Sermon Transcript Tone Analysis

Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God, our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Yesterday, you all know was Saturday.

And Saturday is my favorite day of the week because it's college football.

Now, I have to adjust what I watch for the important business of conducting church service, but by and large, I can watch most of the games I want to watch.

And this week was a big week for two teams.

Last week, ranked number 1, Alabama loss to unranked, Texas A&M.

And the commentators, yesterday morning were speaking about would Alabama come back from that, tremendous loss the week before to an unranked team.

The other big game last week was Iowa and Penn State.

And both undefeated, and Iowa pulled it off.

They beat Penn State.

But the question was now, will they be able to come back and sustain and win against Purdue?

And I think Purdue had a bye the week before, so they were all rested up.

And by the way, because they beat Penn State, Iowa was ranked number two.

And if you watched the games, you know that Iowa could not sustain and they lost, they lost to unranked Purdue.

I'm guessing that Iowa is going to drop a lot further then Alabama or George or any other upper tier team in the rankings.

And Alabama did come back, and they kinda trounced all over their opponent, Mississippi State.

So you might say, well, Pastor, that's great.

But what does that really have to do with our faith?

Well, it has a great deal to do with faith.

Because this morning, we had the opportunity, if you will, to witness faith created in two young men of our congregation by the power of the Holy Spirit, connected with the word and God's water.

I mean, excuse me, the water and God's word.

And the question really is: will they be able to sustain that faith to enter into God's Sabbath rest?

Or won't they?

Now, of course, our prayer is that they would be able to sustain that faith.

And God provides wonderful blessings and gifts to sustain that faith.

First and foremost, He puts those young man in Godly families.

He makes them a part of a congregation who cares for them.

Godly sponsors who will see to it that they are brought up in the Christian faith, especially if they should lose their parents.

And with all that, they can strive, as you and I do, to enter into that Sabbath rest that the writer of the letter to the Hebrews is encouraging us to enter into.

Last week, we learned that importance of spiritual faith and life.

We have to look to our own spiritual life and faith first.

But then, that means also that if I am spiritually well, then I need to look to my neighbor, my brother and sister.

Are they spiritually well?

How's their faith and life?

Or maybe they're wandering and I need to bring them back.

And so sometimes - like Jonah in the Bible class - God gives us a message for our brother and sister that we really don't want to give.

Hey.

You know, you're drifting away.

Slowly, but surely.

You haven't been the same.

Or - I was always afraid I'd get called on this.

You know when the Book World was still on that block downtown?

When I came, I had a big black Dodge van, and everybody knew the Dodge van.

Well, there was no place to park on Grand Avenue, so I had to park on that side street.

And of course, there was a gentlemen's club, you know.

Maybe it's still there, I don't know.

And I'm always like, somebody's going to come up to me and say Pastor, we saw you parked in front of a gentlemen's club.

Now, maybe we have to say that to our neighbor.

Seriously.

And we know there's going to be some pushback, but if we really take our - or maybe we're the one that our friend has to come and talk to, and maybe we want to push back.

But if we're really serious about our spiritual health and life and faith, we'll allow that brother or sister to admonish us, and we'll receive that admonishment.

Because, as that author says: Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

That disobedience that leads to sin.

That disobedience that leads to sin.

And sin unchecked can lead to faith decay.

Faith decay.

How many of you are familiar with the series Hoarders?

Hoarders.

Okay, if you're not familiar with Hoarders, horders are pack rats to the extreme.

How many of you are pack rats?

Not all pack rats are hoarders.

But all hoarders are pack rats, I would think.

But, anyway, in this series, these people, they hoard so much that there's not even pathways through rooms.

I mean, any possible place you could stuff, some stuff is stuffed with stuff.

And this morning, the Holy Spirit took up residence in two new lives just as He's taken up residence in our lives.

But if I start piling up sin and stuffing that away in my life, and boy, that sin is really good.

It really satisfies me.

Pretty soon, there's not going to be any room for the Holy Spirit there, and He's just going to take off.

And when the Holy Spirit leaves, then faith goes with it.

Then faith goes with it.

And then we're cast out.

Not going to enter into that Promised Land, enter into that Sabbath rest.

And how disappointing that will be for a lot of people who think they're going to enter into that rest, but they're so happy with sin and storing up sin, that they've forgotten about their faith.

Forgotten about that great work that God began in them in baptism.

And they'll be standing out there in the darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, as we'll hear in a couple of weeks for a couple of weeks.

And they thought all along that they were going to get in.

But they won't.

And so let us strive, therefore, to enter into that rest, that Sabbath rest of God.

Our young people were asked if there was something that they ever had to strive to do that was really, really difficult and hard.

My thing takes me to physical education.

Much more difficult than math, even though I'm not too crazy about math.

But when I was in grade school, junior high, maybe even into high school, but I'm pretty sure it ended in junior high, there was this award you could get, and it was called the Presidential Physical Fitness, Award.

I'm not going to ask how many of you have it, cuz I don't want to go down that road.

But in order to do that, or to receive that award, you had to accomplish a whole bunch of things.

Like, I think you had to do so many sit-ups and so many push-ups and then you do some chin-ups and you had to climb that rope, you know, that rope that it's never down until it's time for Physical Fitness Award time.

Because otherwise, you don't use it.

I wonder how much one of those ropes cost and if it was really a worthwhile expense?

I don't know.

Anyway, I digress.

But President Kennedy established this to keep American children physically fit.

Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're not physically fit if you just don't have the upper arm strength to do those things, because some of us, we just don't have that upper arm strength, and I was one of those.

And I probably still don't have it.

And so I could handle the sit-ups and push-ups, but when it came to those was chin-ups, well, I could probably pull it off if I could cheat, you know, where you hold it this way (fingers toward you), but no, there was a phy-ed teacher right there.

No, turn your hands the other way.

Well, you don't get as much leverage this way.

And then that rope.

It was like that commercial for The Wonder Years that just came out.

Where they're in the gym and the physical education teacher says to the boy, "See that rope?

I want you to go up to the top of it and come back down.