Sermon Tone Analysis

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We’re so glad you’re here tonight.

If you’re new, I just want to say that you’re welcome here.

Tonight is an interesting night in that this is a series that encapsulates so much of my heart for you all and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

We’re going to be talking about a number of difficult topics in the coming weeks like dealing with loss, toxic relationships, alcohol, body image, and sexual addiction and my thesis is simple.

A relationship with Jesus drastically effects every area of your life

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What it means to be a follower of Jesus is that you’ve given yourself to trusting in the saving work of Jesus and have chosen to follow Him with Your life.

Then we walked through the Sermon on the Mount and we talked about the reality that Jesus is a king who’s bringing a kingdom, gathering a people, and showing them what it looks like to live as citizens in that Kingdom.

The Sermon on the Mount was a manifesto of what it looks like to live life under God’s Rule and reign.

Then we just finished up a series in Proverbs where we walked through the book and talked about what it means to live wisely in God’s good world.

We focused for the last few weeks on the reality that Wisdom finds it’s application in our Trust in the Lord.

That as we choose to be people who live wisely, we are actually saying that we trust that what God has said about us and how the world functions and doesn’t is true.

What I want to do tonight is unpack how this plays out and what it is that God wants to accomplish in you as you come to him with not only the topics we’re going to discuss, but with everything in our lives.

We entitled it grace upon grace because the reality is that we are going to stumble over and over again in our lives and what we see consistently is that Jesus meets us in that and offers grace.

And then more grace.

And then more grace.

So we’ll hear messy stories.

Stories of extreme pain & hurt.

Stories of deep loss and heartache.

By the same token, we’re going to hear stories of a good God pursuing and and making himself available to us.

So not only does God offer grace, but He is also redeeming and restoring the world and humanity alike.

It doesn’t take long for us to look around our world and to see that things are not as they should be.

The Bible understands that to be the result of something called sin, which is the rebellion of humanity against God.

The Scriptures record a detailed picture of that in where we see that the first humans made a choice to disobey God, but the reality is that you and I choose to do the same thing each and every day.

We look at our own hearts and thoughts and choose to trust ourselves more than God all the time.

So.

We’re starting out on a really happy note!

:)

But it’s ok! Because!

If you continue to read the story of the Scriptures we begin to see that God has a plan to put the world back to rights and this is accomplished through Jesus, but also through you and me.

How this happens is through a process called redemption.

But!

We’re going to talk a ton about that word redemption in the coming weeks, but before we get there, I want to unpack a little bit of why we need to be redeemed and what that looks like.

Just as a quick side-note, if you’re new to the Bible, we’re going to use a lot of it tonight because we believe that God has written a book that provides a clear picture of his heart for the world.

A basic synopsis is that the Bible tells one story that finds it’s culmination in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth and He is redeeming and restoring all things.

So in order to get there, we need to start from the beginning of the story.

As we come to the story of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels, we read that Jesus makes this fascinating & subversive claim.

So tonight, as we begin this series, I want to do a little bit of groundwork about humanity and our story with the goal of trying to capture God’s heart for us as students.

Sound good?

So right away, we’re going to be operating under the assumption that this is the starting point for who we are and what that looks like.

So right away, we’re going to be operating under the assumption that this is the starting point for who we are and what that looks like.

The point of these first chapters of Genesis is not to describe in detail how everything worked out, but simply to say, that God created everything.

As we keep reading, we come to this interesting break in the story at Verse 26.

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Genesis 1:26

We read about this decision by God to make man (both men and women) in his image.

We read about this decision by God to make man (both men and women) in his image.

We read about this decision by God to make man (both men and women) in his image.

We need to talk about this word ‘image’ really quick because that’s going to color the rest of the way we read the Scriptures, but also how we approach this series.

The word there literally means idol or statue.

So this is fascinating because an idol or a statue is meant to be a physical embodiment or representation of something else.

So you and I are God’s statues.

I love the way one pastor phrases this:

We were put on earth- because the entire cosmos is this God’s temple- to make visible the invisible God.

To show the world what God is like.

We are the Creator’s representatives to his creation.

The Verse continues by saying, ‘and let them have dominion.’

The idea that he’s trying to capture there is really, ‘let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the bird of the heavens and over the livestock and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’

So you and I are images or statues or walking representations of God to rule with God over his good world.

Are you tracking with me at this point?

So far things are great.

We’ve got a good creation.

We’ve got a God who is portrayed as an artist, and we’ve got ourselves as walking embodiments to partner with God in what He’s doing in the world.

People=Images of God=Good

So God gives humanity a moral choice.

They can choose to trust him and to rule with them.

On top of them ruling with him, He gives them one command.

However things start to turn.

We read in Chapter 2 that God gave humanity a moral choice as to wether or not they were going to obey him.

Let’s keep Reading

I don’t know why the tree was in the garden and I don’t have a good, solid answer for that

So.... let’s fast forward a little bit to chapter 3.

Ok.

Bad news bears.

So let’s talk about this for just a quick second.

The serpent, frigging snakes are the worst.

Them and spiders.

Begins to question God’s word.

It’s the first question in the Bible: “Did God actually say...” Then we jump down to Verse 5, he says that God knows they will be like him.

But what’s the problem?

They already were like God.

So as you keep reading, you’ll find that these humans decide to rebel against God.

This is a really crucial moment because that image that we talked about before is now distorted.

Whereas they were meant to experience fullness of life and abundant flourishing as they image God, they chose something different and they’re hearts and the image of God in them is not distorted.

Not Gone.

But distorted.

We no longer represent God’s heart to the world.

When we look at our world, we see the result of this everywhere.

Senseless shootings, genocide, slavery, millions without water every day.

The results of our rebellion against God are astounding.

We need to be redeemed.

So Adam and Eve are kicked out of the land and now the punishment they face is death.

If the story were to end here, that would be brutal, but we see that right away, God puts another plan in motion by promising someone who would redeem and restore the image and the world to what he originally intended it to be.

This is known as the Messiah—> Who we know to be Jesus.

Humanity needs someone to redeem and restore them, but they can’t do this themselves.

So the Old Testament essentially a downward Spiral of God attempting in multiple ways to partner with humanity in bringing his rule and reign

There are countless examples of this but here’s just onHere we have picture of restoration and wholeness that will come as a result of this Messiah.

So Fast forward to the book of Mark.