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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Emotion
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Anger
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I love bookstores.
Especially old bookstores.
There is a bookstore about 10-15 miles from where my folks live that is amazing.
I walk in and immediately I smile.
I smell the old books as I walk through the narrow aisles between dusty covers.
It is great.
I am a nerd.
I realize that and I accept that.
I would rather spend a day in an old bookstore, whitening my skin, than sit on the beach getting blistered by the sun.
When you spend enough time in bookstores, you start recognizing something.
The sections that I like to buy books from are rather small.
And the sections that I would not want to buy books from are rather large.
People either want to buy junk, or they want to buy books to better themselves.
There is a huge industry in self-help: things that we can do to improve our situation.
Nothing against those books or the people who buy them.
But they aren’t really useful.
And, in the grand scheme of things, they aren’t really helpful.
I promised that these sermons would be divisive.
So, there you go, the first divisive thing I will say, but more is coming.
The Christian life is not about bettering our situation.
The Christian life is about serving Jesus in whatever situation we are in.
Let’s read our text.
Before we dive into the weeds, will you pray with me?
Pray
We Are Christians
Let’s dive into the passage.
Paul has just discussed marriage, divorce, and singleness.
He urged the Corinthians to stay married, except in very specific situations.
He then broadens his discussion to politics and finances, urging his readers to serve Jesus in whatever situation they are in.
He first reminds them and us who we are.
We are Christians.
He reminds the Corinthians that they should lives as believers, which means that they are believers.
But, what does that mean?
There are many people who “believe in God” or “believe in Jesus”.
Which sounds nice.
However, when pressed, they cannot tell you what it means.
They have their own personal faith in some deity, but it is not based upon what Scripture says.
These are not the people Paul is referring to.
Other people “believe in God” and when asked talk about what their church told them to say, and they describe all the things that they are doing for God, or should be doing for God.
Because if you are a Christian, a believer, you do those things.
If you don’t, you must not be a believer.
These things could range from attending a specific church, going through specific sacraments, doing good works, tithing, praying certain prayers, etc, etc.
Paul is not talking about these people either.
He talking about those Jesus was referring to in his parable.
A believer has reached a point in their life when they realize that they are a sinner and that there is nothing they can do to save themselves from that sin.
They throw up their hands and echo what the Philippian Jailor said to Paul:
A believer believes that Jesus, the Son of God, died to save him, died to bring him into a personal relationship with himself.
A believer makes the conscious decision to receive Jesus as his savior.
Have you made that conscious decision?
I’m not talking about a daily choice to trust Jesus to guide you through this life.
I am talking about a life-altering decision to change the state of your soul.
If you have never made that decision, if you have never believed in Jesus and recieved him as your savior, you are not a Christian.
You are not a believer.
Even if you have gone to church all your life.
Even if you have completed all the sacraments.
Without that decision, we are dead in our sins.
If we have made that decision, we are Christians.
We are fulfilled by Christ
If we are Christians, we are fulfilled by Christ.
Paul writes:
Let’s go on a time-travel journey.
8000 years ago.
Beginning of time.
There was nothing.
As Moses records:
6 days, God creates everything.
The culmination of everything is man and woman, whom he places in the Garden of Eden to care for it.
God tells Adam and Eve:
The Garden that he created for Adam and Eve to live in was beyond imagination.
God provided everything that Adam and Eve needed.
But, Adam and Eve thought that God was withholding from them something they needed.
Eve looked at the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
They that they needed more than what God could provide.
So they turned away from him.
The act of coming to Jesus in saving faith is the act of saying that Jesus does provide everything we need.
He does not withhold any good thing and necessary thing from us.
In Him, we have the fulfillment of the desires of our heart.
Before him, we sought to fill our life with all sorts of junk that never worked.
Tell me that getting drunk or high makes you feel great the next day.
We use all this stuff to try to satisfy the longing of our heart, when Jesus is standing there saying, “I’m all you need.”
Paul understood this.
He burst out emotionally to the Philippians:
More than anything else in the world, Paul wanted to know Christ.
We want a full bank account, a couple working cars, a loving relationship, and whatever else our priorities say.
Paul says: nope, all those things would just keep me back from the main goal.
Christ.
If Christ is our fulfillment, we can stay in whatever situation we are in, because the situation does not fulfill us, Christ does.
Paul gives three illustrations of this:
Not by relationships
First, Paul says that we are fulfilled by Christ, not by relationships.
This passage is right in the middle of Paul talking about relationships, marriage and singleness.
Everything that he talks about relating to marriage and singleness comes back to the fact: Christ is our fulfillment.
Think about those couples who get married thinking that their spouse is going to meet all their needs.
What happens?
Divorce.
When couples get married realizing that they are married to a sinner who will not meet their needs, instead seek a strong relationship with Jesus Christ, those marriages last.
Paul is able to say: remain as you are, whether a widow, or never married, or married, because our fulfillment in our relationships is Christ.
More on that next week.
There is no emptiness in our life if Christ is present.
Not by politics
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