Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Tone of specific sentences
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*Abolishing Barriers with His Cross*
*Ephesians 2:11-22*
I learned a long time ago that fences can hurt.
As a young boy, I used to play at my grandparents house.
Grandpa is an old cowboy.
He always had horses around the place.
He had a barn and a pasture with a white wooden rail fence around it.
One day I ran out the front door on my way to the pasture to play.
I jumped up on the wood fence and prepared to climb over into the pasture.
In all my excitement I forgot a very important detail.
About 24” above the wood rail fence was a strand of wire which circled the perimeter of the pasture.
It was connected to a low voltage transformer.
In Oklahoma, we called them “hotwire fences.”
About the time I raised up to climb over the fence, the hotwire caught me right across the forehead.
Next thing I know, I am on my back looking up at the fence.
That fence stung me and hurt me.
Since then, I have learned that there are certain kinds of fences which are much more painful than even a hotwire fence.
They are fences made not of wood and wire, but of charged attitudes and shocking actions.
These fences are much more damaging and have longer lasting consequences than any hotwire.
These barriers are made of anger, bitterness, prejudice, and many other expressions of sin which come from within our hearts.
We construct these fences thinking that they will protect us from certain undesirable people or unwanted heartaches.
In reality, these barriers only serve to isolate us from God and from others.
Such barriers were well known to the Apostle Paul.
He had once been an active fence-builder himself.
But now, by the power of the cross, Paul had been freed from these fences.
In Ephesians 2:11-22, Paul writes about the ultimate destruction of these barriers by the cross of Jesus Christ.
I.
The Barriers of Alienation (vv.
11-13).
A.
Alienated from God.
1. Gentiles alienated from God.
a.
separate from Christ who is the Messiah.
b.
alienated from Israel the people of God.
c.
strangers to the covenants of promise.
d.
without hope in the world.
e.
without God in the world.
The hopelessness of life without God was echoed by the Roman poet Catallus who wrote: The sun can rise and set again but once our brief light sets, there is one unending night to be slept through.
This alienation from God was further captured in the way the Gentiles were described in v. 19 – strangers and aliens.
Not only were we separated from God, we were separated from one another.
B.
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