Sermon Tone Analysis

A Fresh Start

 

II Corinthians 5:16-21

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keith Gaines

 

Sunday, January 4, 2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Baptist Church

 

Albany, GA

 

 

\\ INTRODUCTION

 

The idea of a fresh start is intriguing to our world.

Two movies with the theme…

 

“50 First Dates” – due out February 13 – Henry Roth (Adam Sandler), a veterinarian at an aquarium in Hawaii, falls in love with a girl, Lucy (Drew Barrymore), with short-term memory loss, but he has to keep getting her to fall in love with him every time they meet in order for them to have a relationship, since she never remembers the last time she met him.

In the 1993 movie – “Groundhog Day” – Bill Murray plays an arrogant, self-absorbed character named Phil who is doomed to repeat the same day of his life.

Every time Phil goes to sleep he awakens to find that it is Feb. 2 all over again and that he must face the same things today that he faced yesterday.

He is the only one who remembers that Groundhog Day has already happened.

Just imagine what you could do in 24 hours if there were no consequences and if no matter what happened you would just wake up again at 6 a.m. to Sonny and Cher singing "I Got You Babe" on the old clock radio.

At first it was fun and then it became a terrible burden.

After hundreds of Groundhog Days, Phil decides that the only way out of this mess is to kill himself but, you guessed it, he awoke the next morning to Sonny & Cher on the radio.

The allegory is that Phil's repetition of Groundhog Day is like the daily grind that most of us experience: the same old job with the same people in the same situations with little variation.

Perhaps it feels like your life – every day is the same as the one before and the promise of a fresh new day seems to be but an empty dream.

(Note - I am not commending either of those movies necessarily – just illustrating how we fantasize about a fresh start.)

Paul speaks of such a fresh start in our text:

*2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (RSV)*

*16 **From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.

17 Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.

18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.*

Did you catch it?

We can have a true fresh start – become a new creation – experience the newness of everything! *THIS IS NOT SOME PIPE DREAM!*

 

How do we experience it?

*I.

**We Cannot Make it Happen!*

*a.    **By declaring ourselves new or by wishing ourselves new*

                                         i.