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
0.16UNLIKELY
Fear
0.16UNLIKELY
Joy
0.52LIKELY
Sadness
0.52LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.64LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.28UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.79LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.64LIKELY
Extraversion
0.05UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.76LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.52LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Exodus 33:12–23
Romans 1:18ff
Sermon
On Tuesday I went to listen to some lectures by an Oxford professor.
I was quite excited to hear what he had to say.
It was clear in the first few minutes that he was incredibly knowledgeable.
He stood in front of us with a Greek New Testament and read it like the morning paper.
But as the day went on I grew more and more frustrated, because it felt like he was holding back.
Every now and then there was a glimpse of his brilliance, and then it would disappear again.
I felt like drawing him aside and saying, “Show us what you are truly made of”.
It felt like he was afraid to reveal what he was really like, because maybe we couldn’t handle it.
It felt like inside his head was a treasury of information I wanted, but I had no way of getting to it from the outside.
I could only receive what he chose to reveal to us.
The same is true of God.
We can only know God inasmuch as He reveals Himself to us.
We can only know of God what He lets us know.
Tommy Tenny said we chase God like a toddler chases her father in the garden.
She lunges and turns trying to get a hold of him, but he is always too big, always too far ahead to be caught by such a small person.
And then in absolute kindness he turns around catches you.
Scripture is full of stories of people who have been caught by Jesus while they were looking the wrong way.
One startling example is Saul on the way to Damascus to persecute the Christians.
Suddenly Jesus reveals Himself to Saul and says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
It’s a startling story because Saul had all the religious credentials a Jew could hope for.
He was religious personified, and yet he had no knowledge of who God really is.
Religion usually fails to lead us to a personal knowledge of God.
Religion is rather like anaesthetic which prevents us from feeling the true love of God.
Saul had studied Scripture, he had studied with the greatest Rabbis, and yet when Jesus revealed Himself to him, Saul had to ask, “Who are you Lord?”
Another superb story of God revealing Himself is when Moses was shepherding the flocks and God revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush.
Moses was probably thinking of a light lunch followed by a nap, when God interrupted not only his day, but the rest of his life.
Moses had lived in Pharaoh’s palace as a child and received the best education the Egyptians could offer.
Yet Moses almost sheepishly has to ask, “Excuse me, who shall I tell the Egyptians you are”.
Education and even the ability to reason cannot lead us to discover of God what only He can reveal of Himself.
Paul argues in Romans 1 that God has revealed Himself, His nature and His character so that *no one has an excuse* for not following God.
Paul argues that God’s eternal attributes are revealed in nature.
In my back yard is a guava tree which produces fruit.
This time of year all the birds in the neighbourhood seem to know that there are fresh guavas available at my house.
What does it say about God when trees produce an abundance of fruit for the birds to eat without needing to plant or water?
When we consider how God provides food for millions of birds every year, maybe we can see God’s loving kindness.
God made the earth to sustain herds of springbuck and impala and kudu and elephants.
AT the same time it sustains mosquitoes and eagles and lions.
Not only is the existence of God revealed, but His nature is revealed as a kind and thoughtful God.
Paul goes on to say that people however ignored what can be known of God through nature and turned rather to idols.
I suspect if Paul were here today he would say, “Mankind is hell bent on destroying the revelation of God in nature”.
Through our greed, hundreds of species are no longer supported by their ecosystems and so are being made extinct.
We are burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and polluting rivers and the atmosphere at an ungodly rate.
Maybe God called us to be stewards of the earth to preserve the revelation He embedded in the natural order.
Where the Psalmist said God leads us beside the still waters of a stream and there refreshes our souls, today we would be hard pressed to find such places, away from the noise of cars, away from the pollution of factories.
People have built walls and erected fences and blocked off rivers and dug deep quarries which scar the face of the earth.
When our grandchildren live in the world we leave them, will it still reveal anything of God’s love and provision?
God wants to be known.
Paul’s argument in Romans continues that God is also revealed in conscience.
Paul says “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
CS Lewis said inside every person is natural law.
No-one ever had to teach you that it is wrong to take someone else’s food, or it is wrong to hit someone over the head.
We had that knowledge written into our hearts before birth.
But we have ignored that voice to the point where our conscience no longer pricks us.
It has become futile.
But when we have chosen to ignore our God given conscience, we are left with no excuse before God.
In Exodus 33 we read of Moses, slightly older and wiser, who is actually living an unusual life for his time.
God revealed Himself to Moses and Moses is sold out in following God.
They come to a place where seeing God at a distance is not good enough anymore.
And so Moses says, “*Lord, you have said I have found favour with You, so now let Your presence go with me”.
*
A line or two later Moses says, “*Lord, show me Your glory*”.
Moses is saying, “Just seeing these fleeting images of You is not enough, I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
Have you ever arrived at the place in your relationship with Jesus when you want to cry out, “Lord come stay with me and never leave.
Show me Your glory”?
Or are we satisfied with knowing God from a distance?
I think the amazing thing about God is that God wants to be known by us.
And yet God said to Moses, “*I will show you my goodness.
No-one can see my face and live*”.
The Hebrew word which is translated “face” also means wrath.
So maybe God was saying to Moses, “*Because you are my friend, I am going to show you my gentle side, my caring side.
But there is another side to me which is a righteous side which gets angry*.”
AS God revealed Himself to Moses, He withheld something of Himself because for Moses to see it would have destroyed him.
We don’t know what Moses saw that day, but for the rest of Moses’ life he experienced the goodness of God’s provision for himself and the Israelites.
He saw water from stones, quails and manna, shoes and clothes which never wore out.
He experienced bitter water turning sweet.
Like the birds of the air, for the rest of Moses’ life he knew what it was to have God provide.
He experienced the goodness of God.
In Scripture some people do face the wrath of God, and the result is that they die.
I’m thinking of people like Achan and Ananias and Sapphira who got on the wrong side of God and paid with their lives.
If we follow Paul’s argument in Romans, no one on earth has any excuse for not honouring God because they didn’t know God was there and that God is worthy of praise and obedience.
But Paul goes one step further.
In Romans 3 he says the righteousness of God can be known in another way which goes beyond everything else, and that way is Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the Word of God, the perfect revelation of God.
Jesus is the answer to Moses’ prayer, “*Let your presence dwell with me*”.
Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us.
Jesus said, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father”.
God has not left us alone, but He has filled us with His own Holy Spirit.
God now lives in us.
I want to take our thinking back to Paul on the Damascus Road for a minute.
The very religious Paul met in person with the resurrected Jesus and fell in love with his saviour.
Religion will never be enough for us.
Each and every one of us needs to come to a place in our lives where Jesus knocks us off our horse and says, “*Will you surrender your life to Me*?”
Moses saw the goodness of God and was sheltered from God’s wrath.
God said no-one can see my face and live, no-one can experience my wrath and live.
But one Friday afternoon 2000 years ago, Jesus hung exposed on a cross with no cleft in the rock to hide away in.
And as He died, Jesus took the full wrath of God for every sin ever committed.
Jesus was exposed to what Moses was hidden from.
The full anger of God was satisfied as Jesus died to take our guilt away.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9