Sermon Tone Analysis

A Person’s Great Need for Belonging.

Maslow’s third tier of human need..

A person’s most basic need is physical… food, shelter, water, etc.

If one of those needs are absent in a person’s life, everything else will not work right.

The next need is safety and security.

If a person does not feel safe and secure in there environment they cannot be healthy.

Now sometimes the fear that a person feels may be not real but such as PTSD, or other trauma, but it still tinkers with you and can destabilize an individual.

Belonging and love.

If a person basic physical needs are taken care of and they feel safe and secure, a person can build on that foundation and the next need it this desire to belong and to give and feel love.

Esteem grows out of that

Self actualization, or the need to feel that you are the best person you can be, grows out of that

EXP

Church membership speaks to that need....

And while I don’t want to make this message about a plea to add your name to the list, I know it is Biblical, and that there are truly some benefits from the covenant relationship that we enter into.

I quickly want to say 2 things.

Membership is in the Bible.

Much of the New Testament is written to a specific church to be read to members of that church.

No place is that more evident then Revelations which was a prophetic letter written to seven churches.

Some of the letters are written to specific members asking them to welcome other members.

You cannot do the same thing through text and social media.

Body ministry must be shoulder to shoulder.. eyeball to eyeball.

While your screen can provide and opportunity to meet, it is a pathway to person to person relationship.

Here’s what I do want to talk about.

Last week we looked at the first little sentence of our covenant

Freely

Joyfully

Covenant - we commit to belonging to one another

One Another (I promise to you and I understand your promise to me.)

Today I want to talk about the terms of the contract.

Why?

Because I believe I go to a great church and I want to explore what makes it great.

If there are things we need to look at to make our church greater, then I want to do that for the glory of God

Today I want to look towards the Bible using our covenant as an outline to speak to the unity, love, and spiritual growth of our congregation.

The Covenant

Having been led by the Spirit of God to receive, by faith, Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and having publicly confessed Him by baptism in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we freely and joyfully in the presence of God enter into covenant with one another as one body in Christ.

We agree, by the aid of the Holy Spirit:

to walk together in Christian love, faithfully seeking by all means to grow in grace and in understanding of the truth of God;

to pray and work for the kingdom of God, seeking to have His will done in our lives, in our homes, in the affairs of our community and world, and to contribute to the support of the Church at home and abroad;

to be faithful to our commitments, watchful of our manner of life and speech, and careful to guard the name of the Church and its members;

to faithfully take the Word of God as the guide for our conduct, to remember each other in prayer, aid each other in sickness and distress and do unto others as we would have them do unto us, remembering always to set a worthy example.

Today..

We agree, by the aid of the Holy Spirit:

to walk together in Christian love, faithfully seeking by all means to grow in grace and in understanding of the truth of God;

By the aid of the Holy Spirit

We need help.

Isaiah 6:1-6

He is so high that beings way more incredible than us shout so loud about the holiness of God that it shakes the foundations of heaven.

Moses was hid in the cleft of a rock and saw the hind parts of God and the results were that the glimpse was so powerful that people couldn't stand to be around him.

Abraham fell to his knees

Peter fell to his knees

John fell as if dead

Revelation1:12-17

For the most part when we read the commands of our God, we need to realized that we are only man(kind).

We can’t get holy enough, we can’t get righteous enough, we can’t get loving enough, we can’t get there from here but what we can do is this:

Ask for help from the Holy Spirit knowing that he will give it.

Practice, knowing there is always room for improvement.

The Good News is that despite our lack, God grants grace and shows us His love to be worked towards us and through us.

Walk Together

There is a goal that Christ had for us that can be read in

His goal is that we walk in UNITY… TOGETHER in Him.

When we walk in Unity the worlds sees God is real.

When we do not, the message looks like a lie.

Christian Love

And how do we walk?

Christian love must = the love that looks like Christs love for us.

It is eternally forgiving.

It always welcomes.

It stretches to reach the unreachable, the unlovely - even those who do and say wrong things towards us.

It’s Christlike love.

Real Christian love has nothing to do with the reward we get from giving it.

It has everything to do with the reward we get when we come together.

Because you know what, we don’t deserve it.

We want to be treated the way Corinthians tell us to love.

Well with the help of the Holy Spirit we can seek to Love others the way we want to be loved.

Faithfully Seek

Faithfully Seek

We made this promise as Christians to the larger body and to each other to keep seeking a couple things

Grow in Grace

He made a promise to us to grant us grace despite the fact that we don’t deserve it.

He is always faithful and just to forgive us our sins - and He did it before we even asked forgiveness.

We need to practice sharing that same grace towards the people we made a promise to.

To illustrate this I want to take you to a passage that has a little controversy to it.

Lk 17:

Luke 17

Sometimes I feel like I am the king of saying things I don’t mean.

Through text people have accused me of being cold.

Sometimes the stress of one area of our life spills over into other areas of our lives and we say things we shouldn’t say or do things to people who don’t deserve it.

If someone does that to you, which they have or will do, your job is to go to that person.

It provides the opportunity for grace to abound.

Can I say to you the biggest area of disunity isn’t because that person did something?

It’s because we refused to do our part… when they sin we don’t go to them.

Most of the time the tone we heard or the insult we took was not even intended.

Here is the real intention of this passage......

PROVIDE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REPENTANCE AND BE READY TO FORGIVE.

Let me tell you a procedure right from the Bible...

“Pastor, so and so did ________.”

“I’m sorry that happened, did you go to them.”

“No.

(can you?

I cant I’m to angry… sad… etc).”