Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome again to Resurrection Sunday worship.

I’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time.

Looking forward to celebrating this day with my church family.

As we’ve gathered over the last several weeks, we’ve been studying the life of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.

The gospel of Luke, was written by a doctor, Dr Luke, he was a medical doctor, he also wrote the book of Acts.

Acts is the story of the Spirit of God and the Church… The gospel of Luke is the story of Jesus and God’s plan to save the world.

His story leads up to the Passover when Jesus was crucified.

So, for those of you who have been following along, today I’m going to fast forward to the end.

This is good as we continue to work through the gospel because it frames what we will be studying in the weeks to come… and it’s the Easter story.

I’ve asked Michelle to read it for me… you can follow along in Luke 24:1-12

This is truly an amazing story.

No one expected Jesus to be killed but he was… and his family and followers were heartbroken.

But once he did, they expected to find his body right where they left it… but it’s not there.

You see, no one was expecting a resurrection.

Why would they?One reason might be because he had told them this would happen.

But they aren’t thinking about that right now.

Now all they want to know is what happened to Jesus.

Now no one expected the resurrection, yet that is exactly what has happened.

The next scene in the story of the resurrection we find two of Jesus followers walking home and Jesus comes upon them and the Spirit keeps them from recognizing him and Jesus asks What are you talking about?

And they are like… don’t you know what’s happened?

Where have you been?

They go on to tell the story of what had happened to Jesus and how the others had looked for him that morning only to be told he’s alive… but not seeing him yet.

With that news Jesus begins to tell them all the ways that the OT had said this would happen.

They walked several miles together that afternoon.

Then they came to their village and Jesus was going to continue, but they asked him to come to dinner… not knowing still it was Jesus.

He agreed… far be it for Jesus to skip a meal.

Then during the meal Jesus went to break the bread and give thanks and in that moment their eyes were opened.

They realized it was Jesus.

And then he disappeared the bible tells us.

Well, the time for being sad and angry was over.

These two immediately got up and went back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples Jesus is Alive.

In a moment everything changed for these two.

One minute they were sad, confused and hopeless… the next they were renewed.

They had experienced something that would change their lives.

What happened?

The Resurrection.

The resurrection gives hope.

Hope is something that more and more people in our world need.

It seems that from a pandemic, to the economy, to politics, to family problems, mental health, social media, everywhere you look today it seems there is a need for hope.

I’m more convinced than ever that what we need, what our neighbors need, our world needs is a reminder of how the resurrection brings us hope.

Today I want to remind you of 5 ways that the resurrection brings hope to our lives today.

There are probably more, but I want to just remind you of 5 big ones… connect the dots again for you… or for the first time.

How does the resurrection give hope for today?

5 reasons… that demand one response

First.

Guilt and Shame have lost their power.

Guilt is that feeling you get when you do something wrong… even if you don’t feel it - it’s what happens when you make a mistake… you are guilty.

We’ve probably all heard or been told that Jesus died for your sins.

But I don’t know if that gives as much hope as it should.

Probably because by and large we think of ourselves as pretty good people right… on a scale of 0-10 in the need for forgiveness we like to think of ourselves as good as most folks… like a 6 or maybe a 7.

Problem is, we know God judges on a different scale.

It’s all or nothing.

and since we aren’t perfect… and we know we aren’t perfect… we know we are guilty.

And this guilt can be a good thing… when it corrects us we call it conviction.

That feeling in our heart that we are off track - in dangerous territory… slow down people look up to you… don’t eat that, drink that, look at - say - do that, because it’s not going to solve your problem - it’ll just make the problem worse.

That’s conviction.

The real problem is that we allow our guilt to take over.

We get stuck in it and that’s where shame takes root.

Shame is when we start to believe that we are the mistake… not our behavior.

We were created in the image of God, but we start to doubt that God would want anything to do with us because of our guilt… that’s our shame talking.

Jesus died to pay the price for our sin… to take our punishment so that we would be free!

Scripture tells us in

WE have hope today because through faith in Jesus’s work on the cross, we have been redeemed.

That means our sins have been paid for… we owe nothing.

As followers of Jesus, guilt and shame no longer have power over us.

Jesus has set us free.

We access the freedom Jesus made possible by trust in his work on the cross.

First the Resurrection gives us hope because it tells us that Jesus died to redeem us from our guilt.

Second, we have hope because in the resurrection

Death is defeated.

Since creation everything dies.

We know that.

And yet that is the one thing we all fear… probably the greatest fear of our lives is death.

It’s a fine line between being safe and cautious because life is precious and people depend on us and getting wrapped up in fear of dying...

Think of all the money we are willing to spend to stay alive here on earth just a little bit longer.

Death touches us all.

It doesn’t respect anyone.

Gender, wealth, position.

Think of how a fear of death can limit your life.

How trying to maximize this life causes us to miss the point.

That’s what the disciples were doing when Jesus was arrested and on trial… they were trying to squeeze more out of life.

They ran, hid, sought safety above everything else.

But then, everything changed.

Disciples changed from coward to courage.

Because they were no longer afraid to die… death had no more sting.

At the moment they had no idea the significance of it, in fact, Jesus’s closest followers ran and hid, thinking Rome would come for them too.

A scared bunch of poorly educated men and women hiding… and just a few weeks later they would launch the greatest movement the world has ever known.

They were convinced… because of the resurrection of Jesus, and the promises that he had made, there’s a greater life to come after our death

That’s God’s promise to us.

We need not fear death, because the resurrection of Jesus is proof that death has been defeated.

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The third way the resurrection gives hope is that as a result of the resurrection...

We have God’s Spirit in us.

When Jesus knew he was about to be arrested and be crucified, he told his followers:

Jesus is saying to his followers, there’s something better than having me with you…

Having the Holy Spirit IN YOU

And Jesus said I will send him when I die.

As Jesus said to his disciples before he left the last time

This Holy Spirit brings power… resurrection power.

Power to continue the work of Jesus.

Showing the whole world how regular people can be transformed by faith in Jesus.