Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Opening Illustration: Marriage Counseling

When I officiate weddings, one of the special things I do is I have the husband and wife fill out a questionnaire about the other person.

Only 5 question, but I encourage them to go over the top in their answers.

I ask questions like, “What does the other person do that shows you they love you?” Or, “Why do you want to get married to this person?”

In the actual wedding I will draw from these responses to paint a picture of their love for each other.

But there is another use for these answers.

There are times as a Pastor when I will be called into some kind of Marriage Counseling.

Some of the sweetest moments of my job is getting to care for folks through hardship.

Sometimes we’ll be sitting around our dinner table discussing issues and it is clear, this couple has forgotten who they are.

Whatever the conflict that has arisen, it has blocked their vision.

What is needed is to go back, to remember their identity.

And so, I’ll print off their answers from years prior when I officiated their wedding.

And I’ll have them read those answers to each other, as a way of reminding them who they are.

Personal

Every follower of Christ is in a marriage.

Christ is the Great Groom, and His Church the bride.

He has covenanted with us in an unbreakable bond of love.

At times, like any other marriage, we allow conflict and challenges to blind us from the deeper truth of who we are.

And every once in a while we need to come back to our identity in Christ, as a way of saying, “This is who you are.”

Context

Today we begin our journey through 1 Corinthians.

So, if you are new with us, you are joining at a really special time.

You’re going to have a chance to dig deep into this book of the Bible, to learn how to study the Bible and draw all of its richness out of it.

And we are one week 1, so you haven’t missed anything.

1 Corinthians is in the New Testament, and we call it a book of the Bible (there are 66 books of the Bible), but originally this was a handwritten letter sent by the Apostle Paul to a Church in a city called Corinth, in modern day Greece.

As a letter, it has all the markings of a letter.

Some of the art of letter writing is now lost to us.

But in those days, this was a real skill.

Many letters recovered from antiquity begin with a formal greeting, which is the basis of our passage today.

We’re looking at the introduction.

And I’m going to argue that this introduction is more than just politely taking space.

I think Paul is rooting key themes in this introduction that will be vital throughout the rest of the letter.

Throughout the letter, Paul will deal with concerns and issues facing the Church.

He’s going to speak some very difficult truths.

But first, he roots them in their identity.

He reminds them who they are as a community.

The Main Idea of this sermon is this, It all begins with your identity in Christ

Move 1: A Greeting

The letter opens with a greeting from Paul.

This would have been a pretty standard way to begin a letter in those days.

And yet, as we’ll see, Paul saturates this opening with identity language.

1 Corinthians 1:1-3 “1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Paul Identifies Himself

First, the Apostle Paul identifies himself as the writer of the letter.

Let’s get our bearing straight, who is Paul?

The Apostle Paul not only has a backstory of how he came to faith in Jesus, but he has a backstory with the Church in Corinth.

We read about all of this in the Book of Acts, which only a few years ago our Church went through verse by verse.

In Acts we discover that Paul was once a Jewish Pharisee who adamantly and vehemently opposed this budding sect called Christianity.

He went around and actually oversaw the very first Christian martyrdom that we know of as recorded in Acts 6 where the Deacon Stephen was killed for his faith in Jesus.

Then as he was going from town to town persecuting and trying to shut down the growth of Christianity, Paul was confronted by Jesus himself.

He had a vision in which the resurrected Christ called Paul to follow Him (Acts 9).

Paul from that moment on, not only became a Christian, but became and Apostle, one of the primary leaders of the New Testament Church who went around planting Churches all throughout the Mediterranean region.

Paul would eventually write much of our New Testament.

Paul’s History at Corinth

Paul was the original founder of the Church in Corinth.

We read about this in Acts 18. Paul planted a Church in Corinth and labored there for a year and a half building up leadership and preaching the gospel.

You can imagine after a year and half of caring for and pastoring this Church, he loved these people dearly.

But since his departure he had gotten news from Corinth that things were not going well in the Church.

If you look down at 1 Corinthians 1:11 we read,

1 Corinthians 1:11 “11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.”

Apparently, a letter had been sent to Paul giving him the news that the Church was arguing with each other (something we wouldn’t know anything about).

And so in this letter to the Corinthian Church, Paul is responding pastorally to issues going on in the Church.

In fact, later on in the book when Paul begins the second half of his letter he writes,

1 Corinthians 7:1 “1 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote...

And so it seems that in that letter from Chloe not only did she let Paul know that there was bickering and fighting in the Church, but they also had some theological questions.

And so part of this letter is Paul systematically going through the questions they have.

Context of Corinth

Secondly, in verse 2 Paul continues

1 Corinthians 1:2 “2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus...

Corinth is an actual city with a very long history.

But there are some important cultural things you should know about Corinth, that I think will make this letter of Paul’s highly relevant to us living in Chicago, even 2,000 years later as we are.

Corinth was a booming Metropolis of the ancient world.

It was a port town in Greece, but it was more Roman than it was Grecian.

It was one of the most important cities in Greece.

It was populous.

It was largely wealthy comparatively.

It held the famous Ismuth games where athletes from around the world would come and compete.

It was a cultural center.

One commentator writing about Corinthian culture said this,

“The ideal of the Corinthian was the reckless development of the individual.

The merchant who made his gain by all and every means, the man of pleasure surrendering himself to every lust, the athlete steeled to every bodily exercise and proud in his physical strength, are the true Corinthian types: in a word the man who recognised no superior and no law but his own desires.”

Does it sound a little like Chicago?

Right in the middle of that self-promoting, self-centered, ego-driven, populous city, is this little Church, the Church of Corinth.

And they have this mission given to them by God to build the Kingdom.

And they’re struggling to even be a community, let alone a missional community.

That’s the backdrop of this letter.

Sanctified: Identity

Look how Paul addresses the Christians in Corinth.

1 Corinthians 1:2 “...to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:”

“Sanctified in Jesus.”

This is identity level language.

Often when we use the word sanctification, its normal use is to describe the ongoing process in a believers life of becoming more like Christ.

Sanctification is typically a journey.

But that is not how it is used by Paul here.

Paul is referring to a completed action, something that has already taken place in their life.

The word means, “to make holy” or perhaps “to consecrate” or “to set apart.”

Before Paul begins to work through the junk that this Church is going through, he calls to remembrance their full identity.

He addresses them as they truly are, those who have been made holy, those who are set apart.

Called to Be Saints