Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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Tone of specific sentences

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Emotion
Anger
Disgust
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Anger
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Introduction
We are drawing near to the end of the book of Hebrews.
After this week, we only have two weeks left in the book.
I have greatly enjoyed the journey we have taken.
I thank all of you for being willing to listen to God’s word.
Not just simply to listen, but take this text that was written to Jewish people and take the time to digest that so we can draw from it the truth of the Word in a way we understand.
Our passage today is the concluding thought of the entirety of the book.
The last chapter is a series of encouragements and challenges to the listeners.
So what we cover today will be the climax of the point of this book.
However as we read through it, it will seem like a really strange passage.
That is why we are going to tackle it!
When I read this through with my sermon prep team, we all kinda sat there quiet trying to figure out what it said and why.
So it may be a bit challenging, but I think I have wrapped my head around it enough to break it down for you.
Key Passage/Prayer
Pray
Teaching
We are going to break this passage down in two big chunks.
First, I want to talk about the two mountains.
Then we will tackle the rest of the passage once we have learned the context of the metaphor.
I love metaphors.
Jesus used them often.
He could have talked about how receptive people are to listening to the Bible, but He spoke that truth in a story.
He said the that the Word of God is like the seed, and people’s hearts are like the soil.
Then he gave four examples of soil and how receptive it is to receiving the Word.
My head clicks when I hear that.
I don’t know if you are like that, but that is the way my mind works.
In order to understand this metaphor, I want to put us in the right frame of mind.
At the end of this metaphor, the author makes mention of Abel.
Abel is not a very popular character in the Bible
Give context of Abel
The author of Hebrews includes Abel in the Hall of Faith (Hebrews 11).
Also, he mentions him here.
One of these mountains speaks a word about the sprinkled blood of Jesus
The other mountain speaks a word about the blood of Abel.
What word does the blood of Abel speak?
That is a good question.
In order to understand this, I want to journey back to the story of Abel in Genesis.
Abel’s blood cried out to God.
It was the cry for justice.
It was a real-time example that there is a consequence to sin.
Not just for the person who sinned, but for those who are in the path of the sinner.
An innocent person had been killed.
We see the justice of God in that moment, because immediately, we see that Cain is cursed by God.
But on a larger scale, we see that in the Old Testament, we see a God whose justice is on display.
We often think there are two God’s in the Bible.
There is the OT God and the NT God.
The OT God was violent and judgmental
The NT God is loving, grace giving and kind.
It really revolves around this issue of justice.
We took some time a few weeks ago to talk about the justice of God.
It boils down to how sin separates us from a holy God.
We have become unholy.
There is a natural consequence to separation from God. Death
God is life.
Separation from God is death.
It is the consequence and the punishment for sin.
A just God doesn’t simply allow sin to slide.
It isn’t because He doesn’t have grace.
It is because His nature is absolute holiness.
He won’t arbitrarily turn off his holiness for our convenience.
The author of Hebrews draws from this perspective of justice.
The primary separation of the old and new covenants had to do with a just God and how He dealt with sin.
So back to the metaphor:
The author of Hebrews talks about two mountains and equates them to the Old Covenant and the New Covenant with God.
These are concepts that the author has gone to great lengths to communicate.
The first mountain-Mount Sinai
The author of Hebrews compares the old and new covenants by depicting two mountains.
The first mountain is representative of the Old Covenant.
The author of Hebrews points to a very specific point of the history of Israel.
He points to the moment where they are at Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus and they are about to receive the law of God.
Remember, the law is God’s written standard of holiness.
This is the definition of God’s holiness and the part the Israelites had to agree to in order to approach God.
Here is the moment in Exodus.
The Hebrews in the Roman church immediately knew about this story when it was written.
This was the mountain of justice.
There was no payment for sin except for the sacrificial system.
The sacrificial system would only pay for the sin committed in the past.
It was temporary.
The people experienced the justice of God in a real and tangible way.
The other mountain that represents the New Covenant has a different tone.
The Second Mountain
Do you sense the difference between the two mountains?
One mountain man is responsible before a just and holy God for his sin.
The other mountain, sin is paid for and things are different.
Better.
Let’s break this down:
This is talking about a different mountain.
This mountain is called Zion
It is the city of the living God.
It is also called the heavenly Jerusalem.
This is what the author of Hebrews was talking about one chapter earlier when mentioning all of the people who lived by faith
This idea was the result of those who have faith.
Not simply a sincerity.
Rather a true faith that looks forward to the hope we have of being in the presence of God.
A faith that has a foundation built on the work of Jesus as priest and sacrifice
A faith that submits to Him as Lord and lives our lives in obedience, like all of the people in those stories.
Here is what it says about those people who lived by faith:
They did not receive the things promised to them.
What was promised to them.
The presence of God.
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