Sermon Tone Analysis

*A Worship Meditation:  The Journey of Faith*

Pastor Oesterwind

 

The Public Reading of Scripture

 

God has revealed Himself to us in the Scriptures.

Reading and listening to the Scriptures requires effort.

If what is done this evening is effective, it will only be because all of us have realized that the Lord Himself is speaking with us.

For those listening to the Word of God this evening, let me offer the following admonitions:

 

1.

Listen with a reverent ear – we are reading the very words of God.

2.         If you listen reverently, you are worshiping God.

 

“Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.”

– Deuteronomy 4.10

When God spoke here in Deuteronomy, the people that heard Him begged that He no speak to them in the same manner again.

They could not endure what had been commanded.

“And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I am exceedingly afraid and trembling” (Hebrew 12.18-21).

3.

The public reading of Scripture needs to be held in high esteem.

4.

Public reading~/listening of and to Scripture is worship.

*/Hymn:  Close to Thee (328)/*

 

*Prayer:*  Father, help us to see how brief our lives actually are.

Let us fall into rank and journey close to you.

Keep worldly pleasure and fame distant.

Bear us through whatever awaits us this year.

Keep us close to you until we enter the eternal gate to be forever with you.

*Introduction:*  The Bible often presents the life of faith as a /journey/.

A journey typically takes us away from all that is *comfortable* but not necessarily *profitable*.

We tend to dismiss God from our lives when we feel /at home/ in the world.

Yet trust and dependence belong to vulnerable travelers as they journey through the world toward a common /destination/ with a common /perspective/.

We embarked upon our journeys at different times.

We were /uprooted/ from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

We began the journey because of the abundant and eternal life given to us.

We fled from guilt and the oppressive burden of sin.

Now, we pursue a celestial and eternal home together.

Of course, any journey has to /begin/, and it has to /end/.

Our meditation this evening will center on the journey of faith.

May the Lord be honored by the journey we take together into the New Year.

*/Hymn:  Christ Receiveth Sinful Men (199)/*

Journey of the Patriarchs

Salvation is not something for which we simply wait.

It is something we pursue …something that we journey toward …something that stands at the end of a life of faithfulness to God.

We receive the end of our faith which is the salvation of our souls (1 Peter 1.9).

As newborn babes, we are to desire the pure milk of the Word, that we may grow thereby (1 Peter2.2).  “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps” (1 Peter 2.21).

The journey of redemption began before the foundation of the world and time.

God put enmity between mankind and the accuser.

Two kingdoms have formed throughout the history of mankind:  one kingdom whose citizens journey in darkness and another whose citizens journey through darkness bearing precious light.

The Bible begins with the downward spiral of human history.

Then God focuses the journey of redemption upon one man…

*Genesis 12:1–4 * Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.

*2* I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.

*3* I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Abraham began his journey of faith by leaving all familiar to him.

He left behind family and country to become a stranger in a strange land.

God said to him…

*Genesis 17:8 * “…I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

Abraham ended his journey by realizing only a portion of God’s promise – land he purchased as a family burial plot.

*Genesis 25:7–10 * This is the sum of the years of Abraham’s life which he lived: one hundred and seventy-five years.

*8* Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

*9* And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, *10* the field which Abraham purchased from the sons of Heth.

There Abraham was buried, and Sarah his wife.

The journey of one man became the journey of a nation.

God revealed to Abraham that this would be so…

*Genesis 15:13–14 * “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.

*14* And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.”

*/Hymn:  O Thou, in Whose Presence (277)/*

Journey of Israel

Moses embarks upon the journey of redemption as an unlikely deliverer of Israel, a nation that had grown in the incubator of Egypt for 400 years.

Before God used Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, Moses journeyed in his own wilderness called Midian for 40 years.

This journey shaped and prepared him.

The exodus of Israel began a journey in the wilderness for an entire generation.

It was a journey fraught with trials and testing.

Israel learned to depend upon God …to trust in Him.

But they were not alone…

*Exodus 33:14 * And [God] said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Israel encountered God at Mount Sinai.

It is here that they receive God’s law.

Once the next generation enters the land promised to Abraham and his descendants, God desires that they remember all the past journeys.

*Psalm 39:12 * “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not be silent at my tears; for I am a stranger with You, a sojourner, as all my fathers were.”

*Psalm 119:19 * I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me.

*Psalm 119:54 * Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.

*1 Chronicles 29:15 * For we are aliens and pilgrims before You, as were all our fathers; our days on earth are as a shadow, and without hope.

God prepared Israel for a second journey after their rebellion.

He led them back from Babylon.

Isaiah said that this would be so a century before.

*Isaiah 35:8–10 * A highway shall be there, and a road, and it shall be called the Highway of Holiness.

The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for others.

Whoever walks the road, although a fool, shall not go astray.

*9* No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up on it; it shall not be found there.

But the redeemed shall walk there, *10* and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads.

They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

*Isaiah 40:1–8 * “Comfort, yes, comfort My people!” says your God.

*2* “Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

*3* The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

*4* Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; *5* the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

*6* The voice said, “Cry out!” and he said, “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.

*7* The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass.

*8* The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

*/Hymn:  O Word of God Incarnate (172)/*

Journey of Jesus Christ

Israel’s unfaithfulness persisted even after exile.

The journey continued through the arrival of a Messiah that they would soon reject.

The Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, began a journey of His own.

He lived the life of an itinerant preacher who left family and earthly possessions.