Ezra 3:7-13
You can be seated. Please turn in your copy of God’s
word to first Corinthians chapter 15. Our reading today will be
verses one through 11. As you’re making your way there,
you’ll remember we are ordinarily in the book of Acts and Paul
has just ended his second missionary journey where he had spent 18
months in Corinth. And so, uh, Paul writes four
letters to the Corinthians. Uh, he wrote what we call Corinthian
a, which we don’t have in our Bibles. He wrote first Corinthians,
which we do have. And then he wrote Corinthian
B, which we don’t have in our Bibles. And then he wrote a second
Corinthian. So four letters in total, uh,
possibly more, uh, but he makes reference in first Corinthians
to the previous letter he wrote. And then he makes reference in
second Corinthians to the nasty letter that he wrote. Y’all know
Corinthians, the Corinthians were, they were a messed up church.
In fact, I have a book on my shelf called the 20 controversies
that could have killed a church. And that’s just 20 of them that
this author came up with to, to, to help the modern church
get through difficulty. So the Corinthians were in great
difficulty. The whole chapter, of 1 Corinthians
15. Again, we’ll just look at verses
1 through 11, but the whole chapter is Paul writing to them to correct
their deformed view of the resurrection. He had been there and taught,
he had been there and preached, and then he gets word A couple
of years later, they mixed it up with some other things. And
so he’s writing to remind them of the pure gospel which he preached
to them in days gone by. Before we read God’s word, let’s
do pray together. Our Lord, we do ask that as we
approach your word now, that you would open our eyes, that
we might behold wonderful things from your law through Jesus Christ,
our Lord, we pray. Amen. This is the word of the
living God. First Corinthians 15, beginning
at verse one. Now I would remind you brothers
of the gospel. I preach to you, which you received
in 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 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 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. Amen. I want to ask a question that I
hope will stick with you, perhaps for the rest of the day, and
maybe you’ll think on it and consider it in the days to come.
Do you believe in the resurrection of the dead? It’s Possibly the
most important question of the Christian faith. No bigger than
that. It’s the most important question
of of life. Do you believe in the resurrection
of the dead? I’ve come to believe that the
culmination of the work of the church, all the preaching, all
the teaching, all the pastoring, all the shepherding, all the
discipleship, all the things that we do, the culmination of
that, the purpose of that is to get every Christian safely
home to heaven. I believe that’s the simple job
of the pastor. Get your people safely home to
heaven. But I wonder sometimes what is
the most important pastoral task? And I really believe that it’s
his work at the graveside. It’s the work of the pastor at
the graveside, assuring the family, burying their loved one, that
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the
resurrection of the dead in Christ is true. I was taught by one
of my preaching and worship teachers in seminary, that at the graveside,
as you stand at the head of their loved one, And as you look into
the eyes of that front row of people, as we do in the South,
you know, the chairs and the tent and all, you look into the
eyes of the family and you say to them very confidently the
words of Westminster Shorter Catechism number 37, the souls
of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and
their bodies being still united to Christ do rest in the grave
until the resurrection. I found that to be one of the
most tender and most powerful moments in pastoral history or
pastoral ministry. It’s the moment where the family
is really saying goodbye. It’s the moment where their loved
one will be lowered into the ground or to use the language
of the Apostle Paul, the perishable seed is sown. And one day it
will be raised by the power of Jesus Christ. imperishable. Our theology is important. Our
knowledge of the Bible is critical, especially in moments like these. And there’s one truth we need
to know for sure in our minds and in our hearts, and it is
the truth of the resurrection. For Jesus’ resurrection from
the dead secures our future resurrection from the dead. One of the benefits
of Jesus being raised up from the dead according to our larger
catechism is this. It is to assure us of our resurrection
from the dead at the last day. And so brothers and sisters today,
as we consider first Corinthians 15, one through 11, I want you
to ask and answer the question in your head. Do you believe
in the resurrection of the dead? Do you believe that Jesus was
raised? Do you believe that if you have
faith in him, if you trust in him alone for your salvation
one day, at that great day when Jesus returns and raises the
dead, you will be raised to everlasting life. I mentioned a few moments
ago that the Corinthians had lost a lot of their way in their
church life. Paul had to move on. He made
a vow, a Nazarite vow, and he sailed to Jerusalem. By way of
Ephesus, where in our next missionary journey, as we pick up in the
study of Acts, he will be there at Ephesus a couple of years.
And that’s where he writes this letter to the Corinthians. Somebody
comes over and says, Hey, Paul, the Corinthians are believing
all this, all this mess, all this untruth about the resurrection. So their view of the gospel had
deformed. It had downgraded. It had fallen
apart. And so Paul is going to give
them the gospel according to the scriptures. It’s not going
to be the gospel according to the world or the gospel according
to Greek philosophy or whatever the false teachers in their community
had added to it. And I want to speak of Paul’s
word to them that we read in 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 11.
I want us to think about it in four ways today. The first is
his ministry. He’s writing to them a letter
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the key word
in this chapter 15, at least our verses 1 through 11, is the
word reminder. I am writing to remind you of
what is true. I’ve told it to you before. You
believed it. It brought you to salvation in
Jesus Christ. Now I get word that you’ve forgotten
it. And so now this letter that I’m writing to you that we now
have today in our Bibles and it benefits us because it’s scripture. I’m writing to remind you of
all that I told you when I was there to preach the gospel to
you. And you are convinced of your sin and misery and converted
to faith in Jesus Christ. I’m writing to remind you of
all that I said to you previously when I built you up in your most
holy faith through the proclamation of the scriptures and through
that day by day, week by week, 18 month ministry where Paul
established the church at Corinth. I’m writing the letter to remind
you. of your formation in Jesus Christ. But I’m writing a letter to challenge
you because your formation has now deformed. It is downgraded. It is devolved. It is falling
apart. The wheels are coming off. Paul
understands there are divisions in the church, there are false
teachers in the church, there’s a gospel plus something equals
salvation in the church. One of the things, though, he’s
really writing about there at the end of this letter is some
people now believe there is no resurrection of the dead. And
so there is this question, are our loved ones who are asleep,
are they gone? Or are they going to be raised
up someday by the power of almighty God? And Paul is writing them
in this letter, in his ministry to them, to remind them that
he delivered what God had entrusted to him, the gospel. which says
that Jesus was raised from the dead. He delivered what was entrusted
to them. It wasn’t a man-made gospel,
a made-up gospel, or a money-making gospel. He was a steward among
them of the mysteries of redemption. He was an ambassador of God on
behalf of God among them, preaching the good news of salvation for
the king. He had no right to tamper with
or tweak or alter the message. And so he reminds them of his
hard work in the gospel. He reminds them of all that he
said to them, his journey, his hardship, his opposition, his
his tent making, his preaching, his teaching, his establishing
the church. his reasoning with them. And
he’s reminding them, I had a ministry among you, and now I have a ministry
to you through this letter. And that leads us to the second
thing we wanna think. In addition to Paul’s ministry,
he has a message to them. And it’s not just, I wanna yell
at you message, you’re goofing the gospel up, you’re confusing
the gospel. No, he wants them to once again
embrace, to stand firm, on the good news of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. He wants them to stand firm on
the truths of salvation through faith in the son of God. And
so his message is simply the gospel. It’s not seven ways to
have a happy life. It’s not 10 ways to make your
boss happy. It’s not nine ways to get your children to behave.
It’s not all the stuff you hear today. He says, I want you to
get the good news right. I want you to get the gospel
right. I want you to understand how it is God saves sinners by
his son. And he simply proclaims to them
what the scriptures teach. That’s his message. Notice a
couple of times it says, according to the scriptures. According
to the scriptures, Christ died. According to the scriptures,
Christ was buried. According to the scriptures,
Christ was raised. And according to the scriptures,
Jesus appeared to many. So what was his message? What
was the content of the gospel? Do you see, as we read 1 Corinthians
15 and you think back to the Apostles Creed we recited together
a bit ago, there’s a connection, isn’t there? Our creeds very
often speak the words of the Bible. They’re compiled or distilled
truths that help us say, we believe this about God, the Father, this
about God, the Son, this about God, the Holy Spirit, this about
the church, this about sin, and this about salvation. Go through
the whole Bible, what does it say about each of those things?
We distill it into a creed. And sometimes God makes it easy,
doesn’t he? You just go to first Corinthians 15 and steal a few
words. Christ was dead. Christ was buried. Christ was
raised. Christ appeared. And so the ministry
of Paul through this letter is to give them the message of the
gospel, which they had forgotten and from which they had strayed. One thing to remember about the
apostle Paul, he was confident in his message. You’ll remember
in Acts, sometime after his conversion and sometime after he had done
a little preaching and evangelism out in the world, he goes up
to Jerusalem and he meets with the apostles and he says, this
is the gospel I’m presenting. And they said, good, that is
the gospel. And so these key things are in
his message. Christ died, Christ was buried,
Christ was raised, and then the, The report that Christ appeared
is not really part of the gospel. We don’t find it to be critical
that he appeared to others as a witness, but it’s important
in this passage. Christ died, let’s think of that.
According to the scriptures, can you think in your brain as
you’ve read through your Bible, where does it say, the son of
God, the son of David, the suffering servant will die? Hopefully the
ding, ding, ding in your head is going off. The light on your
dash is flashing and you say, well, how about Psalm 16? How
about all the Messianic Psalms? How about Isaiah and the suffering
servant, particularly Isaiah 53? He was wounded for our transgressions. He was chastised for our iniquity. The Lord saw fit to lay on him. the punishment that was due for
our sins on and on and on. We can see through the scriptures
that Christ, the Messiah, would come and he would suffer and
he would die. He laid down his life as a sin
offering. Last Sunday evening, as we read
through and sang through the the songs of Jesus life and his
death, his passion, his suffering and his resurrection for our
sins, we sang a little song. It’s probably not on the top
20 today in American churches, but the title of it is called
Not All the Blood of Beast. That’ll sell some records, won’t
it? Not all the blood of beast on Jewish altar slain could ever
cover our sins. It took the spotless lamb. It
took the son of God, it took the lamb slain before the foundation
of the world to pay for our sins. Christ laid down his life as
an offering for sin without the shedding of blood. there is no
remission of sin. And can you imagine all the animals
slaughtered back from the cross, back from Jesus, all the way
back into history, all the way back to the Levitical law, all
the way back to Moses, how many millions or maybe billions or
whatever comes after billions. Is it kazillions? I don’t know.
I’m not good at higher math, but all those animals were only
placeholders. And they anticipated, they pointed
to, they waited for the coming of Jesus. They held back the
wrath of God until the wrath of God appropriately would be
placed on Jesus at the cross. And so when our scriptures tell
us that Christ died according to the scriptures, when he endured
the painful, shameful, and cursed death of the cross, it was not
an illusion. It was not a figment of early
church imagination. It was not something made up.
It really did happen in real time, real space, real history.
And God ordained it to be so before the foundation of the
world and accomplished it in those early days of the Christian
church. Christ died. And then it says
Christ was buried. Christ was buried in a grave
and we don’t think of it as a grave like today where we dig a hole
and we put in a vault and we put in a casket and we cover
it with dirt and with thousands of dollars of flowers from the
local florist and then a several thousand dollar piece of marble
with names and dates and all the rest. That’s not how people
died and were buried in those days. This would have been a
tomb in the rock. And you remember that wonderful story of Joseph
of Arimathea. He was one of the council, one
of the Jewish leaders, and he secretly loved Jesus. And he
went to Pilate. Jesus died rather early. He died
on the day of his crucifixion. Usually it took days and days
and days. It was a horrible death and a horrible spectacle. And
it was meant to be both a spectacle to warn all Romans. This is how
bad it is when you cross us. But it was meant to be horrible.
Crucifixion, the worst form of death. Joseph requested, may
I take the body of Jesus before the sundown, before the Sabbath?
And he buried him in his own tomb. And it’s a fulfillment
of the prophecy that Jesus would be buried among the rich. Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy
man. This was his tomb prepared and set apart for his own death,
his own family’s death someday. And we think of Jesus, we think
of his ministry in all kinds of ways. We think of him as a
prophet, a priest, and a king, but we also distinguish him in
his humiliation and his exaltation. And we understand Easter, the
humiliation of Jesus, his suffering, his death. and the shameful death. They bit for his clothes. They
stripped him naked. They beat him. They called out
hail king of the Jews. They pierced his side. They nailed
his hands and his feet. What an awful death. What an
awful suffering our savior endured. But when did his exaltation begin? Some would say, and it would
be a good guess, his exaltation began when he rose from the dead.
But I think many theologians rightly say his exaltation began
When he went into the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, his body
treated with dignity. He was buried like royalty. He
was buried among the rich. But what do we understand about
Jesus’ burial? Why was it important that he
was both dead and buried? Burial has something to do with
finality, doesn’t it? If you’re buried, you’re gone.
You know, we like to say in the South, some little Southernisms.
Well, he’s dead and buried now, right? It’s not just that he’s
dead, right? He’s dead and buried. He’s good and dead. Jesus was
buried and continued under death for a time. Part of his humiliation
after his death consisted in being buried and continuing in
the state of death for a time. He was under the power of death
until the third day. This was according to the scriptures. Well, where in scriptures do
we find a reference to Jesus being buried? It’s a strange
one, but Jesus affirms that I believe in Matthew 12. He says, just
as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days, so the son
of man will be in the belly of the earth. for three days. It’s according to the scriptures
that the son of man would be buried. Now there’s an interesting
little connection. Some of you, I know when we say
the apostle’s creed, you cringe a little bit when we say he descended
into hell. And we have to ask a couple questions
in our minds historically and biblically and theologically.
I’m gonna go ahead and give you the answer so you can take a
breath. When we say in the apostles’ creed that Jesus descended into
hell, all that they meant in the original creed and all that
we should mean is that Jesus died. He just died. He was under the power of death. Now you can connect this to in
Peter, did he go, who did he go preach to in Peter? You can
connect it to Acts chapter two. And, um, you know, did he go
into the afterlife or into limbo is the Catholics might believe
you can, you can go into all these things. And, and I’ve seen
in my ministry over time, there are people who won’t say he descended
into hell. Well, all it means, And our Westminster
larger catechism affirms this meaning, I think very clearly.
All it means is Jesus really died and he was buried. He was under the power of the
grave. But let’s get to the good news.
Jesus died, Jesus buried. Now Jesus raised. This is all
the content of Paul’s message. His ministry to them early, now
a ministry through a letter. He’s reminding them of the message
of the gospel. Jesus died, Jesus buried, Jesus
raised. He was exalted in his resurrection
in that the corruption of death could not hold him. It was not possible for death
to hold the sinless son of God. And so because death could not
hold him, that body in which he suffered, that body in which
all life left, that body whose heart stopped beating, that body
that was bearing the stripes of the Roman torture and bearing
those five bleeding wounds, which we will see the scars of and
glory, took his life. But now the power of almighty
God raised him from the dead on that third day. And the scripture
says he appeared to Peter. He appeared to the 12. He appeared
to the 500. He appeared to James and all
the apostles. And he came to Paul, one who
was untimely born. He speaks of his own conversion.
on the road to Damascus. Paul, who was persecuting Christians,
who was persecuting the way, persecuting the gospel followers,
says, I was one untimely born, the least of apostles. I didn’t
deserve it because I ravaged the church. Christ appeared to
these eyewitnesses. Paul’s ministry, Paul’s message,
And now the meaning of this message, what what meaning is there for
for you, for for us who sit here today? Well, our sins are covered. Divine justice has been satisfied,
death has lost its sting. Jesus is the living son of God. He is the Lord of the living
and the dead. He was delivered up for our transgressions. raised
up for our justification. And his resurrection assures
all of us that our resurrection at the last day will be so. Now, I couldn’t come up with
an M for the fourth one. Paul’s ministry, Paul’s message,
the meaning of that message. So I came as close as I could.
Implications works a little bit, doesn’t it? Do you believe the
word about Christ? Do you believe the content of
the gospel? Do you believe what has been proclaimed to you? What
is your response to Jesus’ suffering and death for sins, perhaps yours? Do you hear the words of the
gospel? Does the Holy Spirit work in your heart and change
your mind and soften your heart that you might believe in him
and rest in him alone for your salvation? I wanna end with this
question and I hope you’ll think on it. Do you believe in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and therefore your
own future resurrection into glory? Let’s do pray together.
Our God, we thank you for the scriptures. We need no other
witness. We need no other testimony. We
need no other proof. Because you speaking by your
word, you assuring us by the power of your Holy Spirit, can
make it so plain to us that you love us with an everlasting love,
that you do judge sin, but you judge it on Christ for those
who believe in you and who will trust in you and will receive
you and will rest in you alone for salvation. Lord, let not
one soul leave today without wrestling on this, without thinking
on it, without coming to faith in you. And those of us who have
an older faith, May we be comforted and built up knowing that these
things are sure. They are yes, they are amen in
Jesus Christ. Lord, we want to serve you and
we want to serve you forever. And we thank you that in Christ
we can do so. Hear us and help us and bless
us. We pray in the name of Jesus,
our great savior, amen.