The Resurrection of Jesus Christ | Grant Caldwell

The Corinthians had forgotten the most important thing: the gospel. Discover how the death and resurrection of Jesus make sense of everything and renew our lives with grace.

HOME | PLAN YOUR VISIT | BLOG | DIGITAL BULLETIN

Transcript

 Welcome, uh, again to worship at Christ Methodist. My name is Grant Caldwell and I serve as one of our pastors here. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them up to one Corinthians chapter 15, uh, one Corinthians 15. As Josh just shared, we have concluded that three chapter. Chunk looking at spiritual gifts.

And now we move to Paul's final issue that he has with the church in Corinth, that of the resurrection. And so today we're looking at the first part of that verses one through 11. Hear the word of the Lord. Now, I would remind you brothers of the gospel, I preach to you which you received and which you stand, and by which you are being saved.

If you hold fast to the word I preach 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 CFUs then to the 12.

Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom who 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 we preach. And so you believed this is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks. Speed to God. Uh, will you pray with me? Father, this passage teaches us that the gospel is a first importance in our lives. And so let us treat it with that level of significance this morning as we hear, study, and respond to your word. We ask that your spirit would be present to make the scriptures come alive for us so that we can make much of your son.

And we ask all this in his name, amen. Come in. Okay. So my, uh, my wife and I, Casey, we were in our first year of marriage, uh, while Casey did the Memphis Teacher Residency Program. MTR is a wonderful program, but it is an intense program. So she student taught four days a week, uh, and then Friday, Saturday she was getting her master's degree.

It was a chaotic year one. And so one day in the midst of that, we were planning on eating chili for dinner. Casey makes an excellent chili, but in, uh, it's award-winning. I might add in transparency though, it's super easy. Like you, you cook the meat. And then you just dump everything in, turn it in a crockpot, turn it on, come home from work.

It's amazing. We, like, we lived off of this chili during this MTR year. Uh, so one day we had a hectic morning and we didn't put the chili in like we were supposed to. And I came home at lunch and made the chili and went back to work. I didn't even text her, like, you know, in year one you're like, Hey, look what I did.

I didn't even do it. I was just feeling good about myself. After school, she texted me and she was like, grant, we didn't make the chili. We gotta figure out dinner. And I was just like, I got you. I got you. Don't worry about it. Take your time. I got it. And I thought I did until we got home and dinner time came.

And she called out from the kitchen. Grant, you forgot to plug in the crockpot. And so here's the thing. This is, this is like free wisdom before we even get into anything. When you're cooking with a crockpot, plugging it in is of first importance. And if you don't plug it in, even if you put a bunch of good stuff in it, it all spoils.

And that's what this passage is showing us in Corinth. By the time we've gotten to 15, we've seen in Corinth that they had forgotten the thing of first importance. They had forgotten the gospel and as a result, everything in their church, even good things that are being done right. We're spoiling. I mean, we've been reading this for, for most of this year and seeing how they've had problems in division leadership, wisdom, sexual immorality, lawsuits, marriage singleness, vocation, freedom idol, gender communion, spiritual gifts, like all of these things in Corinth was off.

All of these things were off and all of these spoiled, uh, because they had forgotten the thing of first importance. And what's sobering for us, that hopefully if you've been with us this year, you've realized that like the things they're struggling with are often the things that we struggle with.

Like these things repeat over and over again through time and we find ourselves doing the same things over and over again. Uh, just like Corinth. And the same is here of great. Just obviousness when it comes to the gospel and it being a first importance whether you are a follower of Jesus or not, whether you're religious or not.

We all have things that we hold onto with first importance. Like we all have a way of looking at the world or a worldview that you're looking at through to make sense of the things around you. Like the, if, if this world is blurry, each of us reach for a pair of glasses that we put on to make sense of the world around us.

Each of us are looking for something to say, this is how all the pieces come together. This is how, even if everything seems uncertain around me, this is how I can put all the puzzle pieces together. If I just put. These glasses on to have this worldview. Then things will clear up. And what we have to be confident in and share with complete confidence, bold love, and clear truth is that the gospel is the glasses that people are looking for.

That the gospel is the thing of first importance that we hold onto that when we put these glasses on, everything around us makes sense. And it's the only thing that we can hold on with first importance, where everything else will be rightly prioritized underneath it. Paul shows this to us in, in this passage again verses one through four, he says.

I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preach to you which you received and which you stand by, which you were being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain, for I deliver to you as a first importance. What I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day.

In accordance with the scriptures, Paul is telling them to be reminded of the gospel. So we ask, what is the gospel? What does that word mean? The gospel is most frequently defined simply as good news. The Go Gospel is an ancient term that was used to describe just this merry glad and joyful news of a victorious conquering king that when you won a battle gospel was the announcement that, that it's over.

We won. For the follower of Jesus the gospel is everything. Romans teaches us that it is the power of salvation for all who believe. We see that the, the message of the gospel is the only truth that will matter for anyone a hundred years from now. It's the truth that we're resting everything on.

It's the most important thing in our lives, our family's lives, our coworkers lives, our neighbors lives. It's of great importance. But what I have found, many people would know and agree and nod to everything that I just said about the gospel, but if I would've made, what is the gospel? An open-ended question where we all kind of answered it together, there would've been a really big awkward silence.

Um, and, and here's the thing that has nothing to do with theology and what you believe, but it has everything to do with what Paul is saying in this passage of our need to be reminded. That we as the church are be to be reminded frequently of the message of the gospel, to be reminded over and over again of what we believe we're to be equipped in what we believe, to be able to share it with a world with a lot of questions.

And so for many of us, we just need a method. Uh, there are lots of methods for sharing the gospel. The one that we use here at Christ Methodist is one called three circles. Now I know that this will be a reminder for for many of you. In this room. And, and that's a good thing because when the gospel is the first importance in a church, when we take seriously what we've said in our vision statement, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we will be a gospel centered community.

The most important thing I can do. Is to make sure people know the gospel. And this church has taken that seriously with, with the equipping of, of three circles. I mean, this is, uh, if you go through a membership class and go through Discover Christ Church, this is the first thing that is shared with new members and prospective members.

Our children have learned this method. Our students have learned this method. I've visited each Sunday school class and talked about it. Uh, we've spent an entire semester on Wednesday nights. Um. Christ Methodist is your home church. You belong to a church where the gospel is of first importance. And so let's, let's be reminded of it.

Um, you can, if you have a pen, you can draw this on your bulletin. If you've never heard this, this is, and you're a visual learner, I think you'll really like it 'cause you get to draw here in church. So the gospel message shared through the method of, of three circles begins with this. It's a reality that we live in a world with a lot of brokenness.

Brokenness. And again, whether you are a follower of Jesus or, or not we know this, we look at the world around us, we open up our phones, we turn on the news, like things are off. Like we feel it in our souls. We feel it in our bodies. We feel it as we fight with one another in relationships. Our cities get off.

Our nations get off. Like, like this is something that we all look at, no matter. What, and go, yeah, this, this world doesn't work the way that it should. What followers of Jesus add to that story though, is that this isn't the way that God designed this world. That God didn't design this world to be a place of brokenness.

He designed it to be a place, uh, of beauty. That in the beginning of the Bible, God designed this world. He designed us for with a purpose, with a design for peace, for flourishing, for beauty, our soul, all the things that I just listed that were broken, our souls, our bodies, our relationships, our, our, the structures of our city and the nation around us.

The, the world itself, like it. God designed it. To be whole. But we also see in the beginning of the Bible that the first created humans. Adam and Eve left God's design and tried to live in their own, and the Bible calls that sin. Anytime we depart from God's design in action or in character, we sin. And the Bible gives us this promise over and over again that sin leads to brokenness and brokenness ultimately leads to death.

Sin One author described this way, sin is like throwing a rock into a clear pond. And then brokenness is all the ripples that come out of it. Sin leads to brokenness. Brokenness leads to death. And, and we all live in this tension day in and day out. Like we know deep in our souls that God designed this world for more.

And yet all we see around us is brokenness. And the thing is, we all hate that. We all know it and we all hate it. Um, and so we do everything possible to get outta brokenness, like these squiggly lines coming off of it. Any way that we can try to like muster up our own energy to get outta brokenness, we're gonna do it.

And some people do that through trying to like fix brokenness, we think, well, if I can be successful enough, if I can get the right job, if I can get the right achievements, if I can be good enough or loving enough or maybe even religious enough if I do all the right things, that will fix brokenness.

Others say, you're just wasting your time. Just forget about brokenness and flea brokenness. Find happiness. Find pleasure, numb out brokenness, ignore it, binge watch TV to distract yourself from it. Drink, smoke, just do whatever makes you happy. And here's the thing is that these squiggly lines, whether you're trying to fix brokenness through your own efforts or you're trying to flee and forget brokenness by being happy, all of these things are like rubber bands that pull you back into it.

Like in our own power, we can't fix brokenness. And in our own power, we can't fix sin. The good news of the gospel though is that God doesn't stay distant from us in our brokenness, and God doesn't tell us that we better try harder. God himself in the person of Jesus loves you, loves me, loves us so much that he enters into our sinful and broken world himself 2000 years ago that Jesus Christ came into our broken world to do everything necessary to be the one true way, to lead us out of our sin and lead us out of our brokenness and bring us back to life.

Again, sin leads to brokenness. Brokenness leads to death, and Jesus Christ on the cross took the death that we deserve for our sin. This is what we read in one Corinthians 15, three and four, that, that Jesus died for us. He died for our sins. He put them to death on the cross and then rose again from the grave, uh, giving us an offer of new and resurrected life.

And here's, here's Jesus's offer for us. That if we repent, that, if we turn from our sins and turn from our brokenness, and we believe, we trust that Jesus is who he says he is. And what he said about this is true. We'll be saved. That Jesus will become king over your life. That we're saved fully now in a way that only continues on and grows into eternity.

Um. Everything changes. And the, the good news is that empowered by the Holy Spirit and empowered by grace, then we start to grow back towards God's design. That we start to look more like Jesus. Slowly and assuredly, we start to think differently, speak differently, act differently. Our relationships with others start to look differently here in the church.

Things change. We, we grow back towards God's design and then part of our growing is then we go and are sent back into brokenness that all of the, the things of of brokenness, souls being off, bodies being off, uh, relationships, being off cities, being off nations, being off like all of these areas of brokenness, followers of Jesus for 2000 years.

Have been sent right back into these areas of brokenness. Not fixing it by our own power but telling people about redemption and restoration and hope that's only found in the, in the message of the gospel. And this, again, is everything for us. Like this is of first importance in all of our lives, in every decision we make, in every thought that we have.

Um, one Corinthians 15 says that this message is something that we're to be reminded of, receive, believe, stand on, be saved, and are being saved. Hold fast to, and preach like this is the ultimate good news. These are the glasses that you've all been looking for, that we've all been looking for to make sense of the world.

And the thing that we find, the more that we look at the message of the gospel, it starts to change the way that we look through and again, becomes these glasses that make sense of the world. Around us and as we do so, and the more that we look at, the more that we start to let the gospel make sense of the world around us, the more that we see that these other things that we look at, other worldviews, other religions, other secular ideas, other things that we would hold onto a first importance, like they all feel like glasses that just don't work.

Like you, you guys have been to the eye doctors before, like this one or this one. They just do that over and over again, like you find over and over again comparing the message of the gospel with these other worldviews that it's just always, always just a little blurry in other worldviews. Like there's little scratches on the glasses that you just can't help but notice.

Like when you have a worldview or, or an attempt to make sense of this world that isn't the gospel. There will always be moments of polarization. There'll always be dichotomies that get created boxes of black and white that, that these worldviews tell you that you have to be forced into and check.

But as they do, they're, they're gonna create inconsistencies where things just are gonna feel off. Like, let, lemme give an example of this. Like, there's some that have a worldview where like, the most important thing is, is caring for the poor, caring for the marginalized value, valuing multi-ethnic and diverse expressions at all.

Others though would say, no, no, no. The, the, the most important thing is the sanctity of life. It's the family, it's conservative sexual values. And the trap that we're living in right now is that like these things have been. Set against each other in a way where like you can either care about the poor and diversity or you can care about sanctity of life in the family, but you can't have both.

And the thing is, is that as followers of Jesus, we look through the lens of the gospel and say, no, no, no. Followers of Jesus have held onto both of these things for 2000 years. Like it's only in the gospel that it makes sense. It's only in the gospel that you're not choosing sides of one thing or the other.

It's only in the gospel that, that for both of these things, you can, you can see the longings in our heart for these things and see that it's because God designed us that way. We can feel our frustrations about these areas and say, well, sin and brokenness makes sense of this. And only in these things does the gospel offer a message of hope and restoration and redemption where we begin to grow in these areas and then are sent back to address them.

In the gospel, you don't have to piecemeal arguments together on separate burning issues. They're held together in a greater story, a greater story than out that out narrates, as Christopher Watkins says, in, in biblical cri critical theory, like it out narrates the other stories that you make sense of.

In the gospel, all of the big stories in your life, views on, on meaning, purpose, creation, identity, goodness, freedom, justice, gender, all of these things come together and fall into place in a clear story of the gospel. All of these things start to fall into place. The more that you put on these glasses and look at the world around you and see, okay, the gospel really does diagnose.

It heals and it fulfills everything that I'm longing for. Everything that makes for flourishing in this world, the gospel really does have an answer for it. The gospel is of first importance. It's the glasses that we're looking for to make sense of the world around us. It's everything. And as we say, it's everything as Paul does in one Corinthians 15.

Like there there's two doubts or objections that you may be questioning in your head. And and they're the two that Paul takes us to in one Corinthians 15. The first one is, is the doubts up in your head and you say, this is too good to be true. Like the gospel message is too good to be true. The resurrection is too good to be true.

Grant, we are modern, scientific Western Americans. People don't rise from the dead. And the idea of, of Jesus's resurrection like that, that can be symbolic, I guess. But like that, that's something from the past that simpler minds believed in. That's, that's a religious allegory. But the text doesn't give us that option.

Like where he goes to in the next three verses five through seven doesn't give us the option to, to do that. It, it says this. And that he appeared to CFUs or or Peter, then to the 12th. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive. Then some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

What's he doing? He, he's not allowing us to kind of push it away of, well, this is just a simpler thing from a simpler time. What is he doing in, in these verses? First, he's, he's grounding it on the factual witnesses that saw the resurrected Christ. Like, he's not saying this happened. Just, uh, take, take my word for it.

He says, ask, ask Peter. Ask the 12. Ask the 500 brothers at one time. Some of them are still alive. Ask his brother James. Ask all the apostles like Paul. Paul is so to say, like he's coming with the receipts of saying, ask the people if this is true or not. And the other thing is that what these names all have in common, what these people have all in common that we have to remember is that these people are all coming out of like the Jewish religion.

And like in the Jewish religion, the idea of a bodily resurrection of the dead is unheard of. Like, there were some that believed that, like in a spiritual sense, there's life after death. Some disagreed with that. But the idea of like a bodily resurrection, what, what the scholar int Wright describes is like life after life after death.

Like that that, not just that our souls will go somewhere, but like our souls will, will rise again in new resurrected bodies like. It was unheard of. There was no framework for it. There was no comment. Like we think like, oh, simpler minds believed in that. Even they were like, that doesn't happen. So for this idea to take off, like there's no explanation for it.

It was unheard of. And there, there's, there's more we could say about, I mean, you, you have the evidence of the eyewitnesses and the fact that it's comes out of nowhere. But like. You also have to consider like the spread of Christianity in the early years. You have to see the brutality of the crucifixion.

You have to see how the first testimonies that we have in the gospels are from women who testimony wouldn't even have been considered as realistic that the gospels use women as the first evidence of the resurrection. Like all these things come together in a way that you say, this is too good to be true.

And yet the most plausible, rational explanation is that it is. And because of that, we have to let that shape our view of the gospel. Tim Keller often tells a story which if you haven't picked up that book, it's at the front desk. Keller often tells a story where people would come to him and say something along the lines of, like, the gospel sounds good.

I I get what you're saying, but there's this aspect that Christians believe, or there's this piece of Christian teaching that I just can't get on board with. The way the Christians care about the poor, the way the Christians value diversity, the way the Christians care about sanctity of life or sexuality.

Like, there's this piece of it that I just can't get on, on board with. And what Keller would do is he would always point him back to this truth of the resurrection. He said, if Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said. If he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said?

The issue on which everything stands is not whether or not you like his teaching, but whether or not he rose from the dead. Some of you're here today, you, you heard three circles, you saw it being drawn, and yet there's still this like piece of you that's like, well, that may be good, but I, I just don't know about that.

And I would say what Keller does and what this passage does there's reasons, rational, plausible. Reasons to hold onto the resurrection is truth. Go back there and then let that dictate what we believe about these other issues. Because Jesus rose from the dead. Everything changes. I was a, a communications and religious studies major at, at ut echo Falls.

Before I graduated, I was doing one of my final advising meetings in, uh, the religious studies department with my advisor. She's the chair of Christianity. Uh, but ut great things about it studied religion from a a completely secular perspective. They studied about religion. They didn't study faith.

And so she was, she was not a believer. And I'll never forget that this was the last thing that I asked her. We had a great relationship all four years. I was leaving the office and I said, I just, what do you, what do you really think happened? And I'll never forget with PhDs and years of experience of education, she said, I don't know.

She said, I don't know. Church, we do know. And that what we know leads to seeing the gospel as a first importance. The doubts in your head can be answered, but some of you though the doubt isn't in your head, the doubts in your heart, which is where Paul goes to next. In one Corinthians 15, when he gives his own testimony, verses eight through 11, he says, last of all as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me for I'm 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 we preach. And so you believed like we get the message of the gospel laid before us, even if we're like, I think it is plausible and rational. Like even if I'm like, I think he really did rise from the dead.

Like there's something in our heart that that usually then seems to spring up and say, not not me though. Like this is good news, but not for me. Like, you don't know my story. You don't know my brokenness. You don't know my sin, you don't know my shame. This might be good news for others, but this is not good news for me.

And in response to that, we have to see the power of Paul's testimony that he gives here in, in 15. He calls himself untimely born. Uh, it's like a, it's actually like an offensive Greek word. He's saying that, that his birth was, was an accident. He goes on to talk about being the chief persecutor of the church.

He talks about all his failures. He just lays out every reason that he has for it not to be true for him. And, and look what the gospel says. Like it, it says two things that are powerful. One, one is what it doesn't say, and one is what it does. Uh, what it doesn't say is like, here are all these failures and here are all these things that, that I've done wrong.

And it doesn't say, that's no big deal. Just forget about it. Forget about it. We're good. It doesn't say that. What it does say though. Is that there's something that's more powerful than all of these failures and all of this brokenness that by the grace of God, you are what you are, and this grace is never in vain, and this message is powerful enough to speak to our doubts.

Like the grace of the gospel fuels the gospel into our hearts. It reminds us of it over and over again. It keeps it pressing deeper and deeper in us. Grace is this amazing, twofold reality. Like it's not just that we're not punished for our sins, that's mercy, uh, but also that we have received the favor of God given to us this favor that.

That draws us into God before we're even seeking to him that favor, that that cleanses us from our sin. It saves us and empowers us so that we can live, so that we can stand, so that we can be saved, so that we can have our our works of, of growing and going fueled by the Holy Spirit and fueled by His grace, Paul's telling us that God's grace empowers gospel living which means that there's no way for us to be too broken, too messed up, or too sinful to have it.

It means that it's all a gift given to us. It's all his empowerment given to us. And what Paul's saying is that, on the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me, he's saying that the very areas that he's most broken in, most shameful of the, the chief persecutor, the one that's untimely born, like those are the things that God's redemption is then leading his ministry.

Someone once told me, uh, a while back that, that what God wants to do is apply great meaning to your great pain and then use that to shape great ministry. And that's what we see here is that Paul is working harder because his great pain, his great shame, his great brokenness is not just a, it's okay, let's just set it over here.

It becomes the very thing that God uses to mobilize him out onto mission, to empower his works, to show him how he is going to be designed to be his workmanship. That's what happens when the gospel becomes a first importance in our lives. It's not just that these things disqualify from. Us for ministry.

His grace uses these things, transforms these things, and then sends us so out to work in a completely new way that there's no brokenness. That's too great for our glorious God to use and shape and redeem and restore for his glory. The gospel is of first importance. It's everything for us. It's why we desire to be a gospel centered community.

It's why we hold onto it firmly. It's why we refuse to compromise on any bit of it at any time. It's everything. It's the ultimate good news. As we close, like there's a, there's a story that he was a, the British pastor and Dr. David Martin Lloyd Jones. He, in one of his talks on one Corinthians 15, one through 11 he was talking about this passage.

And in talking about the importance of the gospel, he talked about it as this idea of there's a difference between advice and news. There's a difference between advice and news. Advice is counsel about something to do That hasn't happened yet? But you can do it. It's counsel about something to do.

That hasn't happened yet, but you can do it. News is a report about something that has happened yet, and you can't do anything about it. It's been done for you. And all you can do is respond to the news. And he says, imagine this. Imagine that there's a king who goes out to battle. If he wins, he sends back messengers that share good news.

They say, we've, we've won. People respond with joy. They go on with their life in the peace of this good news. But if the king loses, what does he do? He sends back military advisors. He says, okay, we have to keep fighting for our lives. Put the, the archers over there. Put the, the horses over there. Let's, let's secure everything.

Let's keep fighting. Here's, here's what you need to do to defend and, and let's prepare to fight for our lives. And, and Dr. Lord Jones said, he said, every religion. Every worldview out there, every glasses that you try to put on to use, use our illustration today. They all send military advisors, they all send people saying that if you want to be saved or if you want the world to make sense around you, here's what you need to do and you better dig in and fight for your life to get it.

You better work hard. You better do the right things. You better believe the right like you be, you better prepare to fight for your lives. It's fear-based, but the gospel's not advice. It's good news, and good news is a message of joy. It's a message that of what has been done for us to be saved that then shapes our lives to do what this passage calls us to do, to receive it, to believe it, to stand on it, to be saved by it continually.

To hold fast to it and then ultimately to preach it. And as we do so, we know that we're standing on the shoulders of saints that have come before us, and we know that his grace is never in vain. It'll empower us to do everything that God has called us to do as this gospel centered community for his glory.

Amen. Let's pray together.

Father as we. See those things as we see the different things that Paul is calling the church to respond to the gospel message in different ways. We just, we pray that for those of us that are gathered here today, that if this is a message that has never been heard before, or this is a message that's been heard a hundred times and somehow today, things are just clicking in a new way.

God, we pray that your grace would give us the ability to receive it and believe it for others that need reminding of this message. I just pray that we would remember the sufficiencies of the gospel, that it's strong enough to stand on, that it's worth holding fast to. That it is the power of salvation for all who believe that there is no low that could take it away.

There's no high that could earn it. That steadfast love of the father is ours through Jesus Christ. Help us stand and hold fast in these things. And then lastly, let us be the ones in our going that preach the gospel. You remember the team that's in East Asia right now and pray for them in their preaching.

Pray for them that they would be strengthened where they need to be strengthened and they would find rest where they need to find rest. And I pray that we also would be those that are sent out of this into areas of brokenness with a message that is worth sharing. That the brokenness that we see in people's souls, in their bodies, in their relationships, in our city, in the world around us, that we would be messengers of this good news that we would be heralds that, that share joyfully what your son accomplished on the cross and in the empty tube.

And we ask all this in his name. Amen.