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
0.14UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.47UNLIKELY
Fear
0.59LIKELY
Joy
0.13UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.48UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.66LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.03UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.76LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.81LIKELY
Extraversion
0.14UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.67LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.69LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
ATTN
Ok, I know that picture may give you the “willies.”
It sure does give them to me!
This is an Anaconda and, according to National Geographic, these snakes can grow to a weight of 550 pounds!
Wow! Now you know why I’m not ready to go on the mission trip down the Amazon!
Someone in the Peace Corps once published a fictitious manual of advice for volunteers headed to South America.
In it they described how you should handle it if you ever, by chance, met up with one of these.
Their advice was listed under the heading, “What to Do if Attacked by an Anaconda”:
1.
If you're attacked by an anaconda, do not run; the snake is faster than you are.
2. Lie flat on the ground.
3. Put your arms tight at your sides and your legs tight against one another.
4. The snake will begin to climb over your body.
5. Do not panic.
6.
The snake will begin to swallow you from the feet end.
7. Step 6 will take a long time.
8.
After awhile, slowly and with as little movement as possible, reach down, take your knife, and very gently slide it into the snake's mouth.
Then suddenly sever the snake's head.
9. Be sure your knife is sharp.
10.
Be sure you have your knife.
I guess that would fall under the heading of “Be prepared,” huh?
As bad as meeting an Anaconda would be, there’s another serpent which is much more prevalent and a whole lot more deadly.
It’s that old serpent, the Devil.
He’s called a serpent in many places and, in our text for today, he’s called a lion as well.
BACKGROUND
In fact, Peter writes urgently in 1 Peter 5:8:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
9 Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.
Last week we talked about verse 8 and the attitude we must have to overcome our hostile, accusing, active, opportunistic, intimidating, deadly enemy.
Today we want to talk about the action we must take in order to defeat him.
Peter sums up that action in one word.
V. 9 begins, “Resist him.”
Resist is an active word.
It literally means to actively resist opposing pressure or power.
You and I are not to passively sit by and depend on our attitude or our thinking alone to defeat the devil.
We are to be active.
NEED
That’s important to note because most of us go through life trying to ignore our enemy.
In fact, there are at least three groups of people here today.
First, there are those I call “COASTERS.”
No, I’m not talking about the round cork things you put your drinks on in the living room.
I’m talking about believers who think they can coast through life without a fight.
They’re like the guys who joined the National Guard during the Vietnam War to avoid the fighting.
That may have worked out back then, but it’s not working out in this current war is it?
And the truth is, it will not work out for you as a believer either.
There’s no coasting, so you must be prepared.
And then we have the TALKERS here today.
These are the people who are always bragging about their spiritual exploits, or at least vicariously living through the victories of others.
They, however, are nothing but hot air.
When the real battle begins and prayer warriors are needed, they are nowhere to be found.
WE have the coasters and the talkers, but we also have the “ISLANDS” here.
That term has nothing to do with real estate.
When I say “Islands” I mean people who think they can fight the battle all alone.
They want to be come little islands of spiritual power impregnable by the forces of Satan and in need of no one else.
These people are usually going from one defeat to another because they are all alone.
No matter your label, God has a plan for how you can be prepared for your encounter with the snake.
He has a way for you to face the roaring lion.
In order to resist the devil, you can
DIV1 - FOCUS YOUR FAITH
EXP
Notice that the very first thing Peter tells us about resisting Satan is that we must do this by being “steadfast” in our faith.
The picture of steadfast is of something that has been concentrated to increase it’s power.
In the old west, whenever the wagon train was attacked by Indians, what would they do?
They would circle the wagons to concentrate their fire power.
The idea of being steadfast is the idea of being compacted together and digging in your heals so as to withstand an attack.
I like the word “focus” to describe this.
When you are under attack, you must focus.
On what, you might ask?
On what must I focus?
Well, in the first place, you are not to focus on your faith.
This is exactly the mistake that many believers make.
They try to make their faith stronger by working on their feelings.
That’s a big mistake.
Faith doesn’t grow from a constant inquisition of it’s power.
Faith grows through a concentration on its object!
I don’t focus on faith to build my faith, I focus on God and He builds my faith!
One of the best things I can do when under spiritual assault by Satan is to focus on God!
Now, this reason you must focus on God is that it is precisely your faith in God that Satan targets.
Peter, realizing this, states very clearly that when we resist Satan, we must resist him in the very area he attacks: our faith.
In Peter’s day, that attack came against the church in the form of outright persecution.
Believers were tempted to deny their faith, and save themselves pain.
In our day, the attack may be more subtle, but it is no less deadly.
Often our greatest temptation is not avoiding the pain of persecution but preserving the comfort of our lives.
The early church was afraid of losing their freedom, or their job, or maybe even their lives; we fear losing a friend or being thought of as a fanatic.
Satan’s temptation is always in the area of our faith, and since that is the case, trusting God must be our ultimate target.
ILL
You see, every sin you’ve ever committed in your life was, ultimately, a failure of faith.
And it is really amazing to note just how quickly our faith can fail:
They arrived at the mountain with great anticipation.
Moses had told them that something great was going to happen.
They’d seen the power of God in Egypt.
They’d seen locust turn the sky black and the fields brown.
They’d seen the teeming Nile dying with the stench of blood.
They’d walked by the stinking piles of dead frogs after that plague was over.
More than anything, they’d heard the wails of mothers crying as they clutched the lifeless bodies of their first born sons.
They had witnessed the awful power of God, and you would have thought that those images, those smells and those sounds so stamped their brains that they would never doubt Him.
But this was different.
Now Moses, their great leader, had disappeared into the dark thundercloud at the top of the mountain.
Surely no one could enter such a storm and live.
Surely no one could behold God and survive.
That had been the reason why, when they had heard the thundering voice of the Living God they had begged Moses to ask God not to speak to them anymore.
They literally thought His voice might kill them.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9