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
0.11UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.08UNLIKELY
Fear
0.14UNLIKELY
Joy
0.52LIKELY
Sadness
0.54LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.77LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.32UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.76LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.9LIKELY
Extraversion
0.1UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.79LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.7LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
God? Is that you?
PRAY…
There’s a TV show on during the day that, to be honest, I have never watched.
I probably will never watch it.
But earlier this week, this show became a lightning rod when one of the hosts quipped, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus.
It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you… that’s called mental illness.”
That was on Monday.
On Tuesday, the show tried to backpaddle and even apologize, sort of.
Now, I’ll let you look for further responses on the internet as homework.
The only reason I even bring this up today is that I think the question is fair.
How do we know if we are just hearing voices or if we are hearing Jesus?
I have stood in front of you many times over the years and said I believed God wanted us to do something, or I believed that God wanted us to change something.
And, to be honest, whether you said it aloud or not, you wondered if what I was saying was coming from God, or my own head.
So, the question once again, “How do we know if we are just hearing voices or if we are hearing Jesus?”
Are there times when we assign our own thoughts and feelings to Jesus?
When we say something to the effect, “this is what Jesus wants me to do,” are we sure that it is Jesus?
Even more, is it possible to know when our thoughts and ideas are genuinely from Jesus?
Is it possible to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we are hearing from Jesus and not just liking our own ideas?
Or the ideas of a famous person?
How can we sort this out?
How can we have any assurance whatsoever that we are hearing God’s voice?
I would like to answer those questions for you this morning.
I would like to give you 7 clues that will help you discern if what you are feeling is God truly speaking.
And, because this is not really a secret, I’ll give you the bottom line of what I am going to say.
We can know that we are hearing God’s voice when the thought or idea is confirmed by God’s Word, the Scriptures.
That is where we will end up.
But let me give a warning before I proceed.
What I am certainly not saying is for us to sit in a corner and come up with an idea and then diligently search the Scriptures for a verse or passage that confirms what we want it to say.
We must be ever aware of what Dr. Don Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School says when quoting his own dad, “A text without a context is simply a pretext for a proof-text.”
In other words, when we pull verses out of the historical-grammatical context we have in the Bible, we set ourselves up to misuse or even abuse Scripture.
So, we must be careful as we approach the Bible to confirm what God is saying.
However, with just a little work, we can be confident of what Scripture says and what it means in context.
And then we can be sure we have heard the voice of God in the Scriptures and then we can measure our own ideas against what God said.
And, with that introduction, let’s look at 4 passages to get 4 clues that we are hearing the voice of God.
I would encourage you to go home and read these passages in their full-context before returning at 4pm for the Solemn Assembly of Prayer.
1.
Obedience
1.1.
Joshua is told to remain obedient to the Scriptures, or the Book of the Law of Moses.
He is not to turn to the right or to the left.
The way he can know whether he has wandered is because the people of Israel will begin to mix with the nations.
Or they will begin to worship the gods of those nations.
Instead, Joshua is to cling tightly to the Lord.
1.2.
Do you see?
The way Joshua could know that he was no longer listening to God, that he was no longer obeying God, was when things got muddy.
Instead, if he remained obedient, things would be clear just as they were the day this command was given to him.
1.3.
When we wander from obedience to God, we make things muddy.
We start to think that a particular sin is not as bad as other sins.
We start to compromise and say the Bible is an ancient book that doesn’t apply today.
And it doesn’t take long at all before we have turned to the left or the right and we start to honor the gods of this world and not the God of the Bible.
Instead of clinging tightly to the God of the Bible, we begin to wander away.
1.4.
The first clue to help us know if we are hearing the voice of God is to examine ourselves to see if we are being obedient to the Scriptures.
If we are not being obedient to God’s Word then how can we possibly discern God’s voice from all the other voices swirling around us?
Context
2.1.
As we read God’s word in context, it unfolds for us.
Difficult passages become more clear in context.
What we need to do to be obedient becomes evident.
But when we take a verse or even section of verses out of context, we make it difficult.
Read the Bible!
The whole Bible.
Watch as God gives light to your understanding.
Let me give you a quick example.
a) How many of you know ?
Well, maybe you don’t know it by address, but you have probably heard it used out of context.
- Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
How many sermons have we heard that say something to effect that Jesus is standing at the door of your heart and knocking, won’t you let Him come into your heart?
Now, just at fact value, that is crazy.
There’s no door on my heart.
And even if there were, would Jesus be standing in my chest cavity knocking on it?
How crazy does it sound that the God of the whole universe would come into your heart to live?
Last summer, we were told by Child Evangelism Fellowship not to use that phrase, “let Jesus come into your heart, “ because it caused more confusion in children than anything else.
But, if we read that verse in context, we see a completely different picture.
Context
is the letter to the church at Laodicea.
That is the church that Jesus says is neither hot nor cold but lukewarm.
Jesus actually says he wishes they were one or the other, but because they are not, he will vomit them out of his mouth.
Yuck!
What a picture!
Then Jesus calls the church to repentance.
And after He tells them to repent we get verse 20.
Jesus is not standing at the door of anyone’s heart knocking, He is standing at the door of the church!
He is knocking so the church will let HIM in! Don’t you see?
In context the verse has a clear and vastly different meaning that what you may have heard.
Jesus says they are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm.
Jesus actually says he wishes they were one or the other, but because they are not, he will vomit them out of his mouth.
Yuck!
What a picture!
Then Jesus calls the church to repentance.
And after He tells them to repent we get verse 20.
Jesus is not standing at the door of anyone’s heart knocking, He is standing at the door of the church!
He is knocking so the church will let HIM in! Don’t you see?
In context the verse has a clear and vastly different meaning that what you may have heard.
b) Another one, real quick, is - And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
You hear people say all the time, “I believe everything happens for a purpose.”
But the Scripture in context tells us that this promise is for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
It is not a promise for every human being but only believers!
2.2.
Context brings clarity.
Or, as the Psalmist says, The unfolding of your word brings light; it imparts understanding to the simple.
2.3.
The first clue of hearing God’s voice is to make sure we are being obedient to the Scripture.
The second is to make sure we understand the Scripture in context.
And those 2 are so important to bring us to the 3rd clue.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9