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
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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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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What do we do with our sin?
Damp problem in house
Tried to ignore - spread.
Painted over it but over time paint and plaster pealed away.
Tried to justify it - not that bad
Until eventually faced with reality.
We had a problem.
I wonder if we are so often to tempted to think of sin in same way.
What sin? live in denial
Self pity?
Whats the point it will always be there
Justify it - its not that bad, look at so and so.
Secracy - if I just keep it to myself, it will eventually go away.
This morning come to one of those passages we want to avoid.
But its a bit of a surprise.
Everything seems to be going so well for God’s people.
Last week we heard them doing victory lap as God brings down walls of jericho.
But this morning we find them confronted with shocking defeat.
Federer beaten by youth
Even if you know next to nothing about tennis, it’s likely you’ll know exactly who Roger Federer is.
He is one of the best players to have ever graced the court.
Between 2003 and 2009, he was in his prime and won a massive fourteen major tournaments in that time, including five US Opens and six Wimbledon titles.
In 2009, he was expected to go all the way in the US Open, as he had done the year before.
He made it through to the finals, in games, which seemed to barely trouble him.
On the day of the final match, he was extraordinarily beaten by 20-year-old Argentinean Juan Martin del Potro, who has never gone on to win another major trophy.
Major upset.
Israel on this glorious journey.
Promised victory.
Enemies trembling wont even fight/.
Jericho conquered without even single fight.
Come to face this little army in Ai.
Not even worth taking whole army.
Not complacency but confidence.
Find themselves defeated - why? Had they underestimated enemy?
Verse 1 we get clear.
Sin is the problem.
Kill your sin!
Last week we saw that God’s greatest desire for us is that we be like Jesus, living in Spirit led, faith fuelled obedience.
But this week we see that we will only do that as we the seriousness of sin.
Sin decieves
Easy to say “What was he thinking” except we can’t claim we wouldn’t be tempted.
Here the are first major conquest, and faced with riches of victory.
Commanded to devote it to destruction.
The city and all that is in it is subject to destruction.
To be a offering to the Lord.
“What a waste.
Whose going to know.
Whose it harming”
Why did he do it.
V21.
Coveted them.
He wanted what was not his, that which he had no right to.
“excesive and wreckless selfish desire for something that belong to someone else - and that someone was God.
Word covert same word used in Genesis 3:6, talking of Eves desire for the fruit - “umbriddled passion for the Lord’s property.
Sin decieves the heart and once decieved the heart, without correction will steer the body to corruption.
Writer shows a pattern common to all sin:
v11 original repeats word also
Decieves.
Decieves Achan.
Get this spiral of sins decietfulness
Begins in the heart - Unfaithful - begins with lie at heart of all sin, that God is not good.
Moves to action: Took v1 - stole what belong to God
Then comes the cover up:
then they lied v11
they hide it v12
Why do we sin.
because we are decieved into believe that God is withholding his goodness from us.
That’s what happened in the garden, and here with Achan, and in every temptation.
Sin decieves us to think we know better than God about how to run our lives, when reality is sin stops us seeing more than whats right in front of our faces.
“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
We are far too easily pleased.”
Achan was decieved.
Faced with treasure infront of his eyes, he failed to see it’s emptiness compared with the life that God was offering him in obedience and blessing.
Whatever sin is our struggle, covertness, lust, selfishness, pride, what does it do but decieve us by tempting us to find life in something else other than God, to find satisfaction outside of his design, and we fall for it.
Again and again.
We sin because in our sinful flesh we want to!
So what do we do.
Like Achan.
Play it down
Private thing
Not that bad
But we need to see this mornign sobering reality.
There is no sin that is anything less that treason against the King of Kings.
Sin kills
Sin kills your relationship with God
What is the most shocking verse in this passage?
Most terrifying verse?
v4 - defeat and Israel losing their courage and melting in fear like enemies?
v15, the threat of being burned?
Or verse 25, the judgement that falls on Achan and his family and live stock and possessions?
No. Writer puts a single terrifying verse right in the middle of this passage.
Nothing more terrifying than thought that God is not with them.
The thought of God abandoning them?
All the way through Joshua, see this repeated promised, covenant promise.
Our verse for the year.
All they had to do is trust Him, demonstrated by obedience to his word.
And as long as Lord was with them, they would have all they needed.
They need not fear, or worry, or struggle, instead they could know peace, and rest and blessing.
How terrifying those words.
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