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
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Emotional Range
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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I remember a conversation I had with my mom during my last year at the Seminary.
At the end of that calendar year, her insurance would no longer cover me.
I figured this wasn’t that big a deal.
In six months I would get a Call and health insurance.
Over the course of my life I’d been pretty healthy.
What are the chances that in those six sans-health insurance months something catastrophic would happen?
Besides, think of the money saved.
Needless to say, Mom didn’t salute that idea.
Many try something similar.
They don’t buy car insurance.
They don’t buy health insurance.
They don’t maintain their cars.
They don’t buckle seat-belts.
They don’t buy home-owners or renters insurance.
They don’t put aside money just in case they lose their job.
Maybe some of that many sits in this room.
Sometimes you get burned.
You break a bone or catch a weird virus in the time between insurance coverages.
You happen to drive into a speed trap and have no proof of insurance.
Maybe you’ve managed to coast your way through and never get burned, or, better, caught.
But even though getting caught with your pants down like this comes with consequences – fines, tickets, hefty price tags, not having cable anymore – are any of those eternal?
Don’t for a minute think that God operates that way.
Just to make that clear, Jesus tells a striking parable.
Ten women get ready for a wedding reception.
They get dolled up, dressed up, made-up, and whatnot.
Then they get their lamps ready because they’re not sitting at the reception hall having a drink, taking advantage of the wedding couples’ hospitality.
These wedding attendants wait outside for the Groom to come so that they can escort Him to the reception.
At this point we make a division: Jesus separates the sheep from the goats.
Jesus says some of these women were smart; some not.
The smart ones didn’t just bring lamps; they brought extra oil.
The foolish ones just brought lamps, not remembering that almost nothing happens on time at a wedding.
This wedding was no exception.
The Groom delayed His arrival.
He didn’t just show up twenty minutes late.
He arrived in the middle of the night.
Then the cry goes out, like Paul’s archangel voice, “The Groom’s here!”
The women awake.
They light their lamps.
Or, at least five do.
The five who brought their oil.
The other five try, but no oil means no fire.
With none to spare, the five prepared women suggest that the fools go buy more oil.
They go.
The Groom arrives.
The five ready ladies go in and the Groom shuts the door.
When the five foolish women arrive all oiled up, they find the door locked.
They knock and ask to be let in, but the Groom says, “I don’t know who you are.
Go away.”
The fools made a bet.
They bet that they had enough oil.
They bet that the Groom would come quickly.
They bet that the other, better prepared women might be able to spare them a square.
They bet that the Groom would let them in, even though they failed to do the one thing in their job description.
They lost that bet.
For their disrespect, their unpreparedness, the Groom denied them entrance and treated them like strangers.
With a parable we can ask Luther’s question, “What does this mean?”
Jesus made that clear.
He summarized the parable.
“Keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”
What day?
What hour?
Go back to the beginning of Matthew 24, where the disciples asked Jesus, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
The rest of Matthew 24 and 25 answers that question.
The day and the hour Jesus alerts us to is the last day, the last hour, the day on which your Lord Jesus Christ comes, the day of last judgment.
This parable talks of that time, the end time.
Now.
He warns us that the Christian Church really divides into two groups.
There are those who are prepared, prudent, smart, and ready; and there are those who are not.
In other words, there are those who are members of churches and really are members of the Church; and there are those who are members in name only.
They carry the right identification with them.
They mouth some of the right words.
They know the secret handshake.
But that’s all just a show.
They’re foolishly unprepared.
Is your soul prepared?
What does that mean?
These women waited for the Groom.
We wait for Christ.
The Groom delayed His arrival for a significant amount of time.
It’s been 2,000 years and counting.
Is your soul prepared?
Do you have your oil?
Or are you counting on borrowing someone else’s oil?
Because you can’t, you know.
When the Groom comes you’re on your own.
No one else’s faith can save you: not your parents or Godparents or the Church’s.
No saint’s merits overflow into your account.
No virgin mother intercedes for you.
No angels pave the way and remove obstacles.
Either you have faith in Christ.
Or you don’t.
Jesus didn’t live and die and rise for that guy, who then paid it forward to a guy who paid it forward to a guy who paid it forward to you.
Jesus lived and died and rose for you.
He filled his lamp with your sins and then poured out all that oil in living and dying and rising again, for you.
For you to grasp on to and hold on to and believe in.
Either you have oil in your lamp.
Or you don’t.
Yet we take too many uncalculated risks, don’t we? “He hasn’t come since then, why would He come today?”
“I can always read my Bible and come to Bible class tomorrow?”(How
does that work with your diet and exercising?) “I could stop committing this sin anytime; I’m just not going to do it today.”
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