Remember the gospel

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you” That’s the opening line of 1 Corinthians 15. The church at Corinth is notoriously a mess. Paul writes 1 Corinthians to correct them for all kinds of sinful behavior and false beliefs. And after giving specific instructions on a number of issues, the conclusion of his letter says, “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you”.  For people whose lives are a mess, it’s easy to get caught up in the urgency of day-to-day matters. It’s easy for us to be moving along so fast that we don’t slow down. And when we do slow down, we usually just use that time to turn our brains off and relax, engaged in some mindless activity. But Paul says, I’m going to slow down. I’m going to take a break from all of the busyness and focus your attention on the one thing you cannot ever forget and yet are so prone to forget. “Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you.”

Today is Palm Sunday. That’s what we have traditionally called the Sunday before we celebrate Easter because of the palms people laid at Jesus’ feet the week before he was crucified and rose from the dead. So for this week and next, we’re going to take a short break from the book of Mark and I want to talk about the resurrection of Jesus and why it matters. So I’ll invite you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 15, which can be found in your pew Bible on page 914 .

There’s one very simple call to action from Paul in our passage and that’s going to be the simple call to action for us this morning.

Main Point – Remember the gospel

Text – 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Prayer

If the gospel is so important for us to remember, then we may follow up by asking, “Why? Why is it so important that we not forget it?” Paul gives us several reasons in our passage.

Point #1 – Remember the gospel because it continues to save you (vs. 1-2)

READ VS 1-2

The specific word “gospel” only appears one time in our entire text this morning, but in these first two verses it comes up at least seven times. Look back at the verses and I’ll show you what I mean.

• Paul opens by saying, “I would remind you of the gospel” - that’s one. Then he says,

• “I preached to you” what did he preach? He preached the gospel. So he’s saying I would remind you of the gospel, and I preached to you the gospel.

• Next, “which you received” so - you received the gospel.

• “In which you stand”, stand in what? You stand in the gospel

• “And by which you are being saved” You are being saved by the gospel

• “If you hold fast to the word I preached to you” what word was that? It was the gospel. They must hold fast to the gospel.

• Lastly, “unless you believed in vain” - believed what? Yes, the gospel.

So, to put all 7 together he says, I would remind you of the gospel. I preached to you the gospel. You received the gospel. You stand in the gospel. You are being saved by the gospel. You must hold fast to the gospel. And don’t believe the gospel in vain. Paul orients their entire life around their relationship to the gospel.

Sometimes as Christians we tend to think of the gospel as something we encountered in the past. There was a day when we heard a sermon or we spoke with a friend or we read the Bible and the truth of the gospel hit us like a ton of bricks. Right then and there we gave our lives to Christ. It was a specific event in the past. And Paul admits that the gospel is in fact something that is a part of your past. He says, “I preached it and you received it”.

The Bible tells us about this story. It’s in Acts 18. Paul traveled to the city of Corinth and it says, “He stayed a year and six months teaching the word of God among them.” It also says, “Many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized”. He preached it. They received it. If someone asked them their testimony, they would say, “A few years ago, a man named Paul came and explained Christ to me and I believed what he said, was baptized, and was added to the church”.

But Paul explains that their encounter with the gospel doesn’t end in the past. He says “You stand in this gospel. You are being saved by this gospel.” The gospel isn’t something from our past. It is something we engage in now. In fact, you are currently standing on it. Do you remember the song, “On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand” ? When you first recognized your need for the gospel, you saw that you were lost and drowning and sinking in your sin. You saw that your only hope was Jesus Christ and at that moment Christ reached down and pulled you out of the sinking sands and set you on the solid rock - salvation through him. And Paul is telling his readers, you are still on that same rock today. It is only the solid rock of Jesus Christ and his gospel that keeps you from sinking and drowning in your sin like you were before. If for a moment you think, I don’t need this gospel anymore, you will be sinking again.

Not only are you standing on the gospel today, but he says you are being saved by the gospel today. Now I’ve talked about this before. Christians tend to think of salvation as something that is exclusively in their past. We say, “I got saved 10 years ago” or “I got saved when I was 13”. But speaking of salvation only in the past tense is not the language of the Bible. Paul says, yes you received the word in the past, but you are still being saved by it today. Real salvation is an ongoing salvation.

I want to remind you that if Jesus saved you in the past, then he is still saving you today. If he is not saving you today, then he never saved you in the past. The two go hand in hand. What does he mean by being saved today? He’s talking about being transformed by God’s grace. He means your life is now different than it was previously. Your life continues to be different and continues to be transformed even more. Paul is certain that if they have actually received his word, then necessarily they will continue to be saved by it. If God’s grace has forgiven you in the past, then it will certainly continue to transform you in the present. That’s how you can recognize a genuine Christian.

So what difference do these things make? What should we do in response? Paul says, because the gospel is continuing to save you - hold fast to it. “Hold fast to the word I preached to you”. You are going to be tempted to forget about it. Maybe it was just a fad that you went through in Middle School. Maybe it’s something that helped you get through a particularly difficult time in your life, but now you’re doing fine. Paul is screaming to these Corinthians, “if you do not hold fast to the gospel, you will not be saved, don’t let go of it”.

One thing I’ve noticed in Ashdown that is different from a lot of other places in the world is that locks are generally optional. Your house has a lock. Your car has a lock. Your shed has a lock. But… they’re not entirely necessary. Sometimes people lock their things up and sometimes, maybe most times, they do not. That’s because people feel relatively safe here. Now maybe some old habits die hard for me, but you’ll still see me locking my car whenever I park it.

But if someone from rural Arkansas moved to inner city St. Louis, they would quickly learn that locks are rather necessary. It can be a pretty dangerous place out there and if you forget that there is legitimate danger, you will be ruined.

Christians too often let down their guard and think, “I haven’t been assaulted by any big sins recently, so I’m probably pretty safe. I can let down my guard, stop remembering the gospel, and just coast safely through life.” But church, if you leave your door unlocked, you will be ruined. We must always remember that sin wants to destroy us, that Christ is our only hope, and that his death and resurrection is the only thing that saves us.

Otherwise Paul says, “you believed in vain”. Your belief was meaningless. If you don’t continue to hold fast to the gospel, you are declaring that you don’t really believe that thing you once said you believed. At youth camp when you were 13 or when you went through that difficult season with your family or when your sin brought you completely broken on your knees to God, you declared, “God, my sin will destroy me. I need Jesus to save me.” But if you stop holding fast to the gospel now, you are declaring, “My sin is not really destroying me. I don’t need Jesus to save me.” You are demonstrating that your past belief was all in vain; it was all meaningless. You never really believed the truth of those words.

The gospel is THE message that is necessary for you to believe today. It is THE message that our church needs to be reminded of every time we gather, because it is THE message that continues to save you.

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you” because the gospel is continuing to save you.

Paul goes on in the next verses to clarify what exactly the gospel is.

Point #2 – Remember the gospel because it is the center of history (vs. 3-7)

READ VS 3-4

Paul had just told them that he preached a message to them and they received it. Now he says, “Here is the thing that I delivered to you. Here is the thing that you received.” It’s almost as if he’s saying,  “I am going to tell you what you believe”. So with that same spirit, Christian, I am going to tell you what you believe. Jesus died on the cross for your sins and he rose from the dead. If you are a Christian, that is the core of what you believe.

It really is an outlandish thing to believe. And I think we should remind ourselves of that. You all have been to funerals, you know that dead people do not get up and come back to life. The people in Jesus’ day weren’t dumb. They also knew that dead people do not get up and come back to life. So this is clearly an absurd thing to believe seriously. But then Paul offers some proofs for the things he said.

Jesus died on the cross. How do we know that he was dead? Maybe he just had a hard few hours and then got down. No. Paul says he was buried. His body was placed in a tomb. It was sealed. No food. No water. No fresh air. No medical treatment. The soldiers made sure that he was absolutely dead and he was buried for three days. And people even knew where the tomb was. It wasn’t a secret or hidden place. Ok. But a man dying is not that unusual.

READ VS 5-7

Next he offers proof for the absurd part. Jesus rose from the dead. What’s the proof of that one? A whole lot of people saw him. First, Peter saw him (Cephas is another name for Peter). Then the twelve disciples saw him. Then if that weren’t enough, Jesus appeared to 500 people at one time. This is not a hallucination. This is not in a dream. This is literally appearing with a physical body and being seen by lots of people. And Paul states very boldly, most of these guys are still alive. You can go find them. You can ask them. Did you see a man who came back from the dead? And each of them will say yes. Paul’s saying don’t take my word for it, ask James. Ask the apostles. Ask any of these 500 brothers you can find. This is a verifiable claim. Jesus came back from the dead. This isn’t just wishful thinking by Christians. He didn’t come back merely spiritually. The thing you believe Christian is a fact of history. Jesus died. He was in a tomb. His life returned to his body. And he was seen by hundreds of people.

But more than being simply a thing that happened in history, Paul tells us that it’s the point of history. Twice you see he uses the same phrase in verses 3 and 4. He says, Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures. He was raised on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures. This specific historical event that happened is what the Scriptures were pointing towards. All of them. All of the Old Testament scriptures were pointing towards the death and resurrection of Jesus. They were all pointing to the gospel. Let me show you where the Bible tells us this is true.

John 5:39 - You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.

What’s the point of the Scriptures? They bear witness about Jesus.

Speaking to some of his followers after he was resurrected Jesus says this in Luke 24:25-27:

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Then again in that same chapter, speaking to his disciples he says:

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead” - Luke 24:44-46

The Bible wasn’t written as a book to tell you some fun stories about how to be nice to one another and how to share with your neighbor. The Bible shows us that all of human history has taken place to bring about the salvation of God’s people through the historical death and historical resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the central event in all of human history.

Many of us are tempted to be afraid of what is happening in human history. We see what’s happening in the news across the world and we see what’s happening in the news locally. Things don’t look good. It’s scary. What will next year be like? What horrible things will happen in the next five years? Will the nations who hate God rise to power? Will those in our own country who despise God’s laws gain control? How will the terrible things in this world impact my life? Will evil win?

And the answer to that is, No. Evil won’t win. But how can I be so sure? Because it has already lost. There was a historical event, where death was defeated. Sin was defeated. Satan was defeated. Jesus demonstrated that he is in control by rising from the dead. History isn’t just aimlessly wandering wherever the wind takes it. Jesus is directing it. And it will go precisely where he intends to take it. He brought all of history to the cross and an empty grave and he will take it to the throne where he reigns as king. It can’t go anywhere else.

But Paul wants us to remember the gospel not only because it transforms history but because it transforms each of us personally.

Point #3 –Remember the gospel because it transforms you (vs. 8-11)

READ VS 8-11

Paul calls himself the least of the apostles, which definitely sounds like some feigned humility. This guy has been traveling the world and planting churches everywhere. He’s getting beaten and arrested and hated, but he keeps on working. He’s writing books of the Bible left and right, but he says, “No, no. I’m not that great. I’m actually the worst.” And you just want to say, “C’mon man. Stop pretending you’re not awesome. We all know you’re awesome.

But, I don’t think he’s faking here. He genuinely recognizes he doesn’t deserve the position he’s been placed in. Because, what is an apostle? The word apostle just means someone who has been sent. But in the New Testament, we see this position made more formal. So formal apostles, like Paul, and the disciples of Jesus, are men who have seen the risen Christ, who have been given authority by Christ, and are commissioned by him to build his church. Paul would say he barely fits that standard.

First of all, Paul had not seen the resurrected Christ before he ascended back to heaven. Jesus had to make a special appearance to Paul later, on the road to Damascus. That’s why Paul says he was like one “untimely born”. Next, someone like Peter, who was one of the twelve disciples, followed Jesus around and was personally trained by him for three and a half years before being commissioned as an apostle. Do you know what Paul was doing before he was commissioned? He was literally on his way to murder Christians. He hated Jesus. He hated his followers. And yet God reached into his life, turned him around, and said “You’re the one who’s going to serve me.”

Paul was probably one of those guys who when you asked to share their testimony, he would start by saying, “Ummm…. Well my testimony is a little bit weird and different than everyone else’s” You know, some people grow up in church their whole lives and they’re relatively well behaved, and then one summer at VBS they hear the gospel and they trust Christ and are saved. Paul says, “Yeah that wasn’t me. Mine was a wild ride, late in the game conversion. I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”

His next words are so striking though. He says, “But by the grace of God, I am what I am”. One aspect of the gospel we haven’t highlighted yet this morning is the fact that it’s a gift. It’s a gift that we absolutely don’t deserve. It’s something that God chooses to bestow on people who are unworthy. In fact, the unworthy ones like Paul, who are different, are exactly the ones that God seeks out to give this gift to. That’s why it’s called grace. Paul says, God’s gracious gift found me. And it changed me.

And how does Paul respond? He says, this gracious gift of the gospel that is given to me was not in vain. I went out and I worked so hard. I served God with everything in me. That’s the Paul we know! That’s the guy who would preach Christ until the city rioted. That’s the guy who would sing in a jail cell. That’s the guy who would cast out demons and raise a man from the dead. That’s awesome Paul who worked harder than anyone. But he says, it wasn’t me at all. It was Christ working in me. It was the gospel. It was his grace.

I will talk about what God’s grace does for us any opportunity I get, because most Christians only know about half of it. If you are a Christian, there was a day when you trusted Christ as your Savior. And that day when you trusted him, your sins were forgiven. All of them. You didn’t deserve them to be forgiven, but they were. Now when Christ looks at you, he sees someone who is perfectly righteous. We don’t deserve that. We deserve to be condemned and punished and yet we are not. Hallelujah. This is God’s grace towards us. This is called forgiving grace.

But forgiving grace is not the only kind of grace that God gives us in salvation. He also gives us something called transforming grace. Transforming grace is what turns someone who persecuted the church of God and was the least into someone who worked harder than any. When Christ died, he died for our sins. Our sins died with him, never to be on our account ever again. But Christ didn’t stay dead. He rose from the grave and he had a new life. In the gospel, your sins are gone and forgiven through his death, but you are also given new life through his resurrection. You are not the same. You will not and cannot be the same. God’s grace will transform you.

Satan is trying to convince you of one of two things, either that your sin is so bad you could never be changed and be free from it, or he’s trying to convince you that you’re doing just fine and have no need of transformation. But God’s grace will have none of that. It’s always invading every corner of your life. It’s rooting out sin in the deepest recesses of your heart, exposing it and killing it, like an exterminator who won’t stop until the last pest has been removed. And it’s making you new! You know that kind sweet incredible saint you always looked up to? The one that knows the Bible like the back of their hand, is always giving of themselves, has wisdom for every problem, and wears the love of Jesus on their sleeve? You know the Christian that is so full of God’s grace that you say to yourself, I’m the least of all the Christians compared to them, I’m not even worthy to be called a Christian? By God’s grace he’ll cause you to work even harder than them and live a life that’s even more exemplary than theirs. Because you’re not the one doing all the work. It’s the grace of Christ’s gospel that will transform you.

Next week is Easter and I’m worried that many of us get Christ’s death and resurrection wrong. As Christians, we cannot think of it as simply a fact that occurred and that you have to admit and then get on with your life. As if you have millions of true facts rattling around in your head and you just need to make sure that the fact of the resurrection gets tossed in there too. No, Paul said in verse 3 this truth is “of first importance”. This is the fact that you have to remind yourself daily.

Christ’s death and resurrection happened. It means something. Your sin has been forgiven. It has been cast away from you. It is continuing to save you. It is the point of all of human history. And right now at this very moment as you listen to this sermon, the gospel is transforming you, to become like Christ.

I’ll let Paul’s opening words be my closing words.

“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 preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”

Prayer