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
0.12UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.04UNLIKELY
Fear
0.05UNLIKELY
Joy
0.69LIKELY
Sadness
0.16UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.44UNLIKELY
Confident
0.29UNLIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.79LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.92LIKELY
Extraversion
0.1UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.83LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.71LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Welcome
Good Morning!
I’m Pastor Wayne and I’d like to welcome you all to the gathering of Ephesus Baptist Church.
Why do we gather?
We gather to worship and exalt the name of the one who has become our salvation.
The right hand of the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ!
Worship is about adoration.
If we truly adore Jesus, we will not be ashamed of Him! Worship matters!
If you are visiting with us this morning, we want you to who we are here at Ephesus...
We are all one family of faith: “giving our all to love God, love people, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples in our generation.”
That is our mission, our purpose, why we exist as a church.
We have a connect card in the pew in front of you.
I invite you to take one and fill it out!
If you have prayer needs, you can let us know about those as well.
I promise, our prayer team will lift you up soon.
You can place those cards in the offering plate when it comes around.
Who’s Your One?
Scripture Memory
Opening Scripture Reading
Prayer of Invocation
Revival of Repentance
If you have a copy of God’s Word, we are going to be back in the book of Nehemiah today.
Find your way to Chapter 8 and join me in standing in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
We will begin reading in verse 9.
Prayer of Illumination
Last week, we watched as a Revival of Worship broke out behind the newly restored walls of Jerusalem as Israel heard the Lord speak to them through His Word in a powerful way.
The result was a Revival of Worship that moves the people into some true soul searching.
A true Revival of Worship will lead us to a Revival of Repentance that causes our regrets to be overcome by the Joy of the Lord which leads us to a Revival of Obedience!
Are we hungry for the Word of God? Do we worship
when God’s Word is read publically?
I know we do okay for 15-20 verses, but what about when we go for 30-40 verses or entire books of the Bible.
Remember how Israel responded to the public reading of Scripture?
Israel worshiped as one man at the reading of God’s Word.
Paul told Timothy to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture.
That is exactly what we saw Ezra doing last week.
Ezra read God’s word and gave the sense of it to the people, thereby teaching and exhorting them to walk with God.
Why should we read the Word and preach the Word?
Because God’s Word illuminated by God’s Holy Spirit is the only thing that can transform our lives, as it rebukes us, convicts us, and corrects us.
But don’t miss this....A Revival of Worship was not the only response the people of Jerusalem had to God’s Word.
There was another response.
That is the response we are going to look at this morning.
It is in their response that we find three ways that God’s Word moves us from a desire for revival to true revival actually beginning to take place within our hearts.
Three Ways God’s Word Brings True Revival
First we will see that,
1. God’s Word convicts us concerning our need for repentance.
(8:9)
By now, it should be obvious to us that Israel wanted to hear from God’s Word.
They wanted to see the Word of God restored in their religious community.
But what they got was far more than they bargained for.
Israel could have listened to the reading of God’s Word with apathy and indifference; they could have rejected it outright or scoffed at it and left, but that is not what happened.
There's no question that the initial effect of God’s Word on God's people was conviction and grief.
How do we know that the Scripture convicted these men and women?
1) v. 9 - “do not mourn or weep.”
2) v. 9 - “For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.”
3) v. 10 - “and do not be grieved.”
4) v. 11 - “So the Levites calmed all the people,”
5) v. 11 - “do not be grieved.”
They are mourning over their sin because the Word was convicting them of their guilt.
They perceived their own miserable imperfections in contrast to the lofty requirements of the Law, and in view of its somber threats of punishment for their disobedience.
They discovered that the “robes of righteousness” they had been parading around in, were in reality just “filthy rags” before their Holy God!
The Word of God was doing its intended work!
The Law was revealing to the people a knowledge of their sin.
The law wasn’t designed to save us; it was designed to convince us that we need to be saved and then point us to Jesus Christ who alone has the power to save.
It is right to let the Scriptures convict us.
But if our conviction doesn’t lead us to repentance we have missed the point entirely!
Perhaps we avoid the Word because of its supernatural ability to convict and challenge us to the very core of who we are: our motives and our thoughts.
But that is exactly what it was designed to accomplish.
We should be willing to let God’s Word do it’s work in our hearts.
That is when our conviction will lead us to real repentance.
What is real repentance?
It is more than a conviction of sin.
To repent means to have a change of mind, a change of heart.
It means that we change the way we live.
A lot of what we call repentance today is not really repentance.
Repentance is more than conviction of sin.
It takes conviction of sin for you to repent, but repentance is more than conviction of sin.
That means that godly grief or sorrow is not repentance; it brings you to repentance.
You may be brokenhearted over your sin but that is not real repentance.
That is contrition for sin, not repentance.
Repentance, ladies and gentlemen, is a divine change of mind concerning your sin.
Not only must you be broken over your sin; you must be broken from your sin.
Listen to what Adrian Rogers once said in a sermon titled “Real Repentance,”
You know what’s wrong with many of us?
We walked down the aisle of some church.
We wept some crocodile tears.
We’ve taken the hand of some pastor.
We’ve gone through the rites and the ritual of baptism.
But there has never been a change of heart.
There has never been divine repentance.
And I don’t care whose church you’re a member of, if there hasn’t been a change in your heart, you’re going to die and go to hell, for the Bible says, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”
(Luke 13:3, 5)
Real repentance means we turn from sin to serve the living God.
You cannot turn to God without turning from sin, and you cannot turn from sin without turning to God.
Israel has heard the Word of God
They have been convicted by the Word of God
All of Jerusalem is ready to repent and follow God.
Nehemiah and Ezra walk up to the podium and do something no Baptist preacher would do at this point.
They yell, STOP!!!! WAIT A MINUTE!!!!
“This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.”
Hold on pastor, let me get this straight, the people are in the process of repenting and they tell them to stop.
Are they out of their minds?
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9