Sermon Transcript Tone Analysis

Ever traveled to another country.

Have you ever had the experience of when you travel to that other country where you haven't even spoken a word, but they pick out the fact that you're an American.

Or maybe it's just you've traveled somewhere else in the United States end.

Before you even met the person, you're marked as a Yankee or a northerner.

They can pick you out pretty quick and the Southern States.

Either of those experiences.

It makes you wonder what gave me away, especially if you haven't even said a word yet.

You just wonder what it is.

you know, in the first century, Christ followers were also recognized immediately by people So, what gave them away?

It certainly wasn't their buildings because they had none.

It wasn't their programs going on at their church because they didn't have any.

It wasn't their political power, they had none of that either.

It wasn't their webcast, they're slick Publications or catchy bumper stickers or you know, growing social media presence.

Existent.

So what was it?

in Acts 4:33, we read With great power, the apostles continue to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in the mall.

They testified to the truth about Christ and live by his grace.

That's what gave him away.

Truce was the food that they ate in the message.

The Facebook can Grace.

Was there are that they breathe in the life that they live that simply who they were.

The world around them had.

Never seen anything like it.

That's why they could identify him so easily, so quickly.

And sadly enough.

The world hasn't seen anything like it since

You know, the only church growth formula the early church possessed was the body of truth that they were proclaiming.

That was flowing with the grace of Jesus Christ.

That's all that they had.

And they drew thousands to Jesus.

But now get this, this is a really radical idea.

By simply being like Jesus.

That's how they grew the church.

what does it mean to be like, Jesus, you know, we could come up with all these long list, and many, many people have done it of all of Christ's character qualities, but the problem is, The longer we make the list.

You know the less likely we are to be able to wrap our minds around what it really means to be christ-like or really to be able to live it out.

The longer that list gets the more we struggle with it.

Could kind of oil down the character of Christ reduce it down to two essential ingredients.

And we can.

You know, if you'll remember is, I was sharing us some verses in the last series, I did.

One of the important verses was John 11, you know, end up getting was the word and the Word was God and the Word was with God and all we talk about those things and that was an essential verse in that.

And another verse that we paired with, it was John 1:14.

The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus.

Was full of two things.

Grace and Truth.

Not the long list that we like to see sometimes, you know, he wasn't full of patients, wisdom Beauty, compassion, creativity.

We could go on.

And on all those things were a result of the grace and truth.

That was within him.

You know, if you noticed in the list and scripture there in that passage that I read from John, you know, there are no commas and there's only one conjunction between them, Grace and Truth.

Scripture distills Christ attributes into a two-point checklist for christlikeness.

The baby that was born in a Bethlehem.

Barn was creator of the universe?

But yet. he chose to come to Earth and to be one of us, On our little planet, God's glory.

No longer was restricted to dwelling in a temple made of wood and Stone.

It was now dwelling in Christ.

He was the new holy of holies.

And then when tries to send it back into heaven, he left God's glory here.

You know, that manifestation of his presence is Shekinah Glory here on Earth.

And with that, that meant that we as Christians.

Became his living temples the new holy of holies.

1st Corinthians chapter 3 verses 16 and 17 says.

Don't, you know that you yourselves are God's Temple?

And that God's spirit dwells in your midst, if anyone destroys God's Temple, God will destroy that person.

Fer God's Temple is sacred, and you together are that Temple.

Are 1st Corinthians 619 says, do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have received from God?

You are not your own.

You know, what gave away?

The first century Christians was the fact that people had only to look at Jesus.

To see what God was like.

And those first century, Christians were doing a great job of living that out.

People today should only have to look at us to see what Jesus is like.

Now, that's kind of a scary and intimidating thought.

But for better for worse people draw, conclusions about Christ from what they see in US.

Our good days and our bad days.

You know, if we fail the grace test, we fail to be christ-like.

And that's something that we have to learn.

If we passed both tests, you know, not just the grace test, but the truth test, then we are starting to be like Jesus.

And integrace starve truth starved world that we live in.

They need Jesus.

That's why I love the alliance slogan.

That's back there, on the top of our map and it's kind of their new overalls slogan.

And it's on her t-shirts that we've gotten for the Church of all of Jesus for all the world.

you know, as we go through this new series about truth and Grace will see that We can't just choose.

Which part of Jesus were going to give people.

Are we going to give people his grace or his truth?

That's often the way we look at it and we don't realize.

That's not the way scripture describes it.

It said, full of grace and truth.

It's the same thing.

We need to be presenting a people cuz you know I said that's a scary and intimidating thought to think that you know, people make assumptions about Jesus about Christianity based on what they see in us because they know that we go to church, they know that we claim to be Christians

You know what?

I think about that.

I think so.

What Does a Grace hungry Grace?

Starve truth.

Hungry World.

Think when they look at us,

As a church.

What do they think about me?