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
0.05UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.03UNLIKELY
Fear
0.06UNLIKELY
Joy
0.63LIKELY
Sadness
0.12UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.51LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.41UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.71LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.87LIKELY
Extraversion
0.11UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.8LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.7LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
The Parable of the Restoring Father
The Parable of the Restoring Father
CSB (mostly)
Series: Parables: Stories Told by Jesus
11.18.2018
Bottom Line: God can restore the reckless runaway.
1. Good morning.
Thanks for joining us this morning.
You had several options on how to invest your time this morning and you chose us.
Thanks for allowing us to be a part of your journey and a start of your week.
My name is Doug Mingus, one of the pastors on staff here at Northland.
It is an honor to be able to share with you today as we step into week 2 of our teaching series, Parables: Stories told by Jesus.
2. Stories.
Is there anything better than a great story?
Whether in written form, audio form or on the big screen, great stories are a big part of life.
We love to invest our time and our resources on stories.
We need stories.
They encourage.
They teach.
They excite.
They inspire.
They keep us up late at night.
They’re powerful.
They change us.
They change the way we see life.
So, when we open up that cover, or press play on the remote, or hear that voice, everything else can seemingly disappear.
3. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” (Dickens – Tale of Two Cities)
4. “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”
(Tolkien – The Hobbit)
5. “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” (Star Wars)
6.
Just like that, we are whisked off into adventure.
The story becomes our story.
It’s a story that is written by an author that just “gets it”.
An author that “gets life”.
There’s no author more “author-ish” than the Author of all life.
The Author of the greatest story… that of human life, human failing and falling, human struggle and the restoration and repairing of humanity.
The Great Author, Jesus begins his story: “A man had two sons.
12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me…”
7. Grab your Bible or Bible App and turn with me to the New Testament book of Luke chapter 15.
In verse 1 we find out that Jesus is telling this story to a crowd that is mostly filled with the religious leaders of the day.
The Pharisees and the scribes.
The law-keepers.
The religious elite.
Those that preferred rules, regulations and raised noses rather than grace, compassion and human beings.
So, to teach them, and to teach us, Jesus tells a story, a parable, that puts them, and us squarely in the center of the plot.
8.
The beauty of the parables of Jesus is that they are stories utilizing the normal things of life to illuminate and teach about Kingdom things.
Each character or significant object in a parable is there to teach us about ourselves or about life as God defines it.
In our story today, The younger son represents the “tax collectors and sinners”, the “lost that need found”; the ones that bothered the religious elite.
The older son in this story, which we will talk a bit more about later, represents the main audience to which Jesus is telling this story to – the Pharisees and scribes.[JM1]
The grumblers and complainers.
The law-lovers.
Those who don’t like that Jesus is being nice to the lost ones.
Then there’s the father of the two sons, representing….
Our Heavenly Father.
God.
This story of Jesus, it teaches us that God can restore the reckless runaway.
9. “(He also) Jesus said: “A man had two sons.
12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me.’
So he distributed the assets to them.”
(CSB)
10.
As Jesus was teaching this, the crowd would have been utterly shocked by the second sentence of this story.
In a time period where honor, respect and tradition reigned, to have a son (not to mention the youngest son) ask such a question would have been mind-blowingly insulting and inappropriate.
11.
Basically, the younger son is coming to his father and saying, I would rather have your stuff than be your son.
You’re not dying quick enough… so can you just give me what is lawfully mine (at least, if you were already dead).
Give it to me now so that I can just get out of here and get on with my life.
Give me what’s mine!
I don’t care about you.
12.
I don’t care about a relationship with you.
I just want your money.
I don’t like the way you run things.
I don’t like the way you are in my way.
I don’t trust what you have planned for my future.
I want to make my own way… with your money of course.
13.
What an amazingly brutal thing to hear from your son! Can you imagine the heart of the father at this point?
Can you feel the shock?
Pain?
Confusion?
Sadness?
Broken-heartedness?
14. Can you imagine if your brother or sister went to your living parents and asked such a question?"
You would rightfully be pretty upset.
Even today that is a shocking thing to do.
This begs a question:
15.
How do you get to this point in a relationship?
How can you become this cold?
This stone-hearted?
This insulting?
The only way I know of that you get to this point is by believing lies and being focused on self.
You get there by having the wrong beliefs.
The wrong system of thinking.
The wrong idea of what will help, satisfy, and fulfill.
16.
You see, it’s clear, that somehow, the younger son believes that pleasure, money, materials, adventure, excitement and what he doesn’t have is what is missing from his life.
He has the wrong focus in life.
He has become so self-absorbed, so selfish, so self-driven, that he cannot see the truth of life.
The younger son is disconnected from reality; disconnected from truth and disconnected from an authentic relationship with the father.
He somehow truly believed that what was missing from his life, was what others had.
He truly believed that leaving town was what was going to help him.
He painfully believed that the grass was greener on the other side of the street.
He will find out just how wrong he is.
17.
How did the father respond to the son’s desire for him to be dead and out of the way?
How did he respond to being asked to liquidate his assets and give the son a pile of cash?
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9