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
0.09UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.09UNLIKELY
Fear
0.08UNLIKELY
Joy
0.6LIKELY
Sadness
0.56LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.72LIKELY
Confident
0.44UNLIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.94LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.67LIKELY
Extraversion
0.12UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.61LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.68LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Introduction:
For this term we’re looking at the Apostle’s Creed, which is a document that comes down to us from the Early Church.
The reason this document exists is that it serves as a summary of Christian belief.
In other words, this document outlines all the essential parts of Christian belief.
Those things that, if you don’t believe them, you’re not a Christian.
The necessary conditions for being called a Christian.
In our first study we looked at what it means to believe, and what things make up Christian belief.
We saw that belief has three parts.
Firstly, it needs to change our minds so we see that what Christianity claims is true.
We need to actually regard the claims of the Bible, and the Bible itself, as true.
Secondly, it needs to change our wills.
It’s not enough to simply think that what the Bible says is true, we also need to let those truths change the way we live, so that we are obedient to what it says.
Finally, it needs to change our emotions.
We can’t simply know the truth and obey it, we need to actually love it, and we need to love God.
He is very much the centre of Christianity, and thus, as Christians, the centre of our lives.
Thus, it is appropriate that we love him.
Then, for the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at God himself.
We saw that the creed tells us a few things about God.
Firstly, he is our Father.
Now, he is everybody’s Father in that he is the source of all being, but there is another, deeper sense in which he is the real loving Father of those who come to him and believe in him through Jesus Christ.
Secondly, he is almighty.
In this sense, God is able to do anything that is logically possible.
He is powerful, supreme and sovereign.
Finally, we see that he is the maker of heaven and earth.
Now, this means that he created all the material reality we see around us.
And we saw that this has one really awesome side-benefit.
It means that everything has meaning.
If God doesn’t exist, and the world came into being in some other, impersonal, way, then everything that happens is meaningless.
Guided by nothing, and pointing towards nothing.
But the fact that God, a personal being, is in control, means that everything that happens is being guided by him for a particular purpose.
What a joy to serve such a God!
Now, this week what we’ll be looking at is Jesus Christ.
If you look at your creed, you’ll see that he takes up a large section of it.
And this is for good reason.
You see, Jesus himself is nothing other than the very centre of our Christian faith.
Even our name, Christian, means little Christ.
What the creed has to say about Jesus can be broken up into three parts:
Who he is
What he has done
What he is doing/will do.
For tonight, what we’ll be doing is looking at who he is, and what he has done.
Who He Is
So, our first question is who this Jesus is.
You say, Dylan, that he’s the centre of the Christian faith.
But who is this guy anyway?
What makes him so special?
Well, what I want to show you here is that this person is God’s Son, and he is our Lord.
So, let’s first see what it means for Jesus to be God’s Son.
I’m going to say up front that this idea is a bit tricky.
It’s not a simple thing to understand the Trinity, but it is a good thing to apply ourselves to every now and again.
To take a look at this, we’ll be looking at John 1:1-4
And John 1:14
So here you see that there is this being called the Word.
This being is with God, and yet is God.
Complex, but the idea seems to be that they are at the same time one beind but different persons.
But then later on we see that this Word is the one who dwelt among us, and here he is called the Son.
Then he became flesh and dwelt among us.
This is clearly referring to Jesus.
And we mustn’t lose sight of this.
This is a big claim, but it’s also awesome.
As Christians, we claim that the founder of our religion is no less than God himself, come in the Flesh.
He is highly exalted, and we should praise him as such.
But the other thing we learn from the creed is that Jesus is the Christ, and our Lord.
Now, I had somebody in Bible class the other week ask me if Mary and Jospeh were Mary and Joseph Christ.
In other words, if Christ was Jesus’ last name.
Now, this isn’t a silly thing to think.
The way we talk about him it does sound like a surname.
But it’s actually not.
To call Jesus Jesus Christ is exactly the same as calling him Jesus the Messiah.
It is, in other words, a title given to him showing that he is this figure the Jews were waiting for called the Messiah.
Now, what did it mean for Jesus to be the Messiah?
What ideas were encapsulated in this?
There are three OT ideas that are included in this idea of Jesus as the Messiah.
The first is the idea that the Messiah would be the son of David.
Now, David is considered to be Israel’s greatest ever king.
He was a warrior par excellance.
He was the one who extended the boarders of the promised land to the extent that they were promised by God.
He was the one who kept them safe from the Philistines.
He was also a man described by God as a man after God’s own heart.
Now, the Jews were expecting somebody from the line of David to come again and reestablish the glory days of Israel.
We see this in texts like Psalm 132:11
Another place is Psalm 89:33-36
So the Jews were waiting for a king like David to come and redeem them.
By the time of Jesus they were waiting for a king to kick out the Romans.
Now, the gospels are full of references to Jesus as son of David.
In the genealogies of Matthew and Luke David is listed as one of Jesus’s ancestors.
But there are other places as well.
For example, in Mark 10:46-48
The purpose of including this is to show that Jesus is indeed this son of David that the Jews have been waiting for.
The second one is the Son of Man.
Now, this is Jesus favourite self-designation.
He repeatedly refers to himself as the Son of Man.
Now, this sounds like a reference to his humanity.
He’s saying that he’s a human being, right?
Well, sometimes it is.
But a lot of the time, when Jesus is talking about himself in this way, he’s actually pointing to his divinity by referencing a figure from the book of Daniel who made up a part of the Jewish Messianic expectations.
This comes from Daniel 7:13-14
So you see, this Son of Man is a figure who approaches God and is given power to rule.
Indeed, he accepts worship.
He is clearly a divine figure.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9