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
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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What’s in a name?
Hello.
My name is Dustin Matthew Mackintosh.
I bet many of you didn’t even know that.
Why?
Because they call me: Dusty.
That’s my trick for recognizing telemarketers right away.
“Hello, is Dustin there?”
They clearly don’t know me.
Most of my family works this way.
Who knows who Jonathan Christopher Mackintosh is?
Who is that guy?
That’s Jono.
And for a brief time in Kindergarten he went by James.
Who knows Denise?
No, that’s my mom, Dede.
But the best “nicknames” are the ones people come up with for you.
Because they say something about you, because of something you did or accomplished.
Sometimes names work the other way.
People come up with a name for you because it so powerfully fits who you are.
Sports is amazing at this.
Earvin Johnson?
No, it’s “Magic” Johnson.
George Herman Ruth?
No, it’s Babe Ruth.
The Great Bambino.
The Sultan of Swat.
“Shoeless” Joe Jackson.
What’s your nickname?
What does it mean?
What does it say about you?
And if someone were to come up with a nickname for you today, just based on your behavior, what would it be?
Church-Planting in Antioch
As we enter Acts 11 we have a bit of a rewind, a flashback, to catch us up on what has been happening in the church in other parts of the world.
We followed the action in Samaria.
We followed the action in Jerusalem.
Now we are traveling a bit further up north, into modern day Turkey, to see what was happening up there.
Reaching back to Pentecost, remember Jews from all over who have made the trip to Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost, 10s of thousands of them come to faith in Jesus Christ.
And at first they are this growing mega church in Jerusalem, maybe spilling out into multiple gatherings, but certainly listening to the apostles as they preach the Word, as they witness.
Then Stephen is martyred and everybody scatters to go home.
They go to Phoenicia (North), Cyprus (island to the North West) and Antioch (big city to the North).
And when they get there, what do they do?
They are witnesses to Jesus, they can’t shut-up about Jesus, and so they share the Word.
But being Jews they mainly share with who they are comfortable with, already in community with, they naturally share with other Jews.
This is consistent with the pattern we have seen in Jerusalem.
Antioch
Third largest city in Rome.
Something like 500,000 people.
Huge!
The gospel goes to the nearest biggest city.
Only bigger ones are Alexandria (around the Mediterranean to the South) and Rome (way over along the Mediterranean to the West.
Antioch is the biggest city in striking distance, about 300 miles.
The men who have fled there are not from Antioch.
They are from Cyprus (the island off to the west there) and from Cyrene (captial of Libya, which is North Africa).
These guys, out of towners in Jerusalem who are now refugees from persecution.
They find themselves in Antioch.
The big city.
Who do they start witnessing to?
Hellenists
Here “Hellenists” appear to be “Greek-speaking non-Jews”.
(Though earlier Luke used the same phrase to describe Greek-speaking Jews, which is confusing).
This appears to be INDEPENDENT from the salvation of Cornelius and the revelation Peter is having in Jerusalem.
Acts may not be wholly organized chronologically, there is regional and thematic organization at play as well.
So Andrew up in Samaria, Peter in Ceasarea, and these faithful but unnamed witnesses in Antioch...
All over the world the Holy Spirit is extending salvation to the Gentiles.
What did they preach?
“the Lord Jesus.”
I love this.
Jesus is the content of the preaching.
It is His hand with them, so He ultimately is the origin of the witness.
And it leads people to Him.
He is the purpose or destination.
Beginning and journey and destination: Jesus.
The soil has been prepared so they don’t panic, instead they send help.
Barnabus.
First of all, how amazing that Barnabus didn’t freak out about what these clowns were doing!
You guys don’t have training, clearly.
You didn’t even know you weren’t supposed to evangelize to Gentiles until God’s revelation to Peter.
You have no cohesive evangelism strategy, you have no church structure, my guess is you have no biblical foundation or knowledge.
This is ignorance on fire.
This is church planting gone wrong...
Except that it is going SO WELL.
And Barnabus sees that.
He says “Stay awesome!” “Keep going.”
He is the encourager, and he encourages them… and yet he sees that they desperately need some good teaching.
And he remembers this guy Saul who, among all the leaders, was the only one who had gone to seminary.
Saul had the absolute best of theological and Scriptural training… it was just before he met Jesus.
If anyone can add the kind of Biblical and theological grounding that this church needs… it’s Saul.
And so he runs to get him.
For a year they added to their enthusiasm about Jesus… they added teaching in the Word.
Sound biblical teaching.
From Barnabus, the great encourager, and Saul, who is responsible for writing a huge chunk of the New Testament and the mentor of Luke, who wrote even more of the New Testament.
And the people in Antioch, I don’t think they knew what to do with this new group of people arising in their midst.
They aren’t just a Jewish sect, that’s what the church had been before this.
But these guys aren’t just a Jewish sect… a bunch of them, maybe most of them are clearly not Jewish!
Antioch is a melting pot… and the church in Antioch is looking like a melting pot, it is crossing ethnic and cultural boundaries.
What do you call these people?
They love each other (we’ll see that later), they are generous, they are spiritually gifted… all these things we are going to see...
But there is one defining thing about them.
They won’t shut up about Jesus!
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