Sermon Tone Analysis

1)      God’s Promise

a)      Confirm – The word that the NIV translates “keep you strong” is the same word found in the previous verse six where it says “confirmed.”

In verse six this word is in the past tense.

God confirmed the testimony about Christ in people’s lives as Paul proclaimed it.

That is, God established the gospel of Christ in people’s lives.

Now we come upon the word a second time, here it is in the future tense implying that God’s saving work is not yet finished, and God is confirming the people of God not the testimony of God, though both are closely related.

The word means, “to make firm, confirm, sustain, establish, secure, warrant, make good, steadfast, firmly grounded, unalterable.”

This is where the NIV is getting “keep you strong” from.

God will make sure that those whom he confirmed in the past will remain steadfast, firmly grounded, established in Jesus Christ until the end of time, until the day of Jesus Christ.

There are three things to point out about this.

First, God does it.

Second, what God establishes endures to the end by God’s faithful providence.

Third, the result is we will be blameless on that day.

i)        First, God is the one who is establishing the people of God to make them blameless just as it was God who established the gospel in their midst.

(1)    As Gordon Fee points out, “what is remarkable is that Paul should express such confidence about a community whose current behavior is anything but blameless and whom on several occasions he must exhort with the strongest kinds of warning.

The secret, of course, lies in the subject of the verb, ‘he’ (=God).

If Paul’s confidence lay in the Corinthians themselves, then he is in trouble.

But just as in 5:6-8 and 6:9-11, in Paul’s theology the indicative (God’s prior action of grace) always precedes the imperative (their obedience as response to grace) and is the ground of his confidence” (Fee, 44).

(2)     In other words, Paul is not confident about the Corinthians steadfastness because of anything they have done.

If anything, that would give him great reason to be concerned and worried.

I think Paul would be up all night with panic attacks if his confidence was in mere flesh.

Paul is confident of their establishment because of God’s prior grace in their life.

(3)    We put no confidence in the flesh because it is weak.

We put our confidence in God who is able to complete what he has started.

Paul is very clearly here redirecting the focus and attention of the Corinthians from their self-confidence and their own giftedness toward God, from whom and to whom are all things.

ii)       Second, Paul is confident that what God establishes will endure to the end.

(1)    That’s what it says right?

He will keep you strong or established to the end.

The end, of course, is the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Not only is God the one who established you, but he finishes what he starts.

(2)    We are of course talking about God’s providence, his hand of direction and control in all circumstances.

He will keep you established.

To do that God has to be in perfect control, and we know that he is.

(3)    Scripture leaves no doubt about it.

Even in the worst of circumstances it is clear from the testimony of Scripture God is in it, God is in control.

(a)    Remember the story of Joseph, who was betrayed by eleven of his brothers by throwing him into a pit with no food and water in it, and then by selling him into slavery in Egypt, and later wrongfully thrown into prison because of a false accusation made against him.

God was in control in the midst of it all and Joseph recognized that when he said to his brothers “and now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.

For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.

So it was not you who sent me here, but God.

He has made me a father to pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt” (Gen.

45:5-8).

Later Joseph says to his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…” (Gen.

50:20).

(b)   In Proverbs 16:33 we read of how “the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.”

(c)    In Job 37:3 and Job 38:25 we read of how God directs and controls every thunderstorm and bolt of lightning

(d)   In Matthew 10:29 we hear Jesus Christ say, “are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your father.”

(e)   In Ephesians 1:11 Paul says, “In Christ we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.”

(f)     In Philippians 1:6 we hear Paul say he is, “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

(g)    In Romans 11:36 Paul exclaims, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever.”

(h)   This is the power of God.

He is control.

I love this.

I revel in this.

I take great joy and boldness in this and I pray you do to!

The apostles of Jesus did!

(i)      Consider Acts 4:27-30.

Here in this passage the apostles take great boldness in the will and control and power of God.

(4)    God has established you in Christ and he will keep you steadfast and unshakeable in Christ until the end.

The gates of hell will storm against you, the desires of your flesh will try to trick and deceive you, but God will keep you strong to the end in the fellowship of Christ to whom you were called by God.

God did not just save you and then hang you out to dry.

He didn’t just redeem you and leave you to fight for yourself.

No, he called you unto himself, now he is holding you unto himself, and he will keep you and make you blameless on that day.

(5)    Ira Sankey (Moody’s Song Leader)

It was Christmas Eve 1875 and Ira Sankey was traveling on a Delaware River steamboat when he was recognized by some of the passengers.

His picture had been in the newspaper because he was the song leader for the famous evangelist D. L. Moody.

They asked him to sing one of his own hymns, but Sankey demurred, saying that he preferred to sing William B. Bradbury’s hymn, “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us.”

As he sang, one of the stanzas began, “We are Thine; do Thou befriend us.

Be the Guardian of our way.”

When he finished, a man stepped from the shadows and asked, “Did you ever serve in the Union Army?” “Yes,” Mr. Sankey answered, “in the spring of 1860.”

Can you remember if you were doing picket duty on a bright, moonlit night in 1862?”

“Yes,” Mr. Sankey answered, very much surprised.

“So did I, but I was serving in the Confederate army.

When I saw you standing at your post, I thought to myself, ‘That fellow will never get away alive.’

I raised my musket and took aim.

I was standing in the shadow, completely concealed, while the full light of the moon was falling upon you.

At that instant, just as a moment ago, you raised your eyes to heaven and began to sing… ‘Let him sing his song to the end,’ I said to myself, ‘I can shoot him afterwards.’

He’s my victim at all events, and my bullet cannot miss him.’

But the song you sang then was the song you sang just now.

I heard the words perfectly: ‘We are Thine; do Thou befriend us.

Be the Guardian of our way.’

Those words stirred up many memories.

I began to think of my childhood and my God-fearing mother.

She had many times sung that song to me.

When you had finished your song, it was impossible for me to take aim again.

I thought, ‘The Lord who is able to save that man from certain death must surely be great and mighty.’

And my arm of its own accord dropped limp at my side.”

K Hughes, /Liberating Ministry From The Success Syndrome/, Tyndale, 1988, p. 69.

(6)    You are founded in Christ Jesus and you are unshakeable in Christ Jesus.

(a)     John 10:28-29 – “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Fathers hand.”

(b)   1 Peter 1:3-5 – “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”

iii)     Third, the promise entails that God does all this so that you will be blameless on that day.

(1)    God will keep us confirmed so that we will be blameless on the day of Jesus Christ.

Blameless means “not accused, without reproach or stain, guiltless, above reproach.”

(2)    Now here is where we meet a difficult exegetical question that will do us well to think deeply about.

(a)    Paul here says that God keeps us established in Christ so that we will be blameless “on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That is clearly future.

God confirmed the gospel in our lives in the past, is presently confirming the gospel in our lives, and will continue to confirm the gospel in our lives until the day of our Lord Jesus Christ so that we will be blameless.