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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Emotion Tone
Anger
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Analytical
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Confident
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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

Tones
Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
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On a rainy September 13, 1814, British warships sent a downpour of shells and rockets onto Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, relentlessly pounding the American fort for 25 hours.
The bombardment, known as the Battle of Baltimore, came only weeks after the British had attacked Washington, D.C., burning the Capitol, the Treasury and the President’s house.
It was another chapter in the ongoing War of 1812.
A week earlier, Francis Scott Key, a 35-year-old American lawyer, had boarded the flagship of the British fleet on the Chesapeake Bay in hopes of persuading the British to release a friend who had recently been arrested.
Key’s tactics were successful, but because he and his companions had gained knowledge of the impending attack on Baltimore, the British did not let them go.
They allowed the Americans to return to their own vessel but continued guarding them.
Under their scrutiny, Key watched on September 13 as the barrage of Fort McHenry began eight miles away.
“It seemed as though mother earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone,” Key wrote later.
But when darkness arrived, Key saw only red erupting in the night sky.
Given the scale of the attack, he was certain the British would win.
The hours passed slowly, but in the clearing smoke of “the dawn’s early light” on September 14, he saw the American flag—not the British Union Jack—flying over the fort, announcing an American victory.
Our Christian experience is that of two great armies clashing on the battlefield of life – the people of God and the sins that would defeat them.
God’s people do not fight as well as they should.
Sometimes they even yield to their enemy.
But even as the battle rages, well before the promised victory, the Commander of God’s army orders a banner to be raised right in the middle of his troops for all to see.
The banner reads, ‘No condemnation now for those in Christ Jesus!’
And that declaration has a remarkable effect upon the people of God.
They do not use that assurance as an excuse to defect to the other side.
They rejoice in the certainty of their final triumph and are energized to fight on.
Two great armies clash on the battlefield of life – the people of God and the sins that would defeat them.
God’s people do not fight as well as they should.
Sometimes they even yield to their enemy.
But even as the battle rages, well before the promised victory, the Commander of God’s army orders a banner to be raised right in the middle of his troops for all to see.
The banner reads, ‘No condemnation now for those in Christ Jesus!’
And that declaration has a remarkable effect upon the people of God.
They do not use that assurance as an excuse to defect to the other side.
They rejoice in the certainty of their final triumph and are energized to fight on.
raises that banner.
We look up at it with joy, and it stiffens our resolve not to quit.
It is a plain and forceful cry.
No condemnation for sinning, struggling Christians who yearn to be rescued from their frustration and failure!
The only thing that will strengthen you to keep fighting is God’s strong assurance of grace.
This Scripture does not free saints to hold onto their sinful ways but fuels them to fight their sinful ways.
We look up at it with joy, and it stiffens our resolve not to quit.
It is a plain and forceful cry.
No condemnation for sinning, struggling Christians who yearn to be rescued from their frustration and failure!
The only thing that will strengthen you to keep fighting is God’s strong assurance of grace.
is one of the richest chapters of the Bible.
But what is Paul aiming to accomplish here?
What question is he answering?
The question driving is this: What can God do for sinners like us who are fighting but too often failing?
We want to live for the Lord, but every day we betray him.
Our hearts cry out with Paul,
.
So what does God provide for Christians with real problems?
Does God have something that can outperform the severe, but ineffective, threats of his law?
So what does God provide for Christians with real problems?
Does God have something that can outperform the severe, but ineffective, threats of his law?
Paul has already whispered God’s answer to our heartcry earlier in his letter to the Romans: Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (5:20).
We are not under law but under grace (6:14).
We now serve God not in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the Spirit (7:6).
And Paul has just shouted for joy, ‘Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (7:25).
But how does that actually work out in our lives?
What does the gospel have to say to us in the midst of the battle, before the final victory is won, as we struggle and fail – and then fail again?
The key word in is Spirit.
In chapters 1-7, the word Spirit appears only five times.
In chapters 9-16 Spirit occurs eight times.
But here in chapter 8 the word Spirit suddenly bursts onto the scene 21 times – usually referring to the Holy Spirit of God – more often than in any other chapter of the entire New Testament.1
So God’s provision for weak Christians is the Holy Spirit.
We do need to get tough on our sinful impulses.
But our own self-monitoring cannot actually change us.
God’s transforming provision for sinning Christians is the sin-expelling Holy Spirit.
The reason grace succeeds where law fails is that, while law is empowered by our own good intentions, grace is empowered by the Holy Spirit.
We need a fresh rediscovery of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our churches today.
I am thankful for the honesty of John Stott: The best way to begin is to stress the importance of our subject by confessing our great need of the power of the Holy Spirit today.
We are ashamed of the general worldliness of the church and disturbed by its weakness, its steadily diminishing influence on the country as a whole.
Moreover, many of us are oppressed by our own personal failures in Christian life and Christian ministry.
We are conscious that we fall short both of the experience of the early church and of the plain promises of God in his Word.
We are thankful indeed for what God has done and is doing, and we do not want to denigrate his grace by minimizing it.
But we hunger and thirst for more.
We long for ‘revival,’ an altogether supernatural visitation of the Holy Spirit in the church, and meanwhile for a deeper, richer, fuller experience of the Holy Spirit in our own lives.2
We do not need more frightening punishments and more withering scoldings.
We need the all-sufficiency of Jesus applied in rich measure to our deepest points of personal need.
And that is what the Holy Spirit does.
He internalizes the triumphs of Christ crucified within the depths of the human being, so that our inclinations start changing from evil to good.
The law cannot do that.
The law tells us to pump harder, but the Holy Spirit makes springs of living water flow from within.
The law tells us to pedal faster, but the Holy Spirit fills our sails.
And that is the power of real holiness.
But Paul does not begin Romans chapter 8 with the ministries of the Spirit.
After the anguish of chapter 7, Paul first reassures us of our bedrock confidence before God: our union with Christ.
Verse 1 declares, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’
If God has drawn you to himself, then he has put you ‘in Christ Jesus’.
We have been ‘united with him in a death like his,’ and ‘we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his’ ().
Jesus used a metaphor to convey the vital intimacy of our union with him: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’ ().
We can see how striking this reality is from , where Paul addresses his letter ‘to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi’ (nasb).
Right now I am in Augusta, Georgia.
You may be in Los Angeles or in Edinburgh or in Johannesburg.
But far more, you and I are also in Christ Jesus.
Think of it: ‘in Christ Jesus.’
Could there be a simpler way to articulate our relationship with the Lord than the word in?
But the meaning is profound.
Among other things, our union with Christ means that his righteousness has been credited to us, in God’s sight (; , ).
And that is why there is ‘no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’
God has done this, we did not.
And it changes everything.
It means that we are not holding on to Christ as much as he is holding on to us.
It means that God has done something for us larger than our own change of allegiance to him.
He has included us in all that the death and resurrection of Jesus are worth.
So when we prove again that we are sinners, as we too often do, we may also announce to ourselves that we are also in Christ Jesus, as liable to condemnation as he is.3
God wants us to revel in our union with his Son.
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