Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Emotional Range
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Tone of specific sentences
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Emotion
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Anger
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The story of the Bible begins with God putting humanity in a Garden to work it and keep it.
His presence is there with them.
They are his image-bearers.
They have as good of access as creatures can have with an infinite and holy God.
But it’s not long before these image-bearers have a new identity.
They now become rebels.
Finite and sinful human beings.
From the moment they take of the forbidden fruit---the moment they put their own will and desire before the will and desire of their Good Father—they realize they’ve messed up.
They for the very first time feel this strange thing called shame.
They feel their nakedness.
It’s not a beautiful thing in this moment—it’s embarrassing—shame inducing.
The story of the Bible begins with God putting humanity in a Garden to work it and keep it.
His presence is there with them.
They are his image-bearers.
They have as good of access as creatures can have with an infinite and holy God.
But it’s not long before these image-bearers have a new identity.
They now become rebels.
Finite and sinful human beings.
From the moment they take of the forbidden fruit---the moment they put their own will and desire before the will and desire of their Good Father—they realize they’ve messed up.
They for the very first time feel this strange thing called shame.
They feel their nakedness.
It’s not a beautiful thing in this moment—it’s embarrassing—shame inducing.
So they sew together for themselves fig leaves and try to cover themselves.
But it doesn’t do the trick.
The shame remains.
They hide behind a bush but it doesn’t do the job either.
The gaze of God finds them.
They are exposed.
And then the blame game begins.
It ends with them being booted from the garden.
Access denied.
Now fast forward to the time of Moses and Aaron.
We’re now well into the second and third book of the Bible.
Quite a bit of time has passed.
And God has, surprisingly, continued to relate to humanity.
He has made a way for them to continue to have at least some access.
It’s not free and wonderful and Garden of Eden type of access but it’s the best at this point that can be offered to finite sinful humanity.
But we should have seen this coming from .
Because even though their fig leaves don’t cover we see that God made clothes for them.
“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
Something dies to cover their shame.
That’ll come up again.
And so now we have Aaron as a high priest.
Now I will confess that I don’t tend to be a detail person.
So reading through some of these lengthy passages in Exodus and Leviticus is really tough for me.
It’s so much detail.
I mean a TON of detail.
Like very detailed descriptions of what specifically Aaron is supposed to wear in order to come into the presence of God.
Specifically the way that the animals are to be slaughtered.
How you are specifically supposed to deal with the blood.
What to burn and how.
So much detail.
And you can read some of these things and think why in the world does that matter?
Consider this small section out of a lengthy chapter in Exodus.
Exodus 28:31-35
And this stuff is very serious too.
Because in we read that Aaron’s sons decide one day that they’ll mix things up a bit and they take what’s called “strange fire” or what the ESV calls “unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.”
And you know what happens?
These guys…high priests…get consumed by fire.
I emphasize that they are high priests because that’s important.
They had to come from the line of Aaron.
A high priest had to be one of his kids…and then their kids…and then so on.
Aaron only has so many kids.
Silly illustration but it’s like if a couple of star players on your basketball team does something bad.
But the coach only has like 9 players on his team and these are a couple of the best ones.
So what does he do?
Sit them a quarter or two?
No.
In this instance he’d boot them off the team completely.
But that’s a silly illustration because we aren’t talking not being able to play basketball we are talking not being able to live anymore.
So why does God take this so serious?
Because he is communicating that He is holy and there is a certain way to approach him.
Like that’s not him just playing games it’s legit reality.
Our God is a consuming fire…we will read that later in Hebrews.
And so if He lovingly says don’t approach me that way it’s kind of like telling a child, don’t put your hand in the oven and grab the pizza pan.
Don’t get close to that because you are going to get burned.
If you are going to stick your hand in the oven put on an oven mitt.
If I’d been in the Garden of Eden, it would have been a bit like this:
God: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Me: “Why?
Why would I die from that?
This seems like a really dumb rule that doesn’t make any sense at all.
Explain to me your thought process here and I’ll gladly obey.
But I don’t obey dumb rules that don’t make any sense.”
Satan: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?
Me: “Yes, he did.
And then he didn’t explain to me why.
He just said don’t do it.
Which doesn’t make a bit of sense to me.
“
Satan: “That’s because God is holding out on you.
He didn’t want to tell you the whole story because he is trying to rip you off.
You saw right through it, oh, wise one.
You don’t have to follow dumb rules that don’t make any sense.
If God really loved you then He would tell you everything.
Me: *chomps down on forbidden fruit*
—
I’d have chomped on that fruit because unless you explain the full reason for the rule and I agree with it too I’m not going to just obey.
But that really was the point of the tree in the Garden.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Because it seems to me that this same question is what the author of Hebrews is working towards answering.
How do we have access to God?
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