Sermon Tone Analysis

March 28

Charles Betters / General

March 28

This past week, a date that changed everything for me passed by.

March 28th.

This past Tuesday.

One of the most important days of the year for me...for my wife, Melanie.

Because March 28th is the anniversary of our very first date.

Melanie was a senior in high school.

I was a softomore in college.

We grew up together in the church but our paths didn’t cross very often because I was a couple of years older…and back then older kids didn’t associate with the younger kids.

Melanie and her friends would congregate right over there after church and talk.

Much the same way groups of young people hang out here after church…and so I started to lurk around her group.

Melanie had a boyfriend.

Why she dated him, I will never know.

I had a girlfriend.

Both were LONG term relationships.

Serious.

I played the piano for the choir.

Melanie sang in the choir because she wanted to get as close as possible to me.

I would try not to stare at her like a creep.

So it is 1991, two Saturdays before Easter and we are here at church for an all-day rehearsal for our concert.

A bunch of people went to Wendy’s for lunch.

I figured out a way to sit right across from Melanie and her best friend who is the daughter of one of our deacons.

I looked Melanie square in the eye and I said, I think you should break up with your boyfriend.

He’s no good.

She claims to this day that she was going to break up with him before I offered my loving and caring and non-agenda driven advice.

So she breaks up with him, I had already broken up with my girlfriend.

Such a sad story for Easter.

It gets happier.

Now back then, in the olden days, you had a matter of hours when a girl broke up with her boyfriend to swoop in before someone else would.

Such a sad story for Easter Sunday.

That Tuesday night, I was in my college apartment.

And I picked up this thing called a land line phone that was actually plugged into the wall.

And I called Melanie.

And I had to speak to her Dad first.

Imagine that.

And I asked her to go out on a date with me that week.

As I wrote the directions to her house on a piece of paper, I wrote “this is the one I am going to marry.”

And on March 28 we went to Chi-Chi’s…and then we went to a park…I was a perfect gentleman.

We sat on the see saw…on opposite sides.

And we just had the most amazing talk.

Everything Changed

March 28…a day that changed everything for me.

There was my life before March 28th and my life after March 28th.

Everything in my life changed.

For the better.

And we have moments like that in life.

It could be the first date with a soul mate.

It could be the date of a significant accomplishment.

It could be the birth of a child.

A day when you find your purpose in life.

A date when everything changes.

From that point on, everything in your life can be categorized as before that day and after that day.

Easter Sunday-the Day that Everything Changed

For the Christian, and for everyone quite frankly, today is that day.

Easter Sunday is a date that changes everything.

Easter is a day that changes the way you see the world.

Your priorities.

That which you worship and value.

Easter is a day that changes the way you relate to others.

The way you raise your children.

Easter changes everything.

Because there is the pre-Easter way of living and the post-Easter way of living.

There is living on the wrong side of Easter and living on the right side of Easter.

2 Corinthians 15: What if Jesus Wasn’t Raised

In 2 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul gives us the most detailed defense of the resurrection of Jesus.

He begins with the Gospel.

And from there the verses rise together to a giant crescendo like the last movement of a great symphony.

He tells us that Jesus appeared to his disciples.

That he appeared to 500 others.

But for a few verses, Paul imagines what life would be if Jesus had not been raised from the dead.

He imagines a perpetual pre-Easter world and what that would mean.

Paul said if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead our faith is pointless, our sins remain unforgiven, those who have died before us are just gone, they just cease to exist, that we are wasting our lives, and people should feel sorry for us.

Paul envisions a perpetual pre-Easter world.

CS Lewis called it an eternal winter without Christmas.

ESV

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Paul says if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead our faith is pointless, our sins remain unforgiven, those who have died before us are just gone, they just cease to exist, that we are wasting our lives, and people should feel sorry for us.

Paul envisions a perpetual pre-Easter world.

CS Lewis called it an eternal winter without Christmas.

In other words, Paul says if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead our faith is pointless, our sins remain unforgiven, those who have died before us are just gone, they just cease to exist, that we are wasting our lives, and people should feel sorry for us.

Paul envisions a perpetual pre-Easter world.

CS Lewis called it an eternal winter without Christmas.

In other words, Easter is the whole ball game.

UCONN

The women’s basketball team from the University of Connecticut is a perpetual powerhouse.

They are not only the most dominant team in women’s college basketball, they are one of the most dominant organized sports teams to ever exist in any sport.

They have won 6 NCAA championships.

They were undefeated last year in the regular season and undefeated this year in the regular season.

However…last year they were shocked in the semi-finals of the championship tournament.

And just this past week, the same thing happened again, they were shocked in the semi-finals, losing on a last second shot by Notre Dame.

They are 146 and 2 in their last 148 games.