Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Red stole.

This is not the first time I have ever worn the wrong color stole in here.

It was so embarrassing to me....even if no one else thought it was a big deal, it stuck with me.

It is hard being the new guy on the block, it’s even harder being a young new person on the block.

One of my best friends now in the church and someone who is in my accountability group often jokes that he really did not enjoy having pilots, doctors, or pastors younger than he is.

Nonetheless I always had a pressure to not be out of place around here and to earn respect, whether that was healthy or unhealthy pressure I put on myself.

That day wearing the wrong color was a mess, I was harder on myself than I like to admit.

Today, I stand in front of you wearing the wrong color stole and it feels so right.

This is the stole that was placed on me at my ordination last week.

<Show ordination picture> I wear it today to honor and thank you and to celebrate the incredible grace of Jesus that has brought this moment to be.

On the morning after my ordination I had breakfast with my family.

My family is a mixed bag.

As so many are but we have definitely had our struggles.

One of the biggest ones is for them to grasp my calling.

Wednesday they asked again and I tried to explain it to them....

When did you know?

What makes this so obvious to you?

Was it when you failed biology in college?

No, this was not some secondary plan when college got hard.

Was it when you were in the back of a police car after getting arrested for DWI? No, that is only a piece of the story.

It was when I realized at 21 years old, my whole church experience had been a shell of shallow platitudes and therapeutic attempts to be something that was good.

Or at least above average.

I wanted to control like and sprinkle Jesus on top when it was convenient, or life was hard, or I was out of options.

There came a time when I realized believing in Jesus and following Him meant something.

It had implications over everything.

But my whole like to that point, I couldn’t see it because I did not think I needed him.

My salvation was out of the church pew and my calling was shaped by it.

Believing means something.

That is what today’s text is all about....it is the warning to believe and keep believing.

Context

If you have not been here we are several weeks into our series through Hebrews.

There is not book apart from the Gospels that focuses so intently on Jesus, the book is a sermon, preaching to these young believers to hold fast, to not drift even in the face of persecution.

The major theme that the preacher employs is showing that Jesus is superior and worthy of all their devotion.

He does this by comparing Jesus to heroes of the faith, to seasons of their journey, and to great theological underpinnings of their Jewish heritage.

Then along the way he pauses to warn his congregation.

This is one of those warnings.

At the height of the teaching he leans in so as to say.... “this is why this matters.”

Here is how it shapes your life.

Last week we saw that Moses the hero of their faith delivered his people, established a people, mediated for them as a mouthpiece to God and for their sins…and yet Jesus surpasses all of this.

But just as the Israelites betrayed Moses and Yahweh, the warning is for God’s people to not once again betray this message.

In the coming verses of chapter three the author will bring to mind the betrayal of Yahweh by the people of Moses.

This takes place on numerous occasions but I think one is in mind here.

The Israelites are on the verge of the promised land.

God has done it all to this point and has promised them sure victory and a new home for their people.....they are afraid and send spies, they see that the land is good, but they are afraid of what they see there....here the response of Yahweh....

Deuteronomy 1:26

They stopped believing in Him.

The warning is do not be like them....hold fast to the hope you have.

Believing Faith

We will fill the rest of our time on 1 verse:

Hebrews 3:

We are his house, If....

We are the house to which Jesus is the builder, the cornerstone…we, the brothers and sisters that have been called into the family, you and me are the house of God.

When we are together the presence of the Lord is pleased to dwell, the Spirit poured into the Temple in one season and now pours into the people, the new house.

We are that house, if we hold fast.

I want you to see the ongoing condition of this statement.

Security of being in the house is not based on sin or lack thereof.

Security is not based on some one time decision way back there.

Or some confimation date, or even a baptism date.

Security of being the house of God is based in holding fast to the hope we have.

Believing fidelity.

The Israelites on the brink of the promised land failed the test of faith, because they drifted from the hope they had in Yahweh.

They did not have to earn it, they did not have to go win all the wars, they just had to believe in their God.

And not just some intellectual assent, because sitting in their tents and saying they believe is not the same as listening to God and walking into the difficulty that lies ahead.

NT Wright:

I tend to agree with N.T. Wright that salvation by faith is more than just an intellectual assent or agreement with the assertion that Jesus is Lord.

Faith according to Paul was more like “believing allegiance” that “…was neither simply a religious stance nor a political one.

It was altogether larger in a way that our language like Paul’s, has difficulty expressing clearly.

For him, this pistis, this heartfelt trust in and allegiance to the God revealed in Jesus, was the vital marker, the thing that showed whether someone was really part of their new community or not.”[1]

[1] N.T. Wright.

Paul: A Biography.

HarperOne: New York.

2018, p. 91.

Hold firmly to our confidence and hope

What are we holding firmly to?

It is this confident hope in Jesus and the good news of Jesus.

That He is the head of the house, that He is on the throne, that for all those in the house we have the inheritance and will be like Him.

That He will come again and death has been defeated.

Michael Heisser:

The New Testament word for ‘hope’ is much stronger than the normal English use, in which it almost means no more than a pious wish that may have no real basis in fact.

That kind of hope would hardly provide a satisfactory basis for pride.

No-one is going to boast in a thing which is not certain to happen.

[MH: Unless you’re an idiot.]

The writer is sufficiently convinced of the certainty of Christian hope

It is the hope that is transcedent to the difficulties that we are facing.

It is a hope that carries through suffering.

Hear me church we will suffer.

The preacher is not going to patronize this congregation with some sentimentality that if you believe all the stuff will get better.

The preacher is again reminding them that what they are experiencing now will not touch the glory to come.

Don’t drift from the hope....

Don’t drift from the hope....

One more from NT Wright:

“...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them.

And we are wrong.

Our task in the present...is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.”

― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Hold firm to our confidence and hope...

If you did a concordance search on it, you're going to hit a lot of occasions where that is how a typical English translation would have chosen to render it.

That's useful to know because it helps convey the idea of optimism and not pessimism.

"Holding fast our confidence"...