Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Story about helping with the children’s message.

They were checking in with me about what to look for and what we were going to do.

I learned long ago that if you want to look like the best children’s message deliverer of all time, you only craft questions where the answer is or could be Jesus.

Right?!

That is who they throw out with out fail over and over again.

Who is your favorite super hero?

Jesus.

It’s like they are conditioned.

That is what the author of this book is trying to do.

That is the intentions of the sermon....to raise the views of Jesus.

Teaching them Christology.

The theological epicenter of the Epistle to the Hebrews may be summed up in one word: Christology.

No biblical document outside of the four Gospels focuses as totally and forcefully on the person and redemptive achievement of Jesus.

Likely this factor more than any other secured its prominent place in the early church’s canon of Scripture in spite of doubts concerning its apostolic origin in the West (Carthage and Rome) prior to the fourth century.

The theological epicenter of the Epistle to the Hebrews may be summed up in one word: Christology.

No biblical document outside of the four Gospels focuses as totally and forcefully on the person and redemptive achievement of Jesus.

Likely this factor more than any other secured its prominent place in the early church’s canon of Scripture in spite of doubts concerning its apostolic origin in the West (Carthage and Rome) prior to the fourth century.

Walmark, L. S. (1996).

Hebrews, Theology Of.

In Evangelical dictionary of biblical theology (electronic ed., p. 335).

Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

Why?

Because in light of all that they are facing this is critical.

So the preacher continues with his already established theme of showing the superiority of Jesus.

To a Jewish crowd and one who would have incredible respect for Moses, the law, passover, and all that is wrapped into this hero of their faith.

In order to understand this move from the preacher, we need to dig into Moses a little.

The culmination of this comparison is

Moses, the faithful servant of the house

Moses is a deliverer

First, Moses is a deliverer.

We might know these characteristics but it is important to walk through them....Moses delivered his people.

Exodus

Moses is the one chosen by God to deliver his people, to lead them out of Egypt and to defeat Pharoah.

Moses establishes his people

Moses is the one who establishes the Israelites as a people.

Later in the promised land it becomes formalized but it is already taking place with Moses.

Exodus 32:1

These tablets represent contracts of sort.

The covenant made between God and His people.

You know I always thought there were two tablets because to carve into stone you had to use like 100 font and you cant fit it all on there kind of thing.

No they are two copies of the covenant.

One for each party.

That is why God’s copy must be in the arc of the covenant...

Anyways, Moses is the one that establishes them as a people.

In he begins to align leaders, regulators, legislators, enforcers....he puts the courts, police, and the government in place.

Moses is a mediator

Moses is a mediator between God and the people.

I mean this in a couple of different ways.

First, in the relational sense: in and it is clear the people asked Moses to be the spokesperson.

They were afraid that even the words of Yahweh would be too much and kill them all.

They send Moses up on the mountain.

It is Moses in the tent of meeting, in the tabernacle.

The second sense in which Moses is a Mediator, is he becomes one who mediates with God on behalf of the sins of the people.

When Moses took too long chiseling/dictating the words of God on stone, they got impatient and threw a party.

God was not happy....

Moses makes a way....

Moses is the prototype human

Moses becomes the one who resembles what it was all supposed to be like.

Talking with God in intimacy, ruling from God’s power, bringing order from the chaos, defeating of evil.

And yet he was always a foreshadow of what God was going to do in a full way.

Moses understood this....

Moses is a unique typological figure of Jesus, for his status as such is explicitly put forth in a prophecy by Moses himself in :

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren—him you shall heed—just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, “Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, or see this great fire any more, lest I die.”

And the Lord said to me, “They have rightly said all that they have spoken.

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

And whoever will not give heed to my words which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.”

Old Testament in the New Testament

The writers of the New Testament are seeing Jesus through their experiences and formation with their faith and their life.

For example, Moses in mentioned by name 43 times in the NT.

Matthews Gospel

Matthews Gospel’s gospel is actually shaped so that when you follow Jesus then the audience would think about Moses.

Jesus comes out of Egypt and the next thing Matthew writes about is the baptism.

He passes through the waters and into the desert.

He goes up on the mountain to deliver his great teaching the sermon on the mount that extrapolates the law that they knew so well.

Moses is a typology of Jesus

Moses is a typology of Jesus.

And let me flesh this out a little because a typology can just be a symbol of something else.

Moses is more than a symbol.

But in as much as he is sent from God he becomes the ultimate foreshadow of who God will send in His ultimate mission.

Typology pointing to the ultimate....

Hebrews 3:

It is like those moments when we look at someone and see something greater behind them.

It would be silly to look at the sistine chapel ceiling and not wonder about the artist Michaelangelo.

It is like those moments when we look at someone and see something greater behind them.

It would be silly to look at the sistine chapel ceiling and not wonder about the artist Michaelangelo.

Moses happened.