Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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On January 28, 1986, NASA was planning to launch the space shuttle Challenger from Kennedy Space Center—a mission that included a schoolteacher named Christa McAuliffe.
The launch had already been delayed a few times.
On the night before the new launch date, NASA held a long conference call with engineers from Morton-Thiokol, the contractor that built the Challenger's solid-rocket motors.
Allan McDonald was one of the Thiokol engineers.
On the day of the launch it was unusually cold in Florida, which concerned McDonald because he feared that his company's o-ring seals in the Challenger's big joints wouldn't operate properly at that temperature.
Since the boosters had never been tested below 53 degrees McDonald recommended the launch be postponed again.
But NASA officials overruled McDonald and requested that the "responsible Morton-Thiokol official" sign off on the decision to launch.
McDonald refused to sign the request, but his boss did.
The next morning McDonald—and millions of people around the globe—watched as a mere 73 seconds into the flight, the shuttle burst into flames.
After the accident, a review showed the cause of the explosion to be what McDonald had feared: the o-rings failed to hold their seal in the cold temperature.
In other words, some people in the know had foreseen the exact cause of failure.
So why, even with that warning, did NASA push on?
Allen McDonald claims that NASA fell prey to the oldest and most basic sin—pride.
McDonald said:
NASA [had become] too successful.
They had gotten by for a quarter of a century and had never lost a single person going into space … And they had rescued the Apollo 13 halfway to the moon when part of the vehicle blew up.
Seemed like it was an impossible task, but they did it.
So how could this cold o-ring cause a problem when they had done so much over the past years to be successful?
[All of this success] gives you a little bit of arrogance you shouldn't have … But they hadn't stumbled yet and they just pressed on.
Have you ever consider the extent to which pride permeates your life?
Consider for a moment our complaints against God and His activities or inactivities.
We see the depth of pride's permutation in our complaints.
Complaints are nothing more than us saying "that God does not know what He is doing and that we know better."
And there is no one here that is innocent of this charge.
Life's highest absurdity is the creature judging its creator.
Who are we to question His love and care?
As though we know what either of those words means.
We may know their definition, yet we lack their demonstration.
We sing "How Great is Our God" while our hearts tell us those words would be true if He would only do as I ask.
Pride is often subtle, and at other times, it is overt.
Conversations with statements such as; "I believe in God I'm not sure about everything I read in Scripture."
If you believe in God, and this belief comes from reading the Scripture, how can you question those parts of Scripture in which you disagree?
How can you know what to agree with and disagree with unless you are God?
You can believe in creation, the cross, and the resurrection, but you can't believe in Eternal Punishment, gender, and sexuality.
When we subtract these truths from who God is, we create a god of our design.
For many of us, such questioning is not an issue.
However, we all are guilty of different levels of suggesting that we know better than God.
In our minds, we have an idea of how God should act.
He promises to provide for us, yet we want him to provide for us in ways that make sense - to us.
Promises assuring the fulfillment of our needs, yet we should decide what that need is.
He promises to work everything out for our good and His glory, and we are OK with that as long as we get to determine the outcome.
None of us are innocent of such thoughts.
We may think we hide them well, but we don't.
Instead, we reveal them through our anxieties and fears.
The root of our anxieties and fears is pride.
Our pride says, "I know better."
We want a God we can tame, not one we must trust.
We want a god-like us.
We are not the first to have this problem.
Our text teaches us that Jesus' disciples needed to learn that Jesus cannot be tamed; he must be trusted.
Peter's confession in the previous verses proves their conviction that Jesus is the Messiah.
In today's text, Peter tries to convince Jesus of what it means to be the Messiah.
They're not sure Jesus knows his role.
So Peter steps in to help Jesus understand what it means to be the Messiah.
Let's take a moment a set our context.
In Mark 6:1-8:30, we saw the Disciples struggle to understand Jesus fully.
Their blindness was like that of the blind man Jesus healed using multiple touches.
We see their need for multiple touches, and we see Jesus touching them multiple times.
The effect of Jesus' ministry is seen in their confession of Him as Messiah in last week's sermon.
When Peter and the others confessed Jesus as Messiah, they said, you are our redeemer and deliver.
The one who will establish an eternal kingdom that will reign forever.
While their confession was true, it was not complete.
While they fully believed their confession, they still did not fully understand what it meant.
Remember that expected?
A messiah who would come and defeat their enemies, who would establish his Kingdom, who would rule and reign, and keep his people in perfect peace.
Their understanding was not wrong; it was their timing.
After Peter's confession, Jesus begins to teach them what that means.
First, in Mark 8:31, he tells them he must suffer, experience rejection, and die.
Their response, rebuke.
Which is where this message started?
When we question God's activities or inactivities, we are, in essence, rebuking him.
Peter, like us, thought he knew better than Jesus.
So Peter is telling Jesus His plan isn't right.
Jesus' response reminds us that it is foolish to think we are wiser than God.
Read with me
Now that His disciples have declared Him, for the first time, to be the Messiah, Jesus begins to teach them what this means.
He not only wants them to know what this means, but he also wants them to know what to expect.
Aren't you glad that God lets us know what to expect?
The question is will we trust Him with what we hear.
Jesus teaches them that to be the Messiah means he must suffer, be rejected, die, and after three days rise again.
Mark says that Jesus said this plainly.
None of us can think about Jesus without thinking about the cross, not so for His disciples.
We can't conceive of a Jesus who doesn't suffer and die while they can't believe in one who will.
They could not imagine a Messiah who would die; even though the Old Testament taught this reality, they believed in a Messiah who would destroy their enemies.
Their belief was right; it just wasn't right now.
The Old Testament pointed to a Messiah coming as king to establish an everlasting kingdom, but that's not all it says.
It also says Messiah must suffer and die.
Does that sound like a contradiction?
It does, and it did to the disciples.
God didn't have two different plans.
This apparent contradiction is a cohesive plan of salvation.
Suffering doesn't cancel out the Kingdom; it creates the Kingdom.
So Jesus establishes the Kingdom through suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection.
Notice the verb in verse 31 - must.
These four events suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection, must happen for the Kingdom to come.
Jesus is not rejected by those whom we would expect; the Gentiles or the most outwardly wicked.
Instead, his rejection comes from those that should have received him.
They despised Him because He did not fit their expectation of a Messiah.
The disciples don't get it either.
How can he be Messiah and not be accepted by the religious leaders of the day?
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