Tonight, I invite you to turn in the Scriptures to the book of 1 Corinthians. We're coming close to concluding our study in 1 Corinthians. And tonight, we begin in this great chapter, chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, a well-known chapter. And if you're looking for that tonight, that is found on page 1222 in your pew Bible. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We'll read together the first 11 verses. This is God's holy word. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and which you stand, and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy 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, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believe. May the Lord bless the hearing of his word. We have for some time been looking at a church with a lot of problems. We have run through the whole course of problems i think you could think about what more could be in a church of by way of problems i mean he began this book with looking at the problem of party spirits and divisions in the church there were ministry problems there were problems with the ministry their worship and their practices in light of what we looked at in the belgic there was no elder oversight their gatherings for worship didn't look any different than any kind of pagan activities that they would do in the culture they were worldly in their view of the ministry this compounded with the problem that there was no discipline in the life of the church one of the things again that was highlighted tonight in the belgic confession that mark of a faithful church is discipline. Discipline was gone. They had corrupt views of marriage and sexuality. There was little to no sacrificial mindset among the people. They didn't give to consider other people's consciences. They didn't care about consciences. They imposed whatever their hearts desired the lord's supper you wonder at that one point where paul says when you come together you're not even celebrating the lord's supper it had become so debased and turned into something that was completely pagan you'll remember for these last few months we've been looking at abuses with gifts all the problems that we consider with gifts in the ministry i mean really what new testament church gets this kind of treatment and has the has you know this many problems laid out in front of us to study and to look at but tonight as i started first corinthians chapter 15 this week as i was working through it i thought he saved the greatest for last you think you got to be kidding me you know we went through some heavy duty stuff He saved the greatest problem for last. What is it? Well, many have recognized this is one of the most important chapters in all of the Bible, if you can say that. Why? Well, you have the major issue that's laid before us tonight that's captured right at the beginning is the gospel. The gospel. If I were to develop this early and we're not getting there tonight, The heart of his concern in this chapter comes out in verse 12. Look what he says in verse 12. Of all the issues, this one deeply disturbed him. If Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? I think it's really hard just to read that and get the sense of how the expression that must have been behind that when he was writing that and what he was feeling. The discouragement and the utter frustration. I don't know how you get behind it, but it probably was something like this. If Christ is proclaimed to you guys as proclaimed from the dead, if that's the heart of our message, if that's what animates us as a Christian church, how can some of you say it hasn't even happened and the rest of you let it spread like cancer as he said elsewhere of two people this is the single great burden of the apostle because right out of the gates what was being tampered with in corinth as we come to chapter 15 in the issue of the resurrection he summarily says is the very issue of the gospel. And if that could be lost in a church, if that could lose its central place, he will go on to say we're the most pitiable of all people. We come, we sing, we do everything we do. But if that's gone, you are one sad group. You are one sad group. So with that in mind, Paul is saying tonight one final thing through this chapter if i i try to put it all together and he's saying one final thing to us in this chapter uh that essentially goes like this there are no excuses on this you have a responsibility to hold fast the gospel with all your might every one of you because that's the message by which you god saves you that's how you're saved if you lose that message, you have no basis for standing now or on that day. That's it. And tonight, he really does give us three things by way of reminder to this church. If you are taking notes, here I have three for you. First, it's the gospel by which we are saved. It's the gospel that has been delivered to you, and it's the gospel that must be believed. It's the gospel by which you're saved. It's the gospel that's been delivered to you, and it's the gospel that must be held on to and believed. No compromises here. Now, to make a case for that, Paul says something in verse 3 that should really stand out. You see this burden come out in verse 3 when he says something that just really, I don't know, I think maybe we've read this passage so much we've lost the real sense of what he's saying here, but there's a little phrase there that when I pondered it, I thought, whoa, that is something he is really swinging hard with. There is something of first importance. Isn't that something? Remember, this is an apostle priority. There's something of first importance. And to build to what is of first importance, he says essentially you guys are tampering and moving away with the one deposit of truth that God has chosen to save you with. And that's where we pick up in verse 1. Now, I would remind you, brothers, notice how he begins, I would remind you, I'm recalling to your minds, I'm giving you something that you need to be reminded about of the gospel I preached to you. In which you received, here it is, in which you stand. Now, I love emphasizing that I didn't put together these two passages from this morning, you know, and tonight. This was the Lord's providence and his spirit. And I always love to acknowledge that he did something really special for the Escondido URC tonight. This morning, he showed you no one can stand, who can stand before him. And tonight, he tells you how somebody can stand, and it is in the gospel. plainly think of what the treasure is that's handed to you right now and what the lord is explaining to you i would remind you of the gospel i preached to you in which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved if you hold fast the word i preached to you unless you believed in vain as the apostle among you i labored to preach the gospel to you paul says I declared it. Remember in chapter 9, this is the same apostle who said, if I don't do that in my ministry, if I don't make that the conscious aim of my ministry, the goal of my ministry, woe is me. That was Paul accepting prophetic curse upon him in the same vein of Isaiah. Woe is me if I don't do this as a pastor and as an apostle. Curse it am I if my single great passion, my single great purpose in the ministry is lost and I refuse to do this anymore. Heavy duty, huh? I have an open conscience on this matter, says Paul. My conscience is clear. Later he would say in Acts, I have not shunned to teach and preach the whole counsel of God. I don't want to lose what he's saying here. It's one thing if a pastor is negligent, derelict, if he is negligent in the duty of preaching the gospel. Your heart bleeds for churches where people go and they sing and they put their money in, they give, and they receive no ministry of reconciliation. I just, my heart bleeds for that kind of scenario. happens a lot more than you realize. I just, that is an abusive shepherd. That's everything that Ezekiel, the book of Ezekiel talked about in warning of a false shepherd who doesn't preach the Gospel. I was grieved this morning when I'm telling you about the plagues and that in the year 1665, when the churches were packed, the ministers did nothing but rail people with the law and didn't preach the Gospel. That's just tragic. I grieve over that. that's a tragedy. But let me tell you what's a greater tragedy. Let me tell you something that's greater. When a pastor faithfully labors to do that, when a pastor faithfully labors every week to preach this gospel and works hard and works hard to proclaim Christ before the ears and eyes of the people and before the sight of God preaches that gospel and the people turn away from it, That's not a scenario we think a lot about. But that goes on. That's Corinth. He says up front here, you guys received this from me. You received the good news. That's what the gospel means, boys and girls, good news. And Paul says, so I'm going to present it to you again. It's this good news that God chose to save you with, to save people with. God's power, remember, he said all the way back in chapter one, this was the heart of where he started with. It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. A verse we should memorize. Bumper sticker verse. It pleased God. I've never seen it on a bumper, by the way. It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save. It's that gospel by which you stand. Oh, that means so much. That means so much. we're not able to stand on our own. You're not able to keep the law, as we looked at this morning, on your own. It's the gospel, the good news by which you stand. It's Romans 5. Through Him, we have obtained access by faith into the grace in which we stand. God sent His Son. His life, His death, His resurrection is the deposit of truth. That message that when believed, a sinner is saved from his sins but Paul says you stand in that message by it you're being saved I'll come to that you're not going to face judgment through it you're going to escape the wrath to come knowing the terror of God we persuade men we persuade them to believe the gospel through it you are turned and God turns his favor to you his smiling face his blessing he says i bless you and i'll keep you my face shines on you in this gospel there's no more enmity with god in this gospel through the gospel announcement of forgiveness your sins are pardoned they're cast as far as the east is from the west they were leaving it maybe not as blatant as the Galatians but pretty close I marvel he said to Galatia that you've turned so quickly from the gospel to another gospel which is not a gospel and you pause and you say what in the world happened I mean what in the world happened that Paul could lay this out like this well the church in Corinth had become completely confused over the resurrection. And you notice Paul gives that striking statement, unless you've believed all this in vain, I think he's really hurt at this point. I think he's really struggling. Is it even possible that you just believe this in vain? Paul is writing into the inspiration of the Spirit to bring them back to orthodoxy on the issue. This was no little matter. What Paul was doing was showing them that a crucial doctrine of the Christian faith had been compromised. And he's saying, with that, you lose the whole gospel. And Paul labors there for years. Paul would visit this church more than a few times. And what had apparently happened was some group, some people, some idea had seeped in to undermine all the work. And I can't imagine the discouragement of this. They were saying, and this is what we know what it was, They were saying that death, and it comes to the issue of death, which ties to this morning too. Death is a kind of expelling of the body, since it doesn't hold the same value as the soul. So what they believed was, you shed your body like a snake, and the soul is what really matters, as Socrates and all of them were teaching in Greek thought at the time, that death is a release from the body. The soul is entirely fastened and welded to the body as in a prison. And Plato said death is the separation of the soul from the body. We get liberation of the soul at death to depart into eternity in its own abode. The body, in Greek thought, was thought to be a prison where everything bad happened. Bad habits, bad behaviors, bad sins. And we need to get rid of that body to be really set free. So the Corinthians believed that they would just be kind of assumed right up on in heaven. They would just be transported right on up there and float around in some kind of eternal spiritual existence without a body. So what was lost? Well, it's not hard to figure out. If the body is some kind of prison house of bad things, who would want it back in a resurrection? And if that's the problem, then why would we want to say that Jesus has a resurrected body? Why would we want to tell everyone that he has a body? Body's bad. Paul is so emphatic here, which is kind of shocking to us, I think. If you deny that, you've dumped the Christian faith, you've denied the gospel. This is chapter 15. And the little phrase I can't get over is, unless you believe this all in vain, You need to cling to this. You need to hold on to this. To which I say tonight, do you see our battle as a church right here? It may not be over the issue of the resurrection. Do you know that we have all that we can do just to hold on to what we've been past? We don't think like that. That's not how we think about the church today. We're constantly thinking about how to bring impact to people's lives, how we can do something really powerful in people's lives, how we can take them to the next level in people's lives, how we can really stir up and make them spiritual, how we can give them a life-changing experience. We're all about that. We're all working on that. We're all thinking about that. We're all worried about that. Do you know when I come into the New Testament and I read the pastoral epistles, do you know what the apostle is telling Timothy over and over and over? You just hold on to what you have real tight. Think of it. But as for you, Timothy, continue in what you've learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it. It's passed to you from previous generations. And how from childhood, you have been acquainted with the sacred scriptures. Remember your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice? Which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Did you hear what he just said? you've known this you just got to hold on to it it's been passed to you and the greatest temptation is to dump it and you don't even realize how subtle that temptation is you don't even realize that you've done it and i've done it i have seen more movements and shifts in my short life in the christian church than i ever care to see my greatest grief is that I see so much little joy over the truly animating power that keeps a church. The Gospel. Our general attitude to it is almost universally, I know it. I've heard it. Jesus died for me. So what? And I stand back and I think, could you ever imagine saying that to Paul? Could you ever imagine saying, You know, I know Jesus died for me, so what now, Paul? This is what animates and drives the church. Our Christian living, everything we are, everything we do, is derived from the exceeding greatness of power that comes from the One who's resurrected from the dead. And I can say that when the animating power of a church is not the Gospel, well, I don't care what they look like. I don't care how they present themselves in being alive and having every kind of ministry under the sun. They're dead. It's a dead church with dead people. Paul's saying it's the Gospel that completes the story. That's what I love about this. In Corinth, they were denying the resurrection. They were losing what the Gospel accomplished for them. And the gospel, Paul says, is the answer to the problem of sin and death. And so, Paul begins to define this gospel. And I want to make sure we see there that he says something in verse 2. By which you are being saved. He didn't say by which you're saved past tense, which that's certainly true, but he's saying it's the gospel that holds you the whole way through your lives. Salvation's a big project. And it includes justification and sanctification. It's this gospel by which you're being saved all the way to the end. Now, if you look here, as we continue to go on, they were losing it and they were departing from it and their attitude showed it. And so what does He say in verse 3? I've got to go back to first importance with you. Isn't that something? Here's first importance. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. It came to me too. It was handed to me. The baton was handed to me. I'm delivering to you of first importance. What is it? He defines the Gospel. Here's the Gospel. That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, in accordance with the Scriptures. That He was buried. That He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. Well, that sounds kind of familiar. Doesn't it? Yeah. Sounds real familiar. It's an early form of what we call the Apostles' Creed. We get together and we confess, according to the Scriptures, that Jesus Christ had to die. Why? Because we're a mess. We're great sinners. We confess that God sent His Son to do that because our sins were so great that He died to pay for them and forgive us. And then that He was buried. It really did prove that He died. You confess that. He was buried. And then we say that on the third day He rose from the dead. And we say the Apostles' Creed and I think people think you guys are just doing some old traditional thing. Yep, we are. It's a good tradition. Paul said it was passed to him. Paul passed it to the church. Isn't it glorious that this has been passed to you now for 2,000 years? Kind of a sad thing when we stand back and mumble through it and act like we're just being legalistic saying this. Lo and behold, Corinth stopped saying it. Corinth stopped saying it. Corinth lost the knowledge of the creed. The fundamental article, the resurrection as B.B. Warfield called it, the cardinal doctrine of our system, or as Machen said, the weapon that the disciples of Jesus used to conquer the world was the message he's risen. Corinth had stopped confessing it and the fundamental article, the cardinal doctrine of our system was being lost. Unreal. Paul says, you're losing everything. You know, we read this and we feel a little bit disconnected from this tonight, don't we? You ever thought about why we feel disconnected from this? Because doctrine doesn't matter much to the church today. At least with Corinth, They knew, they understood, there was doctrine. What concerns me today is that people don't even have enough knowledge of the gospel to deny it. It's a similar time to Hosea. My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge, Hosea 6. Because you've rejected knowledge, I will reject you from being priests for me. Because you've forgotten the law of God, I will forget your children. Pause and think for a minute. Is it any wonder that loads of young people are walking away from the church? It's not a reform problem. We created Children's Church, and we had many in that generation when I was a kid who never sat in big people's church. And then they had the youth group, and they could essentially on Sundays bypass ever coming into here. And we sent them out. And soon the adults dropped the evening service. Well, there went the Apostles' Creed, by the way. It was still a universal practice to have an evening service. And so then the creed was gone and any kind of baton passing seemed to be thrown out because it was all called as strict and legalistic. Most have no connection with doctrine today because of it. As families don't sit together now, they aren't taught to sit together. Now it's become commonplace just to come to church and listen to the pastor's short stories and there's no gospel. It's all assumed. Oh, we get the gospel. We get the gospel. We get it. Thus, when Easter comes, messages aren't on the resurrection. There's no real power in that message. It's on your own personal transformation in your life, right? As Kim Riddlebarger says. Paul is saying the gospel is an objective set of facts historically. They're historical events. It's an historical event. And when we say we believe in true faith, in the resurrection, what we're saying is we are assenting to and we're agreeing with something that was passed to us that happened in a certain place at a certain time. And the reason this mattered to the apostles, the reason they cared about this so much is because Christianity is a creedal faith. What do I mean by that? What you believe matters. The gospel's not ultimately my personal transformation that results from the gospel, but the gospel's that 2,000 years ago on Golgotha, the Son of God, came. And He was crucified there. And he actually paid for our sins there. And he went into a burial chamber. And that stone burst out and he was out in the third day. And that's the basis. That's the groundwork. That's the work which we believe by which we stand and are saved. Almost universally today, you ask somebody to give their testimony. It's not much about Jesus. I remember hearing a radio program years ago where they would have callers call in and the host had testimony time and so they would have testimony time and everyone would talk about all the things that happened in their life and how everything was so life-changing and so powerful. And he said, you know what? I want everyone now, I have a new rule when you call in for your testimonies. You can give your testimony but you can never mention yourself. No one called. you know what he was after somebody to talk about 80 30 in the month of nisan at about the sixth hour of the day when jesus said it's finished and then he rose again somebody to talk about that that's faith paul stops right here and he says the third day he rose again he wanted them to think about what they were losing if there's no resurrection you're still in your sins you don't believe that you are a people to be pitied verse 12 now if christ is preaching he's been raised from the dead how does some of you say there's no resurrection from the dead that's a serious issue he is bleeding with concern this is so crucial to the christian faith he says if he's not risen verse 17 your faith is futile verse 18 we're all men the most pitiable of all human beings we are the most ridiculous group ever to exist on the face of the earth because we have now believed something that has no bearing on anything. Resurrection. Think about the Heidelberg. How does the resurrection of the body comfort you? Not only my soul will be taken immediately after this life to Christ its head, but even my flesh, my body, raised by the power of Christ, will be reunited with my soul. Think of how important this is in light of boils. Be reunited with my soul and my body will be made like Christ's glorious body. I don't know when I'm going to die. I don't know when you're going to die. You don't know when you're going to die, but Christ's resurrection declares to you that death doesn't have the last say. Your body will be brand new. You see why what you believe matters and clinging to it? when we're not growing in our understanding of these things it's wonder we would say let's go on to something else tragedy paul says listen cephas saw him then the 12 saw him 500 brethren at once saw him verse eight and then last of all he was seen by me says paul one born out of due time i'm the last apostle the last one ever to come on the scene born out of due time what change my life, Paul says, was the resurrection. I was on the road to Damascus. It was the resurrected body of Christ. I saw Him. And that was the definitive moment for me. I was a rebel. I was the least. I persecuted the church. But God gave me grace. And Paul views the resurrection as the source of his power what does he call them to i'm going to close here in a minute for some reason they had a low estimation of paul paul feels the need to give some credentials here but his credentials are not what you'd expect he says by the grace of god i am what i am you guys i know you don't think i'm much i know you don't respect my apostleship i know you don't respect me as an apostle. I know I was a mess. I agree with you. But you know what? The message I preach is the message all the apostles preach. With the word that is the real punch to this, whether it was I or they, here it is. So we preach and this is a dig. So you believed it. I'm not saying salvation could be lost. He says you accepted this. What in the world would cause you to turn from it? There are no excuses to dump the gospel. You have no eval excuses to say, Paul says, not even my former life is for you to use and give you an out for accepting the message that I'm preaching to you. The graveyards tell you tonight. They tell us all of the brevity of life. The resurrection tells you of the brevity of death. The resurrection turns death back and it makes your victory complete. That's what we celebrate. I've read this before and this is what I'm closing with. My mentor years ago, John Rainbow, I've used this one other time but it's so helpful in this context. I want to read it again as we start this great chapter. My mentor years ago, John Rainbow, who died of brain cancer, his wife came up to me and said he preached a lot on election in the course of his life. But at the end of the life, what dominated his preaching was the resurrection. Especially as he had cancer. And I want to close with this tonight. When I learned that I had cancer, it meant that what I needed is the resurrection of the body. I knew this already. But now I knew it immediately, sharply, brilliantly, and gloriously. The world that God created is ours to possess and to enjoy. Right now it's blighted by our sin, but 2 Peter promises that it will be cleansed and made new. We keep it, not the godless. We get to enjoy it, not the godless. They get the lake of fire and outer darkness. We get the world, the creation, the beauty, the light, the resurrection bodies. So I want the world, the physical world. That's mine in Christ. I want the new heavens and the new earth. I want the resurrection body as a part of its glory. I don't want just a soul or even a soul floating in a heavenly cloud. I want my body back. And I want the earth back. I want the spiritual and physical presence of Jesus Christ forever and ever. I want to be with Him. I want to see Him with my risen eyes. I want to hear His voice with my glorified ears. I want Him physically and spiritually and emotionally. I want to encounter Him body and soul in the new creation. I want to touch Him in the body. I want a direct encounter body, soul, spirit, emotions with the risen Christ. I want the wicked gone forever. I want my sin gone forever. I want pain and weariness gone forever. Right now, since cancer, the overwhelming reality is weariness. But I want power, explosive, unending power of body and soul and emotion. I want to never be tired again. The body aches and hurts and all around is sickness and pain and weakness and longing for life. But the hope of being absent from the body and present with the Lord, listen to this, it's not the hope. We don't get that. Let me say that again. The hope of being absent from the body and present with the Lord is not the hope. The hope is the sound of the trumpet. The hope is the resurrection and victory. The hope is the possession of the world. The hope is to not be left behind. The godless will be left behind. The hope is to win, to conquer. The hope is the resurrection of the body. Christ's body. And mine. And all who belong to Christ by faith and predestination. I want my body. I want the world. I want the new heavens and the new earth. I have that. It was the last thing he wrote before he died. tragic thing that the apostle was dealing with the church, denying the resurrection of the dead. Value what's been delivered to you, boys and girls, young people. Value what's been handed to you from your grandparents and your parents. Enjoy what is yours. You ever thought about that? Enjoy what is yours. Live in the hope of what is secured for you because it's the gospel in which we all stand. Let's pray to the Lord. Gracious Heavenly Father, thank You for making us and enabling us to stand by Your Gospel. We have no other hope without it. And tonight it grieves us to think that there could be people gathering in churches where this is not even valued, not even preached, not even handed down to the next generation as they watch their children bolt from the church and wonder why. Raise back up and build strong your church around the world that would value what they confess and what they believe. Let us hold it with real meaning. Let us hold it believing these things unless we received and believed it all in vain, which I would never want to think could happen. And so give us, Lord, trusting, resting faith in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And may this be the animating power that happens from the pulpit in the hearts and lives of the people as they believe it in the Escondido URC. I mean, people know what they have and what's held out for them and just hold tight to it. Believing in Your promises and being sure that You are able to keep us and to present us before the throne faultless, being able to stand. In Jesus' name, who is where all our confidence lies, we pray, amen.