Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Anger
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Conscientiousness
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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We are doing a baptism today.
I hope everyone will join us.
It is important that when a believer gets baptized, our church family is a part of it.
It is a witness and a promise of accountability that is necessary for the believer to grow in faith.
When I was a youth pastor, I took the kids camping at Silver Creek Falls Oregon.
This was a great, beautiful park where you can follow a well-traveled path to see awesome falls.
This was no boony-path that you have to search just to find the flags.
This was a National Parks Path.
I had just purchased a new pair of jeans.
We were broke and so, of course my wife did not want me to have them on –camping.
I promised to keep them clean and then went off to trek the 7 miles of the trail.
As we were walking-we traveled three abreast-so we could talk.
I was close but not on the edge.
I stepped on what I assumed was an animal hole-very small no threat.
It wasn’t an animal hole.
It was the top of where the rain had disintegrated the side of the bank.
When I stepped on it-the ground gave way.
I began to roll hoping to land on the solid part of the path squarely.
The problem was—the path was falling apart all around me.
I clawed at bushes.
They fell out of the loose dirt where the bank was collapsing.
I finally caught my self on a bush that was wrapped around a tree.
I looked down-I was dangling some thirty feet or more above a pile of rocks.
The kids all peered down from the bank at me-I had already fallen 10 feet or better.
I was able to get my foot up on the tree and they had a blanket that they lowered down to me.
And in this way I was saved.
When I got back?
Val was mad that I stained the pants!
We all come to God with stained consciences.
We all come with stuff-problems, addictions, failures, crimes-and in short Sins.
It is who we are when we approach God.
Around the year 30 AD a fiery young preacher came on the scene.
He didn’t gather at the temple or the Synagogue.
He didn’t preach at the city square.
He went to the deserts of Judea.
He dressed in camel’s hair and wore a leather belt.
He lived simply, off the land on locusts and wild honey.
He was probably long haired and dirty.
He was the original hippy.
And he preached a message that had never been heard before.
*/Matthew 3 (NRSV) \\ 2 /**/“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
\\ \\ /*
This was both old and new.
The people had been looking for a Messiah.
They were expecting a liberating king that would set them free, make them rich, give them power and glory.
They expected God to come save them in just that way.
But John had a prerequisite-Repent. Get your heart right.
Change your life.
Give God your best and turn away from the things you are doing-then get ready for God to bring about his kingdom.
Repentance means to change your mind.
You decide to see things a new way.
You change your feelings.
You make up your mind to have a new purpose in your life.
It often comes with difficulty and pain.
You sense that you have been holding on to the wrong things and it often is preceeded by a crisis of identity.
You don’t like what you see in the mirror.
You want something different.
John was baptizing people with their repentance.
They probably saw him walking by and asked-who is this guy?
Oh that’s John-John the baptizer.
*/3 /**/This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’
”/*
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*/Isaiah 40:3 Isaiah 40:3 (NRSV) \\ 3 /**/A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
\\ \\ /*
This tells us that there was an expectation.
Isaiah wrote to slaves living in captivity.
This spoke to people captured and longing to go home.
They expected God to make a highway for them to travel to the promised land on.
The New Testament reveals to us that it wasn’t a highway in the desert
that God needed.
God was using John to prepare hearts for his entrance.
God was calling people to change.
If you want to meet God face to face-you need to build a highway paved with repentance.
Remember repentance is not shame, but it does find its birth in regret.
It is a heart that is freed from the bondage of sin-that is open to the freedom of knowing God.
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*/5 /**/Then the people of /**/Jerusalem/**/ and all /**/Judea/**/ were going out to him, and all the region along the /**/Jordan/**/, \\ \\ /*
*/6 /**/and they were baptized by him in the river /**/Jordan/**/, confessing their sins.
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*/7 /**/But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers!
Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
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*/8 /**/Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
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*/9 /**/Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham./*
So John was a famous preacher.
He was all the rage with the who’s who of Jerusalem.
Only problem for the who’s who-is that John was telling them to repent too.
You know if you grow up in a community of faith.
If you believe the right things.
If you follow the big laws-God should like you right?
John told the religious leaders of his day that they needed to change.
They needed the same baptism that he offered the sinners.
They needed to repent of sinful hearts.
They were no better than the new comers.
Baptism in John’s day represented purity before God.
You were old enough to choose if for yourself
Believer’s Baptism
It came with Public repentance
It was full immersion
And it was intended for new converts to Judaism.
And the biggest stumbling blocks for Old religion is new conversion.
They had always believed and taught the right things.
They came to John for affirmation.
They received conviction.
Obviously this isn’t what they were looking for.
John stirred the pot with the religious elite by telling them to become common just like everybody else.
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