Sermon Tone Analysis

I would like to look at the biblical doctrine of The Perseverance of the Saints IE the redeemed.

Let me first explain the meaning of some of these words.

So that were on the same page of what I mean by these words.

*What “Doctrine” Means*

What is a doctrine?

A doctrine is something the Bible teaches.

It’s a teaching.

So what the Bible teaches about Christ is the doctrine of Christ, and what the Bible teaches about heaven is the doctrine of heaven.

So when you hear the word doctrine, think “teaching.”

Bible doctrine is Bible teaching.

Notice, I don’t say “Bible doctrines of heaven” or “Bible doctrines of baptism.”

The Bible does say a lot of different things about heaven and baptism in a lot of different places.

And so in that sense there are a lot of different teachings about these topics.

But when we say we are going to study the Bible doctrine of heaven or of baptism, we mean that we are going to try to look at all the teachings (or most of them) and then sum them all up in a unified way.

That is why you will only hear doctrinal preaching in churches where the Bible is considered to be an inspired unity.

In other words, if I believed that all the different teachings in the Bible disagreed with each other, I wouldn’t bother trying to preach on “the doctrine” of anything.

But I believe the Bible is God’s word, and that God is not a God of confusion or contradiction.

So what it says on various themes will fit together.

And we will be the wiser and deeper for trying to listen to the whole message of the Bible on its important themes.

*Now what does the word saints mean?* “Saints” simply means Christians.

When Paul writes to the church at Philippi, he simply says, “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi.”

A saint is not a special group of Christians, like martyrs or preachers or missionaries.

Saints is just another name for people who are  born again and who have saving faith in Jesus Christ.

*The word perseverance means *endurance or persistence.

Perseverance means hanging in there.

So I want us to look at tonight the doctrine, or the biblical teaching, of the hanging in there of the saints.

the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints bride, that is, the Bible teaching of the hanging in there (the endurance and persistence) of people who are the redeemed.

One of the greatest books to look at this biblical teaching is the book of Hebrews.

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*The book of Hebrews* has more to say about the believers perseverance than any other New Testament book.

It is written specifically for a group of Christians who were about to quit “hanging in there”.

Tonight, I want to walk us through this book to show you what the situation was and how the writer of this book responds to it.

*Let’s start in chapter 2*.

What we see here is a indication that the church was starting to drift away from the truth.

Verse 1: /“We must pay the closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”/

They had started to drift with the current of the world instead of rowing upstream or swimming upstream toward holiness.

Verse 3 /“How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?”

/Verse 3 tells us that they were beginning to neglect the greatness of their salvation.

They were just not paying much attention any more to what it means to be a believer on this side of the age.

They were drifting and neglecting.

*Now chapter 3*.

Verse 6b reveals to us that they were losing a grip on their confidence about the future.

Just like so many today; Verse 6b/: “We are his house if we hold fast our confidence and pride in our hope.”/

“If we hold fast!”

So evidently there was danger they were not holding fast to their confidence and hope.

Drifting.

Neglecting.

Letting slip.

All three are the opposite of perseverance.

The opposite of hanging in there over the long haul.

Verses 12–14 show us again what the danger is.

First verse 12/“Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” /Their drifting and neglecting and slipping could result in a falling away from the living God.

They are not “taking care” the way they should.

So he goes on in verse 13 …

/“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called, ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”/

Evidently their conversation was only about the world.

All they talked about was the kids and the stock market and problems at the office and at home.

They had lost the urgency of exhortation in their daily conversation.

Sin was starting to deceive them.

And this neglect of God’s guidelines was causing them drift and slip and lose their hold on joyful vibrant confidence.

And that is terribly dangerous, he says in verse 14

“Because we share in Christ, if we hold our first confidence firm to the end.”

/For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, /

 

 

Hanging in there with confidence is crucial if we hope to finish the race.

*Chapter 4*

Chapter 4, verse 1, says that some in the church are in danger of not finishing the race.

/“While the promise of entering his rest remains, let us fear lest any of you be judged to have failed to reach it.”/

Some had become so negligent and careless in their spiritual walk that they had no godly fear about what was at stake in their daily lives.

This is a carry over to last Thursday in the Camp David internship…

*Jesus defines wisdom and folly in Vs 3 and 4 in the most simplistic way.

It is profoundly simple and simply profound.

It is so brief; how he describes wisdom and folly.

He goes exactly to the point.

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*He says, “Let me tell you what a foolish ministry does.”

Vs 3 they take their lamps but they take no oil.

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*They take their ministries and push to increase them at every opportunity.

**He goes in this hour of history it’s foolish to think that your responsibilities in the kingdom will produce that which will protect the heart, as well as the lives of those your touching.

The idea that they would carry there lamps, they would function in there ministries without fire in there hearts as though these God given responsibilities in themselves had power in and of themselves.

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*It will not deliver the person with the lamp nor the children in the family which the lamp is shining nor the church which the lamp is directed to.

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*He says when sin escalates and the rage of Satan breaks fourth and my judgement shakes everything he goes “your lamps with out oil will have no power at all.

Jesus says “it’s foolish” they don’t understand the time and the hour in which they live nor do the understand the power of there own darkness of there heart.

They assume activity will deliver them but it won’t and it won’t deliver those that they care most about.*

*They confused the memory of liking oil with having oil.)

They still preach on getting oil.

They pray for people to get it.

But they don’t do it in their own personal history with God.

They don’t actually encounter God with their hearts.

And all the while they are becoming dull of hearing and hardening in the heart.

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*Accumulating oil is no longer important as long their lamps are getting bigger.

And this is the state of the church across the earth, generally.

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*So Jesus would say “ its foolish to be preoccupied first with your lamps while neglecting the oil for it will produce dullness of hearing and the hardness of heart.

The writer of Hebrews is suggesting the same thing in 5:11 but with different language when we neglect and become carless with what God has admonished us to do and how we are to live.

Lets turn to Heb 5:11*

/“About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.”/

In their drifting and neglect and carelessness, their spiritual ears had become dull.

Another way to say you have no oil.

The Bible the word of God was becoming uninteresting.

Their desire for the teaching and preaching of God’s Word was fading.

The energy to think and ask questions about the most important questions in the world was seeping away.

And in its place was a kind of spiritual sluggishness and insensitivity.

Things of the world were becoming more exciting and attractive than the Word of God and the beauty of the Lord along with the greatness of his salvation.