Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: I Corinthians 15:12-28

Theme: Christ is risen!

Hallelujah.

He is risen indeed

Date: 03/06/2022 File name: 1_Corinthinas_26.wpd

ID Number:

Frank Morison was not a man you would find in church on Sunday.

He was a skeptic bordering on full-blown Atheism.

His real name was Albert Henry Ross.

He was a printer, and advertiser and an author who wrote under the literary pseudonym of Frank Morison.

He died in 1950.

So what’s so important about Albert Henry Ross a.k.a.

Frank Morison?

As I said, he was a skeptic.

He did not believe that Christianity was true because he did not believe the Bible was a historically accurate document.

He was a well educated Britisher, and a lawyer by profession.

Morison had been greatly influenced by liberal German and British professors of his day, all of whom openly denied the Bible was true, and that “miracles do not happen.”

Morison took upon himself a challenge.

He decided that he would be the one, once and for all, who would disprove Christianity by disproving its central doctrine — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Things did not turn out as he thought they would.

At the beginning of his quest to disprove the resurrection he wrote, "When, ... I first began seriously to study the life of Christ, I did so with a very definite feeling that, if I may so put it, his history rested on very insecure foundations."

He studied the New Testament accounts, but he also examined all the secular historical accounts of early Christianity that he could find.

In compiling his notes, he saw that everything pointed in one direction — that the resurrection was the only reasonable explanation for the empty tomb.

The book he set out to write — debunking the risen Christ — turned into a book defending the risen Christ.

The title of the book is Who Moved the Stone?

At the conclusion of the book he was brought to, as he calls it, the “unexpected shores” of salvation.

Ninety-two years later the book is considered a classic of Christian Apologetics, and a brilliant piece of analytical work into the events surrounding the trial, crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

This is what it means when the bible says that the word of God is active — God has declared that His Word will not return unto Him empty.

“ ... so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

(Isaiah 55:11, NIV84)

The gospel cuts and it pierces mind and soul and brings lost men to a saving knowledge of Christ.

This Gospel was delivered to Paul by the risen Christ himself on the Road to Damascus.

It is the message that Paul has delivered to the Church at Corinth.

Only now a group has arisen in the church who deny the possibility of resurrection.

Paul has to set them straight.

Now if ...

But if ...

Now Christ ...

I. NOW IF ... The Protest Against the Resurrection

1. in the first part of his defense of the resurrection, the Apostle lays out point and counter-point

a. “point” is his opponent’s denial of the resurrection — “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Corinthians 15:12, ESV)

b. “counter-point” begins his defense of the resurrection — “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

(1 Corinthians 15:20, NIV84)

A. THE DENIAL

1. the enemies of the gospel are denying the resurrection of the dead

a. there is a faction within the Church of Corinth — we don’t know how large or influential they are — who are contradicting the preaching of Christianity’s central truth

1) that central truth is “Christ is risen!

Hallelujah.

He is risen indeed!”

b. some in the church, however, are contending that there is no resurrection of the dead

2. we can understand a lost man’s attack on this foundational truth of Christianity; it should not surprise us

ILLUS.

The first recorded attack on the truthfulness of the resurrection was by a pagan philosopher named Celsus in A.D. 180.

He attacked and ridiculed the very heart of the Christian gospel — the resurrection of Jesus.

Celsus’ anti-resurrection strategy utilized counter-theories to the resurrection; plausible ways to explain away the miracle.

In fact, ever since then, most attacks on the resurrection are merely variations of what he first introduced.

The Christian proposal that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead was just as controversial twenty-one hundred years ago as it is today.

After all, it doesn’t take a 2nd-century Roman philosopher or a 21st-century forensic scientist to figure out that “dead is dead, and dead people don’t come back to life.”

They may cease to exist, the soul may leave the body and go to some afterlife, or it may wander the earth.

But “everybody knows” that dead bodies don’t come back to life!

a. Celsus was probably not the first, and certainly not the last non-believer who would challenge the historicity of the resurrection

ILLUS.

Albert Henry Ross would challenge it, be converted, and write the apologetic classic, Who Moved the Stone?

In our own time, Lea Strobel, an atheist lawyer, had the chutzpah to believe that he would be the one to finally put the nail-in-the-coffin of Christ’s resurrection.

Strobel would also be converted during his research and would write his own classic apology entitled, The Case for Christ.

1) it seems that one of the surest ways to guarantee your conversion is by trying to disprove the resurrection!

3. what is so disconcerting — and disheartening — is that most of the attacks on the historicity of the resurrection in our era come primarily from those professing to be Christians

ILLUS.

Consider Bishop John Shelby Spong.

From 1979 to 2000, he was the Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey.

He was a highly influential churchman, author and speaker.

He denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus, believing it only a “metaphorical resurrection.”

In other words, Spong believed the disciples “made it up.”

The idea of living without Jesus in their midst was so unthinkable, that they convinced themselves that Jesus had literally risen from the dead.

The problem with Spong’s theological dribble is that it trickles down to the people in the pews.

ILLUS.

As Easter approaches, research polls reveal that many Christians struggle with how to understand the Resurrection.

How literally must one take the Gospel story of Jesus’ triumph over death to be called a Christian?

Can one understand the Resurrection as a metaphor or allegory — perhaps not even believe it happened at all — and still claim to be a follower of Christ?

Religious polls taken since the 1990s show that American Christians increasingly struggle to embrace their bodily resurrection when Christ comes at the end of the age.

A mere 42 percent of Americans know that the meaning of Easter is about Jesus’ resurrection; just 2 percent of Christians identify Easter as the most important holiday of their faith.

a.

I read those statistics, and I can’t help but wonder if across America there are people sitting in Church pews wondering — maybe even doubting — if the resurrection is true or not

b.

certainly there were professing believers in the Corinthian church who were having serious doubts about it

5. Paul retorts in this chapter that believing in the Resurrection is essential to the Christian faith

a. it shows that nothing is impossible with God

b. in fact, Easter without the Resurrection is utterly meaningless, and the Christian faith without Easter is no faith at all

... Next, Paul Deals with the “What If” Question

II.

BUT IF ... The Consequences of Denying the Resurrection

1. in verses 13-19 the Apostle lays out the consequences if the resurrection-deniers are correct

a. what is at stake if we deny the resurrection?

— eight issues

A. 1st, TO DENY THE RESURRECTION IS TO DENY JESUS’ DEITY

“But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.”

(1 Corinthians 15:13, ESV)

1. one of the most essential tenants of Christianity is that Jesus is the son of God

a. he is both fully God and fully man

2. to claim that Jesus did not rise from the dead is to say that he remained in the grave and his corpse decomposed and rotted away