Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION

O soul, are you weary and troubled?

No light in the darkness you see?

There’s light for a look at the Savior.

a life more abundant and free.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

and when the things of earth grow strangely dim,

in the light of His glory and grace.

Those are the words of Helen Lemmel, the daughter of a Methodist minister, born in 1863.

She had a wonderful life.

She was raised to love music and her parents got her the best vocal coaches available.

She moved to Germany to study vocal music and met a wealthy man there and married him.

So far you must be thinking this sounds like a fairy tale.

But suddenly, she lost her sight and became blind and when that happened, her husband left her.

At 55 years, thrown about by multiple heartaches, someone gave her a Gospel tract that said, “So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face, and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.”

Lemmel said:

Suddenly, as if commanded to stop and listen, I stood still, and singing in my soul and spirit was the chorus of the hymn with not one conscious moment of putting word to word or make rhyme, or note to note to make melody.

The verses were written the same week, after the usual manner of composition, but none the less dictated by the Holy Spirit.

It is the simplest of songs based on a simple admonition.

Lift your eyes up off of trouble that life has laid on you and place them on Christ.

Gaze upon Christ.

With eyes of faith in the heart, stare at Christ.

See Him—the radiance of the glory of God.

The exact imprint of His nature.

The One who upholds the universe by His power.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

That is what we want to do this morning.

We want to look at the Second Person of the Trinity.

Jesus the Messiah.

The Anointed Son of God.

The Prophet, the Priest and the King.

And we turn to Hebrews 12 in order to find instruction on how to do that.

CONTEXT

A bit about Hebrews before we jump into it.

It seems to have been written before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.

The way animal sacrifice is talked about in chapters 10 and 11 certainly hints at authorship coming before the temple’s destruction.

It is probably a sermon written for a Jewish Christian congregation.

It focuses on how Christ has fulfilled the promises of the OT

How He is the fulfillment of the types and shadows we see in the Old Testament

How He is the fulfillment of the Law and the prophecies

And it shows the continuity from the Old Testament to the New Testament.

If anyone ever says, “I feel like the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament,” you can tell them they need to read Hebrews.

The members of the Jewish congregation were under cultural pressure to abandon the supremacy of Christ and to trust in the keeping of the Law and sacrifices.

But the author of Hebrews (who we don’t know), is writing to say, “Do not go back.

Christ is supreme.

Endure to the end and serve the Lord.”

We are going to pick it up toward the end of the letter, after the author has explained that the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11 is filled with Old Testament saints who had faith in God, but had not seen the fullness of His promise in the coming of the Messiah.

But as New Covenant believers, we have now seen that promise in the coming of Christ.

And we must keep our eyes on Him.

Let’s read the first two verses of Hebrews 12 and then we will look at three teaching points for today to see how we draw strength in hardship from the example Christ set for us.

RUN YOUR RACE (v. 1)

I want us to start by looking at the command we see at the end of verse 2.

Run with endurance the race that is set before us.

This is the goal that we are trying to put the ball through, right?

We want to run the race that God has given us in such a way where we are faithful to Him all the way to the end

In order to use this metaphor, the author is referring to the Panhellenic games, which were a bit of a precursor to the Olympics as we know them.

There was chariot racing (we need to bring back chariot racing—why did we even stop?),

wrestling, boxing, the javelin and discus throw, and of course, foot races of various lengths and conditions.

The games would take place in four year cycles and they were about more than just athletics.

They were about maintaining Greek culture.

To honor the gods and solidify the Greek identity

But that being said, winning was still important.

They competed in hopes of winning the victor’s crown—the winner’s wreath that was placed on your head.

The ancient world was very familiar with the games and the festivals that came along with them.

It was a part of the average person’s lexicon the same way the Super Bowl is part of yours.

So when the author of Hebrews says that the church needs to “run with endurance the race that is set before us,” they would have understood what he was referring to.

They would have thought of all those runners getting ready to take off and chase the winner’s crown.

The author is drawing a connection to the life that we live as Christian people.

My race as a believer began the day I was born.

But not of a woman.

Of the Spirit.

My life before Christ is crucified with Him, but the life I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

That race started for me on July 14th, 1999 in Boiling Spring, NC.

That’s where I was when I was saved.

I have been back to the spot it happened at and I have stood and looked at the place in wonder and thought, “That is where I met Jesus.”

And so from that point of conversion to the time when I clock out and I die or the Lord Jesus returns, whichever comes first—I am running my race.

Conversion is a turning into the right road; the next thing is to walk in it.

The daily going on in that road is as essential as the first starting if you would reach the desired end.

To strike the first blow is not all the battle; to him that overcomes the crown is promised.

To start in the race is nothing, many have done that who have failed; but to hold out till you reach the winning post is the great point of the matter.

Perseverance is as necessary to a man’s salvation as conversion.

Life’s Need And Maintenance, Volume 22, Sermon #1300 - Psalm 22:29

Charles Spurgeon

And this is a race that we are to run with endurance.

The Greek word that translates to our English word is hypomenos (hoop-uh-men-oh)

It carries with it this idea of patience and steadfastness.

It is a determination to press on and not give up.

Run the race of the redeemed life that God has given you, without giving up.

That is the command that we must heed and seek to obey as children of the Lord.

If you are not a Christian, you need to stop right now and pray to God and ask Him to forgive you.

You don’t have a race to run.

You have a life to live, but you are not running the Lord’s race today.

You must repent and trust in Christ.

But for those who have repented and trust in Christ and are seeking to run with endurance?

How do we do it?

This leads us to our first teaching point:

1.

We run our race in light of God’s faithfulness in light of those who came before us (v. 1).

Now, look—here is the spoiler alert—we are going to finish with Jesus today.

After all, the series is called Triune Strength and the sermon is called “The Example of the Son.”