Sermon Tone Analysis

Acts 26

How many of you are pretty handy?

And I mean by handy that you tend to be able to fix things without asking someone for help, whether that’s your husband, dad, wife, or a service person like a plumber or repair man?

Now handy people tend to be resourceful and are able to use various things to make improvements, although it may not be a permanent fix.

How many of you have ever used something other than a hammer to drive a nail?

Shoe?

Or pipe? a board?

a rock? the nearest hard object?

Driving a nail is like giving the gospel to someone.

There are a lot of ways to get it into the wood, but some tools are more effective and efficient than others.

Our Wednesday night teen Bible Study has been working on a semester long project to write out their faith story.

Today, we’ll be emphasizing the importance of knowing and being able to tell your faith story.

As I was discussing with Chris about what the theme of this message will be, we went back and forth between

It may not necessarily be

because, there are several things that your faith story needs to include to be really effective.

Just like a hammer has a long handle to hold, generally it has a nice grip so it wont slip, it has a solid head with a fork for balance and pulling nails, as well as the famous rounded narrow face to drive the nail.

Your faith story will include your life before, during and after your encounter with Jesus.

And every good faith story will include the gospel.

Acts 25.

Context:

you can look at your handout.

This is adapted from a summary sheet pastor Chris has been working on.

Look at the thesis:

To be a good summary of Acts, it has to have

Word

Spirit

Church

Jesus is building His Church through the Spirit empowered proclamation of the Word amid, and even through, the many conflicts of a fallen world.

Look at the progression

Jesus ascends giving them the great commission: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

baptize and teach them to do what I’ve said.

And I will be with you in power to be my witnesses not just in Jerusalem, but Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

Pentecost comes and this amazing display of supernatural Holy Spirit power where all the disciples are speaking the gospel in languages they’ve never learned and about 3,000 people are baptized and added to the church that day.

Jerusalem: church is growing like crazy.

The apostles and many disciples are doing miracles and signs in front of everyone.

No one can deny this supernatural power.

However, many people, especially the religious leaders were so angry with them that they dragged a Christian named Stephen out of the city and stoned him to death.

And the persecution of believers begins to ramp up.

One of the key players in the persecution is Saul, who is gloriously converted from trying to imprison and kill Christians TO be a Christian: a disciple of Jesus in chapter 9, where he begins to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

((some of us may know what that feels like…at one time we are fighting the things of God and then all of a sudden God grips our hearts, and spins us around and uses us make Jesus famous right where we are.))

But the persecution doesn’t slow down much and the Christians begin to leave Jerusalem and migrate to Samaria and Syria.

Paul begins to travel as a missionary to Antioch, Cyprus, and modern day Turkey, then all over the world that is becoming increasingly modernized and connected by these brilliant Roman roads.

Luke is setting the stage for all the epistles to be written

corinthians, ephesians, galatians

To whom?? TO churches

Planted right here in Acts

You see the progression eventually reaches Rome with the implication that there is nothing that can stop it—the Gentiles, which really includes us today, will be reached with the Gospel.

Let’s look specifically at chapter 25

Paul is arrested by governor Felix, who throws Paul in jail hoping for a bribe and to do the jews a favor.

Paul sits in jail for two years until Felix is replaced by Festus.

As soon as he comes to power, the Jewish leaders beg Festus to move Paul from Caesarea to Jerusalem because they want to ambush him on the way.

They can’t prove even one of their accusations, but Festus wants to do them a favor.

Festus asks Paul if he would be willing to be tried in Jerusalem?

Paul replies in

Roman citizens had the option to appeal to a higher court, similar to how we understand appeals here.

The Roman judicial system had served Paul well before, but if he stayed here in Judea it was certain he wasn’t going to get a fair trial.

As soon as Paul appeals to Caesar, God’s plan to send the gospel to Rome is set in motion.

Festus doesn’t think Paul has done anything worthy of death, but doensn’t know how to handle all these people shouting for him to be killed.

So he asks if King Agrippa will assist saying that the Jews want to kill him over disputes about their own religion, where a certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserts to be alive.

v19

So Agrippa asks to see Paul himself.

And tells Paul he can speak freely.

Paul begins to speak very shrewdly.

He says glad he’s standing before King Agrippa because he’s heard that Agrippa knows and understands the customs and controversies of the Jews and is a believer in the prophets.

Paul takes this perfect opportunity to give his testimony.

He begins with his life BEFORE his encounter with Jesus.

He begins by saying (v4) he grew up in the strictest part of the Jewish religion and says, that he is on trial for one reason: he believes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

v7b-8

Then he continues by describing how opposed he used to be the Jesus.

He used to punish and persecute any followers of Jesus of Nazareth, even travelling to different cities to arrest them.

If you’re looking for a micro gospel in your Bible, you can highlight the end of v18 and then v20.

THE GOSPEL CHANGES EVERYTHING !!

We had our Youth CLUE Live activity last night and shut the lights off in the whole building so all the teens had to run around with a flashlight.

Without those lights, without the candles, they couldn’t make it through the game.

They couldn’t have found the secret rooms or solved the mystery.

When the gospel enters your life it transforms you.

It’s such a radical transformation that Paul describes it as light and darkness.

It changes their

heart: belief in God and turning away from sin

life: matches their faith and repentance

When I’m working with the teens, we used this template for our testimonies:

An introduction

Life before you were converted

Your encounter with God

Life after your encounter with God

Challenge to your listener

The teens made sure that their testimony ALWAYS INCLUDED THE GOSPEL.

We’ll have a few teens give their testimony as the conclusion of the message today.

So think about your faith story.

Where does your journey to faith start?

You know where you ended up:

You believed in Jesus

Who were the key people or places involved?

What were you going through at the time?

What truths did God use to really grip your heart?

Did it happen in a lightbulb moment?

Or did it happen over time?

Think about if someone asked you, how do you know you’re a Christian?

You could give them your faith story

HERE are some ways NOT to give your testimony: BOOOO