Sermon Tone Analysis

“I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.” [1]

Unapologetically, the message today is meant for Christians—followers of Christ the Lord.

This is appropriate since the text was originally addressed to a follower of the Master and since the current message is delivered during a time of Christian worship.

Our world is experiencing a transition from historical Christian morality to strange, startling and novel standards that really are as old as sin itself.

Society’s transformation is dizzying—the old order is being abandoned and the new moral order is not fully evident just yet.

What is seen is disconcerting, to say the least.

Cultural Christians and religious adherents are discomforted, though often willing to join in with a full-throated cry for censure of any who dare stand athwart the mad rush to jettison the old order while embracing a new, controversial social order.

We live in challenging days.

Society is being transformed at a dizzying clip; activities and attitudes that were once universally abhorred are now approved and even celebrated, while what was once thought to be good is condemned.

The Faith of our Lord Jesus is being tested; and the testing will grow more intense in days to come.

Events are unfolding at a dramatic pace as evil brazenly strides through our world.

Adherents of this dying world challenge followers of the Master to defend the Faith once delivered.

While few are so direct as to openly confront believers, demanding an apologia for what is believed, the prevalent tone implies that most inhabitants wish we would just go away.

In such a hostile environment, the model for Christian life and service is provided in the words of the Apostle as he was poised on the edge of eternity.

Verse twelve of the first chapter of Paul’s final missive to Timothy is arguably among the best known of all the verses Paul penned in this missive.

The assertion readily suggests three significant affirmations that will provide the outline for our message this day.

First, Paul speaks of his boldness in the service of Christ when he says, “I am not ashamed.”

The Apostle then asserts the reason underlying his bold testimony, “I know whom I have believed.”

Finally, Paul testifies to the confidence that he, and assuredly all Christians, should possess when he pens the words, “I am convinced that He is able.”

“I am not ashamed.”

“I know Whom I have believed.”

“I am convinced that He is able.”

In three stirring affirmations we have the essence of Christian life and service.

*I AM NOT ASHAMED* — I have already stated that the Faith of Christ the Lord is being forced into the closet.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the things that were done in darkness were concealed because those doing such things were ashamed of what they did.

Those things were once universally recognised as “unfruitful works of darkness” [EPHESIANS 5:11].

At that time, we each recognised that “It is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” [EPHESIANS 5:12].

However, that day has passed; this is a new day—wickedness is in ascendency and righteousness appears to be in retreat.

Wickedness has burst forth from the closet where it once lurked.

Today, the Faith is being shoved into the closet.

Christians are being forced into the closet, as though faith in the Living Son of God is something shameful.

Maybe it is time for us Christians to be in a closet—the prayer closet.

In a recent radio broadcast, a well-known pastor said, “Sin which used to hide in the shadows has now come out into the light.

I heard it said a few years ago that when some people get out of their closets, it's time for Christians to get into theirs and pray.

We need to pray in our closets and to pray openly as we're doing today… God doesn't need America.

It's a great nation.

God has given us our life and our liberty.

But God doesn't need America to do what God will do in the world.

But America desperately needs God and we need Him today.”

[2] Doctor Jack Graham’s words apply with equal validity to our beloved Canada.

Contemporary morality has been turned topsy-turvy.

Those who practise what is defined as indecent and against nature demanded acceptance only a short time past.

Soon, not only tolerance, but celebration of those same rebellious acts will be compelled through judicial action.

The cost of following Christ has never been cheap.

Though I make no claim to being a prophet, it seems abundantly clear that a costly payment for being a Christian will soon be demanded.

Morality in dying days of the Roman Empire was not radically different from the moral condition that describes our modern world.

Sexual license, self-centredness, a sarcastic outlook on life, an overweening desire to be entertained seems to have marked that ancient society.

Looking out on the city of Corinth, a city that reflected the moral conditions prevalent throughout much of the Empire, the Apostle described the society he witnessed.

First, he wrote of a culture that had little time for God—in fact, he described a culture that exalted man and declared an individual’s own pleasure to be the /summum bonum/ of life.

Thus the Apostle begins his description.

“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” [ROMANS 1:18-23].

Having excluded God from life, making their own self-interest the centre of their existence, the inevitable result was that members of that ancient society began to worship themselves—their own desires took precedence over all else.

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!

Amen” [ROMANS 1:24, 25].

Self- centred mankind moved inexorably toward utter debasement.

Thus, we read, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” [ROMANS 1:26, 27].

We want to believe that immoral individuals can somehow still be “good” people.

However, the Apostle makes it plain that one who has excluded God from life is unrestrained; and when restraint no longer reigns, society—the culture of a nation—moves inevitably into every imaginable form of evil as described in the final verses of this chapter.

These are Paul’s dark words concluding the passage.

“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” [ROMANS 1:28-32].

During the days of the Republic, Rome was noted for reasonably high moral standards.

After the death of Julius Caesar, Octavius effectively abolished the Republic near the end of the First Century BC, by which time the decline of Rome had begun.

The Republic was a movement of the people, based upon the rule of law and a balanced constitution.

The Empire exposed the transition that had taken place in society.

Increasingly, the populace sought to be supported rather than assuming responsibility.

As people ceased to assume responsibility for their own governance, seeking government leaders to rule over them, they ceased to hold to the old moral codes.

Like Israel in the days of the judges, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” [JUDGES 17:6].

Of Roman society at the time Paul wrote these words, Edersheim has written, “The freedmen, who had very often acquired their liberty by the most disreputable courses, and had prospered in them, combined in shameless manner the vices of the free with the vileness of the slave.

The foreigners—specially Greeks and Syrians—who crowded the city, poisoned the springs of its life by the corruption which they brought.

The free citizens were idle, dissipated, sunken; their chief thoughts of the theatre and the arena; and they were mostly supported at the public cost.

While, even in the time of Augustus, more than two hundred thousand persons were thus maintained by the State, what of the old Roman stock remained was rapidly decaying, partly from corruption, but chiefly from the increasing cessation of marriage, and the nameless abominations of what remained of family-life.”

[3]

Religion no longer had power to restrain people and no power to cope with the degeneration.

The philosophies of the Greeks failed to meet the deep moral needs demanded by the times.

The emperors had become criminal in their conduct and rule.

Native born Romans were decreasing in number due in great measure to an emphasis upon sexually deviant acts and to a general decision that children inhibited fulfilment.

Seneca testified that children were considered with great disfavour and infant exposure was prevalent.

Lawlessness was rampant and unequal administration of the legal codes became commonplace; the moral fibre of society was vitiated.

Because of the degeneration of society, corruption marked the governing class.

Consequently, any movement that challenged the prevailing social condition was opposed.

This was the world in which Paul ministered and in which he wrote the words of our text.

To be certain, Christian evangelists were beaten, imprisoned and treated roughly from earliest days following the Resurrection of the Master.

Christians were derided and treated with contempt in a vain attempt to silence them, for the leading lights of that ancient world could not tolerate seeing their lost condition when exposed by the brilliance of Heaven’s glorious light.

The response of these leaders proved the verity of the apostolic warning delivered in this missive, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” [2 TIMOTHY 3:12].

The most common effort to silence the followers of the Christ was to respond with violence in order to force them into silence.

Notice how often this is observed in the Word of God.

Peter and John had just been employed by the Risen Saviour to heal a crippled man.

People were running to them, hearing the message of life in the Son of God, when “the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them” [ACTS 4:1].

Doctor Luke notes of these august leaders of the nation that they “were greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead” [ACTS 4:2].

Thus, Peter and John were imprisoned and put in custody.

Unwilling to punish them at this time, the Council threatened them and set them free [see ACTS 4:1-22].