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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Anger
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Analytical
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Openness
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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My kids have a special relationship with Katherine.
She’s at home with them every day, all the time.
Whenever they’re sick, hurt, they go to mommy...
There’s also something special when daddy walks into the room… even the dog gets excited
Especially Bennett… he will start to babble and yell DADA just to get my attention.
When catches me looking at him, he breaks out into a huge smile.
One of their greatest joys is to gaze into daddy’s eyes.
One of my greatest joys is to gaze back at them.
1) The best time spent with God will be the time when we simply BEHOLD His glory.
SIMILARLY, Gazing upon God is the most wonderful experience that any person could possibly have.
We come into the world with a deep spiritual longing for the knowledge of God.
We want to know him as he is—in a word, to see him.
Our highest aspiration is to behold the person of God in the glorious face of his Son.
We catch a glimpse of this blessing in Exodus 24.
The chapter began with God inviting Moses to come and meet him.
First the prophet confirmed God’s covenant with his people.
Then he climbed God’s holy mountain:
This episode is one of the most surprising in the Whole bible.
It is surprising because looking at God was supposed to be fatal.
Later God said to Moses, “no one may see me and live” (Exod.
33:20).
Yet here we are told—twice—that the leaders of Israel “saw God” and then lived to tell about it.
They looked at him.
They beheld him.
These men fixed their gaze upon God.
The Bible is well aware of the difficulties this raises because it adds the following editorial comment: “God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites” (Exod.
24:11).
The raising of God’s hand implies divine judgment through some disastrous display of supernatural power.
By saying that this didn’t happen, the Bible implies that it certainly could have happened, and would have under normal circumstances.
Israel’s leaders were in real danger.
A visual encounter with Almighty God put them in jeopardy of sudden death.
Yet the Bible indicates, almost with a sense of surprise, that they did not die.
By acknowledging the danger, the Bible confirms that these men really did see God.
What, exactly, did they see?
Strangely enough, the Bible does not describe their vision of God at all.
Nothing is said about his divine appearance.
The Bible only mentions his surroundings, especially what was under his feet.
And even this was hard to put into words.
Moses says it was “something like a pavement made of sapphire” (v.
10).
The Hebrew word for “pavement” refers to flooring made of brick or tile.
The word “sapphire” probably means lapis lazuli, a brilliant blue stone that is usually opaque but on this occasion was as clear as the blue sky.
Why doesn’t the Bible say more about what God looked like?
Maybe because the elders never looked much higher than the bottom of God’s feet!
They seem to have become most intimately acquainted with the floor, which suggests that they fell on their faces to worship.
They took one look at God and immediately they lowered their gaze.
THE FEET OF GOD WERE SO BEAUTIFUL THAT THEY COULDN’T GET PAST THEM!
THEY FELL TO THEIR FACES BEFORE THE LORD AND COULD ONLY GAZE AT THE GROUND HE STOOD ON
This is the posture we should take every time we come into God’s presence.
He is a great God, and we bow before him in humble adoration.
There’s nothing like being in the presence of God.
Even Moses had a difficult time explaining the floor!! … using words like “AS IT WERE” and “LIKENESS”
SADLY, MANY OF US TRY TO MAKE A LESSER GOD FOR OURSELVES SO THAT WE CAN PERCEIVE HIM.
in just a few short weeks the Israelites would do exactly the same thing, fashioning a god into the form of a golden calf (Exod.
32).
They were not content with the distant glory on the mountain; they wanted a god they could lay their eyes on.
Rather than waiting for God to reveal himself, they wanted to see him right away.
But this was not God’s plan.
God wanted to keep himself hidden from their view, as he often does.
Skeptics often say, “If only I could see God, then I would believe in him.”
But the skeptics have it backwards.
God has revealed enough of himself in his Word and in creation for us to know him and love him.
But his existence still has to be taken on faith, and the gift of seeing him is only given to those who believe.
When it comes to religion, people often say, “I have to see it to believe it.”
But God says, “You won’t see it unless you believe it.
If you believe, then you’ll see! You’ll see me in the person of my Son, when he comes in glory at the end of days.”
Israel’s elders were granted the exceptional privilege of seeing that glory in advance.
God gave them a sneak preview—a glimpse of his majesty.
This was to show them what it means to be saved.
The events of Exodus 24 tell the story of salvation.
Moses and the elders started at a distance.
They were separated from God by their sin.
But then God invited them to come into his presence.
He gave them his word.
He atoned for their sin through the blood of his covenant.
Then he brought them into his presence, where they could gaze upon his glory.
It was a foretaste of Heaven.
In the New Testament, things change, yet they stay the same.
Looking at John 1:18 again, we see that, although no one has seen God, Christ has—and he makes God known to us.
There is a clear tension in John 1.
We cannot see God, yet Christ makes him known.
Moreover, Christ is the Word who was both with God and was God from the beginning (v. 1).
He is also the one in whom we see “glory” (v.
14), a clear reference to the many passages in the Old Testament that speak of God’s revealing his glory.
So, the tension remains.
In Christ we see the glory of God himself, yet we cannot say that we see God in the fullness of His glory.
Seeing God is a matter of knowing Christ.
God cannot be known or seen apart from Jesus.
We cannot “jump” to seeing God if we bypass the only means by which he has made this possible.
There is no unmediated gaze of God apart from the Word, who is the glory of God and who makes God known to us.
To put it another way, Christ is the standard by which we come to see and understand God.
When we look at Christ, we can say, “This is what God is like.”
As Jesus said to Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
As straightforward as this sounds, we often labor under the opposite impression.
Do we not often hold an idea in our minds of what God is like, one formed perhaps from childhood images (as a child I used to equate God with beams of sunlight), hearsay, or some other vague notions we have conjured up?
The question is not what we think God is like, but how God has chosen to reveal what he is like.
This, according to Scripture, is through Christ.
What happened to Moses and the elders is a glimpse of our own salvation.
There was a time when we were separated from God by our sin.
Like the Israelites, we were lawbreakers.
But God atoned for our sin through the blood of his covenant—the blood that Jesus sprinkled on the cross.
Soon he will welcome us into his glorious presence.
Then the longing of our hearts will be satisfied, and we will see God face-to-face.
2) The best time spent with God will be the time when we DINE with Him.
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