Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

AT MANY amusement parks and museums, they have 3-D movies.

When you walk into the theater, you receive a pair of glasses.

If you try to watch the movie without the glasses, you see a distorted picture.

No matter how hard you strain and look and twist to try to make sense of what is happening on the screen, there is still a distortion because of the dimension through which you are looking.

By handing you a pair of glasses when you walk into the theater, they give you the tool you need to see the screen without distortions.

One of the problems many of us have is that we have a distorted view.

We see what we see, but we don’t see all that there is to be seen.

If all you see is the physical, visible scenario, then you are looking at your situation without your glasses.

We need to have a divine frame of reference in order to see what is really going on.

During the Great Awakening, when the Spirit of God revived much of our nation’s early faith, Jonathan Edwards was presiding over a massive prayer meeting.

Eight hundred men prayed with him.

Into that meeting a woman sent a message asking the men to pray for her husband.

The note described a man who in spiritual pride had become unloving, prideful, and difficult.

Edwards read the message in private and then, thinking that perhaps the man described was present, the great preacher made a bold request.

Edwards first read the note to the eight hundred men.

Then he asked if the man who had been described would raise his hand, so that the whole assembly could pray for him.

Three hundred men raised their hands.

Each had been convicted by the Spirit of their sin, and now they longed to confess.

The Spirit of God showed them the ugliness of their sin and the beauty of the truth and they began living different, living for a change.

Then after 3 months of aches and pain and some times where I could not even walk after finishing a run my wife said “enough” get to the doctor.

So I went two weeks ago and as the doctor examined my foot, he said, “I think I know what the problem is but you will not be convinced unless I show you on an x-ray.”

When we see as the Holy Spirit sees we will start living for a change.

Ha-Foke-Ba

On Screen-Bible: ;

Now let’s review.

Up until now we’ve talked about the Holy Spirit’s power to bring about amazing life change.

We saw what His portraits in the Hebrew Bible has always done taking people further, faster than they could have dreamed possible.

The Holy Spirit puts in man what by nature, talent, education he cannot achieve.

We saw last week and this week that Yeshua thought and thinks it is better for us to have the Holy Spirit in us now then to have a time machine to go back to Israel with Yeshua.

Why is that?

He is the second advocate in our hearts defending the decision of heaven to you.

Sin does not merely remove you from God’s shalom, into which the Spirit fights to bring you back, but the Holy Spirit advocates the decision of heaven to your heart so much so that it should radically restructure your heart from the inside out.

A radical re-structuring in man as man, defending the new you to the old you so that you can lead a life directly opposite of sin and towards shalom.

The other major advantage that comes out of our passage(s) today is that to be filled with the Holy Spirit really means to have the truth shining.

That when you are filled with the Holy Spirit you begin to see as He sees and that is when you will really start living for a change because you will see everything differently.

You will see more of reality.

Drunkenness contrasts fullness as blindness contrasts sight.

Drunkenness is a contrast to the fullness because alcohol is a depressant.

Alcohol brings into your life joy, warmth, and courage.

It does that by knocking out your ability to see parts of reality.

It wipes you out.

It makes it harder to see those parts of reality and, therefore there’s joy because your inhibitions are gone.

There’s warmth because your inhibitions are gone.

There’s courage because you’re just forgetting the ramifications of you situation.

Drunkenness is a contrast to the fullness because alcohol is a depressant.

Alcohol brings into your life joy, warmth, and courage.

It does that by knocking out your ability to see parts of reality.

It wipes you out.

It makes it harder to see those parts of reality and, therefore there’s joy because your inhibitions are gone.

There’s warmth because your inhibitions are gone.

There’s courage because you’re just forgetting the ramifications of you situation.

Alcohol is a depressant, it knocks out your ability to see reality, and therefore brings about warmth and joy and courage by inhibiting your ability to see reality.

Warmth: I just need it to take the edge off my day and calm me down.

Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

Joy: It is party time and alcohol increases my joy.

Courage: i want to talk about x so I can have a drink first and then.

Alcohol does not really give you warmth, joy, or courage.

10 out of 10 scientists and at least this former abuser of alcohol will tell you: alcohol does not give you more courage, alcohol reduces fear and removes inhibitions by blinding you to reality.

We have all heard the expression, “It is not him - it is the drink talking in him.”

The real problem is that the person who is under the influence of alcohol really thinks to himself “this is the best me, the real me” and “the sober me, is the bad me.”

The Spirit of God shows you more of reality.

It says here that when you are filled with the Holy Spirit it is an ongoing present progression of sight.

This is a present passive participle in Greek “be being filled” with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit’s is to be a fire-hydrant of warmth, joy and courage in the face of reality.

Illustration: How does he do this?

One of my favorite engrafted believers Jonathan Edwards(tein) said it best in his sermon, “Divine and Supernatural Light.”

there is a difference between having an opinion, that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace.

There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness.

Edwards says as wonderful as knowing the facts about honey may be nothing can compare to simply tasting honey.

When I taste honey I have a present experience of honey’s sweetness, it’s texture, it’s density.

Application: Throughout my career in ministry I have seen that most people agree that being filled with the Spirit is better than being drunk on wine; yet, they live like being drunk on wine is better than being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Alcohol is not the only thing that blocks reality:

It’s not him - its the food talking.

It’s not him - its the praises of other people talking.

It’s not him - its the money talking.

It’s not him - its the new....talking

When I was a youth leader, back in the day about 17 years ago, I had this meeting with this Freshman in college at A & M and his mom and dad.

You see, he had managed to fail himself out of all his classes.

He was a good kid.

He was raised in this charismatic congregation where the gifts of the Spirit and immersion of the Spirit was regularly taught and practiced.

He had the gift of speaking in tongues and was raised up under great teaching in the word.

He failed out of A & M not because he was intellectually inferior but because he was always drunk and living the “high life.”

As I talked to him, I brought up this passage of Scripture: be not drunk on wine but be filled with the Spirit.

He knew the passage well, he finished the quote for me.

But here is what he basically said to me “How does being filled with Spirit help me get the girl, get more friends or get me in the fraternity?”

There was the problem.

He had what Jonathan Edwards would call a rational judgment about the truth but had not sense of the sweetness of the truth.

What was more stunning is that all of the sudden mom started crying when I surfaced this real problem and starts talking about how every night when Dad has come home from work for the last 20 years he always has two whiskey sour’s on the hour to deal with life.

Maybe the reason you are drunk on whatever X is to you is not because you are really living but rather maybe you are just avoiding reality and maybe you prefer the sweetness of the world and like having all the facts, rational judgments about the Bible but none of its sweetness.

So, when you are filled with the Spirit you should be seeing more of reality not less.

You should be experiencing more than just the rational judgments about religion and the Bible, you should be apprehending the sweetness of the truth and seeing more and more of reality.

How do you know if you are seeing more and more of reality?

That is why we need to turn now to so I can show you what I believer are two marks of a person who is really seeing as the Holy Spirit sees.

You will see the world differently and be convicted and convicting.

He is always throwing the spotlight (convict) on the world’s counter narrative.

He confronts the world current narratives through you and me.

It would be nice to think that the Holy Spirit is going to do all the really “icky” work of exposing people’s sin.

Notice how v. 7 and v. 8 are linked together.

Yeshua says, “I will send Him to you (and) when He comes, He will convict.”