Good News (1 Corinthians 15:1-11)

We're going to be reading from chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, verses 1 through 11.

And if you're able, would you please stand for the reading of God's word.

Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preach to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.

For I passed on to you as most important what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time.

Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.

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

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.

On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them.

Yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

Whether then it is I or they, so we proclaim, and so you have believed.

Lord, as we do every week, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that that you have given us your word, that we can hold it in our hands, that we can open it at will and read it at will.

Lord, we can even pull it up on our phones and read it on our phones.

And Lord, I thank you so much that you've given us this.

I pray that each one of us would approach your word this morning with open hearts and eyes and ears to hear, Lord, what you have for each one of us.

So I pray that your spirit would be present here this morning, opening up our eyes and showing us each individually the things that you want us to know.

Lord, directly here from your word.

Use me to teach it well, I pray, that I would be filled by the Holy Spirit, rightly dividing your word here this morning, and that above all you would be glorified.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So, like I said, today we're beginning a section on the importance of the resurrection.

And we're going to see that all the way through chapter 15.

You know, Paul's continuing to correct and to direct this church in Corinth in a lot of different ways.

And this chapter is going to clear some things up for them about the importance of the resurrection.

You know, Corinth is a Greek culture, and the Greeks didn't believe in a resurrection from the dead.

That wasn't a part of their religion or faith or any part of their culture whatsoever.

And it seemed strange to them to be talking about the resurrection of the dead.

And we see this in Acts 17, where it talks about how Paul was in Athens, which is a nearby city to Corinth, and he's preaching about Jesus and specifically about the resurrection.

And it says that this teaching of the resurrection seemed strange to them.

They didn't know what he was talking about.

And at the end of Acts 17, it actually says, when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him.

But others said, We'd like to hear more from you again about this.

So the Greek culture had its reservations already, you know, before Jesus, about the resurrection from the dead.

And to put it nicely, yeah they they just they were kind of anti, I guess is what I'm trying to say, anti anything having to do with any resurrection whatsoever.

So Paul's going to address the Corinthian church and specifically teach on why the resurrection is so important to the gospel message.

You know, and in case you're new or you don't know what that means, the gospel simply just means good news.

Gospel equals good news.

And when we see the word gospel in the New Testament, it's always in regard to the good news of Jesus Christ.

And Paul's going to lay out in verses 3 through 8 of this chapter we're in this morning, a clear account of the good news of Jesus Christ.

You know, and for us, knowing a good, clear account of the gospel is so important to each one of us.

Because Paul tells us in Romans chapter 116, he says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew and then to the Greek.

And I mention this because if you're one of those people that says, you know, I don't know how to share the gospel with people.

You know, I don't know what to say in that moment, or I'm just not good with words, you know, in those situations.

We're gonna go through the simple elements of what the gospel is here today.

And why the resurrection specifically is so important to that.

And I hope what we get out of this is that we don't have to be eloquent.

We don't have to be persuasive in what we say, we don't have to know how to win arguments before we can share the gospel with somebody.

It's our job to simply lay it out clearly in front of whoever it might be, um, as Paul is about to, and then to allow the power of God to take care of the rest.

So look at verse one with me.

Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preach to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand, and by which you are being saved.

If you hold to the message I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.

You know, this sentence can be a bit confusing the way that it runs on, but if you read the first part of verse 1, where it just says, Now I want to make clear to you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preach to you.

If you just stop right there, that's the whole idea of what Paul is talking about in verses one and two.

And then it's followed really by a bunch of qualifiers and a bunch of reminders of what the gospel is, and specifically why the gospel should be so important to this Corinthian church.

You know, I find it helpful when reading this verse is if you read the first part of verse one and two, uh, and then you pretend the rest of it is in parentheses.

I'll show you.

Look at verse one again.

Now I want to make clear to you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preach to you.

And then just kind of pretend the rest of it's in parentheses, like which you received, on which you have taken your stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.

You know, the whole idea here, though, is that Paul wants to give them this clear account of the gospel, which, like I said, we all need a reminder of, and I think we need a reminder of it often.

You know, it's easy to kind of make the gospel murky, to add things to it, or to overcomplicate what it really means.

So, what Paul's gonna do here is he's going to give them a simple message of what the gospel boils down to in four points.

Now, I want to clear something up too because I've heard this quite often and had arguments with people about this, but the way that Paul refers to the gospel and his giving of the gospel can make people wonder if his gospel is different than the other apostles' gospel.

Here, Paul emphasizes, you know, the message I preach to you.

He says that twice in this verse.

And then in Romans chapter 2, and again in Romans chapter 4, he uses the phrase my gospel.

Romans 2 · chapter mention Romans 4 · chapter mention

And a lot of people really want to camp on that and and and try to make arguments about why is it different?

Why does he refer to it so personally?

And so people question that.

And the answer is absolutely not.

It is not different in any way, shape, or form than what everybody else in the New Testament, the other apostles, are preaching.

Paul's using this language to distinguish the gospel he's preaching from the false gospels and from the false teachers and what they were proclaiming to the Corinthian church.

You know, he already said in 1 Corinthians 12 that you can't say Jesus is cursed by the Holy Spirit.

And if someone came and taught a different gospel, you know, and what we think he was referring to there is people were saying, well, Jesus couldn't have been crucified, because that would mean that he was cursed.

But he's saying you can't say that, you can't add to it, you can't take away from it just because somebody else doesn't agree with it.

And then in our passage this morning, you know, we had we're reading one side of somebody's mail here, but maybe the Greek culture wasn't allowing the true gospel to be taught because they didn't want to believe that Jesus was resurrected, because that wasn't a part of their culture.

It seemed strange to them.

So maybe the false gospel that Paul's differentiating from was someone teaching about Jesus, but then saying that he wasn't resurrected because they're trying to make it culturally more palatable.

All that to say, he's not distinguishing his teaching from the other apostles.

He distinguishes his teaching from false prophets and from false teachers.

He goes on in verse 3.

Look at it with me.

For I pass on to you as most important what I also received.

He's saying, These are not my words.

This is not my version of the gospel, this is what I received, and I'm simply passing it on to you.

And we get to learn where Paul received the gospel from in Galatians 1, 11, 12, where it says, For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel preached by me is not of human origin.

For I did not receive it from a human source, and I was not taught it, but it came by a revelation of Jesus Christ.

What better place to learn the good news of Jesus than directly from the source, right?

He's simply passing on what Jesus told him onto this Corinthian church.

Now look at the second half of verse 3, and this is where we jump in to seeing the four different elements of the gospel.

It says that Christ died for our sins according to scriptures.

You know, the sacrificial system was something God set up all the way back to Adam and Eve, really.

They sinned, they realized their nakedness, they tried to cover up their sin, their nakedness, you know, with itchy fig leaves.

But God ends up killing an animal to make them clothes, to cover their nakedness.

Something had to die in their place for the covering of their sin.

And then God gave Israel the whole sacrificial system we see after they came out of Egypt.

And sin offerings were a huge part of this sacrificial system, where an animal would have to die in the place of a human in order to cover that human sin.

But it was this endless cycle of death and then temporarily covering sin.

And then the person would sin again, and then it led to more death through the animal sacrifices.

But as verse 3 says, Christ died for our sins.

1 Peter 3 18 says, For Christ also suffered for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God.

So why is Christ's death so important to the gospel message?

Well, one, we don't have to die for our own sin.

Amen?

We should be very, very grateful for that, right?

And I could just stop there and that would be enough, right?

But there's a huge bonus.

We don't have to continue the sacrificial system of animals in our day and age.

Have you seen meat prices lately?

Can you imagine what that would be like if we were still continually offering animal sacrifices in the place of our sin?

Jesus died once for all, it says.

Our salvation, the forgiveness of our sins, is now a free gift because Jesus paid the ultimate price.

He died the death we deserve so that we don't have to.

You know, without the death of Christ, we're still trying to do good.

We're still trying to be good enough to get into heaven through our own works.

You know, it makes salvation about works.

And our works in Isaiah 64 are compared to filthy menstrual rags.

We'd have no chance.

But he died for our sins in our place to offer us that free gift of salvation.

Now let's look at the next element of the gospel in verse 4.

That he was buried.

The importance to the gospel is that Jesus was pronounced dead.

He was placed in a tomb where everyone thought that he was just going to waste away.

He was sealed in a guarded tomb.

And the buried part also confirmed and fulfilled the prophecy on Isaiah 53, 9, saying, He was assigned a grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death.

Which we saw that fulfilled in Matthew 27.

We see a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, placing Jesus in his own tomb.

And then look at the end of verse 4.

It says, That he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

Now we talked about this chapter and specifically the resurrection from this chapter a lot on Easter morning.

But I want to revisit what we talked about that day, because with the resurrection, we would be, with I'm sorry, without the resurrection, we would be in a lot of trouble.

We'd have to deal with a lot of doubt and fear on our part if Jesus didn't raise from the dead.

We would have to wonder, like, well, was he really God?

Or did he just say it and then he died and then we're left wondering?

You know, was he really who he said he was?

Did he really have power over death and life?

Are my sins truly forgiven?

Or should we still be doing the animal sacrifices just in case?

Just to make sure, just in case Jesus wasn't who he said he was.

And you've probably heard this before, but I really like the saying that Jesus' death was the payment for sin, and his resurrection was the receipt.

It was the proof of payment.

It was the proof that he is our Savior.

It was proof that he was God.

It was proof that he was everything that he said he was.

And one of the biggest proofs that the resurrection actually happened and was not some elaborate hoax by the disciples are the witnesses that we are about to read about.

You know, so many witnesses not only saw him after his resurrection, but so many were also willing to testify of Jesus to the point of their own death.

Did you know eleven of the twelve apostles appointed by Jesus died for their faith?

Now, Paul's going to talk about these witnesses in verse 5.

He says, in that he appeared to Cephas, that's just another name for Peter, then to the 12.

Then he appeared to over 500 brothers and sisters at one time.

Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James and then to all the apostles.

He's talking about eyewitnesses that at the time of this writing, when Paul's writing it, you could actually track down if you wanted to, if you wanted to have a conversation with them.

He's saying most of these 500 are still alive, even some though some of them have passed away.

But think about that.

If you wanted true proof of Jesus, there were hundreds of eyewitnesses that you could go and find and question to corroborate what Paul is telling them.

Hey, you know, is Paul really telling us the truth here about everything that happened?

And those witnesses could confirm they're eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Jesus.

I mean, think about that.

Two or three witnesses in our current legal system, two or three eyewitnesses that are in agreement can put somebody away for life.

God says, how about 500?

Let's not mess around.

Let's just prove this, you know, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

You know, that should be proof to anyone, especially in this time of Paul's writing, where there were eyewitnesses that were still living that can corroborate what he's telling them.

And then notice in verse 7 what Paul mentions.

He mentions James here by name, which I find really interesting.

This is Jesus' half-brother.

Mary was their mutual mother, and they had different fathers, obviously.

But in John chapter 7, verse 5, it tells us that Jesus' brothers did not even believe in him.

John 7:5

Mark 20 tells us that his family actually sets out to restrain him because, and this is their words, they say he's out of his mind.

But Jesus came to James in his resurrected body.

And I'm guessing that's the moment James said, Oh, um, wow, hey, uh, there Jesus.

You know, like, I believe you now, you know.

And in Acts 15, we see that James is a leader in the church in Jerusalem.

And he's most likely the author of the book of James that is in the New Testament, in the Bible that we're holding right now.

So I have a question for you.

Would any of you be willing to die for the sake of a hoax that your sibling is God?

Think about that.

Anyone be willing to die for the sake of a hoax?

And the hoax being that your sibling is God.

That again by itself is proof enough for me that Jesus is resurrected.

That his own brother flipped so drastically from saying he's out of his mind to then becoming one of his biggest advocates and becoming one of the leaders in the church.

And there are many of these other eyewitnesses that are putting their life on the line daily, that are suffering persecution and abuse and torture and even death for the sake of the good news because they saw Jesus resurrected.

You know, this, as you can probably tell, is one of my favorite arguments against people that say that the resurrection was a hoax, that it was something that was cooked up by all the disciples.

Could you imagine any of these witnesses, you know, whether they're facing death or imprisonment or persecution of any kind, um, that if it was a hoax that they would be willing to suffer for this lie.

You know, as soon as a knife was put to their throat, you know, or people started picking up stones to stone them, you could just see them just saying, oh, never mind, it was all a lie.

Just leave me alone, I want to get out of here, you know.

But it never happened.

The good news of Jesus was worth the persecution for these witnesses because it was the truth.

That's why the witnesses are so important in giving the gospel message.

You know, think about it this way.

And by the way, we would never ask you to do this, but say the four of us elders here at the church stood up here and said, We really want to get more people here on Sunday mornings.

So we're gonna tell everyone that will listen that Jesus has returned for his second coming, and he was at our church this Sunday.

And then we told you, you need to go spread this around no matter how much persecution you receive, and you need to stand by this lie to the point of death.

So everybody goes out, which I know none of you would, but goes out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

They're telling everybody that'll listen this lie that Jesus has returned and he was at our church on Sunday.

And then someone that is so appalled as they should be of this breaks into your home, holds a gun to your head, and says, Tell me the truth.

Was Jesus really at your church on Sunday?

What would you guys do?

The elders made me do it, right?

That's the first thing you point and say, Ah, yeah, leave me alone.

Jesus wasn't really there.

So you can't tell me that 500 witnesses were convinced to go along with a hoax like this and were willing to suffer persecution and even death, and they all held that secret to the grave.

You know, I've seen enough movies to know that people like to spill their guts before they die, right?

Isn't that what always happens?

But they were all willing to stand by this truth because they saw, they witnessed Jesus after his resurrection.

And the Apostle Paul, our author.

Here was the one doing a lot of that persecution to the followers of Jesus before Jesus showed himself to Paul, which is what he's going to get into right here in verse 8.

He says, Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.

Born at the wrong time.

There's a lot of speculation as to what Paul means here.

But I think he means that he started following Jesus, you know, being born again, pretty late in the game.

The other apostles, which he'll be comparing and contrasting himself to in these next verses, they had three years with Jesus.

And Paul didn't start following Jesus until after Jesus ascended.

And he's about to mention in verse 9 how he persecuted the church and was so anti-Jesus.

Anti-Christ.

You know, the story of Paul's conversion, you can find the whole thing in Acts chapter 9, which I encourage you to read on your own.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

But it starts off with it says, now Saul, which his name was turned into Paul, was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.

He went to the high priest and requested letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women who belonged to the way, those are followers of Jesus, he might bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

But then, when Paul's on his way, Jesus showed up on the road to Damascus and says, Falling to the ground, he, Paul, heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And then Saul says, Who are you, Lord?

He said, I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting, he replied.

But get up and go into the city, and you will be told what to do.

And then Paul becomes a follower of Christ.

And not only that, but an apostle that was sent to the Gentiles, it says, kings and Israelites.

He went from being one of the biggest enemies of Jesus to being one of his greatest advocates of all time.

And you get the sense here that he really wished that he had started following Christ when the other disciples started following Christ.

Anyone here wish that they started following Christ just a little earlier than when they did?

That's what Paul's going through here.

He missed out on three years of being physically present with Jesus.

I think that's what he felt like when he says that he was born at the wrong time.

He goes on in verse 9.

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

You know, we get an honest look here at what Paul thought of himself.

And this isn't false humility that we're looking at here from Paul.

This is probably a glimpse at Paul trying to fall asleep at night.

As he's trying his best to take his thoughts captive, as he dealt with the shame of what he did, and the guilt and the regret and the remorse.

As he remembered watching Stephen die for his faith, and all of the faces of all of the people that he imprisoned because they were followers of Jesus.

You know, our sin is forgiven when we come to Christ, but we still have earthly consequences that we have to deal with.

We still have horrible memories and big regrets that we have.

And I'm sure Paul that Paul dealt with all of that just as much, if not more, than we do.

But even with all of that, Paul tells us what God thinks of him in verse 10.

He says, But by the grace of God, I am what I am.

Let that just sit for a second.

By the grace of God, I am what I am.

By God's grace, Paul is no longer an enemy of Jesus.

But while Paul was an enemy of Jesus, Jesus loved Paul and revealed himself to him and saved Paul and forgave Paul and washed him clean of all of those offenses.

All of that persecution that he doled out on the church.

Romans 5.8 says, but God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And two verses later, he actually calls us enemies of God before we came to a relationship with Jesus.

And I think nobody knew those words to be truer than Paul did.

But by God's grace, and because God loved Paul so much, unconditionally, he called Paul.

I mean, that is true unconditional love.

Where somebody can treat Jesus and his bride in that way, and Jesus still desires Paul.

Jesus was showing us directly how to love our enemies.

You know, it was by the grace of God that he looked at Paul when Paul was an enemy and said, I can use that passion, Paul.

I can use that zeal, that education, the experience, the background, even Paul's heritage.

It just needs to be redirected toward the kingdom of God instead of against the kingdom of God.

By the grace of God, Paul went from hating Jesus to loving Jesus.

By the grace of God, Paul went from hating the church to loving the church.

And it was by the grace of God, by God's unmerited favor upon him, that Paul became who he became.

Look at verse 10 again.

But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.

So Paul didn't squander it, is what he's saying.

He goes on, on the contrary, I worked harder than any of them.

That them is the apostles, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

You know, that's a big statement to say that he worked harder than any of the other apostles.

And I always wonder what Peter's reaction was when he read that.

But again, he says, even the hard work was by the grace of God.

And I want to make sure we don't get that backwards.

Paul didn't get grace from God because he worked so hard.

It was because of God's grace that he was able to work so hard.

It was by his grace that he was able to labor so tirelessly and not burn out.

To labor so tirelessly and not grow bitter.

That he was able to deal with churches like Corinth that questioned his apostleship, that questioned his authority, and Paul still loved them and still suffered very long with this church.

You know, in 2 Corinthians, which is the next book we're going to jump into, chapter 6, he's going to plead with this church, saying, don't receive the grace of God in vain.

Meaning, don't just receive it and sit there.

Receive it and get to work for the kingdom of God.

Because being a Christian isn't about being a spectator, it's about loving God and loving others.

And loving is an action.

And I think that Paul is the second best example of that, only next to Jesus.

Look at verse 11, and we'll finish with this.

Whether then it is I or they, so again, he's speaking of the apostles, so we proclaim, and so you have believed.

He's saying, regardless of who's preaching, if it is the gospel that I just laid out for you, it doesn't matter if it's coming from me or from somebody else.

This is the gospel.

This is what you need to believe, and you need to believe it in its fullness.

You can't take elements out of it that are not culturally appropriate.

You can't leave out the crucifixion.

You can't leave out the resurrection just because the culture may not accept it at that time.

He's saying you need to live by the gospel that I just laid out to you.

And that's as true today as it was 2,000 years ago when Paul wrote this.

We aren't supposed to be like our culture.

We aren't supposed to massage the gospel to make it more palatable to our culture.

We need to believe what Paul says because it's what Jesus says, as we read in Galatians.

He's just passing on what Jesus gave to him.

And now I want to summarize the elements of the gospel we find in verses 3 through 8, because if we could remember these four points, we can share the gospel.

And as we're talking about, there's power in the gospel, the power of God to salvation.

So the first element, Jesus died for our sins.

The second, he was buried.

The third, he was raised on the third day.

And the fourth, he appeared to over 500 witnesses.

One more time.

The first one, Jesus died for our sins.

Because I want us all to memorize this.

He was buried, he was raised on the third day, and he appeared to over 500 witnesses.

And as Romans 10, 9 says, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

That's the gospel and the acceptance of the gospel in the simplest terms that I can possibly bring it down to.

Jesus couldn't have made it any easier for us to accept the gift of salvation.

And if you're sitting here today and you've never accepted that gift, if you've never heard the gospel, maybe, or you've never accepted the gospel and all that it is, I want to give you that opportunity, just in the quietness of your own seat right there, you can confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for the gospel message.

We thank you for the simplicity of what it is.

Lord, would you teach us how to better just lay it out there for people and allow your power, your power to salvation, just come through that simple presentation of the gospel message.

Lord, would we trust in your work there and not worry about an argument, not worry about maybe we're not eloquent enough, not worry about anything else, but to just lay that out and allow you to do your work.

Lord, help us to be faithful in that and to take advantage of those opportunities and to not allow doubt and to not allow self-consciousness to creep in in those times.

But most of all, thank you, Jesus, for the gospel.

That you died for our sins, that you were buried, and that on the third day you rose again, proving that you're God.

And in your resurrected state, Lord, that you showed yourself to so many eyewitnesses.

We thank you for that.

That now we have this free gift of salvation.

Help us to never grow callous to that, but to be grateful for it on a daily basis.

To be thankful that we don't have to do the sacrificial system anymore of animals and all of that.

But you paid that price for sin once for all.

We thank you so much for the love that you literally poured out on each one of us.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.