Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

I have never been to the Grand Canyon.

I’ve seen pictures, but based on the pictures of places that I have been, I am sure that they are a joke compared to the reality.

I know a little bit about the Grand Canyon, because I know some people who have been there, and have come back to tell me about it.

If I trust them, I can learn something before I ever experience it myself.

I may make it to the Grand Canyon one day and I may not.

But one trip we are all going to make is the trip out of this life.

And I am so glad that we have the testimony of someone who has completed the round trip to tell us all about it.

This morning we are beginning a new series entitled “Life After Life.”

What is heaven like?

What happens to babies, pets or the mentally handicapped when they die?

Do they become angels or ghosts?

Do they watch over us?

Wouldn’t it be boring to sit on a cloud and play a harp all day?

(Probably, but don’t worry - you don’t have to).

All of these questions and more are going to be on the table in the next few weeks.

I have quite a few which some key passages will answer, but I want to know your questions too!

Send me an e-mail or a text, or go on our Facebook page and ask away, and I will make sure that I draw those points out.

Today, we are at the cornerstone of the whole thing.

The reason we have hope after life - the reason that we can know anything about it at all - is because Jesus has been there and told us.

Maybe you’re a believer with a lot of questions about life after this life.

Philippians 3:21 says that one day, we are going to have a body like Jesus’.

So there might be some things you can learn.

Maybe you’re a skeptic who is not sure if there really is life after death, or you struggle with believing that if there is a God that He cares much about what we do anyway.

You ought to be especially interested in what happened one Sunday nearly two thousand years ago that convinced a bunch of good, down-to-earth Palestinians to give up everything to follow someone who had been publically lynched.

If He made a round trip through the grave, then everything else He said deserves some attention.

Maybe you intellectually accept that there probably is a God, but feel like there is something more, just beyond your grasp.

You believe in Him like you believe there was a George Washington or a Julius Caesar, but if He is alive, there ought to be more than that.

We’ll have something for you too.

No matter who you are, this morning we are going to deal with the one question you simply cannot afford to ignore.

When you close your eyes for the last time, what do you see next?

Open up your Bibles to Luke 24:13.

This is the third day since the crucifixion.

For months, Jesus had been telling His disciples that the Son of Man would have to be crucified, and on the third day He would rise again.

It is Sunday, the disciples have been scattered in fear.

Some early reports have come that the tomb was empty, but they continue bewildered about their ordinary business, unsure of what to do.

The One all of their hopes had been pinned on has apparently failed, and their broken hearts are aimless.

If you have ever lost someone you loved, you can probably understand exactly.

You make odd decisions, move in fits and starts and spin in circles in your pain.

Until, for you, like them, Jesus shows up.

We are normally in the habit of reading our entire text through, but I am going to let this story unfold naturally, and if you have heard it before or not, I want to let you think of it as the first time.

Explain: We will recognize each other, and we can know Jesus.

Shocked that He apparently does not know - grief, funeral procession doesn’t stop.

Sentani.

Jesus doesn’t lie to them, but He doesn’t volunteer everything He knows either.

Some of us could learn from that.

It is possible for something to be in my head without it being in my mouth.

They stop short of calling Him messiah or Lord, but still see Him as a prophet.

They know He is special, but do not have any category for it.

He was handed over and crucified.

This dashed their hopes of seeing Him deliver Israel were because of His death, which was the way He would deliver Israel.

Sometimes people overplay this and act as if the Israelites did not expect any spiritual benefits from the Messiah, and only wanted political deliverance - not spiritual.

This overstates it.

The popular imagination could not see how you could have one without the other, because they assumed spiritual wholeness was always physically blessed.

So they see Jesus was a prophet, but then He died.

Liar/Lunatic/Lord - CS Lewis

See/didn’t see, testimony of women would not be made up.

“Hysterical women” pagans.

Suffering was inevitable and the path to glory.

What do we expect?

Jesus in the Scriptures

Or the trajectory type

They recognized Him in the Bible before they saw Him in their presence.

We can see Him now, even though we do not see Him with our eyes.

He revealed Himself in intimacy and fellowship.

He could simply vanish!

His new life could interact with this material world so much that He could break bread, but was so much above it that He could disappear.

Other witnesses.

Peter and apostles, testimony to death

Jesus reappears in the middle of the room!

They had to be wondering, is He a ghost?

A real body.

His real body.

Continuity, yet discontinuity.

This Jesus who now opened their eyes to reveal who He was had also opened the eyes of the blind.

This Jesus who stood with them had been hung before them on a cross, and had the nailprints to prove it.

Not a ghost, although He could vanish and reappear.

But a real, physical body.

Our bodies in eternity will be like His.

Real, physical, but somehow less bound by the material world.

But, Christians ought to understand being different and yet the same.

Acorn, oak tree

Salvation

We need hearts that burn - set aflame by the Word of God because we see Jesus there.