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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Emotion
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Anger
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It’s Emotional
Christmas is filled with emotion.
Joy, peace, love, hope.
We sing about it and talk about it.
And we desperately want to feel good, always, and especially during Christmas.
Love, peace, joy, hope.
But, the holidays, in reality, don’t always go like this.
Families get together maybe for the only time all year.
There are hard things that elicit more negative emotions.
And we tell and relive the stories that make us family.
But it’s stressful.
We sleep less, eat more, maybe drink too much, and as the year comes to an end we reflect.
And, typically, reflections focus on what we did wrong more than what we did right.
Regrets.
Not having what we want now b/c we got what we wanted before.
It’s emotional.
We want to feel better.
We want to feel good.
If we could just find a way to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.
Tough family situations, loss, regrets, financial hardship,
Who Needs Christmas?
Things we wish would have gone better.
The world did.
Then there’s the guilt.
Bad decisions we’ve made and we feel the weight of guilt and we just want it to go away.
God made a promise to an old couple that they would have a son and through his line the whole world would be blessed.
So, when the time was right, Rome was imposing their will to civilize the world and strong enough bring peace to the middle east.
When no one was expecting it.
Is it just a cruel joke that we sing about joy, love, peace and hope only to go home to guilt and frustration?
God made a promise to a young couple; that they would have a son who would bless the entire world.
Is it really possible?
The story of Christmas didn’t begin w/ a young couple wondering how they got pregnant and looking for a place to have their baby.
The story began w/ and old couple who wondered if they would ever get pregnant and have a baby.
What makes this story so remarkable is that it is so unbelievable.
But, as unbelievable as it seems, God needed for it to happen, He made it happen.
God does
You never know how much someone loves you until you know how much they will sacrifice for you.
Love isn’t known unless it’s shown.
God wanted to do something relational so He did something personal.
He demonstrated it and documented it for us so we could know.
God needed Christmas to show us how much He loves us in way that we could understand and trust Him.
So, when the time was right for us, He sent His son to demonstrate how much He loves us.
As we come to understand how much God loves us, we also come to understand that we need Christmas, too.
Who needs Christmas?
The world did
God does
We do
We do
This is an emotional time and we talk a lot about love, joy, peace, and hope.
Not as a cruel joke in such a stressful time.
But as a real possibility for our lives.
God would never put us in a round room and tell us to sit in the corner.
We need real solutions to the things that stress us.
Things that we can control.
The ability to avoid trouble that avoidable.
To make better decisions.
We need Christmas so that we can live an abundant life free from the destructive power of sin.
This is not just about giving us a process to feel better after we mess up.
It’s about being able to not mess up in the first place.
This is what the angel announced to Joseph.
Don’t be afraid.
Do the right thing.
The baby your wife is carrying will give everyone the opportunity to make better decisions.
This is how it happened.
What’s In a Name?
Name Him Jesus
What?
Jesus?
There is no one in Joseph’s close ancestry named Jesus.
But He isn’t Joseph’s son.
He’s God son.
And, God wanted to send a message w/ His name.
Jesus is the Latin translation of the Hebrew name Joshua.
In Greek: Yeshua.
Joshua was a warrior, general, military man who delivered Israel from their wandering in the wilderness into the freedom of their own Promised Land.
Moses delivered Israel out of slavery.
Joshua delivered them into freedom.
c.1 Jews were looking for their Joshua to deliver them into freedom from their Roman oppressors.
The angel told Joseph in his dream that he was going to have a son, Jesus or Joshua.
The long-awaited warrior king b/c for hundreds of years your people have been oppressed by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and now Romans.
And Joseph, in his dream, would have been thinking
Joseph, tracking w/ the angel in his dream, I can’t believe this is happening to me, but YES! Finally!
You don’t need to tell me why, I know why.
“He will save His people.
I know just like Joshua saved his people.
Led them into Canaan and conquered the land.
The walls of Jericho fell down and Joshua led them in.
The lived in freedom and prosperity fulfilling the promise.
“Will save his people from...” I know, their oppressors.
The Roman occupation!
Will save his people from their sins.
What?! Hold on.
Whoa!
Not feeling that.
Not a felt need.
They already had a system to deliver them from their sins; the animal sacrifices in the temple.
They didn’t need another one.
Rome had no system like this.
Rome needed t/b delivered from their sins and Israel needed t/b delivered from Rome.
So, the feeling was they needed a Savior w/ a sword.
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