Sermon Tone Analysis

Announcements

Are there any announcements?

There will be a Worship Team Meeting in April

Baptism- If you want to be baptized see Pastor John

Communion

Welcome to FCC, where we worship God is Spirit and in Truth, one verse at a time, one book at a time.

Today, is aa special day, it is the first Sunday of the month and it is the day that we have chosen to take of communion together.

Everyone can take communion here, provided that you have surrendered your life to Jesus.

Before Jesus died, God’s people sacrificed a lamb each year during the Feast of Passover to remind them that God brought them out of slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12).

Jesus timed his death to take place at the beginning of Passover—when God’s people were sacrificing their lambs.

This would show that Jesus’ death is the once-for-all sacrifice of God to save his people from their slavery to sin.

Now we remember Jesus’ sacrifice by celebrating the Lord’s Supper, instituted by Jesus the night before he died.

We call this communion, the Lord’s Supper, (which means “thanksgiving”).

It is a celebration, but it is also a time to reflect on what Jesus did on the cross, to allow the Holy Spirit to search our hearts, and to seek forgiveness.

Matthew highlights this point:

Church, every time we take the bread and the cup, we remember what Jesus did on the cross for us and that we are sinners in need of his saving grace and forgiveness.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, we bow before you in humility and ask You to examine our hearts today.

Show us anything that is not pleasing to You.

Reveal any secret pride, any unconfessed sin, any rebellion or unforgiveness that may be hindering our relationship with You.

Pause

As we take the bread representing Your life that was broken for us, we remember and celebrate Your faithfulness to us.

We can't begin to fathom the agonizing suffering of the cross.

Yet You took that pain for us and died for our sins.

Thank You, Jesus.

Thank You for Your love and unmerited favor.

Thank You that Your death gave me life—abundant life now, and eternal life forever.

As You instructed Your disciples, we, too, receive this bread in remembrance of You.

Each time we take communion, Lord, we want to recommit our lives unto You! Fill us today with Your powerful Spirit.

As we leave this place, help us to hold this fresh remembrance and the story that never grows old close to our hearts and help us to share the gospel as the opportunity comes.

In Jesus name we love you,

Amen

We have come as far as Matthew 4:12, so let us open our Bibles there:

Read Matthew 4:12-17

Prayer

Lord, as we continue our study in Matthew 4, we ask now for the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation that Paul wrote about to the church at Ephesus.

We ask for a fresh refilling of your generous Holy Spirit and that you would speak light into the dark places of our hearts.

Lord, there are some here today that have enormous burdens, struggles, and even sin, Father we ask for you to heal, to set free, and show up in such a way that the burdens are lifted, the struggles are no more, and that there is deliverance from the sin that so easily entangles us.

Lord speak hard truths into our lives and cause the darkness to flee!!!

In Jesus Names we Love you, AMEN!!!!

Review

In looking back we discover that right after Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit fell upon him to empower Him for ministry, and the Father affirmed him by saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, he was immediately led by the Spirit into the wilderness of Judea to be tempted by the devil.

And we learned that the weapon Jesus used was the Word of God

Therefore, like Jesus church, we must know our Bibles!

He was tempted in three ways:

The devil tempted Jesus to have him doubt or deny Gods provision.

Protection.

Promises

There are some of you sitting here right now saying, I get God’s provision and protection, but I struggle with the Promises of God because of the repeated experiences with others breaking their promises with me.

If people have promised us this or that and have not followed through on their promises, this could impact our ability to trust in the promises of God.

Church, God is a promise-maker and Scripture is rich with the language of promise!

GOD IS NOT NOT LIKE OTHER PROMISE MAKERS, FOR HE CANNOT LIE CHURCH!

Do you know what this means?

It means that if God makes a promise to us, He must keep it because it is who He is!

One scholar says that there are over 8,000 promises in the Word of God church!

God's Promises Are Facts

When G. Campbell Morgan was a young man he visited two elderly ladies each week to read the Bible to them.

When he read Matthew 28:20, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

He said, “Isn’t that a wonderful promise?”

One of the ladies quickly replied, “Young man, that is not a promise.

It is a fact!”

All of God’s promises are fact.

God’s promises give us hope and strength, his promises nurture and sustain us, he has promised to love us, to give us protection and provision church, he promised us the Holy Spirit and thus his presence and support.

God’s promises are meant to move and motivate us.

They are meant to instill hope.

They are meant to give us courage.

They are meant to defeat feelings of loneliness, inability, and fear.

They are meant to give us peace when things around us are chaotic and confusing.

God’s promises are meant to blow your mind and settle your heart.

They are his gifts of grace to you.

God desires to heal our hearts, so we can stand on the promises of God!

Standing on the promises of Christ my King,

Through eternal ages let His praises ring,

Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing,

  Standing on the promises of God.

Standing, standing,

Standing on the promises of God my Savior;

Standing, standing,

  I’m standing on the promises of God.

So Jesus recieved a text message that John was in prison...

Why was John in prison?

What did he do?

John was put in prison because he called out Herod adulterous, law breaking realtionship that he had with his brothers wife.

Herod married his brother wife and John the Baptist called him out on it and ended up in prison.

We pick up here:

Read Mark 6:17-29

So it is clear from this text that time had elapsed between verse 11 and 12.

And that John’s ministry overlapped Jesus’s ministry.

IT IS CLEAR IN THE TEXT THAT JESUUS KNEW THE FATHERS WILL OR THE PURPOSE FOR HIS LIFE BECAUSE THE MINUTE THAT HE RECEIVED THE TEXT MESSAGE JOHN WAS IN PRISON, HE DEPARTED FOR GALILEE TO START HIS MINISTRY CHURCH.

The time had now come—the time when Jesus was to go forth to His great purpose.

Every believer is called of God, actually sent into the world for a specific purpose.

The sad fact is that too many believers are not aware of their purpose.

They do not know why God sent them into the world.

They have not sought God to discover His purpose for their lives; therefore, they are just walking through life doing the same tasks and activities which occupied their time before they were saved.

But for the believer who knows God’s purpose for his life, the day comes when he is to go forth to His purpose.

He is to go forth as Christ went forth, to carry on the great task which God has given him to do.

God has a plan and a purpose for each and everyone of us, but we will never find out what it is without seeking Him and if you seek him with all of your heart you will find him.

Jesus lived in Nazareth and we know that Nazareth was not a great place, in fact Nathaniel said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Jesus just taught a powerful sermon on the Sabbath day in the synagogue and let the religious folks know that he was the Messiah church and guess what?

They rejected him and attempted to throw him over a cliff: