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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Emotional Range
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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I Can’t
It is important to know our limitations.
We have to know what we can do.
And we need to come to grips with the things we can’t do.
I can’t fly.
Don’t have wings and I’m not a pilot.
Be in 2 places at once.
Read minds.
Though, sometimes my wife may assume that.
You don’t want me performing your surgery.
I’m not great w/ tools.
Carpentry, electrical, sheet rocking are things you want someone else to do.
I call somebody.
YouTube is helpful.
But we’re all better off if someone else has the tool in their hands.
There are things I can do.
Every one of the things I can do is b/c someone else did something for me enabling me to do it.
I Can
I’m alive and breathe b/c my mom gave birth to me.
My dad didn’t do much for me beyond his contribution to my conception.
She taught me basic cooking and housekeeping skills.
Single mom.
We all had chores.
Sara has taught much more and much better.
I can read b/c Mrs. Goff, my 1st grade teacher taught me.
I can ride a bike b/c my grandfather ran with me.
He taught me to fish and shoot a shotgun.
I can throw and hit a fastball and coach my kids and grand kids b/c John Simon and Jim Deckinger coached me.
Curveball, not so much.
I can fry a frozen patty on a griddle b/c I worked at McDonald’s.
I can tag a newborn calf, bale hay, and drive a tractor b/c I worked on a cattle ranch in college b/c Dale Garner taught me.
I understand the bible and can study it for myself b/c seminary profs like Howard Hendricks, John Walvoord, and Mark Bailey taught me.
I can say w/ certainty I know Jesus and I’m going to heaven b/c Frank and Ann Harris introduced me.
Then, as I’ve had the chance to get to know Jesus better, I realized what I can do now b/c of what He did for me, and you.
This Easter season I’ve been focusing on the roles we play in our relationships.
The most important relationship we can have is w/ Jesus.
He alone makes that possible.
With every relationship it is important to know our role.
We can’t try to do what someone else is uniquely qualified to do, especially if we are not.
Husbands and wives.
Parents and kids.
Friendships and business.
The big questions about Jesus are, can He do it?
Did He do it?
And, will He do it?
B/C, if the answer is ‘no’, then we are wasting our time.
But, the answers are ‘yes’ to all of them.
The events of Easter prove, take all the anxiety out, give us security in knowing that everything is going to be okay, forever.
The possibilities for us are endless.
Not b/c of what we can do.
But, b/c of what Jesus has done for us and will continue to do.
We can be sure that Jesus is Who He says He is and can do what He says He can do because of Easter.
Once we believe that, then there is nothing that can bind us up or hold us down.
Today we celebrate the fact that Jesus rose from the dead and makes possible so many good things for us.
What Happened?
It was anything but a typical Sunday.
It started out like so many other Sundays.
But the grief and pain was palpable among the disciples.
They were grieving the loss of their Rabbi, Shepherd, Good Friend, and Messiah.
W/ his horrible death, they struggled to conceive the idea that their organization would live on.
In their minds, the church was dead, too.
It was customary for women to visit the tomb and wash the dead body and reapply the spices and perfumes.
No one wanted their loved one to offend anyone even after they were dead and the natural processes took over.
So, just after Mary and Mary head to the tomb, that’s when everything natural stopped and things got supernatural in a hurry.
Matthew recorded these events as the Marys recounted for him what happened.
Did it really happen?
So many have questioned the events of the day, beginning with the witnesses themselves.
If the story was made up, fiction, the author never would have claimed women were the first to discover the empty tomb.
Culturally, women were not even allowed to testify in court.
Their testimony was not considered trustworthy.
So, for a woman to be told to go testify to the disciples, the notion was controversial at best.
Have a man be the first to witness.
An important man.
Not even a fisherman or a teenager.
How about a religious leader who visited to tomb to worship there?
No.
It was the women.
Then, there are the guards.
The Romans posted guards at the tomb b/c of the political importance of the deceased and the common practice of robbing the grave of important people.
The spices and perfumes had value on the black market.
The guards were prepared to defend the tomb against another human invader.
They never expected an angelic one.
And, in Acts, when an angel helped Peter escape prison w/out awaking or alerting the guards, all 4 guards were executed for dereliction of duty allowing the prisoner to get away.
Imagine the feelings stirring in the guard as he watched Jesus walk away.
Wow! that’s a miracle.
I’m a dead man.
No human group would have stolen the body w/out the guards dying to protect it.
They knew they would die anyway.
So no sense in not risking it all to prevent the body from being stolen.
We know from the next verses in Matthew that a fake news story concocted by the Jewish leadership cover the truth while they tried to figure out a better story to tell.
They paid off the guards and ran interference for them w/ the Roman leadership.
We don’t know if that saved their lives or not.
The point is, if this story was fiction, it never would have been written this way.
Then, sometime between leaving the tomb and before Jesus appeared to them, they ran into Peter (the fisherman) and John (the teenager) and told them what they found, or didn’t find, at the tomb.
John picked up the story from there:
The one important detail to draw from this is the cloth that covered Jesus’s face was still lying in its place.
In fact, it was neatly folded where his head had rested.
His body was wrapped in grave clothes and they were heaped on the ground like He stood up, unwound them, and they fell off in a pile and he left them.
The head cloth, like a napkin, was neatly folded and placed where his head used to lie.
In Hebrew culture, when someone was finished w/ a napkin, they wadded it up and left it in a heap.
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