Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro: Imagine you went home today and started talking on the phone with a friend who has no familiarity with the Bible or church or Christianity… and they ask you, “What did you do today?”

and you say “I went to church.”

And they say, “Yeah, I’ve heard you say that before… what is ‘church’?”

What would you say?

Some of you might describe the building we come to...

We drive to 902 Winter Hill Rd Strasburg… it’s a brick building… we rent the first floor… there are some great children’s classrooms… a big room where the adults get together… we sit in rows…

Some of you may describe the activities we do:

We get together on Sundays to sing some songs… pray some prayers… hear teaching from the Bible…

You caught up with a few friends...

Some of you may describe how those activities make you feel:

We sang some songs… prayed some prayers… you’re about to hear teaching from the Bible…

You feel included or empowered or encouraged...

Others might describe the relationships that you have… I have this great group of friends… I love my youth group… or my Sunday school class...

If you are like me, you may have fought to stay focused during that time too...

Now I’m up here telling you to open a book and getting ready to talk for what may seem like a REALLY long time depending on how interested you are…

Later you’ll catch up with a few folks… maybe learn a couple things at a class… jump in your car… and go get a bit to eat…

The truth is that the church is not an easy thing to describe…

It doesn’t APPEAR at face value as all that special…

Sometimes it may even seem unnecessary… or at least optional...

If I can make it, it’s nice… if not, it’s of little consequence...

If I’m feeling it, I’ll participate… if not, it’s not going to make much difference for me or anyone else.

And all of those things that I just mentioned have elements of truth to them… but none of them are the whole truth…

And if we reduce the church to any one of those things, it becomes something less than the cosmic reality that it truly is...

Our gospel communities can feel the same way…

And because it is so hard to describe, the church is something that MANY people… including many believers do not understand...

How many of you have ever heard someone say something like, “I can be a Christian and not go to church.”

A little social time… some praying… some discussion about things that I already know… sharing time that makes me feel awkward… and then I go home…

And all of those things that I just mentioned have elements of truth to them… but none of them are the whole truth…

You hear people say things like, “I can be a Christian and not go to church.”

What do you say to that?

Or some people have been legitimately hurt by the church… and so they stay away...

Yet in doing so, they miss out from the primary tool that God wants to use to bring them closer to Christ and to show Christ to the world…

All around the world, people even go to things that they call “church”… they attend week after week after week...

But the gospel is never proclaimed... and the kingdom isn’t advanced… and Jesus is never treasured...

And I don’t really know what to call what they are doing… but it’s not what the Bible calls the church.

So what… REALLY... is the church?

But I want us to see today... is that what happens in those moments when we gather... is a cosmic reality... with eternal purpose and consequence.

What might sometimes feel mundane or inconsequential… is actually our opportunity to participate in THE CENTRAL activity that God is doing in the present age that will change our eternity forever.

It’s so important that we get that because the church THE CENTRAL PLAN of God in the present age...

The church is the work he is accomplishing RIGHT NOW in this part of his story…

I want us to see that this thing that we are part of called the church... is the center of the story God is writing in the present time.

You didn’t just come to a program or to an event or to a show this morning… you came to a people…

You came to a people who really only have one primary thing in common: that Jesus is Savior and Lord over our lives.

If you don’t know Jesus as Savior and Lord, you are witnessing the work that God is doing in changing our lives… and you can become part of that work through faith in him.

If you DO know Jesus as Savior and Lord, than you are a part of something that God wants to use to change YOUR life… and the lives of everyone around you.

This Fall, we’ve been in a series called “God’s Story, My Story,” and our goal for this series is to find our place in God’s unfolding story of salvation through Jesus Christ.

We’ve been recognizing that the individual stories of our lives are all about the much BIGGER story that God is working out across all time and space…

We find our lives when we lose our lives to find them in HIS story...

We started this series all the way back in September with the Creation in Genesis 1... and we worked our way through the Fall of mankind into sin… God’s promise to the patriarchs… through the story of Israel and the many periods of their history…

We then came to Jesus… HE is the fulfillment of the WHOLE story… working redemption and building his kingdom...

And last week we started into the present part of the story… the Spirit was poured out and the good news about Jesus went forward through the witness of his disciples to the ends of the earth…

And the church was built and multiplied.

Last week we talked about “the story of the Spirit” from the book of Acts...

And from a different perspective, we could equally call Acts the story of the church.

The CHURCH is what the Spirit is working in and through in this part of the story.

So what we get in the book of Acts is HOW the church was formed… and then what we get in the rest of the NT are letters… we call them EPISTLES… the truths that those churches were founded upon and the ways they needed to conform to them.

And it’s in the EPISTLES that we learn the nature of the gospel… and the church.

In Acts, we learn what happened to form the church…

in the Epistles, we learn what MUST happen for us to BE the church.

And we come to find that the church is not just a series of programs or events we attend...

It’s primarily not a building we come to...

It’s something we ARE.

It’s a fundamental part of our identity as believers…

And we discover in the New Testament: The church isn’t just PART of the story of the believer… but rather it’s the only story that God is writing in which you play a part.

[repeat]

God is working out his kingdom in the present age THROUGH the church… through his people who are uniquely united and devoted to one another…

Either you are saved by grace through faith in Jesus and therefore part of the church… or you are not saved by grace because you do not believe... and God wants to use his church to proclaim the good news of Jesus to you.

So here is our big idea for this morning…

Big Idea: Through faith in Jesus Christ, your story is inseparably united to the story of every other believer through the church.

The Christian faith is not just about our individual salvation… it’s about the people God is uniting to write HIS unfolding story of salvation across all time and space…

God is calling a people to himself… and to one another… through faith in Jesus Christ.

That’s the church.

It all starts with faith in Jesus.

You don’t have a church apart from faith in Jesus.

You can’t be part of the church without faith in Jesus.

The whole story of God is about God’s unfolding plan of salvation through Jesus Christ...

He is the CENTERPIECE of God’s story…

And the church belongs to HIM.

We see this so clearly in the book of Ephesians...

(it was already read this morning)… Paul takes us back to before time began… that God the Father “chose us in [Christ Jesus] BEFORE the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”

( ESV)

And we get this picture of God’s people as a church… an assembly… spiritually gathered around the throne of Christ in heaven experiencing their spiritual blessings together.

(that was read earlier) takes us back and gives us this picture of our fallenness… that “you were DEAD in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air.”

( ESV)

Paul is describing the story of every single one of us in terms of God’s big story… Remember the Fall into sin right at the beginning of God’s story…

The prince of the power of the air is Satan… that ancient serpent… who tempted Adam and Eve to SIN against God… they trespass on God’s territory...

He lured them into thinking that they could be LIKE GOD without God...

And so the world went on in the same course… rejecting God… sinning against him by nature and by choice…

continued… “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

(, ESV)

That’s the story of every single person apart from God for the entire history of the world...

Kids… youth… adults… we all can relate to this…

We do what feels good… what we THINK is right… we do what we WANT to in the moment instead of what God wants...

We make choices out of our sinful hearts… our sin nature... that is fighting God’s authority and deserving of his wrath…

The picture the Bible paints for those apart from Christ is hopeless… look at that verse again… … we are dead… incapable of producing life…

Our stories are futile and empty from an eternal perspective… we live forever separated from the one for whom we were created...

That’s a tragic story.

But then… in verse 4... we read some of the most beautiful words ever written: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” ( ESV)

When we were spiritually dead because of our sin… Christ died… in our place… for our sin…

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.