Sermon Tone Analysis

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| *Topics: * | Christ, cross of; Christ, death of; Christ, lamb of God; Christ, resurrection of; Christian life; Communion; Cross; Easter; Failure; Heart; Hunger, spiritual; Lent; Prayer; Resurrection; Resurrection of Christ; Self-examination; Spiritual growth; Worship |
| *Filters: * |
| *References: * | Matthew 27:62-28:15 |
| *Tone: * | Neutral~/Mixed |
\\ Robert Russell, pastor of Southeastern Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, told about sitting behind a 5-year-old boy at their church's Easter pageant a few years ago.
The boy was enthralled.
Russell said, "When the crucifixion scene took place, he got real quiet.
But then Jesus came back from the grave, and there was a song of celebration, and his eyes lit up.
He looked at his mother and said, 'He's alive, Mom.
He's alive!' and began to clap.
And he hugged her around the neck."
Wouldn't it be great to see the resurrection with new eyes?
When Matthew wrote his account of the resurrection of Jesus he emphasized two groups who watched.
His account of Easter morning is framed by two different kinds of watchers.
Open your Bibles to Matthew 27.
At the end of his account of the crucifixion, look what it says in verse 55: "Many women were there, watching from a distance.
They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs."
The next paragraph tells how Joseph of Arimathea had Jesus' body placed in his own rock-hewn tomb.
Look at verse 61: "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb."
Now fast-forward through Saturday to Sunday morning in Matthew 28:1: "After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb."
Those watching women provide one set of eyes on this story.
The other watchers are the guards.
Verses 62–65 explain that they were posted to be sure the disciples didn't steal the body.
Matthew 28:4 says when they felt the earthquake and saw the angel they "were so afraid of him that they shook and become like dead men."
And verse 11 says, "Some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened."
The upshot was that they were persuaded by a handsome bribe to say that, in fact, they hadn't seen a thing.
Two sets of watchers.
Which watcher are you?
*Some watchers refuse to believe the resurrection even in the face of overwhelming evidence.*
There are two incredible aspects to this story.
The first, of course, is the resurrection itself—a dead man alive, and alive in a new way altogether.
The other incredible thing, though, is the response of the unbelievers in this story.
The guards decided to deny an experience so terrifying it very nearly killed them.
We get our word "seismic" from the Greek word Paul used for earthquake.
He used another form of the same word to describe the guard's fear: "they shook" means "they quaked."
They were the aftershocks!
Now look at verses 13–15: "'You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.'
If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.
So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.
And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day."
They denied it ever happened!
I don't have much trouble believing that people would lie for money, but I can't understand how those guards lied to themselves!
And then there are the chief priests and elders.
Did you notice that when the guards showed up to tell them the story of what happened, they didn't go, "No way, Jose! Nyuh-uh!
You guys are out of your mind!" There's no suggestion that they doubted the guards, or that they believed their own lie that the disciples stole the bodies while the guards slept.
Pilate's guards didn't sleep on the job unless they wanted to sleep forever, if you get my drift!
The religious leaders simply refused to admit the obvious.
Two incredible aspects of this story: the resurrection itself, and the stubborn refusal of the guards and leaders to believe the evidence.
Here's the point:
The evidence for the resurrection was and is overwhelming.
First, there was that violent earthquake.
This was the second earthquake in three days, the other happening at the moment of this same Jesus' death and now this at the moment his tomb opened.
This wasn't random seismic activity.
It was a message.
Later they would claim they had fallen asleep, but the very earth beneath them had made sure that wasn't the case!
God himself shook them awake to say, "Listen, I'm speaking!"
Secondly, there was the appearance of God's own shining angel agent rolling back the tombstone.
People then were no more accustomed to seeing angels then than we are now.
Suddenly in that eerie hour just before dawn, "an angel of the Lord came down from heaven!"
He was like a lightning man, wearing snow-white clothes.
The guards were dazzled and dazed.
Then, as if it were Styrofoam, the angel pushed the massive, sealed stone back from the mouth of the grave.
Surely there was no doubt in those guards' minds that this angel came from God on an assignment from God!
Thirdly, there was the empty tomb.
Maybe you imagine the scene like this: this bright angel appears in front of the stone, leans in and whispers, "Are you ready in there?" and then, with a flourish, rolled back the stone, and there stood Jesus, smiling and bright, waiting for the door to open.
That's not what happened.
Jesus was already gone.
They didn't move the stone to let Jesus out, but to let the disciples in, to prove that Jesus was truly resurrected.
I don't know if the guards saw that the tomb was empty before they passed out, but I'm certain they checked when they came to!
They may not have not known what happened while they were out cold, but it was a safe bet they knew that God and his angels had something to do with it.
They knew this was not the work of grave-robbing disciples.
So how in the world could they pretend that nothing had happened but a body snatching?!
The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is equally overwhelming today.
It takes an act either of ignorance or a determined will to deny it.
A turning point in my own life came when I realized how incontrovertible the proof of the resurrection is.
Maybe you know the story of Frank Morrison, a lawyer who was certain that the resurrection was nothing more than a fairy tale and set out to prove it.
But in the end, he was forced to the unexpected conclusion that the story is true.
His book, /Who Moved the Stone,/ is a best-seller.
B. F. Westcott, an English scholar, wrote, "Indeed, taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ.
Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it."
A woman wrote J. Vernon McGee: "Our preacher said that on Easter Jesus just swooned on the cross and that the disciples nursed him back to health.
What do you think?"
McGee replied, "Dear Sister, beat your preacher with a leather whip for 39 heavy strokes.
Nail him to a cross.
Hang him in the sun for six hours.
Run a spear through his heart.
Embalm him.
Put him in an airless tomb for three days.
Then see what happens."
There comes a point when unbelief is not the product of a rational, thoughtful mind but of a stubborn heart.
People who pooh-pooh the resurrection as a myth portray themselves as the real thinkers.
But they are heirs of these guards and priests whose minds were so made up, who were so determined not to believe, that they stopped thinking.
There is always a great deal at stake when someone has to seriously consider the resurrection of Christ.
The resurrection takes religion out of the realm of the abstract, of "believe what you want, so long as you're sincere."
The resurrection removes the possibility that we can each believe whatever we find good.
The resurrection actually happened, and it defined Jesus as the great Truth Teller, the Lord of Life, the Judge of the living and the dead, One who must be reckoned with on his terms, not ours.
The resurrection takes away all our religious options, but one.
Like those chief priests or guards, surrendering to the resurrected Christ is costly—it requires humility and maybe more.
It means saying you were wrong and bowing to what the Bible itself calls "the foolishness of the cross."
And a lot of people would rather lie to themselves than face the fact and the meaning of the resurrection.
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