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Introduction
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he responded by saying that the greatest commandment was to love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
Then he answered a question that had not been asked.
He gave the second greatest commandment.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
It is often thought, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that these two commands are usually opposed to one another.
As if my loving my neighbor well means going against God’s law or loving God well means being an offense to my neighbor.
But if we go back to the question Jesus answered, we find something striking:
The second commandment to love your neighbor is like the first commandment of loving God.
The word there is homoios.
It means to be like or to be similar.
Thus, loving God and loving neighbor are not the exact same thing, but they are similar things.
They are not dissimilar; they are very much alike!
Jesus would use this same Greek word to describe the kingdom of God.
It is like a mustard seed.
It is like leaven.
It is like a treasure in a field or a pearl of great price.
John would use this to say that we as Christians are to be like Christ.
In other words, the word “like” is to show similarities and even representations.
It is not to show dissimilarities or contradictions.
The Pharisees missed this point and I think many Christians do as well.
So as we look at today’s passage, I want us to look at these two narratives that are getting across one main point and one main application: who Jesus is and who we are to become.
We see four parallels between these stories that end in a single outcome.
The first parallel is the day.
The second the dilemma.
The third is the discussion.
The fourth parallel is the decision.
Finally, the outcome of these events is a deliberation about Jesus.
But again, all of this is to teach us who Jesus is and who we are to become.
The Day
The Dilemma
The Discussion
The Decision
The Deliberation
The Day
So we start with the first parallel: the Day.
Both of these events took place on the Sabbath.
Now, they were on different Sabbaths, but they were both on the Sabbath day.
Now we Westerners don’t tend to keep Sabbath anymore.
We talk about the Sabbath.
We may even like the concept of the Sabbath, but we really don’t understand the Sabbath and we definitely don’t keep the Sabbath as a people.
I don’t want to go into everything about the Sabbath, but just enough to give us an idea about how the Bible describes it and how the people in Jesus’s day saw it.
The Sabbath literally means “rest.”
Any day or days where there was to be no work done were known as Sabbaths.
Thus, if there was an entire year (like the seventh year) where no work was done, it was a Sabbath year.
It was to be a time to rest.
And in that rest, one was to “rest in the Lord.”
They were to trust him to take care of their needs.
So in the wilderness, the people were to gather two days worth of manna on the sixth day, even though any other time, trying to gather two days worth would end in it spoiling and filled with maggots.
They were to trust God to provide in their rest.
It’s hard to do that, isn’t it?
The biggest time of rest we have is when we are asleep.
And often times that sleep is kept from us, not because we aren’t tired or sleepy, but because we have a control problem.
We cannot rest our eyes, our minds, or our bodies, because we do not trust God with our lives, our jobs, our families, our friendships, while we lie unconscious and helpless.
This was the same problem just in a grander scale that the Israelites had.
Some did not gather the manna on day six as they were supposed to, expecting they’d be able to do the work on the Sabbath.
For 490 years the Jews felt like they couldn’t just let their land lay fallow on the Sabbath years, and so they worked the land year in and year out, not trusting God to provide.
After God’s bringing the land its rest while the Israelites were in exile, the people returned and began their same ways again!
Nehemiah and Ezra had to put an end to all the trading and treading, sowing and reaping that was happening on the Sabbath.
It’s hard to Sabbath—to rest in God’s providence and sovereign power.
By the Jesus was born, the rabbis, scribes, and Pharisees had helped the people to understand what it really meant to keep the Sabbath.
What had once been guidelines to help people understand had become equivalent to laws.
One cannot walk more than 1,000 cubits—a little more than a quarter of a mile.
They weren’t supposed to draw water to drink or make a fire.
And again, one could wrap a wound, but not put ointment on it as that would help in the healing process.
Some of the guidelines had changed.
At one time there was to be no warring on the Sabbath.
Guess what happened?
The people of Israel were overtaken by their enemies—twice!
That guideline and law got changed, but it took two instances for it do so.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me!
Another was that it was not right to help one’s animal out of a ditch.
Guess what!
Animals are expensive.
If one dies or is crippled because it struggled to get out of a ditch and couldn’t, you’re out a bunch of money.
That guideline/law changed pretty quickly too.
So here is the day that these events occurred.
It’s the Sabbath day.
A day to rest in God.
The Pharisees weren’t trying to be jerks.
They weren’t trying to be legalist.
They were trying to be holy.
And to be holy meant remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy.
The Dilemma
This leads us to the second parallel.
Each narrative has a dilemma.
The first is that a “work” has been done on the Sabbath day.
The disciples had picked grain, rubbed them between their hands to thresh the husks and such away.
And then ate the seeds.
Now the picking on the road was not the work.
Nor was the eating.
It was the threshing between the hands that was considered work.
Thus, the dilemma is simply, should they do it or not do it?
Or to put it more bluntly, should Jesus have allowed this to happen or should he have stopped it?
Is it okay or not okay?
The second narrative’s dilemma involves a man with a withered hand.
It’s been paralyzed for whatever reason.
It’s his right hand, which means that it was his stronger, more dominant hand.
He couldn’t use it.
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