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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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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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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Templars
Today, we hear one of the most offensive sermons of all time.
A sermon so offensive that… well, let’s start at the end.
A sermon so offensive the people listening went blind with rage, picked up stones and killed the preacher.
They loved the temple SO MUCH.
That’s hard to get our head around.
Sacred camp.
Yesterday we picked up the boys from camp, and they were just SO full of everything they had learned and experienced there.
Exhausted but full of fun.
Mostly we heard about pranks on the girls, but they presented all these things they had learned about God and sang these songs.
I had coffee with a former-camper the other day.
“That’s where God is!” I wish I could get back there.
That is the attitude they had toward the temple.
That is where God is, where God stuff happens, that is sacred, and the center of sacred life.
God outside of temple is unimaginable.
If it isn’t camp for you, imagine the place you most experience God.
The way you most experience God.
And someone comes and says “you can’t do THAT anymore!”
Which leads us back to the most offensive sermon!
You want to hear it?
The Most Offensive Sermon
The Setup
False witnesses and slander.
They can’t tackle the apostles (too popular).
Get the new guy!
Again arrayed before a Congressional Hearing (council).
All the religious leaders vs angel boy.
The Speech
And Stephen doesn’t directly answer the question.
Instead he tells them a story.
Their story, the story of the great men of their shared history, a sweeping summary of salvation history.
And he starts with their patriarch, Abraham.
Abraham
Joseph
Moses
David and Solomon
Man does he know his Scriptures!
No bible in hand.
Just full of knowledge, full of Wisdom, full of the Holy Spirit, Stephen goes at it.
And what is his main point?
Abraham - man of faith, connected with God… no temple.
Isaac, same, Jacob, same, Joseph, same.
Moses?
No temple.
Tabernacle, sure, but Moses ordered that made after hearing it from God himself.
Did he need a temple to do that?
No!
David, no temple.
Solomon built the first temple.
And what did God say to David before Solomon built it?
The Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands.
He isn’t limited, he isn’t contained.
And these people are so obsessed with the temple they are missing what God is doing right in front of them!
They are obsessed with Place and missing the Person of God.
True Religion
God is a God of people… not places.
It isn’t about the temple or the trappings of power and religion.
It is about people.
The person of the Holy Spirit, the person of God the Father, the person of the Righteous Son.
The listeners are, again, so enraged at this they rise up, crying out with loud voices to stop their ears, and stone them.
But Stephen’s eyes are on the personal.
You see the whole Trinity there?
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Stephen’s eyes are on the God of persons.
Their eyes and ears and hearts of so full of the place of God, they are missing, even REJECTING the what God is doing right in front of them!
Was the temple important?
Yes.
Had gone worked through this temple for hundreds of years?
Yes.
They aren’t crazy to love the temple, it was amazing and beautiful, and I believe true and beautiful worship and sacrifice took place there.
But God was doing a new thing.
One of the most persuasive arguments for Acts being written before AD 70 is that the temple was destroyed in that year.
How could Luke NOT mention here: and this same temple was to be destroyed in fulfillment of these things.
But God was never locked down to the temple.
He was always connecting with His people.
They had such strong expectations about where to find God and how God would and would not act… that they missed Him.
Isn’t that terrifying?
They missed Him.
They resisted Him.
Where is Your Temple?
Where do you expect God to show up?
Probably for all the best reasons.
Because he Has shown up that way to you before.
Because you feel close to God there.
Maybe it’s camp.
Maybe it’s here.
Maybe it is in your prayer closet at home.
There is nothing wrong with that!
I hope we have favorite places of worship, favorite ways to connect with God.
I hope that we have expectations about finding God the ways that we have found Him before.
I hope that we have disciplines and habits of behavior that have been fruitful!
But, oh God, let me not be blind if and when you are speaking in a new way!
Let me be wide open to Your Persons instead of my places.
Let me hear You beyond the patterns I have laid in my life...
beyond my own striving to reach up, let me see how You are reaching me.
As we pray about what God has next for our church, we have expectations about how that might look.
May we be SO incredibly open to how He wants it to look.
What if He is doing a new thing that doesn’t fit in our structures… or in our programs… or in our building?
I want to see heaven opened up, Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father, and be full of the Holy Spirit.
Our church, full of the Holy Spirit.
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