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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Tone of specific sentences
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Intro
Imagine being out in the wilderness, on your own.
No communications, no electricity, no supermarkets or restaurants or hotels.
As night comes darkness falls.
Deep darkness.
It gets cold.
You’re hungry.
How do you make a fire?
How do you cut up any food you might find?
How do you survive?
Enter the multi-tool.
The Leatherman SIGNAL is actually designed for camping, so it has a fire starter, a knife, a saw, and even a blade sharpener.
Multitools are very useful, here’s mine (it’s not a SIGNAL).
Bringing such a tool with you can mean the difference between life and death.
Not to be overdramatic!
Now imagine you are in the wilderness of modern culture.
Sure, there is much that is good in Australian society, but think about it getting dark.
Not physically dark—spiritually dark.
You’re in a place where people are thinking only of themselves.
Perhaps a toxic workplace—they’re increasingly common.
How do you respond to the abuse dished out to you?
How do you relate to people who are inherently untrustworthy?
How do you stand up for what’s right when no-one wants that?
Of perhaps you’re struggling with the suburban rat-race.
How do you decide how much to spend on your house?
How do you decide what car to buy? Do you need a boat or a caravan?
Should your kids be going to a private school?
How do you make friends with neighbours who are so busy just maintaining their lifestyle?
Enter the multi-tool for all of life.
Today I’m going to talk briefly about how we can use the Bible in the wilderness of the world.
It turns out that it’s much better than a multitool (they are always a compromise, never as good a knife as a knife, never as good a hammer as a hammer).
Bible
The Bible is even useful for explaining its own usefulness.
How meta is that?
Let’s look at what the Apostle Paul tells his mentee Timothy in his second letter to him.
We’re reading the whole chapter, and, just a warning, this chapter starts out very bleakly.
It’s worth noticing that Paul’s critique here is directed at attitudes, not individuals.
Indeed, if we pay attention, we’ll see that the people Paul specifically calls out are people in the church!
Let’s read.
The last days
Just like Timothy, we find ourselves in the last days.
And boy does Paul’s description sound familiar.
We all struggle with the concerns Paul raises, and the direction of our society makes this struggle more intense almost everyday.
People love only themselves and their money.
Tick.
They are boastful and proud.
Tick.
They scoff at God. Tick
They are disobedient to their parents.
Tick
They are ungrateful.
Tick
Good grief, how prescient could the Bible be?
Moody, Dwight L., 1837–1899: “The Bible is the only news book in the world.
The newspaper tells what has taken place, but this book tells us what will take place.”
Anonymous
Let’s keep going.
They will consider nothing sacred.
Tick
They will be unloving and unforgiving.
This is an interesting one, considering how obsessed modern culture (including the church) is with love.
The problem is, we have redefined love to such an extent that we’re no longer talking about love.
Most of the time we’re just talking about either selfish lusts or a mild feeling of affection.
You can see this by how unforgiving we are, cancelling people at the drop of a hat.
And not just cancelling online, either, but in personal relationships, too!
We are so “loving” that we just can’t stand it when someone does something to disappoint or disgust us!
So, yes, another big tick.
They will slander others.
Tick (isn’t that the purpose of social media?
Just kidding.
It’s only one of many features.)
They will have no self-control.
Oh dear, this is getting depressing.
Tick
They will be cruel and hate what is good.
They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
This getting me down.
Let’s just wrap it up with this last bit: They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.
This is, perhaps, the defining feature of our culture over the last decade or so.
The way that it has become religious in its convictions.
Superstition—believing something because others do, rather than because of the evidence—has become the standard way of understanding things.
We saw this demonstrated to very ugly effect during COVID-19.
It is equally ugly in the so-called inclusivism that is actually more about exclusion than anything else.
But we see it every day in every area.
Prejudice and bigotry thrive on superstition, and so we get reverse racism and bigotry against people of faith.
It is ironic that all the failures of religion are now part and parcel of secular Australian culture.
What do we do about it?
So, that’s the diagnosis.
Both for Timothy and for us.
Self-centredness has become an accepted way of life, both in the culture and in the church.
It’s ugly and its destructive, but it pretends to be holy and good.
What do we do about it.
What’s the prescription?
Paul presents two proposals, and they are both important.
1. Endure
The first point is endurance.
Paul reflects on his own suffering.
He reminds Timothy that wicked people are inevitable, and they will suffer the consequences of their own wickedness.
But we can endure.
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