Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Introduction

In the 1929 Rose Bowl game, Georgia Tech and the University of California were locked in a defensive struggle.

The score was zero-zero, when “Stumpy” Thomason, quarterback for Georgia Tech, fumbled the ball and University of California defensive center Roy Riegels got the chance of a lifetime.

The ball bounced into his arms with open field ahead of him.

As a defensive player, Riegels was not accustomed to handling the ball, but he was determined to do everything right.

He tucked the ball, ducked his head, and ran for all he was worth.

He crossed midfield, the forty-yard line, the thirty, the twenty, and then, on the one-yard line, his own teammate, Benny Lom, caught up with him and screamed, “You ran the wrong way!” Before he could run the other way, Riegels was smothered by Georgia Tech players, setting up a two-point safety that was the deciding play in the game.

For the rest of his life, the poor defensive center was known as Roy “Wrong Way” Riegels.

The story of Wrong Way Riegels seems especially sad because he tried so hard to do everything right.

He did just as he should: tucked the ball, ducked his head, and ran as fast as he could.

His only problem was that he lost track of his goal.

Something similar is happening to the congregation at Corinth in the apostle Rabbi Paul’s time.

Everyone is doing their own version of what they think the right thing is.

They want to eat and drink and be merry, they want to celebrate Messiah’s body properly and they want to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit.

But as commendable as those desires may be, the congregation goes astray because it has lost sight of its ultimate calling and the reason why the Holy Spirit manifests his power in anyone.

That is why Paul here writes so plainly about the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in this passage.

In essence, he is plastering a huge signpost on the congregation so that people neither then nor now lose sight of the one thing that the highest priority of the Holy Spirit so that He will manifest His power in their lives.

What is that highest priority?

To be a fully submitted servant of Messiah Yeshua.

Rabbi Paul says that whatever the Corinthians previously thought would cause the Holy Spirit’s power to come upon them must be set aside because when a person is full with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit intends to give that person power to the degree he/she is a fully submitted servant of Messiah Yeshua.

Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Sermons: Models of Redemptive Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 130–131.

The implications are at once vast and specific for those of us who wish to be used by the Holy Spirit.

Discussions about the fruit of the spirit and gifts of the Spirit are necessary and inevitable, but if we are not first and foremost fully submitted servants of the Messiah Yeshua, we will not experience the power of God’s Spirit in our lives.

Our instruction may be valid, our facts may be accurate, our doctrine may be correct, our truth may be true, but without a life fully submitted to the Lordship of Yeshua will keep seeking His power but never experiencing it.

To experience the Spirit’s power—to have a life that is operating on more than just natural principles—we must never lose sight of this one thing: we must remain fully submitted to the lordship of Yeshua the Messiah and committed to the benefit of others.

Living It ()

Ha-Foke Ba

- On Screen Bible

Background to Corinth and it’s community.

Corinth was an influential graeco-roman city far away from Rabbi Paul’s home base in Antioch: about 750 miles by sea and over a thousand miles by land.

Corinth was like the Las Vegas of the ancient world.

Diversity of Culture

Diversity of Religion

Diversity of Economy

Diversity of Pleasures

Corinth was a city where public boasting and self-promotion had become an art form.

Corinth was a home for Jewish people amongst Greeks

The oldest Synagogue dates to about 150 BCE and we believe historically there were 7 synagogues in Corinth in the First Century.

Apart from this inscription, seven more have been found in Corinth.

Five of them are in such small fragments that no one word survived completely.

The date cannot be determined, and the conclusion of the editor of the corpus, that they are in Hebrew, is accepted.

Near the Theatre was found a tablet bearing the seven-branched menorah upon a base flanked by a seven-branched menorah, a lulab, and an ethrog.

Two fragments of Jewish inscriptions were also found in the eastern area of the Theatre.71

They yield some information.

The first one is bilingual (Greek and Hebrew) with a Hebrew word miscab (tomb).

The second contains two titles διδάσ[καλος] and ἀρχ[ισυνάγωγ]ος.

After the last title the editors restored τῆ[ς συναγωγῆς Κορίνθου?].

The restoration is very insecure and the last word ought to be ruled out, since ‘given the size of Corinth in the Roman period, it is certain to have had more than the one synagogue which Κορίνθου might imply’.

Moreover it would be very difficult to find a parallel for the use of a city’s name within that city in a text of this category.74

Rabbi Paul leads the Synagogue Leader at Corinth to faith (; ).

The First Letter to the Corinthians was written from Ephesus probably around ad 53 to 55 shortly before Pentecost ().

Matthew S. Beal, “Corinth,” ed.

John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

Corinth was like the Las Vegas of the ancient world.

Diversity of Culture

Diversity of Religion

Diversity of Economy

Diversity of Pleasures

Corinth was a city where public boasting and self-promotion had become an art form.

Rabbi Paul is addressing a mixed audience of Jews and Non-Jews that are from diverse backgrounds but all of whom probably share this one things in common: that the way to get further faster is to live for self-promotion and that if there was spiritual power from the Holy Spirit it would was were meant for self-promotion and for self agenda.

Rabbi Paul says the opposite: if you want to experience the Spirit’s power then life a life fully submitted to Yeshua and committed to other’s benefit.

That is why in when he starts to talk about “Living It” living the fully submitted and committed life verses 1 reads like some just threw a cup of cold water on someone who was sleeping in their bed.

Owns Idolatrous Past (vv.

1-2)

Living It ().

Rabbi Paul gives us three rapid bullet points for experiencing the Holy Spirit’s power: ditch, submit, and commit.

Ditch the Old Submit and Commit ()

They were believers living in ignorance about how much therr former paganism (cf.

; ; for Jews being called pagan also ) was still controlling their hearts (see ; ).

Earlier in the letter, Rabbi Paul calls them “worldly” because of their jealousy and strife ().

They were committed to themselves and submitted to speechless idols that led them astray and the implication is that at a maximum they are still led astray or at a bare minimum not experiencing the real power of the Holy Spirit.

Rabbi Paul is saying something very powerful here: Brothers and sisters, you can be very ignorant about how much of your old life of submission to idols and commitment to self is still leading you astray and preventing you from experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Submit the Heart’s to Yeshua’s lordship ( )

First, this is not as simple as “say” the right thing.

It is so much deeper than that.

This is about the heart of a person fully submitting to Yeshua’s lordship.

Second, In the Jewish community, from which Rabbi Paul is retrieving this word “anethema,” it means to devote something to a “cherem” a “ban.”

During the rise of Israel as a nation and during its days as a kingdom to put something or someoneunder a ban meant to totally destroy it.

Remember, when Joshua went in to take the promise land and God told him to put all of Jericho under the “ban” (see ).

The Jewish Encyclopedia perfectly describes the use of the anethema or ban in Paul’s day.

In post-exilic times the ḥerem as a war measure against idolaters no longer found any application.

Nevertheless it was employed as a means of ecclesiastical discipline to keep the community clear of undesirable, semi-heathenish elements; and when the new constitution was to be adopted for the new colony, those that would not participate in the assembly of the children of the captivity, had, according to the counsel of the princes and elders, all their substance devoted (A.

V. “forfeited”), and were themselves separated from the community (Ezra 10:8)

Rabbi Paul is saying, that the person who is speaking by the Holy Spirit would never suggest to any degree possible that Yeshua or His teachings are undesirable and should be destroyed or eliminated.

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Last, contrarily, he says the mark of a person who has the Holy Spirit is a heart fully submitted to the lordship of Yeshua.

When you submit to the lordship of someone else you are not paying lip service rather you are saying, “your agenda is my agenda, your plans are my plans, your dreams, your good, your kingdom, your glory is my highest goal in this world.

Your “yes” and your “no” are the song of my heart; rather than the one who says, “your ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ are like puke in my mouth.”

Commit to Benefiting Others

First, it means committing to Oneness not Sameness ()

Rabbi Paul is infected by the implications of the echad tri-unity of God: The parallelism of verses 4–6 is remarkable.

Paul tells us that there are different distributions:

The parallelism of verses 4–6 is remarkable.

Paul tells us that there are different distributions:

of gifts (χαρίσματα, charismata), but the same Spirit;

of service (διακονίαι, diakoniai), but the same Lord;

of working (ἐνεργήματα, energēmata), but the same God.

God is One not the Same, Oneness or Echadness does not mean Sameness.

The model of the body of the Messiah is built upon the platform of God’s echadness, His oneness.

There is going to be a difference in giftedness, differences in service and degrees of how gifted and how much a person is going to serve.

One of the life principles that I have tried to put into my kids is this one be a craftsman and sharpen your skills and don’t attempt everything everybody else does.

Some people are more talented, are more gifted, have more endurance, have more character; however, I have told them if you want to be so good at something that nobody ignores you, then give 100% of your talent, giftedness, endurance, character, and power to it.