Sermon Tone Analysis

I feel like I don’t belong here...

“I feel like I don’t belong here.”

That was the statement I resonated with the most this week during a conversation I had with a few other Christians.

We were discussing the weariness of living in today’s world.

“It was not always this confusing or frustrating,” one of them said.

The gist of the conversation was, “Forty fifty years ago we had our differences, living out different chapters, but always reading from the same book.

Today there is such disunity and confusion.

We’ve lost our moral bearings to the point where cannot discern a boy from a girl.

What was once appalling is now appealing.

What has always been wrong is now glorified as right.

This is not my country.

This is not my home.

I don’t feel like I belong here anymore.”

For many people in our country that sentiment resonates deep in their hearts.

I would contend , those who love Jesus, that sentiment resonates all the more in our hearts the moment we are saved.

Paul says our citizenship is in heaven.

God has put a new longing in your heart for His presence in His kingdom.

These new desires are definitely at odds with the world’s desires.

Because of those new desires, you see the world differently and it creates a tension that illuminates our eyes to the reality that we are sojourners in this world.

Sojourning can be tough.

We are trying to find our way home in a hostile world that is broken and influenced by Satan.

To add fuel to the fire is the mystery of God’s kingdom.

This world is all we’ve ever known.

We long for a home we have never laid our head or walked its streets.

In some ways it feels distant.

The heavy burden of the tension we live on a daily basis can lead your heart to despair, even depression.

You may feel like giving up at times.

You may want to stop doing the ministry God has called you to do; maybe even stop joyfully advancing His kingdom by making much of Jesus.

Brother, sister, I want you to know you, through Christ resurrection, you are promised new life, resurrection life, in a new resurrected world.

I believe one of the reasons God revealed the mystery of the resurrection was to give you and I something to look forward to, a promise to cling to when we do not feel like we belong here.

Your are right yo do not belong here.

You are being fit for heaven.

Jesus’ resurrection ensures you will be resurrected with a new resurrected body for a new resurrected earth.

This morning, I want you to

Strengthen your hope to joyfully advance the kingdom of God by believing Jesus’s promise to you of a new eternal resurrected body for his new resurrected earth.

I want to show you this morning through the lens of several scriptures that Jesus ensures your eternal physical resurrection and how his promise gives you strength and hope to hold fast in the faith as you joyfully advance his kingdom by making much of Jesus.

Let’s begin with Jesus’s promise of resurrection in John 11:15-26.

Jesus’ resurrection ensures your eternal resurrection (John 11:25-26).

Lazarus has died.

He’s been dead four days.

Mary and Martha, his sisters called Jesus to come and heal Lazarus, but Jesus waited two extra days knowing Lazarus was going to die.

He did this because he loved Lazarus and was going to use Lazarus to show the world the power of God over death-resurrection.

Of course, Mary and Martha do not understand why Jesus delayed so long.

Why would he allow such hardship to come to their lives?

Death is scary and painful.

Death offers no nope to anyone.

There is no life in death.

So, when you are threatened with it, whether it be your own life or the life of someone you love, you loose hope if death prevails.

And death dose prevail.

There is no escape.

So, J. C. Ryle winsomely advises you to think on it.

He says,

“Death, and judgment, and eternity are not fancies, but stern realities.

Make time to think about them.

Stand still, and look them in the face.

You will be obliged one day to make time to die, whether you are prepared or not.”

J. C. Ryle

Lazarus was forced to look death in the face and he succumbed to its power, just as all of us will one day do.

Mary and Martha had to look at death in the face as well, and they were afflicted by its sting and were looking to Jesus for hope.

Jesus’ hope came to them, but not in the way the expected.

Jesus comes to them and says, “I am the resurrection and the life.

Whoever believes in me though he die, shall live.

And everyone who believes in me shall live and never die.

Jesus brought the hope of eternal resurrection and was about to prove the kind of resurrection we get to look forward to.

Jesus uses the word anastasis for resurrection.

Dr. Stephen Wellum discusses the the Greek noun anastasis in his study of John.

The Greek word anastasis is derived from the verb anistēmi, meaning literally to stand up and then by extension “to rise up.”

Both words could be used metaphorically.

The word anastasis was common in the ancient Greek world; but it rarely referred to the resurrection of the dead, which is the dominant meaning of its occurrences in the NT.

The word is used to describe both Jesus’ physical resurrection and the physical resurrection of believers.

Paul uses anastasis in

he also uses it in

In both cases, Jesus is physically raised from the dead with a new glorified body that is fit for heaven.

It will have eternal life.

Of believers, the word describes a physical resurrection.

In the

The dead will rise with physical bodies and come to life and they will have eternal life with a physical body.

Where does resurrection life come from?

It comes from Jesus.

Jesus says to us in the Gospel of John

In Christ is life.

Jesus says later,

Because Jesus is the life and he has life in himself, he is able to give his life to everyone who trusts in him.

That life is both abundant life now (John 10:10) and eternal life in the future (John 3:16).

He is able to keep his promise!

When Jesus says to Mary and Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, he is telling them that he will physically raise his disciples, those who love him, from the dead and give them eternal life.

So he raise Lazarus from the dead to validate he has the power to physically raise the dead and give them eternal life.

You cannot find resurrection life in anyone else but Jesus.

Jesus is the only one who can ensure that you will be raised from the dead with a physical body that will enjoy resurrected life in a new resurrected earth.

What will your new resurrected body be like?

(1 Corinthians 15:49; 1 John 3:2; Philippians 3:20-21).

Your resurrected body will be conformed to the image of Jesus.

Paul says

John says

Paul further describes the resurrected body in

A transformation is going to take place.

Paul describes it as a metamorphosis.

We know metamorphosis from studying butterflies.

In some ways, resurrection is speaking of the same thing.

You will transform into something far more glorious and beautiful than what you are now.