Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Great to be with you this morning!

Last week was so much fun, as we celebrated with those going public through baptism.

And last week’s message was intentionally simple.

In my time of study and prayer, I just couldn’t get away from presenting the simplicity of how God makes all things new, and how He is redeeming or restoring us towards His original design and intent for us.

If you missed last week, open your podcast app and search for Emmanuel Assembly.

Before we dive into this week’s message, I want us to prayer over and send off two folks near and dear to us here at Emmanuel.

Samantha and TC.

This morning we are going to continue the idea we discussed last week, that God makes all things new.

STORY: Have you ever been around people who just seem to be listening in on every conversation?

I mean they are the epitome, the icon, of eves-dropping.

Have you ever been around people who just seem to be listening in on every conversation?

I mean they are the epitome, the icon, of eves-dropping.

DEFINE/SLIDE

I have been guilty of it.

I want to hear what’s being said behind those closed doors, so I before walking complete past them I slow down with my ear in their direction to hear what I can hear.

Have you ever been at the bottom of the stairs leaving somewhere but you are curious what’s being said in the room you just left?

So, once you get to the bottom instead of leaving you linger and try to hear what you can.

Maybe I’m the only one that has ever done any of this.

I typically don’t have anything to hide in my conversations, but it does drive me crazy when someone begins asking questions about a conversation and during a conversation that didn’t include them and has nothing to do with them.

If you are going to listen, fine.

But don’t ask for clarifying questions because you don’t even have the context to ask good ones.

Does anyone else know what I’m talking about?

It happens in our spiritual journey as well.

We get half the picture.

We overhear half the conversation of what God is wanting to do in our lives.

We don’t even have the full context.

TESTIMONY: I can share a personal story.

When I was 15 years old, well it was actually the week right before my birthday, I was at home sick lying on the couch.

It was this week that the Lord used multiple things in my life to put a desire and call to MISSIONS inside of me.

God was birthing something in me, but I didn’t and still don’t see the whole picture.

I did my best to interpret what I felt like He was saying to me and what it should look like, but I have to admit I only knew in part.

I started preparing myself for missions, whatever that was going to look like.

I went on mission trip.

I became a part of a Spanish speaking church here in Knoxville.

I surrounded myself with other cultures, ate their food, tried to learn their language, all in attempts to expand on what I thought God had spoken to me.

There were even opportunities God was putting in front of me to go to certain countries and work with certain types of people that I really struggled with.

I told God that I wasn’t passionate about going there, working with those people.

I wrestled with God about this.

There is this idea that God isn’t calling us to something we like or love.

MAYBE.

But I don’t think just because we don’t like something that God is automatically calling us to that.

I believe that God will stretch us out of our comfort zone and allow us to be challenged, but He has placed desires, and passions, and likes inside us for a reason.

And this ties in to what we are talking about when God makes all things new.

Let’s look at one more verse that the prophet Ezekiel writes regarding this idea.

ezekiel

Ezekiel is reminding God’s people about his plan to restore His original plan for them, since the Garden (vs.

35).

But it is greater than the Old Covenant.

It doesn’t occur with appeasement for sin necessary to be repeated.

Instead, God is taking His covenant to a whole new level.

He is getting to the heart of the matter.

vs. 26-27 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.

I will take away the heart of stone and replace it with a soft heart.

And I will place my Spirit within you so that you can fulfill everything I desired of you before.

Remember, last week how we talked about our attempts to fix things, to fix ourselves, usually only make things worse.

Even if we manage to tape things back together it isn’t the process of redemption and repair that only God can do.

This is where self-helps and secular counseling can only take you so far because they lack the element of depending on God, surrendering to His best plan for us.

He’s the creator; we’re the creation.

There is no shortcut to what He has for us when it doesn’t involve Him.

vs. 33/36 God is going to cleanse us, resettle us, and rebuild us.

Then the nations will know…Then the nations will know...

I love this part.

God does something in and through us that no one else can get credit for, and it declares to everyone else around just how good, how great our God really is.

God’s work speaks for itself, and it will speak through our lives to those around us.

ALL will know that God has rebuilt, God has planted, God has spoken, He will do it.

TRANSITION: Are you needing this in your life right now?

I have areas that I am.

Do you know folks needing the Lord to cleanse, to change their scenery, to rebuild and heal them?

God not only CAN but WANTS to do it.

TRANSITION

Last week we celebrated with folks through baptism, and maybe you yourself have experienced God in a personal and powerful way.

And I love what this verse says about what God has done in us:

​ NIV

25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.

26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

​ NIV17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

I love this verse.

But this verse doesn’t tell the whole story.

And sometimes we get it in our minds that once we saved, once we come to God, that this “new creation” things means literally everything OLD and let’s add BAD just goes away.

I don’t know about you, but it didn’t work that way for me.

SHORT STORY: When I first fell in love with Jesus…overwhelmed by his nearness.

God’s Word became alive for the 1st time.

Gladly removed things from my life that I felt would take away from what God was doing inside of me.

BUT as I was sharing with a fellow pastor this week, it was also after I followed the Lord that I wrestled with some very real anger issues and control and even some addictions and lacked empathy for others and was really really selfish.

IT WAS AFTER CHRIST, that I found myself in some really difficult and dark moments.

But I thought I was suppose to be a NEW CREATION.

What happened to that part of the story, of my journey.

TRANSITION: What do we do with that?

How do you handle what you consider personal failure?

How do you keep putting one foot in front of the other and not stop all together when you get discouraged?

I am talking about what do you do when you believe one thing should be the case but it is working out in a totally different way.

It could be that someone close to you got sick while you believed for their healing.

It could be that while you in a church that someone was able to hurt you deeply.

It could be that while you were trying to figure out what God had next for you that you floundered with the steps to take, what it was suppose to look like, and really couldn’t seem to get any bearings.

Listen to this...

I recognize that I am a new creation.

I cling to the work that God has done in me by His grace.

But I also recognize that the work He started isn’t completed, and though He is changing me from glory to glory (it is daily growing) it won’t be finished until the fullness of time.

Have you ever heard someone talk about their relationship with Christ in this way:

I was saved.