Sermon Tone Analysis

House Rules

Our House will look like Heaven

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Ephesians 2:11-22

· So so good to see you this morning.

We are honored that you chose to worship with us this morning.

You have landed with us on our 3rd week of our sermon series we entitled HOUSE RULES.

We are talking about what makes FBA FBA.

We are walking through what makes us tick as a body of believers.

We are talking about the essentials of our church.

· 1st week we said our church will prioritize UNITY.

We looked at and said we will be unified when we are humble/ gentle/ patient.

· Last week we said that we will be a HOUSE that takes RISK.

We looked at and exegetically walked through the text and saw the RISK that Caleb and Joshua took.

We also saw the consequence that the children of Israel (20 years of age and older) had by not entering the promise land because of their lack of risk.

· This morning we have entitled the message “OUR HOUSE WILL LOOK LIKE HEAVEN” What does that mean we are perfect.

Absolutely not.

It means that we will be a DIVERSE CHURCH.

· I believe that this sermon series is a great reminder of who the LOCAL church is and what God has called us to be.

My prayer is it will show us the Power, potential and Vision for the local church.

I believe in our generation that we have lost excitement and understand of the local church and what God intended it to be and that is the hope of the nations.

We want to be a church that is on mission for the Lord.

Today I want to talk to you about one of the distinctive’s of this place, One of the things that we believe that God is calling us to and we believe that it is an area of growth for us and area that we have work to do but it is something that is so so super important.

So today we are going to talk about what it means to be a church that CELEBRATES DIVERSITY.

We live in a very diverse country / our country is divided/ our city is divided/ our city our country is segregated there is so much prejudice in many ways / there is political prejudice/ there is racial prejudice/ there is social economic prejudice that just exist everywhere.

· Ill Redneck capital of the world.

Folks on cell phones don’t realize how loud they talk sometimes and he was obviously from somewhere else and he was telling someone where he was and he said I AM IN THE REDNECK CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.

Memphis tn I am like bro what are you talking about/ what / man and he did even realize that.

Little bit painful to hear all of that.

· I want to speak into this as well.

When we think of diversity our minds automatically go to race when however we are divided with young VS old/ we are divided Rich vs poor.

I would even say our families are divided.

The saying around FBA is as goes the family as goes the ?? CHURCH.

Right we have families today where moms and dads are divided/ parents and children are divided.

Satan is having his way with the families today in our culture.

· What is the answer to all of this: I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is what we want our HOUSE to be.

We want FBA our House to look like our community and today to be honest it doesn’t.

we have a little work to do.

· So lets see how we can grow in this:

· – we will exegetically break this text down into small bite size chunks.

We are going to see some keys in this passage that focuses on diversity.

A lot to cover so here we go.

· V11 Paul is writing to Christians at a church in Ephesus and inside that church there were Gentiles and there were Jews.

Now inside this 1st century culture there was no greater since of prejudice among any other group than between the Jews and the Gentiles.

The Jews hated (understatement) the Gentiles and the Gentiles hated the Jews.

In fact if you were a Jew an orthodox Jew and you were to marry a Gentile your family would not come to the wedding / because they would have another service going on at the same time/ it would have been your funeral/ that is the since of prejudice that existed there.

Paul is reminding them in this first verse of where they come from in their background.

I believe the principles that Paul is going to lay out between the Jews and the Gentiles are principles that can work in every arena of our life where prejudice exist.

· V12 CHRIST Meaning at one time you were separated from Christ we all were.

You were/ I was separated/ we were excluded from citizenship.

Another translation says you were ALIENATED.

Basically, Paul is saying you all had one thing in common.

You all were on the outside looking in.

You were all of minority status if you will.

· V12 ALIENATED So the first Key to overcoming prejudice in our life according to this text is

· #1 Our HOUSE will NOT be a HOUSE of PREJUDICE.

PREJUDICE kills DIVERSITY.

· If you are here today and you are a believer there was a time when you did not know Christ Jesus.

There was a time when you WERE ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN.

Some of you today may have still not surrendered your life to Christ Jesus (we are super glad you are here today) One of the things that happen in our life is we get very prideful even as believers we get prideful about who we are.

We take great pride in a lot of things we really didn’t have anything to do with.

We have to remember that I was a sinner who had no hope no meaning in life apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That is the first thing we have to think about is to remember where we have come from.

· Fillings of superiority really bring about prejudice.

This is really were prejudice starts.

GUATAMALA.

I had nothing to do with being born in America.

I am blessed.

This ultimately leans us to believe that we are better than someone else.

Listen to what the bible has to say about this: Paul says in What then?

Are we Jews[a] any better off?[b] No, not at all.

For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin Nobody is better than anyone else.

We have all been separated from God.

We all have the same spiritual condition at birth.

Paul was a Jew.

He had risen to the top if you will in Judaism.

If anyone could have a thought that he was better than someone else it was Paul but Paul understood where he had come from.

He didn’t have that pridefullness that breeds prejudice.

· Labels fuel prejudice.

This is what we do.

Well he is a redneck.

She is aa Yankee.

He is a Muslim.

He is a democrat/ she is a republican.

We put labels on people.

When you label a person it really keeps you from seeing I would say the secret to overcoming prejudice.

Truth is the only label we all have is that we are all created in the image of God.

It is easier to label someone and stay in hatred.

Now there are generalizations about labels that we make.

Ill BASKETBALL.

KENO Silly thing but we have a generalization of labels.

Labels tends to lead to prejudice and alienations among groups.

· I think about the 1st century world and still today IGNORANCE fuels prejudice.

In a first century world the Romans were in power and the Romans believed this about the Jews/ the Romans believed that the Jews were lazy.

You know why?

Because the Jews didn’t work on Saturday/ Sabbath.

Do you know why the Jews didn’t work on Saturday?

Because it was the sabbath.

It was a day that was HOLY unto the Lord.

Gods word had all kind of restrictions about what they could not do on the sabbath.