Sermon Tone Analysis

Christ said, “I came to this world to set a fire, and oh how I wish it were already kindled!”

(Luke 12:49)

I don’t know about you, but I want to see that fire kindled too!!!

I want to see that fire ignited… That fire that drives us to stand in the gap for our world!

We will see that fire kindled when we put five things in place in our lives.

— When we DO five things…

We talked about the first one last week.

Clean the “Junk” out of our Lives.

— Nothing will happen in our lives… in our homes… in our community… or in this church… until we let go of our sin and…

2. Center our Lives on Scripture.

If you look at that whole passage… Everything they did was in accordance with the Word of God… given through Moses… in how the ministry of the Tabernacle was to take place…

Hezekiah recentered… refocused the Israelites on scripture...

Scripture… the Law of Moses… was the center of the Israelites worship… It was the center of the Temple worship… It’s meant to be the center of the Church’s life… the Christian life… your and my life… because… without it we die!

The Word of God is life!

It is the life of the Church…

It is the life of this world…

And It is the life of God’s Children…

Think about it…

Christ is the “life of the church”… right?

(None of us deny that… But… )

There is an issue in the church today…

(There is a movement against it....)

The largest time-slot we give to anything in the worship service is to the one who stands here… and opens the Bible…

Why is that?!?

Believe it or not… there are a lot of people… even pastors… who have told me …

— to much scripture…

— sermons are to long…

— If you preach more than 20 minutes you are not considering your audience… and you are not a good editor of your sermons....

It seems that people today want short devotions… not scripture-filled preaching… (expound)

— They say we need to preach less in order to reach people… That when we preach to long, we lose people… Yet, those same people who talk about preaches being to “long winded” will spend hours watching football… listening to “how to” videos on topics of interest… or even listening to those “rockstar” preachers…

I disagree with them every time!!!

Do you want to know why?

— When pastors do that… they end up talking about the same 7-8 things continually…

— You don’t need to hear my 7-8 shticks… You need to hear from God!

God knows what you need to know… He knows what you need to hear… and it’s in here…

— I better serve you by walking you through it… by encouraging you to consider it… by challenging you to dig deeper into it… and by preaching it in a way that HOPEFULLY you will hear…

We need to hear from God… Pastor Tony… not grandma… not uncle Sam…

(prayer)

Why?

Because… the most important thing we need in worship is to be reminded of the promises of God!

— We find those promises in scripture…

Have you ever heard a worship leader get up and say: “How you guys feeling today?

You feel good?

Great!

Let’s praise the Lord!”

I really hate when they do that…

Because… We don’t always feel good…

Sometimes we feel spiritually cold… We feel sinful… We come to church, but we are still thinking about the fight we had with our spouse… that guy who cut us off in traffic on the way here… the issues with our kids… our bosses… our co-workers…

Sometimes… we just don’t “feel” good…

But worship isn’t about that…

It’s not about “feeling good”…

Worship is a rhythm of revelation and response.

We don’t start with our feelings… We start with the promises… and beauty… of God… and our worship flows out of that…

Worship is a response to the God of the Universe… to who He is… and His Love for us!

When our worship is based on who God is… what He has done… and how much He loves us… then our response is natural…

When you’ve seen the God of the universe… revealed in Scripture… you cannot help but respond.

When the Israelites looked again at the God revealed in scripture… When they saw… once again… who He IS… they worshipped with Joy and Gladness!

Joy and Gladness… because of what God has done for us… and how much He loves us… should characterize our worship!

Let me tell you…

No angel in heaven… around the throne… seeing God… has their hands in their pockets, wondering what time we’re getting out!

Our attitude toward scripture… toward God’s Word… toward His Love and Grace… effects our worship… And our prayer!

Because… Scripture reveals the Characteristics of the God we serve!

A lack of FOCUS on Scripture… results in a lack of POWER in our prayers!

Because…

Scripture teaches us how to pray!

When the disciples asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Jesus gave them this model:

You do realize that this is a model of prayer, not a prayer to recite?

It teaches us how to pray…

Effective prayer is … figuring out what God wants and asking Him for it.

James 5:16 (NRSV)

16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

Why?

Because… It seeks God’s heart and aligns itself to it!

That’s what the Lord’s prayer does… It teaches us to seek God’s will… and then ask for it!

Think about it:

“Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

— You are God… you are name is holy… Be my God.

“Your kingdom come, Your will be done...” — Teach us what you want… Let it be so in our lives.

“Give us this day our daily bread” — provide for us… tell us your desire for us… Your provision is what we need… Reveal Your Word to us… (“Man does not live on bread alone...” — Mt 4:4)

“Forgive us our debts… “ — Forgive us and help us to forgive as you forgave!

Let Your Will be done through us!

“And do not bring us to a time of trial, but… “ — Save us… be our savior… provide for us… take care of us… protect us…

Every single piece of the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to find out what God wants and to pray for that in our lives…

In 2 Sam 7, David offers to build God a house… God, through the Prophet Nathan, tells him, “Who are you to build me a Temple?”

Nathan goes on to tell David that God will bless and build his house… Look at what David says in verse 27:

The Hebrew literally says that David “found the heart to pray.”

“Prayers that start in heaven are heard by heaven.”

— J.D. Grear

Scripture is the life of the Church…

Remove it from the center of the Church and we die!

Remove scripture from the center of your life… your marriage… your family… your job… and it will die!

God’s Word is our life blood… We need to cling to it… to savor it… to plumb its depths… to saturate ourselves so completely that everything… that everything that comes out of our hearts and minds is scripture!

This is why Joshua told the Israelites:

3. Re-center Our Lives on the Gospel.

God’s Word… God’s Purpose in this world… Christ’s work are meant to be the central foundation upon which our lives are built!!!

2 Chronicles 30 gives a lengthy description of Hezekiah re-instituting the Passover Feast.

The Passover feast commemorated the night that God told the Israelites to take the blood of a lamb and put it on their doorposts, saying: “When I see the blood on the door, I will “passover” you and you will not suffer the plague of the firstborn.”

This is what the Sedar meal is…