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
0.07UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.09UNLIKELY
Fear
0.1UNLIKELY
Joy
0.63LIKELY
Sadness
0.14UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.58LIKELY
Confident
0.62LIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.77LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.85LIKELY
Extraversion
0.02UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.72LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.76LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Appetiser
Let me tell you a little bit about one of my passions, the NBA.
The dream of every player is to become an NBA champion with his team.
What is the road to it?
Well, the season is made up of two halves.
The first is the regular season, where each time has to play 82 games.
You don’t need to win them all—but you do need to win enough to qualify for the second part of the season, the Playoffs.
Here, you need to win 16 games to be a champion—but in order to achieve that, you may well need to play 20-25 games.
So you may have played over a 100 games to become a champion.
But that’s just the games.
Between games you need to train, and train hard; these men are supreme athletes.
So it’s fair to say that the life of the NBA player is a life utterly consumed with the sport.
You won’t achieve anything otherwise.
It’s no accident that sport is used as an analogy to speak of the Christian life.
The Christian life is also one where we run for a prize, where we ‘buffet our bodies’, where we keep our eyes on the prize, where we make sacrifices.
There’s strain, pain and sweat, and that’s pretty normal.
See Hebrews 10:36-37.
But there’s a big difference between sport and being a Christian.
The Christian life is a life of faith in God, Hebrews 10:38-39.
We walk, fight, endure by faith.
And it has always been like this for the people of God—and Hebrews 11 was written to show us that.
But it’s not simply informative—it’s pastoral, Hebrews 12:1-3.
So we will do that.
Let us see the great thing the Lord can do in the life of those who have faith in Him, as we have a look through salvation history.
Main Course
Faith enables us to participate in God’s promise: v1, expounded in v3, 7
This is stated in v1
Faith is concerned with “what we hope for” as opposed to what we already have, and “what we do not see” as opposed to what we can see.
What is meant here?
Cf. 10:36, “what he has promised.”
This we have in common with our brothers and sisters through the ages, cf.
11:13, 39
Both objective and subjective senses of “confidence” and “assurance” are meant, cf.
10:19, 35.
The promise of God of eternal life to the fullest is objective, but we are called to put our trust in God for His promise.
What is the ground of this faith?
“We know him who said” (10:30a)
“We know him”—personal trust.
“him who said”—objective trustworthiness.
Not blind faith, though we may at times not understand what’s happening.
Connection between “we” and “the ancients”
Our forefathers who trusted in God did so by the same faith we are called upon to exercise.
By looking at them we can find teaching and inspiration for our own situation.
The objective, hoped-for, unseen things effect us: as they are spoken of by God, by the sovereign work and grace of the Spirit, they produce faith in us.
That’s the argument of the chapter.
Notice how this changes how and why we read the Bible!
Looking back to creation, v3
The world was not made from the existent matter, but was brought to existence by the creative power of God exercised through His Word.
There is God, in a category of His own, and everything and everyone else.
He is alone is holy, transcending time and space.
“By faith we understand”: To God’s people, this is not an abstract truth, but is why we
worship Him as the Creator.
He made and upholds the world, and everything in it.
He is worthy of our praise Cf.
Psalm 33:6-9
trust in he God Who still speaks.
Cf.
Psalm 33:4-5.
The Words we read in the Bible carry the same power as those God spoke at creation, and sustain the world now.
It therefore sustains us, too—provided we receive them by faith!
v3b—notice how this was the basis of Abraham’s faith in God, “that God had power to do what he had promised”, Romans 4:17-21.
Believer: if you ever struggle to trust God, think of Him as the Creator, and put your trust in Him!
Looking forward to to judgement and salvation: Noah, v7
He believed God’s warning about the Flood, so he built an ark.
The rest of the world didn’t.
He alone, with those in the ark with him, was saved.
When the Flood came, the rest of the world condemned already by Noah’s faith.
Cf.
John 3:18, 36
He believed God’s promise regarding the new world.
God said to him, “I will establish a covenant with you” (Genesis 6:18)—in other words, He made a solemn promise.
Noah believed that he and co.
would survive the Flood and be rewarded: otherwise the promise would not have been fulfilled.
This is also why our Lord stood the test in the face of Satan’s temptation, Matthew 4:8-10 cf.
Matthew 28:18
Both the judgment and the promise referred to unseen realities.
But they were as real as felt for Noah—“by faith”.
Connection to us, 10:36, 39.
Do you have Noah’s faith?
Because even today, it is those who trust in God as Creator, Judge and Saviour, that are saved from the wrath to come.
Put your trust in Christ because:
God delights in those who trust in Him: v2, expounded in v4-6
This is stated in v2
This is how we know who God’s true people are, for God testifies concerning them.
That’s the underlying idea behind the word “commended”.
“This” is emphatic.
“These are the people God delight in”.
Cf.
Isaiah 66:2b: “These are the ones I look on with favour: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.”
Examples in Abel and Enoch, v4-6
They were both “commended” one “as righteous”, the other “as one who pleased God”.
I suggest the two here are synonymous.
This commendation was not due to anything they did, but for their faith in God, as v6 summarises.
They not only acknowledged the existence of God (Satan does that), but knew Him as the rewarder of those who seek Him.
BUT their faith led them to do what they did, just as we saw with Noah.
Abel brought “a better offering”, v4.
“better” here means something like “more acceptable” (ESV)—because his sacrifice was accepted.
What made it so?
He brought it by faith.
Had he not brought it so, it would not have been accepted—because anything that does not come by faith is sin, Romans 14:23.
So God will not look on the unbeliever’s good deeds and accept those, because they are not brought by faith.
But the believer’s worship is accepted, because we come to God through Jesus Christ—by faith in Him, worshipping God through Him.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9