Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

My dad didn’t have a great family when he was growing up.

It’s his story to tell and not mine, but that came to shape so much of how we were to come to understand things in our home.

Because of his background, family was something that my dad insisted that you didn’t take for granted.

Because if you’re fortunate enough to have one that loves you and helps you and supports you, even with their quirks and aggravations, and even though sometimes you will be at odds with each other, you are a blessed man.

Because in life, when the ammunition is live, and the bullets sail past your head, and your health fails and your job plays out and all the people that liked you for what you could do for them go away, a good family, a faithful family will still be there standing with you./

And, the more that I read the NT and the more that I read church history, it’s this type of thinking, it’s this picture that has come to capture my understanding of who the local church is to be.

If you would’ve talked with me eight or nine years ago about what kind of church I wanted to be a part of, I want have started by using words like dynamic, modern, and cutting edge.

I would have told you about new marketing strategies, and I would have described something that would have been virtually indistinguishable from a John Mayer concert.

But now, I’m looking for something more beautiful than that.

I’m looking for something richer than that.

I’m aiming higher than that.

I want a family.

I want to walk through life with people who will bleed with me.

I want to seek the face of God with people who aren’t ashamed of the Gospel.

I want to run after a theology deep enough to hold me steady as I face off with anxiety and depression and loss and disappointment and poor health.

I want a life-giving family that offers life to an ever growing number of new family members./

God’s Word

Read

Jesus Established a Spiritual Family

In , Jesus says something extreme.

There’s a scene in which Jesus is teaching, and his mother and brothers came to talk to him.

So, they send in a guy to tell Jesus that his mom wants to talk with him, and Jesus asks him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”

And, then Jesus pointed toward all of his disciples, and He declared: “Here are my mother and my brothers!

For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus established a spiritual family.

And, it’s a family that Jesus says even supersedes that of our earthly blood.

It is a family that is bound together by his blood!

We are bound together by a pure, royal, righteous bloodline that has secured for us an inheritance in heaven forever and has given us common ground on earth now!

And so, Jesus says that we’re to love one another so distinctly that everyone can see that we are his disciples, that is, that we are a spiritual family that is separate from all of the families in the world.

Beautifully Ordinary

Distinct Devotion

“And they devoted themselves” And, it’s this spiritual family that we see put on full display in .

We have the earliest formation of the NT church after the Holy Spirit has come.

From this early church, I want to draw out two characteristics that we see, and there’s so much we’re going to have to leave for another day, that I want us to parallel with our church and draw as a target on the wall for our church.

First of all, I want you to notice that this church was beautifully ordinary.

Look at verse 42 with me.

And, could that not be said of just about every church that you’ve ever been to or heard about?

I mean it’s a wonderfully, beautifully ordinary thing to say, and yet this is the summary that Luke gives to summarize the passion that was driving this fledgling church family.

They ‘devoted themselves to the apostles teaches and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.’

I mean, if you ask someone how to do church and they tell you that, you just say, “Duh!” Right?

This is the ordinary stuff!/

“devoted” Except that there’s a word here that separates them from most of us.

There’s a word here that separates this church from most churches that we know.

There’s a word here that makes a church built to make the world comfortable impossible.

There’s a word here that we understand makes the difference between a good family and a dysfunctional one.

It’s the word ‘devoted.’

This was THE distinctive feature of the early church.

They were devoted to the learning the apostles teachings.

They were devoted to loving one another and getting to one another in real fellowship.

They were devoted to seeking God’s face together in prayer As a matter of fact, what it’s hard for our english seeing eyes to recognize, is that this exact same word comes up again in verse 46 as the word ‘attending’.

They were devoted to praying and worshiping together in the temple!

Devotion implies perseverance.

It means that there is a degree of enduring involved.

You persevere and you endure because you realize that your devotion will be realized in a future payoff!

Devotion separates real dads from deadbeat dads, real husbands from roommates.

Devotion to Jesus is what separates true disciples of Jesus from counterfeits.

And, devotion is what separates true churches of Jesus Christ from full buildings of religious consumers.

Dr. David Platt said recently: “People are drawn to the church of most benefit for the least cost.”

But, brothers and sisters, I ask you, what is more beautiful, devotion or consumption, sacrifice or indulgence?/

Radically Devoted to God

“devoted to the apostles teaching....and the prayers” If we look closely at verse 42, we can really divide their devotion into two main areas.

First, we see that they are radically devoted to God./

“apostles teachings” First of all, They wanted to know all that God would have them know.

Notice that at the forefront of everything happening in the church was the teachings of the Apostles.

It was the word of God.

There was a hunger to know everything about God they could know.

They wanted to know even better the way of Jesus of the Good News of Gospel and how it impacted the way that they would live.

There was an insatiable thirst in them.

Doctrine wasn’t too divisive or too dull.

It was their lifeblood.

And so, every, single day they went back for more!

Every day!

As much as they had seen of Christ and heard of Christ, they kept saying, “Show us more, tell us more, teach us more!”

They were committed, devoted to knowing God as He actually was, not simply as they wanted to believe him to be.

Is there any surprise that it followed up them studying the scriptures with the observation that they were awestruck, fear-struck, trembling by the awesome thought of who God is?

By the thought of his presence in their very midst?

“the prayers” They wanted to have all that God would let them have.

Oh, but they didn’t just read themselves full.

They prayed themselves hot!

They were witnessing the outpouring of the power of God all around them, and the wanted all of God that they could have.

Jesus had taught them that they had not because they asked not, and so, in his likeness, they were seeking the face of God collectively, publicly, in the temple, in their, day-in and day-out together.

How were they facing down the Sanhedrin as common and uneducated men?

How were they casting out demons?

How were they standing strong in the face of intense suffering and persecution?

How did the church stand up throughout the book of Acts?

They were praying people getting all of the grace and peace and contentment of God they could have in the Spirit by seeking his face together, and I ask us, church, where is this among us?

If we were to have Hillsong come here for a concert, we would have thousands want to attend.

If we were to have a famous preacher come, hundreds.

If we have a Bible study on the doctrine of Christ, maybe a hundred.

If we declared that we were going to meet for three hours to seek the face of God on Sunday night?

Maybe a dozen.

Do we want all that God has? Do we want to experience God’s power among us?

May God not bless us in proportion to our ability but in proportion to our prayer-fulness!

May He work so powerfully among us that we know that we have no ingenuity that can make sense of such a movement.

“they were selling their possessions and belongs and distributing the proceeds” They wanted to do all that God would have them do.

When you read the description of what’s happening, you realize this church obeyed God together.

If you look at alone from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, it teaches you to give to the needy, how to pray, how to fast, not to lay up your treasures in heaven, and not to be anxious about this life since Jesus God provides it all.

Now, let me ask you, just reading this, do you think they took this seriously?

Do you think that the apostles took the entire Great Commission seriously when Jesus told them to teach others all that He had commanded them?