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.
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Anger
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Analytical
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Anger
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Intro and Text
When was the last time you read the Bible or heard a sermon and got mad?
Not annoyed at the preacher, but angry because of what God said?
Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC has frequently said that if you your god always agrees with you, it is not God you are worshipping but yourself.
If we truly worship an infinite, all knowing, all powerful God who exists beyond the space and time we inhabit, we should not be surprised if this living God frequently disagrees with us.
And, of course, when that happens, we are the ones who are wrong.
So, has God disagreed with you lately?
In the first century, most Jews, especially those who lived along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, studied scripture more than we can probably even fathom.
All of them had memorized the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Dueteronomy).Most of them had memorized all of the Psalms and many of the prophets.
Many had memorized all the historical books of the Old Testament and a few had gone so far as to memorizes the opinions of great teachers about each of these books and various interpretations of the Torah.
They know the Bible better than we can even imagine in our day.
And they were all pretty sure they knew who was a part of God’s people and who was not.
And then Jesus came along and… well… we should probably read the story before we get any further.
As we did last week, I invite you to stand for the reading of God’s word as would have happened in the Synagogue in Nazareth.
Let us pray first for God’s blessing on the reading of his word.
Our Lord and our God, now as we hear your Word, fill us with your Spirit.
Soften our hearts that we may delight in your presence.
Sharpen our minds that we may discern your truth.
Shape our wills that we may desire your ways.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
L: This is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!
P: Praise to you, O Christ!
What was Jesus’ sermon about?
Something happens in Jesus sermon that sets off the crowd in the Synagogue.
We see their anger already in verse 22 where some are trying to discount Jesus.
He is just Joseph’s son after all.
They remember when he was a little toddler, his awkward gangly teen years and so many other stories of this man.
They want to ignore what he is saying.
He has offended in some way and so they want to write him off.
But what did Jesus actually say in this sermon that was so offensive to the people that they wound up trying to throw him off a cliff?
Luke gives us a little bit of clue in how Jesus responds.
Our first clue is not one you will notice in your NIV or ESV Bible.
If you can read some Greek or have a program to help you translate it, you could figure it out though.
This is how I translated the text when I looked at it a few weeks ago:
“All bore witness to him and were astonished at the words of grace that came from his mouth.”
Or, you could look at NT Wright’s translation of the New Testament which you should trust much more than mine.
He translates verse 22 this way:
“Everyone remarked at him; they were astonished at the words coming out of his mouth — words of sheer grace.”
It’s all about how you translate the word charis, which means grace.
It is in what is called the genitive case which means it is modifying the word “words.”
It could either mean Jesus spoke words of grace that is gracious words or words about grace.
Given the rest of the story, Jesus speaking about God’s expansive grace seems more likely to get people worked up and angry than Jesus speaking really eloquently would get them worked up.
If this is the case, then the rest of the story begins to make sense.
The second clue is that the people are upset Jesus isn’t doing miracles like he has done other places.
Somehow they are not getting his best or they feel shortchanged.
Other people are receiving things from Jesus they want.
Third, Jesus tells two stories about God’s grace being shown to foreigner.
He tells the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath first.
This is a fascinating a story.
We read about in 1 Kings 17. Elijah prophesies that God is going to bring a famine on Israel for their disobedience.
No rain falls for 3 1/2 years.
The creek Elijah is living by dries up so God tells him to go to Sidon, which is outside of Israel, their enemies.
So he goes.
When he gets to Zarephath, he waits by the well and a widow comes by.
She is gathering sticks.
he asks her for some water and food.
She says she is gathering her sticks to make a fire, bake the last of her flour into bread, eat it and die.
Elijah persists.
She makes the bread for him, he stays with her, and she never runs out of flour or oil for the entire famine.
The famine goes on for more than 3 years.
Lots of people died from malnutrition.
Lots of people in Sidon.
And lots of people in Israel.
But Elijah wasn’t sent to a widow in Israel to save her, but to this gentile, heathen woman to save her and her family.
It’s hard to think of an easy contemporary comparison because our nation has been the biggest global power for all of our lives.
Israel was almost always a minor power, threatened by major empires and other minor kingdoms alike.
And Jesus is pointing out how God cared more about their enemies during a famine than them.
I guess we could imagine how we would feel if we lost the cold war through some violent conflict like could have happened in the Cuban Missile crisis.
How would we feel if someone started bragging about how God delivered a Russian widow when we know many many Americans had been killed.
We might feel a little angry...
But Jesus isn’t done. he takes it one step further in the next story.
The story of Namaan.
Namaan was a general for the nation of Assyria who had leprosy, a terrible disease than always led to death.
Which seems fitting because Assyrians were terrible people.
Their empire was one of the cruelest and most violent of the ancient world.
Their kings often bragged about fields littered with corpses and cities burned to the ground.
One king, Shalmaneser III, is well known for depicting torture, dismembering, and decapitations in disgusting detail on big stone panels.
As Erika Bleitreu says, the Assyrian history is “as gory and bloodcurdling a history as we know.”
And Namaan is one of their generals.
One of the people who got promoted for the fields littered with corpses and the people dismembered.
And Jesus highlights that God chose to heal Namaan of leprosy and not any of the lepers in Israel at the time.
It would be like bragging about how God healed the general who killed all your family.
It is deeply shockingly offensive.
Two stories.
Both pointing to God’s grace being shown to undeserving gentiles and not to the Jewish people.
Grace for the Outsiders
I think it is pretty safe to assume Jesus’ sermon was all about how his mission was not just to bring good news to the poor Jewish people, but to people of all nations.
He would set not only their people free, but all people free.
He would make right not only the things done wrong to the Jews, but even the the wrongs they had done to others.
It was some sort of casting of the vast vision of God to redeem and rescue and restore not a single people but the entire world.
But to these Jewish believers, passionate in their love of scripture, devout in their pursuit of God, this message did not fit their preconceived notions of God.
They knew it was wrong to even associate with Gentiles, how could God be planning to include them in his people.
They knew those sinners were rejected by God, how could God redeem those kinds of people.
They thought they knew the extent of God’s grace.
But it was bigger.
They didn’t God’s grace to include their enemies.
So, my first question for you today is who do you struggle to include in the grace of God?
Jonah refused to go to Nineveh because he knew God would have mercy on the people if they even repented a little.
He wanted to see them punished.
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