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.
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What makes the world go ’round?
have you ever ask yourself that question?
In our global economy, many people would say that money makes the world go ’round.
How else can one explain our obsession with the stock market and the federal manipulation of interest rates?
Some might say that power makes the world go ’round.
That might be why two smart men would spend 5.7 billion dollars each trying to be elected President.
A job, mind you, that pays $400,000 a year!
Hunger for recognition and status is in our blood stream.
For a growing number of the world-wide pornography peddlers, sex, at least a perverted version of it, makes the world go ’round.
Pornography is now a 13.3 billion dollar business.
Porn web sites draw 72 million visitors a month.
John Wesley, had a better idea.
He believed that love could make the world go ’round.
Love, for John Wesley, meant undivided devotion to God and abiding respect for people.
“This love,” said Wesley, “we believe to be the medicine of life, the never failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of the human race.
This religion we long to establish in the world, a religion of love and joy and peace.”
Wow - what if Wesley was right?
When I was a Youth Pastor, it was difficult to follow the kids' latest love interests in my youth group.
Some teenagers fall in and out of love every time the wind blows.
In our culture, love is treated as an emotional event among adults.
I see people who go from one relationship to the next to the next without any type of commitment.
The thought seems that if this relationship doesn't work out, then there will be someone new out there.
When we approach a passage of scripture like we're facing today, it might be easy to look at what John is writing in a very superficial manner, much like we hear about love out in the world today.
Love is a concept that John feels is fundamental and a concept that he wants to grasp.
In this short letter, he uses some form of the word love 43 times.
32 of those times are in this brief section down through chapter 5 verse 3. It is an important topic to slow down and see why John felt it was so important to write about.
This importance that John is placing on love is grounded in the words of Jesus.
In the Gospel passage that was read to us from John earlier, we heard again about the vine and the branches.
Jesus, in that passage, was speaking about the connection of the branches, which means us to the vine, which is Jesus.
Out of that connection that Jesus spoke about is the production of fruit.
In our backyard when we lived in Virginia was a grapevine.
It was there when we bought the house.
The prior owners had put up an arbor thing for it to grow on.
Over the years before us moving there, it had been neglected, and it ran all along the fence that separated our yard from the neighbors.
I knew and still know nothing about grapevines and such.
The only thing that I did know that if I didn't trim that vine back, it would take over the entire back fence and grow up into our neighbor's trees.
I watched it the first year, and it did not produce hardly any grapes, and they weren't worth eating because they were few and were puny.
That grapevine put all of its energy into growing its branches as it took over.
The following year I got my pruning shearers out.
I began to cut away at that wild vine and brought it down to a manageable vine with a few select branches.
That year it looked pretty much dead after I got done with it because I went radical in trimming it back.
The following year something happened.
I trimmed it a little to keep it on the arbor, but it produced grapes.
They weren't the greatest grapes in the world, pretty sour if I remember, but that old grapevine did what it was supposed to do.
I learned from that mess of a grapevine that when the branches ran off and grew further and further from the trunk of the vine that they were not producing any grapes, they were just growing further from the main vine.
I learned through that experience that there had to be a closing connection of the branches with the main trunk of that grapevine.
I believe that is what Jesus is speaking to use in that passage about Him being the vine and us being the branches.
There has to be that close connection.
The basis of that connection is love.
That love originates from the Father because God is love.
It's a part of his very nature.
Listen to these words of Jesus in John 15:9-13:
To understand Jesus' words here is to know that this love is grounded in that connection that we have with Jesus.
There is a genuine danger in our culture today to not be grounded or be connected with Jesus.
People will claim the tag of being a Christian without genuinely following and being obedient to Jesus.
There is a lot of options out there regarding spirituality.
Many people run from one experience to the next, looking to satisfy a felt need in their life.
Some people buy into the idea that if I do this and this, I'm good to go with my relationship with God.
Some teachers and preachers write and sell books that teach if you just implement their principles into your life, you'll be set for life.
The potential problem with those solutions to living the Christian life is that we must be grounded in Christ through His Church.
There are churches out there that are proud of the fact that they are independent churches.
Their point is that they are not part of any denomination.
The thing is that there are no genuinely independent churches because if they are a true church, then they are serving the head of the Church, Jesus.
The same is true of Christians.
You can't be an independent Christian because to truly be a Christian means that you are connected to Jesus.
You are grounded in your faith through Jesus through His Church.
Jesus said in this passage, "Now remain in my love."
This is very important.
Jesus isn't giving us a list of do's or don'ts.
I was one of those people that had a hard time understanding God's love for me when I was growing up.
My view of God was that He was harsh and that if I stepped out of line, He was just waiting to punish me for even the smallest infraction against Him.
It took me a long time to come to the realization that God loved me in spite of myself.
When I finally realized the extent of God's love for me, I experienced the love that John wrote about – "perfect love drives out fear."
To remain in Jesus' love is not a struggle on our part to do this or that because the love is Jesus' love.
It's about a living relationship each day of our life of abiding in Jesus' love.
I hear people say that they wish that they were closer to God.
I say that it starts with the relationship of living in His love, receiving from Him what He freely gives us.
We can't ever hope to have a close relationship with Jesus if we are not living in His love.
Remember that love here is not just an emotion.
It is an action.
It's doing everything that we can to live a life that pleases Jesus because of the love that Jesus has for us.
Jesus told us that he had a new command.
He said:
That verse is easier to understand since we're on this side of the cross.
When Jesus spoke those words, He hadn't yet gone to the cross.
When he said to "Love each other as I have loved you" he was still walking with them daily.
How did Jesus demonstrate his love for them before the cross?
The biggest way that I see Jesus demonstrating His love to his disciples was that he accepted them where they were when He called them.
We often want people to clean up their lives before we invite them to Jesus.
Jesus is telling us to love as he loved.
It was out of his love that people came to be followers of His and became instrumental in spreading the good news.
Do you remember the story of Zacchaeus?
Did Jesus ignore him or reject him because he had a bad reputation as a tax collector?
No, Jesus invited himself to go to Zachhaeus' house for lunch.
Remember the woman who was caught in an adulterous relationship?
The law demanded that she be stoned for her sin.
Jesus instructed her to go and to stop sinning because, just like the men who were condemning her to death, they all had sin in their lives.
Remember the woman that Jesus meet at the well?
Here was a woman who had made lots of bad choices in life.
Did Jesus avoid her? Did Jesus condemn her? No, he lovingly invited her into a relationship with the Messiah.
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