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
0.08UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.06UNLIKELY
Fear
0.09UNLIKELY
Joy
0.65LIKELY
Sadness
0.53LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.6LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.74LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.99LIKELY
Extraversion
0.38UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.92LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.74LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Introduction
Will you please open your Bible and turn with me to ?
This morning, we are going to study together in a message that I have entitled, “Loving One Another At The End of All Things.”
If you don’t have a Bible, you can follow along by looking at the screens in front - the passage will be on those screens.
Let’s read together these verses.
Read .
Pray.
What would you do if you knew that tomorrow was the last day of your life?
What would you do if you knew that Jesus Christ was returning to the world tomorrow evening.
How would you live?
What would you fill your time with?
What would you want to do with those final hours, final seconds of your life?
It’s interesting to think about and hear a person’s answer to such a heart-searching question.
Our answer to a question like this reveals a lot, doesn’t it?
It reveals what we value most.
It may reveal what we regret about life.
It reveals what we see as the purpose for our lives, what we should be doing whether we are doing now or not.
This question is one that we might
We know that this is not an uncommon question.
Maybe it’s one that you’ve been asked before.
It’s certainly one that has been asked by men of God in the past.
Martin Luther was once asked what he would do if the end could come today.
His response was, “I’d plant a tree and pay my taxes.”
Jonathan Edwards once wrote 70 resolutions that he reviewed weekly.
One of those resolutions was “Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.”
These men both pondered the idea of the end of all things.
What you probably noticed is that our passage for this morning begs this very question and, in fact, it tells us the answer to the question.
Our passage tells us how we ought to live our lives, knowing that the end is near.
This is plain because of the very first verse of our passage.
Peter says, “The end of all things is at hand; therefore...” Our attention is immediately drawn in this passage to the end of all things.
What does this verse say about the end?
It says that the end “is at hand.”
The last days have come.
The end is imminent.
It is near.
But how can we say this?
If Peter said this 2000 years ago and the end has not come, was Peter wrong?
No, because what Peter is saying in verse 7 is the same thing that is said throughout the New Testament, namely that the last days have begun.
Through the ministry, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ the last days have begun.
From the time of Jesus’ ministry on the earth, people have been living in the last days.
This is what Paul meant in .
He had just described the idolatry of Israel in the time of Moses and the judgment that fell on them, which served as a warning to God’s people forever.
Paul said:
So we too are people on whom the end of the ages has come.
We are living at the end of all things, and Peter tells us how we ought to live.
In ways expressed by Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards, Peter tells us how to live a life pleasing to God at the end of all things.
And what does this life look like?
A life that glorifies God in the last days is filled with prayer and love.
The central message of these verses is that the aim of the Christian life during these last days is to be prayerful and loving.
How should you live tomorrow if you knew that it was your last day on the earth?
You should be prayerful and loving.
What’s more, since we are living in the last days, this is how we should live every day.
This is what Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards expressed.
Why would Luther plant a tree and pay his taxes?
Because he, just like Edwards expressed in his resolution, wanted to live every day in light of the end.
This is how we are all called to live, in light of the end.
And Peter tells us that we glorify God in these last days by living prayerfully and lovingly.
These two pursuits will serve as our outline for this message.
What Peter tells us first is that we are to glorify God in the last days by being alert and sober for prayer.
Glorify God In The Last Days By Being Alert And Sober For Prayer
Faithful living during these last days, at the end of all time, involves an alertness and sober-mindedness in prayer.
Read verse 7 again:
The two verbs “self-controlled” and “sober-minded” are essentially synonymous.
Other translations have translated self-controlled as clear-minded.
This is how God wants his people to live in the last days.
While the nearness to the end may cause some people to lose their minds and act irrationally, we are to be clear-headed and sober-minded.
After all, the end is a time of turmoil for us.
We are living as exiles in a hostile world.
We experience suffering and persecution.
In the midst of such opposition, we must commit ourselves to prayer.
We must pray for strength to endure.
We must pray for wisdom to walk faithfully in the world.
We must pray to reject temptation to compromise with the world.
We must pray against the tendency to drift.
We don’t want to drift, compromise, or fall.
Therefore we must pray.
We should live lives that are full of prayer and dependency on God.
There are people still trapped in darkness, there are dangers all around us.
Pray for God to act and protect so that He will be glorified through Jesus Christ.
So we glorify God in the last days by being alert and sober for prayer.
Secondly, Peter also tells us that we glorify God in the last days by loving one another earnestly.
Glorify God In The Last Days By Loving One Another Earnestly
If the imminence of the end should provoke us to prayer, this imminence should also provoke Christians to love one another earnestly.
It’s no surprise that Peter calls us to love, is it?
Love is the central characteristic of God’s people.
So living in the last days should also be marked by this quality.
Peter emphasizes the importance of this in verse 8:
In the world full of sin, betrayal, and opposition against Christ we must be a people that earnestly love one another.
Commit your life to this priority in the last days.
Love one another, earnestly.
Do not let the world’s opposition against you cause you to divide, but instead devote yourself to loving each other.
We need each other, so we must love one another earnestly.
At the end of verse 8 Peter gives us a reason for the priority of love in the last days, “since love covers a multitude of sins.”
What this means is that when we lavish love on one another, when we love one another earnestly, sins and offenses against us are overlooked.
It is not easily offended.
It thinks the best of others.
It forgives when people sin against us.
It is not condemning.
Love that endures.
Be quick to forgive, don’t hold on to bitterness.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9