Well, good morning. It's good to see everyone today
give you a second to find your seat.
We are in First Corinthians 15 today, so if you have your
Bible, please open the First Corinthians chapter 15.
It's good to be with you this morning worshipping together and
glad you're here. We are nearing the end of Paul's
letter to the Corinthians, so at least this first letter that
we've looked at. So just kind of as a brief
recap, in chapters 12 through 14, Paul has carefully addressed
the gifts of the Spirit, and he's also addressed how worship
in the church must be orderly and edifying.
So that's been the last few weeks together we've spent in
First Corinthians 12 through 14. Now in chapter 15, Paul turns
his attention to a doctrine that undergirds everything else in
the Christian life and it undergirds everything else in
hope, and that is the doctrine of the resurrection.
So we're going to look at in chapter 15, the doctrine of the
resurrection. But before he deals with the
confusion that the Corinthians are facing, remember the the
Corinthians are a confused people, right?
There are people who are, some of them, they would be newly
saved, some of them saved out of Pagan, previously Pagan
religions. And so the some of the same
practices have worked their way into the church.
They're not good at addressing sin.
They're not good at following their leaders in the right way.
They're holding some leaders in higher regard than others.
They're holding some gifts in higher regard than others.
They got the Lord's Table mixed up, seeing it more as as a party
and an opportunity for the flesh than for a spiritual meal.
And so there's a lot of disarray within the Corinthian church.
And so another one of those issues that they're facing is
this doctrine of the resurrection.
Now, before he deals with the confusion about the resurrection
of the dead, he reminds the Corinthians of the gospel
itself. This is a very, it's really an
important passage for us to examine today so that we can
even understand, begin to even try to understand the
resurrection. So where Paul begins is where we
must begin. It's, it's what we have to
understand this gospel message, because the gospel is the ground
of salvation, right? The gospel is the ground of
salvation. It's where salvation is founded.
It's in the Gospel message, The it's also the ground of the
unchanging message of the apostles.
No matter which apostle you pick up, right, no matter which book,
which letter they have written, you will find the same message,
Christ and him crucified, and then it's application to the
church in that time. It's also the gospel is the
ground of salvation, the unchanging message of the
apostles, and it's the only hope of eternal life.
The gospel brings us the only hope of eternal life.
And so with that in mind, let's read First Corinthians 15 one
through 11. If you would, would you please
stand and honor the reading of God's Word verse one?
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 preach to you, unless you
believed in vain, For I have delivered to you as of first
importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the Scriptures. That He was buried, and He was
raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
And then He appeared to Cephas into the 12.
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 1 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
believed. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and God, we thank
you for the opportunity we have to hear.
It's proclaimed this morning. Father, I pray that you would
just use me as a servant of Your word, a mouthpiece of Your
spirit today to speak to the hearts and minds of your people.
Father, may we love your words. May we be a people who are
undergirded by it, who are convicted by it, who are
convicted of its truth, and who order our lives in an obedient
way because of what we see in your Word.
But Father, these gospel truths that will proclaim this morning
are essential to our salvation. They're essential to the message
that we preach from this point forward.
And so, Father, we ask that you would help us to understand it
in the right ways. Protect us, Lord, from false
gospels. Protect us, Lord, from a false
understanding in which we would try to add to what your word
says or take away from what your word says because it's difficult
to understand or it's difficult to fathom or maybe just
difficult to follow. But Lord, help us to be faithful
to your word and all that we do. It's in Christ name, I pray,
Amen. I failed you a moment ago.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, You may be
seated. So think about having a
conversation with a friend about the gospel.
Or maybe you're talking to a group of people about the gospel
and you've taken time to explain who God is.
He's holy and right and just. He's the creator of all things
that he issued a command, a man. Man rebelled against the
command. And so men fell into an eternal
state of sin. And then God provides his own
Son as a substitutionary atonement for the sin of man
that they might be reconciled to him.
And so now there's a response on man's side.
Are we going to believe the word of God?
Are we going to continue to believe ourselves?
So say you've explained those things to a group of people and
someone raises their hand and you call on them, yes, what is
your question? And they say, why should I or
why should we believe the Christian Gospel instead of any
of the other religions or philosophies in the world?
What would your response be? Your response should be
something along these lines because only one message in
history, only one message across all time, declares that the Son
of God died for our sins, that he was buried, and that he rose
again on the third day, witnessed by hundreds, and still
offers salvation today. All other gospels will leave you
empty. And this one alone saves, right?
This one alone saves. That's exactly what Paul is
doing here in First Corinthians 15.
That's what he's teaching to the Church of Corinth.
He says if you get the gospel wrong, or essentially he's
saying if you get the gospel wrong, then you'd lose
everything. You lose everything.
You can't depend on A resurrection is where he's going
to go. You can't understand the
resurrection. But so many other things that
he's addressed already, as I've tried to show as we walk through
the book, fall apart without the central truth of the gospel
message. So we've titled the series Grace
and the Christian Life. But if you get the gospel right,
if you understand it, you believe it, you get it right,
then you gain eternity. You haven't lost anything.
You've gained everything that's worth gaining.
As John Stott once wrote, he said at the heart of the gospel
is the cross. The essence of sin is man
substituting himself for God, meaning trying to have the place
of God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting
himself for man. Amen.
Charles Spurgeon declared this. He says Christ.
If Christ is not risen, then all our preaching is a lie and your
faith is a delusion. Strong words, right?
But it's true. If Christ is not risen, if we
don't have the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then all that we
preach, all that we believe is a lie and we are disillusioned as
the world would have us think we are.
So is it real? Is it true?
Well, yes, the Gospel is not one religious idea among many.
Again, this is kind of how the world treats Christianity.
It's one religious idea. At least they try to.
But then there's a lot more persecution of Christians going
on than persecution of any other religions.
All of the religions are tolerated, and Christianity is
constantly persecuted, right? Why?
Because it grates against humanity.
It grates against the rebellious heart of man.
So Christianity is not one religious idea among many.
It's the one true message of salvation as we carry the gospel
into the world. For taking notes, you can write
down this point. The unchanging gospel of
Christ's death and resurrection is our foundation and the
message we must hold fast and proclaim.
I'll give you a second, as I know I've been terribly wordy.
Again here. The unchanging gospel of
Christ's death and resurrection is our foundation and the
message we must hold fast and proclaim as we walk through the
text. We'll see it in this way.
You can continue writing that down.
I'm just going to reveal what kind of where we're headed, .1
we'll see the gospel received and held fast, .2 we'll see the
gospel delivered and grounded in Scripture, and .3 we'll see the
gospel verified to or by witnesses, and then .4 we'll see
the gospel transforms by grace. All right, so again, the main
point, the unchanging gospel of Christ's death and resurrection
is our foundation and the message we must hold fast and
proclaim. Point #1 the gospel received and
held fast. Verses one through 2.
The gospel received and held fast.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I
preached to you, which you received, in which you stand,
and by which you are being saved.
If you hold fast to the Word, I preach to you, unless you
believed in vain. So Paul begins the chapter not
by introducing something new, right?
Doesn't run straight to the problem of the resurrection.
It doesn't run straight to the issue that they have within the
Church of Corinth of the resurrection.
No, he wants to remind them of something that he's already told
them, something they've already believed, right?
It's not something new. He's reminding the Corinthians
of what they already know. I would remind you, brothers, of
the gospel I preach to you, which you received, in which you
standing by which you are being saved.
If you hold fast to the word, I preach to you, unless you
believed in vain. Now that verb remind.
Most of us know what this verb means, but it implies calling to
mind something foundational that must not be forgotten.
I'm reminding you of something that's so essential to your
salvation that you cannot forget it.
You must remember this before we get into this conversation of
the resurrection. The gospel is not merely the
starting line of Christianity. It's the path we walk and it's
the hope we die in. And it's not not just the
starting point. It's not, it's not just the
early things you learn maybe as a child or as a new believer.
No, it's, it's the path you walk in and it's the hope you die in
believing wholeheartedly the gospel.
You can notice the progression in Paul's verbs here after
remind, he mentions received, I remind you, brothers of the
gospel I preach to you, which you received, right?
This points to the historical moment of conversion, right?
They heard the gospel. They believed the gospel, they
took hold of it by faith. And salvation begins when a
Sinner receives Christ as their Lord and Savior according to
John 112, And then he gets the next verb we see in which you
stand, right? Well, this speaks of the
believer's present position, right?
You stand within the gospel. You first received it, you
believed it, now you stand in it, right?
The gospel isn't just what saved you, brother and sister, it's
what sustains you. It's what keeps you.
Romans 52 says through him we also, we have also obtained
access by faith into this grace in which we stand, right, in
which we stand the third verb we see by which you are being
saved. So salvation has a past,
present, and future dimension. When we think of salvation, we
need to think not only about a moment of conversion, right?
Which often we do because we'll say things like, when were you
saved, right? And so we kind of limit
salvation to this one momentary moment, right?
This one fleeting moment or this one quick moment in someone's
life where they came to believe. But salvation has past, present,
future, dimension, dimensions. This is what Paul is explaining.
We have been saved from the penalty of sin, meaning you have
been regenerated. You have been justified, right?
You've been saved from the penalty of sin.
You've been justified freely by the grace of God, and you are
being saved from the power of sin, which is your
sanctification, all right? The power of sin no longer has
dominion over you. Rather, you can now, today, take
dominion in Christ by the Spirit over your sin.
You don't have to do whatever your filthy flesh longs to do.
You don't have to follow all the desires of your heart.
You can say no to those things in the Spirit of God and walk
according to the Spirit of God. You're unsure of that.
Look at Romans 6-7 and eight very, very closely.
All right, great passages there on the idea of sanctification
and it goes on and we will be saved, right?
Being saved. If you hold fast, we will be
saved. Now this is will be saved from
the presence of sin, right? When you're glorified with
Christ in heaven, it says that you were brought to a place, a
new heaven, a new earth, where there is no more sin.
You're saved from the very presence of sin in your own
life, the presence of sin in the world around you.
You're brought into glorification with Christ where
all things are perfect and all things are redeemed, all things
are being made new, so the presence of sin is gone.
You've been glorified. So the gospel encompasses all of
that. That's the work of the gospel in
your life, Justification, sanctification, glorification.
Then Paul adds this vital condition here, right?
It's one of those things that you might read over quickly as
you're just trying to read through the text and by which
you are being saved and listen to the condition.
If you hold fast to the Word, I preach to you, unless you
believed in vain. Now that's one of those passes
that you ought to read with a lot of sobriety.
It ought to bring you to humility as you read that all
right. If you hold fast to the Word I
preach to you, that ought to cause a lot of questions.
I mean, alarm bells ought to go off in our mind of wait a
minute, am I holding fast to the message of the gospel?
Do I believe it with all my heart and with all my mind, with
all my strength, with all my soul?
Do I trust what God has revealed?
Does it order my life? Does it give me direction, right
purpose? Do I notice the fruit of the
Spirit at work in me right? Am I holding fast to the word
that has been preached? Or am I like one of the ones
that he warns about here? Unless you believed in vain.
I want you to understand, Paul's not suggesting that salvation
can be lost. He's not suggesting that it can
be lost. He's exposing the difference
between superficial and saving faith.
There is in a sense that there are people who superficially
believe in God, right? We'll get into some of those
examples here in a moment. But there are others whom God
has truly saved. And true believers, we know that
they're true believers because they persevere to the end,
right? True believers persevere because
the gospel truly possesses them. They are to hold fast to it.
But the reason they hold fast is because they are possessed by
the gospel. Faith that fizzles is never
genuine. Faith that fizzles is never
genuine. Listen to 1st John 219.
The apostle John here is writing and he's encouraging this group
of Christians who have had people that have left their
ranks and gone on to proclaim things that go against the
crucified and resurrected Christ.
And this is what he says of them.
He said they went out from us, but they were not of us.
So stark reality in the church is that people can appear like
they are with you, that they are of you, that they're of the same
material meaning, spiritually reborn for a season.
But then a time will come, whether it's a trial or
tribulation, whether it's a hard truth, whether it's a desire to
continue to seek their own way where that faith will be choked
out, so to speak, that superficial faith.
And you'll see who they truly are.
They went out from us, but they were not of us.
For if they had been of us, John writes, they would have
continued with us. And he's so sure of this, right?
He's so sure of the perseverance of the Saints that he says if
they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
Not if they had been of us, they might have continued with us.
Let me say, if they've been of us, they would have continued
with us. But they went out that it might
become plain that they all are not of us, right, that they all
are not of us. The 1689 London Baptist
Confession of Faith in chapter 17 on the perseverance of the
Saints affirms this beautifully. He says sorry the the confession
here says those whom God has accepted in the beloved, in
Christ. Effectually called and
sanctified by His Spirit can neither totally nor finally fall
away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere
therein to the end and be eternally saved.
Amen. What a great comfort, all right,
what a great comfort. Perseverance is not the ground
of salvation. Perseverance is the evidence of
salvation. It's what proves it's what
proves that faith is genuine. What we want to understand,
brothers and sisters, is this, that the same grace that saves A
Sinner sustains a St. That's the same grace, same
grace that saves A Sinner sustains a St.
I mentioned that we would get into some cross references and
supporting texts, so here's a here's a few.
In Matthew 1320 through 23 we have the parable of the soils
and Christ is telling the story of the varying soils.
And the point that he makes is only the seed that falls in the
good soil. Only the seed that falls in the
good soil bears lasting fruits. What he reveals also there is
that there is a temporary enthusiasm that is not saving
faith. There's a temporary appearance
like those who are saved, but then the cares of the world, the
trials of the world, will choke out those things and it'll be
seen that they're not genuine. All right, so that's Matthew 13.
Colossians 123 says this. If indeed this is Paul writing,
if indeed you continue in the faith stable and steadfast, not
shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, alright,
Sounds very similar to the encouragement we have in First
Corinthians 15 this morning, right?
If you indeed continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not
shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, Hebrews
314 For we have come to share in Christ.
If indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, all
right, we have come to share in Christ.
If we indeed hold our confidence, our original
confidence firm to the end, what's he saying?
We have come to share in Christ? If we indeed hold these truths
of the gospel firm to the end, persevere.
John 831 through 32. Jesus says, if you abide in my
word, you are truly my disciples.
Now how do we know a true disciple from a false disciple?
They're going to abide in the Word of God.
That's not to say there's not moments of sinfulness, right?
There's not moments of rebellion.
There's not moments where or even just the ignorance, right?
Those sins that are unbeknownst to a person, right?
Christ is saying, though, if you abide in my word, you were truly
my disciples, you will know the truth, and the truth will set
you free. So each of these passages
reinforces the continuing, that continuing in the gospel doesn't
earn salvation, rather it proves salvation.
That's the point we're trying to make.
It doesn't earn it, it proves it.
Now, another thing that we see in this verse is what
theologians call the doctrine of perseverance.
And that's what I'm laying out here, is this doctrine of
perseverance, but it's rooted in a deeper truth.
It's, it's rooted in the preservation of God.
It's not the perseverance of Saints in the sense that we're
able to somehow become really strong, pull ourselves up by our
bootstraps, become mighty and sanctified men and women of God,
all in our own efforts. No, you, you persevere because
God preserves you. You persevere because God holds
you in his grip. All right, you, you persevere
because God has restrained the effects of sin on you and he's
applied the blood of Christ to you.
And so he carries you through sanctification.
He carries you into glorification, right?
We hold fast to the gospel because God holds fast to us.
You might say, and you say, well, where is this doctrine of
perseverance? Look no further than John
chapter 10 verses 28 through 29 or our Lord Jesus Christ says I
give them eternal life and they will never perish.
I give them eternal life and they will never perish, and no
one will snatch them out of my hand.
My brothers and sisters of the Almighty Lord, the King of
kings, the Lord of Lords, if he is saying I give them eternal
life, they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of
my hand. Can you trust what he says?
Of course you can. My Father who has given them to
me is greater than all. Christ continues, and no one is
able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.
So Christ is saying, look, you're held in the hand of my
Father, and you're held in my own hand.
I've given you eternal life. You will never perish.
Philippians 16. Paul writes there, we've seen
this in our Sunday night sermon series we've been doing and I'm
sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it
to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Paul with Apostolic authority speaks here and says I am sure
of this Philippians, that the work that Jesus Christ, the work
that God has done in you, in Jesus Christ, he is faithful to
bring it to completion on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What's he, what's he promising that that justification and that
process of sanctification that they're in now is going to one
day lead to their glorification. I didn't put it in my notes.
Flip over to Romans 8. Look at verse 28.
This will be lengthy, but it's worth your time, OK.
And we know that for those who sorry, we know that for those
who love God, all things work together for gut, for good, for
those who are called according to His purpose.
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed
to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the first
born among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He
also called. And those whom He called He also
justified. And those whom He justified, He
also glorified all. Again.
What then should we say to these things?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all,
how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?
Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?
Now understand that God's elect stand under the blood of Christ.
They're only the elect of God because they have the blood of
Christ provided for them by the Father.
So charge cannot be brought against them.
Romans 81 confirms this right. There is therefore now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
That was just several verses earlier.
So here he is saying, who shall bring any charge against God's
elect? It is God who justifies.
I'm just going to bring a charge against God.
Why would you justify that unruly man or woman?
And God says it's because of my gracious election.
All right, And what does man say to that?
That's not fair. Well, that's grace.
All right, I'm going to explain to you how God is able to do
this later in the sermon. Who shall bring any charge
against God's elect? It's God who justifies, who is
to condemn Christ. Jesus is the one who died more
than that, who was raised, who was at the right hand of God,
who indeed is interceding for us.
Well, the sisters, you have a great high priest in heaven who
intercedes for you, sympathizes with you, and every weakness was
tested and tried as you are, yet without sin.
And he stands before the Father, interceding for you, able to
save Hebrews 725 able to save to the uttermost all those who draw
near to the Father through him, right, who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress.
Think about the seeds and the sower.
These are the things that cause them to fall away.
The the false converts show tribulation or distress or
persecution or famine or nakedness, or danger or sword,
as it is written for your sake. We are being killed all the day
long. We are regarded as sheep to be
slaughtered. No, and all these things we are
more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
For I'm sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be
able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Praise God, He says a lot more
things about that. But then he gets to the
stocksology. Oh, the depth in Romans 11330,
the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
How insearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable
His ways? For who has known the mind of
the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given a
gift to him that he might be repaid?
For from him and through him and to Him are all things.
To him be the glory forever. Amen.
So I want you to know, salvation
in the Scriptures, the New Testament does not deal with
salvation as some fragile partnership between man's will
and God's grace, right? It's a sovereign work of mercy
that produces endurance. Right?
To stand in the gospel means to rest daily in the finished work
of Jesus Christ and whom crucified He's on the cross, Tay
Tay Lestar. It is finished.
What's finished? The story of redemption.
The plan of redemption planned from the beginning of time,
right before the foundation of the earth, Christ is crying out,
is there as he holds the weight of all our sin on himself, and
he's bearing the wrath of God for you.
And he says it is finished. It's not a fragile partnership
between your will, your ability to keep the commandments, or
your ability to do what God says and God's grace.
It's not a fragile partnership. God's grace empowers you.
It's a sovereign mercy. It's a work of sovereign mercy
that produces this sort of endurance and to stand.
And it means that you rest in his finished work rather than
your own efforts. That's why Paul says hold fast
unless you hold fast. It means clean to it with a
living faith, not not to an idea, not merely to a message,
but to a person. Jesus Christ, the Lord of Lords,
hold fast to him. Imagine a man who's crossing a
frozen lake. I don't know anybody would do
this, but this is the the illustration, right?
If he trusts the ice only halfway as he's walking across,
he's never going to make it right.
His his safety doesn't depend on the strength of his faith, but
on the strength of the ice beneath him.
Likewise, our security is not in the strength of our grip on
Christ, but in the strength of Christ's grip on us.
So maybe you're complacent in here today.
Maybe you have a complacent faith, a complacent belief.
It would be wrong for you to presume.
I'm encouraging you not to presume upon a momentary
profession of faith and baptism. Genuine faith endures, and part
of that endurance is growth. Genuine faith is a growing
faith. It's not because you're strong,
but because Christ holds you, and by his Spirit he's making
all things new in you. Maybe you're a weary believer.
You're tired, you're worn outs, trials, suffering, pain,
heartache, tragedy. When doubts arise about God.
When doubts arise about God or about his work, remember,
brother or sister, that you stand in the grace of God,
right? You were being saved not by your
ability to perform well, but by the power of God in you.
The same power of God, same Holy Spirit that raised Christ from
the dead, Ephesians, one tells us, resides in you.
You received it when you, when you received the message of the
gospel, you were born again and that power resides in you.
Another application for us as a church, right?
Just as we think about who we are and what we do and our
purpose for doing everything right.
We never, ever, ever, ever times a lot.
We never, ever move beyond the gospel.
It's not the AB CS of the Christian life.
It's the A-Z of the Christian life.
It encompasses everything. Everything we are and everything
that we do must flow from the gospel that we've received and
in that which we stand. I've heard a lot of the word
gospel. Paul explains it in the next
verses. The gospel delivered and
grounded in scripture #2 the gospel delivered and grounded in
Scripture. Look at verses 3 through 4
again. For I delivered to you as of
first importance what I also receive, that Christ died from
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. So the the Scriptures reveal,
I've tried to lay this out loosely, right?
But in the rebellion of man in the garden, Genesis chapter 3,
there's a curse pronounced on man, There's a curse pronounced
on woman, there's a curse pronounced on the serpent in
that rebellion. What we see and in Genesis
chapter 5 actually confirms this for us when it talks about the
lineage of Adam and how they were born in the likeness of
Adam, meaning they're born with Adam's transgression.
They're born sinners. Romans 5 confirms this for us,
that by one man's sin all have sinned.
Romans 323 says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God. So by one man's sin, we all
became sinners, right? The scriptures revealed that.
The Scriptures also revealed that God hates sin and that God
hates the Sinner, right? Contrary to popular belief that
we must hate sin and love the Sinner, no, God hates the
Sinner. Yet what we know about God is
that God is loving, right? So think about what we've done
as humans. Think about the human race, what
mankind is. And much of this describes my
own heart. According to the Scriptures, we
have dismissed his authority, right?
We thought that God did not deserve to be an authoritative
position. We believe the lie of Satan in
the garden. No, if you eat of that fruit,
you'll be like God, and God's trying to keep you from that,
right? And so Eve takes the fruit, she
eats. She gives some to her husband,
who's standing there. So we've dismissed the authority
of God. We've also dishonored His
Holiness because we are utterly unholy.
All that we are of pre Christ, all that we are, are stained
sinners, righteousness as filthy rags as Isaiah describes.
We've also despised his righteousness.
We've disregarded his wrath. We thought that no, God is
loving. We don't care about the wrath of
God. We don't consider the wrath of
God as we pursue our sinfulness again in a sinful state apart
from Christ. And we've denied the love of
God. God has worked for God, so loved
the world that he gave his only Son.
Whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting
life. We've looked at the love of God
and we've said I don't need it, denied it.
So here lies the great question of redemption.
How can a just God save rebellious sinners who deserve
wrath? How can a just God save
rebellious sinners who deserve wrath?
Want you to consider and Dustin took us through this on
Wednesday as well. But so if you're in there, this
will sound familiar, but consider Proverbs 1715.
He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous
are both alike an abomination to the Lord.
He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous
are both alike an abomination to the Lord when it comes to the
character of God. According to Proverbs 1715,
God's forgiveness of our sin is a threat to His character.
Justifying the wicked, It's a threat to His character.
We cannot say that He's holy if He justifies sinners, all right.
We cannot say that He's righteous if he justifies
sinners. We certainly can't say that he's
just if he justifies sinners. So how can God express His
Holiness without consuming us in our sin?
Hebrew 6 reminds us that God's holiness is a consuming fire.
It burns up sinners. It's consuming fire.
Another question comes How can God express his love without
condoning us in our sin? All right.
He cannot hate sin and love the Sinner because he must be just.
It's not a just thing to hate sin and love the Sinner.
So then two really important questions come as a thought
process here. How can God judge sin and
justify sinners at the same time?
And then finally, one of the most important questions, how
can God satisfy himself and save us?
He has to satisfy His wrath and he also has to satisfy His
Holiness. He has to satisfy justice.
So if God in in essence, what we're saying is if God overlooks
sin, then he ceases to be just. He's not a just to God, right?
If he punishes every Sinner, then none are saved.
No, no one can be saved. So the cross becomes the answer,
the the cross the the message that Paul is teaching here I
delivered to you as of first importance.
This is the most important thing and I've delivered it to you
already as of first importance, what I also received, meaning
I've received this from the Lord.
He's going to explain that later that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried and then he
was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
So he's, he's describing the cross.
The cross is the answer to this dilemma.
At the cross, God demonstrates the nature and the character of
himself, and he satisfies himself at the cross.
Romans 324 through 26. After you read that all have
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Paul writes this. He resolves the tension.
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption
that is in Jesus Christ, whom God put forward.
So God put his own Son, the second member of the Trinity,
put him forward as a propitiation by his blood, as a
payment, as a satisfaction by his blood to be received by us,
by faith. And this was to show God's
righteousness, Paul writes. Because in his divine
forbearance he had passed over former sins.
So you think about Old Testament Israel, you think about all
their sins, you think about all the sacrifices, the blood
sacrifices that had to be offered.
You think about what it says, that even the priest who were
offering the sacrifices had to offer sacrifices for themselves.
There's this divine forbearance, for God takes all his wrath
against man's sin, and he stores it up, and he puts Christ
forward on the cross, and he lays every bit of it on him.
And Paul writes, he continues there in Romans 324.
It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He
might be just and the justifier of the One who has faith in
Jesus. We must understand that before
the cross even benefits us or is for our sake, so to speak, the
cross is for the sake of God. The cross is so that He can
remain perfect and holiness, perfect and it's justice, and
yet also perfect in mercy and in justifying sinners.
It's impossible without the cross.
Christ himself tells us that it was the glory of God that drove
him to the cross. John 12/27/28 Now is my soul
troubled? And what shall I say, Father,
save me from this hour. But for this purpose I have come
to this hour. Father, glorify your name, and
that a voice comes from heaven, that's the Father.
And he speaks. He says, I have glorified it and
I will glorify it again at the cross, being for the sake of God
primarily or firstly, God satisfied himself by sacrificing
his Son in the place of sinners. Second Corinthians 521, maybe
the greatest little summarizations of what we get in
the gospel, what we see at the cross.
Paul writes for our sake God made him Jesus to be sin, who
knew no sin, so that in him Jesus we might become the
righteousness of God. I'm not into adding things to
Scriptures, but when Paul says so that in him we might become,
he could have added so that in him we who knew no righteousness
might become the righteousness of God.
We knew no righteousness of our own.
And yet God satisfies himself at the cross and is able to cover
us with his own righteousness. The cross also shows us that sin
is infinitely offensive. I've said it before at Good
Friday services, probably multiple times because I don't
have a lot of new thoughts that on Good Friday God outed every
single one of us is not being good enough to save ourselves.
Every one of us were revealed to be sinners.
If one man, if one man, if one man could have satisfied the law
of God, lived in perfect obedience, then Christ would
have died in vain. But none could.
Paul's adamant about this as he quotes the Old Testament in
Romans 3. There is none righteous, no, not
one. Everyone seeks his own way,
turns his own direction, follows the desires of his own heart.
Jeremiah 79 The heart is deceitful and desperately
wicked. The heart is deceitful above all
else and desperately wicked. Who can know it are you.
You're more depraved than you think you are You.
You're as bad as the cross says you are.
Jesus died in the place of the disobedience.
He died in the place of the arrogant.
He died in the place of the rebellious.
He died in the place of the unrighteous, right?
Romans 58 But God shows his love for us, and that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us first.
Peter 2/24. He himself bore our sins in his
body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to
righteousness. By his wounds you have been
healed. That's a direct quote from
Isaiah 53, which says that He bore our transgressions, endured
our iniquities. By his stripes, by his wounds,
you have been healed. Healed from what?
The curse of sin and death, transformed freely by His grace,
given new life in Christ, reborn by the Spirit of God.
You see, Christ became the curse bearer.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.
The heart of the cross was the cup with which caught that
caused him to sweat great drops of blood.
And that cup right you, you remember Christ praying in the
garden. Father, if possible, take this
cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but
your will be done. I thought that cup that he holds
is it's a it's a cup full of the unleashed fury of Almighty God
against sin. All those things stored up,
poured into a cup and Christ now holds it in your place.
You see, God charged Jesus with our sin and He crucified Him for
it. Isaiah 53 again says it was the
will of the Lord to put him to death.
So this is how the divine dilemma is solved.
It's solved in the cross. All of God's characters
expressed at the cross. God expresses His judgment on
sin in the cross, and God enables merciful salvation for
sinners in the cross. Does God hates sinners?
Does His righteousness demand the destruction of sin?
Yes, yes it does. Look at the cross their Christ
for God's glory in their sorry, their God expresses His judgment
on sin by putting His own Son to death.
Does God love sinners that Does His mercy reach to the lowest
Sinner? Yes.
Look at the cross. Right there.
Christ, for God's glory, endured God's holy justice on sin.
There at the cross, God enabled salvation for sinners.
This is why salvation can only be achieved through God's Son
who was the Lamb of God. That takes away the sin of the
world, as John the Baptist exclaims.
But the essence of sin is this man substitutes himself for God.
That's what John Stott was revealing earlier.
The essence of sin is this man asserts himself against God and
puts himself where only God deserves to be.
And the essence of salvation is this God substitutes himself for
man. Our triune God puts his Son
forward. Our triune God, sorry, the
Father in our triune God the Father puts his Son forward as a
substitute for man. And so God is sacrificing
himself for man. He's putting himself where only
man deserves to be, so that he can put man where only God
deserves to be, which is covered by the righteousness of himself.
You see, the death of Jesus is the only means of justification
and reconciliation with God. It's the only way it can happen.
Our acceptance of Jesus's death appropriates to us the
righteousness of Christ and fits us in such a way that we are no
longer estranged from God, nor are we at enmity with him.
We don't hate God. We're brought into fellowship
with him now. And all of this clearly teaches
that man is the one who needs reconciliation, not God.
God doesn't need reconciling. Men become the objects of his
reconciliation. The only means of
reconciliation, which is the blood of Christ, requires that
men hear about that remedy. If we know that the only means
of reconciliation is the blood of Christ applied to them, then
that requires that other men hear about the remedy, right?
We must become carriers of the good news.
We must preach and teach and live the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We must literally make it our lives calling because God has.
This doesn't mean that all of you will become pastors, or all
of you will become teachers, or all of you will become
missionaries. That's not what that means, all
right. Those are special calls reserved
for special men and women. In the 2nd Corinthians 518
through 21, we're told that we have become new creations in
Christ Jesus. All things have passed away.
All things have become new. We've been reconciled to the
Father by Christ. And so we have received the
message of reconciliation, and we are now to be ambassadors of
the message, to carry the message.
What does an ambassador do? He carries the message of the
king. He carries the message of the
one who sent him. It's not his own message.
He teaches that which he's been sent to teach.
He tells of that which he's been sent to tell of.
This is what Paul is doing in these verses of first
importance. The gospel is the core truth on
which everything else rest. Christ died for our sins, Paul
says. This is the idea of penal
substitutionary atonement. Christ bore the penalty for our
sins in our place. He endured God's just wrath so
that we might receive mercy again.
Man is totally depraved in a sin, yet Christ bore the penalty
of sin in the place of man. Now man, through faith and
repentance, can accept Christ's substitution as payment for his
sins. Man could not suffer death for
himself, for he could not eternally take the penalty of
sin for himself. Paul says of that of first
importance. He was buried.
Paul confirms his death. He confirms a real final burial
of his body. It's not an illusion, It's not
something magicians worked up. It's not some scam.
It's not just a symbol of something.
No, Christ died for you. He was literally buried.
Of first importance, he was raised on the third day.
In accordance with the Scriptures, the resurrection
vindicates Christ's person and work.
The penalty has been paid. The debt has been canceled.
The justice of God has been satisfied in Jesus Christ.
For some clarity on this, the London Baptist Confession of
Faith chapter Section 8, chapter 5 or chapter 8 paragraph 5.
Technically the Lord Jesus by his perfect obedience and
sacrifice of Himself, has fully satisfied the justice of God.
He's procured reconciliation and purchased an everlasting
inheritance in the Kingdom of heaven for all those whom the
Father has given to him. Christ's death satisfied divine
justice. Christ's death reconciled
sinners to God. Christ's death secured eternal
life for His people. Amen.
The Scriptures bear witness to this elsewhere.
Isaiah 53536. The Lord has laid on him the
iniquity of us all. Psalm 1610.
You will not abandon my soul to shield, or let your holy one see
corruption. Hosea 6.
Two. After two days he will revive
us. On the third day He will raise
us up. Luke 2446.
Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the
third day rise from the dead. So imagine you're in a
courtroom, right? You've heard this illustration
probably 1000 times, but it lands.
It's good. Imagine you're in a courtroom.
The judge pronounces a guilty verdict on you.
You're sentenced to death. And right after he slams the
gavel down and pronounces the judgments, he steps down off his
podium. He removes his robe and he
stands in your place, taking his sentence of death on himself.
That's the gospel, brothers and sisters.
Justice upheld, mercy displayed. Then we must think of the
resurrection as God's stamped receipt.
It's proof that the payment was accepted.
God raises his son from the dead.
It's proof that the payment for sins has been accepted.
Jr. Packer said this.
He said God loved guilty sinners so much that he gave his son to
be their substitute in punishment.
So if you're guilty and self reliant, in other words, you're
an unbeliever. I want you to know this today,
that Christ bore your penalty. There's no no wrath left for
those who are in him. There is therefore no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Your works can't satisfy God's justice.
Only Christ's perfect obedience has Even the best things that
you do as an unbeliever have something in them that needs to
be pardoned, Dustin said this Wednesday.
I thought it was good. So cheer up.
You're a lot worse than you think you are, but in Jesus
you're far more loved than you could ever know.
So surely you can't see all of this.
You can't hear all of this and think that God's going to
somehow overlook your sin on Judgement Day.
Surely you can't think that God will be all right with your
rejection of His Son. Surely you can see that the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and in that you can recognize the
love and mercy that is offered to you.
His burial has proven His death and His resurrection proves your
life application to the Church. To those who believe, we must
guard the gospel. We must hold it near to our
hearts, proclaim it to ourselves, remember it daily.
I was asked just this week by a brother who's been visiting the
church. Why do you guys practice the
Lord's Supper weekly? And I told him in essence, so
that we can guard the gospel, we can remind ourselves of the
truth of God's grace and mercy for sinners.
Christ drink the wrath, the cup of wrath that was prepared for
us, and he offers us a cup of grace.
We must guard the gospel. If we abandoned the penal
substitutionary atonement, then we abandoned Christianity
itself. As you can tell, .2 was the most
important point of the sermon. Let's look at .3, the Gospel
verified by witnesses, verses 5 through 8.
Things will speed up from here. And then he appeared to Cephas,
who is Peter, then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than
500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive.
The some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James and to
all the apostles. Last of all, as to 1 untimely
born, he appeared also to me. Paul shifts from theology here
to testimony. Christianity is not built on
myth and Paul wants to remind them of this.
It's built on eyewitness evidence.
Peter in the 12 those first Apostolic witnesses, the 500,
many of whom were likely still alive when Paul wrote this.
He invites their verification. They saw him also.
James, once the skeptical half brother of Jesus, now a leader
of the Jerusalem church. Evidence of genuine
transformation. Paul the least deserving, he
says, yet personally confronted by the risen Christ as he's on
his way to persecute more Christians.
The resurrection appearances confirm the historical reality
of Christ's victory. They show that salvation is not
founded on private experience or some mystical reflection.
No, no, no, no. It's founded on verifiable
historical events. Our faith is anchored not on
ideas, brothers and sisters, though there are a lot of great
ideas in it. It's founded in a living Savior
who has conquered the grave. Acts 232.
This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses.
Acts 2626. This crucifixion, this work of
his death and resurrection, Luke writes there.
This has not been done in a corner.
It's not some obscure thing. It's not hidden away in the
corner of a house, tucked away for no one to say no.
It's been done right in front of the watching world.
Luke 1 Luke establishes why he's writing his gospel.
He writes his gospel based on eyewitness accounts that you may
have certainty. She may know for certain that
Jesus is the Christ, He's the Messiah.
So what can we take from eyewitness evidence?
For one, we can have confidence. Brothers and sisters, the
resurrection is not wishful thinking.
It's not the workings of a madman.
It's historical reality. You can take boldness from this
as well. When you share the gospel,
you're not offering up speculation, but you're offering
up truth that's BeenVerified by history.
And you can be encouraged, Brother and sister, Christ
appeared to the undeserving. Paul saves him out of his sins,
gives him a new purpose, and you can know that grace still
reaches sinners today, still reaches them today.
Point #4 the gospel transforms by grace.
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
believed. This is a bit of a harkening
back to earlier in First Corinthians chapter 1 where
there's this argument going on. Some follow Peter or Cephas,
some follow Paul, some follow Jesus or some follow Apollo.
Some follow Jesus, right? He's saying, look, whether it
was I or they, so we preach this gospel that you've received, and
so you have believed, right? One of us plants, one of us
waters, but God gives the increase.
Paul's testimony here is the gospel in miniature.
It's a rebel that's been transformed by grace.
By the grace of God, I am what I am.
I was the worst of these. I was persecuting the church.
By the grace of God, I am what I am.
I was a rebel that's been transformed by the grace of God.
Once I was hunting Christians. It was a sport for me.
I thought I was glorifying God in what I was doing.
And now I've become a herald of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You see, grace didn't just forgive Paul, it redirected him.
It gave him a new purpose. It gave him a new identity.
He became a new creature in Christ.
He had a new nature. Amen.
And so he adds, I worked harder than any of them, though it was
not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
Well, this is what I want you to understand is that grace is not
passive in you. Grace is active.
Grace is powerful, right? True grace doesn't make us idle.
No, no, no, no. True grace makes us active in
our pursuit of God. True grace makes us active in
our desire to want to obey Him and to honor Him with all of our
life. It's not a passive thing.
Grace does not only justify you, it energizes you.
It gives you purpose, and you see the fruit of your labor, for
the Lord pleasures forevermore at his right hand.
Well on about his confession of faith again is helpful.
Chapter 11, paragraph one. Those whom God effectually calls
he also freely justifies, not for anything wrought in them,
but for Christ's sake alone. See, Paul embodies that.
He's unworthy, yet chosen. He's guilty before God, yet
justified. He's weak, yet he's empowered.
We don't know what the thorn and the side of Paul that he dealt
with was. The point there is that my is
that he learned that the grace of God is sufficient in every
way in his time of need. My speculation against
speculation is that the thorn was this remembrance of the
terror that he was to the Church, standing over giving
approval to the death of Stephen, the Church's first
martyr that we have in Scripture.
This young man, who loved the Lord God above all else,
proclaiming the mysteries of the gospel with all boldness and
courage, stands in the face of men who are literally gnashing
their teeth at him, becomes so enraged that they pick up stones
and take his life. Paul felt weak, but he knew that
grace empowered him. First Timothy 115 through 16.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, Paul writes, of
whom I am foremost. Galatians 220.
Paul writes, It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives
in me. He continues there the life I
now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of
God who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Ephesians 2, eight through 10 shows us that grace saves us,
for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves. It is a gift of God so that no
one may boast. In verse 10 we read we are His
workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God
has prepared beforehand. Grace saves and grace sins.
So if you're in here today and you and you just think I'm so
ashamed of my sin, I, I don't deserve, I'm unworthy, I don't
deserve salvation. I I get that salvation can be
for everyone around me, but for me, there's no way will you see
that Paul redeem or that God redeems Paul.
We see that if God can redeem Paul, he can redeem you.
If God can redeem any of us, he can redeem you.
Maybe you're not the ashamed one.
Maybe you're the proud one. You think, man, I'm, I'm worthy
of this. I've got my handful of good
works here. I'm going to take these things
into heaven, and I'm going to show God just how good I've
been. Well, you see that grace leaves
no room for boasting. Hopefully you've seen today that
your good works are insufficient for your salvation.
The only thing we bring to Christ.
It was Jonathan Edwards who said this.
The only thing that we bring to Christ in our salvation is the
sin that made his crucifixion necessary.
And for the church, those of you who believe, will you see that
every act of service, every ounce of endurance along the
way, that all of that flows from grace that the Lord has given
you? By God's grace, I am what I am.
And that is not in vain. Brothers and sisters, He's doing
a good work in you. He's faithful to bring it to
completion on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You see this gospel that Paul received, the gospel that he
stood in, the gospel that he's proclaiming here to the
Corinthians and encouraging them to stand in is the same gospel
that we hold today. It's our gospel, right?
It's it's our belief, it's our foundation.
And what it does is it saves us from sins, penalty through
Christ, substitutionary death. It secures us and standing grace
through his resurrection, and it strengthens us for his service
by transforming grace. Remember, brothers and sisters,
that the unchanging gospel of Christ's death and resurrection
is our foundation. It's the message that we hold
fast, and it's the message that we proclaim.
So my call to you today, Church, is to hold fast to this gospel,
to cling to it, to trust in it, to fix your gaze on Christ, and
to be transformed from 1° of glory to the next as you do.
My call to you today is to trust in the gospel, to live in the
gospel, to proclaim the gospel, and not to settle for anything
less. Do not believe lesser gospels,
trust in Christ. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we we see with Paul that your ways are
inscrutable. We can't look upon what you've
done and find fault. We can't look up on what you've
done and say we deserve that. Now we look up on what you've
done and we say grace upon grace upon grace upon grace.
Would you fill our hearts with gladness today at this gospel
message that we've received? Would you help us to believe it,
to be convict, convinced of it and convicted of it deep to our
core, that we might hold fast to it and not prove to be those who
have believed in vain? God, we thank You that you hold
us, that you sustain us, that you empower us, that you guide
us and train us, that you rebuke us and exhort us.
You correct us. We thank you for such grace,
such love, such mercy, and I ask that you fill us with gratitude
as we leave this place today. It's with a smile on her face
and knowing that Jesus Christ saves sinners and He has saved
me. Help us to go live this out in
our lives. Help us to be ambassadors of
this message in our homes and our workplaces, in the public
square, in our church. Father, I pray for anyone here
who doesn't know you, who's not surrendered their life to you.
May they see the gospel clearly today.
May they see their sin, their deceit.
Would you reveal it to them by the power of your spirit?
Would you draw them to yourself? Would you make them a people of
your for your very own possession?
Would you give them a new name? Would you give them a new
nature? Would you give them a new
spirit, a new heart? God, would you save them from
their sins? Enable them to walk with you.
I'm going to give you a moment now to pray there in your seats.
For what? Just based on what you've heard
this morning, what you've seen in the Scriptures, would you
seek the Lord? However, the Spirit is leading
you now. Lord, we're thankful for the way
you call us, for the way your Spirit moves in US.
Will Your Spirit moves us. God, I pray that you help us to
be obedient to you. You would help us to follow.
You are right to honor and glorify your great name.
It's in the name of Christ I pray.
Amen.