Sermon Tone Analysis

BY Pastor Glenn Pease

From out of the files of the great Michelangelo comes the story of the young artist who labored long and tedious hours on the statue of an angel.

When the time for its unvailing had finally come, the young artist hid himself in an inconspicuous spot and waited breathlessly for the response of the great sculptor.

When Michelangelo arrived and carefully examined the statue, he turned to one of his colleagues and said, "It lacks only one thing...."

The expectant heart of the young artist was crushed, and without waiting to hear what that one thing was, he slipped away with tearful eyes to grieve.

One of his close friends, seeing his condition, mustered up the courage to go to Michelangelo and ask what the statue lacked.

The great artist said, "The statue lacked only one thing-life.

With life it would be as perfect as God himself could have made it!"

The young artist grieved prematurely for he had done the best that man could do, for only God can give life.

God was the first sculptor, and Genesis 2 tells us he formed man from the dust of the ground.

Man was first a beautiful lifeless statue, like those we see of great men and women all through history from ancient Greece to our own great presidents.

But God could do something that no one has ever been able to do to a statue.

He breathed into that statue of Adam the breath of life, and man became a living being.

Out of darkness God said let there be light.

Out of dust God said let there be life.

The Bible says God is the origin of life, the author of life, the creator of life, for God is life.

Life is, because God is.

Life is eternal, because God is eternal.

Life is the foundation of all that is, for life was before all things.

In contrast to those who speculate that life must have developed, or been spontaneously generated out of non-life, the Bible says just the opposite is the case.

All non-life is a product of life, for God is life, and all that is, is because God as life, made it so.

It is fascinating to study life from the point of view of how the creator of life has designed it.

There are marvels that make science a form of worship, as men probe into the mysteries of life.

Take, for example, the wonder that so many of the precious values of life that make modern living such a blessing are non-living products that exist because of life that was sacrificed.

Coal, oil, gas, and diamonds, just to name some major ones.

These, and their numerous by-products, are all derived from life.

God has so arranged the structure of physical reality that there is only one atom that can be the foundation for life, and that is the carbon atom.

All other atoms can form only small molecules of a dozen or less atoms.

Carbon, on the other hand, can form molecules of hundreds, thousands, and even millions of atoms.

Therefore, carbon is the only atom that can form molecules large enough, and complicated enough, to make life possible.

That is why it is called the element of life.

There is no life without carbon.

It has a tenacity to hold together like no other element.

It is the hardest of the elements to melt, and to pull apart.

Plants are full of carbon, and ten percent of the atoms in a human being are carbon.

Remove the carbon from this room, and not only are the plants gone, but so are we, for carbon is the chemical foundation of life.

When trees fall in a forest and lay there as dry wood, they are 50�rbon, but as they decay further and become peat, they become 60% carbon.

The peat becomes Lignite, which is 67 % carbon, and it becomes Bituminous coal, which is 88% carbon, and then the pressure finally produces Anthracite coal which is 95% carbon.

The ultimate comes when the carbon is pushed together as hard as it can be with all non-carbon squeezed out, and you have a diamond.

The diamond is related to coal, just as the black and white man have the same origin.

So the black coal and white diamond have the same origin.

The point of all this is, God has so made physical life that even in death it is not defeated, but becomes a source of great physical blessings.

Almost all of the power that makes life a joy comes from coal, oil, and gas-all products of life.

All the sources of fire are from that which was once alive.

Fire is a flame produced by life.

Diamonds that beautify life, also have their source in life.

Nothing lovely ever dies completely, but passes into other loveliness.

This is the gospel of chemistry.

The Conductor of the great Symphony of Life has so composed the music that there is a continuous interplay of life and death, with life always bursting forth from death.

Spring is one of the greatest movements in this symphony of creation.

Martin Luther said, "Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf of springtime."

The hope of life within us burns

As life bursts forth when spring returns.

The flowers with their colors bright,

The lilies clothed in robes of white,

They speak a silent message clear,

That robs death of its power and fear.

Author unknown

When we move into the higher sphere of life, we hear the advanced orchestra playing the same tunes of the interplay of life or death.

Sometimes the blues dominate, and we are compelled to be conscious of the reality of sin, tragedy, sorrow and death.

But then the music changes, and the tempo speeds up, and our hearts are lifted, for love, light, and life are the themes, and we are filled with praise and rejoicing.

We are moved by the variations to have different moods, and when the blues are playing we wonder how the symphony of life will end.

Will it be a solemn and somber dirge, ending with a whimper, or will it be a crashing crescendo of sound, climaxing in rejoicing and praise?

Here in John 11, we see Jesus, the composer of life's symphony, giving us the answer by word and deed.

The setting is a time of sadness, and the blues have overwhelmed the sisters of Lazarus.

He was relatively young, and now he is decaying in the tomb.

Jesus did not try to comfort the sisters by saying something like this: "Look at it this way-the carbon from your brothers body will be crushed beneath the earth, and some aeons hence may become part of a diamond that will grace the crown of some great king or queen."

Jesus rose above this chemical gospel of creation to the higher level of the gospel of resurrection.

Diamonds for leaves is a good trade off, but diamonds for lives is not good enough.

Man does not want to be glorified by being petrified.

He wants to live.

Pilgrim setting out from the city of destruction cried out, "Life, life, more life."

This is the cry of all men on their journey through this world.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell, the medical missionary, in his book, What Life Means To Me, wrote about life after death, and said, "I know little about it, but that is not of any great importance, because I want it, whatever it is."

This is how the majority of human beings feel.

They do not relish seeing their life end.

Life by its very nature loves to live, and so it longs to conquer death, and live on.

In 1855 Louis Napoleon received a letter from his mother in Switzerland where she was dying.

He carried this letter with him the rest of his life.

She ended it by writing, "Have faith that we shall meet again.

It is too necessary not to be true."

This is the universal longing of the human heart.

Love is too precious a gem, even more valuable than diamonds, and the only way love can be eternal is if life is eternal, and so, man longs for eternal life.

Jesus responds to this universal longing, which was the specific longing of Mary and Martha, by making the boldest statement ever made on this planet.

He said in verses 25 and 26, "I am the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me will live, even though he dies: and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."

This is the ultimate statement on life.

It is the pinnacle, the peak, the summit.

You don't go beyond this, for this is that beyond which there is no beyond.

This is the word of life itself, and life has the last word.

The symphony of life and death will end with life.

Death will die, and life will live.

But, meanwhile, there are problems to deal with.

Edgar Guest wrote this poem, Life Is A Problem.

Life is a mystery, all of man's history

Tells us but little of how it began.

All earth can show of it,

All we can know of it

Give scarce a hint of its purpose and plan.

Life is not altered by what men have guessed of it,