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1 Corinthians 15:1-10
15:1 Now I would remind you, brothers,1 of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 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.
[1] 15:1
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to 1st Corinthians 15. Don't worry. I'm not going to speak for very long. 10 minutes. Maybe 11.
Joel Brooks:We'll see. I I consider our time of lament and confession to actually be the first half of this sermon. And I just wanna now preach the back half of this. I also know this. So you've been receiving a whole lot of teaching over the last two and a half to three months, but we haven't had time for corporate singing and prayer, and I just wanted to make sure we had time for that this morning.
Joel Brooks:I can't tell you how much it warmed my heart to hear God's church sing. We're gonna look at the parables also next week. I thought I would deviate from that and just address some things that I think need to be addressed for us as a church and as a city and country, in the short 10 minutes I have. So 1 Corinthians 15. 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.
Joel Brooks:For I deliver 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, that He was raised on the 3rd day in accordance with the Scriptures. And that He appeared to Cephas, then to 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 and then to the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
Joel Brooks:But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace towards me was not in vain. On the contrary, I work harder than any of them. Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. This is the Word of the Lord.
Collin Hansen:Thanks be to God. Would you
Joel Brooks:pray with me? Father, we pray that You would honor the very reading of Your word. And now through Your Spirit may You write this word on our hearts. May You blow in our midst. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:Lord, may Your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So much like our city or our country is divided right now, The Corinthian church was divided. This letter that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, it actually begins by acknowledging and addressing those divisions.
Joel Brooks:They Some were saying, I follow Paul. Others saying, I follow Peter. Others, I follow Apollos. And then you had those annoying super hyper spiritual Christians
Collin Hansen:just saying, well, I just follow the Lord.
Joel Brooks:But they were divided over what leader they should follow. There was also enormous socioeconomic divisions. You had masters and slaves. You had rich and poor. You most certainly had racial divisions with Gentiles and Jews.
Joel Brooks:As a matter of fact, they were so divided as a church, they were actually taking one another to court. They were suing one another. So in other words, their mess looks a lot like our mess. A lot like our country's mess right now, divided. And although they were not in the midst of a pandemic on top of all of that, they were suffering through a empire wide famine.
Joel Brooks:And actually many people were starving to death at this time. So their situation was actually much worse than the situation that we find ourselves in. And so what does Paul do? How do you address a situation like that? How do you address a people who are as divided as that?
Joel Brooks:Well, because all of those issues that I brought up, all those issues are important, Paul systematically, he goes through each one of those issues. He tackles each of these issues as he goes through the letter. He tackles each of the divisions, each of the sins. But then as he is bringing his letter to a close, he reminds everybody what is of first importance. Not that those other issues were not important.
Joel Brooks:They're important, very important. But here what He wants to remind you is what is of first or primary importance. For I deliver to you as of first importance. And it was this, the gospel. It's the gospel of Jesus, that Jesus died for our sins and that He rose again, and that this Jesus then came to Paul.
Joel Brooks:That's of first importance. Why? Why is Paul saying this is of first importance to this people when there's so many other pressing issues here? Why is this of first importance that the gospel, we know the gospel and how the gospel comes to us? Well, I want you just to think of the man who's writing these words.
Joel Brooks:Think of the Apostle Paul. We've had certain images, forever branded in our mind, these past couple of weeks. I mean we, you can't get it. The moment you see the video, you can't get the image out of your mind of George Floyd being suffocated to death by the police officer with his knee to his neck. When you think of that situation, and you think of George Floyd, and you think of that police officer, and then you think of Paul pre road to Damascus, which one was Paul?
Joel Brooks:Which one was Paul? Paul was the one who was persecuting the church. Paul was the one who went around killing Christians. He's described in Acts 8 as ravaging the church, breaking into homes, dragging people off into prison. He's described in Acts chapter 9 as breathing murderous threats against the disciples.
Joel Brooks:Paul was the one who was the killer, and then he met Jesus. Then he met Jesus, the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus came to him and everything changed. The Spirit of God came into his life. He received a new heart. He was forgiven of his sins.
Joel Brooks:And now what he tells everybody else, he goes, and now I work harder than all of you. This isn't about me doing something or not doing something. Now that the gospel has hit my heart, I work harder than you all. Paul knows this because he knows what his old heart was like. His old heart knew the law.
Joel Brooks:His old heart knew what he was supposed to do. It knew the good things he was supposed to do. He just didn't have the engine to be able to do it. He was incapable of doing the good that He knew He should do. He needed a new heart, and Jesus gave this to him.
Joel Brooks:This is why he says the gospel is of first importance. Not as some abstract theological idea, but that our King Jesus has forever dealt with our sins on the cross and He has risen to give us new life and He is redeeming all things. And when that Jesus meets us, everything changes. Jesus alone can change the hearts of sinners. And when I look around at this world, I see sin and I see hearts that need to be changed.
Joel Brooks:I want you to notice something. Notice something about how Paul actually talks about the death and resurrection of Jesus. He doesn't just say that Jesus died for our sins and that Jesus rose, he adds this one little line to it. He says that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. That he was buried and he was raised up on the 3rd day in accordance with the scriptures.
Joel Brooks:He adds that phrase in accordance with the scriptures. What why does he add that phrase as he's saying the gospel here? I believe what he is doing is he's reminding us of God's story. God, through his scriptures, has been telling us a story in which the death and resurrection of Jesus is a central part of that story, but God has been speaking to us. And the reason I think this is important is because I don't know about you, but I have been getting a lot of feedback lately.
Joel Brooks:And one of the the words that keeps coming up in the, the feedback that I'm getting is the word narrative. Have you noticed that word being used a whole lot? I'm being told not to believe that left wing narrative that everything is about race. I'm told not to believe that right wing narrative that racism has been dealt with and is in the past. I've been told not to listen to the, to the Fox News narrative, not to listen to the, the, MSNBC narrative that's out there.
Joel Brooks:Over and over, I'm told about all of these different narratives that I'm either to listen to or to not listen to. And I get why we use the word narrative. Because what it means is we're trying to take the facts around us, the things around us, and we're trying to put them into a story that has meaning, something that makes sense of it all. That's what Paul's doing. He's saying, don't forget the narrative in which we are all living in.
Joel Brooks:God is telling us a story. God is speaking a story. And the story is this, that God, eternally happy for all all time, as father, son, and spirit, in perfect, loving, giving relationship within those persons, out of that deep love He has for Himself, the world is created. The world is created as a way of spreading the love that God has for Himself. So He creates love and He says, spread my love, spread my glory into the world.
Joel Brooks:And we know from Adam and Eve, the first, the second page of scripture that we fall in this, and that sin comes into our hearts and our spirits die and this world becomes broken. But then we know that God did not leave this world alone, but that he sent his son to die on a cross in atonement for our sins, to rise again, giving us new life. And now he is calling a people to himself. He is our king, and he is uniting together his people under his kingdom as he is rebuilding all things, and someday Jesus will come again and reign forever. That is the story, the narrative in which we find ourselves.
Joel Brooks:And Paul is urging us not to forget this narrative when there's all these other narratives there. The gospel is of first importance. And hear me, church. If you think, okay. I get it.
Joel Brooks:I get it. I know. I mean, we've heard the gospel, but we just we need action. You don't get the gospel. You don't get it.
Joel Brooks:That Jesus came and he died and he has given us new life. And out of that new life, as Paul says, I labor more than anybody. That gospel comes and transforms us. But make no mistake, Jesus is at the center of the story, and whatever narrative we're telling of Jesus is not at the center of it, we're not telling the real thing. Jesus is of first importance.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Lord, unite your church. You gave your blood to unite your church. You gave your blood to redeem all things. We are incapable of any good apart from you changing us.
Joel Brooks:So I pray for our city and for this world. May your spirit come. May you revive us. Because apart from you we are lost. We love you, Jesus.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in your name. Amen.