Sermons by Rev. Charles G. Dennison (Page 3)
Engaging the modern Pentecostal movement, the gifts that continue in the church today (teaching, helps, administration) are distinguished from those identified as temporary: apostleship, prophecy, miracles, healings, and tongues. That distinction shapes how 1 Corinthians 13 should be read.
The party divisions at Corinth (around Paul, Peter, and Apollos) and the disputes over spiritual gifts, Christian liberty, and speaking in tongues that followed from them get traced out. Above all of it, Paul sets love as ‘the more excellent way.’
The series opens with a survey of Paul’s dealings with the troubled Corinthian church and a short outline of the letter as a whole. Read in that context, the ‘love’ of 1 Corinthians 13 is not sappy sentimentalism but Christ himself.
The series closes with Peter’s call to lay down his life for the sheep, an extension of Christ’s own continuing ministry, including its ministry of judgment. Throughout John 6, Christ has been pushing his hearers past bread, flesh, and blood, to the Spirit and to heaven itself.
As the crowd departs, Jesus separates his true disciples from it, forming them into the church gathered around him as the source and substance of their eternal provision. Before the church ever ministers to anyone, Christ has already ministered to it perfectly.
The grumbling spreads even to Christ’s own disciples, many of whom likewise conclude that Jesus is a madman and turn back from following him. What in Christ’s hard teaching provokes such offense, even among those closest to him, is the question at the center.
The grumbling Jews of John 6 conclude from Christ’s hard sayings about eating his flesh that Jesus must be a madman. The claim that Christ came down from heaven as living bread, and why it provokes such offense, gets examined closely.
The crowd’s request, ‘Lord, evermore give us this bread,’ sounds pious enough, yet Christ rebukes them for it. Seeking Jesus for bread alone, rather than for himself as the bread of life, draws his rebuke rather than his blessing.
When the crowd tries to make Jesus king by force, he withdraws from them entirely. Why Christ refuses the kingship offered on human terms, and what that withdrawal means for those who would seek him only for what he can give, is the question probed here.
Similarities between John 6, John 21, and even John 2 show that when Christ tells Peter to ‘feed my sheep,’ he means something far beyond bread. What Peter is to give, like Christ himself, is his very life for the sheep.