Sermon Tone Analysis

Gaylon, Pastella Family, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.

May the joy of Easter and our risen Savior bring you peace, comfort and strength today as we our Father in heaven chose to call home His servant, Robert Pastella.

Our Lord’s gain is our temporary loss; however, as Jesus rose from the dead, and the tomb was empty, Bob lives with Jesus, resting until the resurrection of all flesh>

I’ve known Bob now for almost 9 years.

And I have to say that i, personally, feel the loss, as i am sure we all do.

Bob was a story teller.

And most of his stories left me in stitches.

He is greatly missed.

Bob was also a survivor.

Since I have known him, Bob has cheated death twice, but the Good Lord, in His timing, finally took Bob home to be with Him.

It was as if Jesus said, “I know you’re tired Bob, I have your room ready, so it is time to come home.”

The text that comforts us today is from the Gospel of Matthew.

Previous to our text this morning, John the Baptizer’s disciples were sent to Jesus by John who was in prison, asking Jesus, “Are You the One who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

Jesus’ response to them was that Jesus was fulfilling prophecies about the Christ made centuries earlier: “…the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

And blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.”

After John’s disciples were sent back to John, Jesus began teaching the crowds who were gathered around about who John was and witnessing about Himself, and began to denounce the cities where most of His mighty works were done, because they failed to repent, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Tyre, Sidon and Capernaum.

Jesus said that if His miracles had been performed in Sodom at the time of Abraham and Lot, the people there would have turned and repented of their evil and unbelief.

This brings us to our text this morning.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Bob was tired.

He had fought very hard the past five years of his live.

He lost his leg, fought infections, had a tracheotomy, recovered, then cancer struck again, and his fight was on.

Yet, there comes a time in every person’s life where the fight goes on too long.

Bob succumbed to the struggle.

He told me the last time we were together, “Pastor, I’m tired.”

Weary and heavily burdened with health issues, Bob fought hard.

Yet Jesus kept him in faith, held him in comfort and finally called Bob to Himself.

That is how Jesus is with all of us.

Death is something that we all get to look forward to.

Not one of us will escape the inevitable.

The question is, will you make it out of life alive or not?

All of scripture is the greatest rescue story ever written.

It is the historical narrative of our world as well as the promises of what are to come.

God created all we see.

The heavens and the earth were brought forward by Him.

With a word, God brought forth everything.

The earth was formed, and God gave it water, vegetation, fish, birds, animals, reptiles, then His crowning achievement, Adam and Eve.

God formed them personally from the dust of the ground, and He breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and Adam became a living being.

He then took a rib from Adam and created Eve, the mother of all the living.

However, even though everything was perfect, the serpent decided to throw a curve ball into the picture.

He spoke with Eve one day about this ‘Tree of knowledge of good and evil’.

He claimed that God had lied to them, and was withholding something special from them.

This caused Eve to doubt that God was truthful, and she ate of the fruit and gave some to her husband, Adam.

Instantly, they realized they were naked, and went and hid themselves.

Previously, the only command that God had given to Adam and Eve was to not eat of the fruit of that tree, nor even touch it, for when they did, they would certainly die.

Once Eve ate of the fruit and gave it to Adam, they did die.

They died spiritually.

And that spiritual death has been passed down from one generation to another.

You and I were born into spiritual death.

Each one of us have inherited this nasty birth defect of sin.

Paul writes in Romans, “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—” (5:12, ESV).

Because of sin brought into our world through doubting God’s Word, death is something we all will suffer.

And it is this sin that cause all of us to want to be our own god.

This is what Satan promised in the Garden to our first parents.

“You will not surely die,” he promised Eve, “for when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like god, knowing good and evil.”

We are born into being our own little god.

Sin is a very interesting thing.

It is brought to life by the Law of God.

Tell anyone that they cannot do something, and it is the first thing that they will want to do.

It takes a person from being outward focused to being focused only on themselves.

Sin curves us in on ourselves.

So everything in life becomes all about ‘me, myself, and I’.

Being our own little god is tiring work.

When we have to do everything, such as making up our own rules, enforcing our own rules on others; working to provide for ourselves, taking on the world that goes against our grain, forcing others into our mold and perceived ideology for everyone else’s lives, and doing everything our way, we tire out quickly.

The beauty of life becomes one frustrating chore after another.

We, like Bob, get tired.

We get tired of life, we get tired of others around us, we get tired of the world around us that we cannot change to fit our mold.

And as we get older…we become weary and heavily burdened.

So Jesus comes to us, He says that being your own god is not your job.

That is His job.

He softly and tenderly calls us by His Holy Spirit, through the Gospel to make things right.

Our sinfulness leads to death.

Physical death is one thing, but living your life as your own god also leads to spiritual and eternal death.

Just as being your own god is not your job, hell is not your eternal destination.

That was created for Satan and his followers.

Living life as your own god is not riding the fence between the two, it is following Satan.

It was his doing that brought all this on in the first place.

Fulfilling the desires of self are his promise to you.

Remember though, that following his will for your life will end you up in a very hot place for all eternity.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Doing everything yourself, for yourself, that has been the job you took on for yourself.

And as we know from all of our experience working one job or another, that when you work, you are due wages.

And so if we take on the job of being our own god, the wages we will earn will be eternal death and suffering.

Why is that?

Well, the gift is far better than the wage.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that even God’s own chosen people were not good enough to make up the difference in the heavenly ledger of their life.

“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”

(, ESV).

Even Mother Teresa who gave her entire life to the welfare of others cannot hold that life up to God and expect Him to allow her into paradise.

Since we are born with the disease of original sin, everything in our life is corrupted by this.

Our health, our mental abilities, our emotions, and even the good things we do, or try to do.

Our bodies begin to die the moment we are conceived.

There are birth defects, other congenital diseases, sicknesses, cancer, and the like.

Sooner or later, our bodies give out and die.

This is the result of sin in our world, everything in this creation has been affected by it.

Our mental states can become disease ridden also, with things like schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, bi-polar, depression and the like.

And what about our emotions?

We could be doing great then one day everything is off kilter.

We can wake up one day and perceive that our entire world is crashing down around us, even though its not.

Nothing in life can be counted on as being good 100% of the time.