Sermon Tone Analysis

The Architect Has a Unity in Mind

I saw a large building the other day being erected.

I do not know that it was any business of mine, but I did puzzle myself to make out how it would make a complete structure; it seemed to me that the gables would come in so very awkwardly.

But I dare say if I had seen a plan there might have been some central tower or some combination by which the wings, one of which appeared to be rather longer than the other, might have been brought into harmony, for the architect doubtless had a unity in his mind that I did not have in mine.

So you and I do not have the necessary information as to what the church is to be.

The unity of the church is not to be seen by you today—do not think it.

The plan is not worked out yet.

God is building over there, and you only see the foundation; in another part the topstone is all but ready, and you cannot comprehend it.

Shall the Master show you his plan?

Is the Divine Architect bound to take you into his studio to show you all his secret motives and designs?

Not so; wait a while and you will find that all these diversities and differences among spiritually minded men, when the master plan comes to be wrought out, are different parts of the grand whole, and you with the astonished world will then know that God has sent the Lord Jesus.

Propositional Statement

Jesus built the church as his community that would go an impact the world through demonstration, evangelism, and outreach that adds to the church.

The Book of Acts

Luke, the writer of this book chronicles the journey of the disciples from their last meeting with Christ on the Sea of Galilee to Paul’s going off the scene.

Jesus commands his disciples to remain in Jerusalem until the promised Comforter empowered them to carry on Christ’s ministry of teaching, healing, and preaching about the kingdom.

Judas, who returned to the son of perdition John 17:12:

As the Scripture tells, the disciples, now apostles prayed and cast lots with it falling on Matthias.

The disciples, along with others gathered in the Upper Room to await the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Fifty days later, the Holy Spirit descends like cloven tongues of fire and the sound like a might rushing wind.

Those in the Upper Room were filled and began speaking with unknown tongues and everyone understood one another.

Spectators speculated those in the upper room were drunk, which led Peter to preach the first sermon beginning with the prophecy of Joel to the the resurrection of Jesus.

Luke brought many to conversion through spiritual conviction.

It is behind this backdrop the “first church” was born.

The church is a spiritual entity built and purchased by Christ to carry out the “kingdom agenda” in preparation for his return.

The church is not “brick and mortar” but she is a living organism that serves as the visible body for the Lord Jesus Christ.

She is Christ’s bride preparing with great anticipation of the union between husband and wife.

Revelation 21:1-5

Revelation 21:1–5 (ESV)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

Verses 42-47 describes the formation of the first church fresh after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, under the direction of the apostles Jesus’ chose to carry on his work.

The infancy stage of the church showed the church at her best, and the modern church would do well to follow the model established in verses 42-47.

The modern church sees budgets, branding, and buildings as priority while the soul of man is optional.

Yet, Jesus’ sentiment in Matthew 9:35-38

The Lord’s church are those laborers commissioned to bring in the plentiful harvest, yet the basket still seems empty while the labor force dwindles because of apathy towards church and the assimilation of the church into modern culture.

Devoted to developing relationship

Charles Spurgeon writes in one of his sermons “The Church Healthier After Trial”

That old oak in the forest is one of the noblest works of God.

Look at it bursting into full leaf, bearing well its verdant honors, and making a picture worthy of the artist’s rarest skill.

What are these dry pieces of wood that strew the ground beneath it?

What are these large branches that rot under its shade?

It is needless to ask, for we all know that they fell from the tree during winter’s storms.

Is it a cause of regret for the sake of the tree that those rotten branches were broken off?

It may be a lamentation as far as concerns the broken boughs, but the tree itself would have never been so healthy, and never looked so complete if the rotten branches had been suffered to abide.

When the hurricane came howling through the woods, the old tree shivered in the gale, and mourned as it heard the cracking of its boughs.

Yet now it is thankful because the sound healthy branches with sap and life in them are all there, and the withered ones no longer encumber the trunk.

I do not think times of storm to a church are in the long run to be regretted; a calm is much more dangerous.

When we last seen the apostles, they were hiding in the Upper Room from the Jews and Romans that sought to extinguish the fire that Jesus started during his earthly ministry.

Jesus told them in John 14:12

Fear caused them to “hole up” in a room, but it would be that faith in the Upper Room that sparked the birth of the church, and the start of the Christian movement as we know it.

At this stage, the first church experienced things the modern church to this day still desires to replicate.

The vision of the the first church is tenderly tucked away here in our key verse for this morning.

Luke no doubt talked to those who witnessed Pentecost and the church at her inception described her as a community of devoted disciples.

Jesus’ twelve disciples were his devoted community, and now that small community was empowered to make an impact and a larger community.

The church, or Christian religious community as a whole, or a body of organization of Christian believers.

The Greek word ekkelesia, which came to mean church, was originally applied in the Classical period to an official assembly of citizens.

The church is a way for followers of Jesus to act together as one body, with Jesus as the head, to fulfill this mission.

At its best, the unity in Christ we experience in the church can even give us a taste of the glory to come in Revelation 7:9-10

The church does not do the mission; the church is the mission.

The words of Christ in Matthew 28:18-20:

Jesus’ words here establishes the vision for the Lord’s church, and following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they would begin to share the gospel and disciple others.

The phrase “devoted themselves” is proskarterountes meaning to continue to do something with intense effort, with the possible implication of despite difficulty—‘to devote oneself to, to keep on, to persist in.’

Luke says they were devoted in three ways: (1) to the apostles’ teaching, (2) fellowship, and (3) community.

Hebrews 10:23-25

Following Jesus is a communal activity.

We both make disciples and become better disciples by seeking Jesus together.

In fact, God speaks to us through our relationships with others.

Facilitating this communal growth, worship and prayer is part of the mission of the church too.

The Lord’s Church pt. 2

“The Great Society”

Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States had a vision for the Great Society:

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all.

It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time.

But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.

It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness.

It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature.

It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race.

It is a place where the men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work.

It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

President Johnson’s Great Society focused on American cities, the countryside, and the classroom in the hope of building lives through government help.

Jesus built his church as the “Eternal Society” that focuses on community, discipleship, and evangelism.

Johnson said:

Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life.

The “first church” in its infancy sought to make lives better for all people as a community united through faith in the risen savior.

Verses 43-47 chronicle the activity of the first church after those in the Upper Room were filled with the Holy Spirit, and how God added to the church.

No doubt, Luke interviews eyewitnesses that were present and listened intently as they recounted their time with the apostles and the first church.

The first church experience the power of God on a level that the modern church still seeks to experience, and in this “Great Society,” Christians seeing God move should not be a shock but a reoccurring them.

Seeing the community’s compassion for one another should not be abstract, it should be routine.

People genuinely enjoying fellowship with one another is standard and not and accident.

Acts 4:32-37

Even here in 4:32-37, the church is consistently unified in faith, compassionate in its reach and