Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: 1 Corinthians 15:50-58

Theme: The practical significance of the resurrection to the every-day life of the believer

Date: 05/23/21 File name: ApostlesCreed15 ID Number: NT07-15

I believe in ... the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

In the 1st century world into which Christianity was birthed, every culture of the Mediterranean basin believed in an after-life.

Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Parthians, and Babylonians all agreed that there was something after death.

Equally true, each of these cultures viewed resurrection as patently absurd!

Only Judaism believed in the resurrection of the body, but even among them the political group known as the Sadducees rejected it — but then again, they rejected any kind of afterlife whatsoever.

Thus, Christianity was born into a world where its core belief was almost universally recognized as false.

And yet, without the resurrection the Christian faith is a false faith.

Resurrection is the reversal of death, its cancellation, the destruction of death’s power.

In Christ’s resurrection we have the death of death.

That is what pagans denied.

When Paul preached the Gospel in Athens, the pagan philosophers gathered on Mars Hill were mesmerized by this ‘new religion’ ... until, that is, Paul got to the resurrection, and then they ridiculed him, scorning him with laughter.

We fail to realize how different, how revolutionary Christianity was from its religious competitors.

Without the resurrection, Jesus was just a good teacher, a wise Rabbi, or an astute philosopher.

But resurrection changes everything.

The resurrection fulfills the Scriptures and validates Jesus’ divinity.

It sets Him apart from all the other great religious leaders who have ever lived.

Gandhi is gone and still in his grave.

Buddha is gone and still in his grave.

So is Confucius and Mohammed.

They’re all dead and still in their graves.

But Jesus is alive!

And because has been resurrected, we also will be resurrected.

As the Apostle closes out his defense of the resurrection he specifically ties it to another core belief of our faith — the Parousia.

It’s a word that means arrival, and in the Latin Bible is translated as advent.

Paul associates our resurrection with the Second Coming of Christ to establish his kingdom.

This second coming involves ...

• The Believer’s Transformation

• The Believer’s Triumph

• The Believer’s Thanksgiving, and

• The Believer’s Therefore

I. THE BELIEVER’S TRANSFORMATION

1. we shall be changed ... transformed ... metamorphosisized

“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

51 Behold!

I tell you a mystery.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”

(1 Corinthians 15:50–53, ESV)

ILLUS.