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
0.1UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.08UNLIKELY
Fear
0.12UNLIKELY
Joy
0.6LIKELY
Sadness
0.53LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.42UNLIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.36UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.75LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.95LIKELY
Extraversion
0.22UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.87LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.76LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
The End of the Beginning
On of my favorite Southern Gospel singers in David Phelps.
He was part of the Gaither Vocal Band and also a solo singer.
He has a phenomenal voice.
One of the songs that he sang as a part of vocal band was a song with this title in it.
The song tells the story of a man talking to another man while on a airplane flight to somewhere.
The man is reading his Bible and talking to the other person.
That person says he’s heard it all before.
Later in the song he tells the man about Jesus dying on the cross and he says its the end of the beginning and the man asks him how that could be true.
He replies
I said, "I'll read it again but this time there's more, And I believe that this is true.
His death wasn't the end, the beginning of life That's completed in you.
Don't you see he did all this for you!"
Today is Christ the King Sunday.
It is the last Sunday of the Christian calendar.
Next Sunday we enter into the season of Advent leading us to the celebration of Christmas.
Next to Easter and Christmas, this is one of my favorite Sundays to preach and to celebrate.
It is easy to think that we are just coming to the end of one church year and with Advent the starting all over again.
It is that, but it is way more than that.
It is the end of the beginning.
The Gospel message continues to be told and retold.
Everytime the Gospel is proclaimed it is the end of the beginning.
It is the end of the old way of living and the beginning of new life through Jesus.
As I read through this passage and tried to organize it in my mind I see the what and the why of Christianity.
Into this church had crept false teaching and Paul is writing to counter the false teaching by bring to them a challenge of what it means to live as a child of God.
Paul writes there in verse nine that they have not stopped praying for the church.
Paul wasn’t the founder of this church, it was most likely founded by Epaphras.
It was Epaphras who came to Paul in Rome to tell him about the problems that the church was having with false teaching.
Isn’t it something to know that people are praying for you?
I know that there are many of you that pray for me on a daily basis.
Thank you, I can sense the power of your prayers at work in my life.
Many of you are in church this morning because someone prayed for you for a very long time before you even darkened the doors of this building.
I think back over my life knowing that people prayed for me.
My mom prayed for me as an infant.
She prayed for me and gave me to God like the Prophet Samuel’s mother Hannah.
I didn’t know about that until after I was already in full-time ministry.
I had two of my grandmother’s sisters, Aunt Zula and Aunt Velma, who prayed for me.
They would remind me from time to time that they were praying for me.
I miss those two special ladies.
Prayer is important.
It isn’t though some magic way of gaining God’s favor.
It’s communication, and it involves us talking to God and then allowing God to speak to us.
If all we do is talk but never listen we don’t grow in our relationship with God.
God is not some cosmic Santa Claus that we constantly bring our wish list too.
Paul says that he never stops praying for them.
If you tell someone that you’ll pray for them, don’t stop until the prayer is answered.
Remind the person that you’re still praying for them.
And here’s an idea, if in the course of a conversation you tell someone that you’ll pray for them, why not stop there and pray for them!
You’ll show them that you are sincere in your intent to pray for them.
One of the big questions that Christians have is what is God’s will for their lives.
Often times when bad things happen to people that you will hear someone say that it must have been God’s will.
The curse of sin that we live under has caused the brokenness that we see in the world.
It’s the cause of the genetic mutations that cause cancer and other diseases and birth defects.
God didn’t create the word that way.
When He created man God created man is His image which was perfect.
When someone is diagnosed with cancer, I don’t believe that is God’s will.
When there is a tragic car accident and someone dies, I don’t believe that is God’s will.
Death came into existence because of sin.
Sin is the cause of the brokenness in life.
Certainly God doesn’t have a physical body like us.
Jesus the Bible tells us took on the likeness of man, He became one of us.
Paul says that in his prayer that he hadn’t stopped praying for you and asking for you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
How do we come to know God’s will in our lives?
It’s by the Holy Spirit who fills us with wisdom and understanding.
To have understanding is to be able to comprehend something.
It’s the Holy Spirit that enables us.
We often miss what God is wanting to do because all we do is spend time talking to Him, we don’t spend any time asking God to speak to us.
We don’t make any room in our busy schedules to allow the Holy Spirit to work within our lives.
A false idea that many have is that they can do whatever they want and then when bad times come that they can go running to God in prayer and say a few words and God is going to make it all better.
Are we ever guilty of that?
We go running to God and want him to solve the problem immediately by putting a band aide on it so that we can say it’s all better.
I can tell you that is not the way God operates, He wants to have a daily relationship with you.
Why?
Why is that important to pray and seek God’s will?
Paul answers that question in verses 10 and 11 these five outcomes of walking daily with God when he writes:
Underline them in your Bible, they are import aspects of our daily walk with Jesus.
We pray, we seek God’s will so that we can do these things.
· Live a life worthy of the Lord
· Please him in every way
· Producing fruit in every good work
· Growing in the knowledge of God
· Being strengthened by his glorious might
Those all begin with a verb, a word used to describe an action, they are actions that we take and which the Holy Spirit works through us.
That first one is a call to live holy lives.
It is practical holiness, it is a personal holiness as well as a social holiness.
We as Christians are called to be witnesses to Jesus.
We’re not called to sit in our recliners and just relax until we get to heaven.
If you live your life that way you might just be in for a rude awakening because that fire insurance that you bought into is not worth the paper it’s printed on.
We can’t be effective witnesses for Jesus if we’re not living a life that is worthy of the Lord.
We live in a society that’s all about me.
Watch the news on Friday after the black Friday store sales and see the selfishness of people as the rush to get the bargain not caring who they hurt in the process.
Paul says that we’re to please God in every way.
That pleasing God is more than just showing up on a Sunday morning.
It’s living the Christian faith daily.
It’s seeking God’s will before making that next decision and asking if it is pleasing to God.
Paul says that we will be producing fruit in every good work.
Jesus spoke about the Him being the vine and us, his followers being the branches.
Jesus said:
John 15:1-2 “1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vineyard keeper. 2 He removes any of my branches that don’t produce fruit, and he trims any branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even more fruit.”
Jesus expectations for us are high yet they are very attainable.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9