Sermon Tone Analysis

GREETING

Name

Prayer time

Prayground and snacks

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Ladies Paint night saturday the 16th

Ladies bake sale Saturday the 23rd

Almost Christmas party Sunday the 24th

Remembrance Day - Show Video then Moment of Silence

MESSAGE

It is all about God

All TO Him, THROUGH Him, FOR Him, and FROM Him

The primary point of this is that God is reconciling all people TO himself.

Our relationship with HIM is what needs reconciling.

We have broken relationships on earth, broken families, broken friendships.

We have sins and histories.

But the bible teaches, first and foremost, that being reconnected to Him is the most important thing we need to handle.

Other reconciliations can come through that relationship with Christ - but that we need to reconciled first to Him.

And god works THROUGH his power to help us to bring about this reconciliation

There’s nothing we can do to earn it ourselves.

It required Jesus on the cross.

The desire and ability to reconcile comes FROM god.

The bible teaches that nobody can approach God unless the spirit draws them first.

This is all happening FOR god - not just for our benefit

Our benefit is an extremely important thing.

But we need to understand one thing - God has made his glory known to us so that we can know it.

He’s here to spread HIS kingdom, not ours.

God loves us more than we can possibly imagine, but he is here to build a kingdom, to spread his name - and we’re called to go along with that.

This is really important because I think we unintentionally miss this mark.

When we build and structure our churches, our services, we place a bar on people to say, ‘This is how good you have to be, or how you have to act, to have a place in our church’.

And don’t get me wrong.

There’s good logical reasons for this.

People can be disruptive.

They can bring their own emotional requirements.

They can be difficult.

They can be a drain on our resources.

And there’s a place where you have to say as leadership, ‘yknow what? this is a problem that does need to get dealt with’.

But there’s an underlying question we should ask.

If GOD has reconciled them to Himself, and WE can’t reconcile them to ourselves - whose power are we operating out of?

Jesus died to bring reconciliation, God has literally stopped counting people’s sins against them and cleared the debt - who are we to stand up and say ‘ya, but, you forgot God, they use bad language’ or ‘they are loud’ or ‘they are distracting’.

If Jesus bought their redemption with His blood, but we can’t make it work - whose power are we using?

And don’t get me wrong - a church service should be orderly.

But even

And power is the key word here.

Success in church, feeling God’s presence, coming out of a service fulfilled or changed - that isn’t created by us making you feel more comfortable, or singing the right songs in worship.

It’s a choice we make, to open ourselves up to the living God.

And you can do that no matter what’s going on around you.It’s saying, God, I want your power to work through me.

What changes us is God’s power, not our comfort or familiarity with how things ‘should be’.

When we place the entrance bar for new people, or the success of a service, at how it makes US feel, then we’re communicating that these things are done for US

When the bible is clear - the only thing, the ONLY thing that brings this reconciliation, is a direct encounter with the spirit and person of the living God

People bring their own problems, they bring difficulties to the table.

It’s HARD to love people.

So we can take a cue here from Jesus - when he was presented with a world of problems, and entire humanity full of problems, what did He do to solve it?

He gave his life.

He sacrificed.

God is the one taking almost every step in this process of reconciliation - it is from God, through God, to God, and for God

If we want people to enter into a relationship with God and be eternally changed, we need to do everything in our power to arrange the meeting.

It’s been said that people are generally cool with Christ - it’s Christians that they tend to have a problem with.

The greek word here for ‘counting’, it means ‘to take an inventory’ or also has the sense of a ‘debt collector keeping record of a debt’

Every single soul in this world exists to worship God.

Every person you will ever meet, they are a person that Jesus died to bring into His kingdom.

As a church, we’re given this ministry called ‘reconciliation’ to restore people into their rightful relationship with God.

But we too often consider our own preferences - our comfort level, our style, our desires - when it comes to what kind of people we want in our church.

But we should be asking the question - what kind of people does GOD want in his kingdom?

And then we should be asking the next question - what can we do to reach THOSE people?

And when we do a church service, we don’t do it to to honor ourselves - we do it to honor God.

It’s literally our entire reason for being to be a place where we draw people in to worship God.

A good service is one where God is lifted up, not us.

It’s great to come out feeling encouraged, it’s great to come out feeling renewed - that’s a natural byproduct of being connected to the spirit.

But when we say, church is good or bad based on how it feeds us and makes us feel - that’s not healthy.

In fact, we pray so much for revival.

And revival will come.

But there’s this terrible thing called ‘Revival addiction’.

That we see the Lord move, we feel that awesome rush and change and the power of God, and a REAL revival moves us to the next step, it sends us out into the world to make a difference, because a REAL revival is about God spreading his kingdom.

But when we move service to service, revival to revival, just hoping to catch that ‘spiritual high’ again - we’ve made it about us.

We’ve made revivals not a place where God can change the world, but a place where he can make us feel better.

And this ministry of reconciliation combats that, because it’s default outward focused.

This is why God has called us to bring the outside people inside - because we’re not doing this for ourselves, we’re doing this for Him, and He wants more people in his kingdom.

It keeps us in check.

and...

It says that the new creation doesn’t come until Christ does.

We can’t let a person’s eternal destiny be decided by how they make US feel.

We are Christ’s ambassadors in this process

Culturally, an ambassador was a person of high esteem charged with delivering or receiving a message

God’s ministry of reconciliation was in ‘not counting people’s sins against them’.

The greek word here for ‘counting’, it means ‘to take an inventory’ or also has the sense of a ‘debt collector keeping record of a debt’

We are not just the ambassadors of Christ’s MESSAGE - we are also the ambassadors of Christ’s METHOD

We’re called to speak God’s words - but we’re also called to take up our crosses daily.

We can’t do one without the other.

The method that Jesus used to pave the way for humanity to reach the father was through sacrifice - giving his life to pay for the sins of the world.

If we want to lead people down that road, we’re going to do it through sacrifice.

God is going to ask us to sacrifice our..

Comfort

Time

Wealth

Focus

Selves

The scripture here goes so far as to say, ‘as though God were making His appeal through us’

So how can we bring this ministry of reconciliation?

If we believe God wants to reconcile a person to himself, we also need to accept that God will do it THROUGH us