Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro: God’s life giving river

Discuss the life giving nature of rivers, allude to our own Tennessee River and its impact on our town, Savannah.

Remind about the river of life in the garden of Eden and in God’s future eternal city.

We need God’s river of life to flow through our lives bringing God’s abundance not only for us but for a world that need His life

The river of life

The flowing river points us to the filling, the washing, the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

God the Holy Spirit calling us, filling us, washing us, sanctifying us, teaching us, empowering us, blessing us perpetually for His glory!

We need God’s river of life to flow through our lives bringing God’s abundance not only for us but for a world that need His life

The believing heart

Believing: hearing, receiving, doing, obeying

welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.

25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.

Are you a believer?

Are you presently believing demonstrated by obedience to the Word you’ve heard?

James chapter 2 teaches us what it really means to believe: James 2:14-26 “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him?

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.”

Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

You believe that God is one; you do well.

Even the demons believe—and shudder!

Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend …”

The Word

The source of all God gives, the source of all life that is: John 1:1-4

Life enters flows to those that come to Jesus with a believing heart.

The river of life flows into believers with the intention of empowering us to be not only word bearers but word sharers.

Acts 2: 4 “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

Acts 2:17-18 ““ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.”

Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.””

The Altar

The Sabbath