of the day is for man to be set free from the bondage of making a living in order to enjoy living.

God made man to be happy, and He knows that the two key ingredients in human happiness are health and holiness.

When the inner man and the outer man are whole and balanced that man is a happy man.

If one or the other gets out of balance and loses its wholeness and becomes sick there will be a decrease in happiness.

God gave the Sabbath to man as a means by which he could maintain the balance that leads to happiness.

The New Testament Lord's Day, or Sunday has the same objective.

The reason it pleases God when we use it for these two goals is because He gave it to us to please us, and nothing is more pleasing than to have a gift used and enjoyed for the purpose for which it was given.

We please God by using His gift for our own good.

If I give my son a thousand dollars for his education, and he spends it on a trail bike instead, I will be angry and not pleased, for I gave that gift for his good, and he robbed himself of that good by spending it on that which will not last.

When we use God's gift for that which does not contribute to our long lasting happiness we do not please Him.

If we can become more aware of the presence of Christ in our home, we will be more aware of just how we should use Sunday in a way that pleases Him.

We want to see that it pleases Him when we use it in a way that He intends.

Let's look first at its value for being-

I. HEALTHY.

Our text refers to some Christians who had not only given up on coming to Christian meetings, but they had developed a habit of doing so.

They were doing the very thing that led Israel to miss God's blessing.

The tragic fact is that 25% of American Christians have developed the habit of not going to church.

The reasons are many, but the result is the same.

The body is weakened and made subject to all sorts of sickness.

Somebody said, "If you stay in the sack Sunday morning, you are sac-religious."

Imagine marching in an army toward the enemy and you look to your side and your buddy is not there, and to the other side, and again there is no one there.

Nobody likes to face a foe alone.

We need comrades by our side to have the courage we need to press on.

Every soldier who goes AWOL makes others feel less committed to the battle, and more tempted to retreat.

The health of the body demands togetherness.

Whenever we are absent from our place in the body we deprive the body of the encouragement of our presence.

Many Christians do not realize how much their absence hurts, and how much their presence helps.

It is one of the worst of the bad habits of thinking it doesn't really make any difference if we are present or not.

Bad habits are bad because they have a negative impact on health.

Every Christian is either contributing or detracting from the health of the body.

D. L. Moody said, "When I was a boy the Sabbath lasted from sundown on Saturday to sundown on Sunday, and I remember how we boys use to shout when it was over.

It was the worst day of the week to us.

I believe it can be made the brightest day in the week.

Every child ought to be reared so that he shall be able to say that he would rather have the other 6 days weeded out of his memory than the Sabbath of his childhood."

We need to work at this goal in our homes, and as a family be committed to making Sunday a special day, and a day of health for body, mind, and spirit, and for relationships.

To often Sunday is a day of tension and rush, and the whole family is fighting on the way to church, and very little that is healthy results.

Our problem is that we do not make Sunday a high point of the week.

We just let it happen instead of planning ahead like we do a vacation.

We need to spend sometime getting things ready on Saturday so that there can be more harmony on Sunday.

Parents need to give more thought as to how to make it a special day for enjoying all of the gifts of God.

God gave us one in seven so we could cease the rat race of making a living to enjoy what He has given us.

We are to rest from our labor to enjoy the fruits of His labor.

It is for our health and happiness.