Sermon Tone Analysis

The word of the LORD came to me, saying,

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

before you were born I set you apart;

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

I was eight-years-old when an aged evangelist laid his hand on my head and said, “God has shown me that this young man will be a preacher.”

I was certainly a profligate youth with no discernible religious inclination when my grandfather exited this life to meet the reward of a godly life of service to Christ.

On his deathbed, he instructed my grandmother to ensure that I received his Bible and sermon notes.

“Mike will be a preacher,” he prophesied.

These personal items were not conveyed to me until some time after I announced that I was called to a life of service to Christ and His people.

After the fact, it was obvious to me that God had prepared me for that service even before I was conscious of His work.

As I developed my theology through study of the Word, I became aware that God calls to life, preparing individuals and preparing for their salvation, from eternity past [*2 Timothy 1:8-11*; *Titus 1:1-3*; *1 Peter 1:17-21*].

God calls not only to life in the Son, but He calls to service before an individual is formed.

Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, was informed that before he was formed in the womb God appointed him to his service.

There are significant truths in that knowledge.

We have sown the wind and we shall undoubtedly reap the whirlwind.

Moral issues which were once non-debatable are today accepted as reasonable and even necessary.

Issues of morality are first debated, then tolerated and at last embraced by a population which has forgotten God.

Growing up in the middle of the last century, it would have seemed unthinkable that a day would ever arrive when a great nation would accept murder as a necessary act of mercy.

America was not only the home of the brave and the land of the free, we were assured that this was America the Good.

Canadians, likewise, shared in no small measure a justifiable pride in the righteous standards which the populace held.

Canadians were recognised throughout the world as compassionate and as a peace-loving people.

Today, almost three-quarters of Canadians say they approve of doctor-assisted suicide if the “patient” is near death.

In cases where the patient is removed from immediate danger of dying, an amazing fifty-four percent of our fellow Canadians consider that the issue of doctor-assisted suicide is both permissible and justifiable.

We can only wonder whether self-inflicted suicide would receive a similar overwhelming vote of confidence.

Furthermore, it may only be a matter of time until the populace approves of state-sanctioned murder of those who “forgot” to make arrangements for their demise before they began to inconvenience the government with their welfare.

There have always been strident voices crying out against biblical morality, and those voices have in no small measure prevailed in our world today.

Robert Latimer will be required to spend a minimum of ten years in jail for the convenience killing of Tracy, his disabled daughter.

The high court ruled solely on judicial grounds (as it should have) though virtually pleading to invoke the royal prerogative of mercy by the government.

When the United States Supreme Court ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to slaughter her own child in Roe verses Wade on January 22, 1973, multiplied voices were raised warning of the consequences of such action.

Nevertheless, in 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States of America sent a message to society that if a life is inconvenient you can just get rid of it.

Twenty-seven years later, it shouldn’t surprise the public when people disrespect life and don’t take it seriously.

You cannot kill the unborn and then expect the lessons of that callousness and that cruelty will not have a corrupting influence on the rest of society.

Whenever respect for life is depreciated at one point, it must of necessity depreciate respect for all life.

Whenever continuation of a life is contingent upon whether or not another individual wishes to maintain than life, it must of necessity ensure that every life is susceptible to continuation at the sufferance of another.

If a child *in utero* is left unprotected because of the inconvenience that child poses, we should not be surprised when arguments are advanced to dispose of individuals who have become inconvenient such as was the perceived case for both Sue Rodriguez and Tracy Latimer.

At 7:40 o’clock p.m. this morning, January 21, 2001, the United States had sanctioned the murder of an estimated 8,925,187 unborn infants since Mother’s Day 1995.

Had a monster, parading under the guise of compassion, murdered almost nine million citizens of any nation within a five year period, there would be an international outcry unprecedented in the history of the world.

Since January 23, 1973, an estimated 40,538,400 infants have been slaughtered through abortion.

Canada kills its unborn at a similar rate, though it has only one-tenth the population of the United States.

When the Supreme Court of the United States sanctioned the slaughter of the unborn, Christian voices warned that a holocaust would be unleashed upon the land—a holocaust which would not cease until it had despoiled the whole of the nation.

Those brave Christian voices warned that if we ceased to respect life in the womb, it would be only a matter of time until we ceased to respect the elderly, the ill, the incapacitated.

Tragically, that day of the slippery slope of depreciation of all life is far advanced.

It is mind-boggling that many fail to recognise the deep-seated reasons behind young men visiting neo-Nazi Internet sites, building bombs and dressing in repugnant styles.

We are dealing with something far beyond anger management.

We’re dealing with serious corruption of the human soul.

The question is not why it happened, but why it didn’t occur 30 years ago, since there have always been unhappy teenagers.

Among the changing factors, take note:

 

·         Disintegrating families.

Half of the children born in Canada will experience broken homes.

Even when both parents are present, they pay too little attention.

It is reported that the average child spends six minutes a day talking to their elders.

·         A wave of “cultural pollution,” from video games to movies to television.

Many radio stations air disgusting music and other material, and even diligent parents are often powerless to shield their children from it.

·         Increased birth rates among single mothers.

It’s amazing how far a society can fall in 28 years.

This nation has become so wealthy that nearly every family has a microwave oven, cell phone, designer sneakers and a two-car garage.

But that which children need to be happy—the love of two, committed, married parents, a stable home and reliable rules of conduct—have been denied them.

Reminders appear nearly every day.

For example, 40 percent of the students at Harvard’s business school admitted they would cheat their employer if they knew they wouldn’t get caught.

You will no doubt recall a pair of well-publicised cases in which teens gave birth and threw the child in the trash, one before dancing with the child’s father at her high school prom.

Where did nice, seemingly normal, ordinary, middle-class American kids get the idea that you can dispose of a child like so much trash?

From the Supreme Court, the former president, Planned Parenthood and the entire pro-abortion movement.

When Roe vs. Wade was announced, ethicists, theologians and legal experts warned this was the first step on a slippery slope that would lead to dispensing with all inconvenient lives.

Because it ignored those voices, society is reaping a harvest of assisted suicide.

We should be appalled that a killer like Jack Kevorkian can paint himself as compassionate.

Investigation of his 130 victims showed otherwise.

The majority suffered from nothing more severe than depression and~/or fatigue.

Assisted suicide is seen as great autonomy of the individual—your life is your property to do with as you please.

That’s precisely the argument advanced by those wishing to kill the unborn which says that the foetus is the property of the mother, to do with as she pleases.

People who are dying, who are sick, need our compassion and our help.

They don’t need a shove toward the grave.

As Christians, we are responsible to serve as the moral conscience for society.

We accomplish this task, not through noisy marches or public demonstrations, but through knowing the mind and the will of God, through forming convictions, and through living out those convictions.

When Christians again honour God as Creator, obeying Him in all that He has commanded, we will once more make an impact in our nation.

Until we obey in first things, we shall continue to be seen as powerless in society.

The salt will have lost its savour and the light of godly witness will have been extinguished.

Our nation has lost its moral compass—it no longer knows how to define life.

Heeding the most strident and the most demanding voices of society, it staggers ever further into the morass of a moral wasteland.

Our society has forgotten that all life is a precious gift from the Creator as it debates whether some individuals are less human than others.

Because society has rejected the mind of the Creator, it can no longer tell when life begins.

Even up to the hour of delivery, infants have no protection as we now practise partial-birth abortions.

If we will hope to be the moral conscience for our own community, much less for the nation, we must know what life is.

We must know when life begins.

We must form convictions and we must live as though those convictions direct our lives.

We must not permit ourselves to continue to live as does the world, but instead we must become men and women of courage.

We must cease debating that which is undebatable, and in compassion extend ourselves to a confused and hurting world.

To begin the process of forming convictions, I invite you to consider the call of Jeremiah to Divine service.

God is Sovereign.

Jeremiah addressed God as the Sovereign Lord—Ah, Sovereign Lord [h~/ihyÒ yn:doa}]!

The thought conveyed in this exclamation is that Yahweh is Master of all.

Especially does the prophet acknowledge that God is supreme over life and service, issues which I shall shortly address.

What is important to first fix in our minds is that God is sovereign.

Though the world may be unwilling to acknowledge God as sovereign, Christians should be quick to confess that God is sovereign.

When we say that God is sovereign, what do we mean?

Nebuchadnezzar, the great king of Babylon, had a dream in which in which God foretold that he would suffer from a form of lycanthropy.

In fact, he would be afflicted with boanthropy—he would think he was a cow.

As the dream was drawing to a conclusion, the messengers of God stated the reason for this affliction.

It was so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men [*Daniel 4:17*].

Daniel, interpreting the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, says that God was doing as He willed until [the king] /acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes/ [*Daniel 4:25*].

To acknowledge that God is sovereign is to admit that He is able to act as He wills and that no one can question Him.