Sermon Tone Analysis

Let’s Play A Game

“Call me Ishmael.”

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

1984 by George Orwell

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

“All children, except one, grow up.”

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

“It was love at first sight.”

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

“Mr.

& Mrs. Dursley of number 4, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created.”

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

“‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Some stories are tragic.

Some are scary.

Some are funny.

Some are perplexing.

Some are intriguing.

Some are exciting.

Some are strange.

Our lives are stories.

Each one begins with an opening line.

Each one continues with a narrative.

Each one has an ending.

What is your story?

I went to the bookshop the other day to get a book on OCD.

I went up to one of the assistants and asked, “Where is your self-help section?”

She replied, “Find it yourself.”

When I did find it, it was a mess and I spent the rest of day organising the books into alphabetical order.

When you walk into a job interview, the interviewer makes up their mind about you in the first 30 seconds.

The rest of the interview is either you confirming what they thought or persuading them they were wrong.

First impressions last a lifetime.

There’s no second chance to make a first impression.

What first impression do you make?

Acts 10:38 (NKJV)

...God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

In John 13, after the Passover feast, Jesus began washing the disciples’ feet.

One by one He washed them.

Jesus turned the simplest and most menial of tasks in a household into a metaphor for how we ought to behave as Christians.

Example Matters

The example we follow and the example we are, matters.

It matters to God and it should matter to me.

In Luke 10:25–37, Jesus taught the parable of the Good Samaritan.

It was an answer to the question, “Who is my neighbour?”

We make much of the Samaritans and their status before the Jews in Jesus’ time, and rightly, Jesus commands the lawyer to, “Go and do likewise” (v.37).

Jesus’ point is very straightforward: if Mr. Nobody can figure out what the right to do is, what about us who have been shown how to do it?

Jesus went about “doing good.”

What is “good”?

The word Luke uses in Acts 10:38 is unique to this passage.

However, the word from which it comes “ergon” is found in every book of the New Testament.

It is prolific in John, Luke, and Acts.

Not surprisingly, it is everywhere when Paul writes.

In Acts 10:38, the meaning is clear: doing something that is good and beneficial to someone else.

In the many other uses of the root word, we discover instruction on what to do.

We’ve considered John 13 when Jesus washed disciples’ feet.

We can take the time to read what Jesus said and did in His ministry upon this earth.

In the various epistles, we discover lists of the do’s and don’ts now that we’re Christians

“Therefore, as you took for yourselves Christ Jesus the Lord, in Him live!”

Paul is making a wonderful point in Colossians.

We have proclaimed Jesus as the Lord of our lives.

In doing so, we have accepted Him, not only into our lives, but to allow Him to live through our lives.

“…in Him—live!”

Translations like the NKJV and the ESV will say, ‘so walk in Him.” Chris will be delighted to hear that the Greek word is that from which we get the English word, “peripatetic” meaning to “walk around.”

It can also refer to the “walk of life.”

That is how it is being used in Colossians 2:6.

More than that, the word is written as a command.

It is emphatic.

It is demanded.

It is to be obeyed.

It is not optional.

Walking is something Paul speaks of regularly.

Sometimes it’s negative, referring to our former lives without Christ, often it is positive.

In Ephesians, Paul uses the term 8 times, and five of them are positive:

Eph 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Eph 4:1 “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called,”

Eph 5:2 “And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.”

Eph 5:8 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light”

Eph 5:15 “See then that you walk circumspectly [carefully], not as fools but as wise,”

Elsewhere he writes,

Col 4:5 “Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time.”

1 Thess 4:12 “that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing.”

However, this is no idle command.

Paul continues:

1 Thess 4:1–2 “Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God; for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.”

The disciples in the first century were taught how to live in Jesus.

In that passage, Paul continues to mention some of the instruction needed.

The challenge though is how we view this “living”.

If we consider it to be a rule book, a to-do list that is marked as completed and we get to move on to something else, then we have thoroughly missed the mark.

This living is, as we discussed a couple of weeks ago when we studied the Fruit of the Spirit, about surrender.

The giving up of self and the lock-step with the Holy Spirit.

Eph 4:30 “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Grieving the Holy Spirit in this context is first and foremost the words that we speak.