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
0.11UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.13UNLIKELY
Fear
0.11UNLIKELY
Joy
0.6LIKELY
Sadness
0.44UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.47UNLIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.52LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.88LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.91LIKELY
Extraversion
0.3UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.89LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.72LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Have you ever had one of those a-ha kind of moments?
You know what I am talking about.
They can be small kind of moments, like when you get a joke that may or may not be funny.
A farmer went out in his field and watched the sun set.
He stayed there all night pondering where the sun went, until finally it dawned on him.
The a-ha moment can be small, or it can be absolutely huge.
I mean one of those moments that is life changing, and defining.
After it happens, you are never the same again.
When I went to college, I was going with the intent of being a Christian counselor.
One night my roommate asked me why I wasn’t going into the ministry.
I didn’t have an answer for him, so I began praying about it.
I didn’t dare ask for a sign, but I got one anyway.
That year, on Easter Sunday, I found my confirmation video.
I had not seen it in six years, and did not remember it.
Threw it in the VCR, and there is this dorky looking seventh grader standing next to his pastor.
And the pastor addresses the congregation, “We have someone up here practicing to be a future pastor.”
And the rest is history.
In our Gospel lesson for today, we see one of those kinds of moments.
It may not seem like that big of a deal, but if that is the case it is only because it is something that is so familiar to us.
But it is worth it to let these words hit us all over again, because they are powerful, and they mean that we will never be the same again.
Jesus is the Son of God.
That is how mark begins his gospel.
“This is the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.”
No story of his birth.
No list of his ancestors.
Boom.
We jump with both feet right into the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.
But before we see him working, we are told right up front who Jesus is, the Son of God.
And then Mark moves right along to prove it for us from the get go.
Matthew and Luke begin by telling us how Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
John begins by telling us that the Word, that is Jesus, was made flesh and lived among us.
But Mark tells us that Jesus is God’s son and then shows it to us with the next scene.
He sets the stage with John the Baptist.
John is out in the wilderness baptizing with a baptism of repentance and preaching a brief sermon.
“Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am – so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals.
I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” Enter Jesus, and without any explanation Mark tells us that Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Ok.
Hold on a moment, Time out.
What is up with that?
I mean Jesus is perfect and sinless right?
This is told to us throughout the Scriptures.
The author of the book of Hebrews tells us that he was tested or tempted in every way that we are, only without sin.
We know that Jesus is God in the flesh, so there is no way that he can be sinful, so why is he being baptized with a baptism of repentance?
That is a great question.
I am glad that you asked.
Pastor Hinchey will be more than happy to give you the answer as you leave today.
We often talk about how Jesus took our punishment upon himself when he died on the cross.
He took our place, and the punishment that your sins and my sins deserve, Jesus took.
The other side of this coin is that Jesus also lived the perfect life that God requires.
If life were a test, then you would only get one shot, and one wrong answer would be a failing grade.
We are all in a lot of trouble.
But Jesus lived that perfect life.
If you look at the history of God’s people in the Old Testament, everywhere that they messed up, Jesus did it right.
And so the same applies to you and me too.
So we get to have his test score so to speak.
And that is what is happening here.
It can be easy to talk about sin almost as if it were an annoying splinter that did little more than cause irritation.
But sin is much more serious.
The Scriptures tell us that sin makes us spiritually dead and enemies of God.
We can do more spiritually than a corpse can do on its own.
This means that we cannot even repent of our sins on our own.
We need help to do even that.
And so we see that in Jesus.
Jesus is not being baptized because he needs to repent, he is being baptized because we need to repent, and in this he helps and enables us to repent too.
Now that is a pretty big deal.
That is a pretty good a-ha moment.
But after that an even bigger one comes.
As Jesus is coming up out of the water he sees the heavens torn apart and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove one him.
The heavens don’t just open up like a door.
They are torn open in an act of God.
In Jesus God has come down to save and redeem his people.
He has come to bring them back to himself, and he does this through Jesus who is both God and a human being.
The heavens are open.
The Spirit descends like a dove and a voice from heaven says, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
It is almost as if Mark is giving us proof of the identification that he identified Jesus with in the first verse.
Jesus is the son of God, but you don’t have the take my word for it.
Check this out.
Jesus is God’s son, and here God shows and tells us that that is the case.
So in the baptism of Jesus we see that he is the son of God and that he is living the perfect life that God requires in our place.
A-ha.
This is awesome.
Because, since this is the case life will never be the same again.
Now perhaps you don’t believe me, but consider this.
Jesus is who God says he is.
God is correct.
He is not wrong.
We are who God says that we are.
The baptism of John was one of repentance.
The baptism of Jesus is one with the Holy Spirit.
At some point in your life, you were held over a font, and water was poured over your head and you were baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
At that moment you were named as a child of God.
His own dear son or daughter, and that is a source of identity that will be with you your whole life.
It is all too easy for us to identify ourselves by the things that we do or the relationships that we have.
I am a husband and a father.
I am a pastor and a student.
I am a son and a brother.
I am a member of this club or that place.
And yet those ways of identification can give us a false picture of who we really are.
They can cause us to think that our value and worth comes from the way that we connect to others and the things that we do.
When we see things from this perspective it is all too easy to believe the world when it tells us that we are good enough.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9