Sermon Tone Analysis

1Cor 15:1-10

As a church we have been working through the beginning paragraph of .

As a church we have been working through the beginning paragraph of .

Verses 3–5 give four essential rudiments of the gospel message which Paul mentioned in v.1.

Verses 3-5 identify four things that Paul himself had received and of which he’d earlier said (in vv.1-3) to be of great clarity, communicabilty and centrality to us.

These four essential core-meaning events of the gospel message are sequentially told to us in vv.3-5.

Here they are in time sequence:

(1) Jesus the Messiah (the Christ) died (aorist tense, simple historical past) for (i.e. on our behalf, in our place, in order to deal with) our sins under the direction of what the Scriptures predict and require.

The last phrase of v.3 indicates that the death of Christ was in the purpose and prescription of God who ultimately inspired these Scriptures.

(2) Jesus the Messiah was buried (that is to say He was widely, humanly-recognized as dead).

This first phrase of v.4 indicates the evidence that Jesus’ death was a real and complete death in all its dimensions.

(3) Jesus the Messiah has been raised (perfect tense, suggesting that He was raised and continues to live).

The Resurrection is said to have occurred on the third day and again to be in full accordance with what the Scriptures predict and require.

(4) Jesus then appeared to witnesses -- many witnesses -- even apostolic witnesses, who now become the God-moved authors of the new supplementary Scriptures then being written to further testify to the fuller meaning and purpose of Jesus' saving work.

Last week I told the story of a young fellow called Nard from the Philippines, who tried reading the book of Mark without knowing either the pre-story nor the end-story.

Our friends today, are like Nard, in that they cannot understand the meaning of the gospel events & achievements of Jesus’ life and death without them knowing the pre-story AND the post-story.

People need the Lord, as we used to sing in passionate tones, BUT without their perceiving their fallen condition, in a fallen race, fallen into sin and therefore into death, they cannot fully appreciate the purpose of Jesus’ death.

— The way Paul summarizes the first stages of the gospel in v.3 is SO hard to appreciate unless we understand the human race’s fall into sin and death.

And, you know something else? ... we cannot understand the accomplishment and the benefits of the death of the Saviour without also understanding the story of the resurrection — as Paul summarizes it in v.4 and following in 1st Corinthians chapter 15.

And, you know something else? ... we cannot understand the accomplishment and the benefits of the death of the Saviour without also understanding the story of the resurrection — as Paul summarizes it in v.4 and following in 1st Corinthians chapter 15.

We can only come to a deep appreciation for what Jesus was doing when He died for us because His death and His resurrection were done in full accordance with what the Scriptures said.

Last week, we reminded ourselves from v.3, the first part of Paul’s gospel summary, that Jesus the Saviour died a substitutionary death instead of us being permanently separated from God in permanent, everlasting death.

We can only come to a deep appreciation for what Jesus was doing when He died for us because His death and His resurrection were done in full accordance with what the Scriptures said.

PRAY

PRAY

The old man made me a cup of tea, and took me through to his sitting room.

‘Now you must see this,’ he said, passing me a much-handled photograph album.

‘This tells you how we came here.’

The pictures told their own story.

The happy family at home in Armenia.

The sudden journey with what they could carry and nothing else.

The key figures—father, grandfather, an uncle.

On board the ship.

And then the arrival:

staying with distant relatives, finding their own home, settling down, making a new life.

‘And this is where I come in,’ he smiled, turning the last page.

‘I’m not really an Armenian, you see.’

There he was, a little baby, born just after the family arrived in their new world.

I wanted to know more of the history of this strange, proud people who had retained their sense of identity despite being hunted almost to extinction.

He gave me a book, also showing signs of being read many times.

‘This gives you the whole picture,’ he said.

‘When we read this we realize why it’s important that we came here and have carried on our way of life.’

Two stories, one old and long, the other sudden and short.

Weave them together and you create a new community.

And that’s what Paul is doing in ’s first paragraph.

Paul tells how the Christian movement had begun:

it’s a kind of family album, explaining what had happened to bring this little family to birth in its new existence.

He adds himself at the end of the list, though there is something odd about his being there at all.

And Paul gives the tell-tale hints that reveal this story as simply the most recent, and decisive, moment in a much longer story,

for which you need the Book, the Book that gives the whole picture and explains why these new doings of Jesus are so powerful as to save us.

This whole chapter BTW is one of the greatest sustained discussions of a topic which Paul ever wrote.

The theme is the resurrection—the resurrection of Jesus, and, the future resurrection of those who believe in Jesus.

Today, as we finish our series on the gospel, I too must speak about the critical resurrection of Jesus!!

What I have to say boils down to this:

There has to be an undeniable resurrection, and, the resurrection of Jesus has an undeniable Scripture-defined meaning -- which meaning powerfully affects people being saved.

The fact that Jesus was “buried” (in v.4a) verified His death by publicly accessible records & witnesses,

and the fact that Jesus “appeared” to others (in vv.5,6,7,8) verified His resurrection by still living witnesses (v.6b)

So, Jesus’ resurrection, like Jesus’s death, is undeniably grounded in witnessed testimony.

John Singleton Copley, one of the great legal minds in British history and three times High Chancellor of England, wrote,

“I know pretty well what evidence is, and I tell you, such evidence as that for the resurrection has never broken down yet.”

Paul was writing about 16 to 18 years after Jesus’ death.

Just 16 to 18 years after.

That’s the reason why Paul can say in verse 6, “All the people who saw Jesus raised from the dead … You don’t have to trust me.

You can talk to them.

You can interrogate them.

They’re available to you.

They’re still alive (most of them).

It’s only been 16 to 18 years.

Most of them are still alive.

You go talk to them.”

And Paul’s changed life and testimony is part of the evidence.

He talks about his own changed life, but think about this.

He is able to make this offer that depends on more than human reactions to the resurrection.

Paul insists on something more historically objective: “All the people who still live in Judea who are still alive who saw the risen Jesus with their eyes, you can go talk to them.”

You know, he could never have made that offer unless all the original witnesses of the resurrection were, through the rest of their lives, testifying to the reality of the resurrection, at enormous cost.

When you put those three things together (the empty tomb, the eyewitnesses, and the changed lives of the people who saw Jesus), you have a very powerful case for the undeniability of the resurrection of Jesus — that it really happened.

Some say that Paul did not mention the empty tomb — though each one of the Gospels do.

The word translated “buried” means “entombed, placed horizontally in a [rock] tomb,” not “placed down into the ground.”

So, Paul strongly implied an empty tomb;

what else could the original words “He was buried or entombed, but … He was raised” mean?

Two recent scholars put this together (even though neither one of them is a conservative evangelical).

They “get it” just from the force of the historical evidence.

The first one is the German scholar, Wolfhart Pannenberg, who says:

the early Christians could not possibly have preached the resurrection of Christ publicly and successfully unless both the empty tomb and these hundreds of eyewitnesses really existed.

Do you hear that?

What he’s saying is if there is anybody here today who says, “Well, who knows whether there was really an empty tomb after all these years?

Who knows whether there were really eyewitnesses?

Why would I trust an ancient document?”

Pannenberg is saying, “Hey, just think.

As a historian, there is absolutely no way those things didn’t happen, that they weren’t true.

There must have been an empty tomb, there must have been all those eyewitnesses, or Christianity would not have been able to preach the resurrection of Christ immediately and successfully the way it did.

It must have happened!

Those things must be there.”

The second recent scholar is the English Anglican, N.T. Wright.

He works it out a little bit more.

He effectively says:

...if there was only an empty tomb and there had been no sightings, people would have believed the body was stolen.

If it had only been eyewitnesses claiming to have seen Jesus but the tomb still had the body in it, then everybody would have believed they were just hallucinating.

Only if all these were true … the empty tomb, the sightings, and the permanently changed lives of the witnesses … could Christianity have ever even begun.

Briefly, that’s the case that Jesus’ resurrection is undeniable.