Sermon Tone Analysis

There’s a story told of a Sunday School Teacher who asked his class of elementary aged students… Does anyone know who Paul was?

And several children raised their hands… eager to give the teacher their answer.

The teacher called on one of the students, and the kiddo gave the answer… Paul was Jesus.

Children seem to learn at a young age that just about any question at church can be answered correctly by saying Jesus.

This seems to carry over into adulthood as well.

Something happens when we enter the building that we call church on Sunday morning… we kind of get in this Sunday morning groove where we come up with a simple and easy answers.

We don’t want to dive too deep into a subject because that could get uncomfortable… and no one wants to admit that they don’t “read their Bible enough” to know the answer.

And so, it’s very easy for us to come up with these simplistic Sunday School answers.

We see something like this happen in Matthew chapter 16, Mark chapter 8, and Luke chapter 9… all 3 places telling the same story.

Jesus is walking with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi and He asked His disciples… So who do people say that I am?

And it’s at this point, the Sunday School type answers start rolling in.

John the Baptist… A Prophet… Elijah… Jeremiah…

But then Jesus stops them… And the gospel accounts portray this as one of the most pivotal moments in the ministry of Jesus.

As they’re giving their Sunday School answers… Jesus stops them and says…

Even today, this question remains the single most important question for us to answer.

And there is no room for a simplistic answer to this question.

When you’re faced with difficult times, it matters who Jesus is.

When you’re faced with a difficult decision, it matters who Jesus is.

When you try to live a Christ honoring life, it matters who Jesus is.

I think if we’re honest with ourselves… if we really look deep enough… we think that Jesus is a whole lot like us.

We have created God in our own image.

Here’s a question.

What do you think Jesus looked like?

Let’s do a little thought experiment real quick.

Get a picture of Jesus in your mind.

Imagine what you think Jesus looked like.

Got it?

Curious… How many of you have an image in your mind that was influenced by one of these famous paintings?

Or perhaps you’ve been influenced by a movie or a TV Show?

Most of the time… in images and movies, Jesus is portrayed as being a relatively clean cut, relatively handsome, middle-aged, middle-class, white guy because that reflects the overwhelming majority of the authors.

And the tendency is to say… I’m a relatively clean cut, middle-class white person… so that’s how they envision Jesus.

We’re influenced by their perception… and it fits how we look too… so… Jesus looked a lot like you and I look.

A team of scientists over a decade ago decided they wanted to get to the core of what Jesus physically looked like.

Now… Understanding that this is all speculation because the Bible doesn’t give us a physical description of Jesus… the closest thing we have is in Isaiah chapter 53… which tells us…

Other than that… we have no physical description.

These scientists, though, took all of the available data that they could find from first century middle Eastern men, including skeletons… They analyzed the facial features, analyzed the average height and things like that… and they came to the conclusion what the average first century middle eastern man looked like.

Therefore, the scientific data says that Jesus looked something like this…

Not only that, Jesus was probably about 5 foot 1… approximately 110 pounds.

Anyone in here 5’ 1”? Ok… so you go stand next to ***** and you’ll know what it was like to stand next to Jesus.

He could’ve been a little taller.

5 foot 5 was considered very tall for a man at that time.

That was just a fun little experiment… but I showed you all of that to make the point.

Not only do we make Jesus out to be like us in appearance… but we also make Jesus out to think the way we think.

Let me ask this… If Jesus lived in modern America… Would Jesus vote Republican or Democrat?

Chances are… you believe Jesus would vote exactly how you vote.

The point is… at the end of the day, we tend to see what we want to see in Jesus.

We make Him out to be in our image in our mind.

And the result is… our image of Jesus is really… He’s just kind of a good ole boy … a good buddy.

He affirms what we believe and the decisions that we make.

Jesus desires what we desire… Jesus prefers what we prefer… Jesus thinks what we think.

We may ask the question… “What would Jesus do?”…

But we know the answer… Jesus what clearly do what I do.

Jesus and I are on the same page.

Can I tell you?

The way we tend to create Jesus in our own image is very dangerous thinking.

Because when we do that, what we’re doing is projecting our own desires and preferences and our own whims onto Jesus… and in the process… we project our own brokenness on to Jesus.

And all we’ve done is become our own little gods.

It’s dangerous… if not deadly thinking.

For that reason, over the next 4 to 5 weeks, we’ll be going through a series that I’m calling Person of Interest.

And my desire is that we would dive into Scripture… do some investigating… and hopefully the result will be that we see Jesus for whom He truly is.

We’re going to begin this morning by looking at a passage from a first century church that also had a problem of creating Jesus in their own image.

If you have your Bible, and I hope that you do, turn with me to First Corinthians chapter 1.

First Corinthians Chapter 1.

While you’re turning there, let’s go over some important background information about the church in Corinth.

Corinth was a city in southern Greece and it was a major center of trade… a major hub of industry.

And as the Apostle Paul went to Corinth to establish a church, he encountered two major worldviews.

The first worldview that he would’ve encountered was the Greek Corinthians.

The Greek Corinthians stood on the tradition of the philosophers.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and so many others.

And because of that, they valued learning and thought.

They believed that learning was the primary human endeavor.

They exalted knowledge and people who could charismatically proclaim that knowledge.

They exalted orators.

So, if you could speak eloquently and charismatically… if you could articulate with great power and passion… you would’ve been highly regarded in Corinth.

So, if the Greek Corinthians were to think about God entering this world and doing a magnificent work, they would believe that God would work through a philosopher.

God would work through a great orator.

The second worldview that Paul would’ve encountered was a Jewish tradition.

There were a number of Jewish people in Corinth.

And, of course, we know that the Jews stood in the tradition of Moses.

Now… Most of us know who Moses was.

He was God’s spokesperson to Egypt… he led the people of Israel out of Egypt with all these unbelievable signs and magnificent displays of power… these magnificent displays of God’s might.

Through Moses, God did all these amazing and mighty and miraculous works to deliver His people from slavery.

And so, if the Jews were to think about God again entering history, they would believe that God would come down like he did with Moses… God would come down with these overwhelming incredible signs and displays of power and might.

So, these are the worldviews that Paul confronts as he enters Corinth.

And Paul’s message to them is that God has not worked through a wise philosopher or an eloquent orator… nor is God working through mighty displays of his power that everyone’s going to look up and see… Paul enters Corinth and says… God has worked through the cross of Jesus Christ.

Look at Verse 18 of First Corinthians Chapter 1 with me… Actually, let’s start with 17…

What Paul is saying here… He’s confronting those two worldviews and saying… No, no, no… That’s not how God chose to work.

God has worked… God has provided salvation through the cross.

Now… Us… We don’t really grasp how ridiculous the idea of the cross would’ve been to this first century audience.

I mean… we put crosses up in our house as décor… we make them out of gold and wear them as necklaces.

But to the people in Corinth… the cross was absolutely ugly… the cross was the single most abhorrent and disgusting things that they have ever encountered… the cross was a death penalty for convicted criminal slaves and terrorists.

The cross represented a curse.

It didn’t represent the grace of God to them… it represented the wrath of God.

After all… Deuteronomy tells us that “Cursed is the man who hangs on a tree”.

So, if a man is hung on a cross, it represents that God has judged that man with the harshest of judgments.

The cross was so abhorrent, that if you were a Roman citizen that received a death penalty, they would kill you in some other way because even the absolute worst of Roman citizens deserved a better death than the cross.

And so, the idea that something good could come from the cross… that God would work by using a cross… well… that was absolute nonsense for someone in the first century… it made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

But here’s Paul saying… I know wisdom of the world says that this is foolishness… but God is not limited by human knowledge or expectations… God is not bound by what we think is good and proper… God has chosen to work through the foolishness of the cross to save all those who believe.

I want to read a few passages without comment just so you can see how central the cross is to what God has done and what Christ accomplished on the cross.

What Paul proclaimed to the church in Corinth… and what the New Testament testifies to time and time again… is that God’s decisive act in transforming this world… God’s decisive act in forgiving our sins… God’s decisive act in transforming you and me… God’s decisive act in obtaining victory over death… God’s decisive act in defeating evil… God’s decisive act is the cross of Jesus Christ.