Sermon Tone Analysis

*4~/8~/07  Easter   1 Cor 15:12-28   PrBC*

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A month or so ago, there was a very short-lived controversy, instigated by a Hollywood director, who claimed in a documentary that a coffin bearing the bones of Jesus Christ had been found.

For as many headlines as the program generated, it ended up running the path of a shooting star and flaming out rather quickly.

But in the wake of it, a Jewish rabbi from New York wrote a column in Newsweek.

He denounced the documentary for being anti-Christian.

Rabbi Mark Gellman wrote, “I don’t think interfaith relations are improved when a Jewish filmmaker implies” that Christianity is led by a dead Messiah.

But, that wasn’t all he said.

Rabbi Gellman went on to point out that if these bones did belong to Jesus, “then not only is the Christian Testament false, but, worse, Christianity is a cruel deception.”

But the really interesting part of his column was this.

It’s a long quote, but I think it’s worth hearing: “Some Christian respondents to this film have said that even discovering the bones of Jesus would not seriously undermine their faith.

They say that 2,000 years of tradition does not just get canned because somebody found some bone boxes in the basement of the Israel Museum.

I know many Christian clergy who have told me that the main truth of Christianity for them is to love as Jesus loved and that no archeological discovery can change that spiritual lesson.

I love these folks but, as an outsider, I just don't agree that decisive refutation of Jesus' resurrection would have no effect on Christian faith.

Unlike Judaism and Islam and Hinduism and even Buddhism, which are built on God's teachings *(?)*, Christianity is built both on God's teachings as well as on an historical event proving a transcendental miracle.

If the Red Sea never really split, there would still be the Ten Commandments and the Torah for me.

What is left of Christianity if Jesus died and then just remained dead?”

That is an excellent question & an excellent observation.

And sure enough, the makers of the Jesus tomb documentary didn’t have to go far to find a so-called Christian Bible scholar to make that very point; a professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University, said this:   (John Dominic Crossan DePaul Univ Discovery Chan)

 

“If the bones of Jesus were to be found in an ossuary in Jerusalem tomorrow, and without doubt let’s say they are definitely agreed to be the bones of Jesus.

Would that destroy Christian faith?

It certainly would not destroy my Christian faith.

I leave what happens to bodies up to God.”

And so we have a so-called Christian Professor who couldn’t be more wrong and an unbelieving rabbi whose comments are right on the mark.

*1 Corinthians 15:17** * says: “…if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins…”

 

You see: the rabbi’s right.

There’s nothing left of Christianity if Jesus Christ has not been raised from the dead.

I’d like you to turn to 1st Corinthians 15.

 

1st Corinthians was a letter written to the church in Corinth, a first-century group of believers who were beset w~/ problems.

The Corinthian church was a melting pot of new believers, many of them Gentiles saved out of idolatry.

And these new Christians were coming out of old, familiar patterns of pagan worship.

Some were still clinging to the secular philosophies & human wisdom on which they had depended for all their lives.

And that’s what led to many of the problems addressed in this letter, including confusion over the resurrection of the dead.

Look at v. 12.

Now, these are people that Paul is addressing as Christians.

The letter is addressed to those set apart in Christ Jesus and called to be saints.

So, his expectation is that he’s writing to true believers.

And the confusion here probably doesn’t fall along the same line as the modern debate over whether or not Jesus rose from the dead.

The problem in the first century probably had more to do with the pagan philosophy of dualism, which held to a very strict separation between a person’s body & his soul.

The body was seen only as a wretched prison for the soul, while the soul was thought to be the divine aspect of each individual.

So, the popular philosophy of the day saw no place for a bodily resurrection of the dead.

It was assumed that when a person died, his soul was set free to enjoy life in its divine nature.

Now, as Christians, we do look forward to the day when we will shed these frail, deteriorating earthly bodies, complete with flesh that is trained to sin, and bones and organs that wear out and quit.

We eagerly anticipate that time when there will be no more pain or suffering or disease or physical hardship of any kind.

A Christian understands that at death, his or her soul departs from this body of sin.

Yet the Bible is also plain in teaching a bodily resurrection, and not just a departure of the soul from the body into a body-less existence.

In other words, we also understand from Scripture that we will ultimately be clothed in a glorified body.

At the end of this chapter, it talks about the earthly body and the heavenly body.

Well, the Corinthians were being lured by this old way of thinking that said the body was left behind at death, while the soul went on into eternity.

Again, biblically, there’s some truth to that, except that they refused to ever connect the two back up again, as is described in the New Testament.

So, when it came to their error concerning Jesus Christ, it may not have been the idea that He just died and went completely out of existence.

In fact, it’s even been speculated by some that part of the belief system of that day may have inclined people to think that since Jesus was God, He never really was in a body in the first place.

He was always just spiritual.

And therefore the crucifixion itself was somewhat of an illusion.

Well Scripture does not sustain that at any level.

As clearly as Jesus Christ suffered and was put to death as a man in a body, so too the Bible is clear about His appearance to the disciples after His resurrection.

In Luke 24, it says:

 

*Luke 24:37-43** * they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.

38 And he said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?

39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.

Touch me, and see.

For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."

40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

41 And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?"  42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish,  43 and he took it and ate before them.

Jesus was determine to eliminate any doubt about this and to make it very plain that He was not a mere spirit being.

The Scriptures would have to be lying at this point, because He expressly demonstrated to them that He was in a body, even eating food in front of them.

The Gospels show Christ after His resurrection in a recognizable body.

It was a different body - not bound by time and space limitations - but it was, nonetheless, a body.

Yet, within the church at Corinth confusion reigned over the matter of a bodily resurrection, and it was being taught by some that such resurrections did not happen.

So, you ask, why does that matter?

Because the beginning of 1st Corinthians 15 makes it clear that the death, burial & resurrection of Jesus Christ are all essential to the Gospel.

God came in flesh to redeem human beings who had been created by God as flesh & soul.

It was God’s design that only holy God could satisfy His perfect wrath.

But He also became a man so that the body and soul of a man – not some animal; not a lamb – but a man, would be sacrificed on behalf of His brethren.

So, the Corinthians – and any other Christians for that matter – could not forsake the bodily death and the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, w~/o gutting the Gospel.

And that’s why Paul sets out to demonstrate in these verse the lack of logic, which flowed from a no-resurrection point of view.

V.

13.

 

Somehow these young Christians had missed the connection.

They had come to believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but they were also trying to keep a no-resurrection philosophy.

So Paul is showing them that those two cannot stand together.

If there is no resurrection from the dead, then nobody rises from the grave.

And if nobody rises from the grave, then Jesus Christ did not defeat death and rise from the grave, because He is fully man.

And if that’s true, then the consequences are terrible.

V.

14.

The flow here is very simple.

Paul spelled out the basics of the Gospel - that message which Christians in Corinth had believed.

Then he applied worldly wisdom to it.

And here’s the outcome of that experiment: Add worldly wisdom to the resurrection, and you’ve put Jesus back in the tomb and made Christianity a dead religion, centered on the worship of a dead man.

And if that’s the case, then what we are preaching is a vain message, & it’s totally useless for you to believe it.”

15-16.

If there truly is no resurrection of the dead, then all the people who claimed to see Jesus after His crucifixion were wrong.

1st Cor.

15:6 says He appeared to be more than 500 people at one time.

Well, the only logical conclusion is that they were all part of a grand conspiracy.

That many people don’t make a mistake about what they’ve seen.

They either all saw Jesus alive after He was put to death, or they somehow agreed to lie & cover up Christ’s crucifixion.

And then they all carried that story, consistently with them to their graves, even when it meant some were killed for believing it.

If that was true, then Paul, & the rest of the apostles, were not only remarkably courageous and foolish actors, but they were also false teachers who deceived thousands of people with a story that could not be true.

And if that was the case, then throw out Christianity, because the resurrection is at its core.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is all through the NT.

So, if I have to cut it out because it’s not true, then nothing else about Christian teaching in the NT is reliable.

It might as well all be a lie.