The Lutheran Hour

"Early Adopters"

#93-32
Presented on The Lutheran Hour on April 12, 2026
Speaker: Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler
Copyright 2026 Lutheran Hour Ministries

Text: 1 Corinthians 15:20

There’s always a cost for early adopters. But when the conditions are right, the rewards can be incalculable.

The year was 1905. And a certain 28-year-old car salesman in the city of San Franciso was failing. That year, he had failed to sell a single automobile. Flash forward, 30 years. Now this same car salesman is one of San Franciso’s wealthiest, most generous citizens. But it took a paradigm shift. The city had to literally be torn down and rebuilt in the process.

You see, in 1900, in San Francisco, as one history-writer put it, “The horse and buggy was not going the way of the horse and buggy.”ⁱ Not yet. Car makers back east said it would make life easier. But, out West, nay-sayers called the automobile a “devilish contraption.” It was the object of scorn and derision. Cars were expensive and dangerous. They belched out exhaust, kicked up storms of dust and, worst of all, scared the horses. The roads and cities weren’t made for cars. There were no gas stations, no mechanics, no parking lots. The horse was still king out west. And it took an earthquake to dethrone him.

It came at 5 a.m. on April 18, 1906, with a magnitude of 7.8. The city convulsed for a full 60 seconds, and afterward it was engulfed in flames and covered in rubble. “Wagon horses ran in a panic through the streets, snapped their legs in the rubble, and collapsed from exhaustion. The horse-drawn city was in desperate need of vehicles to carry firemen and bear the injured.”ⁱⁱ

And that young car salesman suddenly became the richest man in town. He converted his unsaleable autos into makeshift ambulances and firetrucks. And those once-ridiculed contraptions became display models of a whole new era. You see, for the early adopters, the rewards can be immense. But make no mistake. It always comes with a cost.

What about you? How do you respond to new technology? Are you an early adopter? Are you like my dad? He forked over the cash to install dial-up internet in our home back in the 90s, back when they still called it “the information superhighway.” Just in case you don’t remember, dial-up downloaded at horse-and-buggy speed back then. Oh yeah, early adopters always incur a cost.

So, are you—are you an early adopter? Or are you like my friend, Mark, who’s still holding onto his AOL account from 25 years ago?

Chances are, you’re somewhere in between. As with just about everything involving people, it seems that the 80-20 rule applies here, too. Roughly 20 percent are early adopters. The rest of us are naysayers, feet draggers, late adopters. And we have good reason to be skeptical. Early adopters pay a high price to get that first display model. And most new technologies tend to over-promise. “This will make your life so much easier!” Has email made your life easier?

Now we hear all these promises about AI. For some, it’s the most devilish contraption ever devised. For others, it’s guaranteed to be the savior of the world. But look, we can’t predict the future any more today than they could back in 1900. Or in 2000. You remember the Y2K panic? You remember Segway—that two-wheeled gyroscopically balanced scooter that was supposed to revolutionize personal transportation? The inventor of the Segway said that it would be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.ⁱⁱⁱ

Instead, we got Uber. And they shut down Segway production back during the pandemic. But, who’s to say? Who’s to say where that failure might lead next? Maybe the next world-changing innovation is just around the corner.

See, that’s the mindset of the true early adopters. They live by faith, not by sight, not by what is, but what could be, what will be. They live by a certain vision of the world, a story about what the world is, what it’s for, and where it’s all going.

Many live under the spell of the story of progress. That story says that progress is inevitable, and the goal, the reward, is that it will make life easier. Easy—that’s the promise of technology. It’ll make everything easy, which is code for “I get what I want, when I want it, and not a moment later.” And technology promises the ring of power that will give it to you. And maybe that’s why so many of us drag our feet when it comes to new tech. Not just because we don’t have the disposable cash to throw at every new gadget, but frankly, we’re not sold out to the story. We’re not sure that progress, humanly speaking, is guaranteed.

Maybe that new gadget on display will make our lives easier. Or, maybe it will destroy civilization as we know it. Who’s to say? We take this wait-and-see attitude, not because we’re technophobes, but because we know enough about human nature not to put our faith in any creation of humans and their vision for the future. But then, you have to put your faith in something, don’t you?
The fact is, we all have some story we live by. I don’t want to presume which it is for you, but I’m guessing that since you’re listening to this program, you’ve somehow been drawn to the story of Jesus, the Christ—the account of His birth and life and death and resurrection from the dead. Maybe that’s the story that’s got your attention, or maybe you’re wondering what it would be like to come under its “spell,” so to speak. I’ll tell you this much—it’s not typically a straightforward path—a connecting of all the dots, all at once. Adopting a new story, being adopted by a whole new paradigm of life, it takes time and testing and conversating and sometimes an earthquake, but always a cost.

That convulsive adoption process was part of the story for some of the earliest adoptees of the crucified and risen Jesus, a group of His followers in the ancient city of Corinth. When you read through the letter written to them by Paul, the missionary who brought the message of Jesus to them, you get a sense of how seismic the change was for them. They had to reevaluate everything—their views on power and popularity, sex, marriage, divorce, dinner parties, religious rituals, and death, to name a few.

Paul saves the topic of death for last, but not because it’s least important. In some ways, a person’s view of death is the bedrock on which they build everything else. And a seismic shift in it means that your whole outlook has to be torn down and rebuilt.

Paul’s teaching on death is in the last chapter of 1 Corinthians 15. This teaching centers on a comparison, a metaphor: firstfruits. Firstfruits is an agricultural term referring to an early sample of a crop. It was a sample that was representative of the full harvest still to come. And Paul calls Jesus, the crucified and risen Jesus, “the firstfruits—He’s the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Now “fallen asleep” here means dead—those who have died. And firstfuits, you heard me say what that means, but it probably didn’t register because you don’t live in a culture built around ancient agricultural practices.

And if Paul were writing to us today, he probably would have used a different metaphor. He would have picked a metaphor that works for us. Maybe he would have said that the risen Jesus is the “display piece” of a new innovation, that He’s the “showroom model,” the “prototype” of a new product line to come.

In other words, what God did in the death and resurrection of Jesus wasn’t something detached or one of a kind (now, of course, Jesus Himself is one of a kind, fully God and fully human, but that’s for another discussion). Paul’s point here is that the risen Jesus is the display model of what we will be—everyone adopted by faith in Him will be just like Him.
This means that—contrary to what some of the Corinthians believed, and contrary to what many people today believe—it means that death is not the end of God’s plan for our physical existence. Death is only a temporary interruption. When Jesus returns for the final judgment, for the ultimate paradigm shift, He will raise us from the dead, just like God His Father, raised Him from the dead. And our risen bodies will be the same make and model of His crucified and risen body, which means that we’re not going to be floating up in the clouds all misty-eyed, playing harps. No, we’ll get to work with Him and walk alongside Him in the new creation, just like He worked and walked alongside His disciples after His resurrection, like how God worked and walked alongside Adam and Eve in the garden.

The point is: Jesus’ resurrection is the same as ours. We’re only separated by time, not by quality. Jesus is the paradigm-shifting display piece, the First off the line, the Model-T God is driving into a world still clinging to its horse-and-buggy ways.

Paul uses this image to correct a misunderstanding among the Christians in Corinth, who assumed that what God did for Jesus was a one-time patch, something to keep their old system limping along. But, in fact, God was doing a whole new thing.

Now, there are some ways the “display model” metaphor falls short of what Paul wanted to communicate to these early-adoptee Christians. First of all, in the display model metaphor, I tend to imagine myself as the buyer. You probably do, too. I’m standing there in the store, or searching online, trying to decide if this product really is going to make my life easier, or not.

But in the firstfruits analogy, we should understand the Buyer as God. He’s the One who examines the display piece to verify its quality. He’s the One who pays the price for the harvest. He paid for it by sending His Son to become the harvest, to be the Seed who dies and brings forth much grain. It’s all about Jesus. He’s the Adopter. He’s the earliest Adopter, the eternal Adopter of the Father’s plan. And He was scorned and derided for it. He suffered and died for it. He paid the cost—He secured the full inventory with the price of His blood.

And He didn’t do it to make His life easier. Easier would have been not to create at all. Easier would have been not to care at all about us naysayers, feet-draggers, and late adopters. Easier seems to be the least of His concerns. He didn’t do it for ease, but for love—love and sacrifice and service to God, His Father, love and service and sacrifice for us. That’s the new world Jesus is creating. That’s the new era He’s growing and nurturing and harvesting for His Father in the power of His Spirit. It’s not a patch on the old system. It’s an all-new software/hardware bundle, based on the perfect prototype of His own crucified and risen Person, the firstfruits of the harvest of which you become a part when you’re baptized into Him, when you trust in Him.

Even now we get to become part of Him, part of His crucified and risen body. We become one with Him, with God as our life, under Christ, our Head, and love as our goal, and creation-care as our calling, and relationships our reward. We are God’s Model-T, cherished and prized, retrofitted as an ambulance, driven into the world to save the dying, to invite them into a life-giving relationship with Jesus.

I started with a story about cars, so I’ll end with one. It comes from a brother in Christ, one of my favorite authors named Dan Paavola, who died recently, is asleep in Jesus, awaiting the resurrection. Now when it came to cars, Dan was definitely a late adopter. He loved cars—just not the showroom kind. He preferred the hundred-year-old-kind, the ones made back in the horse-and-buggy days, Model-T’s, specifically.

Dan loved Model Ts. But really, Dan loved his dad. The Model T was for his dad. Dan’s dad was a dairy farmer. And the farm work was getting to be too hard on his old body. So, Dan decided that he’d find an old Model T that he could rebuild with his dad, something they could do together. And they certainly weren’t going to do it the easy way. Dan found a 1917 Model-T in an old farmer’s field that hadn’t run since 1953—a pile of tired, blue tin, a sad little car that everyone had ignored. But to Dan and his dad, it was priceless treasure.

For four years they worked together on that car. Dan said, “We talked at least once a week on the phone. Dad and mom came to visit, and dad took parts home to work on. We went parts hunting together in the winter on below-zero days, pulling rusty parts out of snow banks.”

After a few months of this, Dan said that his mom knew that if he called, after they visited on the phone for two or three minutes, she would say to Dan, “I suppose you want to talk to Dad. He’s standing right here.”

Dan said that his dad was the quietest man ever. But they talked about that old car. They talked about that car more than anything else. Marriage, children, school, moving—nothing compared to talking about the T.^iv “The most important thing,” Dan said, “was that dad wanted to do this with me.”

It’s one thing to have a crazy idea yourself: “Let’s build a Model T!” But it’s another thing to have someone sacrifice and share your idea, down to ten below. It’s one thing to have someone ask, “What did you find?” It’s another thing to have someone burrow in the snow ahead of you and say, “Danny, Danny, look what’s here!”

All in all, the cost of the job was hard to figure, adding up all the late-night consultations, drive time, plus family members enlisted to help. Dan’s wife, Holly, she sewed up the vinyl and fabric top. His four-year-old son, Steve, he was the hammer man. Steve came morning after morning to nail down the upholstery as Dan pulled the pieces tight and held the pliers to position the tacks.^v On labor alone, the cost was nigh incalculable. Sure, it could have been done easier. But that wasn’t the point. The reward was the relationships. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

i Laura Hildebrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend, New York: Random House (2001), 5. Hildebrand tells the story of Charles Howard, the car dealer who became the owner of the legendary racehorse, Seabiscuit.
ii Ibid., 7.
iii Nolan Gray and Katrina Hall, “Lessons from the Awkward Life and Death of the Segway,” Bloomberg, July 15, 2020. Accessed March 12, 2026 at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-15/rip-segway-the-dorky-grandfather-of-micromobility.
iv Daniel Paavola, Patience and Perfection: Finding Peace in God’s Plan for You! St Louis: CPH (2018), 29–30.
v Ibid., 35.

Reflections for April 12, 2026
Title: Early Adopters

Mark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, archived audio, our mobile app, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Now back to our Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.

Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today I’m visiting with Dr. Jeff Gibbs, an emeritus professor of New Testament studies at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Thanks for being here, Jeff. Christ has risen!

Jeff Gibbs: He has risen indeed, Mike. Alleluia.

Mike Zeigler: So we’re finally wrapping up our study of this letter from Paul to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians. And as with much of the whole letter, Paul, this last chapter, chapter 15, he seems to be responding to questions, issues, maybe misunderstandings of these early Christ-followers. So, as you read it, what would you say is the issue, or the question at stake in chapter 15?

Jeff Gibbs: I think the answer is found in verse 12. So Paul summarizes the Gospel that he preached in the first 10, 11 verses. And he says, “This is what I preached. This is what you believe. Here it is.”

But then verse 12, “Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how are some of you saying that there is no resurrection of the dead?” See, so that’s their problem. Now, where does that come from? And we’re just not specifically sure, but what I think most people agree upon is that the Corinthians are already thinking, “Hey, we’ve got it all already, pal, and so we don’t need a resurrection.”

Mike Zeigler: Paul is trying to help them see that their future resurrection that the Gospel talks about is the same as Christ’s resurrection? That Christ’s resurrection isn’t like a special miracle God did just for him …

Jeff Gibbs: Correct.

Mike Zeigler: to show that He was God or to show that our sins are paid for, but the two are linked together. Is that right?

Jeff Gibbs: The most important word in the whole chapter in fact is in verse 20, “But now Christ has been raised from the dead.” And here it comes: “the firstfruits.” He is that initial little foretaste of the harvest that’s already been brought forth. But guess what? There’s more harvest coming. They weren’t denying that Christ had been raised from the dead, apparently, we have no reason to think that. But they had forgotten or maybe never understood that Jesus is the Firstfruits. If He’s raised, it guarantees that His people will be raised to glory on the last day.

Mike Zeigler: Yeah, so I could hear somebody saying, maybe not exactly like the Corinthians, but, “I get to go to heaven to be with God as soon as I die. What more do I need than eternal life in heaven with God? Why do I need this extra thing, the resurrection?”

Jeff Gibbs: If someone said that to me, I would say, if I had my wits about me, I would say, “Tell me some more about how you’re thinking about that. This is all you need?”
And If they say, “Yeah, that’s all I need. I don’t care if I have a body or not.” I might say to them, “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings here, but you’re a Christian, right?”
“Well, yeah, I’m a Christian.”
“And you believe that what the Scripture says is right; it’s the way things are?”
“Yeah, of course I do.”
“Well, shouldn’t you want to think the way God thinks?” So, what is it that’s keeping you from wanting this glory that Christ has promised to you by Himself rising from the dead? I mean, this is an easy sell if you’re reading the Bible.

Mike Zeigler: If this is such an important teaching and core to the Gospel, then why has he waited until chapter 15? What is he waiting … why did he wait for it?

Jeff Gibbs: It’s because in God’s plan, before Jesus was raised from the dead, He was crucified. First comes cross, then comes crown. First comes humble suffering, then comes glory. And that’s God’s way. And the Corinthians had lost sight of that. They’d lost sight of the humble suffering. They’d lost sight of the love that suffers all things. So I think Paul had to first reintroduce them to kind of his way of saying what Jesus said, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.” You’ve got to have that in place. And as you’re doing that, you look for the promise, you live in hope, as Paul says in Romans: “Now, who hopes for what he sees?” We don’t see it yet, right? “But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it with endurance.” And that’s the part that the Corinthians were missing.

I think this is an accurate thing to say, Mike, that it’s only in the Corinthian letters that Paul calls the Gospel “foolish” and “weak.” Only there. In Romans, it’s just the power of God for salvation, right? In Ephesians and Colossians, it’s the message of Christ’s triumph over the powers. But in Corinth, see, this was the cultural need. And he had to try to put that to death so that they could emerge again and hope for the fullness of life.

Mike Zeigler: Amen!

Jeff Gibbs: Amen!

Mike Zeigler: Christ has risen, and we too shall arise.

Jeff Gibbs: He has risen–and He has feet! It’s in Matthew 28.

Mike Zeigler: Amen.

Music Selections for this program:

“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“With High Delight” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“O Sons and Daughters of the King” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.