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
0.42UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.08UNLIKELY
Fear
0.14UNLIKELY
Joy
0.57LIKELY
Sadness
0.57LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.58LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.48UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.88LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.86LIKELY
Extraversion
0.21UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.76LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.74LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Riddles are fun.
I enjoy a good riddle.
I enjoy a good riddle.
There is usually a pun or some twist on a word.
I enjoy trying to think through the different possible solutions until I find the right answer.
So for example:
What is greater than God and more evil than the devil.
The poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you’ll die?
I’ll say it again, what is greater than God and more evil than the devil.
The poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you’ll die?
The answer: Nothing
Yes, they’re a little corny, but you get the idea.
There is a play on words, often times a double meaning, but there is always a solution.
A mystery has an answer.
And a lock has a key.
We’ve been in Galatians 4.
Paul is writing to the Galatians and they are a riddle to Paul.
They are a mystery.
They were first converted after hearing the Gospel from Paul.
They were regenerated.
They were filled with the Holy Spirit.
And then things went haywire.
The Judaizers came in and gave them a false gospel of works and legalism.
In , Paul expresses his frustration.
The end of the verse he says, “… I am perplexed about you.”
Another way to say that is , “I am at my whit’s end with you.”
Galatians isn’t a nice letter, which is interesting.
Which is interesting
I Corinthians was written to a church that was filled with egos, overt sexual sin and overall craziness.
Corinth was not a good church.
And yet, when he wrote to the Corinthians, he began that letter with some nice words, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus,”
That’s a nice intro.
We don’t know of the Galatians having blatant sin like the Corinthians.
But we do know that they have accepted some bad teaching, which is offensive to God Himself and truth.
While Paul had nice words for the Corinthians, he didn’t have nice words for the Galatians.
, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—”
, “O foolish Galatians!
Who has bewitched you? ...”
, “Are you so foolish?
...”
They began by trusting in the work of Christ alone.
But over time, they began to adopt legalism.
What prompted Paul to write to them, was they were embracing Christ and works.
Thinking that our works, our obedience is what gives Christ His power.
Think of the freedom that we have in Christ, and strangely, they are abandoning that freedom to be under the law.
says, they “desire to be under the law”.
That’s a riddle.
The law condemns.
Jesus freed us from that condemnation.
And now they want to go back under it?
They want to go back to the very thing that Christ freed them from?
Do you see why Paul is so perplexed?
They are a riddle.
They are true Christians, but they’ve also accepted some really bad teaching.
So what do we do?
Remember, every riddle has an answer.
Let’s look at Paul’s solution to the riddle of the Galatians.
Open your Bibles to Galatians 4:21-31.
Read Galatians 4:21-31.
The first clue to solving the riddle of the legalism is Know Your Mother.
I know that sounds weird.
It’s a weird first point.
We see this in verses 22-26.
Paul says go back to the Law.
Typically, when we think of the Law in the Bible, we think of:
The Ten Commandments.
Or the book of Leviticus or Deuteronomy.
But really, to the Jewish mind, the Law would have been the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible.
He goes all the way back to Abraham.
God had promised Abraham that he would become the father of a great nation.
But Abraham was no spring chicken.
He was getting old.
His wife was getting old.
They thought they were getting too old for children.
So Sarah suggested that Abraham, take her handmaiden, Hagar, and use her as a surrogate, in order to try and produce a son by their own efforts.
God had promised them something.
But instead of trusting God to fulfill His promise, they demonstrated faithlessness and tried to manufacture it on their own.
Hagar became pregnant with a son, his name was Ishmael.
But God was not pleased with this, and made it very clear that Ishmael, the son of the handmaiden Hagar, was not the son that would receive God’s promises.
God would supernaturally make it possible for Sarah, even in her old age, to become pregnant.
And so, at the age of 90, Sarah became a mother to Isaac.
Abraham was promised a child.
In the Bible everyone wanted to be a child of Abraham, but that was not enough.
Everyone wants to be a child of Abraham, but that’s not enough.
Abraham was promised a son, but not all his sons would receive the inheritance.
Not all the sons of Abraham were promised an inheritance.
Only one son would become the father of God’s people.
Only one son would have the privilege of having Jesus come from his descendants.
So the question isn’t, “Is Abraham my father?
But am I that son?”
How do you know if you’re that son?
That’s why Paul talks about mothers.
That’s why the first point is “Know who your mother is.”
Who’s your mother?
One son was born from a slave.
The other son was born from a free woman.
The free woman’s son, Sarah’s son, was the promised son.
Paul is uses this as an example or an illustration of the Galatians.
They’ve forgotten who their mother is.
They’re living like children of the slave woman.
When all the way down in verse 31, Paul has to remind them, “So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.”
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9