Sermon Tone Analysis

Illustration with Guitar tuning

Note how life often gets our hearts out of tune.

With a guitar, it’s an easy fix - grab a tuner, get the strings stretched out right - BAM! Back in tune

Is it that easy for our hearts?

There’s a scientific method involved in the tuning of a guitar’s strings

The tuner measures the vibrations sound waves make as they travel through the air

If only there was an objective ‘tuner’ for our hearts

There is!

There are actually many ‘tuners’ God gives us:

How does God tune our hearts?

The bible

Godly friends - the Community of the Church!

Regular worship with the church

The list goes on!

The purpose behind this tuning is to enable our lives to join in with the grand Divine Song that echoes throughout eternity

Let’s consider Revelation 4

John is called up into heaven

Can you image what this would have looked like?

I looked up pictures what some people had drawn and it was pretty crazy.

As in...I’m not sure what to make of them, but they were so cheesey or psychedelic as to be distracting.

So no pictures for you - you’ll have to just use your imaginations.

And this is what they were singing:

And their song goes on!

What an amazing song:

Rev 4:11 - This could be said to be the “theme song” of heaven!

Before we get to the fifth chapter in Revelation, we need to step into time, into reality - into creation itself.

Because what John reveals in Revelation 4-5, the significance of the vision there, lies in the purpose of what God is doing.

Hebrews 11 is going to help us make sense of that and connect it to our life.

Hebrews 11

Some call Hebrews 11 a “Hall of Faith,” a sort of biblical list of heroes of the faith.

Now many have understood this as the “Hall of Faith”, a sort of biblical list of heroes of the faith.

Our approach is going to be less “stiff” and more of considering these men and women as examples of those who lived their faith out in their lives.

The worship of their heart has been shown and testified to by Scripture as being in ‘tune’ with God.

What is faith?

The writer of Hebrews defines it for us and then he notes that it was through faith that our elders or ancestors won God’s approval.

How does that work for us?

I want us to understand this:

Faith is a key element in the correct tuning of our hearts in relation to God.

One way to understand faith, in this way, is that instant where you accept God’s tuning (specifically the Bible) as the standard for how your heart should be tuned.

Note here that the author of Hebrews wants to start at the beginning.

The VERY beginning!

But this is key, because it puts God at the origin of everything.

If you’re not willing to understand, to confess, that God created everything and that he’s ultimately in control, Christianity begins to make less and less sense.

This understanding sets up what is good and right and praise-worthy about everything that is to follow.

Heb 11:4 - This is the first intentional act of worship of God recorded in the Bible, and the result is murder….let’s

look a little closer.

Yikes - murder!

That Cain was a punk, wasn’t he? Let’s zoom in a bit more…

This is much more significant and pointed.

What is wrong here?

Why the rejection?

Gen 4:4-5 - Note the word order: “The LORD had regard for Able and his offering, but He did not have regard for Cain and his offering.”

Significantly, this Hebrew verb works in the text in the sense of acceptance: God was reacting favorably or unfavorably to them.

Fascinatingly, the Hebrew points to the men and then notes the offering.

God accepted Abel and his offering, God rejected Cain and then his offering.

And you can see this more explicitly in verse 6 & 7

The warning God gives has less to do with the actual material of the offering brought and so much more to do with the state of Abel’s heart.

Gen 4:6-7 - God is pointing out that Abel’s heart was wrong, and that it will lead him to do what is wrong, rather than right.

But Abel decided to reject God’s tuning of his heart.

That was bad, but it got worse.

Instead of joining in God’s song, he decided to compose his own, and it ended in murder.

John here is considering the same part of the Genesis story that Heb 11:4 is, and he names Cain a murderer.

Cain’s worship was wrong, but it had so much less to do with the offering he brought and so much more to do with the condition of his heart.

1 John 3:11-15 - John (who is also the writer of Revelation!) notes that Cain’s works were evil, but his brother’s were righteous.

Having jumped in and dived a little deep with this story, we can begin to understand how and why the writer of Hebrews is developing this list.

He wants to challenge believers to live out their lives, to live out their faith, in specific ways.

So now, let’s just ride along a little and see the other stories he draws out.

This is a much less discouraging example than the first - Enoch didn’t even have to die! God just whirled away with him.

How cool is that?! That’s kinda how I’d like to go.

Heb 11:5-6 - Enoch’s worship was so heavenly God wanted him in the choir!

This makes me wonder if Enoch’s life was marked by a worship which so closely resembled Heaven—that worship we started with in Revelation 4—that God just decided he wanted to get Enoch into the Heavenly orchestra early - before Enoch had even died.

That’s pretty awesome!

Noah!

My man!

I think it’s interesting that the writer of Hebrews says that “By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”

Heb 11:7 - In a sense, we could say that the song of his life showed the dissonance or disharmony of the world around him with that of God.

The life of the world no longer worshiped God, and its song was so out of tune that it had to be wiped out.

It’s very interesting.

The writer of Hebrews actually spends nearly 14 verses out of the entire chapter to talk about Abraham.

Notice the “forward looking” that Abraham is credited with.

Abraham was tying the song of his life to his hope in heaven.

It was God’s divine song and the hope that Abraham had to join it that drove him forward.

There is a longing evident here.

Heb 11:8-10 - The song of Abraham’s life is moving us towards something.

The song of our life is moving us towards something.

This connection of Sarah’s faith with the gift of her children is incredible.

God is enabling his promise to come to fruition.

That future hope that Abraham was so captivated by is being realized by the power of God through his people.

Heb 8:11-12 - God is enabling the lives of his followers to sing out his praise and declare his power.

And now this theme of future longing comes to the fore.

It comes out and grabs our hearts.

Heb 11:13-16 - God is calling us - beckoning us - to something greater, something more than this world has to offer.

His is a Divine symphony he longs for us--each of us!--to join in.

And it was the faith of these men and women which enabled them to walk out and live out their faith.

They were able to endure the tragedies and chaos of life and to even resist the world because of the promise to which they had fixed their hope.

Their hearts were tuned by their faith, and the song of their lives rose as beautiful melodies to God.

Now let’s jump to the very beginning of the next chapter, because I don’t want us to miss the reason the writer of Hebrews has been working through this history of the faith.

As we finish up here, I want us to note what the writer is getting at here.

Heb 12:1 - This term “witness” is where we get the modern word “martyr”.

The sense of the translation is still “someone who sees an event and reports what happened.”