Sermon Tone Analysis

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Good morning Church.

Great to see all of you today.

Always feel special when I get to be introduced by my wife.

She is amazing.

So thankful for the blessing that is her love for Christ and His church.

How has everyone’s long weekend been?

Good.

Awesome.

Many of us celebrated Thanksgiving, followed up with a rigorous day of shopping or a rigorous day of sitting on your couch Or maybe both?

Have any of you done the midnight shopping thing?

Like, wrapping up dinner with driving to the mall to get in line?

I’ve definitely been that Black Friday shopper before.

Last time I shopped hard on Black Friday I’m pretty sure I mainly purchased a bunch of DVD’s and CD’s.

So I guess it’s been a while for me since I really hit Black Friday shopping hard hard.

In good part because most of the last 15 years I was working on Black Friday.

One thing you don’t see on Black Friday deals much anymore, and definitely not Cyber Monday... Magazines.

For those of you that don’t know, Magazines are like a website with articles, and puzzles, opinion pieces and your favorite advertisements.

But instead of having to go online for the website, it was put into a little booklet that came out once a month.

So instead of visiting the website each day and surfing around, getting lost on the internet, clicking around looking for something interesting, the company would send you a “magazine” each month with all their articles, pictures and advertisements in one handy, portable location.

Okay, I get it.

Websites are way handier and it makes sense why the Magazine industry is dying a slow death.

Seriously though, I am a little surprised that when you go to the grocery store, there is still a pretty good amount of aisle space dedicated to… magazines.

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One of the fun things about these racks is that you don’t actually get on the internet, instead you can see options of what you might care about in one place.

Plus a bunch of stuff you don’t care about.

All presented there, things people care about, make your choice.

One thing I’ve come to notice, looking at a magazine rack, is seeing the surprising number of periodicals that are still going strong, and comparing what they’re doing to the influencers, blogs, websites, and other time grabbers.

I’ve noticed that there is a common theme that seems to dominate the periodicals and online stuff.

The theme: Living.

Getting what we want out of life.

Living a satisfying life.

A meaningful life.

Living a long life.

Where you live.

How you live.

And there are a lot of ways that this plays out.

Now, I am not only talking about Lifestyle magazines and articles.

There are many more influencer’s, companies and institutions that are all about living the way you want.

Living healthy, living beautifully, living happily.

Even the political articles are often about living.

What rights do you want to live with, what politics support what you want from life, what we can or can’t do with our money, the state of the world we live in.

Or the survival magazines and guru’s.

They are literally all about making sure that under a variety of circumstances you can stay alive.

Take the gamer’s, or the celebrity gossip stuff, fueling a desire to live elsewhere from our current reality.

We as humans are obsessed with how we’re living.

In the now.

In the future.

Gosh, for that matter, even living in the past.

Look at the massive market of nostalgia related products, there are loads of people who are obsessed with living in the past.

I don’t think this whole focus on how we’re living is a new novelty.

There’s no shortage of evidence that attention to improving one's life has been a priority throughout history.

Whether it’s just surviving, or an effort towards thriving, how one lives is a priority for people.

2000 years ago, someone came to earth and began to challenge what living was all about.

Began to build on the words of some Jewish prophets and writers from years past, claiming not only that the God of the universe was His Father and His equal, He was also claiming that what it meant to live as believers in God was much more amazing, personal, and available, than anyone had ever thought before.

As you likely have guessed, I’m talking about Jesus.

And as we’ve walked through the book of Mark for much of this last year, we have learned about some of the amazing things He did, things that He said, as well as, hearing about the saving grace that would change our lives through His death and resurrection.

Nevertheless, if you could just join me for a moment, as we prepare ourselves for today's passage, let’s put ourselves into the shoes of the followers of Jesus.

Some who are in today’s story, and others who are spoken of in it.

Just days before what we’ll read today, Jesus, the man who had come and made bold claims about Himself, about dying and going to heaven.

The man who healed the sick and performed miracles, taught on how to live life and understand God, told His followers that only through Him can one know God.

That man died.

He was wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit, brutally beaten, humiliated by the leaders of the Jewish temple and others, and eventually, upon their request, murdered on a cross.

We don’t have to wonder if the followers of Jesus were shook up by all this.

Scripture makes it clear that they were.

I can only imagine what it would have been like being one of the disciples, I might be asking questions to myself like “but He said He was Lord.

I thought He said that through Him we would know the Father.”

Was Jesus just a guy that performed amazing miracles and made things better for a time?

He said He was the way, the truth and life.

But now He is dead

I can only imagine the pain, confusion, and fear the followers of Jesus must have been feeling.

The made that had brought hope into to their life, was gone.

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There’s a saying, “death puts things into perspective”.

For these followers, everything they heard and experienced.

Was death really going to be the final word that defined Jesus’ life?

Let’s open our Bible’s and read today in Mark chapter 16

Jesus wasn’t in the tomb.

He had risen from the dead.

Death didn’t get the last word.

Death didn’t put everything into perspective.

Last week, Tyler talked about the death of Jesus being His coronation.

About this section of scripture being the declaration of Jesus being King.

However, there’s more to the story than Jesus rising as King,

He has risen as King, and His first act.

His first act was paying the debt of our sins so that we may be able to have eternal life, joining Him in His eternal Kingdom forever.

The event that caused the followers of Jesus to hide in fear, or at best, openly weep at His side as He died, was the event where He paid the debt for their sins and ours so that we may be able to join Him in His eternal Kingdom with new life.

But how can dying be the path to new life?

Through resurrection.

Through the debt of our sin being paid for, freeing us from our guilt.

And then conquering death, removing for us the penalty to be paid, a penalty that is supposed to be our permanent condemnation.

And then, having taken our own sins upon Him, He did what we could not have done.

Having paid our debts, He then rose from the grave.

He satisfied the debt of our sins and then came back to life, to be with us.

The death and resurrection of Jesus was not only His coronation, the death and resurrection of Jesus are the most foundational events of all of the Bible.

Through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, everything the Bible says becomes true.

Through this everything becomes eternally meaningful.

Everything that Jesus said and did becomes alive in the lives of believers, forever.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians

If Christ has not been raised we might as well buy into those magazines and influencers.

Click often on the life changing pieces of advice advertised on Instagram, eat up that juicy celebrity gossip, give into those sins that bring pleasure and worldly benefit, buy that lottery ticket to make your fantasy life come true.

Cause if Christ is not raised, then the Bible is just advice, history, and stories about a guy who made a difference for a time in people's lives some 2,000 years ago in Israel.