Sermon Tone Analysis

I. The Reading

[ Scripture Reading ~5 Minutes ]

This is God’s Word, Amen.

II.

The Exhortation

These last words read in our hearing, verses 33 and 34, are meant to grab our attention.

These two verses contain three related commands “to the church.”

The first command, is one the apostle has given before (6:9) —

“Do not be deceived” (15:33)

Do not allow someone else to cause you to wander off the path.

Do not allow someone else to mislead you (LN).

God will never mislead you.

God will never lie to you.

But if you do not receive the word of God, you will be deceived.

Jesus said:

Do not be deceived!

If someone tells you, for example, that following Jesus is easy, then they are not speaking truth.

Who are you listening to?

Who are you allowing to teach you about God and His ways?

Is it the Holy Spirit and the Word?

Or is it some other spirit?

The apostle says first, “Do not be deceived.”

And if you think the apostle is talking about someone else other than you (the church), if you think he is writing to the pagans, or to the unbelievers — then you are already deceived.

Sunday after Sunday, if you think that this gospel of God’s grace that is proclaimed is a message for someone else, calling someone else to repentance and faith, but not you, calling someone else to obedience but, not you, then you are already deceived.

You are being misled.

The apostle is not writing to them, he’s writing to you! He’s writing to us.

“To the church.”

“Do not be deceived.”

Then, he writes a second command —

“Wake up from your drunken stupor” (15:34)

“Come to your right senses” (LN).

“Sober up" (LEB).

This command is not directed at the town drunk, but again, at the brothers and sisters in Christ who "eat and drink for tomorrow we die” (v.32).

This command is for those in the church who have lost control of their own thought processes (LN), who are led along the way by crazy ideas, who do not think as one should think (LN).

Something else leads and controls their thoughts and actions.

Sunday after Sunday, if you have a careless, unbelieving attitude about the things of God and the truth of God’s proclaimed Word, and you think “that’s just one man’s opinion, that’s just one interpretation, that’s not for me” — and you give no thought or consideration to acting upon what God has given, acting upon what you hear, allowing God’s Word to teach, reprove, correct, and train you in righteousness — with humility and eagerness to search the Scriptures to see if these things are true — then you are drunk!

Not the town drunk, but the church drunk.

Every church has them.

The church drunk stumbles around making an absolute mess of things because they have no control over their own thoughts and their actions follow suit.

The apostle says — Sober up!

This is not a show.

This is the gathering of the saints!

The holy ones, in the presence of Almighty God.

Come to your right senses.

Think for yourself.

And then the third and last command is related to the first two, and reveals the root cause of both.

The apostle writes:

“do not go on sinning” (15:34)

Do not act contrary to the will and ways of God (LN).

That’s sin.

And the apostle recognizes that there is “sin in the camp.”

There are some who are rebelling as evident by their theology and practice.

Any problem in the church, if you dig down deep enough, if you uncover all the layers and disguises, comes down to this one problem: sin.

Sin for which Christ already died.

And yet Sunday after Sunday, sin is living, like a parasite, in the church because someone continues to feed it.

Is that you?

Are you sinning?

Are you hiding it?

Do you refuse to acknowledge it?

Will you not confess it?

It’s obvious.

Sin is as obvious as a drunken stupor.

Sin acts to undermine, hinder, subvert and destroy.

Sin is why someone will not submit to God’s Word or God’s authority, and instead insists on one’s own way.

Sin deceives and masks the knowledge of God.

And yet, it is the very knowledge of God that we continue to proclaim, Sunday after Sunday.

All three commands — “do not be deceived,” “sober up” and “do not go on sinning” are given here for one reason:

“For some have no knowledge of God.” (15:34).

And by way of invitation, God wants us all to have knowledge of Him and to act according to that knowledge - not to promote sin, but to proclaim salvation and the forgiveness of sin, and to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The apostle writes so that the behavior of the church would be changed on account of what is known about God.

“The knowledge of God.”

While much is said about the resurrection of Christ in these verses, Anthony Thiselton says that this knowledge of God expresses “the theological heart of [this] chapter and the hinge of [this] argument.

Knowledge of God (God’s resources, God’s grace, God’s transformative action through Christ) holds the key to understanding what the resurrection is actually about.

And so in verse 12 the apostle turns his attention to the resurrection of Christ — so that, as he writes in Philippians 3:10-11:

Let us turn our attention now, to the resurrection of Christ, and what that means for our knowledge of God.

III.

The Teaching

In the opening of this chapter, verses 3-4, the apostle reminded the church of what he had delivered to them as of first importance:

This is the gospel message - the grace of God! Christ died, he was buried, he was raised, he appeared.

Three of those actions are given to us in the Greek past tense: Christ died, he was buried, he appeared.

Past.

On the cross, Jesus said “it is finished.”

He will never die again.

He will never be buried again.

And when Jesus appears again - He will not appear as he did before, as a suffering servant but instead, as a reigning sovereign!

And if we do not believe in what Christ has already done, there is nothing left for us to believe!

There is complete sufficiency in all that Christ did to forgive us of our sin.

We do not put Christ on the cross again and again, and we do not stare at empty tombs.

For “Christ was raised.”

This one action, the raising of Christ, is given to us in the Greek perfect tense.

Meaning, this was an action that took place in the past, but has meaning for us in the present.

To be clear, ALL the work of Christ has meaning for us in the present, but the resurrection especially so — because if Christ is not raised, his death and burial mean nothing, and his appearing was only a figment of people’s crazy imagination.

And we know God, because Christ is raised.

Look with me at verse 12:

15.12

Notice the contradiction.

The rebellion!

The unbelief!

Christ is (lit.)

preached as “raised from the dead” but “some of you say…that there is no resurrection of the dead.”

All of us, right now, need to answer this question: