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
0.19UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.18UNLIKELY
Fear
0.12UNLIKELY
Joy
0.5UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.56LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.6LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.71LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.74LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.78LIKELY
Extraversion
0.27UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.84LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.68LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Sermon on Luke 13:22-30
Title: From the east to the west to the north to the south.
Theme: Those entering through the narrow door come from all corners of the world.
Goal: to all people to strive to enter through the narrow door.
Need: We wrestle with what it takes to join in the true feast.
Outline:
Introduction
#.
The question of all questions
#.
What doesn’t matter.
#.
What is most important.
Conclusion
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
What leads you to question the existence of God?
It isn’t a matter of if you have ever questioned.
It’s a matter of in what ways does your mind bring you to wonder about in a negative way about God.
*Why do bad events devastate people and places around the world?*
Would a good God allow for people to suffer?
A person’s life was snatched away too soon, how does a good God fit into a world infiltrated by such suffering?
*A close second to that.
My child, my parents, my brother or sister.
My friends haven’t surrendered their life to Jesus, how could I possibly accept a God just as he is if he can’t accept my loved ones just the way they are?*
Wow!
Questions like that.
They rip at the deepest parts of our soul, don’t they? *Before we talk some more about this, we need to realize that these doubts run deep in us, and they run deep in the hearts of the people of this world.
The stream of our culture today pulls towards eternal blessings for everyone.*
The cultural stream moves us to feel virtue is found in being yourself instead of being like anyone else, even being like Jesus.
“Salvation” in the world today is stupid to even talk about, all death brings is a crossing over to the “other side.”
No judgement of a persons faith and life.
Just a different side of existence.
Jesus’ teachings in this passage stab painfully at our cultural values.
*This passage is going to hurt.
But let’s first acknowledge it is the truth from Christ.
And let’s not let that distract us.
Christ motivated his followers with this teaching.
Should it do anything different for us today?*
Read the passage here.
Luke 13:22-30
The question right of the bat nails a tough point.
23Someone asked him, *“Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”*
The person asking this question probably wanted to get into a theological discussion with Jesus.
Jewish thinkers of Jesus day used this sort of question as something to speculate about, to debate about, then to come out on the other side saying, well, now I know where rabbi Melchizedek is coming from.
So Jesus could have rattled off the theological answer to the question, but do you know Jesus to be one to do that.
Nope!
*Instead he turns it into a moment to teach and to challenge the crowd in the way they think and live.*
You hear that for us in the passage as well?
*Jesus moves us from simply thinking theoretical questions to action, to doing something with the way we live.*
The challenge to Jesus: Convince us Jesus that you know about how many are going into heaven!!
The response in verse 24 and 25.
*24**“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.
**25**Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
*
*“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’
*
“What kind of answer is that….
Oh wait.
Did you hear what he just said?”
Christ answers in a way that ignores the theologically obscure topic this person raises.
*Essentially, he says, let’s not worry about the number of people in heaven.
Let God in his grace and justice worry about that.
Just remember to keep on striving for the narrow door.*
Keep on allowing the Holy Spirit to capture you, to bring you back onto the path that leads through this narrow door.
Notice the difference in the words used by Christ.
Make every effort.
*Now, I know, “Everybody wanna go to heaven.
It beats the other place no doubt.
Everybody wanna go to heaven.
But nobody wanna go right now.” * But isn’t that kinda what Christ is talking about right here.
Sure you want a hundred more years or so to live life, but as much as we are tied to this world, Christ wants us living everyday like we are two steps from entering the gates of heaven.
Sure we feel tied to this world.
I love living this life.
We are allowed to love life in this world, as long as we are loving life that isn’t all about women and whiskey or following the wrong paths of the sinful world.
To not live today like we are heading for the narrow door puts us in league with the people standing at the threshold of eternity knock knock knocking at heavens door.
*They didn’t spend their life on the path, they just figure when it is all said and done they can just get in.
*
*Christ says, hop off that path right now.
He says to everyone, Toby, Kenny, Johnny, Carrie, everyone, don’t just coast through life thinking the door will be open yet when you get there.
Make every effort, or the owner of the gates of heaven might just say, sorry.
Who are you again?*
This isn’t the first time Christ has said something like this.
Many will come saying, Lord, Lord.
But he will say, I never knew you.
*It doesn’t sound to me like it’s the most obedient idea to wander let your life do whatever and hope God doesn’t mind.
Doesn’t it sound like a better idea to put your heart and soul into following Christ today, now and always*.
Then when we inevitably realize that we keep on messing it up, then praise God for his glory and grace.
But isn’t it enough that we have spent our time in church.
We took the Lord’s Supper.
We tossed a bit in the offering plate, or even used our offering envelopes.
Isn’t that it?
Those signs show our ability to do things that look good to others.
But has our heart ever encountered Christ.
Have we made the serious effort to act as a person who belongs body and soul to Jesus Christ?
Just listen.
This ought to challenge the Christian, rebuke us when we wander away, and maybe even terrify those who refuse to trust in God.
*26**“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’
*
*27**“But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.
Away from me, all you evildoers!’
*
*28**“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.
*
Today if we took part in the Lord’s Supper we can be ones who say, Jesus we ate with you.
We shared your body with all the other Christians in church that day.
And we can say we drank with Christ.
Jesus we took a good gulp of the juice that represented your blood shed on the cross that day in church.
Don’t you remember.
And we might say, “Jesus the preacher was preaching the words of the preacher.”
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9