Sermon Transcript Tone Analysis

I thank you guys for letting us to do that.

Of course.

Having Gwen on a Saturday 20 days before we anticipated kind of threw things off a little bit.

So I really appreciate your guys's Grace.

Just letting us just going to have a purse service and work together and it was just a beautiful service.

It really was it was great to see people that we have here from the community that have come to the church really pray about the church and pray about the growth of the church and pray about how we're going to reach his community and everything like that.

It was just a beautiful thing.

But before that the last week before that we talked about New Year's resolutions and you know how there are so many already have completely blown out of the water.

I haven't worked out on how long because of the wind coming and everything.

I've done pretty good on my Bible reading making sure that I'm being pretty diligent with that and then but I normally am so that's not really a big deal.

But but I have been doing pretty good with that and I have stopped drinking soda.

So if you ever see me with the soda knock it out of my hands or something cuz I should not be drinking soda.

Matthew is getting down to one a day.

So I mean, you know, baby steps, you know, good good things like that.

So so yeah, but the new year is a time to really rehash the old and come and go towards the new and that's kind of what I want to do with this church is I kind of want to look at our future and I kind of want to look at it from the standpoint of why are we here?

Because God really has definitely placed us here.

We've seen God do some amazing things.

But let me be honest with you.

We are not as large as what I thought we were going to be when we moved to Chicago.

I thought when we plan it at church or church in my community and we would just have so many people in here.

We would have to like buy chairs for the park in order to get all of the people in here and that has not been the way that it has been because it's really hard to start churches in Chicago for a lot of different reasons people moving in and out already having existing churches and networks and stuff that Out there that people can go to it's like why are you really here?

You know, so that's kind of what we look at.

I really want to look at things of why we are here and what God is using us to do and I still believe that God is going to use us in a mighty way.

I don't necessarily think we're going to have thousands of people in our church ever.

But I do think we are going to reach a lot of people for the gospel and that really is a huge thing.

Now when Paul was talking to his churches, of course, we know all the letters that he wrote to churches a lot of times he was writing to correct the ology and to direct bad ideas when it came to church and I think that's what he would do today.

I think he would look at us and he would really try to figure out why does the church exists and I think there's a lot of strategist in and people and things like that really starting to look at things and go why are we not reaching people?

Why are people not being baptized?

Why are people not knowing Christ?

What is the problem?

Is he Chicago's very spiritual is not necessarily A lot of people going to church but it's very spiritual.

There's not a whole lot of people in our city that would say that God doesn't exist or anything like that.

Just a lot of people that don't want to be pigeonholed into saying this is the way that God is and that is the hard thing.

We've tried a lot of different things in this church.

We tried your dad or evangelism and we really tried and we prayed about it and we brought in teams in and all sorts of stuff but people thought we were crazy likes listening.

I don't know what but it did not work.

All we did was getting negative comments on Facebook.

That's really all that that did for us.

We've tried a lot of different things.

We tried a big lunch ideas when we serviced, but the problem is we really only who it had about two or three of those people who are actually from the community.

So we probably should have waited before we launched until we really understood and knew our community and had more people in our community and I believe that we are starting me to get more people in our community to come to church and we are starting to show people that were not just here for ourselves, but we're really here for the glory of God, but there's a few questions and I want us to look at me cuz I don't think it's just us to The Orchards that's come in and had a bad idea of different things.

I think it's a lot of churches that's doing that.

So I want to look at three questions in the three questions are how do we lose sight on the mission of the church number two is how do we fight the battle against worldliness and number three is how do we refocus and get set to renew?

What spray father?

Thank you.

For your word, thank you for the lessons that you give us from from Paul and from others about how we can miss the mark and how we can start to focus on the wrong things and start to push the wrong things and start to make our church about not you even when we say it is about you it isn't about you got to help us to refocus help us to understand why we're here in the first place God help us to understand our place in your kingdom here on Earth.

We love you in Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

So the first question is how do we lose sight on the mission of the church will first we get in trapped by the flesh.

I want to go to 1st Corinthians chapter 2. It's going to be up on the screen as well.

And Paul when he's riding to the Corinthian Church, the Corinthian Church is a pretty nasty area.

So there's a lot of sexual debauchery.

There's a lot of just horrible things happening in coron just in the city itself not necessarily in the church, but but in the city itself, so when Paul plants this church, when all these people go out and really try to reach the world, they start having a lot of people who don't know Jesus coming to the church and coming to these homes would have been at church like we see now it would have been coming into homes.

But what was the problem is they started coming in these homes and they started coming in these Church type circles and they were doing lost things they were acting like lost people and unfortunately the church rather than starting to act more like the church and trying to explain to them and show them how to be holy they started to act more and more like the lost.

So that's what Paul was why he was disappointed why he was writing to the Corinthian Church because He knew the faithfulness of they had he knew all the good things about the church.

But he also knew there were a lot of people that were starting to follow false teachers starting to follow people rather than Christ starting to engage into some of the the sexual acts that were happening in and letting people come in that had too long of hair and wear distractions and different things like that and they're all these different problems and a problem is that the church got in trapped by the flesh it got in trapped by the world and says in 1st Corinthians chapter 2 and when I came to you brothers did not come for claim with you the testimony of God with walk the speech or wisdom for I decided to know nothing among you accept Jesus Christ and him crucified and I was with you and weakness and in fear and much trembling a my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the spirit and of power So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God, do you say Paul had a lot of issues in this church.

This is what he's writing about.

He's talking about all these different things.

But but the problem is that Paul's Church in Corinth and started reaching everyone.

What's in those masses?

Like I said started to bring their own things Temple worship.

It started adopting all these worldly ideas and we trying to get into the same traps.

I remember one time when I was a part of a church and this church was a Dynamic Church Great Pastor, like good expository messages and then he went off to some thing in Atlanta and he came back and he changed everything in the church.

He got black paint to paint the Church of black and he got all these cool lights smoking and all this this Beast pool sermons that were done by this pastor and he tried to make him his own rather than doing his own sermons.

And at first I understood and I'm like, yeah, I understand where we are understand we got to reach people.

I got to understand we know what we have to do to really try to to be attractive to the masses.

So I kind of got it a little bit but if things continue to go on the ology started to kind of go by the wayside discipleship became more of a party in a BBQ than it did actual repentance and accounting.

40 it became something that was more like the world and it came like a community group like a regular community group in a community like a Lions Club and didn't really look like a church leaders didn't look like church leaders and that's not necessarily a bad thing that needs to happen sometimes but when your church leaders are doing worldly things that can really cause a problem and it can cause a lot of people to stumble

We've been real careful.

As a church here to not do those things, but we still even myself.

I'm still got way caught up in Facebook ads and different things that just haven't worked because the only thing that's really going to attract people to our church or to Christ is the Holy Spirit and we have to get back to that.

We have good reasons to want to do all these different things to try to attract people.

We take the sermons and we make them about good advice rather than what the gospel is.

We take songs that are more about us and make us feel good rather than songs that explain to us who God is and how he works in our lives.

We water things down so it can become easier and that more people can follow it.

But then we lose the essence of the Gospel we lose the essence of who Jesus is Because we get caught up in the flesh is another thing we do to we can go the other route and we can get too caught up in religion.

We can get too caught up in the rules to this is another thing that Paul wrote about he wrote about people getting too involved in the world, but he also wrote about people getting way too involved and religion and getting too involved in all of the rules.

Another reason.

We have a Protestant church.

And while I broke away from the Catholic church was because they got way too involved in religion.

It's starting to make the church about paying this money in that money to try to get out of hell and and trying to do go see this Relic in that Relic and pay this kind of money to try to get out of purgatory and all these different things that were happening and the church become more about tradition than it did the actual gospel of Christ.

And that is why the Protestants of white Martin Luther knocks all the notes on the door.

Is 95 thesis and input all they're all the problems that he had with the Catholic church.

That's why we had the Reformation.

That's why they broke away from the Catholic church and started something Protestant that believes in Grace by faith not by works like the Catholic Church does Became less about God for the Catholics though and it became more about them.

So that's why they broke away and we do the same thing.

Sometimes we make God a very nice dinner.

But if you want to be saved or forgiven.

You have to do this or that just like the Catholics.

Did you had to go ask a priest?

You can just do it on your own you couldn't just ask Jesus to forgive you had to go through all of these hoops.

And we get into the same traps.

We get enamored into the whole idea of following Christ perfectly not understanding that.

We can't follow him perfectly.

All we can do is be obedient.

We're going to mess up.

We're going to mess up bad and Paul talks a lot about this as we continue to go on and 2nd and 1st Corinthians chapter 2 starting in verse 6 should be up on the screen.

Yet among the mature.

We do not impart wisdom.

Although it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doing the pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our Glory.