Sermon Tone Analysis

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2019 Masters

Greatest Comeback

This past Sunday, millions and millions of sports fans rushed home from church to watch the last few holes of The Masters, the first of the four biggest annual tournaments in golf each year that make up what is called golf’s Majors.

In years past they didn’t have to rush home because TV coverage didn’t even start until 3pm Eastern time.

But this year, due to the forecast of incoming afternoon storms, the tournament officials changed the setup so that the tournament would be completed before the storms hit.

Those of you who are not golf fans may be wondering, what was the big deal with this year’s Master.

What made this year’s Master a bigger deal than other years is that after 10 years of golf futility, Tiger Woods was in the final group and only 2 strokes off of the lead going into the last day of the tournament.

Now off of the golf course, I am not a fan of Tiger Woods, but the minute he steps up to the first tee, I am frequently sitting in my chair watching every stroke.

From Oct. 1996 through Dec. 2009 his golf game was a thing of beauty.

It all fell apart on Dec. 9, 2009, when it was discovered he had had multiple affairs on his wife, much of the next 10 years his life was marked by injuries and personal failures, and there was a point a couple years ago, shortly after his 3rd back surgery that he was unable to get out of bed without assistance.

At the time he was certain he would never swing a golf club again.

One more back surgery, and some physical therapy, and he began to sense a return to golf was possible.

Part way through the year last year, it appeared as if the old Tiger was back and this past Sunday, fans flocked to their TV’s to witness his come from behind victory.

When all was said and done, many were calling this the greatest comeback of all time.

As much as I enjoyed watching the last few holes of last Sunday’s Masters, and as much as I was rooting for Tiger, this was not the greatest comeback of all time.

It also wasn’t Reggie Miller scoring 8 points in 11 seconds to lead the Pacers in a playoff victory over the New York Knicks in the Madison Square Garden or the 2004 Boston Red-sox coming back from a 3 games to none deficit to beat the New York Yankees and advance to the Worlds Series, which they eventually won.

As impressive as these come backs were, this morning we are going to look at one the trumps them all.

To begin with our look at the greatest comeback of all time, I’d like to start by having us watch the following video clip together:

Rightnowmedia.org “He Was” video.

2:04

That, my friends was the greatest comeback in history.

As an avid sports fan, generally most days I look at my ESPN app on my phone, or perhaps go to ESPN.com to look over what is taking place in the sports world.

For the past several weeks one of the constant headlines on ESPN was multiple articles on the upcoming Masters, and the first article was always about Tiger Woods.

Most of the experts in the golf world gave him a better than average chance at winning and when all was said and done, he proved them all right.

The same cannot be said for Jesus after the Crucifixion!

To be honest, on this side of heaven, outside of Himself, I don’t know of a single person on the face of earth who expected to ever see Him physically alive on earth again.

This included those closest to Him, some of whom He had told point blank, that He would rise from the dead.

You see they all expected what they had seen time and time again, when you die, you don’t come back to life.

Sure there was Jarius daughter, the widows son in the town of Nain and His personal friend Lazarus, but Jesus raised them from the dead.

With He Himself now gone, they saw no hope in His rising from the dead.

Had they expected Him to rise from the dead, rest assured there would have been a large crowd of followers waiting outside His tomb Sunday morning anticipating the greatest event in all of history to take place.

Scripture is pretty clear as to His followers expectations, let’s take a few minutes to look at some.

To begin with, we will look at His: Next Slides

Secret Followers

John 19:38-42

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Now perhaps you may be wondering what this has to do with a belief that Jesus would not rise from the dead.

Let me give you: Next Slide

3 Evidences they didn’t believe Jesus would raise from the dead

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They were members of the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin was basically the Supreme Court of Israel.

There was no love loss between the Sanhedrin and Pilate.

In fact Scripture makes it pretty clear that Pilate did not want Jesus crucified.

It was the Sanhedrin that forced him to sentence Jesus to death on the cross.

For these 2 members of the Sanhedrin to approach Pilate for the body of Jesus was a huge risk for these 2 men.

Really for 2 reasons:

Pilate was not in the mood to have anything to do with any member of the Sanhedrin.

This was a political death sentence for both of them.

You see the majority of the Sanhedrin wanted Jesus humiliated in every way possible.

Not just in the way He died, but in the way His body was treated after His death.

Normally someone who was crucified was thrown into a trash heap reserved for the worst of the worse.

Joseph and Nicodemus were seeing to it He was buried with honor.

This pretty much ended both of their careers.

Why would they take a risk like this if they were certain Jesus was going to rise from the dead?

The second evidence that they did not believe He would raise from the dead is:

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They used expensive spices and linen clothes.

The whole purpose for the linen and spices was to suppress the odor from the decay of a body.

Why go through the time and expense of preparing His body using special spices that suppress the odor of decay, if they expected He would raise from the dead before decay would set in?

The third evidence was:

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3.

They laid Jesus in a special tomb.

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Matthew 27:60

This was no ordinary tomb.

Joseph had purchased this property at great expense, then he had hired a special stone cutter to cut out of a huge rock what is believed to be a family tomb.

This was customary for the wealthy.

I can’t imagine he would have done this for someone Who was going to raise from the dead.

Ok, so these were a couple of Jesus secret followers, but what about those not so secret followers?

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Women Followers

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Luke 23:55-56

What we see here is some ladies that were so devoted to Jesus that they wanted to make sure His burial was as perfect as could be.

Now Scripture indicates that these women were from another part of Israel and likely were not familiar with either Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus, and even had they been familiar with them, these men were a part of the Sanhedrin, who was largely responsible for the crucifixion.

They followed these 2 men at a distance because they wanted to know where His body was to be laid.

In another Gospel, we read:

Mark 16:1

Now here they are, very early Sunday morning, heading to the tomb to finalize the preparations of Jesus for His final resting place.

The events of the last few days happened so fast, they had no doubt been in a state of shock since they heard about what took place Thursday night.

They were approaching the tomb to prepare His body and say their final goodbyes.

This was going to be their closure.

None of this would be necessary if they knew He would raise from the dead.

Ok, so we have looked at His Secret Followers, and some Women Followers, now let’s look at: Next Slides

Jesus Closest Earthly Friends

We see this encounter in

John 20:1-10

Had these, Jesus closest friends, believed Jesus would raise from the dead, as soon as Mary told them what she saw, they would have likely responded along these lines;

“Mary, Jesus made it very clear to all of us that He would raise from the dead.

Don’t you remember what He said?”

But that is not what we seen in their response, what we see is they immediately jump to their feet and begin to run to the tomb.

Let me tell you what else you don’t see, you don’t see them yelling back and forth as they are running to the tomb;

He is risen!

He is risen indeed.

He is risen!

He is risen indeed!

That brings us to a very important fact that is clear in Scripture: Next Slides

When Jesus followers approached the empty tomb, not one single one of them assumed a resurrection.

Here is what I believe is the reality for virtually all of His followers after the crucifixion.