Sermon Tone Analysis

Community

Good morning brothers and sisters, welcome to Church today.

Welcome to our family.

This is our community that God gave us and in this place, the thing that happens here in Church is change.

In our community, lives are changed.

Changed for the better.

Amen?

Two weeks ago I talked about how fellowship can sometimes make us fat.

But there is something else that happens when we fellowship and that is growth.

Growth happens when we fellowship.

But fellowship is not just simply coming together to eat or drink.

That is just having a meal together.

But real fellowship is coming together to help one another to grow in our relationship with God.

When we become children of God, God not only gave us a relationship with him.

but he also put us into a community with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

Right?

When we become Christian, one of the first and most important thing that our friend will tell us to do is to go to church and also attend a Cell group.

Why is this so important?

Why do we need to be in a community?

Can we live as a Christian by ourself and grow?

What happens if we are left to be by ourselves?

Todays society values individualism.

This is where people are only interested in themselves and not interested in other people.

Where they will not allow others to speak into their lives.

They are interested in what benefit they can get more than what others can get.

Individualism in society has caused divorces to increase, more competition at work and even lack of growth in people’s lives.

Individualism can make people selfish.

This used to be something that is from the west.

From the western countries.

But in recent times, because of the globalisation, the world has become a smaller place and the culture of he west has come to the east.

People in Asia are becoming more individualistic in their lives and they care only for themselves and not for others.

If we are not careful, this can happen to us also in the church.

Where we come to Church only to hear the sermon.

We don’t invest much in people’s lives and we don’t allow brothers and sisters to come into our lives and invest into our lives.

I thank God that in our Church, we have a very warm community and we care for each other and we are willing to help each other.

But I feel that we can grow in the way that we fellowship more.

We can help each other grow more.

The Bible teaches us how to do so.

In today’s text, we will be looking at Hebrews 10:24-25.

In , it talks about Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross for us.

Jesus sacrifice has paid the price of our sins once and for all.

Because of that, we have been set free from our sins.

And after that it says from verse 19 that we can now enter into the presence of God. he encourages us to hold on to the hope that we have in Christ.

And in verse 24 -25 he talks about our fellowship with each other helps us to continue to have that hope in God.

Paul is telling us that we need each other in order for us to continue to persevere in our faith.

So the person sitting next to you is very important to you.

We need each other to finish the race.

We cannot do it alone.

Here are 3 things that we can learn from Paul from these verses.

Spur one another to love and good deeds.

What makes a good friend?

Are good friends people who tell you nice things?

Or are good friends people who are willing to tell you the truth that other people will not tell you?

What kind of friends are we?

Are we friends who are willing to tell the truth?

It says here in proverbs that the friend is willing to tell us the truth even if it hurts us, but the enemy tells us only the good things.

Pauls tells us that we should take an interest in each others lives and speak the truth to each other.

The word in this verse is to spur or to stir each other to love and good deeds.

Spur in english is what cowboys put on their boots to make the horse move by poking them.

So sometime we need to poke each other to help each other do the right thing.

Which means that we need to encourage one another to love and do what is right.

For example when we see a brother or sister making a decision that is not good for them.

What will we do.

Will we just keep quiet about it of will we try to talk to the person about it?

There was once when a brother in Church told me that he will be going to his girlfriend’s place to bake cookies for Chinese new year after cell group and that he will stay at her place because it would be late when they finished.

When I heard it, I as quite troubled by it because they were not yet married and it is not good for them to start staying over at each others house.

So I went to ask my pastor what should I do?

I was afraid that he would be angry if I told him that it was not a good idea.

My Pastor encouraged me to talk to him if I care for him.

So I prayed before I spoke to him and I thank God that he listened to me and he told me that he will not stay over.

He will take a taxi home after they were done.

And he messaged me that night to tell me that he went home that night.

I thank God for this brother who was willing to listen to what i needed to tell him.

Some may say it is just staying over one night.

It is not a big deal.

Nothing will happen.

But if he did stay over, there is a chance that something might happen that both of them will regret.

He doesn’t need to take chance like that.

God says that there should not be even a hint of sexual immorality in the Church.

God wants us to speak into each others lives.

God wants us to be willing to listen to those who love us enough to tell us the truth about our lives.

We need to submit to each other.

We need to account to each other for the things in our lives.

Many times God speaks to us through our brothers and sisters to warn us about certain things in our lives.

Many times it is the other people who are outside who see what we cannot see about ourselves.

And many times what others tell us about ourselves can help us see our sins.

When people give us feedback.

It would be good for us to not need to rush to protect ourselves first, but to go back and pray about what the person had said and if there is truth in it to change and repent.

2. Meet up regularly.

If we want to speak into each other’s life.

We need to meet up with one another to hear from each other and understand each other.

But it will take time and effort to meet up one another.

In the verse it says that we should not give up meeting up together as some are in the habit of doing.

Meaning that there were people who have stopped meeting up with each other.

It is easy to want to just do our own thing and live our own lives.

This is where the culture of individualism affects us.

This is when we just want to do our own thing and we are not interested in other people’s lives.

But the bibles commands us to not only be interested about ourselves but to also care about others.

We need to look out for each other.

Having a community for support is very important for us to continue to grow.