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
0.12UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.1UNLIKELY
Fear
0.09UNLIKELY
Joy
0.63LIKELY
Sadness
0.49UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.58LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.6LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.91LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.62LIKELY
Extraversion
0.17UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.27UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.79LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
God’s Temple
LIVESTREAM
Good morning!
I hope everyone is excited to be here this morning.
Excited within reason, of course.
Once there was a Junior High school with about 2000 students having an assembly in their gymnasium.
For some reason, the teachers gave each kid a glow stick and turned out the lights.
Unsurprisingly, the kids all got a little too excited and started throwing their glow sticks.
In an attempt to stop the hysteria the principal turned on the lights and ran out into the middle of the gym yelling for the kids to stop.
Simultaneously, all of the kids graciously decided to return their glow sticks to the principal at that moment.
One kid got so amped-up that he snapped his glow stick in half and drank the liquid from it, winning himself a trip to the nurses office.
I hope you are excited, but not that excited.
Today we are looking at a bible study by “The Bible Project” about God’s Temple.
A common subject that comes up often in the Old Testament is the temple and the tabernacle.
When Jesus shows up on the scene, He presents Himself as the true temple.
Jesus even taught that God’s presence would come dwell in His followers, which makes them His temple, not just sacred structures in scripture.
To me, it is fascinating to watch how God uses the theme of His temple to show His intent to dwell with His people.
This theme begins on page 1 of the Bible as God structures His creation to show us that all of creation is His temple.
When we think of God’s Temple, chances are the first thing that comes to mind is the temple that King Solomon built, or the tabernacle that Moses built.
If you pay close attention to the design that God laid out for the temple and how it was commissioned, you will be able to notice many similarities to the creation story.
Think about God’s motive.
We recently talked about Jesus saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” Then He taught the people to pray for God to continue to bring Heaven to earth, and for His will to be done here on earth as it is in Heaven.
An overlapping of heaven and earth with divine purpose.
That is where the temple comes in.
God’s temple is the central point in which Heaven and earth meet.
Another way that this is evidenced in scripture is to think about God’s divine image.
God told humanity not to make idols and images intended to represent Him or for them to worship.
Why?
Because God had already made humans in His image.
Instead of a statue for the divine image, humanity is placed as the image of God in the temple.
A living image of the divine creator and king.
In “The Gospel of Genesis,” W. A. Gage states...
The Hebrew Bible is replete with descriptions of creation as a tabernacle which God has pitched, or a house that God has established.
Consequently, the temple of Zion, as a sanctuary that God has established, becomes a microcosmic metaphor for creation itself.
To get started, let’s look at some similarities between the creation story and the temple stories.
1. Timeline
The creation story outlines the 7 days that God used to bring order out of chaos.
He created an ordered world out of a dark wasteland.
On the 7th day, God’s presence fills creation as he takes up His rest and rule.
This can all be studied in chapter 1 of Genesis.
If you turn pages until you reach chapter 6 of 1 Kings you will come across the story of King Solomon building the Temple.
In that chapter, you may notice that it took King Solomon 7 years to build the temple.
It’s almost as if God planned the whole thing!
2. Tohu / Vohu (Wild and Waste)
God brought order to an unordered wilderness.
The Hebrew word for wilderness is “tohu.”
It is unordered.
Chaotic.
The first 3 days of the creation were dedicated to bringing order out of that chaos.
God used that time to build.
When God told Moses to build the tabernacle, He gave him detailed blueprints.
Then Moses got together all of the materials to build the tabernacle.
To me, this is a great picture of ordering the unordered.
God told them how to take a raw, wild piece of wood and carve it into something, overlay it with Gold, protect it with leather, and place each piece in it’s proper place.
Then there was the Vohu.
That is the Hebrew word for waste, or uninhabited and empty.
In the creation story, God spent days 4-6 filling the void.
The earth now had order, next it was time to fill it.
Fill it with light, creatures, and people.
In the temple stories, God told them to fill the temple with the incense, oils, fragrances, spices, and people.
3. Rest & Rule
On the seventh day God rested.
That was the final step for the temple as well.
After all of the other steps had been fulfilled, God’s presence entered the Holy place.
This is what Exodus says happened after Moses finished the tabernacle.
4. Seven Speeches
God kicked off each day of creation with a divine command.
Our bibles say, “And God said...” Day one, for example, says, “Then God said, ‘Let there be light.’”
In Exodus, God spoke to Moses and the speeches open with divine command, “And Yahweh spoke to Moses...”
In both sets of speeches there were also acts of obedience.
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
In Exodus 40, each think God commanded Moses did.
The statement in scripture say, “And Moses did… just as Yahweh commanded Moses.”
In 1 Kings 8, after completing the Temple, King Solomon made 7 petitions to God saying, “Blessed be Yahweh who spoke to my father David.”
These “7’s” culminate in completion.
We have rest (or the Sabbath), the completion of the tabernacle, and Solomon even holds 2 seven-day feasts to dedicate the temple.
5. Repeated Words
There are several repeated words and phrases that also tie creation and temple themes into one cohesive idea.
Some of the words are “completed, finished, work, rested, blessed, seven days.”
After God finished the 6th day scripture says, “and God saw all that he had done, and behold...” That is repeated in regards to the work that Moses had done in Exodus.
6. Temptation and Fall
Then, of course, each story has a tragic disruption where people give in to temptation and abandon God.
Fall from His glorious standard.
If you want to read about each one, they are in Genesis 3, Exodus 32, Leviticus 10, 1 Kings 9:1-9 and 11:1-13.
7. Temple Structure
The seventh similarity that stands out is the structure of the temple and the structure of the earth after creation.
God actually compresses His temple theme into the ancient world’s understanding of the cosmos.
To understand what I mean by that, we need to first understand how the ancient world viewed the cosmos.
If I asked you to draw a picture of Earth, what would it look like?
*Pic1* Most of you would probably draw something similar to this...
*Pic2* I think someone in here would surprise us with something like this...
*Pic3* If you are like me, yours might look more like this...
Regardless of talent, we would probably draw something similar in perspective.
Probably resembling a satellite image of Earth.
However, if you asked someone in the ancient world to draw earth, they would show you something completely different.
*Pic4* When you read the Old Testament you will find that they saw the earth as constructed in 3 different tiers.
At the top was the sky.
When people in the ancient world looked up to the blue sky, they believed there was water behind a dome.
Within the dome, God had placed the sun, moon, and stars.
Above the earth, they envisioned God enthroned in His heavenly temple.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9