Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you, Father, that your word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Thank you, Father, that you are gracious and merciful with us today.
So, Father, as we open your word, we ask that you would be with us,
that you would minister to us, that you would open our hearts to believe your word.
And, Father, we ask that you would dwell with us and teach us what you want us to believe
and what you want us to know.
So, Father, would you bless this time, and we commend this time to you in Jesus' name.
Amen.
So, about a month ago, I bought a car.
And it's not my first car.
It's my second car.
And it's not my first used car.
It was my second used car.
And when I bought the car, you know, it was a good deal.
It was a really good car.
I'm really, really happy for the car.
And I actually sincerely believe that it's a blessing from God.
But I bought it from a stranger.
And when you buy things from a stranger, you kind of have to have faith in this fellow stranger
that they are telling you the truth.
And, you know, the price is good.
The mileage is good.
I want it to be true.
And I don't really have anything to which I can base this desire on.
Because, really, I don't know the person.
And I don't know if they're lying to me.
So, I paid a good price.
And I had to go through the safety and all those different things.
And it ended up costing me a little bit more.
Actually, quite a bit more than I expected at first.
And for many people, they actually see the Christian faith just in the same light.
Where there isn't actually any proof for Christianity.
You kind of have to just believe what the others say.
And you kind of have to kind of go blindly towards Christianity and say,
Well, you know what?
I'll believe it.
And they find out later, well, this is not true.
This is not based on reality.
And so, today we're going to look at something very interesting.
It's a letter from the Apostle Paul who talks to the Corinthian church.
And essentially, what Paul is doing, he's going to open up the fine print of Christianity.
He's going to look at what Christianity is all about.
What is the main essential claim of Christianity?
And he's going to open it up right wide open so that we can look at it.
And see for ourselves if this is true.
If this is worth believing.
So, if you have your Bibles, I would ask you to open to 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
And we're going to read verses 1 to 11.
Now, I would remind you, brothers and sisters, 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.
For I 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, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Then he appeared to more than five hundred 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 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.
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 he preached, and so he believed.
This is the word of the Lord.
So here Paul is, I'll just give a bit of a context.
Paul is writing to a Corinthian church.
And this happens about twenty years after the resurrection of Jesus.
And so Paul is writing to them, and if you read the first, say, eleven chapters of Corinthians,
this letter that he wrote to them, he's essentially giving them a rebuke.
He's correcting them for the things that went wrong within the church.
And now he's giving them a bit of hope.
He's turning the tone of the letter into, this is what you should do.
You should go back to the basics of the Christian faith and what you actually first believed.
So Corinth, in a sense, was a very popular city,
in the sense that they have a very interesting culture, a culture that is very worldly.
There was an expression that said, they live as in Corinth.
And to us that doesn't mean anything.
But to them, back in the day, someone from Athens would say,
ah, they're living as in Corinth.
People would say, oh, okay, okay, I know what you mean.
And to us, it's essentially the same as saying, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
And we don't really know what that means, but we have an idea that it's something very sinful,
and maybe we shouldn't ask because it might be a little embarrassing for them.
So here, Paul is talking to these people who kind of let the spirit of Corinth come into the church,
whereas the church was supposed to influence Corinth.
And so he's giving them a direction.
Here we see in verse 1,
So there's this implication that we need to respond to this gospel,
that there is something that we believe in,
and that we don't just believe in here in our minds,
but we actually hold on to it.
We cling to it.
We live by it.
And we hope in it.
And Paul is making this case that it is the gospel that he preached to them,
and also this word that he preached to them.
And he's talking about these things.
He's bringing them together, saying that these are one thing.
So the gospel, as we read on the projector, it's the good news.
It's another word for good news.
And the word here, in the Greek, is, in a sense, it's really a substance.
That's what Paul means here.
So it's kind of giving a tone to the word, word here.
So there's a substance in which we believe, and this substance is good news.
It's talking about an event.
So this event, this good news, is something in which we should believe.
Now Paul is implying here when he says,
unless you believed in vain, he's talking about two different ways that we can approach the gospel.
There is right belief in the gospel.
There's a right way to respond to the gospel.
And there is a wrong way to respond to the gospel, or a wrong approach to the gospel.
And we see here, when he talks about it in verse 3,
for I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received.
He's not saying anything new, anything that comes from Paul.
He's only passing along the baton to them.
Something that he received, and he's passing along to them.
So, what is wrong belief?
Well, there are many ways that we can approach that,
many ways that we can see what is wrong belief.
Some people will believe, or they will believe that they're Christians because they're afraid of hell,
and that they will become Christians so that they can escape hell.
Other people, it's kind of like the opposite tone of that is the more positive light.
They want to go to heaven.
They just, they want to be in heaven when they die, so they become Christians.
But they don't really know much more than that.
And other people, it's because they grew up in a Christian family.
They grew up going to church, and so therefore, they are Christians.
But Paul is saying something a little bit different here.
And he, Paul, wants us to go right back to the basics.
Now, I'm reminded of this one time when I had a phone bill come in through the mail.
And I won't tell you how much it is because my parents are here.
But I had to call them and say, look, there's something wrong here.
What do you mean my bill is X amount of dollars?
And they had to, you know, explain, you know, sir, this is what you signed up for.
Didn't you look at the fine print?
And, of course, the fine print, I don't read the fine print.
It's about 10 pages long.
The letters are this big.
Like, I don't have time for that.
But it's really important that we shouldn't be surprised when we see that our faith is not working out for us.
So I have a friend who recently told me that they're no longer Christians.
And this person, this friend, told me why they're not a Christian.
And they gave me this explanation why.
And some of the reasons were, well, you know, the Old Testament is very violent.
And God wants us to do those things.
He wants us to stone people and children and all those things.
And then he went on to tell me how the church is a business.
And they're all about making money and taking your money from them.
And I was just like, oh, what are they saying?
So at the end of this big soliloquy, I asked them, so do you believe you're a sinner?
And the person was thrown off.
Well, no, of course not.
And that's when I realized, oh, this person, this friend does not believe that they're sinful.
And that's why all these different peripheral things, these different peripheral issues in the Bible, they don't make sense to them.
It's not actually because these things define God in a way that they want to interpret God.
But it's actually because they don't want to be known.
They don't want to believe that they're sinful.
They don't want to believe that they have sin that holds them accountable to God.
So here we have the substance of the gospel.
We have Paul saying that there's the gospel, the good news, which is the substance of Christian faith.
And he's talking about as well the substance in here at verse 2.
So when he says, if you hold fast to the substance, I preach to you.
And he's about to lay it out here.
So verse 3.
So if you notice here, it talks about in accordance with the scriptures.
And honestly, if the scriptures spoke about one thing and then Jesus did another thing,
then we should abandon the whole thing completely.
Because it doesn't make sense.
There's no cohesiveness.
There's no coherence in the whole story, the big picture of the Bible.
But here's the thing.
Jesus makes sense according to the scriptures.
He was talked about in the scriptures.
If we look at the big picture of the Bible, we see that in Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth.
And he makes it and it was good.
And then he puts mankind on this earth so that they can have this relationship.
But then we see shortly after that the first man and first woman, Adam and Eve, rebelled against God.
And so they became enemies of God.
And God made a promise that he would fix it.
He would fix his project.
He would take care of his project because Adam and Eve and their descendants would not be able to.
So God is going to take care of it.
And when God gathers the people of Israel, he gives them this practice that they should sacrifice animals
so that when they put their hands on the animal, their sin would go into that animal.
And then the animal would be slain and their sins would be remembered no more in God's eyes.
And now in this time, the flow of the Bible is that God would open up his people to all the Gentiles
so that they can come in so his people would be both Jew and Gentile in Jesus.
And in sending Jesus, when people put their faith in Jesus, put their trust in Jesus as the Lamb of God,
they will receive salvation.
Their sins will be remembered no more before God.
So this absolutely makes sense in the whole scope of Scripture.
And when it says in accordance with the Scriptures, we can believe that.
Verse 4, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with Scriptures.
Now there isn't much saying explicitly about being buried, being three days.
There is something about being buried that Joseph of Arimathea would buy a tomb for him
and that he would be buried there.
And that he would be raised from the dead.
And that's something that's fairly common in the Old Testament,
that we believe that they had this expectation that the dead would be raised on the last day.
And so Jesus here is raised from the dead.
Now, in the last month, there's been a few people, or a couple of people that I know that are dear to me,
who passed away, and I've been to their funerals.
And it's always a strange thing.
What is death?
What is this thing, death, that awaits us at the end of our life?
We try to find solutions to death.
We want to spiritualize it and say,
well, you know, we're going back to the ground and where we belong,
we're going to be one with nature again.
Or, you know, we want to say that everyone's going to the same place.
It's all going to be good.
We're actually going to a better place.
And really, it's hard to tell what's happening at death.
What is death anyway?
So we all want this solution to death because we're afraid of death.
And we want death to be taken care of.
And if death is going to be taken care of, it needs to happen,
this cure, this antidote to death needs to happen in the realm of reality.
Because if we just think of something about death,
that is, you know, what happens after life,
if we just think about it, we create this new concept,
it doesn't really solve anything.
So we need to have something that comes into life,
something that comes into death,
something that is victorious through death.
And this is exactly what Jesus is doing.
Jesus lived a perfect life,
as we see in the picture here.
And then he died the death that he shouldn't have died,
but he died the death that we should have died.
And then he rose from the dead.
And that's why the Christian faith is the only one
that provides the true antidote to death,
that the death is not the end,
but that the resurrection, that Jesus,
who is life and who is the resurrection,
gives us this new hope.
So now we need to respond to that.
And Paul tells us in verses 1 to 2
that we need to receive it,
we need to stand on it,
we need to hold fast to it,
and by that we will be saved.
And for a lot of people,
they think, again, that story at the beginning
that when you buy a car,
you know, you have to close your eyes
and just, you know, hope that it's going to work out,
but you don't really know.
But I think a good illustration that talks about faith
is that we, in a sense,
are falling down from an airplane,
we're falling in the sky,
and we need something to save us.
We need something that will protect us
and break us from the fall.
And this is the parachute.
This is the only thing that we can have.
So in a sense, we need to open up the parachute.
Jesus is the one who can save us.
We hold on to the parachute,
but it's not the fact that we're holding on
to the parachute that's saving us,
but it's actually the parachute itself.
And we trust in the parachute
that it will slow our fall
so that we don't die,
but that we will land safely.
And this is kind of like an image of faith
and how we should look at the response.
So here's another evidence.
We have the scriptures that testify about Jesus,
but there's also something else.
Let's read in verse 5.
So we have a lot of appearances here.
And this is a very big deal
because if Jesus was raised,
but it's only a symbol,
it's only an allegory
that his memory will be with us forever.
If that was true,
then there shouldn't be any eyewitnesses,
but there are.
And there are many of them.
And in fact,
there are more than what this text is talking about.
If you read the Gospels,
you see that there's Mary
and there's a few different apostles
that he walks into the city
and then there's the fishermen.
So there's a lot more
than what this text is saying.
And this text, in a sense,
is saying,
well, the Corinthians,
they would know these people.
They can go to these people
and ask them,
did Jesus actually rise from the dead?
Did Jesus die for our sins?
Was he actually who he said he was?
So some of you know that I'm a baker.
You know that I like to bake
and I've done a few weddings
and different events.
And if you guys wanted to have a cake
for your next birthday or wedding,
you would come and ask me,
who can I ask for a recommendation?
I want to know if you're able to do the job.
So I would point out some friends
from maybe Messiah,
some friends that I would assume
that are in your circle of friends
so that you can go and ask them
and you know who they are.
You know that they're taste buds.
You can trust them
and from that point on,
you can say,
okay, well, you know what?
I'll go through with this.
This is essentially what Paul is doing.
He's naming these people.
There's James here
who is the archbishop
or the archbishop,
the bishop, I guess, of Jerusalem.
He's the overseer
of the church of Jerusalem.
You have Peter
who is here called Cephas
in verse five
who is the itinerant preacher.
He would travel.
So these people would know
these witnesses.
These witnesses,
they would be able to ask them
the question,
did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Was he actually in bodily form
or was he just a spirit
or is he just a figment
of our imagination?
So here in the Christian faith,
evidence is important.
Paul sees evidence
as very, very important
and very essential
to the Christian faith,
the whole message.
Now,
what about these witnesses?
Like,
I don't know,
there's a lot of them.
It's 2,000 years ago.
These people were,
you know,
less intelligent.
You might be thinking,
you know,
they didn't have
all the knowledge
that we have today.
I can't really trust
these witnesses.
Let me ask you,
where were you
or what were you doing?
Was it September the 11th, 2001?
Where were you
and what were you doing
September 11th, 2005?
And where were you
September 11th, 2013?
Now,
it's interesting
that we remember
very vividly
where we were in 2001.
What about 2005?
What about 2013?
2013.
It's interesting
that this event
that really marked
that one year
we remember
much clearer
than what happened
the years
that came after.
And in a sense,
this is what
the gospel witnesses
are all about.
That there was
this big event,
this very,
I don't want to say
traumatic,
but it's this event
that is out of the ordinary,
something that's extraordinary,
where a man
who rises from the dead,
the one who claimed
to be the Messiah
rises from the dead,
he appears
to all these people
and they would be able
to give the testimony
of him
in a way that is accurate.
So this should be able
to give us
a little bit more trust
in that.
And we see in verse 11,
and I'll just read it,
whether then it was
I or they,
so we preach,
and so you believe.
So they share
the exact same message,
and it's a very simple message.
It's not going
in too much depth,
but it's talking
about one thing,
that Jesus actually lived,
he died,
and he rose from the dead,
that all of them
would share
that same message.
So here's
the third evidence.
Let us read
verse 8 to 10.
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.
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.
A very strange thing
happened here.
The apostle Paul,
who we see
as super Paul
or super apostle,
is the,
probably the largest
contributor
to the New Testament,
but it's talking about
how Paul persecuted
the church.
Now,
if we knew Paul
in his days,
we would think,
you know,
he's kind of like
that kid in the playground
who just tells on you
all the time
to the teacher
and always pleases
the teacher,
and you're just fed up
with that person
because he's always
going by the rules,
he's always trying to,
you know,
make his way
all the way to the top,
and he's kind of
ripping us off
in a sense.
Paul was a very,
very religious man.
He was very devout
to his faith,
and he wasn't necessarily
pleasing to be around.
And it says here
that Paul persecuted
the church of God,
and it's interesting
that a lot of these people,
Peter and James,
would remember Paul
being this persecutor
of the church.
But he says here,
but by the grace of God,
I am what I am,
and his grace toward me
was not in vain.
Something happened.
Paul encountered
the resurrected Jesus
in his life.
He encountered Jesus,
and this encounter
was so powerful
that it would make
his trajectory in life
completely different,
that he would make
a whole 180 degrees
in his life
to follow this Jesus
whom he was persecuting.
So this is a very,
very important witness
that the witness of Jesus
who appears to us
changes and transforms
our lives.
So here in the ESV,
in the English Standard Version
that I'm reading,
it's not very,
very clear,
but I did look at
the Greek translation.
It's talking about here
in verse 8.
Last of all,
as to one untimely born,
he appeared also to me.
It says here,
as to one untimely born.
And the tone of this
slogan that he gives himself
is a little bit awkward.
It's a little bit different.
It talks about
as if to an aborted fetus.
And that's,
that's strange.
So,
Paul uses this
because his conversion
was so unnatural.
He was going one way
and his trajectory
was going one way
and then all of a sudden
he is taking out
of this trajectory
and he's put into
somewhere else.
And,
you know,
praise God
that that happened,
but that's a weird title
to give yourself
and it's a very uncomfortable
title to give yourself.
And Paul puts it here
in his testimony.
And he also puts
that he persecuted
the church of God.
And I can just imagine
Paul going from one place
to another
and his testimony
that he was the persecutor
of God.
Yes,
that's a great story.
That's a great story.
But this testimony
that he is the one
who would
attack these Christians
is probably a very,
very haunting one
to him.
You know,
there's a lot of things
that I regret
having done in my life
and I'm a Christian now.
I can say,
wow,
by God's grace,
you know,
I'm a new man
and,
you know,
God is great.
But the memory
of this,
of the things
that I've lived,
the things that I've done,
still haunts me.
And I think about it
almost every day.
It's like
this little,
I don't know,
this little character
that comes beside me
and says,
hey,
do you remember me?
And he tries to explain
to me who I was.
And it's interesting here
that in the scripture,
Paul does not neglect
his testimony.
He does not
put it away.
He does not try
to put it in a box
and forget about it.
But it's right there.
And we're reading about it
2,000 years later.
You know,
there's a lot of
spiritual practices
that try to
meditate our way
out of who we are
because the burden
of our,
of the reality
is so hard
and intolerable
as we even pray
that the burden
of them is intolerable.
The burden of our sins
is intolerable.
And there's more
religious people
who like to
do the right thing
and do the right rules
and practice them
so that the remembrance
of,
of who we were
and the sins
that we've committed
would be no more.
And we have to acknowledge
that these things
leave a really
deep scar
in our lives,
that they are wounds
in our lives.
and the gospel
brings us
to a different place
where there is,
where we don't forget
who we were
and we don't
try to please God
so that we,
so that he would forget
who we were
but both of them
collide together.
The new us
and the old us.
And that meets
perfectly in the cross.
When we look at Jesus,
we see him here,
he's on the cross
and he has holes
in his hands
and he has holes
in his feet
and the story
would say
that he would have
a lot of whipping marks
on his body
and this would speak
of the sins
that we committed.
Theologically speaking,
it would be because
of our sins.
It would not be
because of his sins
because he didn't have any.
Now, if Jesus didn't
rise from the dead,
these scars
would tell the story
of a blasphemer.
They would tell the story
of a man who claimed
to be the Messiah
but, you know,
he's nothing else.
But,
Jesus rose from the dead
and we see him here.
He still has the marks
in his hands
and these tell
a different story.
These tell the story
of a victory
over sin
and over death.
You know,
we read that
when Paul says,
but by God's grace,
I am what I am.
And some days,
I can't even lift up
my fist to say that
and can say,
well, you know,
I am what I am.
But,
the memory of
the things that I've done
is so true
and so vivid
and I don't even know
how to deal with it.
And I think it's important
that we notice
that Paul
keeps it in his testimony
because
instead of thinking
as Paul,
as the super apostle,
as super Paul,
he had real struggles
just like you and me.
And Paul here
acknowledges
that he has
these deep wounds
and he has these deep cuts
of the things
that he's done.
But they have a new name.
They have a new
meaning to them.
And just like Jesus
holds on his hands
and on his feet,
these speak
of a new story.
Not that of brokenness,
but that of victory.
So God's grace
leads us to a place
where we can acknowledge,
yes,
we have this pain,
we have this brokenness,
but now they have
a new name
and we don't have
to hide it.
We can share it
with one another.
We can share
that we have
a lot of things
that hold us back
and things
that have hurt us
along the way.
But that's not
the end of the story.
That Jesus rose
from the dead
and when we put
our faith and trust
in Jesus,
complete trust,
complete dependence
upon Jesus,
who is the only one
who can pay for our sins,
the only one
who gives the right
and complete antidote
to death,
our hope will not
be in vain,
that our hope
will be in Jesus
who has risen
from the dead
and that we will
be with him.
Earlier we read
on the screen
the lamb who was
on the throne
as if he was slain.
It's probably not
a pretty sight,
but they tell
the story of victory.
Please stand.
Heavenly Father,
thank you that
thank you that you do not
by your grace
completely erase
the memory
of who we were,
but Father,
that you bring redemption,
that you give
a new name
and a new reason
and a new purpose
for who we are.
Father,
would you help us
to come to you
with all that we are
and Father,
would you be gracious
to touch every part
of who we are
and give it a new name.
Would you help us
to walk in victory?
Father,
would you bless us
and bless this time?
We look to you, God.
You're the only one
who is worthy
of all praise.
You're the only one
who can do any of this,
who can bring healing,
who can bring redemption
and victory.
Lord,
we look to you
in Jesus' name.
Amen.