Back to Basics
Notes
Transcript
We truly worship in a beautiful building. We are blessed. I appreciate all the work that Judy puts in to decorate for each of the seasons. I appreciate all the signs that she hangs to remind us of important spiritual truths. I appreciate all the things that have been donated to push our eyes up to the throne room of God.
All the plants, both real and fake, give testimony to our God as the creator. The candles speak of the light of the world. Different signs.
Finally, we have this massive cross. If nothing does, this should remind us of our hope and our faith, the reason that we gather every week.
You know, it doesn’t though. I’m sure we all have Sundays where we come in, and yes our mind mentally, subconsciously, acknowledges each of the things I talked about. But, practically, even the big cross up front, we don’t look at it when we walk in, and become overwhelmed with the truth that it represents.
All these things become commonplace and we so easily forget.
Which is why we need to bring out the basics and reminds ourselves of the basics, so that we do not forget. And so that, just in case anyone fell through the cracks in not knowing the basics, we can bring them up to speed in the faith.
Today, is one of those basics sermons.
Let’s read the passage together.
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve 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 to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
Let’s pray.
Today, we will see that the Gospel is to be believed by sinners tenaciously.
Let’s talk about the Gospel.
The Gospel
The Gospel
The Gospel is a term that we throw around so much. But, sometimes, I ask people what the Gospel is, and they cannot answer me. Sometimes they will say that it is a book of the Bible, which is kind of true.
Paul in our passage defines for us what the Gospel is.
He writes:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
The Gospel can be simply defined as God’s good news to humans. And it has some very important elements.
Jesus
Jesus
Jesus is what the Gospel is about. This was the man who was born of a virgin 2000 years ago. Turns out, he wasn’t just a man, but he was God as well. The eternally existent Son of God lived among us, completely sinless. This is a historical being that every agrees lived.
We have his teaching. We have his recorded miracles.
Josephus, a historian who wrote 20-30 years after Christ, described Jesus as this:
“Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works-a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles.”
Definitely Died
Definitely Died
This Jesus, who lived the perfect life, loved by all, died. He definitely died. Paul says:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
Paul inserts the “he was buried” to prove the fact that Jesus died. Non-believers at the time of Jesus, acknowledged Jesus’ death and they could point to a tomb where Jesus was buried.
Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian, Mara Bar-Serapion,, and the Talmud, all point to the fact that this divine man died, a normal excruciating death.
For Our Sins
For Our Sins
But, here is where things get quirky. Here is where we leave the normal historians behind. Jesus didn’t just die as a falsely accused man. He wasn’t just a good teacher who got on the bad side of the religious elite. He died with a purpose.
He died for our sins.
Paul wrote:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
That three letter word is pretty unbelievable: For. It means on our behalf, in our place. Christ died for our sins.
If you’ve got a pen, pull it out. And start writing down all the sins you have ever done. Don’t worry, no one is looking over your shoulder. Now crumble them up and throw them over your shoulder.
Because Christ died for those sins. He took care of them. They are no more. His death was sufficient for all sins, past, present, and future.
But Is Alive Again
But Is Alive Again
How do we know that they are taken care of? Because he is alive.
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
All those people he appeared to are proof of the fact that he is alive. He defeated sin, death, and the devil.
And Don’t Forget the Prophecies
And Don’t Forget the Prophecies
Everything was done according to Scripture.
Which part? Well, the whole thing. From Genesis to Malachi, all the OT points forward to the coming Messiah. Everything about the OT screams that Jesus is going to come and die and come back to life.
I had a teacher once who said that he likes the OT because it reminds him of the New Testament.
One passage in question:
I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
The Gospel: Jesus definitely died for our sins, but is alive again. And I can show you proof.
The Gospel. We live around it so much that we too often become calloused to it. Oh, may we never.
The Gospel Is for Sinners
The Gospel Is for Sinners
The Gospel is for sinners.
Paul describes himself in very graphic terms.
and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
The NIV really makes that phrase sound really well. The KJV says: “as of one born out of due time.” A little more to the point, but again, sounds nice.
The word is used of an abortion, a miscarriage, or a premature birth, which at this time would have almost guaranteed the baby’s death.
It is a shocking, graphic, uncomfortable term. At this time, the term was used as a figure of speech to show dire human wretchedness.
Why would Paul describe himself this way?
Because he considered himself the chiefest of sinners.
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
When Jesus appeared to Paul, he was dead. He might have been alive physically, but he was completely and utterly spiritually dead.
He thought that he was doing God such a favor by rooting out those heretics that followed Jesus. But instead, he was acting forcefully against God.
Jesus told Paul:
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.
Paul in persecuting the Christians was fighting against God.
If we were Christians at this time, we would have thought that God should have struck him by lightening at that point in time.
But, what does God do. He looks down with pity on this spiritually dead man, and appears to him. A man who is like a stillborn baby, without hope, God breathes life. And the one which everyone said had no hope, comes alive.
Paul says:
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
The Gospel is not for those who delude themselves into thinking that they have everything in order. No.
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
We might look at ourselves and say: I’m not that bad! I’m not like Paul who worked to kill Christians.
No, that’s probably correct.
But every sin we commit is against God.
As David confessed:
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
We would probably have said that David committed his sin against Bathsheba and her husband, when he forced himself upon her and then had her husband killed.
But, David knew that his sin was ultimately against God. When we live in a way that is not according to the holy standard of God, we are setting ourselves up as God’s enemies.
Every sin that we do, from the littlest white lie, to our lustful thoughts and actions, to our gossip, to our murder, they are all the same in God’s eyes. They are all against God. They are all a sign of our spiritual death.
And we need someone to come up to us, pick us up, and breath life into our lungs.
Which is why Jesus came, for those who realize that they are sinners, that they need help, because they can do nothing.
Which is why Jesus died. He died for our sins.
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.
The Gospel is for sinners. But, we get so comfortable in our holiness, we grow callous to the truth that we are miserable wretches apart from Christ. May we never forget.
The Gospel Is for Sinners to Believe
The Gospel Is for Sinners to Believe
The Gospel is for Sinners to Believe.
Paul defines the Gospel for us, and tell us who it is for, but he doesn’t define it so that we can have mental knowledge.
There are a lot of people who are big-headed infants. They have all the knowledge, but their bodies are shriveled up. There is no growth beyond their mind. Unfortunately, all the mental knowledge does nothing for salvation. There will be plenty of people in an eternity of hell who knew about the Gospel, but never believed it.
Paul ends our passage with the sentence:
Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
Paul and the rest of the missionaries preached the Gospel. The Corinthians didn’t just nod their head and say: that’s nice. Good sermon, preacher! They believed it.
Paul expounds on that idea at the beginning of our passage:
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.
Believe is to receive and to stand.
This is echoed in a verse that I love to quote:
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
Those who hear the Gospel, who say: that sounds nice. We must make the choice to believe. We must make the choice to say: I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, come to die on the cross for my sins and I trust him alone to save me, a sinner.
Receiving is that act of confessing with our mouth. We reach out and grab the gift.
Standing is the act of living according to our belief. It’s the whole example of how do you know if someone trusts that a chair will hold them up. Well, the person who is sitting in that chair.
There are plenty of people who have one foot in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and one foot in some other teaching. That’s not believe. That is covering one’s bases. Unfortunately, that will not bring salvation.
The Gospel is for those who believe, who receive the gift and stand, saying I will not trust in anything else, and I will not give off the impression that I trust in anything else.
This is not an easy stand to take. Because we get pulled by friends and family, and we don’t want to make them mad. But if we truly believe in Jesus, we will trust only in him and no one and nothing else.
The flip side is belief is what Paul terms: believing in vain.
By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
This phrase could also be translated “without due consideration, or in a haphazard manner, or thoughtlessly, or at random.” This is incoherent belief.
This is a superficial appropriation of the Gospel. This is the person you meet on the street corner who is a “Christian” because they have gone to church or gone through catechism, or taken communion, or have been baptized, or have prayed a prayer, or whatever else we want to say.
They have placed their faith in something other than Jesus Christ. They have taken the clear teaching of Scripture, throwing it aside and trusting in something that will damn them to eternity.
The Gospel is so simple. Why do we choose to mix it with other things? Why do we deny its powerful truth by allowing our kids to think that there are other ways to God?
The Gospel is for sinners to believe. May we not grow callous to that. May we not forget.
The Gospel Is for Sinners to Believe Tenaciously
The Gospel Is for Sinners to Believe Tenaciously
I don’t get to use that word very often.
Paul writes:
By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
He calls the Corinthians to hold firmly to this Gospel. To realize that this Gospel of Jesus Christ is our only hope.
Picture the classic movie scene. Man is running along the edge of a cliff, it is raining. he slips and starts to tumble down to his death. But, he grabs a hold of a tree root, and he holds on. Tenaciously. He is not letting go. That tree root is saving him from assured death.
The same is true of the Gospel. It is saving us from assured eternal death. So, we hold on to it tenaciously. We will not let go.
Now, Paul is not saying that because we have the ability to lose our salvation. No, but if we do not hold tenaciously to the Gospel, not forgetting it, keeping it before us all the time, we will start slipping in our life. We start growing callous to the truth of the Gospel. We start forgetting. And we start living as if we are not saved.
The author of Hebrews uses the same term:
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hold firmly. Hold unswervingly.
On Maggie’s and my honeymoon, we went to Colorado. We spent a week outside Colorado Springs, and then we hopped the rockies and took a week driving southwest to Durango and back to Texas. Well, that hop over the rockies, Monarch Pass, was quite the adventure.
We hit it as dusk was falling, about 6:30p. Clear skies, middle of May. As we are driving up, the temperature starts dropping. Soon, snow is falling. And we can’t see anything.
The thought went through my head: I just got married and now I am going to die.
We slow to a crawl and keep driving. I can barely see the center line of the road, but not the edge of the road, or the cliff as I should say. We inch to the top, where there was a way station, but for some reason, I don’t stop. I keep driving, and we go down. The temperature starts rising. The snow stops, and we get to the bottom, clear skies, warm temperatures.
On that mountain, I held unswervingly to the steering wheel, following that center line, not going to the right or the left.
This is what Paul is talking about. If we hold firmly to the Gospel, we will hold unswervingly in our lives to the center line of truth, not going to the right or the left.
It doesn’t just affect our lives, but also our words.
Paul inserts a small little phrase into his Gospel introduction:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
The first thing, the prioritized thing, that Paul told the Corinthians was the Gospel.
If we are believing the Gospel tenaciously, it will be the thing of first importance. It is our hope and we will want others to have this hope.
We see people falling down the cliff and we say: here hold on to the branch! It will hold! Don’t fall!
Too often, because we are not believing tenaciously: we look at the people falling around us and we say: well, they have to make their own decisions. They seem content in their own spirituality. I don’t want to rock the boat. I can’t push my faith on them.
If we believe those phrases, we are not holding firmly to the word that was preached to us.
What would it be, if we had the attitude of Paul? If the Gospel was the thing of first importance? If we truly realized how amazing it is that we have this hope, that the Gospel is for me the sinner and I truly believe it, and I will not believe anything else? What would it be like if that was the thing of first importance in our conversations? Not the weather, not sports, not politics, not our health, but the amazing truth that Jesus definitely died for our sins, but is alive again. And I can show you proof.
Our lives would change. And I can guarantee that other’s would change too.
The Gospel is for sinners to believe tenaciously.
I need to ask two questions: Have you believed? Or are you in the mental category? Have you just been ingesting facts and never received and stood in the amazing grace of our God? If that is so, believe today. Come and make a decision for Jesus Christ.
If you have believed, have you believed tenaciously, or is your life lukewarm. Do you realize that you need the Gospel to change your life and your priorities. If that is so, come and let us pray with you.
We don’t normally do altar calls here, because we don’t want an emotionally-driven faith. Sometimes, though, we need to draw a line in the sand, and an altar call helps.
So, today, if you need to put you trust in Jesus Christ or you need to start prioritizing your life of trust, come. Or if you need someone to pray for you about anything, come.