Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Intro / Announcements
Good morning.
Welcome to TRC.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend.
I know we had a lot of fun celebrating together here.
Couple of announcements before we get started:
If you’re new today, first, welcome!
Also, Connect Cards are a great way to let us know you were here!
There should be one in a seat next to you.
And if you fill it out and turn it in (either to me, Janelle, or in the white box in the back), we have a gift for you and I’ll also send you a thank you card for being our guest!
Connect Cards are also a great way to let us know if you have a prayer request, would like get more involved here at TRC, or even if you’ve made a decision to follow Jesus.
We’d love to pray for you.
We’d love to help you take your next steps of faith.
Also, Men’s Breakfast is coming up on the 11th.
If you are a dude and you’ve never been, you’re missing out.
The next one will be Chick-Fil-A here in Glastonbury.
Lots of other things going on.
If you’re interested in finding out more, you can talk to anyone with a green lanyard on or visit our “Events” page at theriverchurchct.com
As you can see, God has blessed our small church with lots of kids!
And our River Littles team (that’s Kinder and below) is looking for a few more team members.
As I’ve said before, this is not babysitting, this is the early stages of discipleship.
This is the future of the church and world.
This is sharing the love of Jesus with our little ones.
If you’re interested, grab a River Kids pamphlet and talk with Alyssa Zeek.
Finally, we don’t take a tithe and offering during service.
However, TRC is supported by your generous giving and your offerings go towards furthering God’s Kingdom here in Glastonbury and beyond.
If you’d like to give, there is a white box in the back or you can give online at theriverchurchct.com/give.
Speaking of giving.
I have a short video to show you how a portion of our giving is used.
Many of you know we keep 10% of our offerings for missions.
Now, 6% of that is given to what’s called the Cooperative Program.
Here’s a short video about what that means...
Although we are still waiting for God to send us our own missionary or church planter to support.
Through our network partnership, our church is ALREADY helping support God’s work all over the world.
In fact, TRC was support through funds given to the Cooperative Program.
So this is a really cool thing!
Let’s pray for our tithes and offerings and this morning’s sermon.
Things are changing here in CT.
I’m sure you’ve probably noticed… it’s been raining a lot lately.
Not snowing (although I prefer snow).
But here in CT, we’ve been getting a lot of rain and warmer weather.
However, the most significant change I’ve seen take place recently is - the blooming of the trees!
Now, that’s cool!
I love that!
But all of a sudden, the trees that have appeared dead, due to the freezing cold, are showing life.
I think that’s one of the coolest lessons the transition from winter to spring teaches us: Life still happens.
It might feel cold and dead, but in the right season, life happens again.
I believe we see this perseverance of life in the Bible.
The grand story of the Bible starts with God creating perfect life, but sin enters the world and with it, death begins to infect everything.
Yet, God made promises of life from the beginning.
And although there are season where everything seems dead, life continues to happen.
And in the Bible, God used men called “prophets” to speak or remind people of God’s promises.
These were men who spoke as God directed them.
Sometimes they gave warnings or judgements.
But many times they spoke God’s words of life!
And one of the most famous of God’s prophets was named Elijah.
He was a man who spoke powerfully for God and did many miracles.
But the time came for his life on earth to end and the question became, “Who be the messenger of life - God’s prophet - if Elijah was gone.”
Well, we find out that Elijah’s powerful ministry of life would continue through his servant Elisha, who was also a prophet.
And as Elisha takes over as God’s prophet, I believe there is a lot we can learn, even today, in his first miracle.
I think it’s applicable to where we are at as a new church in Glastonbury.
Look what happens:
First off, we read that the men of the city say to Elisha...
The situation of the city is pleasant!
Now, the city they were in was the city of Jericho.
Jericho was this amazing city that was perfectly situated to flourish.
If you fast -forward to Jesus’ day (like 900 years), we see this through the story of Zaccheaus - the head tax collector.
The reason why Zaccheaus was super rich was because Jericho was a prosperous town.
Now, hit rewind and go all the way back to Joshua’s day, when the Jews first came into Israel and you find something interesting.
Jericho probably sounds familiar to you, even some of you kids, because why? Yes, it’s the city with huge walls that God told Joshua and the Israelites to march around 7 times and then yell.
And the walls supernaturally fell down.
But that’s not the interesting thing I’m talking about.
Look at this:
Okay… now, curses are a little weird and spooky.
I know I’m asking, “Why is God’s leader placing curses on things and is this something God’s people should do today?”
Short answer is no.
Joshua is simply declaring God has destroyed the wickedness in this city and it’s to be a reminder of His victory.
To rebuild it would be rooted in a spirit of rebellion against God, which has consequences, thus invoking a curse.
Yet, someone did rebuild it and the curse was being enforced.
The men of Jericho described their city by saying...
But the water (life) is bad and the land unfruitful.
Basically, this should be a prosperous city, but this place is cursed!
The water is bad… Water is life… if the water is bad, life is bad.
Case and point: the land is unfruitful.
It won’t produce life!
And what thy are really asking Elisha is, “Since you’re supposed to be the new prophet, prove it.”
Elisha said...
Bring me a new bowl...
A new bowl represented God’s new vessel.
It represented Elisha, the new prophet of God.
And he says...
Put salt in it.
Salt, especially in the realm of worship, represented purification and preservation.
It had this cleansing quality about it.
And Elisha takes the salt and throws it into the spring of bad water.
Now, I understand the religious symbolism of all this - salt in the water … purify the water - but, I don’t know about you, but… putting salt in water has never made water better!
Salt in water usually makes it worse!
And yet we see...
Thus says the Lord, “I have healed this water… so the water has been healed to this day.”
It was truly a miracle.
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