Sermon Tone Analysis

It’s Jesus - Community - Mission

Real Christianity is simple.

It’s Jesus Community Mission.

You can leave out many traditions.

You can make many mistakes.

But if you have Jesus Community Mission, you’re into real Christianity, and your life will matter forever.It starts with Jesus, and his good news for bad people.

Is it too obvious to say?

I don’t think so.

We need constant refocus on the Lord.

One man put it this way:“Believers may not often realize it, but even as believers we are either centered on man or centered on God.

There is no alternative.

Either God is the center of our universe and we have become rightly adjusted to him, or we have made ourselves the center and are attempting to make all else orbit around us and for us.”

We are not well-integrated beings.

We are divided and scattered, hassled and unfree.

We think it’s because we’re busy.

The truth is deeper.

We’ve established in our hearts something like aboard room, with a big table and chairs all around it.

A big committee of competing selves sits at the table in that board room deep in our hearts.

There is the professional self, the family self, the religious self, the goof-off self, the financial self, and so forth.

Our greatest problem is this committee never agrees.

They argue and shout and vote against each other.

We feel the pull of each self-staking its claims.

Then we invite Jesus onto our committee and give him a vote, thinking that’s Christianity.

But that isn’t the real Jesus.

That’s committee member-Jesus.

And that’s when being a Christian is a chore.

It isn’t sincere, from the inside out.

It’s a performance we put on, even for ourselves.

As long as our committee still has voting power, what else can we expect?

Wouldn’t it be honest and freeing to admit this morning,“I need to get re-centered on Jesus”?

Aren’t we tired of being pulled in so many directions with our chaotic selves?

Will you give Jesus the mastery of your life?

Real Christianity feels like an adventure, because Jesus comes in and fires the committee and takes over.

He can quiet you and focus you and satisfy you.

Only he can.

Real Christianity begins with Jesus.

Community

Again, is that too obvious to say?

I don’t think so.

We have lots of churches, but little community.

Walking in the light, being honest with one another about our problems, loving one another in life groups, not treating church as another weekend activity along with the ball game but as the defining center of our weekly schedules–that is rare in the world today.

Real Christianity is a community experience.

Gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture.

The message of grace creates an environment of grace.

When we come into church, we walk out of an environment of law and criticism and fault-finding and judgment, and we walk into an environment of gospel + safety +time, where we can start relaxing and changing.

Here’s how Keith Miller describes a healthy church:

The neighborhood bar is possibly the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give His church.

It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but it is an accepting and inclusive fellowship.

It is unshockable.

It is democratic.

You can tell people secrets and they usually don’t tell others or even want to.

The bar flourishes not because most people are alcoholics, but because God has put into the human heart the desire to know and be known, to love and be loved, and so many seek a counterfeit at the price of a few beers.

With all my heart I believe that Christ wants His church to be a fellowship where people can come in and say, ‘I’m sunk!’ ‘I’m beat!’ ‘I’ve had it!’

Alcoholics Anonymous has this quality.

Our churches too often miss it.

Every week when we gather, we come in with many wounds.

We come out of a world where we’ve been beaten up all week long.

We all need a soft place to land, where we can breathe again.

That’s community at Eureka, with gospel + safety + time–lots of gospel,lots of safety, lots of time, for lots of people.

Many more people need to be experiencing this.

To all who are spiritually weary and seek rest, to all who mourn and long for comfort, to all who fail and desire strength, to all who sin and need a Savior, to all who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and to whoever will come, this church opens wide her doors with a welcome from Jesus Christ, the mighty Friend of sinners

Jesus - Community – and now Mission.

When we serve others here at Eureka, that’s Community.

But when we serve people outside Eureka, that’s Mission.

Mission answers the question; what are we going to do with this newness God is giving us?

It can’t be for us only.

Jesus said,

We are going to make Jesus undeniable in our city and far beyond through a faith that works.

We cannot make Jesus acceptable but we can make Him undeniable.

We cannot make Jesus any more acceptable than we can raise the ocean level by spitting in it.

We aren’t called to make Him acceptable.If we attempt to make Jesus acceptable to all people we will be guilty of creating various types and forms of Jesus.

We present Jesus as is . . .

We don’t make Jesus into something because he is something; we make known and make clear.

We must get Jesus right!

We must distinguish his uniqueness among all other Jesus’s who are being presented today.

I take this from

This we will discuss more in future days.

Next the word undeniable.I take this from;

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated(no formal education), common men(a person who has not acquired systemic information or expertise in some field of knowledge or activity—‘layman, ordinary person, amateur),they were astonished.

I AM A COMPLETE IDIOT, MY FUTURE IS INCREDIBLY BRIGHT, ANYONE CAN GET IN ON THIS.

I AM A COMPLETE IDIOT.“The

simple fact is that there isn’t one nano-second when God looks at me and says, ‘Ooh, that’s impressive.’”The

Good news is MY FUTURE IS INCREDIBLY BRIGHT.And if it is not too far beneath you ANYONE CAN GET IN ON THIS.

Remember this . . .

we weren’t meant to be somebody but we were meant to know someone and make Him known.

And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.”

(Acts 4:13–14, ESV)

Undeniable means;“unquestioned as to quality, merit, and indisputably good”.

How do we make Jesus undeniable?

By Living Spirit filled lives(4:8) meaning that we live lives that reflect that the word of God is dwelling in us richly.

We make Jesus undeniable by living lives of boldness.

Boldness is not brashness or being obnoxious.

Sometimes when Christians try to serve the Lord, they act in silly ways.

But the Bible says,

In other words, anticipate how people are going to react, and behave as winsomely as you can.

But when the only way people will like you is if you allow Jesus to be ignored, you have to be bold.

You can be a soft-spoken, gentle person and be bold.

Boldness is a compound Greek word “all” + “saying”

Boldness is an all-saying candor, freedom, and openness in the way we speak and live.