Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Most of us could tell true stories of our forgetfulness that allowed us to put a book, a casserole, or some other object on the top of our car, and then get in and drive off.

Some of these stories will have sadder endings than others, but it is not likely any of our stories could match that of Paula Horowitz of Amherst, Mass.

The object she absentmindedly placed on the top of her car was a $31,000 violin that was thirty years older than the United States of America.

The Springfield Symphony Orchestra had loaned this valuable instrument to her son Jason, who was the concert master for the local youth symphony.

She put it on the top of her car and drove off, and where the violin landed nobody knows.

Police say witnesses reported seeing and empty violin case by the road, but no violin.

The woman said, "In one minute's carelessness I feel like my life has been destroyed."

She groaned in grief for her loss.

That is rare to bear such a burden because of the loss of a musical instrument, but all of us at sometime will have to groan in grief because of the loss of the instrument called the body.

The body is a wonderful thing, but it can also be a pain and a burden.

There are those who teach that Christians should not have bodily pains and problems, but should always be in a state of ideal health.

All of us could wish this was true, but the facts are, and the Bible makes it abundantly clear, our bodies are a part of a fallen world, and they lead to groaning.

Paul in verse 2 and 4 says we groan in this present body.

The Greek word he uses here twice is stenazo.

This is the primary New Testament word for groaning and sighing because of life's burdens.

Someone said, "the optimist says this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist believes it.

"Paul was one of the greatest optimist of history, but he never believed this was the best of all possible worlds.

It is a lost and fallen world, and in Rom.

8:22-26 Paul uses the word groan three times.

In verse 22 he writes, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of child birth...." In verse 23 he writes, "Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."

Paul is making it clear that we live in a fallen world and our bodies are subject to all sorts of sufferings.

The only was to escape is to get out of this body into a new body which is not subject to all the burdens of a fallen world.

Anyone who promises you a life in this earthly body without burdens is offering you something that God has never offered.

In verse 26 of Romans 8 Paul even says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

Even God enters into the burdens of this fallen world.

We see it especially in the groans of Jesus.

It was a messed up world that Jesus came to.

That is why He came.

It is the sick who need the doctor, and this is a sick world.

But Jesus also got sick of the folly of man, and he sighed under the burden of it.

In Mark 8, right after Jesus fed the 4,000, one of His greatest miracles, the Pharisees came to Him and asked Him for a sign from heaven.

There blindness was more than He could tolerate.

Jesus knew what frustration was all about, and in verse 12 it says, "He sighed deeply and said, why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign?

I tell you the truth, no sign will be given it."

And Jesus left there.

Don't let anybody tell you that a good Christian should never be frustrated with this fallen world.

If it was a pain and a burden to Jesus, it is folly to expect to live without groaning.

We also see a positive side of His groaning.

It is usually a negative response to the negatives of a fallen world.

But it can be a sympathetic sighing.

We see this in Mark 7:34.

A man who was deaf and who could hardly talk was brought to Jesus.

It was a sad sight to see a man made in the image of God in so pathetic body.

It was not the work of art He created.

It was totally defective and flawed.

Jesus was moved with compassion, and verse 34 says, "He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh (this is the same Greek word stenazo) He said to him "be opened" and the man was healed.

There are whole sermons preached on this sigh of sympathy, and we could spend the rest of our message on it, but for now, I am just trying to establish beyond a doubt what we already know.

This is not the best of all possible worlds.

It is a fallen world where much in it is not the will of God.

Jesus felt the burden of it with bodies having lips that could not praise the Creator; with eyes that could not see the wonders of His creation; with ears that could not hear the good news of His love.

Jesus hated what sin had done to this world and to man, that is why He came to die, so that sin might not have the final word, and that man might have the chance to live in a sin free body in a sin free environment.

While Jesus was here in the flesh He, like Paul, felt the burdens of the body with its weakness, defects, and handicaps.

When Paul groaned about his body he was in good company, for Jesus did it as well.

Those who pretend that this tent can be patched up permanently and never wear out are trying to create their own paradise on earth.

But it is a foolish paradise.

The wise Christian will do his best to keep his body in shape, but he will not make this flimsy tent the foundation of his hope.

Those who do are facing inevitable disillusionment, for there are no earthly tents that do not tear and force their tenants to evacuate.

Christians should aim for a life of good exercise, good diet, and a healthy life-style, but they should also recognize that these things are used as a humanist escape from the reality of aging and death.

The Christian has to face up to the reality that nothing man can do can make this fallen world the paradise that only God can make.

Everything made by man is doomed.

Only the God-made body, and the God-redeemed world can be the focus of the Christian hope.

That is why Paul groaned and longed to be clothed with the heavenly body God had for him.

He could have said with the poet Frederick Knowles-

This body is my house-it is not I.

Here in I sojourn till, in some far sky,

I lease a fairer dwelling, built to last

Till all the carpentry of time is past.

This body is my house-it is not I.

Triumphant in this faith I live, and die.

The Christian is not an either-or person: Either a pessimist or an optimist, but a both-and person.

He is both a pessimist and an optimist.

When he looks at this fallen world and these tent-like bodies, he is a pessimist about any man-made scheme to develop immortality.

The hopes of cryonics to freeze people until they find the cure for the disease that killed them, and then bring them back to life, is the world's version of the health and wealth gospel that pretends this world can be the best of all possible worlds.

The Christian is skeptical about all attempts to make this fallen world a paradise.

But he is optimist about the God-made body he will enter as soon as he leaves this tent body of time.

Paul says that when we are clothed with that heavenly dwelling the mortal will be swallowed up by life.

As soon as we die we begin to live as never before.

This tent we dwell in now is a hindrance to life.

We cling to it because it is all we know of life, but it is only when we leave this body that we really live.

The abundant life is possible on a temporary basis even in this tent, but for permanent and persistent living of the good life we need the body not built by human hands.

The question is, when do we get this heavenly body so we can get on with the joy of abundant living where all groaning is gone?

This was the hope of the Old Testament saints: And environment of joy where sighing will be no more.

In Isa.

51:11 we read of this hope- "The ransom of the Lord will return.

They will enter Zion with singing: Everlasting joy will crown their heads.

Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away."

This has ever been the hope of God's people.

When does this kind of life begin?

If we say, as many Christians do, at the resurrection when Christ comes again, we are unconsciously creating a Protestant purgatory.

The Christians who hold to this idea of a disembodied state until the resurrection do not intend to create a purgatory, but that is what they do.

For if Paul groaned longing to be clothed with the heavenly dwelling, and he still does not have that dwelling, and neither do any of the dead in Christ, then they are left to groan and sigh, and wait until the resurrection.

This is a rather grim picture of the intermediate state, and makes it a major disadvantage to die before the rapture.

Paul's whole point in writing to the Thessalonians is to make it clear it is not a disadvantage to die before the rapture, for the dead in Christ will be the first to be raised, and they will come with Christ in His second coming.

But if they have been in a disembodied state for centuries, that does not sound like the ideal.

Patience would need to be the basic virtue for those who died before the rapture, for they are going to have to wait for who knows how long to put on their heavenly bodies.

Paul and other New Testament Christians have been waiting for nearly 2,000 years, and this seems to be a very inefficient plan that makes early Christians suffer a purgatory that the last Christians do not have to endure.

The whole idea of the dead in Christ having to wait for centuries to enter into the heavenly body is absurd the more you think about it.

On the other hand, the more you think about what Paul is saying here, the more logical it becomes that we enter the God made body as soon as we leave this one.

The Biblical evidence for this is abundant.