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.
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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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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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When our kids were small, the beach was a favorite place for us.
One particular afternoon when Karen was at work, I took two of our kids there to play.
A game of tag turned into a disaster when one of them tripped over a barnacle-covered rock.
She was scraped from three inches above the knee to three inches below, and the blood was everywhere.
She was inconsolable.
The only thing I could do was pick her up in my arms and carry her home to clean and bandage her wounds.
But the one thing I did not seem able to do was find any words to bring her comfort in her sorrow.
All around us, people are beaten and bruised by so many things all at once.
Our friend John said to me a few years ago, “I can see why people go to church at times like these, people want soothing words.”
Maybe that’s true for some.
But that doesn’t give people enough credit.
I don’t think people just want words.
They want a real sense of peace in their soul and a true hope for the future.
All of us know the world is broken.
The truth is all of us, in our sin, have contributed to breaking it.
Our sins against God and others hurt others and ourselves.
Each of us stands guilty for breaking our world.
The first half of Isaiah’s prophecy that we’ve been reading together has been a lot of hard truth.
Because of Israel’s sin, they will be conquered, mistreated, and exiled.
In fact, this is how chapter 39 ends.
So when chapter 40 begins, it’s shocking.
Isaiah 40:1 (ESV)
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
God is telling Isaiah, my people are crying in pain.
Console them.
True comfort, the kind that brings lasting peace and true hope, will come as we are reconciled with God, truly see God just as He is, and put all our hope in God.
Be Reconciled to God
1-8 - When God speaks His final word, it is eternal comfort for His people.
The imagery is God returning to His people.
His anger has subsided.
He has compassion for their weakness.
He is returning in all His glory and He doesn’t want them to be afraid.
He wants to comfort and console them.
1-2 - Warfare ended, iniquity pardoned, received double for all her sins.
The time of discipline and punishment for sins is over.
He is not angry with them, He is not at war with them.
(Who wouldn’t want this?)
3-5 - Cited Matt.
3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4-6; John 1:23, fulfilled in John the Baptizer - The LORD God is coming back, through the wilderness, we will all see His glory.
The wilderness was a literal place through which one would have to journey to come to Jerusalem.
But in this case, it is also a wilderness of Israel’s making because of their sins.
They made the path between them and God very rough.
God will smooth it out.
v. 5 - “for the mouth of the LORD has spoken”, 1:20, then returns to, “the word of our God will stand forever”, in v. 8.
When we speak, we announce our intentions, and it might happen 75% of the time.
When God speaks, His intention becomes reality, every single time.
6-8 - 1 Peter 1:24-25 (see 1 Pet 1:13-25); people are fragile, frail, and finite, we fade and die; when God promises a thing, it will stand forever.
So, if God is speaking comfort to you, forgiveness of your sins, words of reconciliation, take comfort.
God is not like my earthly dad.
My earthly dad gets angry with me for a while, he punishes me, but after he has spent his rage and fury, it subsides or he forgets why he was angry in the first place, and everything is okay again.
This could bring some comfort for a minute.
But it’s not ultimate comfort.
What if he gets angry again?
I never know we’re reconciled for good.
God isn’t like your earthly dad.
When He is done with a thing, He is done.
He is not unpredictable, erratic, or impulsive.
He doesn’t get angry over little things, He takes a long time to get angry, and He doesn’t stay angry after He has forgiven you.
The cross of Jesus teaches us the terrible wrath of God for sin.
Jesus, the only righteous human being, took our sins upon Himself.
God’s anger for our sins was poured in full force on His only begotten Son at His death.
But the resurrection of Jesus tells us that the work is done, God’s wrath has been spent, Jesus has been vindicated as a righteous sacrifice, and God reconciles us through Him.
2 Corinthians 5:19 (ESV)
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
So God is not like your dad.
In fact, He isn’t like anyone else either.
See God as He Is
There are all kinds of ways people see God.
An out of touch old man, a force, an angry dad, the church lady.
But ultimate comfort comes from seeing God as He truly is.
He isn’t like anyone else.
So I need to adjust my expectations of what I see when I look for Him.
Isaiah helps us see God in a way that brings comfort.
Isaiah describes the city of Jerusalem on Mount Zion as a herald of good news, gospel.
We think of the gospel as what we just explained, that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and was raised on the third day for our justification.
What is the gospel Jerusalem preached to the world?
“Behold your God!”
Isaiah 40:9 (ESV)
Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah,
“Behold your God!”
So, Isaiah says that seeing God is good news.
Would you agree?
Why is it good news when we see God as He is?
Because what we see about God is this, verses 10-26:
10 - He is the ruler who uses His power to reward.
11 - The shepherd that cares, gathers and carries the helpless, and gently leads those burdened with life.
12-17 - The omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent One
Isaiah says God is the one who could gather all the waters of the earth in His hand to measure them.
He could measure the heavens with one span of His hand.
He can pick up all the dust and the mountains and the hills of the earth and weigh them out in His scales.
But He Himself can not be measured.
He can not be taught anything He doesn’t know.
If you add up all the people who have ever lived through all of human history and stacked them up, they would not measure up to His greatness.
They wouldn’t tip the balance in a scale compared with God.
In fact...
18-26 - He is the substance of all created things.
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