Sermon Tone Analysis

Why So Dull?

It’s the first Sunday in October, fall is finally setting in and it’s that time of year when everything starts to wind down.

The trees are losing their leaves and thoughts turn to the storm of activity that’s about to start in just a few weeks.

The Holiday’s are around the corner, but for now things are winding down.

Which brings us to today.

Over the next few weeks we are going to see what the purpose is of endings.

We are going to look at the endings of several people in the Bible.

See how as their lives wound down it paved the way for the next thing that God was going to do.

We start with a Genealogy, one of the dullest things in the Bible right.

There are approximately 25 genealogies in the Bible , a great way to fall asleep faster is to either start reading them or listen to them, you can get great audio bibles several apps also have an audio feature for bible reading.

So lets dig in.

We can learn a lot more from genealogies than we realize in fact there is a very important principle to be found in the life and death of people.

I pulled a segment out but if you read before and after you find name after name each one giving the number of years they lived, and then making sure to tell us one thing…”then he died.”

Lets look at why this is important.

Hebrews

Death is a part of life.

Humanity begins to die the day they are born.

I know that’s morbid but our bodies start to wind down, it’s just a fact of life.

But this one’s a little bit different.

Enoch.

what do we know about Enoch.

We know that Enoch is mentioned four times in the Bible.

Here and three times in the New Testament.

Once in Luke as a decendant of seth, anohter one of those geneologies,

Then

Then

This last set of verses is what leads people to claim he wrote the book of Enoch a non canoncaial book in all but the etheopian church.

In that book we find what shapes most of the Apocalypitc literature in the bible and while that’s interesting I want to focus on a couple of things about Enoch that are true.

Enoch Walked with God

This one thing is completely different, every other person in that geneolgy it is mentioned that they died.

But enoch is different.

HIs walk with God made a difference in his final dispensation.

He walked with god and was not becasue God took him.

(diffeernt stories about what happened)

What was the differendce what was the walk with God all about.

Hebrews tells us he pleased God, so much that god just took him

What does it mean to walk with God?

Act Justly even when it’s hard, even when it’s easier to go a different way

Love faithfulness so much that it’s your first choice.

Walk humbly recognizing that the only differecne between you and the person that has no relationship with God is the fact that your eyes have been opened and you have realized your need for God.

So what’s Enoch got to do with winding down?

Simple...

(talk about the long walks in DC) at the end of the day it was time to rest and that rest was needed in order to wake up the next day to go on to the next part of the vacation.

What mattered though was not the end result of resting what mattered was all that we did that day.

It’s the same with us.

Is your walk worth winding down from?

If it is you’ll hear this.

If not…well...

It’s interesting,we get it in our heads that this little parable is talking about Christians and Non-Christians but that’s not it, they both ask the same question…Lord when, both belive they are walking with God the difference is simple what they did and didn’t do…how they walked.

This Week’s Challenge

Bring someone to church!