Sermon Tone Analysis

Outline

Jab 1

Shocking.

Misery loves company.

Suffering brings us together.

It creates bonds that don’t get formed any other way, for example...

Jab 2

Top Gear to Grand Tour

I’ve brought up my enjoyment of the British car show Top Gear...

I haven’t gotten interested in the series since they replaced the cast.

There was something about the original.

19 years of misery.

motorcycles across Vietnam, building a convertible mini van, hospital trips, break downs, trips across Africa in station wagons…suffering.

They never act like they like each other, on the show or off.

When Jeremy made a huge error in judgement and the BBC chose to discontinue his contract, Richard and James went with him.

They made a new show.

Suffering brings a loyalty and unity, one more example...

Jab 3

Enchanted Forest

Kelly and I went many times over the years.

Hiding and jumping, laughing and running.

That said, overall, Kelly and I loved one another…but did not get along.

We (at least I) didn’t seek opportunities to hang out.

No trip meant more than one taken in 1996.

I had just graduated high school.

Kelly was about to be a sophomore.

Jab 2

We had just gotten the word that our parents were splitting up.

Vows had been broken.

Security had been shattered.

Every plan we had for our future, every dream of holidays with grandma and grandpa Hart in the home we grew up in someday when we had kids was gone.

So I picked Kelly up and we drove to Salem.

We played.

We laughed.

We grabbed ahold of childhood firmly with both hands and made a choice to walk this road together.

Suffering changes a relationship.

I hate what Kelly and I went through.

I love the result.

Transition

Immanuel.

God With Us.

God ate with us.

He desires fellowship with us.

God learned with us.

In Christ, God experienced all that makes us human.

He grew, and learned, and became like us, so he could identify with us.

Or as Hebrews puts it:

Heb 4:

Beyond that, as we remember the incarnation, as we examine what it meant that God became “Immanuel”, God With Us, he took an additional step and suffered with us.

He wrote the story, he could have planned it so he was raised in security and comfort, chosen disciples who would be nothing but faithful, or simply avoided incarnating all together, and just started over with a new race of creatures who would not choose sin, and would never need a savior.

Yet because of his great love, for the glory of God, Jesus dwelt among us, suffered, hurt, and ultimately died on our behalf.

As we celebrate a baby in a idyllic manger scene, may our joy be all the more full, our wonder all the more enhanced, and our hearts be all the more moved to the love and glory of God to live fully for him as we look beyond the manger and into the way that God, Immanuel, suffered with us.

Isaiah 53:4

Pray

Jesus suffered (like us)

Jesus Suffered Physically

Illustration:

Physical pain is a common experience for all of us.

From the growing pains of adolescence, to the annoyance of chapped lips or a stubbed toe.

By simply being alive, Jesus had to endure the same physical pains and aches we do.

His journey to the cross would be much worse.

Isaiah

Explanation

One of the first elements I wanted to know about when I started here was what we did for Good Friday.

While Christmas and Easter are celebrated universally, apart from the experience of Good Friday, it’s all fluff.

The man Jesus was put to the ultimate in torture and trauma that Friday.

The greatest physical pain you have experienced, he’s been there.

There are some sects and cults which believe that Jesus did not feel any of that pain, that he withdrew into the God side of his being and it was like all of that torture was happening to a lifeless puppet.

This is in direct contradiction to anything in scripture.

But as we knew well, suffering is more than pain...

Hebrews 2:9-

Jesus Suffered Emotionally

Illustration

Transparent moment.

I cried a little when I wrote out the illustration I used earlier of my sister and I at Enchanted Forest.

(I cried a little more when I wrote that last sentence)

I hurt a little when I make the desserts my Nana used to make at every holiday.

Scroll back through my photo app ten years or so and so many faces and memories will spark a reminder of futures that can’t be, relationships broken, lives lost, and opportunities missed.

If I know one thing, it’s that I am not unique.

Some hurts are fresh, some far off.

Some have healed into sweet memories, others are still tender to the touch.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry people came and went.

A crowd would gather, Jesus would say something like, “Take your cross and follow me” or “If you would be my disciple you must eat my flesh and drink my blood” and the crowd would thin pretty quickly.

“Jesus, you were a lot more fun when you made fun of legalists and made bread multiply”

Except his disciples.

They were there through it all.

Then came the night of his arrest.

Matthew 26:

Matthew 26:

Explanation

All the disciples…left…fled…Peter would go on that night to claim he never even met Jesus.

Abandoned by those to whom he had given the most of himself.

I would say imagine that pain, but for some of you, maybe most of you, you don’t have to imagine very hard.

Jesus experienced the loss of people.

Though we miss the story between Jesus age 12 and Jesus age 30, we know one thing.

Jesus age 12 had a dad in Joseph.

Jesus age 30 is visited by mom and brothers.

On the cross, Jesus will ask one of his disciples to take care of his mother.

We can connect the dots here and recognize that Joseph is gone.

Likely, Jesus had to bury the man who taught him to hold a hammer.