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
0.1UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.1UNLIKELY
Fear
0.09UNLIKELY
Joy
0.64LIKELY
Sadness
0.19UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.65LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.43UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.86LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.95LIKELY
Extraversion
0.27UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.75LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.75LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
God’s Love Is Not Lent, It’s Given
Philippians 3:17 - 4:1
For many people, Lent is a time to pause and reflect and consider their ways and to walk closer with the
Lord and to be found pleasing in His sight.
With that definition, Lent is an everyday practice that lasts all year
long, year after year.
Lent gives us a different way of looking at who we really are.
So, who are you, and what
defines your core?
John Smith was the only Protestant to move into a large Catholic neighborhood.
On the first Friday of
Lent, John was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his grill.
Meanwhile, all of his neighbors were eating cold
tuna fish for supper.
This went on each Friday of Lent.
On the last Friday of Lent, the neighborhood men got
together and decided that something had to be done about John.
He was tempting them to eat beef instead of
fish each Friday of Lent, and they couldn’t take it anymore.
They decided to try and convert John to Catholicism.
They went over and talked to him.
John decided
to join all of his neighbors and become a Catholic, which made them all very happy.
They took him to church,
and the priest sprinkled some water over him, and said, “You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist,
and now you are a Catholic.”
The men were so relieved, now their biggest Lenten temptation was resolved.
Then the next year’s
Lenten season rolled around.
The first Friday of Lent came, and, just at supper time, when the neighborhood
was settling down to their cold tuna fish dinner, the smell of steak cooking on a grill came wafting into their
homes.
The neighborhood men could not believe their noses!
What was going on?!
They called each other up and decided to meet over in John’s yard to see if he had forgotten it was the
first Friday of Lent.
The group arrived just in time to see John standing over his grill with a small pitcher of
water.
He was sprinkling some water over his steak on the grill, saying, “You were born a cow, you were raised
a cow, and now you are a fish.”
It’s not so much what we eat or don’t eat that is important, it is who we are that matters and how we give
ourselves to Christ.
If you really want to give something up for Lent, try not watching your favorite TV show
for 40 days and use that time to pray and meditate on the Bible.
You will be all the richer for the experience.
Lent is a time to remember who we are and who we might better be.
There is nothing wrong with observing
2
Lent by observing certain practices and disciplines - even those that may involve eating one thing and not
another.
What’s critical, however, is that we remember where we come from.
Paul’s letter to the Philippians is a word of encouragement to very young Christians living out in the
world.
In 42 B.C., about 100 years before Paul wrote his letters, Roman generals Antony and Octavian (who
became known later as Augustus, the emperor at the time of Jesus’ birth) had won a great battle near Philippi
during the Roman civil war, which occurred after the death of Julius Caesar.
Having won the battle and with no
further fighting necessary, the two generals found themselves feeding a large army which had nothing to do.
Rather than risk taking that many soldiers back to Rome in the midst of a politically unstable environment
where loyalties could easily shift, the generals gave the soldiers the land in and around Philippi as a reward for
their service.
They were essentially making new homes away from their homeland.
Years later, Paul had planted the Christian church in Philippi and understood the dynamics of different
peoples living together.
Acts 16 tells the story of the conflict that Paul and Silas had with city officials over the
introduction of the gospel into an unfamiliar culture.
It caused a conflict that landed them in jail, from which
the two missionaries were miraculously sprung by an earthquake.
To make a long story short, Paul and Silas
refused to leave; they claimed the right to a fair trial as Roman citizens which caused the magistrates to change
their tune very quickly.
The missionaries were quickly escorted away from the prison (Acts 16:16-39).
It was
salvation by citizenship!
They knew who they were.
When the Philippians opened this letter from Paul, they would have understood that he was indeed one
of them, be they Roman citizens, Jewish converts or oppressed people.
Paul was all of those, which made it
possible for him to make the case, that his example of discipleship and devotion was worthy of following - a
model of purpose and perseverance.
While Paul’s words here may sound a bit self-important to us, we have to
remember that Paul himself is trying to imitate Christ, who is the primary model for the life of faith (2:5-11).
For Paul, imitation wasn’t about flattery, but about faithfulness.
Apparently, though, some of the Philippians had skipped the lesson Paul was trying to teach.
Rather
than embrace the example of Christ, they became “enemies of the cross” through their self-indulgence, gluttony
and by “setting their mind on earthly things” (3:18-19).
Paul reminded the faithful Philippians that their identity
3
was not to be bound up as citizens of a sinful and self-serving world, but to remember that their “citizenship is
in heaven” (3:20).
They may have settled here, but they were to be faithful to their homeland, or as Paul said to
the Corinthians, “we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (I
Corinthians 5:1).
That’s not to say that as the faithful, we’re simply slumming here on earth, biding time until
we go back to our true home in heaven.
How does that hymn go, “The world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through, my treasures are laid
up, somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me, from heavens open door, and I can’t feel at home in
this world anymore.”
If we understand anything about Paul, he surely means we are to live a more prudent and
immediate life.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9