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
0.09UNLIKELY
Fear
0.07UNLIKELY
Joy
0.6LIKELY
Sadness
0.45UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.47UNLIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.17UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.89LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.68LIKELY
Extraversion
0.1UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.82LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.72LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Intro
Where do you start when you tell people about Jesus?
Imagine you have made a new friend at work or school and you’re chatting about life and the opportunity to talk about your faith comes up.
They say: “You’re a Christian right?
Why do you believe all that stuff?”
“Well...”
Where do you go from there?
I’m sure many of us have had experiences where we get stumped when the crunch moment comes!
How far back do you go?
Where do you start?
Start talking about the authenticity of the bible, no, no no, we need to go back further and talk about the church being founded on eye witness testimony...
...but then you go back further to what Jesus actually said and did
...but in or to understand that you have to go back to the exile, and then the Law & promised land
...but to understand that you have to go back to Abraham and the forefathers,
...but to understand that you have to go back to Creation and fall… and so on!
But then how do you crunch all that down into manageable pieces to you can communicate the Gospel clearly?
It’s even a challenge for the most gifted evangelists to communicate the epic story of redemption through Jesus Christ in bite size amounts.
This is also the situation for even those who lived with Jesus, those who saw his life, death, burial and resurrection!
The Apostle John, who wrote this book that we are looking at today, he was trying to help people believe in Jesus and receive eternal life.
He had to start somewhere!
He had to make editorial decisions about what he would leave out!
He couldn’t fit it all in!
He tells us as much at the end of the book where he summarizes everything he wrote:
So this book that we call the Gospel of John was written so that you can believe that Jesus was the anointed one of God.
It helps people who don’t believe in Jesus to hear about Jesus and have faith in him.
It helps newer disciples to grow in their faith, love and knowledge of Jesus.
It helps mature Christians to keep their faith on track with the true Jesus.
And all this belief, all this faith, has the goal of having Life!
What a wonderful reasons to write!
TO help people have live - new life, eternal life.
To do that John gives us a kind of biography of Jesus’s life called a Gospel.
These are not a strict blow-by-blow account, but a structured account of historical events that lead you to believe in Jesus.
We call these biographies “Gospels” which means “Good News” - This book is the Good News about the life death burial and resurrection of Jesus as recorded by John.
If you have read the other Gospels in the New Testament, you will see that the Gospel of John stands out for being a slightly different style.
The other three all seem to quote each other a fair bit, and are structured in a similar way, where as John does his own thing.
As we shall see over the coming weeks, John has written in this way to show different aspects of the Gospel of Jesus.
He brings themes and ideas to the front that are sometimes in the background with the other Gospels.
John the Apostle was there with Jesus.
He saw him.
He walked with him.
He shared meals with him.
He was taught by Jesus.
He was a witness to everything.
But now he wants to share what he has seen and heard and knows.
But where is he going to start?
He is he going to set the scene for us?
With a prologue.
That what these first 18 verses are traditionally called.
It is a prologue to what is to come.
It sets the stage.
Many of the ideas and themes that are introduced in this passage will come up again in future chapters.
So whatever we gloss over here, we have a opportunity to cover it again in greater detail in coming weeks.
So how does this prologue set the stage for the book?
I’m suggesting that this passage answers 4 stage-setting questions for us.
v1-18 will answer 4 questions that will get us in the zone for everything else to come.
1.
Who is this book about?
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9