Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

Good morning Myrtle Springs Baptist Church, it is an honor to stand before you this morning.

Bro.

Kyle sends his love, as his family is on vacation and away this week.

How many of you have ever felt that little prompting to go talk to someone before?

How many of you have ever felt that little prompting to go talk to someone before?

Most of you know that exact feeling.

You are maybe sitting in the break room and you look over and there’s Johnny sitting alone and you hear.

Go sit with him and talk to him.

Maybe it is while you are in the grocery store and you hear the voice say, encourage that mom because she is working hard with those three kids.

Other times, it is share Jesus with that person.

I could go one with these types of promptings.

However, in many cases, these promptings are often ignored and cast aside.

In other cases, we simply are too busy or engrossed in the things in our own lives to pay any attention to the things around us.

Maybe

One of the biggest culprits to this issue has been cell phone usage.

In fact, a recent study by IDC showed that “79% of the population between 18 and 44 have the phones on them all the time with only 2 hours spent away from it.”

It actually has resulted in what they call text neck.

Upper back and neck pain.

https://www.spine-health.com/blog/modern-spine-ailment-text-neck

One could easily argue that text neck is showing the societal epidemic of not paying attention to their surroundings.

We are engrossed in social media, web browsing, gaming, and texting.

While it sounds ridiculous and even somewhat hilarious that there is such a thing as text neck, it is a real condition according to many experts.

The real unfortunate reality is that this condition demonstrates a more significant spiritual issue.

We as Christ followers are failing to live out our lives in a Christ honoring way because we are engrossed in our cell phones and ignoring the God appointments in our lives.

If you are taking notes this morning, the title of today’s sermon is Life Changing Obedience.

We will be in beginning with verse 26.

Before we get there we need to understand some of what is going on in the lives of the early Christian’s.

Christ has ascended back to heaven.

Pentecost has come and the church is growing.

Difficulty and mistreatment arose in the church and seven men where selected to oversee the wellbeing of the widows.

These seven men are Stephen, who is described as a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, can I just say what a statement about this man, and the others are Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas.

It is not long after that Stephen is brought before the Sanhedrin.

After preaching and rebuking these men, Stephen is stoned to death.

Upon his death great persecution breaks out in Jerusalem and there is a great dispersion that takes place.

The book of Acts follows Philip to Samaria where he goes and preaches Christ to them.

In fact, this is one of the lay people of the early church.

Remember he has just recently been selected as one of the seven.

But through Philip, God begins to do great wonders through and the people of Samaria respond to the call.

Such a movement of God took place that Peter and John were sent to Samaria.

Where they testified and spoke the word of the Lord and began to go back which leads us to our passage this morning.

Those that are able please stand in the honor of reading God’s Word.

Pray: Lord, please give me the words to speak, give us ears to hear, and the boldness to live out the words from your Word.

Father, we desire to see you in our lives better today than yesterday.

We desire to hear your guiding voice in our lives and that we would be sensitive to the prompting of your Spirit.

Father, we need you in our lives and we desire true life change this morning.

In your name we pray, Amen.

The first thing I would like for us to not this morning is that,

1. Faithful obedience leads to God appointed meetings.

(vs 26-29)

(vs 26-27)

Philip is serving the Lord faithfully ministry to a people and the Lord begins to speak.

Philip heres the word of the Lord tell him to get up and go.

Both of these verbs are commands from the Lord.

It is not like the Lord came to him and said, Philip if it is easy or convenient to you will you go to the south to the middle of nowhere?

No! It was a command to Philip.

Which he responded with immediate obedience.

There was absolutely no sense hesitancy in Philips response.

It says he got up and went.

I can imagine a conversation like this if it was many in the church today.

“Lord, I know you want me to go.

I also know that you are supreme and king.

But I really don’t think you want me doing that.

Have you heard me speak?

Sounds familiar right?

Moses said it this way,

Or, instead of making an excuse of physical ability it is mentally related.

Something like, “Lord, I would share but I don’t know how or what to say.”

But tells us

While you might not be facing rulers, the Lord will aide you in your witnessing and it is the Holy Spirit who will move in those situations.

If you know enough to be saved, then you know enough to share the gospel with someone.

Ultimately, the question is will you be faithfully obedient?

How we admire the obedience a dog shows to its master!

Archibald Rutledge wrote that one day he met a man whose dog had just been killed in a forest fire.

Heartbroken, the man explained to Rutledge how it happened.

Because he worked out-of-doors, he often took his dog with him.

That morning, he left the animal in a clearing and gave him a command to stay and watch his lunch bucket while he went into the forest.

His faithful friend understood, for that’s exactly what he did.

Then a fire started in the woods, and soon the blaze spread to the spot where the dog had been left.

But he didn’t move.

He stayed right where he was, in perfect obedience to his master’s word.

With tearful eyes, the dog’s owner said, “I always had to be careful what I told him to do, because I knew he would do it.”

Not only does this passage show us that if we are faithful to obey the Lord we have God appointed meetings, But we also see that

2. God appointed meetings produce evangelistic opportunities.

Fill in text

Look with me at ,

The Lord has brought Philip to the middle of nowhere.

He can look around and it is pretty much desert place except for this chariot and caravan of people.

The Lord tells him to go talk to these people.

It would be pretty obvious that this is not a jewish person.

After all, this man does not have olive skin but ebony.

He is traveling from Jerusalem and it is clear he is an influential man.

I can see Philip seeing it almost dazed thinking “WOW!

Look at that, a person associated with royalty!” Then the Lord says “go and join them.”

Again without hesitance Philip goes up and hears the Words being read aloud.

At this point, many of us would go, should I say something, or should I just mind my own business.

But not Philip he boldly asks do you understand what you are reading?

Let’s be real for just a moment.

If a person is not aware of Jesus or heard of Jesus, then this passage is absolutely impossible to understand.

Jesus is the perfect Lamb sacrifice and willingly without a fight gave up his life through humiliation and death so that we might have salvation, if we will simply admit that we are sinners believe Jesus is the Son of God and confess him as Lord.