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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Emotional Range
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Anger
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Opening
Would you please open your Bibles to .
Read
This is a beautiful text.
It contains hugely important principles for the church in our behavior with each other.
And also contains one of the clearest passages on the two natures of Jesus.
He is fully man.
And He is fully God.
I had a hard time trying to figure out how to preach this text.
When I come to a text that is as divided as this one, I want to split it up into two texts.
I thought about preaching on humility this week.
Then next week looking at the natures of Christ.
But then I realized that if I did that, it wouldn’t be good hermeneutics.
When we preach, we have to try and look for authorial intent.
That’s preacher jargon for, “What was the author trying to communicate?”
There’s a reason why Paul talked about humility among each other and then talked about Christ’s humility.
And if I split that up, I’d be splitting up Paul’s thoughts.
I’d be in danger of removing the authorial intent.
Let’s begin with the Danger of Disunity
Paul is grateful for the Philippian church.
Back in chapter 1, he began by saying that he thank God every time he thought of the Philippian church.
They were a true testament to the power of the Holy Spirit.
God established this church.
It was originally composed of Lydia’s family, the Philippian jailers family, and possibly an ex-demon possessed slave girl, and maybe even some ex-prisoners.
And now they are a full fledged church.
Complete with Christians, elders and deacons.
He was proud of this little church.
This church isn’t a church that is plagued with theological heresies.
They aren’t like the Corinthians church with big and proud sin.
Paul saw the Philippian church as a church that shared in the joy in Christ.
Verse 1 explains their growth in Christ.
There are 4 things in verse 1 that Paul shares with the Philippians.
They have encouragement from Christ.
Comfort and love.
Participation in the Spirit.
Affection and sympathy.
They share Christ in common.
When we see others come to Christ, it excites us.
When we see a baptism it’s a joyous moment.
There is encouragement seeing people come to Christ.
It’s a reminder that the Holy Spirit continues to convert hearts and that God continues to draw people to Himself.
We are recipients of God’s love.
This is especially encouraging.
Sometimes in this life, the only thing we have is the love of God.
And like the words from , “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
I may be in the valley of the shadow of death.
I may be in the presence of my enemies.
But the love of God is essential and kind.
We are participants with the Holy Spirit.
A bit more literally, it should read if there is fellowship in the Spirit.
As Christians, we have fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
We have a relationship with Him.
He is present in our lives.
He guides us as we walk.
Please open your Bibles to
He gifts us.
In fact our relationship to the Father is dependent upon the Holy Spirit, since He enables us to pray to the Father.
And then there is the comfort that we receive from Jesus Christ.
I think of the beatitudes that say:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
And on they go.
Though we grieve and suffer, we are comforted by Christ.
Who has shown us such great love.
Paul knew that the Philippian church was a church filled with Christians and he was joyful.
His concern wasn’t whether they were in Christ or not.
His concern was they were a church that was becoming divided.
He had such great joy in their love of Christ, but his joy wasn’t as great as it could be.
Verse 2 he explains the problem, “complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”
There are two women in the church, Eudodia and Syntyche.
And they are fighting.
The result is that there is backbiting, grumbling and complaining within the church.
I’m a fan of JRR Tolkien, he’s the author of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
If you’ve ever read those books, you’ll quickly be surprised by all the legends, poetry and tales that are included within the stories.
After Tolkien’s death in 1973, his son, began publishing the background stories for these legends.
And on of the biggest projects was called The Silmarillion.
In the Silmarillion, there is a story about the days just after creation.
In his story of creation, he uses music as a way to describe the progress of good and evil.
He describes the world as having one song, and then as evil developed, what started out as a harmony, it began to grow, and eventually, was a competing song with the melody of creation.
Listen to how Tolkien describes how evil fractures the beautiful song.
He speaks of two sounds, “The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came.
The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes.
And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern.”
In Tolkien’s tale, a second sound, splintered the beautiful sound of creation, bringing disharmony and strife.
And in the same way, empty fighting and strife brings ruin upon a church.
Do you know what I’m most afraid of in the church?
It’s not necessarily a theologically ignorant church.
Because I believe this can be corrected.
If we follow the prescribed order of having elders who teach God’s Word faithfully, it’ll happen.
I think we at Southwest have experienced this.
What I’m most afraid of is a church that bickers among themselves.
A complaining church.
A grumbling church.
A selfish church.
We can get a church to believe the right things, but getting a church to behave the right way is a different story.
How do I know this?
Because I meet people all the time who are leaving good churches.
These are churches that believe rightly.
But people leave because:
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