Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Hey everyone!

Welcome back to our Thursday Night Gatherings.

If you weren’t at Cross Con with us a little over a week ago…or you didn’t swing by our house on new year’s, then it’s been a bit. 5 weeks to be exact.

5 weeks since we’ve met, and 6 weeks since we’ve been in this context with Worship and time in the word.

I bring that up just to say one thing.

I missed ya’ll.

I missed you.

I missed this.

I missed seeing God work in your lives through his word…and through the community we are building here.

I missed it for sure, but some time off was necessary.

Not only because of the holiday season and Cross Con…but because your leaders and myself needed a bit of time to recharge, regroup, refocus.

We spent last Thursday together talking about the plans for this upcoming semester, and I’ll tell you, I’m excited for what Jesus is going to do.

I’m excited for the community events that we are planning, for the church wide events that are occuring…and for the teaching that Jesus has for us here on Thursday nights.

Let me a give you a bit of an update on that before we dive into tonight’s message.

If you were at Cross Con, I announced our brand new series for this semester.

By Faith: A study in Hebrews 11.

Every spring I want to take some time to appreciate the Old Testament, and show you how important it is to our walk with Christ…and how important it is to understanding God and his Word.

Those of you that know that might be confused as to why Hebrews 11 is our text for the spring then.

Well it’s because we are going to be using Hebrews 11 as a springboard to head back into all of the OT people that are listed in that chapter.

We are going to be looking at how the faith of the saints of the Old Testament cause us to turn our eyes on Jesus now.

That’s starting next week.

And I’ll tell you, I’m not the only one who is going to be teaching this semester.

We’ve got some other pastors on staff here coming in, we’ve got our own leader, Regent Erickson, bringing the word.

And we’ve even got a guest preacher coming in, Pastor Greg Savage…who was just on the Centered.

Committed.

Confident.

Podcast if you listen to that.

So, lots of exciting things going on this semester.

But what are we doing tonight?

Well, tonight starts 1 out of 3 messages that focus on Christian essentials?

Not just college ministry Christian essentials…but fundamental things pertaining to the life of any Christ.

These three messages will be dedicated to our 2nd “C” of college group.

Being committed to discipleship.

Specifically, this semester will be focused on things that help you commit to your personal discipleship.

The topics are prayer, sanctification…and tonight’s topic.

Fellowship.

Or what we like to call…gathering.

That’s tonight message:

Why do we gather?

Why is it important?

Why should we care about it?

How should we go about not only thinking about it, but prioritizing it?

This is what we are discussing tonight, and we will be jumping around just a bit in scripture…so let me pray for us and we’ll get at it.

Prayer

Alright, here’s the first point we are covering tonight.

Why do we gather?

Because

God Commands It

We are going to start with a really simple one that I don’t think will take as much explaining.

It’s easy and simple.

God commands it.

We do it.

Go ahead and turn in your bibles to the book of Hebrews.

You might as well get use to that now since that’ll be our series coming up.

But instead of Hebrews 11 tonight, I want you to turn one chapter before to Hebrews 10.

And get your eyes on verse 19.

Here’s what it says.

Now I should be clear…this is not the only passage in scripture that commands the people of God to gather.

In fact, there are some that are even more explicit in doing so..and there’s plenty of examples of the church in the book of Acts doing just that…but I chose this passage tonight because of the language surrounding the command.

And let’s be clear…it is a command.

Verse 19 starts with a “therefore”, meaning, “because of everything I have said, here’s what you should do”.

And verses 22, 23, and 24, are all commands…actions that must be taken if the previous statement is true…which it is because it’s the word of God.

That third command “let us consider how to stir up on another to love and good works” so that’s the command…and intrinsically tied with this idea for the author of Hebrews is the thought that that means gathering together.

Which is why he is clear in his statement...”stirring up one another to love and good works” means not neglecting your fellowship.

It means not neglecting the gathering of believers.

The fellowship of Christians.

Now the part of love and good works we will get to by the end of the message..but for now you just needed to see the simplest of reasons as to why we gather…because God commands it.

If you want more evidence than that, come talk to me…I’ll get you some more verses.

But…at the end of the day…as Christians, disciples of Christ, children of God…his command should be enough.

God says it.

We do it.

But praise God…that he is gracious and loving enough to not only give us the command in his word, but to reveal his heart in it as well.

And it’s because of that that we not only see that we gather because God commands it.

But we gather because...

God Intended It

From the very beginning, God has intended that we would be in fellowship.

Let’s look at two scriptures that support this.

The first one we find in Genesis 2. You’re more than welcome to turn there if you’d like.

I’ll also read it, it’s just one verse.

You’re familiar with the creation narrative.

God creates the World, everything in it, creates man..and then comes this verse.

So here we see, that man needed fellowship.

Man needed company.

Just to live life and fulfill the most essential and basic of all God’s commands…tend the Garden…man needed fellowship.

Before this moment, before Eve was created, it was Just Adam, the animals, and God.

Let me ask you a question.

Was God not good enough for Adam?

It’s a tricky question right?

Because of course, God is all sufficient.

All fulfilling.

He is never not enough for anyone or anything.

But yet, when you look at the facts.

Adam’s companion was God…and yet he needed more…or something else.

What does this mean?

It means that Adam desired fellowship because God intended for him to desire it.

God was not surprised that Adam needed it.

God created Adam knowing he would create Eve as well.

God wasn’t lacking, he didn’t fail to be enough for Adam, he simply created Adam with the design of being in fellowship with other humans (in this case particularly eve).

So what we can see from this is...