Sermon Tone Analysis

Christ is Risen!

He is Risen indeed, Hallelujah!

In the Easter letter I tried to pose: What is the most important day of the Christian Year?

Christmas?

Good Friday?

Easter?

In Countries like Macedonia Christmas passes by almost as a non-event but Good Friday and Easter Day are celebrated.

I think that they have got their priorities right.

Were you there when they pierced Him in His side?

We can only imagine the grief that the disciples, His mother, and others who were there when they saw and looked upon His body on the cross.

The cross has become the emblem that is in almost all Christian Churches.

Some even wear crosses around their necks.

But these crosses are nothing like the cross that Jesus bore and was hung upon for it would have been rough and with splinters.

The reason why we are here today on Good Friday, Easter Day and on Christmas Day and on other Sundays and at other times is because of the most famous verse in the Bible that quotes Jesus saying:

Christmas Day or Good Friday or Easter Day was not the start of this love story – it started a long time before, long before we even existed on planet earth:

Before the world was created He chose us to be adopted us into His family.

He wants us in His family.

After all that is why He created us in the first place.

He wants us in His family.

He wants to accept us if we will simply accept Him.

This is all fine but, and there had to be a ‘but’ didn’t there?!

This love story has a problem and like many love stories the road was not exactly smooth.

There were problems to be overcome first.

The problem was that we did not want Him even though He wanted us.

He wanted us to be in His family but we did not want it.

And that has been the problem ever since we humans existed, starting with the very first one, Adam.

Adam sinned and we have carried on his tradition ever since.

Yet it was God who created us and made us in His image so that we could know Him.

And because we all have gone and done our own thing without regard to God and His ways our relationship with Him broke.

And nothing we could do could repair it.

We were irreconcilable.

God in His majesty and holiness cannot and could not bear sin:

Every single one of us has failed to come up to God’s standards.

Even as Christians we do not manage it.

And the sentence has been passed.

It is not one that anyone could like.

And what is the judgment that has passed?

Is there anyone who can escape it?

If anyone has ever sinned it is the death penalty.

And not one person has lived without sin and so all have died or will die.

All, that is, except one, and He is Jesus.

Only Jesus did die didn’t He?

What is that about?

God is absolutely holy and absolutely just and absolute love: On one hand he had to punish wrong doing for what judge is he who does not pass sentence for it to be carried out?

What kind of judge is it that will not send people to jail?

But God’s love said: I don’t want to pass sentence but I have to because justice demands it – but I will sentence myself in Jesus.

That’s the amazing thing about the verse we just read: ‘For the wages of sin is death, (and it continues…) but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’.

The sentence has been passed but as soon as He says it a solution is offered to us: Not death but eternal life as a gift.

On Good Friday and this morning we read Isaiah 52 and 53 that gives us a harrowing description of what Jesus went through.

All our sin, all our crime, all our pride, all our hate, all our coveting, all our lust, all our disobedience, all of what we have ever done wrong, was placed upon Jesus to pay the price.

We read the words that it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.

The fullness of God’s wrath was poured out upon Jesus instead of upon us.

That’s how Christ loved us.

He has the scars in His hands, He has the scars in His feet, He has the scars on His head, He has the scars on His back, He has the scar in His side, all the scars He has were because He came for us.

Were we there at the crucifixion – yes we were – for it was our sin that was borne upon that tree.

We were crucified with Christ.

Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?

His friends, His family.

How could they or would they cope?

But these were the same friends who were not with Him when He needed them most.

So, not only had they lost their friend and had to cope with grief, they were also in despair for they had failed him and were full of guilt.

Not only that, everything that had given their lives meaning for the previous three years was suddenly yanked away from them.

Their hopes, their dreams.

Despair descended upon them.

How to cope with emotions such as these as well as the fact that there had been a betrayer among them.

They feared that they might be next.

What were they to look forward to?

Where were they to go? Things were as black as black.

Were we there when he was buried?

Yes we were – for it was there that our wages of sin came to its completion for the wages of sin is death.

Were you there when God raised Him from the dead?

As we consider the state of the Galilean women, we must not let our knowledge of the glorious revelation that awaited them dull us to the dark sackcloth covering these women’s souls.

They were depressed, exhausted, mourning, with no hope whatsoever—and according to Mark, fretting over how they would get into the tomb (16:3).

They did not expect anything except more sorrow.

If you take flowers to the cemetery, do you expect to see an empty grave?

And if you did see one, would it occur to you that the deceased had risen from the dead?

Of course not!” On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus” (vv.

1–3).

Now they were definitely confused and bewildered!

They apparently assumed Jesus’ body had been stolen—that is what John tells us Mary Magdalene thought (cf.

20:13).

The empty tomb intensified their distress.

But distress soon gives in to a change of emotions – what is going on?

Suddenly, Joy! Uncertainty!

Belief!

Unbelief!

Incredulous!

one of the angels voiced the immortal rebuke, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (v.

5b).

They were accused of coming to anoint a lifeless Jesus when they should have known he would rise from the dead.

It was scandalous to look for Jesus in the grave.

Yet, what do we find among so-called professing UK Christians today?

In a survey released last week only 46% believe Jesus died on the cross for their sins and was resurrected.

Of course Scripture says that if you do not believe these things you are not a Christian - so what does that say about the 54% who either do not believe or are not sure - they are self-deceived - not Christian but unbelievers.

They are still looking for the grave of Jesus.

But the women at the tomb: Surely and slowly the realisation dawned, just as the dawning of Easter Day, that it is true, what the angel said: He is not here!

He has been raised!

So, ...Jesus IS alive!

The resurrection proves He has won the victory.

All this so we could go free, all this because He loved us, all this so we could be with Him for eternity – sin’s penalty was paid for by Jesus in full.

We have been reconciled to God.