Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Introduction
If you could keep open in front of you - we’re starting a new series there this morning.
As we had it read, you might have heard the drum beat of the passage.
Faith.
Faith, in this chapter alone, comes up 27 times.
So hopefully you’ll be expecting me to talk about faith.
And you’d be right!
Everyone lives by faith in some sense.
In fact, I reckon that the majority of decisions made by people in this world are ‘by faith’.
When you drive your car - you have to have faith that the other drivers are following the highway code, and that they’ll not come hurtling towards you.
When you are ill, and prescribed medication, you have to have faith that the doctor knows what they’re doing, and that the drug company has done their tests.
When you get in an airplane, you exercise faith that the pilot has taken his training, and that the airliner has checked those credentials.
I could go on and on, but we all make decisions based on faith.
So we have to ask the question.
What is faith?
What is faith?
If you were to turn to Hollywood for an answer - something that a lot of people would do - faith would be defined as a leap in the dark.
Any films coming to your mind?
Perhaps it’s this famous scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Play clip.
As his Dad faces imminent death, Indy must take the ‘leap of faith’, across that dark cavern, to save him.
If you were to turn to Hollywood for an answer - something that a lot of people would do - faith would be defined as a leap in the dark.
Probably the movie best capturing that is Indiana Jones and the last crusade.
Play clip?
As his Dad played by Sean Connery is facing death, Indy must take the ‘leap of faith’ to save him.
If you switched on your radio, you’d hear the word ‘faith’ come up in a number of songs.
What you’ll find there is ‘a wistful longing that something might come to pass in an uncertain tomorrow’.
As George Michael sings about relationships: ‘Well, I need someone to hold me but I'll wait for somethin' more, 'Cause I gotta have faith’.
'Cause I gotta have faith
Or, if you were to turn to your dictionary, finding the big letter F for faith, you’d find something like this.
‘Faith is the firm belief in something for which there is no proof’.
That’s the definition from Merriam Webster.
Faith is something for which there is no proof.
A wistful longing that something might come to pass in an uncertain tomorrow.
Everyone lives by faith in some sense.
In fact I reckon that most of the decisions that most of the people in this world make are ‘by faith’.
Those definitions capture something of the faith we saw in those earlier examples.
But at the end of the day, that kind of faith can’t help anyone.
We need to grasp how the Bible speaks of faith.
Because, the author here says it's extremely important.
I had Danny start our reading a little further back in this letter, so we could get a feel for what is going on.
There we saw in verse 32 that this letter is being written to a group of people who had endured great conflict, full of suffering.
They’d been publicly exposed to insult, and persecution.
Some of them had been put in prison.
Others had property confiscated.
And the temptation for them is to shrink back.
To throw away their confidence, as 10:35 hints at.
And that’s a similar temptation we can face too.
It’s becoming socially harder to be a Christian.
There was a time when holding a Christian belief was more acceptable.
Perhaps you, today, feel the temptation to shrink back.
To hide away.
To give up.
You see, our situation isn’t that different to these people.
And that makes this letter all the more worth our time to listen to, and apply to ourselves.
So what is the solution?
What is the call in this section?
As you might have figured, it is to have faith.
You see that in the final verse of :
So the big theme, the big call here is to have faith.
You see that in the final verse of :
So the big theme, the big call here is to have faith.
You see that in the final verse of :
The writer of this letter wants to encourage you today, as well as to the readers back then, hold onto faith.
Hold onto faith.
The big issue for the readers of this letter is to have faith.
(and wilderness generation).
To persevere.
To endure.
The writer of this letter wants to encourage you today, as well as to the readers back then, hold onto faith.
Hold onto faith.
And that faith will enable you to persevere, to endure.
: Let us do the same.
Jesus endured the cross.
: Let us do the same.
Jesus endured the cross.
Like a car - driving forwards
Faith in the unseen
But maybe you’re thinking - those definitions of faith you gave earlier… Those won’t help people hold on.
Those won’t help us persevere.
Those won’t give anyone any real help.
If you’re thinking that, good!
You’re tracking with me.
That’s why we need to see what the Bible says faith is.
What does Biblical faith look like?
Take a look at :
Let’s unpack that sentence.
That verse is saying that faith is a real, a solid, confidence in what we hope for.
So a confidence in the future, that something is coming.
And assurance - that’s in the present day - about what we do not see.
So living in the now, confident of the future.
You could say that faith is the title deed to the future.
That faith is the foundation, believing that the promises of God that are still to come, will come.
Aha, the cynical part of your mind might be calling out, ‘surely that is just a leap in the dark?
A firm belief in something with no proof?’
That might be the case if we started here in the letter.
But we’re in chapter 11, and that means there are a whole 10 chapters before where we are, in which the author has made the case that God has spoken.
He has spoken throughout history.
And ultimately in His Son - the Lord Jesus.
The author’s underlying theme is what God has said in the past, affects the present, and has guaranteed the future.
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