What Must be Preached & Believed

What Must be Preached & Believed

“What Must be Preached & Believed”
(1 Corinthians 15:3-11)
Series: Chaos & Correction (1 Corinthians)

Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD

Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson

•Take your Bibles and join me in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15 (page 775; YouVersion).

If you’re visiting with us we are preaching our way verse-by-verse through the book of 1 Corinthians. That’s what we do here, we preach through books of the Bible, believing this to be the best way to teach and to learn the Word of God and rightly apply to our lives today.

As we find 1 Corinthians 15 I want to remind you there are folks praying for us in the prayer room over here; always grateful for our volunteers who pray during the morning worship services.

When we were last together we studied the first two verses of chapter 15, introductory verses on the gospel. Paul says in verses 1 and 2:

1 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand,
2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

And so we talked about the gospel and our standing, the gospel and our salvation, and the gospel and our security. We must examine ourselves and ask whether we are “holding fast” in our faith, holding fast to the Word because we ourselves are “held fast by the Lord.” If not, Paul warns, we may have “believed in vain.”

So this is always a healthy exercise in your family devotions and as you share the gospel with co-workers and friends, ask about belief. What do you believe about Jesus Christ and about salvation? Make sure that you and your loved ones are not “believing in vain” but are trusting in the finished work of redemption by Jesus Christ upon Calvary’s cross.

Now Paul goes on in verses 3 and following to talk more pointedly about the gospel and, as I read the passage let me invite you to listen for the essence of the gospel, the essential content of the gospel and also listen for the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection that corroborates the truth of gospel teaching.

•Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.

3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,
5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve.
6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.
7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles.
8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.
9 For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
10 But 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.
11 Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

•Pray:

Introduction:

Most of us take pictures anymore with a smartphone, an iPhone or an Android or some other kind of phone that takes pictures. In any case when you take a picture you look at the display and you’re trying to capture as much as you can within the frame of your viewer or display. And so you may zoom in or zoom out and try to frame as much of the essential subject matter as possible. In fact, most phones allow you to take a picture and then zoom in and crop it so that you can get even more clarity of the content you are capturing. You wish you could get everything you see—the background, the foreground—but you can only so much, just a snapshot, and so you have to frame it just right and capture the essence of the subject.

The opening verses of our passage this morning are like a theological snapshot of the gospel. As though he were using a modern camera the Apostle Paul takes careful aim to capture the essence of gospel content, zooms in and frames it just so, so that we may see it clearly and appreciate its application today.

So let’s scroll through Paul’s photo album and take a closer look at this picture he has captured for us and framed for us to look at and study together this morning. Here’s a heading that may help you. I wrote down in my notes this first main number of an outline:

I. The Gospel and Essential Content (3-4)

In verses 3 and 4 the Bible gives us the very essence of the gospel. This is like a zoomed-in picture of the gospel. Of course there are other important elements “outside of the frame,” outside the shot, but what is “inside the frame” is indispensable to our ability to see clearly and understand rightly the gospel message. The gospel and essential content. Paul writes:

3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

Paul says, “I delivered to you first of all that which I also received.” Paul had not invented this news, he had received it.

And he says that which he had received he delivered to them “first of all,” which is to say that this message is a matter of first and foremost importance. The word “first” there in verse 3 is best understood not in the sense of time like, “The first thing I did was this,” but rather in a sense of importance. So it’s more likely that Paul is saying here something like, “I delivered to you all as a matter of first importance, primary, foundational importance—the gospel.”

And what is the first thing Paul says about the gospel is—verse 3—“that Christ died for our sins.”

Christianity is unlike any other religion in that other religions are about a body of moral teachings, ethical instructions and works that people must do in order to gain approval from some god or other. But Christianity is about God coming to us and dying for our sins.

Note this carefully: not just “that Christ died,” nor even that, “Christ died for sin,” but “Christ died for our sins.”

And the word that’s translated as “for” there, the preposition “for” our sins, is a word in the original that means “on behalf of,” or “in the place of” another. John Stott says, “The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.”

So true! Stott continues: “Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.”

The gospel is Christological. The gospel is inherently Christ-centered. We must preach Christ!

A couple of month’s ago a blogger surveyed the tweets of one popular health, wealth, and prosperity preacher whose name I will not mention, but he happens to pastor I think the largest congregation in America, somewhere in Texas. And his message is largely that of:

“God loves you and wants to save you from a life of mediocrity and small dreams. Therefore, if you believe in God and be obedient to him, God will give you a plan for your life that includes big dreams, self esteem, favor, health and wealth, influence, a better job, a positive self image and a fulfilled life free of negativity.”—see: http://pulpitandpen.org/2014/07/18/joel-osteen-likes-god-he-just-doesnt-like-jesus-a-twitter-survey-of-joelosteen/

That is largely the message of this preacher. So this blogger was making the point that if we don’t preach Christ, we end up proclaiming a vague and nebulous kind of God, making God into whatever we wish. And we end up with an unbiblical gospel.

And the blogger did a survey of all of the tweets of this popular health, wealth, prosperity preacher and went back to July of last year. Now if you have yet to enter the 21st Century, tweets are the short statements people say on their Twitter account, catchy one-liners of 140 characters to proclaim something or other. So out of this preacher’s tweets, and there were 806 in a year, out of 806 one liners, this preacher mentioned “God” 334 times. We would expect something like that. But here’s the point: can you guess how many times he mentioned “Jesus?” Answer: Just once. One time. In fact, the blogger wanted to be as fair as possible, so he searched for whether the preacher used the word “Christ” instead. And how many times was “Christ” mentioned? Twice. Two times. Is that not telling? Think about it.

You know, I love you all and I just want to warn you about the ease with which so many folks play fast and loose with the gospel. Who is God? He is the one who came to us in flesh. He is Christ Jesus, God-incarnate, whose primary purpose for entering into our lives was not to make us healthy, wealthy, and wise, but to save us from sin. The gospel is Christological, Christ-saturated, Christ-centered.

You see, changes to the gospel matter, no matter how small those changes may be.

It’s like the earth. I read recently:

The size of the earth and its resultant gravity is finely tuned. If the earth were only slightly larger, hydrogen would be unable to escape earth’s gravity and would collect in our atmosphere, making earth inhospitable to life. If the earth were only slightly smaller, oxygen would escape and water would evaporate. Small changes in either direction would make human life impossible. (http://lifehopeandtruth.com/god/is-there-a-god/intelligent-design/)

Small changes to the gospel make spiritual life impossible. It’s just that important.

4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,

Here is the essential content of the gospel: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. What Scriptures? Of course this would be the Old Testament.

I suppose Paul could have had in mind particular passages such as Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53. Or maybe the first couple chapters of Jonah. Remember when some of the scribes and Pharisees taunted Jesus and asked Him for a sign that He was the Messiah, he replied in Matthew 12:39-40: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

It’s probably more likely that Paul simply means that the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures testify to the truth of God’s master plan in sending the Messiah to come and make reconciliation between sinful man and God, as Peter preached in his sermon in Jerusalem in the second chapter of Acts, Jesus was “delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23).”

Or as illustrated in Luke 24, in my favorite resurrection appearance of Jesus, His appearing to the two on the road to Emmaus. Remember that one?

These two guys are walking home to Emmaus, 7 miles from Jerusalem, their heads are down, they are discouraged, they’re trying to make sense of all that has happened in Jerusalem. Then Jesus appears and walks with them, but the Bible says that He hid himself from them so they didn’t recognize Him—you can do stuff like that if you are God!

And Jesus says to them, “What up, guys?! Why are you walking along so discouraged?” And they’re like, “What are you some kind of out-of-town visitor?”—ha! if only they knew how true that was!—They say, “Don’t you know what’s been going on? This prophet from Nazareth came and we thought He was the Messiah and He was crucified and some folks say He rose from the dead and His tomb is empty, but we don’t know…”

“Then Jesus said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (Luke 24:25-27).”

The Bible is a “Him book,” it’s about Him.

The Gospel and Essential Content. Secondly:

II. The Gospel and Eyewitness Corroboration (5-8)

What Paul does in verses 5 and following is to provide evidence, eyewitness testimony that corroborates the truth of the resurrection. Paul’s doing this because the truth of the bodily resurrection of Christ will be the basis upon which he will teach the truth of the bodily resurrection of Christians.

Remember these Christians at Corinth were a little messed up. They believed that Christ rose from the dead, but they did not believe that Christians would rise from the dead. I mean, they believed that the Christian’s soul would continue on after death, but they did not believe in the resurrection of the physical body. So Paul is at pains to teach the reality of the bodily resurrection of Christians—believers—based upon the reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ. So Paul writes in verse 5:

5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve.

Cephas is the Aramaic name Paul uses for Peter, the name our Lord gave to Peter. And does it not make you smile that—in so far as the 12 disciples are concerned—our Lord was seen first by Peter? And that Paul mentions Peter first here as well?

The angel had said to the women at Christ’s empty tomb, “Go tell His disciples—and Peter…(Mark 16:7).”

Peter had denied our Lord and Jesus seeks to comfort him. What an amazing thing! Here is our Lord comforting the one who hurt Him and was disloyal to Him. As William Barclay notes, “Love can go no further than to think more of the heartbreak of the man who wronged it than of the hurt that it itself has received.”

Jesus was seen by Peter and then by the 12, a general reference to all our Lord’s disciples, including Matthias. Verse 6:

6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.

This verse really shatters the thoughtless criticism that the resurrection appearances were just the hallucinations of loyal disciples who so wanted to believe in Jesus, just so wanted to believe He rose from the dead that they had these hallucinations of His resurrected body.

Paul says “He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once.” It would be pretty strange if 500 people all had the same hallucination of the very same thing on the very same day, at the very same place, for the very same amount of time!

And Paul adds that of these 500, “the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep,” that is, some have died. But the greater are still living.

Paul established the church around AD 50 and wrote 1 Corinthians a few years later, we’ve said roughly around AD 55, so this letter is only some 20 years after the death and resurrection of Christ. Paul is like, “You can go interview those close to 500 eyewitnesses and they will corroborate the truth of His bodily resurrection.

7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles.

The mention of James is significant. James was the half-brother of our Lord Jesus (Galatians 1:19) and when Jesus began His earthly ministry James and the family had concluded that Jesus must have been crazy, “out of his mind” as Mark puts it in Mark 3:21. But the resurrection of his half-brother made a believer out of him!

8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.

One of the qualifications for apostles was that he had to “see” the risen Lord (1 Corinthians 9:1).

So Paul is like, “The Lord Jesus also appeared to me after all the other apostles had seen Him. I’m like the ‘Johnny come lately’ of the bunch, born a little late, you know.”

The other apostles had seen the resurrected Christ before His ascension whereas Paul had seen the resurrected Christ after His ascension. And you all know the story about how the Lord appeared to Paul on his way to Damascus, on his way to persecute Christians, Jesus appears to Paul and Paul is saved, effectively converted.

This takes us then to our third and final point. We have studied the Gospel and Essential Content, the Gospel and Eyewitness Corroboration, and thirdly:

III. The Gospel and Effectual Conversion (9-11)

The Gospel saved the Apostle Paul. He writes of his conversion and calling in verse 9:

9 For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

And you may wish to read the account again later as a family. Read it in Acts 9, Paul’s conversion from the murderous Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul—effectually saved and converted. Note Paul’s humility in verse 10:

10 But 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.

Can you say that? “By the grace of God I am what I am. I may not be perfect still, but I am by God’s grace saved and forgiven. I am what I am and His grace toward me was not in vain.”

And Paul just tells the truth when he says, “But I labored more abundantly than they all (meaning all the other apostles).” It was true! We have Paul’s letters here as evidence. But, he adds, “Yet not I (It wasn’t actually as though I was the great laborer in my own efforts), but the grace of God which was with me.”

11 Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

That is, “Whether it was I (the Apostle Paul who preached the gospel), or they (that is, the apostles who preached the gospel), so we (Paul and the other apostles) preach. So we preach and so you believed.”

We have studied “What must be preached and what must be believed.” Do you believe the gospel? Do you preach it to yourself every day? Do you revel in the truth of Christ’s resurrection?

Concluding Illustration:

The resurrection is the Father’s “stamp of approval” on the work of His Son for sinners. Romans 4:25 says that Christ was “delivered over (to death) for our sins, and “was raised for our justification,” raised from the dead so that Christians would be forever regarded as justified, “not guilty” of sin and condemnation. The resurrection is the Christian’s proof that his sins have been paid for in full, a “proof of purchase” if you like.

Tim Keller is helpful here with his analogy of having a receipt to prove that an item was paid for. Imagine you are at Wal-Mart or at Macy’s shopping across the river at Eastland Mall. You’ve got some items you’ve purchased and you’re walking around in one of the stores and a plainclothes security officer approaches you and, how embarrassing, he asks whether you have paid for the items you have in your hand. And you’re a bit rattled, but you reach into the bag and are relived to find that receipt and so you pull out that receipt, the proof of purchase, and you proudly say to the officer, “Trouble me not! Be gone!”

And this is what Jerry Bridges is talking about in that book we read in Sunday school a few years ago, where he challenges us to “preach the gospel” to ourselves daily. The resurrection is our “proof of purchase,” a receipt that shows that our sins are “paid in full.”
So when—like a mettlesome security officer—our conscience begins to trouble us, and rattle us, we can point to the receipt of the resurrection and say to our conscience, “Trouble me not! Be gone!”

And the same is true when the devil seems to speak into your ear whispers of condemnation, “God doesn’t really love you. You’re a sinner. You’re sins are too great for Him to forgive.” And you reach inside the bag of your experience and you pull out the “receipt” of the resurrection, the proof that your sins have been paid for in full, and you say to the devil, “Trouble me not! Be gone!”

Do you do that? Do you preach the gospel to yourself regularly, to your conscience regularly, to the devil? This is the application of the gospel message, “so we preach and so you believed.”

•Stand for prayer.

 

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