Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good Morning, how are you doing today the very first Sunday of 2020?

I remember some years when many ministries, organizations even the Church I was serving at that time started setting long terms goals with this year in mind.

It was a very catchy thing to lay out your goals with this label of “Vision 2020”.

This is vision for where we want to be by 2020…and here we are.

I don’t know if you had a “Vision 2020” plan or if you even are one of those people who do planning like this, but the arrival of a new decade often brings the planners among us into gear.

We think back over some period of time to wonder if we are where we thought we would be way back when.

Have you ever put yourself through that?

Have you ever put yourself through that?

Many of us have, I am sure.

I bet you a

Many of us have, I am sure, and for some of us life has taken us right along that path that we expected…but for others of us we find ourselves in a place today that we never expected to be.

But just because it wasn’t expected doesn’t mean it isn’t good, right?

As we look back we could have wanted all the wrong things for ourselves and over time those things that we thought were going to remain so important faded away and new things rose up in our lives.. Things that have become so much better than we ever could have imagined back then.

So along the way we switched our major, or went back to school, or interviewed for a new job, or moved to a new city and things are actually better than they would have been if we had followed our “Vision 2020”.

that’s possible…

but it is just as possible that looking back on past plans is a very hard thing.

Life has unfolded in some tragic and difficult ways.

Ways that have hurt us and even left us with this feeling of being stuck…stuck on this new path that doesn’t feel like it fits and we are desperate to see some hope that something will bring us in a new direction soon.

Or…maybe looking back on past plans is a very hard thing.

Life has unfolded in some ways that have left us feeling stuck…stuck on a path that doesn’t feel like it fits and we are desperate to see some hope that things will turn around very soon.

Either way, for the better or for the stuck, there are times in our life when we are drawn to look back and ask ourselves the question: How did we get here?

How did we get here?

I don’t know if you had a “Vision 2020” plan or anything, but the arrival of a new year often does bring us to asking questions along those lines.

What are our goals in life?

What have be been aiming for?

new year typically does get seeing 2020 - looking forward to “vision 2020” and what did you plan to see? Was it like it is now?

If it isn’t why not?

Have you ever taken some time to look back to see how you go where you are - good or bad?

What have be been aiming for?

Maybe you had a ten year plan at one point, how is that going?

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself questions like these.

new year typically does get seeing 2020 - looking forward to “vision 2020” and what did you plan to see? Was it like it is now?

If it isn’t why not?

Have you ever taken some time to look back to see how you go where you are - good or bad?

Tension

I think that God has wired us to ask that question.

I think He wants us to ask this question.

I think that it is a question that He has placed in the hearts of mankind since the beginning of time.

How did we get to the place that we are?

What circumstances led up to this?

How did we get here?

in order to are we ask in order to discover how to sustain the good direction that we have come from, if we don’t like where we are then we ask more of a place of desperation, hoping that this is not all there is.

Hoping that there is more to our story than what we are currently seeing.

It is very helpful line of questioning, because If we like where we are, then we ask the questions in hopes to discover how to keep moving in the same direction.

If we don’t like where we are then we ask the question in hopes of making changes so that we don’t continue down the same path that got us here in the first place.

This morning we are returning to our Gospel Project series and we are going to pick up right where we left off in 1 Kings, but before we do I feel like we need to to take some time to re-introduce these Old Testament books that we are going through.

You see the series of books we are in right now, including Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings were first written to a people who were asking themselves this same key question:

How Did We Get Here?

So open up your Bibles with me to , p. 299 in the Bible in the chairs.

I promise we will eventually get here to chapter 17, but we are going to walk up through some earlier verses in order to get some context to where we are now in the history of God’s people.

So lets pray together and then we will dive back into the Gospel Project together.

Truth

Sometimes we mistakenly read the Bible as if it a story that are unfolding in front of us, but it is really a record of things that have unfolded behind us.

It something called “historical narrative” which means that the stories it contains have happened in the past.

I know... that is not news that draws you to the edge of your seat.

We all know the Bible is an old book about things that happened long ago…but it was not as long ago for the first people who read it.

And that is who the authors first wrote it for.

Sometimes we mistakenly read the Bible as if it a story that are unfolding in front of us, but it is really a book that has unfolded behind and way before us.

It something called “historical narrative” which means that it is stories that have happened in the past.

I know... that is not news that draws you to the edge of your seat.

We all know the Bible is an old book about things that happened long ago…but it was not as long ago for the first people who read it.

And that is who the author first wrote it for.

We are not certain on who all contributed to these books, but we can deduce from the settings described in 1 Kings that the author, or more likely compiler, of the book lived in the time period when God’s people were living in exile.

They were “aliens and strangers” in a foreign land.

This is sometime around 550 to 600 BC.

So the first audience head these stories after the Temple and all Jerusalem had been destroyed.

After the Kings and all their people had been completely conquered and carried off into exile.

At the point that the first audience was hearing these stories, Israel was not just a divided Kingdom, it wasn’t a destroyed one.

At best, the world remembered it as a small hiccup in the Babylonian quest for World domination.

Having this background information can paint new colors into the pictures of these stories.

We read these stories as ancient history, but the first audience had already heard parts of these stories from their grandparents and great-grandparents.

We read these stories through lens of “a long time in a far away land”, so we have little to offer from our personal experience that can argue with them.

But this was not the case for the Children of Israel in exile:

This Do you see how this background information paints new colors into the pictures of these stories.

We read these stories as ancient history, but the first audience had already heard parts of these stories from their grandparents and great-grandparents.

We read these stories through lens of “a long time in a far away land”, so we have little to offer from our experience that would argue with their truthfulness.

But this was not the case for the Children of Israel in exile:

books then history books seen more like fairythat God’s people first read of the stories of 1 Kings.

It was here that they sat.

Defeated.

Isolated.

Feeling like they were no longer a part of anything significant.

The stories that their grandparents and great grandparents told them seemed almost like fairy tales.

Something about their mighty warrior King David and this amazing city called Jerusalem where they could go and worship the God of their people…and He would meet them there.

That’s a nice story Grandpa, but if all of that is true then How Did We Get Here?

In the Hebrew Bible these books are from a section of their Scriptures called “The Former Prophets”.

These were written and collected by many different prophets over these years and then given to the God’s people when they were inAnd you are like “duh, pastor, the Bibles an old book it all happened in the past.”

That is true, but the first readers of these books

So the scenes, characters, events and plots of these books are being given to a audience in the future so that they can learn about the past.

How is that for being clear as mud.

If our Kings were so great, then why are they not ruling over us?

If our nation was so strong then why are in exile?

If our God is the one true God then why are we slaves to the people who serve other gods?

Why isn’t this promise keeping God you speak of still keeping his promises to us?

These are the questions that the prophets of God sought to answer through these books, showing a questioning people how God is still keeping his promises, just as He always has.

He has not forgotten His promises, but His children have...or at least parts of them.

There are two promises God made to His children that stand out in these books.

He promised:

If our God is the only true God then how come we are enslaved to these people and their god Marduk?