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
0.5UNLIKELY
Fear
0.13UNLIKELY
Joy
0.55LIKELY
Sadness
0.49UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.6LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.13UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.87LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.74LIKELY
Extraversion
0.28UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.5UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.84LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
By Pastor Glenn Pease
The first impeachment trial of a President of the United States began on March 30, 1868.
The 54 Senators were at their desks in the Senate Chamber, and at the front was Chief Justice Salmen P. Chase of the Supreme Court, who would preside over the trial.
The President himself was not there.
He felt it beneath his dignity to honor the trial with his presence, and so he remained in the White House.
It was a complex case.
Abraham Lincoln did a strange thing.
He asked his Republican Convention to let him choose a Democrat to run as his Vice President.
Believe it or not, they nominated Andrew Johnson for the Vice Presidency.
Lincoln had appointed Johnson as military Governor of Tenn.
Johnson favored Lincoln's plan to unite the North and South after the Civil War, and not seek to punish the rebel South.
Many radicals in Lincoln's party wanted revenge, and they wanted the South to be punished.
Lincoln won support for his plan for unity, and the result was a Republican-Democrat team won the election.
A Republican President with a Democrat Vice President would be strange enough, but it gets even stranger.
When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, Andrew Johnson became the President.
Our nation went from a Republican to a Democrat President with no votes or election whatever.
It was not a ballot, but a bullet that brought about this radical change.
The Republicans were not pleased with this turn of events, and they set out to make life miserable for a man they never liked in the first place.
To make a long story short, they finally found a way to bring impeachment charges against him when he forced his Secretary of War to resign, who was a Republican.
The Republicans controlled the Senate, and all it took was a two-thirds majority of the Senate to impeach him.
It was a 6 weeks long battle with the best lawyers in the country on both sides.
When the vote was finally taken on May 16, 1868 Andrew Johnson won by one vote, and survived as President.
The only way he could have done it was if his lawyers were clever enough to divide his enemies, and that is precisely what they did.
Seven Republicans were persuaded not to vote with the radicals.
They paid with their political lives, and they never won another election to office, but Andrew Johnson, thanks to his clever lawyers, not only survived, but after his term ran for the Senate and won.
He sat in that very chamber where he narrowly escaped his greatest defeat.
I share this long introduction out of our history because it is a fascinating example of the complexity of life, and of the importance of cleverness for success and survival.
The only way a minority can win in a conflict with the majority is by the strategy of divide and conquer.
The only way you can win in a court case is to get the jury divided.
If they are all united against you, you are sunk.
But if you can break that unity and get opposition among them, you have a chance to win.
If you are before the Supreme Court and all of the judges are united the battle is lost.
But if you can get the judges divided you have hope of winning.
The very essence of being a clever lawyer is in having the skill to bring about division in the ranks of your opponents.
The Apostle Paul in all of the trials of his final years never had a lawyer.
Jesus was his heavenly advocate, but he represented himself before both Jewish and Gentiles judges.
In chapter 24 the Jews brought a lawyer with them in Paul's trial before Governor Felix.
One of their reasons for their bringing professional counsel is because of Paul's clever maneuvering here in chapter 23.
As his own lawyer he was able to outwit the Supreme Court of the Jews.
It was certainly a great embarrassment to them to be outwitted by Paul's cleverness.
I suspect it is an embarrassment to many Christians even that Paul was so clever in his escape.
The reason is that the Christian is often conditioned to think that being clever is more in tune with following Satan than the Savior.
So much of the cleverness of history has been the cleverness of evil.
The cunning serpent was able to deceive Adam and Eve into choosing death for life, and by his cunning he has deceived the majority of mankind.
We tend to think of cleverness as the ability to get away with something in a negative sense.
Like the clever little boy who was warned by his mother not to take seconds.
When his hostess at the party saw how eagerly he gobbled up his ice cream, she asked if he wanted some more?
The boy said, "I promised mom I wouldn't except more the second time, but if you ask me the third time I guess it would be alright."
Or what of the boy who asked his teacher, "Would you punish someone for something they didn't do?"
When she said, "Of course not," he said, "Good, because I didn't do my homework."
The whole world of advertising is based on trying to be clever enough to get people to buy your product.
Sometimes it is based on deception, but if it is clever enough people will think it humorous and not be offended.
A store keeper had a sign in his window that said "Fishing Tickle."A
customer called his attention to the spelling mistake and asked,
"Hasn't anyone told you of the mistake before?"
"Hundreds," replied the dealer; "But whenever they drop in to tell me, they always spend something."
In a world of competition we often need to be clever to stay ahead, or even to keep up.
For several years a minister and a professor played golf together.
They were evenly matched and it was a keen rivalry.
Then one spring the professor’s game improved so much that the minister was regularly beaten.
He came up with an idea.
He picked out three how to play golf books and sent them to the professor for a birthday present.
It was not long before they were evenly matched again.
This was funny and acceptable, but the following example, though funny, is also a dirty trick.
Three engineers and three geologists were traveling by train to an oil producers conference.
At the station, the geologists bought three tickets and watched as the three engineers bought only one ticket.
"How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?"
a geologist asked.
"Watch and you'll see," said an engineer.
They all boarded the train.
The geologists took their seats, but the engineers crammed into a restroom.
After the train departed, the conductor came by to collect the tickets.
He knocked on the restroom door and said "Ticket please!"
The door opened just a crack and a single arm emerged with a ticket.
The conductor punched it and moved on.
The geologists saw this and thought it was great.
On the way back home, the geologists, being clever, bought a single home to save money.
To their astonishment, the engineers didn't buy a ticket at all.
"How are you going to travel without a ticket?"
asked one perplexed geologist.
"Watch and you'll see," answered an engineer.
When they all boarded the train, the three geologists crammed into a restroom, and the engineers into another.
Shortly after the train departed, one of the engineers left his restroom and walked over to the geologists restroom.
He knocked on the door and said "Ticket please."
We think that cleverness will lead to the con-man mentality that devices sting operations that cleverly rob people legally and ingeniously.
And the reason we think this is because it is true.
Vincent Teresa in his book My Life In The Mafia tells of all the clever ways he got people to give him money.
He didn't need a gun to rob a bank.
He would go into cash a ten-dollar check, and when the teller asked for ID he would say he had none.
She would send him to the manager to get it okayed.
He would go to the manager's desk and show his license and get the manager to initial the check.
Then instead of cashing it he would take it and trace the manager's initials on a bogus 4000-dollar check, and then send his accomplice to the bank to do the same thing.
He would be sent to get his ten-dollar check okayed by the manager, and when he came back to the teller he would switch to the 4000 dollar check.
She would see it initialed and see he just came from the manager and give him the money.
They took many banks by this clever scheme.
He tells of all kinds of ways they robbed insurance companies of millions.
Evil thrives by cleverness, and that it why we tend to think of it as evil.
We see satanic cleverness at its best in his temptation of Jesus.
He came to a starving man and urged him to use His power to make bread of stones.
He came to a man who was lonely and in need of fellowship seeking to entice Him to jump off the temple and have the cheering crowds at His side.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9