Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Good Morning!

I’m Pastor Wayne and I’d like to welcome you all to the gathering of Ephesus Baptist Church.

It’s nice to see so your smiling faces.

If you are visiting with us this morning, please know that you are surrounded by some pretty amazing people.

Ephesus is an active faith community on a mission with Jesus.

We don’t all share the same story; in fact, we come from many different paths.

But here, we are one people giving our all to love God, love others, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples in our generation.

We have a connect card in the pew in front of you.

I invite you to take one and fill it out!

Please be sure to include your name, email, and address.

If you have prayer needs, you can let us know about those as well.

I promise our prayer team will lift you up soon.

You can place those cards in the offering plate when it comes around.

Scripture Memory

Call on Abigail to recite the verse

Opening Scripture Reading

Introduction

Good Morning,

We are in the middle of a sermon series where we are looking specifically at five commitments that we should make as believers.

Five commitments that have the power to take our spiritual lives to the next level by helping us to grow in our faith.

In the first message we discussed how Scripture calls us to be commited to concealing God’s Word in Our Hearts.

Through Ps. 119, we saw the kind of committed devotion we are to have toward the Word of God.

Last week, we discussed how we are called to be committed to celebrate God’s Son.

We learned that genuine worship at the feet of Jesus will far outweigh a lifetime of religious “busy work.”

We are to celebrate Jesus everyday in every way!

Today, we are going to deal with a subject that may make some feel a little uncomfortable.

We are going to be looking at another commitment we are to make according to Scripture.

We are called to be committed to connect to God’s people!

If you are visiting with us, I want you to know that you are always welcome here.

At the same time, today’s text just begs for me as pastor to speak specifically to the brothers and sisters who make up Ephesus Baptist Church, to show us what it means to be a gospel community.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

At the same time, if you are a Christian and a member of another church, and you for whatever reason were not able to worship with the church of which you’re a part of today, then I hope you will be encouraged and reminded of what it means to be a member, a part, of that local church.

If you’re a Christian and you are not a member of Ephesus or another church, I pray that you will be convicted today of the importance of the body of Christ, and that you will be challenged to commit your life to a gospel community, a local church, whether it is here with us, or another one in the area, or wherever you might live.

And if you are not a Christian, then I hope you will see the love of Christ today.

Jesus has designed His church to be an expression of His love.

And oftentimes, unfortunately, non-Christians don’t always look at the church and see love, but I hope you will see that today, that you might receive His love, and become a part of His church.

Today, we are talking about connecting to God’s People, our primary text will be Hebrews 10:23-25, but we will look at a few related verses along the way.

Join me as we look at what God’s wonderful Word has to say about Connecting to God’s People.

Why do we need to be connected with other people?

Is it okay for me to live life as a hermit?

Do I really need anyone in my life?

Can’t I prevent myself from hurt by not opening up my life to others?

The Bible would say no!

Because God designed us to be relational.

Facebook has made a lot of money off of this biblical truth because they realized that even when we try to disconnect from the world, we still desire relationships, we need relationships to thrive in life.

God said in Gen 2:18

We literally need each other because God designed us to be relational beings!

But also

Because we simply can’t grow spiritually mature without being connected to God’s people.

In Colossians 2, Paul encourages the believers to walk in Christ and warns them to not be deceived by the vain philosophies of worldliness around them.

He said the one who thinks he has arrived on his own at a view of the world opposite of a biblical world view is one who doesn’t hold on to Christ, the head of the Church!

The relationship we have to God’s Church, to God’s people, determines how close we are to the one who causes us to grow spiritually healthy.

So, today I want to share with you three reasons we should seek to connect to God’s people.

Three Reasons Why We Should Seek to Connect to God’s People

1.

The Bible teaches that the Church is God’s family.

We belong to each other.

This is us!

The “Let us” in this verse and the next one is referring to the body of Christ, the people of God, the Church.

God’s Church is where Christ dwells with His family.

Wherever a man’s family is, that is his home.

Wherever a man’s mother and sister and brother dwell, that is his home.

When we gather here at Ephesus as His disciples, we must be Christ’s home.

We were adopted into God’s family by the work of Christ on the Cross!

We were purchased by Christ’s own blood, therefore we are His!

As a pastor, I am called to be on guard for and to shepherd the flock which is also called the church of God.

So when we read “Let us” in Hebrews 10, it is speaking of the whole family of God to which those of us in the church belong!

In the gospel, we are united.

God commands us to hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering.

We are to hold fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are to hold fast to the teachings that flow out of that beautiful Gospel.

Why?

Because He who promised all these things is faithful!

We are God’s family and we belong to each other.

2. As God’s family, the Bible commands us to strengthen one another.

Our response to the Gospel provides power to love others and to strengthen our collective endurance in the Christian life.

The original audience of this book, were a persecuted people who were struggling to keep it all together.

They were weak when they should have been strong.

God is speaking into this people to encourage them to press on and find strength in the Gospel together.

We are to lay hold of Christ together and never let go, not even in the slightest.

No persecution, real or feared, was to lessen the ardor of these believers for Christ.

As Christians we have a corporate responsibility to strengthen each other.

We must concentrate on the needs of others and not only on our individual needs.

We can stir up people toward either good or bad works.

Other words that can be used to render the idea of “stir up” are “stimulation,” “incitement,” “spur” and “provoke.”

I like the word provocation here, because Hebrews calls us to provoke others to be a practical expression of love and an attractive display of unselfish deeds.

A Christian is his “brother’s keeper.”

We are responsible to one another for what we can do for one another.

Consider one another get to know one another, be interested in one another, be ready to serve one another, but especially to be interested in the spiritual well-being and the progress of spiritual growth of those who are united to us in the Christian fellowship.

Spiritual gifts, virtues, experiences, are never to be thought of as personal possessions: they are for the mutual edification of the body.

Are you using your gifts to strengthen your brothers and sisters in Christ?

3. The Bible encourages us to embrace Christ’s family as our own.

Loving one another will not just happen.

It needs to be worked at, even provoked, in the same way as good works.

It stands to reason that no provocation to love is possible unless suitable opportunities occur for the stirring up process to take effect.

The words, not neglecting to meet together, presumably refer to worship meetings, although this is not stated.

God may have left this ambiguous in order to allow for other gatherings of a more informal kind, like various small group ministries and ministry teams.

Some had evidently been neglecting to meet with their Christian brothers and this is seen as a serious flaw.

Christian assemblies are intended to have a positive and helpful outcome, i.e. encouraging one another.

Do you realize the immeasurable influence for good that can be fostered by the powerful example of right-minded people moving in the same direction together.