Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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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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Sadness
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Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Emotional Range
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Tone of specific sentences

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Anger
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Anger
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*Refusing to Surrender to Anger*
/Ephesians 4:17-32 (emphasis on 26-27)/
 
It was code-named /“Operation Overlord,/” and was to become the largest invasion force in human history.
It involved the combined efforts of soldiers from eight countries, including Great Britain, America and Canada.
By the time Americans learned about it in the early morning of June 6, 1944, more than 7,000 ships, 12,000 aircraft and 156,000 troops had crossed the English Channel and landed on the beaches of Normandy in northwestern France.
Hitler had control of France, and the Allied Forces knew that unless he was stopped, many more lives would be lost.
The purpose of the invasion was to drive back the German army by opening a western front in Europe.
The key to the invasion was to establish a beachhead, from which they could establish a base of operations for further military maneuvers.
And that is exactly what happened.
By June 30th, over 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies had landed on the Normandy shores.
Fighting by the brave soldiers, sailors and airmen of the allied forces on the western front and Russian forces on the eastern front led to the defeat of German Nazi forces.
In less than one year, on May 7, 1945, the Germans agreed to a total and unconditional surrender.
While this action by the Allied Forces was ultimately a very good thing leading to the end of World War II, we find a warning from Paul in Ephesians 4 about allowing Satan to establish a beachhead in our lives and hearts.
He’s been telling us that as believers and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, our actions and lives should be different than they were before.
They should no longer be characterized by the thought processes and lifestyles of those who do not know Christ.
So Paul is telling us, “Stop living that way.
Stop thinking that way.”
In fact, the wording he used, as we’ve seen in recent messages, is that we are to /“put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”/
(vv.
22-24) The image that Paul uses, as we’ve already seen, is that of taking off a set of dirty clothes and putting on fresh, clean clothes.
But then Paul begins to describe for us what that really means.
That’s why the word “therefore” begins verse 25—“on the basis of this change that is taking place in your lives, here is what you should do or not do.”
He tells us in verse 25, /“Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”/
Last week we talked about how telling the truth extends to telling the truth about others, about ourselves and about God Himself.
But that is not all that he says, and we focus today on verses 26-27: /“In your anger do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”/
Let’s focus for a few minutes on the word translated “foothold,” which is used by most translations.
The King James reads, “Neither give place to the devil.”
The New American Standard words it “do not give the devil an opportunity.”
The idea here is that we should not give evil any chance whatsoever to make entrance into our lives.
The word means any place that has been marked off, such as the boundaries of a city or country, or a jurisdiction.
The word also was used to describe an invading army, trying to establish what we could call a “beachhead,” such as at Normandy, a secure place from which it could launch further military maneuvers.
That’s the idea behind the use of the word “foothold.”
Or this: I’m climbing the side of a mountain, and I need a place to put my foot, so I can advance to the next level.
Paul says, “Don’t allow Satan the opportunity to advance any further in your life.
Don’t even give him the smallest chance to influence you or have control over you.”
The New Century Version captures the feel of this meaning with its translation, /“Do not give the devil a way to defeat you.”/
Of course there are many ways Satan can defeat us.
There are many ways we open ourselves up to his influence and power in our lives, most of the time without our even knowing we’ve done it.
Satan has marked off much territory in our lives where he would like to gain control, and once he moves in, it is much, much easier for him to affect us in other ways as well.
The Holy Spirit of God directed Paul to identify unresolved, sinful anger as one of the best ways Satan establishes a beachhead on the shorelines of our lives.
The reason for that is that “an unhealed breach is a magnificent opportunity for the devil to sow dissension” (William Barclay).
We find that Scripture agrees with Scripture.
We can look to the very first incident of anger recorded in the Bible, in Genesis 4:5-7—/“So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.
Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry?
And why has your countenance fallen?
If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?
And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.’”/
The words are different, but the principle is the same as we see here in Ephesians 4. “If you do not resolve this anger, there is the very real possibility that you will fall into sin.
Sin is crouching at the door.”
Now picture that—imagine sin as a wild animal crouching outside your door, just waiting for you to come outside.
Once you step across the threshold, that beast pounces on you, ripping you apart.
God was telling Cain that he needed to deal with that anger pretty quickly, or else it would destroy him.
Combine that thought with the warning here in Ephesians 4, not to give the devil an opportunity.
Don’t allow the devil to camp out on your doorstep.
The longer he stays there, the more likely he is to find a way in, and once inside your heart and life, he will establish headquarters from which he can do all sorts of damage in your life.
And Scripture continues to agree with Scripture.
Psalm 37:8 tells us, /“Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.”/
The problem with anger in all its forms is that it very often leads to something else, to some deeper and more insidious evil.
And don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’ve got to throw open the door and invite him in.
Don’t think you’ve got to offer him a four-lane highway to bring his army into your life.
He only needs a small area of your heart to establish his beachhead.
We don’t want that to happen, and Paul tells us that it is foreign to the life Christ gives us.
So let’s look at it a little more.
/“In your anger do not sin,”/ we read in verse 26, or in the words of the King James, “Be ye angry, and sin not.”
We read that, and we think that Paul is commanding us to be angry.
And we think, “Well, I can certainly do that,” and most of us do a pretty good job at it, don’t we?
We have already covered in recent weeks that there are some things in our world and society over which we must get angry, that it would be sin not to be angry in those situations.
Bede Jarrett once wrote, “The world needs anger.
The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough.”
Someone has said that if we would be angry and not sin, then we must be angry at nothing but sin.
But look again, because that’s not the end of the sentence.
The command is not to */get/* angry—the command is to get angry */without sinning./*
That is something we can’t always do!
Most of the time when we get angry, the problem is that we enjoy it too much!
Frederick Buechner, in his book /Wishful Thinking Transformed by Thorns,/ shared this insight:
/Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun.
To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.
The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself.
The skeleton at the feast is you./
Billy Sunday was a famous evangelist many years ago.
A woman came up to him once after he preached on anger, and tried to justify her angry outbursts.
She explained, “There’s nothing wrong with losing my temper.
I blow up, and then it’s all over.”
Sunday replied, “So does a shotgun, but look at the damage it leaves behind!”
An ancient Chinese proverb says, “If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.”
So we shouldn’t make excuses for our unresolved anger or outbursts of temper.
We shouldn’t even try to excuse the anger we allow to smolder.
It burns beneath the surface, festering until it controls us and poisons us.
We may make excuses for it, even trying to justify our feelings to ourselves and others.
We say “I’ve got every right to feel this way!”
Well, it depends on your perspective, and that’s Paul’s whole point here.
If you are living like those who don’t know Christ, then yes, you do have every right to harbor that anger and bitterness and resentment.
But according to the Word of God, no, you don’t.
Paul told us in verse twenty that that’s not what we learned from Christ.
Unresolved anger and bitterness is a stubborn holdover from our former way of living, from the time before we began to follow Christ.
And if we make the choice to allow anger to fester in our hearts and minds, then we also making the choice to allow Satan to set up a base of operations.
Do we want that?
Paul tells us at the end of verse 26, /“Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.”/
I want to point out a couple of things here.
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