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
0.11UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.07UNLIKELY
Fear
0.67LIKELY
Joy
0.63LIKELY
Sadness
0.55LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.74LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.42UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.8LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.94LIKELY
Extraversion
0.35UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.77LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.69LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
In Philippians 2:12 Paul says, “Work out your salvation in awe and wonder.”
Notice he didn’t say, “Work for your salvation.”
He said, “Work out your salvation.”
You can only work out something you already have.
This means that salvation is something you have to work out into every part of your life.
Paul is teaching us that we have to work our identity, that is given to us through the gift of salvation into everything.
Everything includes our psychology, sociology, relationships, and our approach to the world.
This is how change takes place.
Scripture provides us with Spiritual disciplines to enable us to work out what salvation has worked in.
The aim of this sermon series is to set a spiritual trajectory for 2018.
We began this series last week by looking at scriptural meditation.
Today our focus will shift to scriptural application.
Last week we learned how Scripture leads us into communing with God, and today we will learn how the Scripture leads us into obeying.
Last week’s subject matter is popular while this week’s seems to be polarizing.
Most American’s especially the younger generation find meditation to have an element of coolness while obedience lacks appeal.
Obedience is seen as restrictive and negative.
Obedience equals no freedom.
Freedom is now defined as no constraints or restrictions from following any of our hearts’ desires.
All of the polls and research of religious and irreligious Americans reveal that Americans don’t believe it’s ever right to give up ultimate spiritual authority to some external party.
In other words, almost every American says, “I and I alone can judge what is right and wrong for me.
I and I alone can decide the pathways I should tread.
I and I alone can decide what is right and wrong and spiritual.
My heart, my conscience, has to be the thing that determines that.
Therefore,I give up my spiritual and moral authority to no one.
I’m my own spiritual authority.
I don’t give it over to some external authority that puts me under its statutes, decrees, commands, and precepts.”
This resistance works against our true desire for change.
You will not transform without submission to God’s authority.
Our text teaches us the foolishness of being your own spiritual authority.
Furthermore, it teaches us how we can put ourselves under God’s authority in a way that is transforming and not stifling.
Some might ask; what wrong with being your own spiritual authority?
First is it ignores how your heart really works.
Whether you believe this or not your heart is already under spiritual authority.
Everyone heart is enslaved.
Your heart has a Master.
You are not your own spiritual authority.
If you believe otherwise you are being naïve about your heart’s true condition.
“Your ways” is a synonym for Scripture, God’s decrees, God’s commands.
Notice what He doesn’t say.
He doesn’t say; “I’m going to turn my eyes.”
He says, “Turn my eyes”.
He is saying; “I need help.
I can’t stop it.
My eyes are fixed …” on what he calls “worthless things.”
The Hebrew word for “worthless things” is translated in other texts as idols.
Such as . . .
If you are not serving God you are serving something else.
Euripides, the old Greek writer, put it something like this: “No one is completely free.
If you live for wealth, you’re a slave to wealth.
If you live for morality, you’re a slave to the moral law.
If you live to please people, you’re a slave to the people you are seeking to please.”
Euripides philosophy is ripped from Scripture.
Everybody lives for something.
Everybody has something that is the main thing they live for that gives their life joy.
What is your emotional center?
Your answer determines reveals the authority in your life.
Are you under the controlling authority of the Lord?
If not you are under the spiritual authority of some other lord.
Those are your only two options.
In Oliver Twist there’s a good-hearted prostitute named Nancy, and she’s living with Bill Sikes.
Bill Sikes beats her but she stays with him.
Why?
In the Broadway musicial she tells us why in song.
This song was written in 1963 and reveals why most people stay in such a relationship; codependency.
Listen to this section of lyrics from Nancy’s song; “As long as he needs me, I know where I must be; I’ll cling on steadfastly as long as he needs me.”
She is being abuse and yet she says, “He needs me.
I’m going to be true to him.”
Why? Listen to the final line of her song, “If you’ve been lonely, then you will know when someone needs you, you love them so.”
She’s saying, “If you have a love vacuum in your heart, you know what I’m talking about.
When someone comes along with the promise of filling that vacuum, you have to give yourself to them no matter how they abuse you.
You can’t stop it.”
Does the word dysfunctional come to mind?
Before you rush to judgement.
Before you unleash your criticism.
Consider this; everyone in this room has a Bill Sikes in their life.
For some your Bill Sikes is your career.
For others it’s your children.
It is your master.
It is your authority.
It will never be happy or satisfied.
You will never be able to serve Christ until you get your eyes off those objects which you obsessively serve.
Saying, “I’m my own spiritual authority” is naïve.
You’re not your own spiritual authority.
You’re not your own.
You’re sold to something.
Saying, “I can be my own spiritual authority” ignores the nature of how real freedom works.
The Hebrew word for wide place is the metaphor for freedom.
Let’s just say you’re walking on a little narrow path and on your left is a sheer wall of rock and on your right is a thousand-foot drop.
Where are you going to walk?
You don’t have many choices.
You’re in a narrow spot where there are no choice but if you were a broad place, you would have choices.
A broad place means choices.
So the psalmist is teaching us; “I gained my freedom by serving you.
I now walk in liberty because I sought your precepts.
I am free because I have bound myself to serve you with all my heart?”
God makes us servants so we can be free and this freedom fuels our service.
He is saying, “Now that you’re my Master, nothing else masters me.
Those “must haves” I are now take it or leave it.
Freedom is not a lack of restrictions.
Freedom is finding the right restrictions, restrictions that fit your being.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9