Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro
This is my favorite time of the year.
Christmas is supposed to be the “most wonderful time of the year.”
A time where joy and thanksgiving are felt as we spend time with family, friends and associates.
Christmas is supposed to be a time of “peace on earth and good will towards men.”
It’s supposed to be a time when we greet each other with Merry Christmas and send Christmas Cards.
Christmas is the time of year we sing Jingle Bells, and Joy to the World and yet, it’s a well documented fact that people struggle with depression & discouragement more during the holidays than any other time of the year.
One survey reported that 45% of all Americans dread the Christmas season because it’s another reminder of the death of a loved one, or a painful divorce, or the loss of a job, or unrealized dreams as one more year passes by.
So, what can get us through the holiday Doldrums?
Blues?
Depression?
Hope
Hope is an essential ingredient for an Abundant Life
Look at the WOG
Dr Victor Frankl, a psy.
who was a POW in Auschwitz Prison Camp during the Holocost said this in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
“The prisoner who had lost faith in the future, his future was doomed.
With his loss of belief in the future he also lost his spiritual hold.
He let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.”
Hope is a powerful force in the human heart but it can wane during the holiday seasons, but there is HOPE.
Not talking about pumping yourself up with positive thinking and optimism about the future.
I believe true and lasting hope comes as a result of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Because Jesus was much more than a human child born 2018 years ago on the outskirts of nowhere, a family, a nation and the world were surprised by hope.
700 years before Jesus birth, the prophet Isa described what the coming of the Savior would be like.
There are 4 qualities that Isa uses to describe the coming Messiah.
Four Qualities of the Savior
1. Jesus as my counselor reveals God’s love for me.
He is Wonderful Counselor.
What a wonderful thing it was when God revealed his love through the Savior.
Jesus came to earth 2,000 years ago to die on a cross and pay the price for sin and everyone who puts his or her faith in Him will have everlasting life.
Jesus did not die just so we could go to heaven, He died so we can be in relationship with God.
Do you understand that the God of the Universe, the creator of everything wants a friendship relationship with you?
God loves you and I so much, that humanly, we can’t understand it.
His love is so vast and powerful that once we really embrace it, live in it and be controlled by it - - everything will change & you will never be the same again.
When you really understand this, you will be surprised by hope.
2. Jesus as the Mighty God is in control of all things.
The attribute that Jesus gives me the most hope is his sovereignty… the fact that he is in control of everything.
He is in control of everything in your life… the good, the bad and the ugly.
Jesus doesn’t cause the bad things in your life, but he allows them to strengthen your faith and develop your character.
That’s why James wrote…
God accomplishes His purposes through my problems!
No matter what’s happening in your life, you can be confident of the fact that Jesus the Mighty God is on complete control.
ILL - Atom Illustration -
Everything is made up of Atoms.
Atoms have: protons, neutrons, & electrons.
The Protons and Neutrons make up the center of the Atom called the Nucleus and the electrons fly around above the nucleus in a small cloud.
I also want you to notice that Protons have a positive charge but the Neutrons don’t have any charge.
Physicists have discovered that positive charges repel each other (think of this as trying to push two magnets together, remember when we were kids we used to do that?)
So all the Protons should not stay together.
So what holds the Nucleus together?
Scientist don’t know, but we do.
Dr Karl Darrow, a physicist with Bell Labs...
“...all the massive nuclei have no right to be alive at all.
Indeed, they should never have been created, and, if created, they should have blown up instantly.
[So we should be having nuclear explosions all over the place because everything in life is made up of matter; therefore it’s composed of atoms.]
Yet here they all are… Some inflexible inhibition is holding them relentlessly together.
The nature of the inhibition is also secret… one thus far reserved by Nature for herself.”
It’s not really a secret.
we know what holds everything together.
Holds all together = “to cohere” to be constituted with.
Jesus is literally holding the universe together.
Every atom should explode but it doesn’t because Jesus holds it together.
One day he will let it go…
“What holds the universe together is not an idea or a virtue, but a person: the resurrected Christ.
Without him, electrons would not continue to circle nuclei, gravity would cease to work, the planets would not stay in their orbits.”
Dr. Douglass J. Moo: The Pillar New Testament Commentary
So do you really think that if Jesus holds the universe together, that he can’t handle your problems?
No matter what’s going on in your life, there is hope because Jesus is the Mighty God and he holds everything together.
So you don’t have to be afraid or worry… you can place your confidence in Jesus.
That’s why Peter says...
When you believe that Jesus is the Mighty God, you will be surprised by the hope that you will have!
3. Jesus as the Everlasting Father keeps His promises.
If you have kids, you always want to keep your promises… right?
I used to just scratch my head as to why parents would take their kids through Toys R Us.
It was always a struggle because the kids want everything.
Whenever you would finally say yes, they would say something like...
You promise?
Really?
You don’t want to break your promises, but sometimes we have even though we didn’t want to.
We want to grow up trusting our parents.
ILL - daddy throwing my up and catching me… Johnny’s dad missing him
Broken promises break little hearts and no daddy wants to do that… neither does God our father.
Jesus as God has the heart of a Father for his children and he always keeps his promises.
So when the Bible says,
You can believe it
You can believe it
You can believe it
You can believe it!
You can believe it
Jesus the everlasting Father keeps his promises.
4. Jesus as the Prince of Peace has made peace between God and me.
When Isaiah refers to Jesus as the Prince of Peace, he is referring to the fact that Jesus has made peace between God and me.
Before a person receives Jesus Christ as their Savior, the Bible says they are an enemy of God because of their sin.
Sin has separated them from a Holy and Righteous God so all they can expect to receive from God is His wrath.
That’s the bad news.
But, here’s the Good News:
Jesus took on Himself the full wrath of God while hanging on the Cross and shed His own blood to pay the penalty for my sin.
And once I accept Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, once I believe in faith that He died in my place, at that moment of belief, I become reconciled to God.
God is no longer at war with me: Jesus has made peace between me and God.
Don Richardson was a missionary to a cannibalistic, headhunting Sawi tribe of Irian Jaya in Indonesia.
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