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
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
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*Immanuel: a sign of Hope and Judgement*
*Isaiah 7:1-25*
* *
I have to admit that this is a difficult time
for us as a family.
Yesterday morning Hedi had a wonderful conversation
On the phone with her dad.
A short while later her brother called back from Paraguay
To let us know that Hedi’s dad
Had been taken by ambulance to the hospital
And it didn’t look very good.
The rest of the day
We basically sat by the phone to await any news.
It appears that he had a massive stroke.
As we continue to wait for news about his condition
We ask for your prayers.
We need your prayers.
And now to my sermon,
I had a really hard time making heads or tails
Out of the scripture lesson for today,
And as I was thinking about the passage
I felt for our Sunday School teachers
Who were preparing this lesson for today,
And are most likely to be teaching this lesson right now…
Incidentally, more than once when I looked at this text
I was tempted to lay it aside
And choose another sermon for today.
But, after reading the text a number of times,
I realized that Isaiah is really trying to speak Hope
Into the lives of God’s people,
And encourages Judah to trust in God.
Isaiah gives Israel the assurance that
/ “The Lord himself will give you a sign: /
/The virgin will be with child /
/and will give birth to a son, /
/and will call him Immanuel” (v.
14).
/
Isn’t it amazing to see how God works?
It is easy for us to say that we trust in God.
Our behavior would suggest
otherwise as we rely on money
or the ability of another person
or some greater human power to help us.
When God says something in his Word,
can we trust him that he will carry out his work on our behalf?
\\ \\ *1.
When you are threatened… \\ * \\ The opening verses give us a nutshell of the situation.
/“When Ahaz son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, /
/was king of Judah, /
/King Rezin of Aram /
/and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel/
/marched up to fight against Jerusalem, /
/but they could not overpower it” (v. 1).
\\ /More of the story is told in 2 Kings.
What we do know is that the northern kingdom,
Israel, led by Pekah,
and Aram, led by Rezin,
wanted to form an alliance against Assyria,
Ahaz refused to join them.
The two kings decided that the best thing to do
was conquer Jerusalem
and depose Ahaz
putting their own king on Judah’s throne.
Then they thought they could
resist the great superpower of Assyria.
\\ \\
Ahaz and all of Judah trembled at the thought.
What do you do when you are threatened by bullies?
Hire a bigger bully to beat them up.
That’s what Ahaz did.
He gathered up the gold and silver of the temple
and sent them to the king of Assyria
hiring him to deliver Judah
from the threat of Israel and Aram.
\\ It was a foolish thing to do.
The situation would have been similar to Poland
asking the Soviet Union to help them
fight the Nazis in World War II.
When the war was over the Soviets didn’t leave Poland
and the Poles remained a threatened people,
a people living in fear.
\\ Fear can force us to make rash decisions.
When we are threatened by seemingly overwhelming odds
we tend to trust what we can see.
God is unseen and to human comprehension so very far away.
Our temptation then is to reach for what we can do ourselves,
or arrange for ourselves.
We will solve our own problems.
\\ This behavior goes against what we as followers of Jesus
say we believe.
/“Trust in the LORD with all your heart /
/and lean not on your own understanding; /
/in all your ways acknowledge him, /
/and he will make your paths straight” (Prov.
3:5-6).
\\ \\ /
Fear and doubt, if we let them,
will rob us of the Lord’s plan to rescue us.
That’s what happened to Ahaz.
\\ \\ *2.
“Trust Me” \\ *God knew of the fear that paralyzed Ahaz
and sent Isaiah to tell him two things.
The first was this: \\ /“Then the LORD said to Isaiah, /
/‘Go out, you and your son Shear-Jashub, /
/to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, /
/on the road to the Washerman’s Field.
/
/Say to him, /
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