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
0.1UNLIKELY
Fear
0.11UNLIKELY
Joy
0.48UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.56LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.73LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.49UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.81LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.74LIKELY
Extraversion
0.18UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.77LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.64LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Introduction:
We return to the Gospel of Mark this morning and we will be in .
I have titled my message “Do you really know Jesus?”
Back in college, I took Psychology class where they made us watch a video on selective attention.
In the video 6 students are passing a ball around.
3 students are in white shirts and three students are in black shirts.
You are asked to count how many times the ball is tossed around with the students in the white shirts.
At some point, a gorilla walks into the center thumping his chest of the 6 students passing the ball around, and the many students fail to realize the obvious.
Well when it comes to the Bible, we often miss the obvious because we too often focus on ourselves.
Even in our Bible reading, we are asking what is God saying to me?
Or how does it apply to me?
And every time we encounter the Bible, we should be looking for applications.
But sometimes, the applications is not what does this say about me, but what does this say about God.
Sometimes the application is look!
Behold!
Look at the obvious!
And what Mark wants his readers to understand is who is Jesus Christ!
The stories we find in his gospel tells us to look at what He does and see who He is!
But even disciples can be selective in their perceptions and fail to miss what is right in front of them.
And that is true of us in the church where we can be so familiar with the stories of the Bible that they no longer grip us or amaze us.
Too often we think the story is about us rather than about God.
Did you know it is possible to be in the presence of someone and not really know them?
Just think about people you see in church.
You may “know” people who come and sit here every Sunday, and some even attend church for years, and you don’t know who they are.
What do Filipinos do when you don’t know the name of someone?
Hi, Kuya.
Hi, Tita, or Tito.
You may run into these people in the grocery store or while you are out and you still don’t know the people who attend the same church as you do even though they have been attending years.
And in the same way, the Bible presents knowing in different ways.
The word “know” can mean a superficial knowledge like how the demons “know” God, but are damned to Hell.
And the Bible also uses the word “know” in an intimate way just like how Adam “knew” his wife Eve and they conceived a child.
There are two different ways to know someone.
One way is to know someone on a superficial level and another way is to know someone in an intimate and personal level.
Throughout Mark’s gospel you see crowds and religious people knowing Jesus on a superficial level, while the disciples knew him personally.
But even for the disciples, sometimes they too did not get it.
True Christians are those who know Jesus intimately and personally.
True believers realize who Jesus really is and are changed by his glory.
Recap
And just to remind you where we have been in Mark.
Mark is trying to communicate to his readers the true identity of Jesus Christ.
Who is Jesus?
And Jesus’ popularity was known all throughout Galilee and Jersualem.
Crowds flocked to Jesus.
But many in the crowds only knew Jesus in a superficial way.
Jesus jsut
And we in church can be so familiar with Jesus that we think we know Jesus when our knowledge is not a personal knowledge of Jesus, but only a superficial and inaccurate view of who he actually is.
Even Christians fail to get it sometimes, including myself.
And in today’s passage, we get another glimpse of who Jesus actually is, so that we may know him better as we see who He actually is through his works.
Mark again and again is asking the same question that the disciples asked after he was with them displaying miraculous powers:
mark 4:4
Mark
Who is Jesus?
We will see that Jesus is the God-man who has sovereign authority over nature and diseases in .
And we will see that Jesus is
The Perfect Man (vv.
45-46)
The Sovereign God (vv.
47-52)
The Compassionate Healer (vv.
53-56)
Scripture Reading:
May God bless the reading of His Holy, Inspired, Unchanging, and True Word.
Amen.
Who is Jesus?
I. Jesus is the Perfect Man (vv.
45-46)
Mark 4:
Context
Jesus just fed 5,000 people, and if you include women and children in the account, that must have been at least 15,000-2000 people by multiplying just five loaves and two fish.
It was evening time and the people needed to go home before it got to late.
The text says immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.
The word that is used is that he “forced” or “urged” his disciples to depart.
Jesus would remain on the land and he himself would dismiss the crowds.
Why was there so urgency to leave the region?
The Galilean political climate was tense at the time.
The Jews were waiting for a Messiah to overthrow Rome.
It was time “to Make Jerusalem Great again!”
Jesus was the man to do it.
There were all these expectations of Jesus.
Jesus knew this and therefore he did not want his disciples to get caught into people’s expectations of him.
So he forces his disciple to leave, the crowds to leave, and he goes away to be alone with his father to pray.
As at the beginning of his ministry (Ch.
1:12 f.), Jesus’ presence in the wilderness provoked the renewal of temptation: refusing the acclaim of the multitude he gave himself to a long period of solitude in order to affirm his obedience to the Father.
Jesus does not live according to people’s expectations of him, but what God expects of him.
That is a good way to live.
So many times in our lives we have lived and made decisions on what others think rather than what God thinks.
Maybe we decided to be silent about Jesus at school because our friends thought we were too religious.
Maybe we choose a particular school or career path because this is what would please mom and dad.
Maybe we were willing to step on someone else at work so that our employer would notice and give us the promotion.
And that is a terrible way to live.
It will leave you depressed when you fail to live up to other people’s expectations or you may comprimise your beliefs to please others.
We have been watching Avengers again.
I really enjoy that movie.
There is a scene where Thor, who is now fat, travels back in time to Asgard to try to recover one of the infinity stones.
Thor is hopeless and depressed.
They really remake Thor from a good looking god of lightning to a couch potato who plays fortnight, eats pizza, and drinks beer.
As he travels back in time, he meets his mother who was actually dead in the future.
And his mother counsels him through the depression.
He is confessing his pain and hurt.
Thor has lost his father, his mother, his brother, his sister, half of his people and his home has been destroyed.
And she says to him,
“Everyone fails at who they are supposed to be Thor.
The measure of a person or a hero is how well they succeed at being who they are.”
And Thor regains his courage again and waits to get his hammer and says “I am worthy!”
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9