Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Corinthians 15:1-19

Good morning church!

Today is a very special day for us at Old Town Christian Fellowship.

I’m glad that despite the Maine weather, so many of you came out to join us this morning.

I want to read some names to you of a very diversified group of people, and you tell me what they all have in common…Babe Ruth, Half Pint from little house on the Prairie - Christian name Melissa Gilbert, First ladies Eleanor Roosevelt and Nancy Reagan, Steve Jobs, Nelson Mandela, and President Gerald Ford.

Some from the Bible.

The book of Exodus tells us the story of a young mother named Jochebed, who had a son by the name of Moses.

Moses was born during a time that the Pharaoh who was ruling in Egypt began to grow fearful that the Hebrew slaves were growing too numerous, so he ordered the death of all the Hebrew, first born males, and among them was Moses.

His mother, fearing for his life, took reed grass, or bulrushes, and coated them with asphalt and pitch to make a basket that would float and she put him in the Nile river hoping to save him.

An unlikely women found him, adopted him into a royal family where he received all kinds of advantages as he grew, because that women was the daughter of Pharaoh.

She was the one who took Moses in and raised him as her own.

When we read about Esther, in the book of Esther, there’s a book in the Bible named after her.

She had no mother or father, so she was adopted and raised up by her cousin Mordecai, she became a queen, and God used her to bring deliverance to the Jewish people.

And then we read about a virgin birth, where a young Jewish girl named Mary miraculously conceives a child by the Holy Spirit, and gives birth to baby Jesus.

Raised by Mary and her husband, the adopted father of Jesus, a man named Joseph.

Adoption is something that we see throughout the scriptures, not just in these examples, but God uses it to help us to better understand what it means to be saved.

That though Jesus, we can become the children of God.

In the book of Romans we read this...

and again, from the book of Ephesians we read...

I remember when William first came to the Braley’s.

Myself, and many of you labored in prayer for that little boy and the battles that he had to endure because of other peoples mistakes.

He was born into a sinful world and suffered because of it.

But God had a different plan for his life, God chose a path for him, that included a mom and dad that loved him.

A brother, and some crazy sisters that would become such a huge part of his world... and then Jaeleigh was born, and we all began praying that she too could become a part of this family, that God would pour out His blessings on her as well, and He did.

The years that followed were difficult, with drawn out legalities, but finally here we are today, and today the kids have a new home, a new family and a new name.

There’s an interesting verse in Revelation where Jesus is speaking to the church of Pergamos and he says...”To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat.

And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.”

For us, receiving a new name, is a gift from the Lord, and it is the assurance and evidence of being grafted in by adoption into the family of God.

What we are doing here this morning is a beautiful picture of that.

Would the Braley family grab your kiddos from out back and join us up here on the stage....for those of you that have never experienced a child dedication, let me explain what we are doing, and you are participating in as witnesses.

We don’t do infant baptisms here.

In the Gospel of Mark Jesus says:

So belief is alway required before baptism.

Baptism is simply the outward expression, or the public testimony, of a change that has already occurred inside you.

So as amazing as these two little angles are, Betsy tells us that they were born sinners, we haven’t seen any evidence of it yet, but we trust her.

No, that’s the deal, we are all born sinners and individually have to make a choice on what we are going to do with Jesus.

We either accept Him as our Lord and Savior and follow Him, or when we die face Him as Judge.

In the Bible there are several examples that we see of parents coming before the Lord in gratitude for a child, and dedicating that child to the Lord.

That is what we are doing here this morning.

God ordained this adoption, it was never a surprise to Him that William and Jaeleigh would be given a new name.

He always knew that no matter how many kids Jim and Betsy planned to have, these two would be counted among them.

So today we are acknowledging that, and thanking Him for it.

Jim and Betsy, you understand that by dedicating your children to the Lord, you are acknowledging that they are a gift from Him?

You are committing to God, and before your church family as witnesses, that you will teach them and instruct them in the ways of the Lord, that they would grow to love Him, and Honor Him personally?

Let’s pray!

Kids, the family, the service.

We are in an interesting spot this morning in our Bibles.

We are nearing the end of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians in our Bibles and we are in chapter 15 this morning.

I read you the first couple of verses of the chapter last week, which is the gospel in a nutshell, but we’re going to dig a little deeper this morning.

Before we do that, I want to remind you that this was a corrective letter written by Paul to this church that he started.

He had spent 18 months with them in Corinth and then continued on with his missionary journeys.

In his absence, the church just seemed to get weirder and weirder.

They were very caught up in the Greek culture of philosophy, performance, and the arts.

They let the culture around them influence them, more than they did the culture.

Throughout this letter Paul has addressed several issues and corrected several behaviors, their improper use of the gifts of the Spirit.

Their lack of love for others, and putting their own liberties above their concern for weaker brothers and sisters.

But when we get to chapter 15, it is as if, Paul is saying.

This issue is foundational and critical.

It is the core of what we believe and what Jesus taught, I want this to stick in your heads, because if you get this wrong, nothing else really matters.

He is dealing with the full gospel.

Not just that Jesus died for your sins, but that He died, was buried, and on the third day was resurrected and all of this was in accordance with the Scriptures.

Before we do that, I want to look again at that passage in Ephesian and then continue on in that chapter a little bit, and that should be the end of our skipping around this morning....So Ephesians 1, starting again in verse 5 where we left off.

With that as our background, turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15, beginning in the 1st verse.

Vs. 1 I want you to notice a few things about what Paul says here because they are really important.

First, he is declaring the good news, the gospel, that he already preached to them and was received by them, and they are standing in it.

So no matter how messed up they got, how immature they were, how carnal and selfish they were, even as spiritual weirdos, they had held to the essentials and hadn’t abandoned the foundation of their faith.

Vs. 2 In verse 2 it says that they were saved by that gospel, its really only good news if it can do something for you, a happy story does nothing for us on judgement day, but he says something else here if you hold fast that word, unless you believed in vain, meaning having believed something in the past has about the same value as me saying I used to have a 28 inch waist.

Go for me, but it’s just not true anymore.

You guys didn’t know tuff skins came that big did you?

Vs. 3 This wasn’t a gospel that Paul made up, it was good news that he had received.

And unlike many of the false religions in the Greek culture and in our own day, this gospel was not based on somebodies grand ideas, thoughts, or feelings, it is based on facts that Paul is going to present evidence for.

Christ died for our sins…that’s so important gang, because if you have a Biblical understanding of death, the fact that Christ died, should trouble you some.

The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death, or the price to be paid for sin is death.

It also explains death different than what we might naturally think.

Death is not simply the cessation of life, or no brain wave activity.

The Bible tells us that death is not the cessation of breath, but it is the eternal (forever) separation between you and God.

Jesus was without sin, but He still died, because HE took on the full payment and penalty of sin, Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture, not only did He do it, but it was prophesied about hundreds of years before He did it.

These words are from Isaiah 53 written more than 700 years before Jesus was crucified on the cross.

Again, He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures…vs. 4

Again, a statement of fact, something that really happened, He was buried, laid in a tomb, you only do that when someone is dead.

He death was actually verified before being taken down from the cross when His side was pierced with a spear and blood and water spilled out…but it didn’t end there.

He rose again on the third day, this was critical for a number of reasons.

First, this was according to the Scriptures, not just that He would do it, but that it would be on the third day, and equally important, Jesus Himself said it, so if He failed to do it, or if He did it on the second or the 4th day, He would have been a false prophet.

So it had to be according to the Scriptures.

Another thing, Paul will reveal a little further in the chapter, there were those there that didn’t believe in the resurrection.

Even worse, there were those in the church that not just believed it, but were in positions where that was a part of their teaching, shocking for a Christian church, and again, I think this is why Paul saved this correction for the last thing.

But as we read through this, imagine if you were one of those teachers sitting there as this letter is being read publically to the church, written by the Apostle Paul, who now begins to present fact after fact as if he were introducing witnesses in a courtroom.

Vs. 11&12 give us a little more insight into the issue here, it wasn’t that they didn’t believe that Jesus was resurrected.

Paul just laid out the facts on that, over 500 saw him as one time, most of those guys are still alive if you don’t believe me, go ask them.

It wasn’t that, verse 11 says Paul and the other Apostles preached the resurrection and these guys believed it, or at least they had.

They didn’t believe in our resurrection.

They didn’t believe that Jesus was the firstfruits of many resurrections to come.

And Paul continues with his argument here, because this is just as essential as the virgin birth, the sinless sacrifice.

And you could see how a perfect sacrifice, may have seemed like enough in the mind of a Jew that had been raised under a sacrificial system…verse 13.

You can see where Paul is going with this, and I encourage you guys to read through the rest of the chapter in preparation for next week, but what Paul is talking about is if there is no resurrection, then Jesus is still dead.

If Jesus is dead, then He’s not God, His sacrifice wasn’t sufficient.

It’s just another sacrifice.

There have been thousand of altruistic sacrifices throughout humanity.

Men and women dying for incredible causes, or in defense of others.

This past week, Detective Jason Rivera and Officer Wilbert Mora made the ultimate sacrifice as members of the NYPD.