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
0.18UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.14UNLIKELY
Fear
0.15UNLIKELY
Joy
0.61LIKELY
Sadness
0.53LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.68LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.28UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.93LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.23UNLIKELY
Extraversion
0.28UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.34UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.47UNLIKELY

Tone of specific sentences

Tones
Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
! Friend of the World, Enemy of God (James 4:1-12)
Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote of a man who was dominated by the driving desire for self-gratification.
To possess land was his highest pleasure.
Someone promised him that he could own all of the land he could walk around between sunrise and sunset on a given day.
He began at a leisurely pace.
However, driven by his ambition, he began to accelerate.
He drove himself, sprinting faster and faster.
His body blazed with fever.
He stripped off his shirt and abandoned his boots.
As the sun set, he flung himself toward his destination.
He reached the starting line as the final rays disappeared in the west.
Exhausted, he died.
The only land he got was a grave, 6 feet by 2 feet.
Tolstoy's unforgettable story underlines the raging power of the drive for self-gratification.
Men and women die for their pleasures.
James wrote to churches that were being divided by pleasure-seeking members.
Ideally, God's wisdom gives peace (3:13-18).
Actually, the churches to which James wrote experienced chronic hostility and sharp confrontations (4:1-6).
The section 4:1-12 betrays the most passionate and intense feelings of the entire letter.
Driven by personal pleasures, church members divided the churches.
This portion of James divides into four emphases: (1) The pursuit for self-gratification leads to disaster in the church (4:1-3).
(2) Obsession with one's own pleasure betrays worldliness.
Such spiritual adultery places the pleasure-seeker in conflict with God (4:4-6).
(3) Such worldliness calls for urgent, radical repentance.
James gave ten sharp imperatives—biblical bombshells that demanded repentance (4:7-10).
(4) In this whole process, persons must judge themselves, not one another.
To judge one's brother usurps God's prerogative (4:11-12).
!! When Believers Battle (4:1-3)
"What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you?
Is it not your passions that are at war in your members?" (4:1).
Why do believers battle?
James's words do not address international wars, although the cause of such wars is the same.
James wrote Christian churches that were embattled and strife-torn.
The word "wars" indicates chronic, long-lasting hostilities.
The term "fightings" refers to sharp outbursts, skirmishes that reveal the long-standing wars.
Phillips translated: "But what about the feuds and struggles that exist among you?"
Like lava smoldering under the earth for years, some believers burn with belligerence.
Like a volcano erupting, such anger surfaces in hot explosions.
What causes the slow burn and the white-flash of angry confrontation?
James blamed church conflict on "passions that are at war in... [believers'] members."
In verse 1, three words in his remarkable statement demand explanations "passions," "war," and "members."
*Passions* translates the word from which the English word hedonism comes.
Literally, James charged: /Hedonisms are at war in your members/.
The Greek word usually carries overtones of evil or unworthy enjoyment.
Yet James did not refer exclusively to the "playboy philosophy."
His word included any kind of self-gratification.
The lust for position, power, or prestige dominates some lives that are unmoved by sensual pleasures.
The pleasure of "getting it done my way or else" has caused many skirmishes in local churches.
The battleground for the passions of James's readers rested in their "members."
Some interpreters have understood this to indicate the various members of the church.
Selfish gratification propelled various church members with competing agenda toward inevitable conflicts.
Another interpretation is more likely.
Usually, in the New Testament, the word members refers to the members of the human body, the person's various parts that give the individual drives, lusts, and compulsions.
James probably used the word in that way.
He graphically depicted selfish individuals who were walking civil wars.
Frustrated desires for every kind of personal pleasure erupted in the church's life.
What seemed to be the problem and what actually was the problem in the church were two different things.
Every discerning reader knows that many church conflicts about buildings and budgets are not actually about buildings and budgets at all.
Often, church disagreements conceal a whole spectrum of personal and vocational frustrations.
Desires for self-gratification are "at war" in every believer.
Peter exhorted his readers to "abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul" (1 Pet.
2:11).
An occupation army still encamps and campaigns within every believer.
Pleasures habitually lay siege to the soul.
Each Christian must recognize and respond to pleasures on the continuing march within.
The battle will not end until physical death or until Christ's return.
Even though over the years strongholds of pleasure will be defeated, newer and more subtle ones will take their place.
Many churches face destruction by factious rivalry.
Each person's pleasure is most important to that individual.
As a result, the unbelieving world knows many Baptist churches more for heated business sessions than for Christlike concern in the community.
Church members can—and do—inflict destruction with words.
!!! Murder in the Aisles?
(4:2)
Had things gotten so bad that Christians were killing each other?
"You desire and do not have; so you kill" (4:2).
These words present one of the difficult challenges to understanding James.
Did James address the church or the world in verse 2? Did he mean that Christians literally murdered one another, or did he write figuratively?
To understand that James made an observation about life in the world to the churches to which he wrote is best.
/The Didache,/ an early church manual, warned Christians about murder: "'Be not angry, for anger leadeth to murder, nor jealous, nor contentious, nor wrathful, for of all these things murders are engendered'" (Didache 3.2.).
Even for Christians, conflicting pleasures can lead to violence.
When one chooses pleasure instead of God, even murder can result.
That James had in mind a particular church situation where Christians literally killed one another is unlikely.
However, he did give the strongest possible warning about where conflict leads.
The calm prayer of personal petition presents the only alternative to church wars.
"You... do not have, because you do not ask" (4:2).
Christians battle with one another for pleasures they do not need.
The only way out is for them to return to believing that /God/ gives what the Christians really need.
Confident expectation that God alone can meet the needs of any situation creates a calm sense of secure brotherhood, not an atmosphere of heated confrontation..
!!! Right Things; Wrong Motive (4:3)
Self-centered believers pray, but they pray just like they live: "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions" (4:3).
Church members may ask for the right things from the wrong motives.
Already James had indicated that one may pray with the wrong attitude: doubt (1:6-8).
In 4:3, James insisted that one may pray with the wrong objective: self-gratification.
Earlier, he gave an example of the right objective for a believer's prayers: wisdom (1:5).
God does not answer when one intends to squander the answer on personal lusts, selfish desires, or the mere acquisition of material gain.
Such evil motivation in praying results in no action from God.
/U. S. News/ reported the remarkable story of a forty-two-year-old man worth 40 million dollars.
He lives in a 3-million-dollar mansion, drives a $90,000 Ferrari, a Jaguar, and a 44-foot speedboat.
Seven years ago, he was hanging sheetrock and eating peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.
Now, he owns three high-tech component companies.
Many readers' reaction would be: Why does God not do that for me?
What would you do with it if God did?
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9