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
0.1UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.11UNLIKELY
Fear
0.11UNLIKELY
Joy
0.54LIKELY
Sadness
0.57LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.65LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.22UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.89LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.53LIKELY
Extraversion
0.29UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.91LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.67LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Introduction:
Tonight we are continuing our series on the apostles and will look at the fifth name on the list which is Philip.
Philip is known as the leader of the second group of the apostles which consisted of four.
Philip’s role as a leader is a minor role compared to the four in group one which we have already talked about in previous weeks.
Philip’s name is Greek which means “lover of horses”.
He has a Jewish name as well which was not given.
Philip came from a family of Hellenistic Jews, this is how we know he had a Hebrew name but for some reason we only know him by the Greek name.
The apostle Philip is from Bethsaida which is also the city of Andrew and Peter.
Philip most likely attended the same synogogue as Peter and Andrew.
Philip, Nathaniel (Bartholomew) and Thomas were all fishermen from Galilee.
The disciples were all fishermen who were empowered to serve.
Jesus chose a diverse yet common group of men with unexceptional talents and average abilities who already knew each other and gave them full power of attorney to speak and act on His behalf.
All Jesus required of them was that they were available.
Jesus drew them to Himself, trained them, gifted them, and empowered them to serve Him.
We learn most about Philip from John’s gospel.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke give no details at all about him.
From John’s gospel we discover that Philip was completely different than Peter, Andrew, James and John.
Philip is often paired with Nathaniel (Bartholomew) and we can assume they were close friends.
Philip is unique from among all the disciples.
Philip was a facts and figures guy, by the book, practical-minded, non-forward thinking type individual.
He was a bit of a kill joy, pessimistic, narrowly focused, and sometimes missed the big picture.
He was a cynic rather than a visionary.
John 1:38-
The Call
Philip’s call was different from the other disciples.
We meet him in the day after Jesus called Peter, Andrew and John.
Jesus called these men in the wilderness, where they were sitting at the feet of John the Baptist.
John pointed them to Jesus the Messiah and then they left John to follow Jesus.
Then the following day according to this happened:
Philip was in the wilderness with John the baptist and before he went back to Galilee Jesus sought him out and invited him to join the other disciples.
Peter, Andrew and John (and likely James) had more or less found Jesus.
So in this instance we see that Jesus actually sought and found one of them.
Not saying that he did not seek and call the rest, but the language is quite unique in the call of Philip.
He is the first to be sought out and the first one that Jesus said the words “Follow me”.
Philip was the first to hear and obey those words.
Jesus actively sought Philip, found him, invited him to follow and He found Philip eager and willing to be His disciple.
Philip had a seeking heart.
A seeking heart is always evidence that God is always sovereigly drawing the person.
But as far as Philip was concerned He found the Messiah rather than being found by Him.
The Lord found Philip but Philip felt that he found the Lord.
But Philip’s search was over and was devoted to the Word of God and believed the OT promise of the Messiah.
Philip had a seeker heart and also a heart of personal evangelist.
His first response was to immediately go find his friend Nathaniel and tell him about the Messiah.
Here is a first example of Friendship Evangelism.
Nathaniel’s response was cynical asking if anything good could come out of Nazareth?
Philip’s response: “Come and See”.
The ease that Philip believed was remarkable.
He knew the OT promises and was ready and was expectant.
His heart was prepared.
He received Jesus gladly and without hesitation, no reluctance, no disbelief and mattered not which town he had come from his search was over.
This is out of character for Philip and it reveals to what a great degree the Lord had prepared his heart.
His natural skeptical, cynical tendencies would have caused him to hold back, doubt, ask questions and wait and see.
Feeding the Five Thousand
we see the feeding frenzy.
There was a gret crowd assembling.
I know we have looked at this with other disciples but this is so important to examine with Philip.
Philip followed Jesus without hesitation, that was his spiritual side.
He was a man of faith but he was also man of weak faith.
His personality begins to show through.
The crowd of five thousand was not necessarily the final count there was a multitude.
Ten or twenty thousand would not be an exaggeration.
In any case it was a huge throng.
The people needed to eat.
Why do you think Jesus singled Philip out and asked him?
Philip was the administrator of the apostles - the bean counter.
He was most likely charged with arranging meals and logistics.
We know Judas was in charge of the money, so it makes sense that someone was also charged with coordinating the aquistion and distibution of meals and supplies.
It was a task that suited Philip’s personality.
He was concerned with organization and protocol.
He was the type of person who in every meeting was the doubter, the pessimist and master of the impossible.
Almost everything fit in to that category.
Jesus was testing him with this question.
He wasn’t testing him to find out what he was thinking, Jesus knew that already.
He wasn’t asking for a plan, John says Jesus already knew what He Himself was going to do.
He was testing Philip so that he would reveal to himself what he was like.
That is why Jesus turned to Philip, the classic administrative personality and asked How do you propose to feed all these people?
Can’t you see that he had already counted the heads and started the calculations.
When the crowd started moving in he was doing estimates.
It was late in the day, there was a huge crowd, they were hungry.
There was no fast food spot to run to near by.
Philip had been thinking it through the difficulty of the food supply and the size of the crowd was overwhelming to him.
He was concentrating on the problem rather than thinking what a glorious occasion!
Jesus is going to teach this crowd.
What a tremendous opportunity for the Lord!
All pessimistic Philip could see was the impossibility of the situation!
Why is it that we tend to look at what we don’t have rather than what God can do?
Why aren’t we quick to jump in on the good that is happening rather than what we are lacking?
All Philip was focused on was the imposibility of the situation despite the countless times Jesus performs miracles and met needs.
Impossible should not be a part of his vocabulary.
Philip was there when Jesus turned the water into wine.
He had seen numerous times when Jesus healed people, including several other miracles.
But he saw that crowd and then became overwhelmed by the impossible.
He lapsed into materialistic thinking.
When his faith was tested Philip responded with unbelief, saying it can’t be done, no way no how, discussion over.
But from the human perspective he was absilutely right.
His thoughts were pessimistic, analytical and pragmatic - comepletely materialistic and earthbound.
I believe this points to the fact that God wants us to dream big not be caught in the details of the impossibility.
On of the things I believe that we need to gleam as Christians is the sense of vision and the ability to dream big because we serve a God that is limitless, He’s a big God with big possibilities.
Don’t limit God!
Philip became obsessed with mundane matters and then became overwhelmed by the impossibility of the immediate problem.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9