Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Jonathan Edwards was born in 1703, and he became one of the greatest preachers in history.

He lived in a day when pastors went to a church out of seminary and stayed there for the rest of their lives.

His father was the pastor of The Congregational Church in the little village of East Windsor, Conn. for 64 years.

Jonathan entered Yale at age 13 and graduated at age 17.

He studied theology for 2 years and then became a tutor at Yale.

At age 24 he was invited to be the junior pastor at Northampton, Mass.

where his grandfather was the senior pastor.

Two years later his grandfather died and he was the sole pastor of the church.

Edwards developed a theology that said God can do whatever He wants with people.

They are His creatures and He can do with them as He pleases.

He can take them to heaven or cast them into hell.

He has the right and the power to do anything He wills.

He started to preach a series on this theme, and one became very famous, and it was called Sinners In The Hands Of An angry God.

His fearful messages started a revival that spread until he became one of the most famous and influential pastors in the nation, and he was still only in his 30's.

When the winds of change died down, and the emotions of revival cooled, and apathy set in there was a period from 1744 to 1748 where not a single new person joined the church.

This was a long dry spell, and critics of Edwards stirred up agitation.

After much personal bitterness the church voted in 1750 to dismiss their pastor.

He appealed to the Ecclesiastical Council to review the church's action, but five of the nine ministers voted to sustain his dismissal.

So Edwards found himself out of a job at 47 years of age with a wife and 10 children to support.

Their financial situation was pathetic.

After a few months the church found that nobody wanted to come to be their pastor, and so they did an unbelievable thing: They asked Edwards to help them out.

Most pastors would have refused with indignation, but Edwards agreed to do it.

He started preaching again in the pulpit from which he had been cast out.

He was ministering the Word of God to a people who had rejected him.

He did this for a year before he got a call to another church.

He went on to write 4 theological works that gave him the reputation of being the most original religious thinker in American history.

In 1758 he was asked to become the President of Princeton.

I share this history of one of the great preachers of our land because it is such a parallel to what we see in the relationship between Paul and the Corinthian Church.

Paul spent a year and a half getting this church established.

It was hard work, for they were a very godless people, and Paul needed special encouragement from God to hang in there and not give up.

So Paul plugged away at it and got Silas and Timothy to come and take over his labor of making tents so he could devote himself full time to preaching and teaching.

You would think that this would be a dream church.

The world's greatest Apostle, who was the most brilliant and devoted man on the earth was their pastor, but the fact is, it was a nightmare.

Paul had more problems with this church than with all the rest of them put together.

These Christians refused to grow up.

They stayed as babes, and the result was they were not really any different than the pagans around them.

Paul, however, never gave up on this bunch of carnal Christians.

He wrote 4 letters to them.

We have 2 of them, but he refers in them to 2 others he wrote.

So we have the paradox that the church, which had the most problems, and which gave Paul the most grief, have the most written to them of all the churches.

They were the worst and they received the best.

They found every petty fault they could find in Paul to criticize.

They chewed him up and spit him out, and yet Paul keeps coming back for more.

Many who study the issue in depth wonder why Paul did not just write them off as a hopeless cause.

As Paul travels the world he is ever thinking of this church and how he can help them shape up and stop being so critical.

He wants them to grow up for the glory of God.

Most would walk away from a church that treated them like this, but Paul looks at all their fault finding and decided he will defend himself against these critics.

This letter is loaded with Paul's self-defense.

Some Christians feel it is not wise to engage in self-defense, for it can sound very egotistical.

This is true, and at times Paul sounds anything but humble in this letter, but we need to keep in mind that he is not doing this for his sake, or for his reputation.

The truth of God's Word will suffer and all the church will be hurt if he lets his critics undermine his authority and his teaching.

He is defending himself for the sake of the church.

Self-defense is legitimate when it benefits others.

Believe it or not, one of the main criticisms of Paul was that you cannot trust the man to keep his promises.

Paul told the Corinthians that he planned to come and see them and spend a winter with them after he went through Macedonia.

But that plan did not work out, and Paul did not make it to Corinth.

The best laid plans of mice and men, and even Apostles, do not always work out, and this one of Paul's fell through.

This is just the sort of thing critics latch onto.

They were saying that Paul's word was not worth the paper it was written on.

He says one thing and then does another.

He says yes, but he means no.

It made no difference to the critics that Paul ended his promise to come to them with these words in I Cor.

16:7, "...if the Lord permits."

Paul knew that life did not always go according to his plan, and so he conditioned his promise.

But this did not stop the faultfinders.

Have you ever promised somebody something and then discovered that life took a turn that you were not expecting, and you could not keep that promise?

Parents have this quite often with children.

You don't have to do this very often before you hear the words, "You never do what you say you will."

This is what the childish critics are saying to Paul.

He is like a mother who placates her crying kids by promising them the moon, but when it comes to carrying out the promise she is too tired, or has other plans.

Parents often do make promises to easily, and they do fail to be consistent with keeping their word.

But this is not the case with Paul.

He has valid reasons for his behavior, and much of this letter is his self-defense.

It is hard to deal with Paul's defense in any other way but by a methodical verse by verse examination of his arguments and statements, and so that is what we will do beginning with verse 12. Paul begins with, "Now this is our boast."

The Greek word Paul uses for boast is a very common word in the Greek world.

The only problem is that it is almost always a bad word used to describe a person who trumpets his own renown, and is, therefore, not liked.

We feel the same about a boaster today, and so it does not sound like a good choice of words for a man trying to defend himself against critics.

This is especially so since James 4:16, using this same word, says, "As it is you boast and brag.

All such boasting is evil."

So now he has James against him too, and he is calling him evil for his boasting.

Paul's fist words of defense do not seem appropriate unless he is trying to hang himself, or unless he is a master of paradox.

That, of course, is what Paul was, and by so being he teaches us over and over again that the same thing can be both evil and good.

Boasting is primarily evil, for it is a sign of pride.

But we all know there is also a positive pride, which is the foundation for our self-esteem, and without it we would not be healthy individuals.

Paul had a healthy sense of self-esteem, and he was able to be honest about how he felt about the gifts God had given him.

His pride and boasting were not self-centered, but God-centered.

You will notice that he stresses that his gifts are from God and according to God's grace.

When your boasting exalts God as the source of what you are proud about it is a virtue.

Just because most boasting is a vice of self-centered pride does not mean we should avoid all boasting.

Paul took this bad word and used it often in a positive way.

In so doing he taught Christians to look for the positive side of the sinful nature of man.

What possible good lurks in the hearts of sinners who behave so proud and boast of their achievements as if they were self-made and created all their gifts on their own?

That very vice that keeps them self-centered can become a tool for God-centered service.

This negative word became one of Paul's favorite words.

He uses it about 25 times in his letters to the Corinthians, and it is used only a few times in all the rest of the New Testament.

It is a bad thing that can be good if properly expressed.

Minnie Pearl was famous for saying, "I'm mighty proud to be here."

It was an expression of joy and a compliment to the audience.

No one would ever accuse her of sinful pride in her spirit.