Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Read

Pray.

Hebrews 13

I have had the blessing of serving a few churches already in this journey.

KUMC is the longest serving in vocational ministry, but my time at FUMC Bryan was unique because it was my home church.

Though I only served as the director of youth and young adult ministries for a couple years and as an intern to for a couple of years before that....I had been there my whole life.

I remember taking very seriously all my words those last weeks.

The things I would say to the students and charge them with a mission going forward.

I had the opportunity to preach at church my final Sunday.

May not seem like a big deal now, but I only had a few opportunities to this point.

Man, I had so much to say, so many things I wanted to encourage them with.

I preached about the growing trends of students leaving the faith and how important multi-generational ministry was.

The sermon was about discipleship and it had its points, but then at the end, knowing that this could not go on for ever, I add these last remarks that were relevant but not anchored in narrative with the rest of the sermon.

That is what it feels like we have here at the conclusion of Hebrews.

The preacher is gathering his notes from the pulpit and he turns and says “let me give you these last few things.”

A charge, a exhortation.

No longer spending as much time to convince you of why you should do it, but in light of everything we have talked about…this is what you should do.

In the fashion of the text, we are going to hit these one by one on the laundry list and then I think the preacher gives us a picture of what all of this means.

That picture is going outside the city, we will talk about that in closing.

The Preacher’s Checklist

Brotherly love

Hospitality

Help those in need (prisoners)

Chasity

Contentment

Confidence in your leaders

And these amazingly are so applicable to our context as well....

All these issues have immediate relevance in twentieth-century society.

Those who are indifferent to them thereby prove that they have hardly grasped the letter’s earlier teaching, for this Christian message has profound social and moral content.

They are not merely implications which can be considered and ignored as an optional addendum to a more spiritual message.

‘Therefore, if this truth be so, it demands the following changes in your life …’ In the teaching of these verses Christians are expected to be loving, pure, contented, loyal, bold and worshipful.1

1 Brown, R. (1988).

The message of Hebrews: Christ above all (p.

248).

Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Brotherly love:

Brotherly love:

Remember from a couple weeks ago....about spiritual friendship.

We are so good at responding to physical need.

So good at bringing a caserole to a friend who had surgery or a loss…that is awesome.

What if we were as good at spiritual support as we are at making a meal for someone.

For the preacher, already established just a chapter earlier, loving each other is not just coddling.

But it is seeing that no one falls short of grace.

Hospitality:

We raise our kids with a saying.... “Don’t talk to strangers.”

This is smart, lots of crazy things going on in the world.

However, I think we grow up and live our life like this.

He does something subtle here with the angles.

It may seem weird.

But remember back to our second week of this series we talked about angels.

This is not about potentially hosting John Travolta (show picture), beer drinking, cigarette smoking, two-stepping, life of the party and missing out.

Angels are messengers of God, its their identity.

What if you have missed a message, a word, a lifeline God has sent you because you, “don’t talk to strangers.”

Help those in need (prisoners):

In context, probably about those from the community that have been imprisoned for their faith.

We should visit those in prison…yesterday we got to visit my brother and it was awesome.

For the context, who might be suffering for their faith?

Who can we go to and walk alongside?

Maybe it is the brother or sister that is carrying the faith in their home and that is tough.

Or maybe someone is in prison because they are having a crisis of faith.

Chasity:

Hebrews 13:

I wont add too much here so that I can get to the other points, we talked about this a couple weeks ago… to those that are married in the room…listen, marriage is not about emotion and feeling.

It is about covenant and commitment.

, Wives submit to your husbands as do to the Lord.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

I hear this all the time, I am just not in love anymore.

Friends we are to love with the love of Christ and I dont know of any moments where he was like eh, I am not feeling it right now.

Ok, this is a sermon unto itself.

Contentment:

Hebrews 13:

This is self-explanatory.

Keep your lives free from the love of money.

You do not have to have boat-loads to love it.

We are too quick to love the created over the creator.

There is a reason why money and sex are talked about so much…they are the easy foothold to the heart.

to the flesh.

Kingwood, keep your lives free from the love of money, you cannot serve two masters.

Last point.... we quote this text all the time, and isnt it fascinating that it has to do with money?!

Confidence in your leaders:

Let’s pretend for a second that I am talking to you about all of your spiritual leaders.

The other pastors, pastors you might be with at another church in the future.

Yes, there is a level of “good fit”, but sometimes we consume pastors like they are a commodity.

We take what we like, we leave the rest.

Or that’s just so and so excited about whatever, no big deal.

I want you to test what you hear always with God’s word and the wisdom of the church, I want you to be very careful following anyone (that’s why Hebrews says do not be carried away from strange teachings), but there is a point where you need to follow those God has entrusted to lead spiritually.

They have been given authority and responsibility.

We will answer for how we lead.

Ok, all of this is ramping up to this text right in the middle and we need to teach on it a little...

Get outside the city

The calling in this text, I think all of the bulletin points have to do with this exhortation, to become comfortable with discomfort, outside the city walls.

Hebrews 13:11

Hebrews 13:

I am such a city boy...

I have shot a gun like 3 times.

I cannot fish, I cannot hunt, I cannot find my way around any farm anything.

I prefer libraries to the pond, a good book to many things outside.

The city is comfortable for me.

I like to know where hospital is, grocery store is, where people can be found at any given moment.

To leave the city for me is to leave comfort.