Good morning.
It’s good to see all of you here.
It’s good especially to see our visitors
with us.
We want you to know that you are honored
guests.
We appreciate your presence and we hope
that you’ll be back with
us at every opportunity that you have.
We also hope that you’ll stick around for
a few minutes afterwards and allow
us to get to know you and greet you.
First Corinthians chapter fifteen is where
our study will come from this morning.
Over the course of recent months,
we’ve discussed much of the book of First
Corinthians in view
of First Corinthians thirteen and its
focus on love
and the things which love is and is not.
I want to spend a few moments this morning
with the beginning
of First Corinthians fifteen. If you’re
familiar with this chapter,
you know that the chapter at large is
dealing with the subject
of the resurrection. And it is a pivotal
message that Paul
is writing to the church at Corinth
because there are some there within
the church of Corinth that are teaching
that there is no resurrection.
That this life is all that there is.
Doctrines haven’t changed much in two
thousand years.
There are still many in the world today
insisting that this life
is all that there is.
But Paul will insist that they know
better.
Where I want us to focus this morning,
though, is actually on the first eleven
verses.
Not in this lesson taking on that signal
message
of the resurrection, but rather the
preceding message which
Paul builds his argument about the
resurrection upon.
And that is our message.
The gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul is going
to begin to deal with
the argument that they make concerning the
resurrection by first emphasizing
the message that was preached.
If you go back in your minds to 1
Corinthians chapter 1,
Paul is going to write to them in 1
Corinthians chapter 1 and insist that
he preached to them when he was present
with them,
when he was at Corinth, Jesus Christ and
him crucified.
He preached to them a message that
confounded the Jew and the Gentile.
Because the Jew wanted a sign,
the Gentile wanted to seek the wisdom of
this world.
And Paul insists that the wisdom of God
defeated the wisdom
of this world. In sending his son to die
on the cross for our sins,
to be put to death, something that
A Gentile mind would think is foolishness.
To to worship a God who gets killed?
To worship a God who seems to be defeated?
What kind of God is that?
And yet, Paul will make clear that he
didn’t come with
fancy words, he didn’t come with the
wisdom of the age,
he didn’t come with
the worldly presentation that would have
convinced
the Gentiles.
Nor did he come with all the things the
Jews were looking for.
Rather, he came with a very simple
message.
Jesus Christ and him crucified.
And as Paul opens up 1 Corinthians chapter
15,
he’s going to go back to that discussion
about the message which he preached
and the message that they heard.
And that’s where our focus is going to be
this morning.
In chapter 15 and verse 1, he writes:
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the
gospel which I preached to you,
which also you received, and in which you
Stand. Consider first
the gospel was received.
The gospel was a message that the person,
the individual, the hearer
in Corinth could receive and understand.
There are those within the religious world
today that will insist,
they will tell you until they cannot tell
you anymore that you,
if you are outside the body of Christ,
if you are a sinner, if you haven’t had a
miraculous operation on your spirit
and on your soul, you cannot receive the
gospel.
You cannot understand the message of God.
Paul was completely unaware of that.
Because Paul said, I declared to you the
message
of the gospel, and you received it.
Paul doesn’t say that the Holy Spirit laid
it on their hearts.
Paul doesn’t say that they received it by
the direct operation of the Holy Ghost.
Paul says, I taught it to you,
and you received it.
Consider that the gospel was something
that reached this city.
The gospel was something that had been
brought to them by the work of Paul,
by the work of Timothy, by the work of
Sylvanas,
by the work of others, by the work of the
church in Antioch,
by the work of the church in Jerusalem,
they had ~ been able to have the gospel
reach.
Them
The gospel message went no further
and no faster and to no greater distance
than those who were willing
to take it and preach it.
But the gospel had reached Corinth.
But also consider that the gospel is going
to be reiterated to them.
Paul is going to remind them of what
he already taught them. He says,
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the
gospel which I preach to you.
I taught it to you when I was there,
and I’m going to remind you of it right
now.
And it was received.
They didn’t insist on getting something
different.
They didn’t come to Paul and say,
Well, I like that part, but not interested
in this.
When someone gives you a gift
Is it your habit to look at the gift and
say,
Well, thank you.
But I only want half of it.
When somebody ~ is so kind as to bring one
of my favorite desserts to
the meal we often have after I I don’t I
don’t like someone else have
the other half.
No, thank you. I’ll take the whole thing.
No, I do share.
But when someone brings you a gift
Grandparent shows up, grandchild’s
sixteen,
grandparent arrives, says,
Grandson, here’s a car.
You think the grandson says, Well,
Graham, can I just have the front half?
I appreciate getting the whole thing,
but I think really just the left half will
be fine for me.
No. When you’re given a gift,
you receive the gift.
The concept of they received the message
is not that they picked
and chose the portions that they wanted.
It is not that they got to decide they got
~ the Messiah and not the rest of it.
No, Paul says, I brought the message and
you received
it as it was given. Matter of fact,
the problem.
that Paul has with the church at Corinth
right now is after they have received it,
now they wanna parse it and they wanna get
rid of some of it.
Paul’s not going to let them do it.
Paul says, you received it, and you stand
in it.
But then consider as well the gospel is
that which saves
and sustains. Paul is going to insist it
is the message that
was preached to them that saved them from
their sins.
Paul is going to make it clear that they
do not have salvation apart from
the gospel. Notice what he says in chapter
15.
He says, by which also you are present
tense,
saved. The gospel that I declared to you,
the gospel that you received, the gospel
in which you stand,
is the reason you are. ~
Saved.
When you go back to Acts chapter eighteen.
We read concerning Paul’s time in Corinth.
In Acts chapter eighteen, after these
things,
Paul departed from Athens and went to
Corinth,
and he found a certain Jew named Aquila,
born in Pontus, who had recently come from
Italy with his wife Priscilla,
because Claudius had commanded all the
Jews to part from Rome,
and he came to them. So because he was of
the same trade,
he stayed with them and worked,
for by occupation they were tent makers.
And he reasoned in the Sabbath synagogue
every Sabbath.
And persuaded both Jews and Greeks.
When you read the words that Paul was in
the synagogue every Sabbath,
persuading the Jews and the Greeks,
you are reading about what Paul’s telling
them about in 1 Corinthians 15.
You are reading about him preaching the
gospel,
the gospel that they received,
the gospel that had reached them,
the gospel that he’s reiterating to them.
And he reasoned in the synagogue every
Sabbath and persuaded both Jews
and Greeks when Pi when Silas and Timothy
had come from Macedonia.
Paul was compelled by the Spirit and
testified to the Jews that Jesus is the
Christ.
But when they opposed him and blasphemed,
he shook his garments and said to them,
Your blood be upon your own heads.
I am clean. From now on, I will go to the
Gentiles.
And he departed from there and entered the
house of a certain man named Justice,
one who worshipped God.
Whose house was next to the door of the
synagogue,
then Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue,
believed on the Lord with all his house.
Now be careful.
Because some will want to come to First
Corinthians chapter fifteen
and they’re going to want to say,
You notice this, you hear the gospel,
you believe it, and you’re saved.
And that’s all you gotta do. And then you
can stand in that salvation because that’s
the last action.
Except that Paul’s writing to a group of
people who knew better.
Because they knew what they did when they
received the gospel.
Paul doesn’t have to spell out every act
of the obedience of a sinner
to receive salvation, because they’ve
already done it.
Paul simply says they believed,
and now they stand in it. But when you
read Acts chapter 18 and
you read about Crispus, the ruler of the
synagogue,
and what he and his household did,
notice what the text says he did.
Then Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue,
believed on the Lord with all his house,
and many of the Corinthians hearing,
believed and were baptized.
He’s not saying in that text that many of
the Corinthian Christians were baptized.
He’s saying many of the Corinthian
Gentiles were baptized.
All those who believed were baptized.
When you come over to First Corinthians
chapter fiftin.
Paul, as he writes to them, says,
You know what I preached. You know what
you received.
You know that when you believed,
you obeyed the commands of God,
and you received salvation.
The gospel message saves the sinner.
It does not save them apart from their
willingness to believe it.
It does not save them apart from their
willingness to obey it.
But rather they’re saved when they hear it
and obey it.
That’s not new. Jesus would say that he
compared the person who hears these
sayings
of mine and does not do them to a fool.
And he compares the one who hears these
sayings of mine and does them to a wise
man.
Paul says the gospel message which he
preached to them saved sinners.
When they heard it, like Crispus did,
when they believed it, like Crispus and
his household did,
and when they obeyed it, like the
Corinthians did,
because they are the Corinthians.
But he also says it sustains the saved.
When you go through this life and you
struggle with this life.
May I encourage you to not allow yourself
to be separated from
the gospel message which saves your soul.
That would be like waking up one morning
and deciding that oxygen just
was unnecessary for you that day.
That would be like suggesting that perhaps
water is just not something that really
needs to be a part of your every weekly
life.
Paul says, Moreover, I declare to you the
gospel which I preach to you,
which also you received, and in which you
stand,
by which also you are saved, if you hold
fast the word which I preach
to you unless you believed in vain.
Paul says, you have an active
responsibility every day of your life as a
Christian.
And that is to hold fast to the Word of
God.
That is to hold on to the message which
you were delivered.
The message that was preached,
the simple gospel that God has delivered
to you.
You are not to hold on to an inner
feeling.
You are not to hold fast.
to an inner faith that comes up out of
yourself.
You are to hold fast to a message which
saves your soul.
Unless you believed in vain.
Paul will point out there are some who
will believe,
who will be obedient,
who will begin a walk with God only to
turn back.
But then notice he says the gospel
has one foundation and only one.
In verses three through eight,
he says, For I delivered to you first of
all that which I also received,
that Christ died for our sins according to
the scriptures.
Consider as Paul is presenting to them.
Reiterating to them what he already taught
them.
He’s going to remind them that I ~ what I
taught you was what I received.
What I taught you is what I was given.
I didn’t create something new.
I didn’t invent some new doctrine.
This didn’t originate with Paul.
He says, rather, for I delivered to you
first of all that which I also received,
that Christ died for our sins according to
the scriptures.
And that he was buried, and that he rose
again the third day,
according to the scriptures.
Now notice some some assumption that’s
right in there that is necessitated
by the passage.
In order for someone to die, they had to
first what?
Live.
Paul insists that the gospel message means
nothing if Jesus Christ didn’t actually
walk this earth.
The foundation of the message of the
gospel is Jesus Christ was a real person
who walked this earth in reality,
that was born of a virgin, that was born
in Bethlehem,
that was raised in Nazareth, that taught
in the synagogues,
that taught in the temple, and that went
to the cross.
And if you’re not certain of that.
We’d love to study with you.
Because without a certainty of that you
can’t hold fast to the gospel.
Because the fact that Christ lived is the
first foundational truth of the gospel.
If that’s not true, none of the rest of it
matters.
But there’s more than that. It’s not just
that Christ lived,
it’s that he died.
Remember, Paul said, I preach to you Jesus
Christ,
that’s the fact that he lived,
and him crucified, that’s the fact that he
died.
Some even today.
struggle with the very idea and skeptics
promote the struggle.
What kind of a god do you worship that has
to kill his own son?
And what’s the point of having a cr a God
who comes,
who lives, and who dies only to know he’s
gonna live again?
What sacrifice is that?
If you were to think back.
To Abraham.
And you were to think back to the time and
the occasion where Abraham
in Genesis 22 is told to take his only
son,
Isaac. The son of promise.
The son that God said he would receive,
the son through which God said the promise
and the fulfillment would happen,
in which his descendants would receive a
land and an inheritance and would become
as the stars of the sky and as the sand of
the seashore.
And God tells
Abraham take your son.
Go to the mountains and offer him as a
sacrifice to me.
The Hebrew writer tells us Abraham was
convinced that God would cause
his son to live again.
I would suggest to you that did not in any
way diminish the command.
It it did not in any way diminish the
willingness of Abraham
to sacrifice everything.
For God.
And as we read Psalm twenty two,
as we think concerning the words of Christ
on the cross,
my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
to leave any implication or diminish in
any way the sacrifice of Christ
for our sins?
is to completely disregard all of
scripture.
Paul points out that Christ lived,
that he died.
And he wasn’t kind of dead.
He wasn’t, as the movie quote goes,
mostly dead all day today.
You know what movie that is.
He died.
And he was buried.
They laid him in that tomb. One of the
things that
you can rest assured of is governments
aren’t good at a lot of things,
but governments are good at killing
people.
And making sure they’re dead.
And the Romans were especially good at it.
You weren’t getting off the cross alive.
But it’s more than just conjecture.
More than just a suggestion that perhaps
maybe he had fainted,
maybe he had passed out, may maybe he
appeared to be dead,
but he wasn’t.
For when that centurion took that spear
and ran it into his side,
out came blood and water.
A process that occurs when a person is
dead because the water that’s
in the blood begins to separate from the
blood.
He was dead. And he was buried.
And for three days he was in the grave.
And Jesus had told the Jews,
I’m going to give you no other sign except
the sign of Jonah.
For Jonah was in the belly of the whale
for three days and then came forth.
And Jesus was speaking concerning his
death,
his burial, and his resurrection.
Paul says
I delivered to you first of all that which
I received,
that Christ died for our sins according to
the scriptures,
that he was buried, and that he rose again
the third day.
According to the Scriptures.
Paul insists over and over and over again
as
he declares and reiterates the gospel that
the gospel didn’t ever stand alone.
It wasn’t a message that just popped up
out of the minds of twelve individuals.
It wasn’t something that the Jews just
began to preach in Jerusalem by chance.
It was founded in the scriptures that
for 2,600 years,
God had been telling his people about what
was coming.
And God fulfilled everything he said.
Verse 5, and that he was seen by Cephas,
that’s Peter. And by the twelve,
after that he was seen by over 500
brethren at once,
of whom the greater part remain to the
present,
but some have fallen asleep. Paul,
as he declares this message to the
Corinthians,
is challenging them.
He says, I preached this to you.
I taught this to you. I told you about his
life.
I told you about his death. I told you
about his burial,
and I told you about his resurrection.
And some of those who laid eyes on him
after he walked this earth,
after he was risen from the dead,
you can go get yourself and travel to
Jerusalem and talk to them in person.
If you don’t believe me.
He was seen.
It wasn’t secret. He was witness.
By first one, then more,
then more, until there were hundreds
of eyewitnesses to his resurrection.
The gospel has one foundation,
and that’s it.
You remove any one piece of that,
and Christianity is worthless.
But if those things are true
Then Christianity is undeniably true.
Paul will also point out that the gospel
produced one entity,
the church which belongs to God.
Paul will point out. After that,
he was also seen, verse 7, by James,
then by all the apostles. Then last of
all,
he was seen by me also as one born out of
due season.
For I am the least of the apostles who am
not worthy to be called an apostle,
because I persecuted the church of God.
Imagine Paul would have liked it.
If he could have looked back on his life
and have identified parents that were
waiting for the Messiah.
That heard the message of John.
that pointed him directly at the Messiah
and said,
Go follow him.
And that from the beginning of Paul’s time
he could have walked with Christ,
could have been raised up to follow
Christ,
and that he could have been faithful from
his very earliest days.
I imagine Paul would have liked to have
had that opportunity.
But that wasn’t Paul’s life.
Rather, his parents put him at the feet of
Gamaliel.
And Paul spent years of his life after
Jesus Christ went
to the cross, imprisoning
and killing and persecuting Jesus Christ
and his church.
And as he was on the road.
And as he saw that light and as the voice
from heaven came to him and said,
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
Saul had enough honesty in his heart to
admit.
That whoever’s talking to him exists,
but he doesn’t know who he is.
If the voice from heaven had said,
Saul, Saul, I am the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, Saul would have thought
he knew who he was.
But when the voice from heaven said,
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
Saul is quite certain he doesn’t know who
he is.
Who art thou, Lord?
And the answer from heaven is,
I am Jesus of Nazareth.
Whom thou persecutest.
Paul never once in all of his life raised
up a stone against Jesus
of Nazareth in the flesh. Paul never once
in his life raised
up the threat of imprisonment to Jesus
Christ of Nazareth in the flesh.
So how is it that Jesus Christ of Nazareth
is saying to Paul,
you are persecuting me?
Because when you persecute someone’s
bride,
you persecute them.
The gospel brought forth, it produced one
entity,
the Church of God, the entity that Paul
had persecuted.
And Paul says, I am last of all,
and I am least of all.
Because I persecuted the church.
But he says by the grace of God.
I am what I am. And his grace toward me
was not in vain, but I labored more
abundantly than they all.
Yet not I, but the grace of God which was
with me.
You consider two things are true.
The gospel produced the church that
belongs to God,
and the grace of God produces the church
that belongs
to God.
Paul says it was grace working through him
that made it possible for
him to preach the message, for them to
receive the message,
for them to stand in the message.
This morning.
I want you to consider the gospel.
Our message. It hasn’t changed.
It’s not ours to change.
It’s still the one that Paul preached.
It’s still unchanged.
We can’t have part of it. We can’t have
half of it.
We can have it or we can reject it.
Over in the end of First Corinthians
chapter fifteen,
Paul will write
Verse 57, but thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brethren,
be steadfast, immovable,
always abounding
in the work of the Lord.
For you know that your labor is not in
vain in the Lord.
Our message is the gospel of Christ.
Our message is Jesus Christ and Him
crucified.
Our message is one that does not originate
with us,
is not changed by us, is not altered by
us.
It is simply declared by us.
It is believed by us.
It must be obeyed by us. It saves
a sinner from their sins.
And it sustains a Christian in faith.
And if you’re here this morning and you’re
outside the body of Christ,
we encourage you to be obedient to that
message.
We won’t ask you to do anything that Paul
didn’t ask Crispus to do.
Paul taught Crispus the gospel.
Crispus, a Jew. Crispus,
the ruler of the synagogue. Paul taught
Crispus the gospel.
What did Crispus do? He heard,
he believed, and he was baptized for the
remission of his sins.
That’s all we ask of you. Because that’s
all we’re authorized to ask of you.
Because that’s the gospel.
If you have need of the invitation of our
Lord,
why not consider being obedient to that
message this very morning as we stand
and as we stand.
