Sermon Tone Analysis

Outline

Read the Text from Hebrews 12:1-3

This passage should be set to the Rocky theme song, “Eye of the Tiger.”

For me one of the greatest problems in religion and with religious people is use sanitized use of shame or shaming.

For me one of the greatest problems in the secular world is the corporate use of shaming to keep a good employee down.

And, my favorite stories are the stories of people who were openly and publically shamed but despite that they did not give up.

Abraham Lincoln

Ulysses Grant

Albert Einstein

Oprah Winfrey

Michael Jordan

Jerry Seinfeld

Everyone of these people had: Shame Resiliency.

Define shame as “You are not enough.”

Shame has the power to make you a victim twice.

Externally: You are not enough

Internally: I am not enough

Brene Brown the most current expert in this field said she defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”

Through much of my life I have struggled with shame and its effects.

Sometimes it was not intentional: overhearing mom’s comment.

Other times it was deeply internal: I did not feel like I was enough and then I interrupted everything that way.

Still other times I hid my fear of shame through high performance until someone took the shame away: Dr. Almann and take a B.

Yes, at other times the hurtful kind of shaming like when my wife was told by someone she respected and looked up to that she was not a good singer or worship leader and she would have to spend the rest of her life in voice lessons.

Or when I was called the devil and was asked to go get demons cast out of me by a deliverance ministry.

We have all had to wrestle with shame.

Whether it is the internal shaming of ourselves and all those messages of “I am not enough” or the external shaming that comes from someone we love or respect: a peer, a spouse, a child, a boss or colleague.

Dr. Brene Brown says that shame feels the same for men and women but it is organized by gender.

I agree that men and women experience shame for different reasons but the underlying message for both is the same:

I am not enough and therefore, unworthy of love or belonging.

You are not enough, and therefore, you are unworthy of love or belonging.

Shame, if it has its way, at a minimum will detour your life at a maximum it may lead to a total shut down.

Shame works on your heart; it is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders.

People often confuse guilt and shame.

Guilt is accepting responsibility for my bad choices and or failures.

That is not what shame is.

There’s a huge difference between I did not study for the test (guilt) and I am a failure (shame).

The former is acceptance of our imperfect humanity.

The latter is basically an indictment of our very existence.

Of course guilt over things you have no control or is not my responsibility can be and is very unhealthy.

Shame will put a cap on what you do with your life.

You will find that in the Scriptures the practice of shaming others is something that is not just strongly discouraged (Pro 12:4) but that believers should not have to face this experience: 1 Peter 2:6

Which makes our passage in Hebrews 12:1-3 all the more interesting.

This appears like a contradiction.

If I trust in him I will never be put to shame and yet at the same time we are told we will face shame and must face it the same way as Yeshua Hebrews 12:2

And just human experience has taught me that shame does not go away.

Transition: The good news is that I believe there is an answer that makes sense of the experience of shame and gives us a better path forward.

And, I believe it because people just like you and me experienced radical shaming for their faith, friends and families in the first century and somehow this message in Hebrews 12:1-3 helped them to not be nudged by shame in the wrong direction, it created a shame resiliency.

τοιγαροῦν this is the strongest way of saying “I am about to drop some real wisdom on you that can change your life.”

μάρτυς martus means a “witnesses” not a spectator.

We tend to draw up images of the Johnny Cash song, “Family Reunion in the Sky” and some use this passage at funeral to assure people that your family members are in heaven looking down on you.

Maybe that is true but it is not true from this passage.

These are court witnesses.

These are the kind of people you can call to the bema of God, to the courtroom of God where in a real ironical twist as Walter Brueggman did in his OT Theology God is on trial and these are the witnesses testifying on his behalf.

What are they testifying?

Faith in who God said they were and He told them to do was the only thing that pushing back the tide of who shame said they were and what shame said they could not do.

Noah testifies

Enoch testifies

Abraham testifies

Sarah testifies

Moses testifies

David testifies

Deborah testifies

What right do I have to say that faith is what sets us free from the shackles of shame?

The text says Hebrews 12:1 ...

Let’s get rid of every weight and entangling sin.

This is the image of an athlete stripping himself of any cothing that would impede his performance.

Like a boxer taking off his robe before he enters the ring.

And, anything that might entangle the athlete like a belt, necklace et.

Here is the clue, this kind of sin is the kind of sin we wear, it is placed on us.

I know this may sound like a contradiction but in the Bible not all sin is is the same sin.

This kind of sin is

not the sin of moral evil though it can lead to it.

not the sin of idolatry though it could go there.

not the sin of atheism though it might leave you wondering.

This kind of sin is the kind that is pecking at you from without to destroy within you what is good.

It is what Yeshua described in the parable of the Sower.

That “When anyone hears the word of the Kingdom and doesn’t take it to heart, the evil one goes to work immediately” (Matthew 13:18-23).

Some give up because they are not secure in themselves (rocky ground folds) some give up because of the thorns of worry (Matthew 13:22).

This is the attack on your personal faith in who God says He is and who He says you are.

But, there is another clue.

I have been hiding it right there in plain sight.

Hebrews 12:2

The author says these witnesses are amazing.

They all ran an amazing race on their own.

But he does something in this passage with the person of Yeshua that is “wow” level.”

He makes Yeshua into the model disciple, not the Lord of the disciples but the star athlete we are supposed to all look up to.

The race set before us: this is a marked out race.

We have stay in the lines.

Illustration of runner stepping on line by millimeter.

Our line are in good places.

We run “focusing” on Yeshua’s race because we realize that he is the initiator and perfecter of our faith.

In other words, He is the paradigm for how we work out our faith.

He was so absolutely convinced in Himself that he was love and belonged and that his purpose on earth was God’s purpose for him that he was not deterred by the cross.

Remember the old saying: no pain, no gain.

For Yeshua, the pain of the cross was the gain of humanity.

It was the ultimate win for all who trusted in him.

What makes Yeshua’s race so stunning are the next words: disregarding its shame.

You see it is one thing when you are enduring pain in a Marathon race.

The race itself is considered noble and it is an event that many people consider a bucket list items.

No one in the ancient world consider death on a cross as a noble sport.