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
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
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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Finding Joy
Many of you know, I work at Faithlife as a Software Developer and I lead the sermons team.
We work on tools to help pastors write sermons… which is great for me because I am a pastor writing sermons.
We have this tool I had to show you because it made me laugh this week.
This is our “Emotional Tone” analyzer.
There’s a few things like this.
It found last week’s sermon really joyful.
Which makes sense, we talked about redemption and repentance.
There is lots of joy there.
Then I dove in to see what it saw as joyful about last week’s sermon.
Can you see there at the bottom where it found the most “joyful” phrase in the whole sermon?
“Tiglath-Pileser flayed victims alive and made great piles of their skulls.”
Yikes.
And the “dark orange” color indicates that it was REALLY super joyful.
People find joy in some weird places!
I actually brought this to the team thinking it might be a bug, but they pointed out that it clearly gave “Tiglath-Pileser great joy” so…
Again.
People find joy in weird places.
Jonah Recap
Where did we leave our friend Jonah?
He knew what God wanted him to do… and he went the opposite way.
And God sent the storm.
What was the fish?
Lots of argument here.
Arguing… could it be a “whale?”
Could be a whale, sure.
The Hebrew word is generic.
Swimming thing.
No scientific classifications at that time on swimming mammals vs fish fish.
There are thousands of whales in the Mediterranean.
There are books, studies on people who have survived being swallowed by fish and survive.
They are generally horribly disfigured, but whatever.
If Jonah was swallowed by a whale, like a huge one with a huge stomach like a sperm whale.
Stomachs are for what?
Dissolving the food.
There is no situation in which this sort of “makes sense.”
It’s a miracle.
It would make the most sense, really, if Jonah had died and God just brought him back to life on the shore.
We know God is a God of resurrection… and indeed the “sign of Jonah” is used by Jesus as a model for his own death and resurrection.
And yet, there is something strange here… Jonah is conscious in the belly of the fish.
We know that because of this crazy verse:
For how long he was in there, don’t know.
What kind of fish?
Don’t know.
Big enough to swallow the Jonah… that’s a big fish.
I can tell you what it looked like.
Close your eyes… that’s pretty much it, probably.
Here is my crazy assumption.
It was awful.
Tight, maybe as the stomach muscles flex and move, not only as the fish moves but as the stomach tries to digest you.
Maybe even painful as the stomach acid tries to dissolve you.
Claustrophic.
Not quiet, either, all the sounds of the water around magnified… and the sound of a very very nearby giant fish.
If it is a whale, maybe it’s making those sounds, complaining because something it ate just isn’t sitting right.
Where is Jonah getting air?
Even if it is a whale, the air doesn’t go in the stomach, it goes in the lungs.
There are pockets though, especially in fish or whales that breach periodically, so maybe gasping for borrowed breaths.
A miracle however you cut it… but a desparate painful gross, slimy, likely painfully acidic and horrible.
Now that we have spent way too much time imagining ourselves in the belly of a fish… how many of you are happy to be there?
Yes, this is GREAT!
Better than the cruise to Tarshish, this is wonderful.
What would be your prayer from the belly of the fish?
Get.
Me.
Out.
Of.
Here! Save me, Jesus, from this fish!
This is the absolute worst!
Hear Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the fish:
Out of the belly… not of the fish, of Sheol.
The grave.
The Ancient World saw the grave as below the floor of the ocean, and Jonah was close because he was drowning in the ocean.
all of that language, is of him drowning, the bottom of the ocean, the seaweed all around...
Not the prayer we expected!!!
The fish is Salvation!
“The belly of the fish is not a happy place to live, but it is a good place to learn.”
The fish isn’t punishment, it is salvation.
It is an act of grace.
It is a place to learn.
When does Jonah say “Salvation belongs to the Lord.”
When is he grateful for God’s salvation, for grace and rescue, for “steadfast love?”
Not after he is on dry land.
While he is still in the belly of the fish.
After Jonah has learned some wisdom, then his time in the fish is done.
Not “spit”.
Vomited.
And that grace leads where?
Right back into where God had called him in the first time.
God knew what He was about.
Mercy and Grace
We talk a lot about grace.
Mercy and grace.
As we should.
Justice is getting what we deserve.
Mercy - not getting what we deserve.
Grace - getting what we don’t deserve.
These go hand in hand.
Jonah disobeyed His Lord, His God.
What does he deserve?
A peaceful cruise to Tarshish?
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