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
0.13UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.06UNLIKELY
Fear
0.09UNLIKELY
Joy
0.62LIKELY
Sadness
0.5UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.76LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.26UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.93LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.77LIKELY
Extraversion
0.16UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.38UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.68LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Intro
I am sure most of us today are familiar with all of the long contracts that are put out, especially by big companies today.
They go on for pages and often have a link to an even more in depth document full of legal speech that makes little sense to the average person.
How man of us actually read those in depth all the way through before hitting I accept?
It is a rare thing when a company, instead of telling you how to not use their product by giving that lengthy explanation telling you how to not use it, gives simply urges people to use their product for good.
Their is a software company that has the statement.
May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
At first I thought,
Imagine if more terms of service agreements were written as blessings instead of legal documents.
If we boil it down and really think about it.
That is essentially what Jesus is doing with his disciples.
Compare the pharisees, with their endless lists of rules of what to do and what not to do in order to be holy are like those contracts, full of legal mumbo jumbo.
Not bad necessarily, but full of so much information that you could never fully keep or understand what is there and certainly never actually keep every rule listed.
Jesus though tells his disciples judge not, condemn not.
Do good and not evil.
Forgive others.
Share freely with others.
The analogy of course breaks down if we begin to think of this section as terms of service.
Because we know from scripture that the terms of service are
In a discipleship relationship, we trust in Jesus for our forgiveness, then natural question then is now what?
The previous section used examples of two different ways of life, two different types of people to put forth a question of a decision that must be made.
While the previous section takes up the question of our relationship to means and resources, how we choose to use them and the priority they take in our lives.
This next section of the text brings up the question of our relationship with others.
Jesus instructs his disciples on their relationship with themselves if they are going to follow Him.
Judging, condemning, forgiving.
Jesus instruction to His followers begins with 3 imperatives.
Judge not, condemn not, and forgive.
There is no more forceful way in the Greek language to tell someone to do something than a simple imperative—particularly the second person imperative.
Especially when such a command is given regarding a specific situation, the one giving that command sees himself as an authority figure.
The writer or speaker expects those addressed to do exactly as he has ordered.
That is exactly what we have in these statements.
I want to look at each of these words a little bit closer.
The word for judge is a root of English critic.
It seems to imply a critical, judgmental, self-righteous spirit which judges others more severely than it does itself.
It emphasizes one set of sins over another set of sins.
It excuses one’s own faults, but will not excuse the faults of others
An example of this.
There is a story of one man visiting another.
As they were eating together the visitor told the owner of the home a story.
There were two men in the same city—one rich, the other poor.
The rich man had huge flocks of sheep, herds of cattle.
The poor man had nothing but one little female lamb, which he had bought and raised.
It grew up with him and his children as a member of the family.
It ate off his plate and drank from his cup and slept on his bed.
It was like a daughter to him.
4 “One day a traveler dropped in on the rich man.
He was too stingy to take an animal from his own herds or flocks to make a meal for his visitor, so he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared a meal to set before his guest.”
5–6 The owner of the home exploded in anger.
“As surely as GOD lives,” he said to the visitor, “the man who did this ought to be lynched!
He must repay for the lamb four times over for his crime and his stinginess!”
The owner of the home quickly saw and realized the injustice of the other mans actions.
If you don’t know already, this is the story of Nathan confronting King David over taking another man’s wife.
Nathan responded to David’s explosion of anger was, You are the man!
You can go read the rest of the story in 2 Sam 12, but David makes a key statement in verse 13.
Now, the reason I mention this this morning is because it is an indication of something that I find as a tendency in my own heart—
Perhaps you have the same
That is, the ability to very quickly detect a problem in somebody else while ignoring the problem that I face myself.
Or, in the words of Jesus a little later on in the passage, to see specks of sawdust in other people’s eyes while at the same time overlooking the fact that we have planks in our own eyes.
Now, this brings us to the very core of what Jesus is teaching here this morning, confronting us with the fact that each of us,
if we’re honest, are inclined to discover and condemn the faults of others while passing lightly over our own sorry sins.
This is what Jesus is saying do not do.
Condemn not.
He elaborates with his next word.
Condemn not.
This Greek word means to give judgment against a person, recognize the evidence against him, pass sentence, which is why our English word condemn is used.
We might better understand it in a court setting when a person receives judgment.
A murderer may be condemned to life in prison.
If we study the word and its use in scripture though it is frequently used in relation to innocent people rather than those who deserve it.
The other uses in the NT
Here it is used with the imperative in making a direct statement, a call of Jesus followers to stop condemning others.
This is a direct follow up from our previous verses on loving your enemies.
We should not condemn because we don’t know another persons whole situation.
God does, but we are not God.
These are some of the most misunderstood and misapplied verses in the Bible.
Today they serve as the base of much of American religion.
Some people do not know a single Bible verse—they might not even know there is an Old and New Testament.
But let them feel the slightest disapproval and the King James comes forth: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”
This verse so well loved because judging/condemning someone else is thought to be the most heinous of crimes.
Never mind that they are lifting the verse out of its context and are ignoring other Scriptures that call for Christians to judge and even at times condemn sin.
For example, here in this same sermon which we we get to in a couple weeks, Christ calls his disciples to judge people by their fruits (vv.
43–45).
Paul in 1 Cor challenges them the make moral judgments stating
As disciples of Jesus, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we ought to have a heightened sense of right and wrong and the ability to make subtle moral judgments.
If we are listening...
Jesus command Judge not contains no suggestion of moral indifference or passing on of moral responsibility.
What Jesus is disallowing is a judgmental, condemning disposition,
Frederick Godet who was a Swiss pastor in the 1800s described it in more boisterous terms as judging for the pleasure of judging.”
So while this does not prohibit examining the lives of others, it certainly prohibits doing in the spirit it is often done.
The context would suggest that it is the attitude which fails to show mercy to the guilty which is here being attacked.
An example of unjust judgment was the disciples’ condemnation of the woman who came to anoint the feet of Jesus with oil (Matthew 26:6–13).
They thought she wasted something; Jesus said she had done a good work that would always be remembered.
They had a rash, harsh, unjust judgment.
We break this command when we think the worst of others.
We break this command when we only speak to others of their faults.
We break this command when we judge an entire life only by its worst moments.
We break this command when we judge the hidden motives of others.
We break this command when we judge others without considering ourselves in their same circumstances.
We break this command when we judge others without being mindful that we ourselves will be judged.
The importance of this is seen specifically in the phrase that follows the command to not judge and not condemn.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9