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
0.1UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.08UNLIKELY
Fear
0.13UNLIKELY
Joy
0.52LIKELY
Sadness
0.21UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.55LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.42UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.9LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.76LIKELY
Extraversion
0.07UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.49UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.71LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Over the past couple months, I have had a few different people wanting to know more about prophecy in the Bible.
Some of this came up with the reading of Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem before His death, burial and resurrection, which all happened according to the scriptures.
During that last week is when Jesus gave what is commonly referred to as the Olivet Discourse.
That is a fancy way of saying, “What Jesus taught his disciples on the Mount of Olives.”
Let’s read that passage together.
And Jesus goes on from there.
That is less than half of what Jesus shared.
There is a whole lot more in this chapter, and then in the chapters that follow there is even more.
What does all of that mean?
How are we supposed to understand it?
Understanding Prophecy
Well, there are some clues in the passage, like the reference to Daniel.
There are also other things that are also spoken of by other Old Testament prophets.
So, if we want to understand this prophecy, we need to start back further in the earlier scriptures.
In other words, we do ourselves a disservice if we just jump into the Olivet Discourse.
We need to get some of the earlier teaching down first.
We need to start with other, more basic things that God revealed to understand this passage.
You can understand the concept of starting with earlier teaching if you think of mathematics.
For example, if you want to study Calculus, you do not start with differentials.
You should start with Trigonometry.
And if you want to study Trigonometry, you should first study Geometry.
And if you want to understand geometry, you will first need to know some algebra.
And if you want to understand algebra, you will need to first understand multiplication and division.
And before multiplication and division can be understood, we really need to understand addition and subtraction.
Oh, wait, one more step.
If we want to understand addition and subtraction, we need to understand what numbers are, and counting.
We really need to get the foundations set, and study what God has revealed in an organized way before just diving in to what Jesus said on the Mount of Olives.
The disciples had an advantage.
They grew up hearing all of the Old Testament prophecies.
They grew up understanding what prophecy is.
We need to start there, and work our way up; which is what we will attempt to do over the next few weeks.
Are you ready?
Here we go.
Now, the first order of business is prayer.
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit will guide us into truth.
Let’s ask the Lord to open our hearts and minds to understand what He teaches.
Let’s pray.
What is a Prophet / Prophecy?
In the Old Testament, they used three different words for those who were prophets.
These words are typically rendered ‘seer’ and ‘prophet’ when translated from Hebrew into English.
1 Chronicles 29:29 uses all three of these words.
These words give us the idea that they saw something.
They were given some revelation by God.
They were given information, or knowledge from God.
How did they get this knowledge, this revelation?
Sometimes this revelation of knowledge came through visions, dreams or as a message from God.
But why were these specially chosen people given information, given revelation from God?
Look at Jeremiah.
A Prophet is a person given a revelation to pass on / proclaim to others.
We also see that a prophet was not just given this knowledge for their own benefit.
They were to pass it along to others.
They were the mouth-piece of God to others.
The knowledge they were to pass on or proclaim is the prophecy.
It is important to know that they prophecy, no matter how it came to them, whether vision, dream or message, was not something they came up with.
It was literally from God.
As Peter tells us,
They were not given the gist of what to say.
They were given precisely what to say.
They did not get to decide what to communicate.
As God said to Jeremiah, ‘He put the words in their mouths.’
Which is also what He said to Moses and many others.
God appointed Moses as His prophet to Israel, and to the Egyptians.
What is Prophecy?
As we said, prophecy is the revelation, the message given by God to the prophet.
All too often, people tend to think of prophecy as just foretelling the future.
Is it is just telling of the future?
No. Actually, foretelling the future is a part of it, but not all of it.
Consider Moses.
Moses was a prophet.
His ministry began with going to Israel to let them know that God heard their cries and saw their plight and that He had compassion on them.
He was even to reveal God’s name to them!
That was a revelation to build them up.
Edification.
It was for their encouragement and comfort.
Then, Moses went to Pharoah and told Him what God wanted.
“Let my people go!”
That was for Pharaoh's edification.
When Pharoah would not listen, Moses told him what God was going to do.
That was for edification.
It was a warning.
And that was foretelling what was to come.
Notice, the foretelling is just a part of the prophecy.
All of this is the message from God.
The foretelling was just a part of it.
Later, after they left Egypt, Moses gave Israel the law as it was given to him by God.
He also gave them the temple and the sacrifices as instructed by God.
Basically, Moses, as a prophet, gave them instructions for how to live and relate to the Lord, as given by the Lord Himself.
So considering all of this, what is prophecy?
Prophecy is a message from God meant to edify, comfort, encourage, or exhort.
Prophecy is a message from God meant to edify (build someone up in true knowledge), comfort, encourage, or exhort (warn someone).
This is exactly what 1 Corinthians 14:3 tells us.
Sometimes it was giving information about the Lord, and His character.
Sometimes it was information about how to live and worship.
Sometimes it was a reminder of the past, so we would remember the Lord.
And, yes, sometimes, it foretold the future.
An interesting example of a prophet is Asaph.
Does anyone know who Asaph is?
He was a leader of worship at the temple.
He wrote a number of the Psalms.
He was a prophet!
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9