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
0.11UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.11UNLIKELY
Fear
0.5LIKELY
Joy
0.61LIKELY
Sadness
0.53LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.64LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.47UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.78LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.86LIKELY
Extraversion
0.22UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.86LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.7LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Introduction
Good morning!
Before we start I would like us to pray.
It has been my joy to serve here at GEM and in South Korea, but this was not an expected joy.
The plans that God has for us are never what we expect.
I will tell you that I was happy living my simple Christian life.
I served in the church and enjoyed praying and reading my Bible.
But deep down I also knew there was something more to it than simply practicing my religion by doing the things good Christians did.
I want to first tell you, that God has a better plan for our lives than we could imagine.
If you are willing to live a life that is daring for God, he will show you His great wonders in abundance.
I would like to share with you a bit of my testimony so you can get to know who I am a little better.
It is hard to pinpoint when my story starts, but I would have to say it starts with my mother-in-law before I even knew her.
My mother-in-law is really into praying and the things she prays for tend to always be answered.
From the moment my wife was born, my mother-in-law prayed for a spouse.
One day my future wife was writing in her prayer journal that she would like to one day be an international missionary traveling to a far away country.
My mother-in-law wanted my wife to be safe, so she also prayed that the husband that my wife would marry would take care of her overseas.
But it would seem that God didn’t answer the prayer exactly as anticipated.
My wife married someone who didn’t want to live in a far away country.
No, just far away from people in general.
After about 5 years of marriage my wife was pretty much convinced that she had married someone who would not only never live overseas, but wouldn’t even consider traveling overseas.
See, my mother-in-law and father-in-law moved to East Asia as missionaries and they invited my wife to come out and visit them to see the work that they were doing.
And what I felt was fear and trepidation and a desire to plant my feet firmer in the ground.
I NEVER wanted to leave America.
And that is what I told God, “please let me do your will, and I will do anything you want O God, but never send me to East Asia.”
I do think God has a great sense of humor.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I was facing much dissatisfaction in my job.
It became even more difficult when I had two suicides happen at my school back to back.
I had to read a statement to the class that stated that they had taken their own lives.
And the really hard thing about it was, I could not comfort these students.
My hands were tied behind my back because I was not allowed to speak about Jesus to them.
I became so frustrated that I began to ask God to open a way for me to serve students in a more powerful way.
God then led me into seminary.
I had no intention in becoming a pastor, but instead planned on being a counselor.
I wanted to help students get over their problems, and so I started going down this certain path.
But then I felt God speaking to me, and saying that biblical counseling was not the right path that you need to go and get the degree many pastors have.
I didn’t feel God was telling me to be a pastor, but just to go and get that degree.
So I switched my major.
Then something life changing happened.
A pastor came to speak at my church and said something profound.
He said, “If you are telling God no, when he is telling you to go, then you need to reconsider your position with God.”
At that moment, I prayed and said, “God I will do anything and will go anywhere.
Even if that means traveling to East Asia, or wherever, God open the door so I know what is your will.”
And of course I recieved an offer to come work at an international school in South Korea.
And things went so smoothly that I know that God’s hand was upon me the whole time.
There are many more things that I wish I had the time to tell you of God’s faithfulness to me in moving me to SK, but I want to talk to you mostly about something that has been heart.
Not only here in Korea but also when I lived in the US.
What I want to ask you today is are you passionate for God? Do you see God and speak with God and know who God is?
Coming to Korea has been a life-changing thing for me.
I had never been so fired up to serve God.
Today, I want to tell you something that you may think you know a lot about already and that is “What is a Christian?”
We are going to be looking at the book of Revelation today.
Please turn in your Bibles to Revelation.
We will be referring to the word often.
Not too many people I know want to talk about the book of Revelation.
Why?
Because it is confusing to them, and there are a lot of symbols and words that are hard to understand.
But what is truly exciting is that since this is the last book of the Bible it also contains the most exciting truth.
Those who endure through the suffering of this world will finally receive justice and the whole world will be corrected.
Today, I want to speak to you about the powerful message that Jesus spoke to the Church of Laodicea and a message that he has for all of us.
I. Jesus knows your works
SLIDE: We open this text by speaking about what Jesus knows.
He knows your works.
First, we must mention who wrote this and who it is written for.
John the apostle of Jesus, was exiled on the island of Patmos which is off the coast of modern day Turkey.
He wrote this book to these seven churches.
The cities that he is writing to can even be found in Acts and Colossians and other places in Scripture.
SLIDE: In V. 14.
In our Bibles it is says that Jesus is speaking these things to the angel of the church of Laodicea.
Laodicea was a city in Asia minor.
We know that Paul had done some missions work in the area nearby in the city of Collossae.
The city of Laodicea is interesting.
It was wealthy and one that prided itself on being able to take care of itself.
There was a large earthquake in the area around 60AD about 30 years before this book was written.
Their city was destroyed.
But instead of asking for help from Rome, they decided to rebuild it themselves.
Why?
They had lots of money.
They were confident in themselves.
They did not need anything from anybody.
Then comes the words of the message.
The book of Revelation is also a book of symbolism.
The text of Revelation matches a lot of literature of the time period.
We talk about this book being about the apocalypse because the name of the book in greek is actually ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΨΙΣ ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ.
Not everyone may agree with my belief on symbolism, but no one will deny that symbolism is used.
“The Words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning (or ruler) of God’s creation.”
So when read about this angel, we see that it is just one from the seven churches.
Seven churches not because there are only seven, but because seven is a perfect number in Jewish writing or in other words seven can represent the whole church.
So when he says “to one of the angels,” he is saying that part of the church behaves this way.
And it behaved this way then and does so today as well.
ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΨΙΣ ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ the and this angel is just one from the seven churches.
Seven churches not because there are only seven, but because seven is a perfect number in Jewish writing or in other words seven can represent the whole church.
So when he says “to one of the angels,” he is saying that part of the church behaves this way.
And it behaved this way then and does so today as well.
Who does this sound like?
The word Amen that we say at the end of prayer means these words are true.
Who is true?
Who is the ruler of God’s creation.”
Jesus.
And it is Jesus we know who is speaking these words to the people of Laodicea.
Jesus says, “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot.”
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9