Sermon Tone Analysis

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Tone of specific sentences

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Emotion
Anger
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Anger
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*When Life Isn't Fair* \\ Matthew 20 : 1-16 \\ \\
Beloved preacher and teacher Fred Craddock tells about being on a flight back when they still had smoking sections on airplanes.
Craddock was seated in the no smoking section.
He was seated on the aisle.
Across from him sat a man who pulled a long black cigar out of his pocket and lit it up.
Soon the area was filled with foul-smelling smoke.
Craddock stopped the flight attendant, a very attractive young woman, and said, “Am I in the wrong section?
I asked for no smoking.”
Realizing what he was saying, she said to the man with the big cigar, “Uh, sir, this is no smoking.”
He ignored her and kept puffing on his cigar.
Craddock complained again.
Again she reminded the man he was in the no smoking section.
It did no good and Craddock was infuriated.
Later on during the flight, the flight attendant was coming down the aisle with a tray of drinks.
She was right between Craddock and the man with the cigar when they hit an air pocket.
The sudden turbulence caused her to dump the drinks right into the lap of the man with the big cigar.
But that’s not all.
Seeking to correct her balance, this very attractive flight attendant fell backward . . .
right into Fred Craddock’s lap.
Says Craddock with a sly grin, “Now, don’t tell me there’s no God.”
(1)
I wish life always turned out so neatly, don’t you so that the wrongdoer got what was coming to him and the guys in white hats always came out on top?
I read about some burglars in Essex, England, who broke into the home of a woman named Dee Blythe.
After stealing everything of value from her living room, the burglars discovered a plastic bag of powder marked “Charlie.”
“Charlie” is a street term for cocaine.
It is also the name of Dee Blythe’s dead dog.
In a news report on the crime, Ms. Blythe is quoted as saying, “It was horrible knowing they were in my house, but the idea of them trying to get high on a dead dog’s ashes certainly made me feel a bit better.”
(2)
Sometimes things do sort of even out, but, at least it seems that more often than not, they do not.
Former business star and Chrysler Corporation chairman Lee Iacocca tells about an incident that occurred when he was in the sixth grade.
The incident involved the election of the captain of the student patrol a job he really wanted.
He lost by two votes.
The next day one of his classmates pointed out to him that the total number of votes was greater than the number of students in the class.
But when Iacocca told his teacher, she simply advised him to let the matter rest.
It was, he recalls, his first lesson in the fact that life would not always be fair.
(3)
How many times have you and I looked at life and complained, somewhat bitterly, “Life isn’t fair.”
Even God doesn’t seem to play fair.
Jesus told a parable about a landowner who went into the market place early in the morning to hire laborers‑‑a common practice in rural communities in some places even today.
Those he hired he agreed to pay the standard wage for a day’s work.
Three hours later he saw that he was going to need more laborers if the work was going to get done.
He returned to the market place and hired some more.
About noon he again found it necessary to hire more workers, then again at three o’clock, then again at five.
Quitting time was six o’clock.
At six o’clock he had his foreman line up the laborers to be paid.
He began with those who had worked but an hour.
He paid them for a full day.
Watching this were those who had worked since six in the morning.
They rubbed their hands in delight.
“Wow,” they thought to themselves, “If he pays them a full day’s wage for working just part of a day, think how much he will pay us!”
When their time came, however, they also received the standard wage for one day’s work.
They were mad.
They had worked all day and they were receiving the same amount as those who had worked just one hour.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t just.
But the landowner said, “Didn’t I pay you what we had agreed on?
If I want to be more generous with these others is it not my right?
Is it not my money to do with as I please?”
Boy, that’s a hard teaching particularly when applied to the subject of salvation.
Since most of us in the church feel that we are those who have labored since six o’clock in the morning, this may be one of Jesus’ most difficult teachings to accept.
Is it true?
Can a person be an absolute scoundrel right up until the moment of his or her death and then repent, confess Christ and receive the gift of eternal life as if he or she had been a saint?
That is the way this text is most often interpreted.
Ty Cobb is generally regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1936, he received the most votes of any player on the Ballot.
Cobb is widely credited with setting 90 Major League Baseball records during his career.
He still holds several records, including the highest career batting average, .366,
and the most career batting titles.
He retained many other records for almost a half century or more, including most career hits, most career runs, most career games played and at bats, and the modern record for most career stolen bases.
However, as most baseball fans know, Ty Cobb was not a nice man.
He was an overt racist, and he was mean and surly on the baseball diamond.
He would not be on anyone’s list for preferred role models.
In 1961, Ty Cobb lay dying.
Reportedly a pastor came to Ty Cobb’s bedside during this difficult time and urged him to repent of his sins and confess Jesus Christ as his Lord.
Cobb looked up from his deathbed and said, “You’re not telling me that a whole life of sin can be done away with by a deathbed repentance, are you?”
And the pastor assured Cobb it could.
And Ty Cobb invited Jesus into his life.
Shortly thereafter he died, and we can assume that he passed comfortably through the pearly gates as if he had been a Sunday School teacher all his adult life.
And all I can say to that is, “That’s wonderful, but it’s not fair.”
I know what some of you are thinking: Why not, then, go ahead and live a life of sin and wait until the last moment to repent?
I mean, if you’re going to get the same reward, why not party hearty right up until the last moment?
This, by the way, is not exclusively a Christian teaching.
Our Jewish friends wrestle with this same conundrum.
Herman Wouk, in his book, /This Is My God: The Jewish Way Of Life/ tells a story about his grandfather, a learned and pious Jew.
His grandfather had in his apartment a lodger less learned than himself, and much fiercer in piety.
One day when they were studying the laws of repentance together, the lodger burst from his room.
“What!” he said.
“The atheist guzzles whiskey and eats pork and wallows with his women all his life long, and then repents the day before he dies and stands guiltless?
While I spend a lifetime trying to please God?”
The grandfather pointed to the book.
“So it is written,” he said gently.
“Written!” the lodger roared.
“There are books and there are books.”
And he slammed the door as he strode angrily back into his room.
The lodger’s outrage seemed highly logical, says Wouk.
Then his grandfather pointed out that canceling the past does not turn it into a record of achievement.
It leaves it blank, a waste of spilled years.
A man had better return, he said, while time remains to write a life worth scanning.
And since no man knows his death day, the time to get a grip on his life is the first hour when the impulse strikes him.
It’s a fascinating question, and, on the surface, it can be troubling.
Why turn to God now?
Why not wait?
Rabbi Eliezer said, “Turn to God one day before your death.”
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