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.
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Introduction
(Praise the church for their kindness to me last week.
“If you're visiting, I want to tell you about the church that you just stepped into.”)
If you're visiting, I want to tell you about the church that you just stepped into.
I have lived much of my life paralyzed by the potential for failure.
I can remember as a child obsessing over grades and tests and papers to the point of making myself physically sick.
And, can I just be transparent with you for a second?
If you were to ask Megan this morning about my greatest source of anxiety and fear, she’d tell you that my greatest fear is that I’m going to be the one to fail and kill this great church.
I love ICBC more deeply than I know how to adequately express, and I can tell you with integrity that I would rather resign and mow grass than to be the one who leads Iron City toward death and apathy or even mediocrity.
But, let me tell you what God’s been dealing with me about.
Much of my view of success and failure is flawed.
My definitions of greatness and failure are horribly off center.
You see, I am like you, and I have ambition, and what’s ethically tricky is that my ambition is tied to this church.
And so, as a result, I find myself needing to define my success and my failure in measurable and quantifiable ways.
It’s easier to define my success by how many are coming rather than how faithful we are being to sow the Gospel seed and make disciples.
So, last year shattered me in a lot of ways.
After three years of growth, we saw decline in the second half of last year.
And, I’ve spent a lot of that time paralyzed with feelings of failure.
But, here’s what I’m beginning to realize: It shattered me because I needed to be shattered.
Being the pastor of ICBC had become my singular identity and my ambition had become my mission rather than the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.
I was shattered because in many ways I was trying to advance my agenda and my reputation rather than that of Christ.
It shattered me because I was defining success by the standards of the world and not by the standards of the Kingdom.
Because, as we’re going to see again this morning, first place in the Kingdom often looks and feels like last place on earth.
But, when you’re living Kingdom values, you can love last place in the here and now.
God’s Word
Read
Last Place’s Best Example
“the Son of Man will be delivered over” Jesus is marching toward his death as he presses on toward Jerusalem.
He is in his final days.
And so for the third time since chapter 16, we see Jesus predicting his death to his disciples.
Jesus knew where this road was carrying him, yet He was resolved to walk it anyway.
His death was a willing and voluntary death.
He knows what Jerusalem holds, but his love for his Church compelled him to go nonetheless.
And, as Jesus labors to teach his disciples to live with a last-first ethic, it is the perfect time for him to talk once again about his death.
Jesus isn't a hypocrite.
There is nothing that He calls his disciples to do that He himself wasn't willing to do.
You see, if you want to learn what it looks like to live out a last-first ethic, then really all you have to do is look to Christ.
He is our example.
And, He is the evidence of its power.
“to the chief priests and the scribes…to the gentiles” Matthew lays out his description of this prediction very specifically.
Notice how he frames it.
He says that Jesus will be 'delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes.'
So, that would likely be a description of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body over the Jewish people.
Then, he says, "They will....deliver him over to the gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified."
So, that would be the Romans.
This would be Pilate and executioners.
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