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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Emotion Tone
Anger
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Analytical
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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In life there can be famous people and infamous people.
Have you ever met anyone famous or even slightly famous?
I’ve meet two different celebrities over my lifetime.
During my time in the Air Force I met a number of Generals and high ranking civilians including a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense.
It was fun to meet a famous person.
I add those to the things I’ve done or people I’ve met list.
Other than being able to say that I met them, the encounter did nothing for me.
It didn’t change my life or how I live my life.
I’ve met some infamous people.
I’ve met people that have alluded to the fact that they should be in prison or dead.
The hinted at the crimes that they have committed in their lives.
Some of those people made me wary of being around them.
There is one person that I met who has changed my life and that person is Jesus.
When I met Jesus my life was forever changed.
You can’t have an encounter with God and not come away from that experience unchanged.
Isaiah in our scripture text was transformed by his encounter with God.
An angel brought a coal from the altar of God and touch Isaiah’s lips and said to him:
Before we can understand the transformation in Isaiah’s life we have to know why this event happened.
Isaiah opens this chapter telling us:
Isaiah gives us a little historic context for his encounter with God.
He tells us that he saw the Lord in the year that King Uzziah died.
From history, King Uzziah’s death occurred about the year 740 B.C. Depending on the translation of the Bible you have you find him named Azariah.
They are the same person.
We first read about Uzziah in 2 Chronicles chapter 26.
That chapter gives us some very helpful information about Uzziah.
In that chapter we read:
From that small section of scripture we learn a few important bits of information:
He rebuilt Eloth - this was an important sea-port on the Red Sea.
It had been destroyed by the Edomites but he rebuilt it.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord – he followed his father’s example
He sought after God
As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success
Uzziah in the list of Judah’s kings was one of the good godly ones.
He started off right and was remembered for seeking after God.
As you read through that chapter in 2 Chronicles you learn some more about him.
He went to war against the Philistines, the ancient enemy of Israel.
They lived in that area that we now know as the Gaza Strip.
He rebuilt towns in the area.
Verse 7 tells us that “God helped him against the Philistines and against the Arabs”
Verse 8 tells us that “his fame spread as far as the border of Egypt, because he had become very powerful.”
Verses 9 through 14 tell us that he was a great builder.
He was a great farmer.
He was a great military leader.
Verse 13 tells us his military was “an army of 307,500 men trained for war, a powerful force to support the king against his enemies.”
That was a large army, it was comparable in size to today U.S. Air Force.
He was an inventor, verse 15 tells us “In Jerusalem he made devices invented for use on the towers and on the corner defenses.”
The last sentence in verse 15 tells us something very important about Uzziah.
We read there:
2 Chronicles 26:15 (CEB)
15 And so Uzziah’s fame spread far and wide, because he had received wonderful help until he became powerful.
He had received wonderful help until he became powerful.
Who helped him?
It was God.
Back in verse five we read
“As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success.
“
Until he became powerful.
Until he became powerful then something happened.
In verse 16 we read: “But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall.”
That seems to be a common occurrence.
There is a statement that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We see it time and time again.
In the Proverbs we read:
That word arrogance means “having or showing the insulting attitude of people who think that they are better, smarter, or more important than other people”
I like how The Message paraphrase renders that verse, it says:
First pride, then the crash — the bigger the ego, the harder the fall.
I think that describes Uzziah pretty well because in the following verses we see where his pride led him.
Listen to what happened:
Did you catch what happened to him?
In verse 16 it tells us “He was unfaithful to the Lord his God.”
That led to his downfall.
“King Uzziah had skin disease until the day he died.
He lived in a separate house — diseased in his skin, because he was barred from the Lord’s temple.”
Uzziah started out as a faithful follower of God.
He was obedient to God and did what God commanded and God blessed him beyond measure.
Somewhere along the way he got his eyes off of God and got them on himself.
It came to the point that he felt he didn’t need the priests in the Temple to burn incense for him, he felt he could do it himself.
It was at this point as he began angry at the priests for confronting him that God afflicted him with leprosy.
What often happens when someone is in the wrong and they are confronted?
They often become angry at the person who is confronting them.
Uzziah became angry.
I wonder if things would have turned out differently had he instead of becoming angry had repented then and there.
Of course we’re reading this after the fact.
In the Old Testament law we read this about leprosy:
So for the rest of King Uzziah’s life he lived in a separate house, away from all those who were in awe of his power and might.
Here is a man who had it all, he had everything going for him but it went to his head and he took his eyes off of God and failed God miserably.
It’s into this context and background that Isaiah writes
There is a profound contrast between Uzziah and God.
Uzziah died as a leprous recluse, isolated from his family and all the power and prestige that he had enjoyed.
Its been said that sin will take us to places we never could have imagined and that is what happened to Uzziah and the Jews.
When Uzziah died a refocus on God needed to be had.
When Uzziah last entered the temple he was arrogant and prideful.
He left rejected and ostracized.
In his arrogance and pride he assumed a role that was not his to assume.
When Isaiah saw the Lord, he saw God in God’s proper position.
The Lord was high and lifted up.
When Uzziah entered the Temple he was trying to lift himself up but God struck him down.
Isaiah saw the Lord, he was high and exalted, seated on a throne.
Uzziah thought he was high and exalted but God struck him down.
The train of the Lord’s robe filled the temple.
Uzziah never again was permitted to enter the temple.
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