Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: I Corinthians 15:35-49

Theme: The coming resurrection is the hope and motivation of the church and of all believers.

Whatever happens to our present bodies—whether they are healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or plain, short-lived or long-lived, or whether they are indulged or tortured—they are not our permanent bodies, and we should not hold them too dearly.

Date: 03/20/2022 File name: 1_Corinthinas_28.wpd

ID Number:

There are few theological issues that have produced so many questions in people's minds, as this issue of the resurrection of the body.

Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, the most famous theological work of the middle ages, goes on and on, page after page, dealing with questions about the resurrection body.

Will the resurrection body have hair, nails, intestines, sex organs, sweat glands, blood and other fluids of the body?

He wrestled with problems most of us never lose any sleep over.

For example, if Adam rises with his full original body, will Eve have a part in the resurrection since she was made from Adam's rib.

If he gets it back in the resurrection, there is nothing left for Eve to rise with.

Or consider the case of Peter Martyr Vermigli (Vayr-MEEL-yee).

He became a 16th century Protestant Reformer, and was called the “Italian Calvin”.

Like Martin Luther he went from being a loyal supporter of the Catholic Church to an opponent of much of what the Church taught.

Also like Luther the Catholic Church hated him.

To show contempt for Peter, Catholic authorities had the dead body of his wife exhumed and flung onto a dung hill.

Protestants took the body and reduced it to ashes to protect it from further abuse.

They then mixed her ashes with the ashes of a Catholic saint to prevented further desecration, since Catholics would not want to desecrate their own saint’s ashes.

What happens to her at the resurrection?

These issues must have been similar to the questions the resurrection-deniers at Corinth were peppering Paul with.

God must have a lot of good laughs at our perplexities.

He hears us asking questions about the resurrection, and He just smiles, and reminds us that He can do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we can think or ask.

Paul is writing this greatest of all chapters on the resurrection because of the questions of the Corinthians.

Let’s consider what he says.

I. THE INFIRMITY OF THE RESURRECTION-DENIER’S ARGUMENT

“But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised?

With what kind of body do they come?”

36 You foolish person!

... .”

(1 Corinthians 15:35–36, ESV)

1. the Apostle Paul begins this section on the resurrection by responding to the question offered by those denying the resurrection in the church at Corinth — How are the dead raised?

With what kind of body do the come?

2. there were many in the ancient world who could not fathom the idea of a physical resurrection of the human body

a. in Greek culture especially (remember Corinth is in Greece) the body of man was considered to be inherently evil and the spirit of man to be inherently good

1) for them, death liberated the soul from its imprisonment to evil and corruption

2) the idea of coming back to life in a reanimated body was particularly distasteful idea

ILLUS.

Remember Paul’s visit to Athens in Acts 17. Paul finds a sport in the city’s main market place and begins teaching about Jesus and the Gospel.

After a few days, a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with the Apostle.

They’ve never heard of this “new religion” and they’re curious, and so they invite Paul to speak before the Areopagus, the Athenian governing council.

They politely and intently listen to his message on the life and ministry of Jesus until he gets to the resurrection.

At that point he loses his audience.

They sneered at him and most rejected his message.

A. THEIR ERROR

1. the error of resurrection-deniers at Corinth was in confusing resurrection with reanimation

a. they assumed that the believer’s resurrected body would be identical their earthly body, and that they would live forever in fleshly, diseased, aching bodies

b. we actually have a number of examples of reanimation in the bible — stories of miracles where the dead are brought back to life

1) in the Old Testament the Prophets Elijah and Elisha both restore life to the sons of widows (1 Kings 17:22, 2 Kings 4:32-35)

2) in the Gospels we witness Jesus reanimating Jairus’ young daughter (Luke 8:52-55), the son of a widow from the city of Nain (Luke 7:14-15, and of course, most famously, Lazarus (John 11:1-44)

3) in the Book of Acts Peter raises Dorcus (Acts 9:40-41), and Paul raises Eutychus when he falls asleep during a sermon, falls out a window and dies (Acts 20:9-11)

c. the similarity between resurrection and reanimation is that both are miraculous events

1) these people really, really died and a miracle had to take place to restore them to life

d. the difference between resurrection and reanimation is that they resumed life in the bodies they had, and all those individuals had to die again

B. PAUL’S RESPONSE

1. vs. 36 begins, You foolish person!

a. most modern translations have softened Paul’s answer — it’s actually a sharp retort

1) the King James offers the best translation ... Thou fool!

2) it’s a derisive word, and the fact that Paul uses it is an indication that those resistant to the doctrine of the resurrection are not honest inquirers, but are mocking the very idea

2. they are foolish because they are dismissing the ability of God to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think

3. many people continue to mock and dismiss the idea of resurrection

a. secular Jews dismiss the resurrection through bizarre conspiracy theories — the disciples stole the body, or the women went to the wrong tomb

b. materialists, who include agnostics and atheists and communists, dismiss the resurrection — they are the sober-minded rationalists of our day who would never stoop so low as to believe in deities or in miracles; to them the resurrection is a superstition

c. liberal intelligentsia dismiss the resurrection as metaphor or allegory — it’s not real, but it makes fools feel better about the future

d. fake Christians dismiss the resurrection — professing believers who like the ethics of Jesus, but who dismiss the supernatural as untenable in a modern, scientific world

ILLUS.

Amazingly, the 21st century church — particularly in the West — is full of resurrection skeptics.

In a 2017 BBC survey of British Christians, a quarter (25%) of all Christians in Great Britain said they did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Nor do they believe in their own bodily resurrection.

A Rasmussen poll from 2013 (the most recent one we have asking the question) reveals that 19% of professing Christians in America reject the central doctrine of the Christian faith.

What we’re discovering is that, every year, fewer and fewer professing Christians in Western culture believe in the bodily resurrection attested to in the Scriptures.

What this means is that a growing number of Christians in the West are heretics!

4. Paul will now use the rest of the chapter to defend and describe the believer’s resurrection

II.

OUR RESURRECTION IS ILLUSTRATED AS GERMINATION

“ ... What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”

(1 Corinthians 15:36, ESV)

1. the Apostle’s opening description of the resurrection uses an illustration virtually everyone both then and now understands even though there remains mystery behind it

a. the kernel of wheat that is sown into the ground is different from the plant that springs up, and yet there is a continuity to what is planted

1) God decreed this all the way back at the creation

“And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.”

And it was so.

12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good.”

(Genesis 1:11–12, ESV)

b. in other words, if you plant a kernel of corn you get a stalk of corn and not a head of lettuce

1) in time that stalk of corn produces a fruit that is genetically identical to the kernel that was planted back in the Spring

2. this natural process, Paul says, helps us understand the spiritual process of resurrection

a. what we are now is not what we will be at the coming of Christ and consummation of his redemptive work

A. THE BELIEVERS IS ‘PLANTED’ AS ONE THING BUT IS ‘HARVESTED’ AS SOMETHING DIFFERENT

1 the seed planted in the soil corresponds to our perishable body that will die and, in time, disintegrate into dust

a. just as the kernel that is buried represents our fleshly decaying bodies, the new life that emerges from death represents our new resurrection body

“And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.”

(1 Corinthians 15:37, ESV)

2. because of the continuity between what is planted and what springs out of the ground we will know ourselves to be ourselves

a. others will recognize us and we will recognize them

III.

OUR RESURRECTION IS INDIVIDUALIZED LIKE GOD’S CREATION

1. in trying to describe our resurrection bodies, Paul uses three analogies

a. in each one Paul says, “Look, when it comes to our resurrection bodies there will be similarities to our natural bodies, but there will also be wonderfully unique differences”

A. FIRST, he compares them to the variety of seeds in the world

“But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.”