Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ /38 //Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus.

Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews.

With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away.

39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night.

Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.//a//

40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen.

This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.

41 At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.

42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

//*[1]*// John 19:38-42 (NIV)/

 

*The Pain of Failure*

 

We’ve all known this before haven’t we?  */I guess if we haven’t failed then we haven’t tried hard enough./*

Think about it.

There are people who simply don’t try as a tactic to avoid failure.

It’s not failure that’s bad – it’s the refusal to try what may cause us to fail.

And so in the church you have folks who will never attempt to do anything except the things in which they have confidence.

This morning we talk about Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.

We could see them as abject failures.

They were first class politicians and second class saints for sure if you could even call them that.

A second class saint is a loser all the way around.

In my mind there is no such thing, I’m being extremely facetious.

/Often we assume that God is unable to work in spite of our weaknesses, mistakes, and sins.

We forget that God is a specialist; he is well able to work our failures into his plans.

/

/ /

/-- Erwin W. Lutzer (1941- )/

 

God’s forgiveness is always perfect – there’s always a way back home and a place for you when you get there.

But there are people and perhaps some here today who have difficulty receiving God’s forgiveness and in turn forgiving themselves.

They don’t measure up in other people’s estimation and what is worse they are a disappointment to themselves.

It’s one thing when someone else is disappointed in you but the pain is intensified by the suspicion that these critics are right.

When it comes to God and spirituality and devotion and discipline, you just don’t cut it.

I think that a person can feel bad about their performance without feeling bad about themselves.

When I consider what I feel God would have me to be and I superimpose my weaknesses; my losing battles with temptation; my own willfulness that has harbored fugitives like pride and envy and a critical spirit and impatience and a host of other escapees on the lam from the ever searching Spirit of God, . . .

there are those days when I feel like a miserable representation of Christ.

/When the frustration of my helplessness seemed greatest, I discovered God's grace was more than sufficient.

And after my imprisonment, I could look back and see how God used my powerlessness for his purpose.

What he has chosen for my most significant witness was not my triumphs or victories, but my defeat.

/

/ /

/-- Charles Colson (1931- )/

 

What effect does that have on me?

If the spotlight remains on my strength and my performance the result is emotional and spiritual paralysis.

Ever read Romans 7?

 

/21 //So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

//*[2]*// Romans 7:21-25 (NIV)/

 

This has always encouraged me to know that Paul at times asked himself similar questions or made similar observations about his own post conversion experience.

I’m driven back in wonder each time God’s utterly amazing grace.

“That God should love a sinner such as I

Should yearn to change my sorrow into bliss.

Nor rest til’ He had planned to bring me nigh

How wonderful is love like this

 

Such love such wondrous love

Such love such wondrous love

That God should love a sinner such as I.

How wonderful is love like this.”

So when I go on about my own failures today, I’m not blue or downhearted.

I am eternally grateful to God for His goodness, His love for me and the more I fathom the depths of that love the more I lose myself and find Him as the greatest reality of my life.

I feel really good to be so loved by God today.

Sometimes the greater question than my own belief in God becomes the reality of His belief in me.

I’d like to show you a clip from a classic movie called, “The Count of Monte Cristo”.

Here’s a man falsely accused and imprisoned by the betrayal of a friend who wants his girlfriend.

He has languished for years, forgotten in a prison cell.

His faith has worn as the etching on the wall has gathered dirt and mold and become almost indistinguishable.

As we lose hope something insidious is birthed within our hearts.

In this case, the desire for vengeance and the cold icy fingers of hate strangle the spiritual vitality from a once warm heart.

The once hopeful markings, “God will grant me justice.”

are barely visible on the walls of his cell.

Watch this exchange between himself and his prison mentor who restores his faith – a relationship that God uses in a dark dank dungeon to fuel hope within his heart.

!! View Clip

 

*The Power of Faith*

 

*I want you to know today that God believes in you.*

He loves you desperately and longs to have you know and experience Him fully.

Some of you today are fearful of such love, such wondrous love because unleashed in your heart you would discover what you really want.

Most people apart from Christ spend lifetimes discovering things that fail to bring them lasting joy and peace and purpose and fulfillment.

And I guess there is reason to fear on one hand because when a person really encounters Christ they are never the same again.

There’s no going back to the way things were.

You can’t if you want to because the world is never the same once you meet Christ.

And from the perspective of heaven, these men were more than prolific politicians, for whatever that may be worth.

They were not second hand saints experiencing “hand-me-down” holiness.

They were disciples.

At least, that is what John the Beloved says from the scripture today.

Joseph was a secret disciple for fear of the Jews, and Nicodemus a nocturnal one.

Really both the same.

They watched the tensions of the religious leaders build at the impact of the ministry of Christ and their own

 

They were people who were well up on things.

They held influence that was powerless to save a man condemned from eternity, the God-man, Jesus Christ.

/45 //Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” 46 “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards declared.

47 “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted.

48 “Has any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him?

49 No!

But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

50 Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, 51 “Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?”

52 They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too?

Look into it, and you will find that a prophet//a// does not come out of Galilee.”

//*[3]*// John 7:45-52 (NIV)/

 

In John 3 we find the account of Nicodemus seeking Christ in the shadow of night.

He hears the clear message of the need to be “born again”.

It doesn’t seem that he understood it and we have no record that would indicate to us that he responded in any way to those words but he went away somehow changed.

In the scripture that we have just read, it is clear that he sought to stand among his peers in defense of Christ.

There is a certain amount of courage required to do something like that, to raise the question of protocol relative to the San Hedrin’s dealings with Christ.

He took his stand and risked identification with Christ.