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
0.16UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.13UNLIKELY
Fear
0.1UNLIKELY
Joy
0.56LIKELY
Sadness
0.21UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.54LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.93LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.76LIKELY
Extraversion
0.21UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.69LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.66LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Lord, thou wast favorable to thy land;
thou didst restore the fortunes of Jacob.
Thou didst forgive the iniquity of thy people:
thou didst pardon all their sin.
Thou didst withdraw all thy wrath; thou didst turn
from thy hot anger.
Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away thy indignation toward us!
Wilt thou be angry with us for ever?
Wilt thou prolong thy anger to all generations?
Wilt thou not revive us again, that thy people
may rejoice in thee?
Show us thy steadfast love, O Lord,
and grant us thy salvation.
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people,
to his saints, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
that glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
Yes, the Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before him,
and make his footsteps a way.
Psalm 85
The
Why
of Revival
Elijah was the famous prophet of the 9th century B.C. who served in the northern kingdom in the reigns of Ahab and his son, Ahaziah.
His consuming passion throughout his ministry was the vindication of God's ways among men.
His encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel is perhaps the best illustration of this fact.
The story reads like a thriller.
After three rainless years the Lord had instructed Elijah to present himself before Ahab.
On his way to see the king, the prophet met Obadiah, who was over the king's household, and told him to go and inform the king that he had come.
When Ahab met Elijah he greeted him as the "troubler of Israel" (1 Kings 18:17), but the prophet replied that it was Ahab who had troubled Israel by forsaking the Lord and following after Baal.
He further challenged Ahab to bring to Mount Carmel the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who were subsidized by Jezebel the queen.
When these prophets assembled, along with many of the people, God's prophet proposed a test to determine who was the true God.
The prophets of Baal were to prepare a meat offering, and Elijah was to do the same; the God who answered by fire and consumed the offering would be recognized as the true God.
The efforts of the Baal worshipers proved to be ineffectual, and Elijah mocked them as they tried to induce Baal to receive their offering.
Finally, the prophet took charge, prepared the altar of the Lord, laid his offering upon it, and then instructed the people to pour four jars of water on it three times, so that the water soaked the prospective offering.
What a dramatic and dazzling moment it was when Elijah looked up to heaven and cried,
Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God.. .
Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God (1 Kings 18:37-39).
As far as Elijah was concerned, that was the why of revival.
Nothing else mattered so long as the people knew that God was on the throne and active in history, and longing to heal their land.
As in the days of Elijah, so it must be in our times.
Nothing really matters except the glory of God.
David focuses on this when he asks, "Wilt thou not revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee?"
He was looking back to a time when God had been favorable to the land and had "brought back the captivity of Jacob."
Then he continues, "Thou didst forgive the iniquity of thy people; thou didst pardon all their sin.
Thou didst withdraw all thy wrath; thou didst turn from thy hot anger."
He is recalling the time when God delivered Israel from captivity, forgave the iniquity of the people and in sovereign grace restrained the fierceness of His anger.
In the verses that follow the psalmist forecasts the possibility of a coming great national revival.
Implicit in his words are the divine principles that underlie spiritual revival when God's people are ready to pay the price.
In effect, David gives three reasons why God sends revival.
Revival will Restrain the Righteous Anger of God
Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away thy indignation toward us!
Wilt thou be angry with us forever?
Wilt thou prolong thy anger to all generations?
Wilt thou not revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee?
It is clear from these words that God must visit His righteous anger against an unrevived people.
Their state is vividly described to us in three words which significantly punctuate this psalm.
The first of these words is found in verse 2—"the iniquity of thy people."
Iniquity denotes wickedness, and the tragedy is that such wickedness can be found even in the heart of a redeemed man or woman.
Every Christian is possessed of two natures—the old and the new.
If he is living in the fullness of the Holy Spirit then the new nature will be dominant and the old will be dormant.
On the other hand, if he is living in an unrevived state, ruled by his old nature, then this wickedness will find expression in subtle forms of iniquity.
How true are the words of Jeremiah the prophet: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"
(Jeremiah 17:9).
Iniquity is that evil in our hearts which tries to explain away God's demands upon our lives in order that we may continue to sin.
The Psalmist says, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me" (Psalm 66:18).
This means that if I look with approval upon anything which is out of adjustment to the will of God, I erect a barrier between myself and God so that He will not hear me.
Surely this explains why so often our prayers are not answered, our lives are not blessed, and our service is not fruitful.
We have explained away the divine commands and lowered the standards of God's expectation in our lives.
This in turn leads to what the psalmist plainly calls "sin" in verse 2.
The Apostle John tells us in his epistle that "sin is the transgression of the law," or, as the Revised Standard Version puts it, "Sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4).
Wickedness always leads to lawlessness, or the arrogant violation of the will of God.
Explain away the divine demands and it be-comes all too easy to disobey them.
How prevalent this is in the church of Jesus Christ today!
Think of the sin of non-attendance at church gatherings (Hebrews 10:25), the sin of unreliability in Christian service (1 Corinthians 4:2), the sin of unholiness in everyday life (1 Thessalonians 4:7).
Every thoughtful Christian must be aware of the fact that we are living in a day of "double standards."
A "philosophy of persuasion" is being used to introduce thousands of our young people into ways of immorality, unchastity and easy divorce.
But the description does not end there.
The psalmist goes on to say that wickedness produces lawlessness, and this in turn leads to carelessness.
We read that God "will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly."
How often we hear the expression, "I couldn't care less."
Wickedness and lawlessness have produced an insensitivity to evil, leading to a cold, calculated carelessness.
When I look into the faces of Christian men and women who laugh and mock when God is speaking to them about their iniquity and sin and folly, I can understand why God's righteous anger is revealed from heaven.
God cannot condemn sin in the sinner and condone it in the saint.
This is what Peter means when he says, "For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God" (1 Peter 4:17).
We talk about the judgment of an evil world, but we forget that the risen Lord is Judge also of His own church.
As He walks among the candlesticks His eyes burn as "a flame of fire" at the sight of iniquity, sin and folly (Revelation 1:13-14).
God has a high standard of holiness for His Church and His people, and we must not forget it.
Consider for instance such utterances as:
Thy decrees are very sure; holiness befits thy house, O Lord, for evermore (Psalm 93:5).
It is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16).
For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness (1 Thessalonians 4:7).
God's anger is revealed not only against an unrevived people, but also against an unrepentant people—"Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away thy indignation toward us!"
It is one thing to be passively unrevived, but it is worse to be actively unrepentant.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9