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
0.14UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.09UNLIKELY
Fear
0.11UNLIKELY
Joy
0.65LIKELY
Sadness
0.54LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.63LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.3UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.7LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.92LIKELY
Extraversion
0.09UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.85LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.71LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Introduction
Everybody needs a God.
Nothing can remove that innate desire to have a god.
Pascal said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created think, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”
Unless we are connected with God we will always feel that void.
It doesn’t matter how much he does for us.
It doesn’t matter how much we attain, or how many things he does for us.
Unless we have seated God on the throne in our hearts we will feel the emptiness of his absence.
A.W. Pink says, “Man must have an object, and when he turns from the true God, he at once craves a false one.”
This is true.
We are always craving something.
Whether it be a new car, new hair, new shoes, new clothes, new partners, a new job.
We are always craving something.
We seem to have trouble trusting a God that we can’t see.
So we make for us gods that we can see, touch, and feel.
They supposedly give us comfort and help us cope with life.
(Think about inserting a more compelling argument that appeals to the human search for a god.)
The problem is we are prone to exchanging the God that made us for a god that we made.
The hole that is within our hearts is the root of our desire to make for us a God.
We move God from the center to the margins.
It’s not that we don’t want a God, because we do.
We want something we can put our trust in and someone we can call on.
We all want to serve something.
The problem is we ruin the relationship that we have with him when we attempt to replace him.
Think about the foolishness of that statement, “trying to replace him.”
We are talking about replacing the God who had just a short time prior to this time had brought them out of Egypt.
Their God had looked out for them, now they find themselves looking for a God.
What caused them to go looking for a god after all that God had done for them?
I.
We Desire Relationship
Number one, because we desire relationship.
We desire to be in relationship with one another.
We want to have fellowship with one another.
We like to be around other people, to share our experiences and to feed off of one another.
But we also desire to have fellowship with something above us.
Some of us are struggling just to find that relationship with God.
Some of us are struggling to strengthen that relationship with God.
Even in Israel’s idolatry.
They made for themselves a god as a way to be connected to God.
The problem with their search for a god is that putting a created god between you and God, makes it harder to see God.
If you are having trouble seeing God, make sure you haven’t made a God out of the things God has given you.
Moses was the only link to God that they had previously known.
In the minds of the Israelites Moses made relationship with God possible.
The perceived absence of Moses was in turn interpreted as the absence of God.
They became angry and this anger exposed their lack of trust.
Moses had been up on Mount Sinai with God for forty days.
Forty days into his spiritual sabbatical the people of God became impatient and enraged at his absence.
They felt abandoned by God because they could no longer see Moses.
Moses had been the central figure in the Exodus.
He was a hero and the people looked up to him.
God had used Moses in such a way that the people had connected Moses presence with God’s favor, and Moses absence with God’s neglect.
The problem with their relationship was the emphasis that they placed on Moses.
God had used Moses as a mediator and a deliverer for his people, and the people had made Moses their God.
We must be careful not to make God’s out of the things that God gives us.
They would have been right to appreciate Moses and to esteem Moses highly.
But they were wrong to esteem Moses to the level of God, “the man who brought us out of Egypt.”
God used Moses to bring them out of Egypt, but Moses alone didn’t bring them out of Egypt.
Once they felt that Moses was taken from them, instead of looking to the God that gave them Moses, they wanted to make for themselves a god.
Moses had become their god and when their relationship with him seem to be dissolved they needed to find a replacement so they approached Aaron about making them a calf.
Israel’s idolatry didn’t begin with the calf.
It began with Moses.
Our relationship with God is affected when we focus all of our attention on the gifts instead of the giver.
If we value those things that God places in our lives more than we value God, when those things disappear it will cause us to become bitter toward God.
What the Israelites had done would not bring them closer to God, it would actually push them farther from God.
By making for themselves a God, they disobeyed God.
Disobedience, or sin, causes us to be separated from God.
By fashioning for themselves a God they had violated the second commandment:
Exodus
I need a God because I desire relationship, but I cannot let the earthly matter come between me and the God that created me.
II.
We Desire To Give
Believing that he might be able to discourage the people from going through with their plans to make a God, Aaron asks them to do something he believed they would be reluctant to do, give.
Giving is an important part of religion because it shows God where your heart is.
All of our hearts are set on something and we don’t mind surrendering our wallets so that it is known how much we cherish it.
Whatever it may be.
Giving is something that we do naturally.
Even the most frugal or stingy person invests money into something.
They may not spend money on material goods, but they may invest all of their money in their savings account.
It is both wise and biblical to save and prepare for the future.
But when all of your money goes toward you then it has become clear who your God is.
But I can’t just pick on those who save excessively.
There are those of us who spend excessively.
We spend money on our stuff, on our hobbies, on our loved ones.
Again, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the things that God blesses you with.
But when all of what you have goes toward your stuff, it has become obvious what your god is.
It is natural for us to give.
We don’t have to be taught that.
We do have to be taught to give to God, because giving is a heart issue.
Our money follows our desires, and we desire to give, just not to God.
Take the Israelites for example.
They desired to have a god before them so they did what Aaron least expected them to do.
Not only did they give, but they gave sacrificially.
The took off the rings of gold that they had acquired from Egypt so that they could have a god.
They didn’t scrape up the gold that they weren’t using at the time, they took the gold that they were wearing and put it in the offering pot.
God had taken care of all of their needs.
He had led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
He had given them manna from heaven to eat.
All of their needs were taken care of and although they liked wearing the gold they understood that sacrificing the gold was the least they could do for their god.
However, they gave it to the wrong god.
They could never repay the God of heaven for what he had done for them, and during this time they wanted a god they could see so they gave their gold.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9