Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements:

Happy Sunday!

I’m so glad to be here with you this morning.

We haven’t done this in a while,but turn to somebody and give them a high-five.

Let them know you’re glad they’re here.

If you’re new here, my name is George and I’m the pastor of The River Church.

If you have time after service, I’d love to officially meet.

Come grab me.

Also, if this is your first time, Connect Cards are a great way to let us know that.

If you fill this out and turn it in the white box in the back, we have a pretty sweet gift for you.

Additionally, I’ll send you a hand written note simply thanking you for hanging out this morning.

Connect Cards are also a great way to let us know your prayer requests.

We’d love to pray for you!

You can also let us know if you’d like to take some next steps in your faith journey - whether that’s questions you have about our church or the Bible; or, if would like to help out around here; or, if you’d like to put your faith in Jesus - we want to know about that and walk with you on this new adventure; or, anything in between.

Connect Cards are a great way to help us, help you!

My wife Janelle mentioned last week we finally got new invites last week.

Grab a couple to hand out.

As a church, part of our purpose is to invite people into opportunities where they can meet Jesus.

These are an easy way to do that.

Also, if you have FB, we finally got our live-stream working.

Sharing that onto your page is another great way to show people what God’s doing here at TRC and also spread the good news of Jesus - you can do that now if you’d like!

You should’ve got a bulletin as you walked in.

One side is for taking notes, but the other side has important information about who we are and what we value.

Additionally, there are gathering opportunities listed - like Men’s Life Group coming up next Saturday.

Men, you don’t want to miss those!

Great food.

Great friendships.

And great discussions focused on growing as godly men and supporting one another.

If you have any questions about what’s going on here at TRC, feel free to ask anyone who has a green lanyard on.

We don’t take a tithe and offering during service, but your generosity is important for two main reasons: 1) It is an act of worship - and we are all about worshiping God here; 2) It helps support the mission God has called us to here in Glastonbury and beyond.

If you’d like to give, you can put your offering in the white box in the back or give online through PayPal.

With that, let’s pray for our tithes and offering, and for today’s message.

Intro:

Does anyone remember being in school and studying really hard for something, only to realize you studied the read the wrong chapter or wrong subject?

You got to class the morning of the test and you’re like, “I’m ready.

I studied chapter 17 front and back.”

Then, your teacher says, “Okay class.

Put your books and notes away.

Time for your test on chapters 23 & 24!”

And you’re like “Oh no!”

But what can you do?

Even though you had the best intentions, it doesn’t matter that you know chapter 17’s material - that’s not what was required.

Similarly, I was at an evangelism training yesterday and one of the presenters said, “If you want to be a good employee, find out what the boss wants and do that - preferably without being asked.

Because you can do amazing things at your job, but if they aren’t what the boss needs done, you’re not going to get your boss’s appreciation!”

He was ultimately talking about our responsibility as Christians (followers of Jesus) to make sure we know what Jesus wants us to do, so we’re doing the thing that matters.

Because we can do a lot of amazing things in our life, but are they the things Jesus is asking us to do?

As we continue in our series through the book of Revelation titled “Ready,” we are now in chapters 2 & 3 - a section known as the 7 letters to the churches of Asia.

And here’s what’s really unique about these chapters: They are letters from Jesus.

This book is filled with letters.

Some of us have favorites that really read over and over again.

A lot of Christians a fans of the apostle Paul’s letters.

They should be!

They are awesome.

We do whole sermon series, whole bible studies, on these letters.

And as I was preparing for this week, the thought crossed my mind of combining all 7 letters into one message, especially since our current series is simply an introduction to Revelation.

But then I thought about something: These are letters from Jesus.

These are letters relevant to the entire church.

Theres are letters that let us know what our boss - our king, Jesus - wants!

If we are going to study anything to be ready for our future test, it’s going to be these chapters.

So, I thought, let’s study them.

Let’s spend some time going through each of the 7 letters and find out what King Jesus is saying to us.

Because it’s important!

Before we get started, I want to point out something that will be helpful for us to understand the next 7 weeks, but also understand these letters when we ready them on our own.

Remember, our hope is this “Introduction” will better equip you to read Revelation for yourself.

The General Outline of the Letters can be broken into four parts:

Description of Jesus relevant to the content of the letter.

A section describing what the church did good.

A section on what they’re doing wrong.

Finally, a section on how to properly respond to what Jesus wants.

And this morning, we’re going to start with the letter to the Ephesians.

Now, don’t get that mixed up with Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

This is Jesus’ letter to the Ephesians.

Same church, different letter, time, and purpose.

And we’re going to see this basic outline here in this letter.

Jesus is going to describe himself.

He will tell them what’s good.

He will tell them what’s not.

And He will tell them how to respond.

So, let’s read it together:

You guys see the outline.

Now, for us this morning, I’m going to add something else that I believe will help us better understand what Jesus is saying...

Exegesis:

4 Perfects: “You Win” - “Perfect!”

In the early 90s, a video game called Street Fighter came out.

Man, I loved that game.

My favorite character was Ken - he was the blond karate guy.

I can still remember how to do all the moves.

I invested so much time trying to be good at that game.

It never happened - I stunk.

But I had fun.

In the game, two opponents would fight and there would be three rounds to a match.

Whoever won two out of three, won the match.

And when you’d fight, there were these energy bars at the top for your character.

When you got hit, your energy went down.

Once it was gone, you lost the round.

Now, does anyone know what would happen if you beat your opponent without losing energy?

That’s right!

You’d get a “perfect” (you got to say it that way!).

Let me show you an example...

So, let’s have some fun.