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
0.13UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.07UNLIKELY
Fear
0.1UNLIKELY
Joy
0.64LIKELY
Sadness
0.53LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.77LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.64LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.82LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.76LIKELY
Extraversion
0.07UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.78LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.67LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Claim (of the passage) - God’s righteousness results in judgement upon humanity and His love results in grace to those who truly seek His mercy.
Focus (of the sermon) - Delight in the grace of God, whether by delighting in obedience to His will (unlike Jonah) or whether for the first time pleading for mercy to be spared from judgement.
Function (for the congregation) - For non-Christians to cry for mercy before a righteous God.
For Christians to see how failing to delight in obedience to God shows we have forgotten the grace he showed in sparing us from judgement.
PRAY
Jonah has disobeyed God once in chapter 1.
He ran away.
If you have to ask your child to do something twice, then
It’s a bad reflection on Jonah’s attitude towards His heavenly Father.
Jonah thinks God’s grace is unacceptable.
It’s similar to when I ask Zeph (my son) to get his spellings out and practice while I make a coffee in the morning.
But God is not like Jonah.
I return with my coffee and find him in another room smashing a ballon about.
He loves Jonah enough to do the hard thing.
To bring him to repentance, to demonstrate to Jonah that he is the cheif recipient of His unacceptable grace,
It’s a bad reflection on his attitude towards me.
If you were here last week then you’ll remember we saw that even in God’s plans to bring about great despair for Jonah,
he was at work in his grace.
God is unrelenting in his grace.
He has pursued the disobedient Jonah, and brought him back.
And then that grace, in chapter 3 brings Jonah to a point of obedience.
At this point we are not sure if Jonah is obeying out of fear and resignation that he has no other choice,
But then God the Father, showed Jonah grace, by not allowing him to mess up his life.
or
Or do I
becasue he desires to please the Lord now.
We’ll find that out next week.
But what we do see this week, is that,
‘When God calls, and Jonah obeys’ absolutely incredible things happen for God’s kingdom.
I hope that’s what we will learn for our own lives as well.
‘That when we are obedient to God, give our lives to serve him in every-way, then absolutely incredible things happen for God’s kingdom.
God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, and Jonah ran!
although, God in his unrelenting grace uses Jonah’s escape to reveal himself to some sailors.
But as a result of Jonah’s running, he faces a horrific time.
It makes sense really, that if we proclaim to be followers of Jesus, and yet we run from prioritising obedience to him, then life will not be all it could be.
Non-the-less, God, in his unescapable, unrelenting grace, will pursue his people and bring them back to himself - but it might be a horrific experience.
And so now, chapter 3, shows us the opposite option.
Look what happens when we, God’s church are obedient to Him.
Then the results are incredible.
And
S
He brought about consequences and pain, so that Jonah would realise His father knew best.
You see if God had asked Jonah a second time, and Joanh
If you have to ask your child to do something twice, then
So Jonah is asked for the second time!
So
verse 3
The first thing to note is that Jonah is to go and ‘proclaim the message’ that God gives him.
He is not going to make up his own mind about what to say.
This will be a message directly from God.
The Ninevites don’t need any more man-made wisdom.
They have plenty of that - and God’s assessment of that is that they have turned out wicked.
They need to hear the righteous message of God.
Truth that is right and good.
It’s why week by week here at GC, we explain the bible in our sermons.
You do not need any man-made wisdom or ideas,
You certainly don’t need my wisdom or ideas!
You need the righteous, true and living word of God.
And that’s important,
becasue as we’re about to see,
often what God has to say,
does not sound like it will go down to well!
Many churches today speak of...
prosperity or you’re doing ok type messages.
No, God’s word, the word Jonah is going to proclaim,
is far from ‘you’re doing good’
going to reveal the character of God.
It is actually, ‘You’re doing really bad - and now you’re going to pay’
So that is what Jonah’s job is.
Then we get 2 things eamphasised about Ninevah.
Firstly, Nineveh, was a big place, an important city.
It stood as one of the great ancient cities under the rule of the Assyrian empire, around 800BC.
The detail of it taking 3 days to visit gives you an idea of all the hustle and bustle, people and trade, noise and distractions, it could easily take 3 days to travel around it.
The London of the UK.
Bold, powerful.
It inspired self confidence and strength.
The London of the UK
They had it all.
They believed they were in control of their own destiny, and they had no place for the God of the bible.
We know that, becasue that is the other detail we are given about them.
“We’re above that God stuff”
“How dare you tell me I’m not good enough”
“That judgement stuff may be good for you, but I don’t need it”
But other than being big, we are only given one other significant fact about the city.
We were told back in in 1v1.
It is full of wickedness.
Which in the bible means that they are ignoring the good rule of God and live by their own standards.
To speak of God of judgement (as Jonah is about todo) to the Ninevites, would have gone down about as well as it would in your office, or the school playground today in London.
“We’re above that God stuff”
“How dare you tell me I’m not good enough”
“That judgement stuff may be good for you, but I don’t need it”
“How dare you”
But that was the message Jonah was to proclaim:
Judgement is coming.
I don’t know how comfortable you are with understanding God as bringing destructive judgement.
This great city was to be overturned!
It’s a foretaste of the ultimate judgment that God will bring upon humanity for it’s wickedness when Jesus returns.
But if you’re not comfortable with God being a God of Judgement, then we ought to be.
we ought to know and hear, and speak of ourselves of the coming judgement of God.
Because judgement is an unavoidable byproduct of God being righteous.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9