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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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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Blessed are the meek
I.
Intro - Christmas is approaching; don’t believe me, ask the stores who all put out their Christmas stuff this last week.
A. So in the spirit of saving Christmas, let’s think about that first Christmas morning.
B. There is one word that describes the night Jesus was born—ordinary.
1.
The sky was ordinary.
An little wind, a little chill in the air.
A clear night, clear enough to see the stars, especially the big one that had been hanging around for the last few nights.
Clouds, the moon, an ordinary night.
i.
It was a beautiful night—a night worth peeking out your bedroom window to admire—but not really an unusual one.
ii.
No reason to expect a surprise.
iii.
Nothing to keep a person awake.
iv.
An ordinary night with an ordinary sky.
2. The sheep were ordinary.
Some fat.
Some scrawny.
Some with barrel bellies.
Some with twig legs.
i. Common animals.
ii.
No fleece made of gold.
iii.
No blue-ribbon winners.
They were simply sheep.
3.
And the shepherds.
i. Probably wearing all the clothes they owned.
Smelling like sheep and looking just as woolly.
ii.
They were conscientious, willing to spend the night with their flocks.
iii.
But you won’t find their staffs in a museum nor their writings in a library.
iv.
No one asked their opinion on social justice or the application of the Torah.
v.
They were nameless and simple.
C.
An ordinary night with ordinary sheep and ordinary shepherds.
1.
And were it not for a God who decided this night to put an “extra” on the front of the ordinary, the night would have gone unnoticed.
2. The sheep would have been forgotten, and the shepherds would have slept the night away.
D. But God sometimes makes the ordinary, extraordinary.
And that night he did something amazing.
1.
The black sky exploded with brightness.
2. Trees that had been shadows jumped into clarity.
3. Sheep that had been silent became a chorus of curiosity.
4. One minute the shepherd was dead asleep, the next he was rubbing his eyes and staring into the face of an angel.
5.
The night was ordinary no more.
6.
The angel came in the night because that is when lights are best seen and that is when they are most needed.
7. God comes into the common for the same reason.
8. His most powerful tools are the simplest.
E. I’d like to look at some other times in scripture that God turned the ordinary into the extraordinary.
II.
Consider the rod of Moses.
(Exodus 3,4)
A. By this time in his life, Moses had been a shepherd as long as he had been a prince, and he’d grown accustomed to it.
Herding sheep wasn’t as lively as living with Egyptian royalty, but it had its moments, especially the moment God spoke to him through a burning bush that didn’t burn up.
God announced that Moses was his man to deliver the Israelites.
Moses wasn’t convinced he was the one for the job.
God said that who Moses was didn’t matter; what mattered was who God was.
And God set out to demonstrate.
1. “Moses,” spoke the voice from the bush, “throw down your staff.”
2. Moses, who had walked this mountain for forty years, was not comfortable with the command.
3. “God, you know a lot about a lot of things, but you may not know that out here, well, you just don’t go around throwing down your staff.
You never know when …”
4. “Throw it down, Moses.”
5. Moses threw it down.
The rod became a snake, and Moses began to run.
6. “Moses!”
7. The old shepherd stopped.
8. “Pick up the snake.”
9. Moses peered over his shoulder, first at the snake and then the bush, and then he gave the most courageous response he could muster.
10. “What?”
11. “Pick up the snake … by the tail.”
(God had to be smiling at this point.)
12. “God, I don’t mean to object.
I mean, you know a lot of things, but out here in the desert, well, you don’t pick up snakes too often, and you never pick up snakes by the tail.”
13. “Moses!”
14. “Yessir.”
15.
Just as Moses’ hand touched the squirmy scales of the snake, it hardened.
And Moses lifted up the rod.
The same rod he would lift up in Pharaoh’s court.
The same rod he would lift up to divide the water and guide two million people through a desert.
The rod that would remind Moses that if God can make a stick become a snake, then become a stick again—then perhaps he can do something with stubborn hearts and a stiff-necked people.
16.
Perhaps he can do something with the common.
III.
Or consider another shepherd from Bethlehem.
(1 Samuel 17)
A. There are certain things anyone knows not to do.
1.
You don’t try to lasso a tornado.
2.
You don’t fight a lion with a knife.
3.
You don’t sneeze into the wind.
4.
You don’t go bear hunting with a cork gun.
5.
And you don’t send a shepherd boy to battle a giant.
6.
You don’t, that is, unless you are out of options.
Saul was.
And it is when we are out of options that we are most ready for God’s surprises.
7. Was Saul ever surprised!
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