Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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Alright, we’re in for a ride today!
Let’s start off with honesty time!
Who has ever made a mistake?
We all mess things up.
Are you the type of person that even with the simplest of tasks you somehow find a way to mess it up?
Like these pictures…
You Had One Job Pictures (included in the folder)
As Christians, we basically have one job.
Jesus said, “Follow me.”
That’s our one job: to follow Jesus.
So if he doesn’t want us to do something, we don’t do it.
If he wants to do something, we do it.
We put others first, we love, we serve, we tell our friends about the Gospel, we forgive, we do what Jesus did.
The problems in life comes when we don’t do our job.
And the difference between those funny pictures and messing up while following Christ is that we don’t just make mistakes… we sin.
Jesus didn’t die for “mistakers,” he died for sinners.
That’s you and me.
All of us have a sin problem.
Thank God for the Gospel, which changes everything for us.
James chapter 4, in ten short verses, gives us a picture of life without Christ, the Gospel of grace that Christ offers, and how we go about receiving it.
We are going to break it down into three sections so let’s begin by reading James 4:1-4.
Sin that Ensnares
This doesn’t sound good, does it?
But this is exactly what sin does.
It ensnares, destroys and kills whatever it touches.
Wherever there is sin, there are consequences.
God and the devil are waging war over your soul and the battlefield is the temptations you face every day.
James says when we choose sin over God, it ensnares us and ends up in fighting, jealousy, murder, pride, and selfishness.
And ultimately, it ends up making us enemies of God because he can’t be associated with sin.
Men who trap animals in Africa for zoos in America say that one of the hardest animals to catch is the ring-tailed monkey.
For the Zulus of that continent, however, it's simple.
They've been catching this agile little animal with ease for years.
The method the Zulus use is based on knowledge of the animal.
Their trap is nothing more than a melon growing on a vine.
The seeds of this melon are a favorite of the monkey.
Knowing this, the Zulus simply cut a hole in the melon, just large enough for the monkey to insert his hand to reach the seeds inside.
The monkey will stick his hand in, grab as many seeds as he can, then start to withdraw it.
This he cannot do.
His fist is now larger than the hole.
The monkey will pull and tug, screech and fight the melon for hours.
But he can't get free of the trap unless he gives up the seeds, which he refuses to do.
Meanwhile, the Zulus sneak up and nab him.
See, this is what Satan does to us.
He knows us so well and knows what we like and what temptations we can’t say “no” to.
So he’ll dangle it out there and let us grab hold of it, but sin will never fulfill you.
It will always ensnare you.
It makes big promises but they are always empty.
It’s what Satan does best.
Proverbs 5:22 (NIV) says,
James 1:14-15 (NLT) says,
Pass out Popsicle sticks
So what sin really has a grip on you?
What does Satan tempt you with the most?
You know what you struggle with; maybe it’s two or three things.
Whatever it is, I want you to take your Popsicle stick and write those sins down on it.
Then hold it in your hand for the rest of the service.
At the end we’ll do something else with it, so just hang on to it for now.
The Devil came to steal, kill, and destroy, and that’s what that sin will do in your life.
That’s what sin does.
No one has ever sinned and truly come out better in the end.
When you choose to sin you choose to suffer— you will always lose.
You might say, “But I’ve been holding on too long already.
It’s no longer I who has the grip but the sin has a grip on me.
I can’t stop.
How can God forgive me?
How could he love me with all this sin in my life?
You don’t know how bad it is.”
You’re right, I don’t know what you’ve done, and I don’t know how bad it is.
But I do know this: no matter how messy your life is, God is greater than your sin.
He is stronger.
James has some news for us.
Let’s read James 4:4-6 (NLT).
Grace that Restores
Listen, God made us so that we would live in an intimate relationship with him.
An intimate relationship is one that can’t be divided.
So James is saying if you are friends with the world, and you just go along with what everyone else in the world is doing, regardless of what God says, then you’re not friends with God.
If you’re a Christian, verse 5 tells us God has put his spirit inside of us so that we can live in his presence and under his guidance every day.
Yet, we still turn our back on him.
So how is God able to keep reaching out for us, when we clearly don’t deserve it?
Verse 6 tells us: he gives more and more grace.
Grace is receiving something we don’t deserve for something we could never do on our own.
If you are able to humble yourself and place yourself under God’s authority by become a follower of Jesus, then God will give you the grace that you desperately need.
Grace… it is God giving us what we don’t deserve: life.
And it’s also God not giving us what we do deserve: death.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NLT), Paul writes:
In Roman 6:14 (NLT), Paul writes:
And the apostle John writes in John 1:16 (NLT):
Let me tell you the story I heard about a minister and his family.
He had three sons, and one day, they were just disobeying him left and right.
It culminated in a moment when he asked his middle son to help pick up something, and his son looked at him and said NO! For the dad, this was the last straw.
So he told his boy to come out to the porch swing because he was going to talk to him and give him a spanking.
Out on the porch he explained to his son why what he did was wrong and asked him if he understood.
He son said “yes.”
So he had him lean over his leg and told him that he was going to give him his consequence now.
This dad raised his hand and swung it down as hard as he could on his own leg.
His son winched and realized he didn’t get hit. 2 more times the father swung and slapped his own leg.
Finally, his son was like, “Dad, why are you hitting yourself?”
The father said, “Son, we’ve all messed up.
I’ve sinned against my Heavenly Father.
But when the time came for him to give me my punishment, he took it upon himself.
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