Sermon Tone Analysis

I. Why do Christians celebrate the resurrection?

Sermon Title: Gospel: When Love and Justice Mingle

Introduction: We have looked at our one hope and the love that characterizes us as God’s forever family.

BRIEFLY explain the gospel

“Flannery O’Conner was once asked to put the meaning of one of her short stories into a nutshell.

She responded tartly that, if she could have put the meaning into a nutshell, she wouldn’t have had to write the story.”

Why do Christians celebrate the resurrection?

(Put another way, why does resurrection matter?)

In order to understand the glory of the resurrection, we must first understand the horror of death in its origin, substance, and types

Substance: What is death?

Death is separation.

Death is more than just the end of life, it is the cutting off of relationship.

This is where we get the phrase, “You are dead to me” and why Jesus can say that to hate someone, to cut them off from yourself, is to murder them.

Origin: From where does death originate?

Death originates out of human rebellion against God.

Death is the perpetual curse against humanity made by God in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve rebelled against God.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife

and have eaten of the tree

of which I commanded you,

‘You shall not eat of it,’

cursed is the ground because of you;

in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;

and you shall eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your face

you shall eat bread,

till you return to the ground,

Forms: What forms of death exist?

for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust,

and to dust you shall return.”

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

Forms: What forms of death exist?

Spiritual, Physical, and Eternal

Physical death is a glimpse and foretaste of two other types of death.

Spiritual Death

Physical we too readily know already

The Second Death

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Why is there all of this death?

Because of God’s appropriately just wrath against his enemies.

Take in two parts: God’s just wrath, his enemies

God’s just wrath

You may be able to understand this through an illustration.

For those of us old enough to clearly remember September 11, 2001, we can likely remember where we were and what we felt.

And amidst all the emotions, two rose to the surface, grief and wrath.

You can find these two emotions on the national consciousness if you look at the songs written during the following year, but chiefly, justice through the expression of wrath came to the forefront, expressed succinctly and popularly by Toby Kieth, “Soon as we could see clearly / Through our big black eye / Man, we lit up your world / Like the fourth of July.”

And whatever you may think of the seventeen and a half years of war that have followed those attacks, there is no denying the national solidarity in the months following: whoever was responsible for those attacks that killed unsuspecting men and women, and undeserving from among our very old and our very young, must be brought to justice, and justice looked like death.

An egregious evil had been committed, payment must be made, justice must be served.

There is something in everyone one of us that knows unprovoked, undeserved attack is unjust and ought to be met with appropriate justice.

His enemies:

It is at the point of “appropriate justice,” however, that we struggle.

I imagine that most of us would say that someone like Hitler or Mao deserved death, or at the very least some form of retributive punishment, but our struggle is not that unprovoked, undeserved attack ought to be met with appropriate justice, but that we, who are not so bad as genocidal madmen, deserve the wrath of God that leads to a triad of death.

This is why we may not see ecstatic celebration as an appropriate response to the resurrection because death does not seem like the necessary response to who we are.

But let me propose to you that all sin, rather than being on a gradient scale, in its substance is a type of murder, a hateful, relationship severing action toward the God who created us.

presupposes what is stated plainly elsewhere by Paul, that humans were created for God, for his glory (), not in the sense that we would add glory to his perfect glory, but that we would enjoy him through worship and he us through our worship of him.

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

(ESV)

In the middle of , the apostle Paul, explains that God’s wrath has come upon humanity because we have suppressed this truth.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

The truth Paul references is that his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly revealed through creation itself.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

Knowing that God is both eternal and divine ought to prompt worship in us for him, but because of our rebellion, which began in the Garden of Eden, we suppress that truth and believe a lie.

Romans 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The lie that we believe is the eradication of God from our consciousness.

It is the cutting away of his existence from our minds and living as though we have effectively killed him.

We replace him with self love, satisfaction in relationships, security through money and career, glory in our achievements.

For the more religiously minded among us, we refashioning a god after our own image and adopt religious behaviors whether to placate a guilty conscience or fuel our pride.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!

Amen.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!

Amen.

Whether worshiping the things of this world or a god of our own making, humans find themselves guilty of feebly, but persistently attempting divine murder, which then plays itself out in what we call sin, which is basically a hodge-podge of possible ways of living as though we have killed God and he no longer exists.

But this is not merely theoretical, but became actual.

When confronted with God in the flesh, the Jews (the people of God) and the Gentiles conspired together, expressing their spiritual enmity toward God by physically nailing the God-man Jesus to a cross and killing him.

Therefore, every person who has sinned stands, in a sense, as guilty enemies of, having murdered God in their hearts.

A crime for which punishment, he says, is death.

But there is an incomprehensible, mysterious, wonderful difference between our wrathful justice and God’s in that God is simultaneously justly wrathful toward sinners and graciously loving toward his enemies.

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

[10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

(ESV)

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

[10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

(ESV)

John Calvin sees in these words, the co-mingling of God’s love and justice: “‘. . .

God, in a way that cannot be put into words, at the very time when he loved us, was hostile to us till he was reconciled in Christ.’

Calvin [is acknowlodging a] mystery of God that is beyond our grasp.

To Calvin, this duality of attitude, love and hostility, which in human psychological terms is inconceivable, is part of God’s . . .

glory . .