Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Human beings love to be amazed and filled with wonder.

That is why they travel the world over to see the 7 wonders of the world and the million and more lesser wonders of God and man.

That is why the constant craving for special effects in spectacular movies that take us out of dullsville into a world of wonder.

The amazing is always popular.

Back near the turn of the century, Hodji Ali made his fortune by being amazing.

In full view of the audience he would swallow peach pits, pennies, rhinestone rings, watermelon seeds and a whole series of small objects.

Then he would bring up specific items at the request of the audience.

Like the great fish in the book of Jonah, he could vomit for a profit{prophet}.

That was merely a warm up.

While his assistant set up a miniature castle, Ali drank a gallon of water and then a pint of kerosene.

The drum would begin to roll and he would spit out the kerosene in a six foot arc across the stage, setting the castle on fire.

Then with the flames shooting high into the air, he would spit up the water and extinguish the blaze.

The people loved it, for it was amazing, and people love to be amazed.

That is what the Christmas season is all about.

It is about being amazed.

The whole world, in shopping centers, is changed to convey a sense of amazement.

The lights and decorations and colors are all changed to convey a sense of wonder.

We are expected to respond, how wonderful, how beautiful, how amazing it all is!

The world and the church cooperate once a year in an all out effort to create an atmosphere of amazement.

It is very Biblical to do so, for that is the spirit that characterized the first Christmas.

After the shepherds had gone through the wonder-filled experience of hearing the angels and seeing the Christ-child for themselves, they spread the word, and we read in verse 18, "And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them."

Amazement has three different levels very much like the three levels of heaven.

There is the atmospheric heaven of the birds and the clouds.

There is the astronomical heaven of sun, moon and stars.

There is the angelic heaven of all the heavenly hosts and the Trinity.

Human amazement begins on the highest level as the shepherds are confronted by the wonder of the angels.

But then the shepherds have to go back to tending their sheep, and day by day the wonder of it all would begin to fade.

The challenge for them and for us is to keep the wonder alive and on the highest level.

Let's look at the three stages of amazement, for just being aware of them will help us.

I. THE RESPONSE OF AMAZEMENT.

This is the first and highest level where we are confronted by the mysterious and marvelous and feel a sense of awe.

Georgia Adams conveys a common experience of amazement in her poem Evening Awe.

I am filled with awesome wonder

on moonlit, starlit nights;

Speechlessly I stand engrossed in

Such an array of sights.

Like a rich black velvet curtain

The sky hangs silently-

Studded with millions of diamonds

Shining so brilliantly.

Among the myriads of stars

Flung into outer space,

The dipper so majestically

Appears to take its place.

Each whirling, twirling planet spins

Within its orbit there;

The silvery moon hangs deftly

Suspended in mid-air!

Ah yes, the spacious firmament

In silent witness stands

To prove God holds this universe

Within His sovereign hands!

-Georgia B. Adams

We have all been amazed at some time by gazing up into the sky.

The wise men were more amazed than usual when they saw the Star of Bethlehem.

In that state of wonder they were willing to give up a good chunk of their life to follow that star to the Christ-child.

When they arrived they, no doubt, had the emotions of those who sing, "I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene."

We see an atmosphere of amazement everywhere in the New Testament when people confronted Jesus.

When Mary and Joseph found Jesus as a young boy in the temple talking with the scholars, they were amazed.

When Jesus began to teach, the people were amazed at His authority.

When He began to cast our evil spirits, they were amazed at His power.

When He healed people, they were amazed, and they praised God.

When He stilled the storm His disciples were completely amazed.

The point is, there was an atmosphere of amazement that surrounded Jesus and His ministry, and we read in Mark 9:15, "As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet Him."

The response of amazement was the normal response of men when they had an encounter with Christ.

The next level we want to consider is-

II.

THE RETREAT OF AMAZEMENT.

This second stage is a lower level and is the inevitable direction we must go.

Just as Jesus did not permit Peter to build his three tabernacles on the Mt. of Transfiguration, and stay in that elevated atmosphere of amazement, so He does not permit anyone to go through life in perpetual wonder.

The disciples were often amazed at Jesus, but after living with Him for some time, they went from being, sometimes awe filled, to being sometimes, awful.

They fought and bickered over issues of pride, and lost the sense of honor it was just to be in His presence.

Judas retreated so far from the glory of his first response that he lost the light altogether.

But nobody escapes the detour off the super highway of amazement.

That is just the way God made us.

The thing that amazes me is how fast we can retreat from the atmosphere of amazement.

Some years back, my parents visited us and we took them down town to see the sights.

It was new to all of us as we saw the flowing water and trees, and all sorts of plants inside a modern building.

It was truly amazing.

But years later when we returned to hopefully again be amazed, the novelty was gone.

It was a boring journey for the atmosphere of amazement had vanished.

I experienced the retreat of amazement.

Amazement thrives on surprise and the unexpected.

It has a hard time surviving in an atmosphere where all is known.

I enjoyed the amazing surprises of the movie, Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

But when I watched the film again on television, I was no longer surprised by the unknown, and I lost a great deal of amazement.

Earl Stanley Gardner tells of the fascinating experience of a traffic officer who was patrolling the highway one hot summer day.

He found a place in the shade to pull over and observe the traffic.

He saw a car which was acting strange, as a driver drove slowly along a creek road leading to the highway.

He got his binoculars out, and to his surprise, he recognized the driver as his next door neighbor.

He observed him stop the car, and get a bag out of the trunk, and lay it in the shade by the stream.

He then got back into the car and left.

The officer was curious, and drove to the spot, and checked it out.

He discovered a mother cat and six kittens.

He quickly picked them up and drove with his siren blaring at high speed to his neighbors house.

He ran around the back of the house and put the cats on his porch.

He never told his neighbor what had happened, but delighted in hearing him tell others of the impossible story of how his cat and six kittens beat him home, when he drove off to abandon them.

His neighbor lived in perpetual amazement at finding these cats purring in the sunlight on his back porch.

The point is, had the officer told him what had happened, the amazement would retreat rapidly into oblivion.