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
0.21UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.14UNLIKELY
Fear
0.13UNLIKELY
Joy
0.48UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.51LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.58LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.2UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.8LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.84LIKELY
Extraversion
0.11UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.84LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.72LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
*1. **Confusing or clear?*
Sometimes efforts at communication end up very confusing don’t they.
Have you ever read a sign or a message and thought – I have no idea what they are talking about?
ILLN – like the boy playing on the grass slope at a 5-star resort, oblivious to the signs all around him saying ‘please stay off the bank’.
And after the third time of his father yelling at him to get off the bank, the boy asked his father quite innocently ‘what’s a bank?’
Or the sign on the park that said ‘please refrain from treading on the area of verdant herbaceous growth’.
Why not just say ‘keep off the grass’.
If we want to communicate we need to be clear and not confusing.
Like the road signs I saw last night driving home from the city.
One said ‘keep to the left’; the other said ‘don’t hog the right lane’.
Pretty clear.
When it comes to Christianity, sometimes the message seems very confusing, and lots of things seem to get in the way.
So many people and groups claiming to be Christian, and yet their messages seem confusing.
Go to church, no you don’t have to go to church; care for the poor, no that’s not most important; engage in holy wars, no war is not the way; live a good and moral and upright life, no how we live doesn’t matter.
If I was to ask you what Christianity is all about what would you say, what gets in the way for you, what seems unclear?
We need to somehow cut away all the extras and understand what Christianity is about clearly.
Thankfully the Bible helps us.
In the Bible God speaks to us.
And he wants us to understand what he says.
Today as we look at 1 Cor 15 it is one of the clearest passages about the basic truths of Christianity, Paul takes us back to the essence of Christianity – and we need to hear it clearly.
Let’s *pray* God will help us.
#.
*Clear Christianity!*
I don’t know about you but sometimes I have those so-called senior moments – you know, when you forget things.
But there are some things in life you should never forget if at all possible – if you’re married then your anniversary or your spouse’s birthday are some of them.
In 1 Cor 15 Paul reminds the Christians in this city called Corinth of another thing never to forget – and that is the gospel which he had passed on to them.
The word ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’.
We use it in church circles as a shorthand way of talking about the Christian message.
And Paul is saying this gospel, this message of Christianity is good news.
I wonder if you think it is good news?
If the Christian message you have heard is good news?
Well let’s see what Paul says is at the heart of Christianity, and see why it is good news for us.
Paul says this good news, this gospel, has 3 key elements.
And you can’t just believe 1 or 2 of them.
It’s all or nothing.
Take away any one element and it ceases to be good news.
So let’s look quickly at these 3 key parts of the Christian message.
Let me put them as clearly as I can upfront and then speak to them one by one.
If you hear nothing else today then listen to these 3 points, because this is as Paul says in v3 of first importance, here is the crux of Christianity.
- Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures
- He was buried
- He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
That is the essence of the Christian message.
Let me repeat it again in case you didn’t hear it clearly.
REPEAT
So let’s unpack each of these 3 points and see why it is good news for us.
a.
Died
Paul’s first point is that the Christ died, you can see it there in v3.
Who was this Christ?
The Christ was the king God had promised over hundreds of years to send to his people to rule over them.
The Bible in the New Testament says the Christ, this king, has come – it is Jesus.
Christ is not his surname, like Mr J Christ.
Christ is his title.
Jesus is God’s promised king.
A king who God promised would reign forever.
But the shock of the Bible is that this Christ, this king Jesus, died.
He was nailed to a rough wooden cross, and there he died.
It sounds awful and it was, hardly seems like good news does it.
The Romans killed many people in the same way.
Why is this death good news?
It has to do with the reason why he died.
Paul says he died - for our sins.
Here’s another word which may be unclear.
So let’s try and see quickly what it means.
Way back in the beginning, at the start of the Bible, God created man and woman to enjoy a perfect relationship with God and one another forever.
Chapter 2 of the book of Genesis closes with Adam and Eve in this perfect relationship with God, with one another and with the rest of creation.
But now think of what was read to us from Genesis 3. Adam and Eve decided to disobey God; they deliberately did what he told them not to.
This wasn’t some mix-up in communication – God had been very clear back in 2:17 ‘you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’
Pretty clear isn’t it – don’t eat the fruit of this tree.
But they did.
And that was the beginning of human sin in the world.
What does sin mean?
Sin is where we disobey God, we disregard God or ignore God and do what we think is best.
Have you ever done that?
If you’re honest you have.
I have, you have, we all have.
Adam and Eve did.
And the consequences were exactly as God said, for he never lies, Adam and Eve would die.
It took some time.
But they died.
They died physically.
And they died spiritually – they lost that perfect relationship they had with God.
They were cast out of Eden, out of the presence of God.
And there humanity stays.
We bear those consequences.
Ever been to a funeral?
We die don’t we?
We die because sin is still in us and in the world.
We cannot be friends with God, we cannot have a perfect relationship with God, because our sin gets in the way.
We need someone to help us.
And as God’s story progresses in the Bible, it is the story of a search for someone to help us.
Someone who can deal with the problem of our sin.
Would it be Adam and eve’s sons, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon?
The list went on and on, but no suitable helper came.
All those men had to deal with their own sins, so couldn’t help us with ours.
But one day it happened – the helper was born.
He lived on earth about 20 centuries ago.
He was Jesus.
Jesus was perfect.
He never sinned.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9