Sermon Tone Analysis

I would like to ask you two questions this morning.

The first one is “what is worship?” or should I say, “what is true worship?”

What does it mean to worship God.

The Second question builds off this first questions because without a proper understanding of the first you will not have a proper understanding of the second.

The second question is “What makes a church healthy?”

Well this morning we will learn the meaning of worship and as we learn the meaning of worship we will see how true worship effects the church.

As we learn about worship we will see it involves at four key elements which also make for a healthy church.

We want to examine these through God’s word.

We will find this truth in our study of Acts this morning.

We will be pausing on one verse today and breaking down the four elements in this verse.

Let’s go ahead and open to Acts 2 and we will actually read verses 37-42 but our focus will be on verse 42.

Peter has just finished with his sermon that points to the coming of the Holy Spirit who has just indwelt the 120 disciples which includes the 12 apostles.

Once Peter finishes with the sermon we find the guilt of the people and their involvement in Jesus’ crucifixion.

God convicts those there and God moves them to repent and God called the people to Himself.

We find in verse 40, three thousand souls were added to the Kingdom of God that day.

The church had in one fell swoop gone from 120 to 3120.

Now in verse 42 we find “they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

These are the four elements of the church, these are elements which any healthy church should have.

Now we need to take these four elements and we really do need to break them down and take a better look at what these elements entail.

So let’s take a look at the four essential elements for a healthy church.

Four Essential Elements of Worship in a Healthy Church

Worship is Dedicated Lives

Luke tells us they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching.

We need to understand what has just transpired here.

The people Peter was giving his sermon to were Jews, Israelites who had a very specific law and culture.

They have also been awaiting God’s Messiah.

God’s Chosen King who was to come and deliver the nation out of oppression from under Roman rule.

These people were not illiterate and they weren’t stupid.

In fact they were raised from the time they were children memorizing the Hebrew Scripture and they knew about God’s plans and what He had done.

In fact God had set up feasts and festivals for the purpose of having object lesson for the nation to be reminded of what God has done and how He has delivered them from Egypt and brought them into the promised land.

The psalms that we have today were actually set to rhythm and they were and are able to be sung.

The people knew how to worship and serve their God and they believed God would deliver them from the Roman oppression.

The problem is they were to focused on the here and now.

The temporal not the eternal.

Peter’s sermon put things into perspective and now their focus is on how to live in the temporal in light of the eternal.

There is more to this life then just living for rules and these people have heard a message about God’s chosen King and how they are guilty of putting their Chosen King on a cross and how they are culpable for His death and now that they have been called by God to be Delivered from sin and so since they have heard truth from Peter now they continue to listen to Peter and follow after Peter and the other apostles teaching.

These people were now bound together with one common bond and that bond is Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of God’s plan so they have devoted themselves to worship God.

Worship true worship involves every part of the person worshipping and it is always pointed toward the object being worshipped.

True worship in the church is always pointed to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Look at this definition of worship:

worship is declaring—with our lips and lives—that God is more important than anything else to us, that He is our deepest desire, that His inherent worth is beyond everything else we hold dear

This is true in the church and this is true within our personal lives.

True worship within the church is much, much more then just singing songs.

The singing of songs is an outworking of everything of our deepest desire to attribute to God the worth He is do.

The thing is as we see in this verse there is more to true worship then just singing.

The first element these people devoted themselves to, the first element that is necessary for true worship is, Doctrinal Priority

The first Element: Doctrinal Priority

There is now a commonality between these people.

As we looked at Peter’s sermon, Peter addressed the crowd three times.

He addressed them as Men of Judea and then Men of Israel and lastly Brethren.

The Israelites saw themselves as covenant people, they are the descendants of Abraham and they identify with the Abrahamic promise through circumcision.

Now they are more then just Israelites bound by this promise and heritage but more then that they are now bound by the blood of Jesus Christ.

They now have more in common then they ever thought possible.

Because of this they now devote themselves to the teaching of the apostles.

It is doctrinal priority.

Well if these people already knew the Hebrew Scripture and if they weren’t Biblically illiterate then what would be the apostles teaching.

I know what your thinking, ‘well they taught the new testament’ they didn’t have the New Testament.

The New Testament won’t be written for at least another 15 to 20 years so what is the apostles teaching here.

It was Jesus’ teaching and a thorough explanation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

They were teaching with authority and with true conviction and they weren’t just spouting their opinion.

Remember the apostles spent 3 1/2 years with Jesus and in those 3 1/2 years they learned a lot.

One important lesson they learned was how to explain the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Matthew 5-7 is the record of the sermon on the mount and during this sermon Jesus would say, you have heard it said, proceed to quote a commandment and then explain it in such a way they have never heard before.

Just to point one out so you understand what Jesus was doing lets look at Matthew 5:21-26

Jesus through this exposition, this explanation of the 6th commandment is something the people have never heard before because the explanation was not adding rules on to what God has already commanded but getting to the heart of the commandment and the heart of the person.

The apostles heard this and spent time with Him and now being indwelt by the Holy Spirit they are teaching in the same way and with the same kind of power.

They are not just make up rules to live by but explaining the rules God has already provided.

What they are doing is holding fast to the truth of God’s word.

What is funny is they really aren’t adding to it just explaining it.

That is really what our new testament is, it is the explanation of God’s truth and the fulfillment of God eternal plan of glorifying Himself and the greatest act of His glorifying Himself was the redemption of mankind the salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Take for example grace, people like to think grace, God’s unmerited favor on mankind is a new testament concept.

That is inaccurate.

It is fulfilled in Jesus Christ but God has always been gracious and merciful.

Look at what the Psalmist says in Psalm 30:1-5

God’s Grace realized in the Old Testament

So grace is an attribute of God that was realized in the Hebrew Scriptures and it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Paul in instructing his protege Timothy tells him this in 2 Timothy 1:8-11

The church in its foundation here in Acts 2 is to be the barer of and the guardian of truth.

Jesus is the Cornerstone and the apostle’s teaching is the foundation.

Paul tells Timothy in his first letter to him this about the church being a pillar;

Understand the church is here to teach the truth not to spouse some ridiculous opinion or to just push some agenda it is to safeguard God’s truth.

The way the church safeguards the truth is by accurately dividing the Word of Truth.

Which Paul also told Timothy to do.

It is the number one essential element in worship and in having a healthy church.

People do not know how and why they should be worshipping God if they don’t know God and people can’t know God if they are not in His Word and being taught His word correctly.

The first century church, the first church devoted herself to the teaching of the apostles who taught God’s word.

Look with me at what Paul teaches the Ephesian church which will lead us right into the second essential element in a healthy church,

Second Element: Common Connection

Paul says this in Ephesians 2:19-22

Do you see this Paul is talking to Gentiles, that is why he calls them strangers and aliens.

They were never seen by the Israelites as being a part of the covenant people of God.

They weren’t viewed as being a part of the promises God had given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even though that was God’s intention all along.

Now they are no longer strangers and aliens they are now “fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household.”

This is a big deal.

And Paul qualifies it more as he continues in verse 20 “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone.”

See that Jesus is the Cornerstone which is what holds the foundation together.

When you lay a foundation whether it was in ancient Israel or even in modern day America the corner is the most important part and the Cornerstone is the most important part of the building.

The cornerstone is where everything starts from.

It provides the stability and the measurement for the rest of the building.

In order to make sure the building is square you start from one fixed corner then you can make sure all the other corners are in the right place.