Resurrection Sunday, 2014 - 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 The critical gospel

Good morning and blessed resurrection day to you. You know, I feel like I rise from the dead every morning. However, Nancy knows that I don't really die at night, especially after I strike her in the middle of the night, right? Accidentally, of course. Anyway, all right.

Randy mentioned we won't be going through this whole chapter, which is a good thing because we'd be here until about 2. But just to introduce, this chapter is full of some rich things. Not that kind of riches, spiritual riches. If we were to step all the way through the chapter, some of the key things that are brought out are the basic gospel, and we'll be covering that here today. Christ died for our sins. He was buried. He was raised on the third day. And you believe that.

The other is solid evidence for Christ's resurrection. And we will be taking a look at that this morning as well. The other is the essential nature of the resurrection. That's brought out later in the chapter. And then the identification truth about sins. Now I call this a secret identification truth because it's seldom brought out. and the identification truth about sins and Adam and about Christ. And finally, an explanation of what takes place when we who believe are taken to be with the Lord. So, we'll take a look here at the first 11 verses, the ones that Randy read for us here.

Paul's first topic is the gospel, the content of the gospel to be believed in order for a person to be saved. and we'll talk later about what's not the gospel as well the second topic we'll be looking at here is the list and number of witnesses of Christ after he was raised from the dead more than 500 more than 500 by the time Paul was writing about this here in first Corinthians there were still a great many of those alive that could testify to Christ's resurrection and the third topic is his own apostleship He marks that out as genuine in a humble way, but under exceptional circumstances, and he extols God's character rather than his own in doing so. So, why present the gospel again? Isn't he writing to this church where everybody supposedly is saved?

Well, for the believers in Corinth, it seems that some aspects of the gospel have become foggy to them, less clear. Possibly by a confused or false gospel that had been introduced. And we actually have that problem here in our own country, in our own culture. False gospels get slipping in. And we'll talk about that in a bit here. Some, it's clear from the passage later on down, were questioning the resurrection. Christ died for my sins?

Yeah. Buried? Yeah. Resurrection? Eh, not so sure. Questioning the resurrection. And so he has to address it, the whole gospel, the whole thing. For us, it's also valuable to visit the gospel. Things can get foggy, right? And we can revisit this so that we have a very clear understanding of why we needed to be saved, first place, and what the true gospel is for those who don't believe.

So he has in here, the gospel which I preached to you. What doesn't come across in the English is the word gospel and preached are from the same family of words. So it has the idea of good news. So the good news which I good newsed to you. So we wrote emphasizing this good news. So the good news which I good newsed to you, the word which I good newsed to you. So he's actually saying it repeatedly. Good news, good news, good news. That's what gospel is, right? Good news.

Here you have the poetic pattern for the beginning part of the passage. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. What's that what? The gospel.

So it continues on here, in the next slide, that Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He was raised on the third day, and all those according to the scriptures. All those according to the scriptures. And so, what's the gospel to be believed? Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again. It's that simple. If a person believes, according to the scriptures, that Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again, you're saved. That's it.

Now, he has reference here to scripture. Well, the New Testament was just barely being begun. So what's he talking about here? He's talking about the Old Testament Scriptures. The Old Testament Scriptures talked about Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. The Old Testament passages did exactly that. An example would be Isaiah 52, 13, the end of chapter 52, and then on into the rest of chapter 53. Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and even the believing of that is included in that Isaiah passage.

And there are others we could point to. So what's the gospel to be believed here? We have to get it straight here. We can't get this messed up. We have to get THE gospel and not something else. Not something left out. Not something mixed up. Christ died for your sins, which means sins are or were a serious problem. Christ died for our sins, which means sins are or were a serious problem. You see, all of humanity has this sin problem. And so that's why Christ died for the sins of the whole world. And He had to die. He couldn't just faint. He couldn't just say, well, you know, I'm really tired. It wasn't a matter of just kind of being a little weakened.

He had to die for your sins. When Christ died, He took the penalty that I should have paid. He died and took the penalty instead of me. So here's the chorus of a song by exactly that name. Instead of me, He took the blame, the misery. Instead of me, He suffered silent agony. And in that final breath, He died alone, the sinner's death, instead of me. So each one of us can say those words. He died instead of me. He died the death that I deserved to have. He died instead of me. He died in my place.

And next, he was buried. And you might say, well, why does burial matter? Why didn't he just die and then resurrect? Could he have died and then come off the cross and then resurrected right there could have but why buried? buried wrapped up in a hundred pounds of wrappings and aloes and spices that was by the way a very expensive king's burial but that burial certifies yes he really did die He didn't just swoon or faint or something close. He actually did die and was in the tomb.

Completely dead. Physically. And he was raised on the third day. That was the essential completion of what had to take place for our salvation. It had to take place. you couldn't have just two out of three. You know, two out of three ain't bad, you heard that? No, that's not going to do it here. It takes all three. All three.

He really did die for our sins. He really was dead, which is made certain by the fact that he was wrapped up in a hundred pounds of wrappings and laid in a tomb and buried. In fact, the centurion had to certify to Pilate that Jesus was actually dead in order for Pilate to authorize Joseph of Arimathea to take his body he really was dead and he had to be raised on the third day that was essential all three of those things absolutely essential each and every one and so what's the gospel to be believed it is important not just to acknowledge that these took place, but to believe it.

To believe it. So, Paul is not seeking to cause those who are saved to doubt their salvation when you see that IF. That salvation for these people had already taken place when they believed. So why is he using IF? He's wanting to make certain that each one does believe the entire content of the gospel, all of it, each and every part. Is it simple? Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again? Yes, it's simple. Doesn't take me 15 seconds to say.

But each part is essential. And they were starting to get foggy on the last part, the resurrection. The part that some of the believers in Corinth seem to have lost sight of was that Christ's resurrection is essential to the gospel and to our own resurrection.

What good would it do if Christ died for your sins and was buried and he was still in that tomb? What good would that do? Nothing. Great! Christ died for my sins. What eternal difference does that make? Without the resurrection, nothing. Doesn't do any good. Because if Christ is not raised, then we are not raised.

So he's making that point here. One of the patterns we see throughout the chapter, he says here in verse 2, unless you believed in vain, then in verse 10, his grace toward me did not prove vain, and then in verse 12, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? Ah! In verse 14, if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain. Christ must be raised, it is essential to the gospel, and it is essential to our being saved. Otherwise, great, Christ died for my sins, but no life. He doesn't have life, and I don't either.

Page 3 of your handout brings together various testimonies of the resurrection of Christ in the New Testament. It starts with observing the empty tomb. This is what the women saw who first came to visit. This is what the apostles Peter and John saw when they came to see the tomb, having heard that Christ was not in the tomb. And so they witnessed that.

On that Sunday, numerous appearances. And appearances again and again to as many as 500 people over the next 40 day period of time. So multiple people seeing Christ raised at once. Again and again, some seeing Him raised repeatedly. This is not just some singular hallucination. This is not just wishful thinking. As a matter of fact, they didn't expect Christ to be raised. None of them did. Even though we told them in advance that he would be raised, they didn't get it.

Now, in addition to that page 3 on your handout, the quantity and the quality of the testimony for Christ's resurrection is beyond impressive. The testimony is from six different New Testament authors and over a half a dozen of their books by more than 500 people over more than 60 years of time. The apostles and others continued to testify about Christ's resurrection, even appealing to people in a group saying, we are witnesses of these things, even to the point where they gave their life. Each of the apostles, with the exception of John, so far as we have any evidence, died a martyr's death for the gospel.

For a resurrection that they didn't believe in, in the first place. This was not wishful thinking. They gave their lives, testifying to Christ's resurrection. Matthew, it's told, died in North Africa. He was having wooden stakes driven into his body while he was yelling out the gospel. And he was among those who didn't believe that Christ was actually going to be raised. But he was, let me tell you, quite convinced of it.

So here's Acts 2.32, this Jesus God raised up to which we are all witnesses.

Acts 3.15 The prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses. Acts chapter 10 God raised him up on the third day and granted that he become visible to us who ate and drank with him after he arose from the dead.

He continued to testify about his resurrection. Many sacrificed their lives testifying to the resurrection. Even those who didn't believe in Christ before then came to believe when they saw him resurrected. Thomas, the one who for a week, with ten of his fellow disciples, telling him, Jesus is resurrected!

We saw him! We've seen him with our own eyes! All of them were telling this. He said, I won't believe it. I've got a touch, I've got to see, I've got to know it for myself. I won't believe it. It doesn't matter what all 10 of you say. I do not believe this. When he saw Christ a week later, it's interesting the Lord said, I'm going to wait a week before I show myself to this guy. So here's Thomas denying all of his fellow disciples, all 10 of them. He sees Christ and he says, My Lord and my God. Thomas went all the way to India. And that's where his life was taken. He went all the way to India. And we have evidence that beyond that, from there, the gospel was taken to China before 90 AD.

Okay. These people genuinely believed, even someone as skeptical as Thomas, with 10 people testifying. He says, nope, not until I see it myself. But he did see, he did believe, and he gave his life for that testimony. John 7, 5 has an interesting revelation. Not even his brothers were believing in him. We have it on record that Jesus had four brothers, okay? James was one of them. And so 1 Corinthians 15, 7. Here is James, who didn't believe in his brother. And here is James, and his resurrected brother shows up, okay? Guess what? He believed after that. Right? He believed after that. That kind of changed his mind. Turned his head. And so did his brother Jude. Right? And so did the others.

The disciples did not expect the resurrection. Where a lot of people might think that, oh this is just wishful thinking. Or they were really wishing Christ was resurrected. They did not expect it. And there was great skepticism. Even after he showed up later, they were still thinking, wow, am I seeing something? Is this real? For as yet, John 20 verse 9 says, for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise again from the dead. They did not understand. But they came to. They came to.

Jesus talking to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus says, O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory? Slow of heart to believe. They weren't gullible people that were just hoping for a resurrection. They were slow of heart and some even skeptical. And some of them still thinking, wow, am I seeing what I'm seeing? Is that even possible?

In addition to the great number of those who saw Christ resurrected, and sometimes multiple times, add to that the testimony of the documents and the extra-biblical confirmation. as opposed to most documents from ancient history, the short time from the originals to the copies and the great number of those copies is simply astounding.

What you have here is of the various ancient documents, for example, Herodotus writing history of the ancient world, the closest from his time of writing to the earliest copy is 1300 years and we only have eight handwritten copies I could go on with the others but you see it with the New Testament less than a hundred years between the earliest copies and the actual event and we have more than 24,000 handwritten copies that is astounding This is the best testimony of any ancient documents by far, by what we call orders of magnitude, times 10. Aside from the New Testament documents, there are also a number of historical sources that confirm the basic outline of what the New Testament claims for Christ. If you didn't have the Bible at all, we have records from the first and second century that document a number of things about Christ. And there's a book, Jesus Outside the New Testament. It's one compilation of those documents. Now, so what do we have here? This mountain of evidence. Here's the summary on these documents.

There are at least 5,309 surviving hand-copied manuscripts that contain all or parts of the New Testament. And the number keeps growing. There are more than 19,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts in other languages, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, etc. The oldest copies of the New Testament known to exist are the Syriac and Old Latin versions. All totaled, more than 24,000 handwritten copies of the New Testament have survived. No other ancient document comes close. Not even close.

So here you have the summary in a slide on page two. Sir Frederick Canyon, and by the way, he said this sometime back, he died the year I was born. So that was a long, long time ago. OK. The interval between the dates of the original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible and the last foundation for any doubt that the scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.

And we've found more documents since he wrote this. More are being discovered every year. Here's Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, a historian. He spoke just last year in Colorado Springs. Even if we did not have the New Testament or Christian writings, we would be able to conclude from such non-Christian writings as Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger, otherwise known as Pliny of Secundus, that one, Jesus was a Jewish teacher.

2. Many people believe that he performed healings and exorcisms.

3. He was rejected by the Jewish leaders.

4. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.

5. Despite his shameful death, his followers who believed that he was still alive spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by 64 AD. And six, all kinds of people from the cities and countryside, men and women, slave and free, worshipped him as God by the beginning of the second century. You have all that from outside any New Testament. All from other records. Now, we address Paul's apostleship here.

Paul credits not his merit, not his great accomplishment, but God's grace to his being appointed as an apostle. He said, By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain, but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. While the other apostles spent time with the Lord, and were active in seeking to build up the church, Paul was at the start busy trying to destroy the church, and he even says at the end of Acts, he says, I voted for death every chance I got. I wanted those Christians not just to have trouble, I wanted them dead. That was his stance. His appointment as an apostle was only by God's mercy and grace. You imagine the rest of the apostles, Paul's become a believer? I don't trust that guy. He wants us all dead.

And he did. Here is the progressive poetic pattern returned here to bring us to the gospel. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures. And all three of those things are absolutely essential. We can't do what is two out of three. Not going to work. All three.

And it's according to the Scriptures. The Old Testament spells out the Gospel. The New Testament, of course. Let's talk about what the gospel is and what the gospel is not. We're going to start with the nots. Inviting Jesus into your heart is not the gospel. What's the problem with inviting Jesus into your heart? You've not dealt with a sin issue. Jesus doesn't need an invitation into your heart. But we have a need to believe that he died for our sins, was buried, and rose again. Inviting Jesus into your heart doesn't get it done.

Doing more good things than bad. I recall when Nancy and I were going to college that one of the people writing for the school newspaper went around and did a survey. And it was interesting in this survey, do you think you're good enough to get to heaven? And most people thought they were better than average. I'm not sure how that works out. But doing more good things than bad is not going to cut it. Christ died for our sins, and every one of us is a sinner. We need his death. And doing more good things than bad is not going to cut it.

Trying real hard to be like Jesus. You know, it's something very interesting. Just this year, my dad's brother became a believer. And he had previously written a letter in which he talked about this very thing. How important it is to try to be like Jesus.

But then he came to realize, and this is only weeks ago, he came to realize that isn't going to cut it. He needs the Savior. And he needs to believe that Christ died for his sins and was buried and rose again. So he's learned that trying real hard to be like Jesus isn't the gospel, even if you believe that for many years.

Making a commitment to Christ, whatever that is. People get committed to various things. I think asylums people get committed to. But making a commitment to Christ is not going to do it. Believing that there's a God is not going to do it. Believing that there's a God is not going to do it. It still doesn't deal with the real issues, the sin problem.

The gospel is believing that Christ, the Son of God, died for your sins, was buried, and rose again. It's that simple, and it's that critical. None of the other gospels that we've talked about here will get you there this is the essential gospel Christ died for your sins was buried and rose again and we can believe it because those things actually happen that's the reason why we have this massive number of copies handwritten copies of New Testament documents.

That's the reason why we have, as shown on page 3, lots of witnesses and people who not just were thinking of the resurrection as a nice idea, but even people who didn't believe, like Thomas and like James, even people who didn't believe when they saw Christ resurrected did believe and gave their lives for it.

Josephus recorded that James, who didn't believe while Christ was on earth carrying out his ministry, James died in the early 60s AD. So he died believing about three decades after Christ was resurrected. So James gave his life. Thomas, who didn't believe for a week, even though his fellow disciples were testifying, he came to believe.

There is a mass, a mountain, of evidence. Christ did indeed rise from the dead. And we need to believe all three. Christ died for his sins, was buried, and rose again, and nothing else, nothing else will replace that. Making commitments, Believing there's a God, trying to do good things, trying to emulate Jesus, none of that will do it. One thing, believing that Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again.

That's the gospel. Absolutely essential, every single part. Let's pray. Lord, thank you. As we look at this, the gospel is pure, plain, and simple. And in one respect, is it hard to believe that Christ was raised from the dead? Well, I suppose in some ways that's true. But on the other hand, there is such astounding, massive testimony that that is exactly what happened. And on that basis, it is believable. And we thank you for making that clear and evident to us. We thank you for this simple, critical gospel. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.