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
0.15UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.12UNLIKELY
Fear
0.1UNLIKELY
Joy
0.58LIKELY
Sadness
0.24UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.41UNLIKELY
Confident
0.32UNLIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.77LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.9LIKELY
Extraversion
0.31UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.96LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.77LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
What’s so different about the 21st century?
In so many ways, the 21st century is completely different from the 1st century.
With our computers, we can listen to a sermon from the other side of the world.
We can listen to it and we can watch it being preached – as it happens, live!
This is so different from life in the time of Christ and His Apostles.
Very different – Yes! – but is it completely different?
Can we, in the 21st century, afford to ignore the voices which speak to us from the 1st century?
We search for a model for Church life, a model for ministry, in the 21st century.
We learn about modern methods of communication.
Still, we are faced with the question – Have we listened to what the Lord Jesus has to say to us?
When I was a young student at Stirling University, I took the members of our Christian Union Committee to hear my Minister, the Rev George Philip.
We were thinking of asking him to speak at our Christian Union Conference.
He preached on the third verse of the letter of Jude where we are exhorted to ‘contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the people of God’.
As we listened, our hearts said, ‘Yes.
This is it.
This is the message for today.
This is the message we need to hear.
This is the message we must never forget.’
As we seek the way forward, God’s way for the 21st century, are we beginning to see that the way forward begins when when we go back to the Word of God, back to the Saviour, back to His Apostles?
What a wonderful model for ministry we have in Paul’s message to the Ephesian elders!
Here is a man who demands our attention.
Here is a man who compels us to listen.
He is a man of his own time, a man from the 1st century, yet his message is for our time.
It is a message which calls us to take God seriously.
It is a message which calls us to listen carefully to God’s Word.
Paul calls us to centre our lives on Christ.
He calls us to commit ourselves to prayer.
Paul’s ministry was a helpful ministry.
It was a Gospel ministry.
His ministry was a teaching ministry and it was a prayerful ministry.
(1) Paul’s ministry was a helpful ministry.
He tells us, in verse 20, that ‘he kept back nothing that was helpful’.
In his public preaching of God’s Word and in his pastoral work in the homes of the people, Paul prayed that his ministry would help the people to grow in their knowledge of God, their love of God and their service of God.
Why was Paul’s ministry such a helpful ministry?
It was helpful because it was real.
He was a man living in the power of Christ’s resurrection, a man who could truly say, ‘For me, to live is Christ’ (Philippians 1:21).
His ministry was helpful because it was a ministry of fearless preaching, faithful pastoral work and fervent prayer.
Paul was fearless as he preached God’s Word to the people.
He was faithful in the ministry of bringing Christ to the people in their own homes.
He was fervent in prayer as he asked God to bless the people.
I recall an occasion when I spoke at the Presbytery of Dunfermline.
The Rev Dr Gordon Jenkins was about to take up a position in Edinburgh.
I had been asked to pay tribute to his ministry at the North Parish Church, Dunfermline.
Gordon was an enthusiastic supporter of Dunfermline Athletic.
I used the letters of the team’s nickname, the Pars, to describe Gordon’s ministry.
It was Ministry Anointed by the Renewing Spirit.
Preaching Anointed by the Renewing Spirit – this is where the helpfulness comes from.
It comes from above.
It comes from the Lord.
When we have done all that we can do, we must look away from ourselves to the Lord and say, ‘It is not by might.
It is not by power.
It is by the Spirit of the Lord’ (Zecharaiah 4:6).
When we look at all that has been achieved, we must learn to look away from ourselves to the Lord and say, from the heart, ‘This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes’ (Psalm 118:23).
This is helpful ministry – ministry which serves the purpose of God’s salvation, ministry which depends on the presence of God’s power, ministry which maintains the priority of God’s glory.
This is helpful ministry – bringing Christ to the people, bringing the people to Christ.
Helpful ministry – it is ministry that never forgets to say, ‘Our help is in the Name of the Lord’ (Psalm 124:8).
(2) Paul’s ministry was a Gospel ministry.
In verse 24, he describes his ministry.
He tells us that he ‘received this ministry from the Lord Jesus’.
He tells us that it is a ministry of ‘testifying to the Gospel of the grace of God’.
What is the Gospel?
– It is the Good News: Christ has died for our sins, Christ has risen from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).
Is the preaching of the Gospel simply the announcement of these facts?
No! It is more than that.
There is also the challenge of the Gospel, the call to repentance, the call to faith (v.
21).
God is not only telling us something.
He is asking us something.
Will you repent?
Will you believe?
God is saying something to us – ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.
This is My beloved Son.
Listen to Him’.
He is also asking us to say something to Him – ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’ (Luke 18:13).
This is the prayer of repentance.
This is the prayer of faith.
We turn from sin.
We turn to God.
We take our sin to Jesus.
We trust Him for forgiveness.
To every one who hears the Gospel, the question is asked, ‘What will your response be?’
As I look back over my own spiritual journey, I am forever grateful to those who impressed on me the need to make my personal response to Jesus Christ.
It was not enough to say, ‘God so loved that He gave His only Son’ (John 3:16).
There needed to be something more personal – ‘the Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).
It was not enough to say, ‘Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world’ (John 4:42).
There needed to be the personal confession of faith – ‘Jesus Christ is my Saviour’.
Paul was a faithful and fearless preacher of the Gospel.
If, in our generation, we are to follow his example, we must not hesitate to impress upon the people the necessity of ‘repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ’ (v.
21).
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of attending a service conducted a recently retired minister, the Rev Dr Sam Hosain.
In his sermon, Dr Hosain directed our attention to three verses in the letter to the Hebrews:
‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins’ (9:22),
‘without faith it is impossible to please God’ (11:6),
‘without holiness no-one will see the Lord’ (12:14).
In these three statements, we have the key features of Gospel ministry:
First, we are to hear the Gospel – the Good News that Christ died for our sins;
Second, we are to believe the Gospel – ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be
saved’ (Acts 16:31);
Third, we are to live the Gospel – Christ has died for us.
Now He calls us to live for Him.
This is Gospel ministry – hearing the Gospel, believing the Gospel and living the Gospel.
May God help us to be faithful to His Gospel – in our hearing, in our believing, in our living.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9