Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

We are now two days into 2022.

The analysis and discussion of 2021 will be as it is every year.

Pundits and talking heads will tell us what the top stories were, what the year meant, where we should be going this year based on last year.

Just as an example, the top news stories for each month in 2021 according to CBS news were:

January - President Biden’s inauguration and the protest at the Capitol

February - Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord

March - The Suez Canal was blocked.

April - Derek Chauvin found guilty.

May - Space X successfully sent a man into space and safely brought him home.

June - The Florida condo collapse.

July - The delayed Summer Olympics.

August - The withdrawal from Afghanistan.

September - Passage of the Texas Heartbeat Act.

October - The WHO approves the first malaria vaccine.

November - The Atlanta Braves win the World Series.

December - Massive tornado outbreak in the Midwest and the approval of two pills to fight COVID.

Whereas Christianity Today’s top 20 stories for 2021 were:

The Ravi Zacharias scandal.

Carman, the singer and showman, died.

Mars Hill former pastor Mark Driscoll continues his old ways.

The 50 countries where it is most dangerous to follow Jesus.

Beth Moore leaves the SBC.

Three bioethical questions about the COVID vaccinations.

A Washington DC mega-church hit with an attempted takeover and lawsuit.

Why I voted for the atheist president of Harvard’s Chaplain group.

Bethlehem Baptist leaders clash over ‘coddling’ and ‘cancel culture’.

How could all the prophets be wrong about Trump?

We worship with the Magi, not MAGA

Canadian pastor jailed over COVID-19 violations was released

Failed Trump prophecies offer a lesson in humility

Charles Stanley: not selling CBD

What is Christian nationalism?

What Christian aid workers want you to know about Afghanistan

How Josh Duggar shifted homeschooler’s sense of security

Francis Chan returns from Hong Kong after visa rejected

The splintering of the Evangelical soul

The Christian peacemaker who left a trail of trauma

You can go online or turn on the TV and find all kinds of different reviews of 2021.

Depending on your political leanings, your religious affiliation, secular affiliations, business, news shows, subscriptions, etc. you can find support for your overall view of 2021, both positive and negative.

It won’t be any surprise that all of these different views of the year have varying opinions of what was positive and what was negative.

Quite often one group will cite an event as positive while another group will consider the same event negative.

Our personal lives are no different.

While the events of our lives may not make the national or world news we will look back and take stock of the positive and negatives happenings throughout the year.

And we will have differing ideas of what was positive and what was negative.

Our plans for this year are more than likely based on what happened last year and how we perceived those events affected us.

Yet, while we go through these exercises, discuss and dissect them with others, maybe even get into heated arguments about them, I think we all tend to lose sight of what is most important.

Background

Our passage starts with a well-known autobiography.

Philippians 3:5-6 “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

In the context of the letter to the Philippians this section is warning those believers against the teaching of the Judaizers who were teaching that to be a true Christian you first had to follow the Law of Moses.

Paul, and the other apostles, fought against this teaching fiercely.

As a means of showing his credentials Paul states that as far as the Law was concerned he was unsurpassed in his knowledge and action.

If ever there was a Jew’s Jew it was Paul.

He not only scrupulously studied the law and followed it’s commands he relentlessly persecuted the perceived heretics - Christians.

And yet, once he met Christ, he considered everything he was prior to be nothing.

It wasn’t worth saving but only worth throwing on the garbage heap.

It was Paul’s way of saying Christ is everything and nothing we have or do or are is anything outside of Christ.

Philippians 3:7-11 “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Then Paul goes on to tell us that he, and we, have not yet attained the full promise of God.

We live in what theologians call the “already but not yet.”

I have heard it said this way - “We were saved from sin’s penalty, we are being saved from sin’s power, we will be saved from sin’s presence.”

Philippians 3:12-14 “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.

But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

This is where I think many of us get tripped up.

Paul tells us to “…forget what lies behind...” Is he telling us to totally forget the past?

That the past has no use or meaning in our life?

Are we only to live for today?

No, what Paul is telling us is that we need to change our perspective on the past.

Our point of view can no longer be that the past defines our present and future.

Quite the opposite - our future should define our present and change our view of the past.

The Bible Exposition Commentary states it like this, “We cannot change the past, but we can change the meaning of the past.”

Forgetting What is Behind

So let’s talk about our view of the past.

The Bible teaches that there are two main ways to remember the past.

One way leads to blessing, the other to destruction.

How often we choose unwisely.

The remembrance that leads to destruction is the path of nostalgia.

Nostalgia is an interesting word.

It is a compound of two Greek words algos - pain, grief, distress and nostos - homecoming.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary nostalgia is 1 : the state of being homesick : homesickness or 2 : a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition

In the 1700s and 1800s it was considered a disease.

We look to the past and remember some golden time when nothing was as bad as it is now and long to return to that time.

This is how the Israelites acted in the wilderness when life got impossibly difficult.

Did you catch that?

The fish cost NOTHING.

Nothing but their freedom, their baby sons, their ability to worship the Lord Almighty, their lives.

But, the fish was free!

The problem with this type of nostalgia is that it denies the power of God to work in our lives now and in the future.

It says that no matter how good the future promises are there is a past that is more secure and happier.

It is a form of idolatry that says we know when we have it good and that what God promises is meaningless.

It is looking to the past with rose colored glasses while declaring the present and future to be totally bleak and irredeemable.

This is the world of the Judaizers that Paul was fighting - the world where the past, and only the past, defines the present and the future.

The second way of remembering the past is to remember how God has worked in the past and how that makes his promises for the future sure and unchangeable.

The same Israelites that wanted free fish and slavery were the ones that also said in Psalm 143:5 “I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands.”

And Psalm 42:1-5

We are not that different.