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
0.13UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.12UNLIKELY
Fear
0.15UNLIKELY
Joy
0.6LIKELY
Sadness
0.53LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.61LIKELY
Confident
0.16UNLIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.93LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.65LIKELY
Extraversion
0.09UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.39UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.71LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
How many of us have heard the children sing “The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock at Vacation Bible School?
And how many of us have sung the hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” in church?
Surely these words from the Sermon on the Mount are well known in the church community.
These words of Jesus come at the end of the sermon and act to sum up all that He has taught.
It also acts in a way similar to what we today call the “altar call”.
These words are meant for the listener to decide what they are going to do with the words of Jesus.
We saw earlier in our study that Jesus placed His words on par with those of what we call the Old Testament.
As Jesus said that every jot and tittle of Scripture must be fulfilled, Jesus would be making the same claim for His own words.
The words that Jesus spoke are the very words of God Himself.
Jesus uses an illustration here from the geography of the nearby wilderness to emphasize the importance of giving proper weight to his teaching.
The wilderness is a tortured landscape with deep winding gullies, high heat, and normally very, very dry.
These gullies extended for miles.
Most of the time, they would be bone dry.
But still, water could be found underneath the dry stream bed, or even a few pools at the surface for short periods of time.
This was not a place for the faint of heart to live.
Only a few wandering shepherds, religious zealots, and thieves escaping the law would try to live there.
Yet, this is the place where God sustained the Children of Israel for forty years on manna.
At times he provided water by having Moses strike a rock.
One of the characteristics of the wilderness was that when it did rain, it rained very hard.
This rain might fall miles away.
Yet, a few miles away, it remained sunny, hot, and dry.
Without warning, a rushing sound would be heard, followed by a rushing flood of water.
This flash flood would wash away anything that wasn’t firmly fixed.
Many a unprepared person has been swept away in such matter.
Although there is no direct reference here, an active imagination might go back to the account of the flood in the Book of Genesis.
Jesus in another place did make the connection between the last times and the flood, as did the Apostle Peter.
It was business as usual in that day, people were buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, oblivious to the danger that was about to rush upon them.
It was a sunny day in the wilderness of sin.
Then the flood came and washed them away.
Only Noah and His family, warned by God of the real danger prepared themselves by following God’s command to build a large boat.
Actually, the word we translate “ark” from the Hebrew, is similar to the word for “coffin” or “box”.
So in a sense, Noah escaped death in a coffin.
In a similar way, the Christian is delivered by the death of Jesus.
This same word “ark” is used for the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament in which the blood of animals was sprinkled on the Mercy Seat.
God’s wrath was propitiated from the People of Israel through a sacrificial death of an animal which pointed forward to the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The decision which Jesus is forcing here is based upon the Hebrew two way theology.
There is no middle ground.
One or the other outcome awaits all people, whether salvation or the eternal destruction which will sweep away all who fail to heed Jesus’ words and put them into practice.
Ignorance is no excuse.
It is true that Jesus only addresses two groups of people, those who have heard His words and put them into practice and those who heard them and did not.
But Jesus could only address the people who had contact with His words.
This does not mean that those who have not heard are off the hook as they are totally unprepared for what will happen at the Last Judgment.
According to Romans and the Westminster Confession of Faith, all people have knowledge of the true God which they willfully suppress.
God has clearly revealed Himself in nature as well as in the conscience.
In this sense, they have heard the word of God and have refused it and fall into the group who have heard and ignored the Word of God.
This natural knowledge is enough to condemn, though without the special revelation of Jesus is unable to save.
This is why it is so important to evangelize, that by this God-appointed means, some might be awakened to faith.
The analogy Jesus uses is simple enough to understand, even for those who do not live in areas prone to flash floods.
The common element of these two groups is that they have heard the Word of God.
The difference, then, is in the response.
The wise man is the one who heeds the warning and takes the prudent steps to ensure when the flood does come, that they won’t be swept away.
The foolish man shortcuts or dismisses the warning to their own demise.
When we looked at Noah, he took heed and acted upon God’s word.
I can only think that for the extended period of time that he preached the warning to His neighbors.
At least, the building of a boat on dry land would have attracted the attention of Noah’s neighbor.
As far as we know, it had never rained.
God used the dew of the morning to water the earth.
Certainly they enquired of Noah who certainly would have told them.
They heard the words of God and did not put them into practice.
Another analogy from Scripture can be found in Genesis 13.
Abraham and his nephew Lot had become so rich in livestock that the marginal land in which they lived could not sustain them both.
There was a decision to be made.
One decision was to give away the surplus to feed and clothe the poor of the land.
But both Abraham and Lot, enriched by the wealth of Egypt, made a fateful decision to part.
Abraham as the superior offered the choice to stay or leave to Lot.
It says that Lot saw the well-watered plain around Sodom in the area of the Dead Sea.
The low elevation and natural gushes of water like the spring at En-Gedi made it a tropical paradise in which all kinds of exotic fruits grew.
So Lot broke protocol by choosing what he considered the natural choice and left Abraham in the wilderness areas at the border of Canaan.
But Lot’s decision was fateful.
The passage warns that the people of Sodom were exceeding sinner before the Lord.
There was warning.
But Lot chose the way of sand and lost it all.
He would have lost his life as well except for the Lord’s gracious rescue.
But he finished his days living in a cave, having lost it all.
We all know how unprepared the world is for the judgment of God.
We hear their scoffing every day.
But it is even more distressing to see that there are many “Lot’s” in the church today who are equally unprepared.
They have not taken Jesus’ words to heart and acted upon them.
They instead build their lives upon the sands of this world.
The world looks more promising.
It appears to be well-watered.
These people think that material blessing is proof of the Lord’s favor.
Their attitude is Heaven now.
We live in a church today in which many ministers water down the Word of God to scratch the itching ears of followers.
They have ceased to give warning of the impending judgment and have gone to preaching prosperity.
But be assured from the authority of the Word of God that judgment is coming.
The world is guilty of great sin before the face of God, and He is coming to judge.
Because the full counsel of God, every jot and tittle of it, is not being proclaimed by too many pulpits today, people are ignorant of the true danger they are in.
Even if one takes the best case scenario.
The unprepared church member will come to the grief of Lot.
When the rushing water comes, they will be those who have used inferior materials upon which to build their lives.
Their work will be burned with fire, and they will only be saved by the grace of God.
Yet they will suffer great loss.
But I feel that this is even too optimistic.
Paul in Corinthians is in a sense talking about the ministry he, Apollos, and others had offered the Corinthian church.
It was built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ.
This passage in Corinthians then differs from the passage here in one very important aspect.
In this passage, the wise man is the one who builds his house upon a rock which Jesus says is His own words, the words of God.
The fool disregards the words of Jesus and builds his house upon a different foundation.
How many people in the church today are in the second camp?
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9