Sermon Tone Analysis

We now enter the final chapter of this gospel.

We began this study in November of 2015 and we now approach the end.

Children please come up.

Read text

Pray

Christianity has a long history.

We have nearly 2000 years of Christianity.

The age of our nation is just a bit over 10% of that time.

That’s it.

The church was instituted and the cross and was in effect on Pentecost.

And from there it grew.

The apostles traveled taking the gospel message wherever they went.

Wherever you were from, that was your church.

So we have the church in Rome, and the church in Galatia, and so on.

People were member of that church.

When Paul wanted to address the church, to the saints in Corinth.

Something along that lines.

History tells us that church “service” was nothing like we have it today.

It was not very inviting.

Not all.

And if you were not a member, you couldnt eve witness communion.

Closed service unless you prove yourself.

And becoming a member was not a profess my faith… get baptized next week or the week after an become a member.

It was you were trained for a year, than baptized, then welcomed as a member.

And the church grew that way.

Through persecution and death, the church grew.

Some early writers claim that the seed of the church is the blood of the martyrs.

While terrible as it was to be murdered the way that they were, it got peoples attention.

Who is this Jesus that those men were willing to take that kind of agony?

Do you see how the church can grow through persecution?

And the church continued to grow and while there were many different heresies going around, the church remained together.

The heretics didn't branch off and start a new denomination, they were cast out and deemed heretics.

Sometimes heresy had strong influence, but the gospel always came back.

By the 6th century, the theology became weak.

And people started to give into tradition.

And then tradition became official doctrine.

Then it got to the point where the church was playing the role of the Holy Spirit.

We will tell you what this means and you will follow.

Fights grew more and more intense and then in 1054AD, the church had is first official split.

The Greek east was very upset with the Latin west, and the Latin west was gaining control and the east was being forced to adapt.

The Greek East finally said, after 200 years of fighting, we’re done, we don't agree with you we are doing our own thing.

We call this the great schism of 1054.

And it was at that moment in history.

The Catholic church became the Roman Catholic church and the east became Greek Orthodox.

But the Gospel was still in darkness for the most part.

There have been people who would try to bring in out of darkness but were executed in the attempts.

Ultimately, you were calling out the church.

We were saying salvation is by Grace alone through Jesus alone.

And the church was saying salvation is by Grace but not alone, its by baptism and by the church and by Jesus.

So when you questioned the power of the church in salvation, you died.

Then the reformation came and we have talked about that a number of times, no need to do it again, a simple recap, the reformers were trying to get the church back to its original form.

They were not successful in that.

So the reformers attempted to be one in Protestantism.

They could not do that.

It was the meaning of the Lord Supper that kept them from uniting.

So you had the Zwingli movement, which did not last very long, the Lutheran movement, maybe you have heard of them.

And then you had the reformed movement which branched in two not because of a split but it just did.

Both branches are still here today, reformed and Presbyterian.

Within the reformed movement came Anglicanism, Puritanism, Baptist.

You also had something called Arminianism which was a movement that confronted reformed, Presbyterian and Lutherans.

Out of Arminianism came the Methodist (some prefer to be called Wesleyan) and the free will Baptists.

And the branches seemed to have continued.

Splits and divisions.

Let me just scratch the surface of baptist movements in america alone, keep in mind, that at one point in american history, Baptists were one;

You have the American baptist church usa, Southern baptists, the baptist general conference (now called Converge), Conservative baptist association, Cooperative baptist fellowship (which was a Split from SBC in the early 90’s)

The American Baptist Association, Reformed Baptist, Primative baptist, regular baptist, National association of free will baptist, Association of reformed baptist churches.

And we can play this game with every other denomination.

People have gotten mad about all of these seperations so the non-denominational christian church movement came and people ran to that because it seemed right and good.

But most non-denominational ministires are baptist in some form in theology and controversy tends to surround them because… well some create their own empire with no accountability.

But that can and does happen with denominational churches as well.

That was quick history in a nutshell, let me ask.

Do you think that God intended all these divisions?

Well many gosple centered ministries agreed that these seperations were driven by sin.

We dont stick together because of sin.

Some speculate that John did not write this chapter, they argue it came much later.

They think John ended in chapter 20 and someone else came along and added this chapter.

Several reason why we should not consider that.

One is that it is fitting that John have an epilogue because after all, the first 18 verses of chapter one are a prologue.

Second, it ties some loose ends such as, what happens with peter.

And third, John draws back to his thought that we read last week in the last 2 verses of chapter 20.

The scene we are looking at in this chapter takes place sometime after the events in chapter 20.

How long, we do not know.

But afterwords Jesus manifested himself again to the disciple and John really seems to emphasize these manifestations.

And we see who are all together.

There are 7 disciples present.

The sons of zebedee are James and John and then we have 2 unknown disciples.

John

It is kind of odd that Peter says I am going fishing.

This takes place after he had seen the resurrected Jesus and after Jesus breathed on him.

So it is odd that he decided to go fishing.

We dont know how long it has been since the last time they seen Jesus.

Maybe he was discouraged like, it has been too long since we last seen him.

It could be because that was his source of income and it was time to get back to work, after all, he was not given the missional task to go and make disciples yet.

He was not told to wait for the Holy Spirit.

Whatever the reason, He decides to go fishing.

And the those who we just named decided that they will go too.

So they went out and got into the boat.

That night they caught nothing.

It was not uncommon for fishermen to fish at night, if the night was right.

What was uncommon was to fish all night and not catch one thing.