According to the Scriptures

Announcer: There’s no more important message than the gospel of Jesus Christ. And there’s nothing more important to proclaim. And that’s a bold claim, but it is the truth. Too often we can become so focused on this life and the temporal things of this life that we miss what’s most important. Today on According to the Scriptures, we’ll take a look at this gospel that is of first importance. Here’s Pastor Damian Kyle pointing out why the resurrection and the gospel is so important.

Damian Kyle: His resurrection is proof that Jesus secured our justification, our forgiveness, Paul says. And justification is even more than the forgiveness of our sins. Justification is, when we put our faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, we are then not only forgiven, but the Bible teaches we are justified for the rest of our lives and through all of eternity.

When God looks at us, He will see our faith in Christ, the righteousness of Jesus put to our account. And when He looks at us, it will be just as if we had never sinned. That’s the power there in all of this. His resurrection is a proof that Jesus secured our justification, our forgiveness, and even more.

Well, if the gospel is the good news that God provided a way for sinful man to be forgiven of our sins and to enter into a relationship with God that will go on forever and ever, well then, I think the greatest question becomes, how do I make that good news my own? And how do I receive that gospel and that savior and that salvation into my own life?

And we do it the same way that the church in Corinth did and Paul reminded them of it there in verses one and two. And as he lays out the gospel that had changed their lives. Remember, just like us, as he came to Corinth, he preached that gospel to them. At one portion of their life, one moment before they were saved, they knew nothing of this life.

They knew nothing of a relationship with God, knew nothing of forgiveness of sin, knew nothing of the hope of everlasting life. And then right on the other side of being born again, all of these things become our possession. And so that gospel, Paul says, had changed their lives. Paul said that he had preached it to them in verse one, and then verse one, that they had received it.

So we’re not saved by simply hearing the gospel or hearing God’s offer of salvation, but we need to receive that gift of salvation by putting our faith in Jesus. To say to God at some point in time in our life, "My sin separated me from You. You are that holy, and my sin is that serious. But You loved me so much that You did not leave me in that separated condition in terms of a relationship with You, but You sent Your Son into the world to die on that cross as the full and satisfactory payment for my sin.

He was buried, He rose again on the third day. I believe that that is the Savior, He is the Savior, that is the salvation that pleases You. And so I put my trust and my faith in Him for the forgiveness of my sins. I repent of my sins, and I give You my life and choose now to follow You." And when a person does that, the Holy Spirit comes into our life and we’re born again by the Holy Spirit.

And that spiritual birth occurs, and that had happened to so many there in the city of Corinth. And then not only had Paul preached it to them, then they received it, but then I think it’s beautiful as Paul declares in verse one, they were standing in it. Now, some weren’t standing in it, but those who were standing in the gospel there in Corinth, this gospel had brought a stability into their life they had never known before.

And it cannot be found anywhere else. That it is something that we stand in and it provides us with that foundation related to salvation and our relationship with God. And then he said in verse two, they were saved because of this message. And so Paul, I don’t know that he’s saying this, but he could be saying this in a very, very polite way of then saying, "So why are you people messing with this?"

You ever wonder about that? I wonder about that all the time. It’s like people become a Christian by trusting in the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Their life becomes an absolute miracle. They literally become a new creation. They are living a quality of life that they would have never, ever approached by a million miles.

And then they, having experienced the blessings of the fullness of the gospel or any part of the Christian life, then they come along after a while and then deny its existence so that those who are going to come behind them are then denied what they’ve already partaken of and produced a miracle in their life. I don’t get it. I don’t get it.

And so Paul almost could be looking at it this way—I won’t put words in his mouth because I don’t want him to hunt me down in heaven and correct me here in all of this—but to why would you change something? And then this happens. It’s always happened, even in the early church, but it’s so much within liberal Protestantism and all.

Here you have a gospel that has changed lives and eternities for 2,000 years. It has provided human beings with a hope and a confidence that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. And now in my generation, now we are so smart that we don’t believe in these things anymore. And sometimes that kind of thing can happen.

And so this gospel provided, Paul says, it provided you with a miracle, the miracle of salvation, everlasting life. And now that you’ve experienced its power in bringing you into this life, you want to deny the power to those who have yet to hear. We are debtors. We are debtors to deliver to all people in the next generation an accurate gospel, the gospel that changed our lives.

How could we live with ourselves if we did anything less than that? And then in verse two, not only were they saved because of its message, he gave them a warning about believing in vain. That is to believe the gospel or believe in a good news that has not provided an answer for death or not provided a victory over death. And so no gospel that does not provide a victory over death can be considered good news.

And Paul’s going to get into this a lot in the remainder of the chapter. Death is an enemy that hounds all of us in life. And somewhere in the course of our three score and ten, more or less—sometimes a lot less, so don’t assume you’re going to get to 70—but somewhere along the line, we must have an understanding of why death came into the human condition and then what victory is there over death. And Jesus, the Bible gives us an explanation for the origin of death in human history in the Garden of Eden, and Jesus provides that victory.

And then Paul, in the remainder of these verses, he reminded them and he reminds us of all of the eyewitnesses that there were to Jesus’s resurrection. Verifying His resurrection from the dead. And now he kind of, as he’s challenging their unbelief, he calls all of these eyewitnesses to the witness stand to testify from their own experience to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

And the first witness that he calls to the witness stand are the scriptures themselves. And you notice that phrase that’s repeated in verses three and four: "according to the scriptures." So Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, His death, burial, and resurrection from the dead, this isn’t something that Jesus just popped into human history out of the blue, but this is something that He fulfilled in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies that Messiah would do.

He says in verse three, "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures." What scriptures? The Old Testament scriptures that prophesied of Messiah’s death. Isaiah 53, verse eight: "And he was taken from prison," speaking of Jesus, speaking of Messiah, "and taken from prison and from judgment. And who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living."

He’s going to die. Don’t talk to me about this swoon nonsense. "For the transgressions of my people he was stricken." And just one of many prophecies in the Old Testament speaking of the fact that Messiah would die. And then in verse four: "He was buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures." Again, what scriptures? The Old Testament prophecies concerning His burial after He had died.

For instance, Isaiah chapter 53, verse nine: "And they," speaking of the Messiah prophetically, Jesus would fulfill it, "and they made his grave with the wicked." That’s where they intended to bury Jesus after He was taken down from the cross. Rome was going to discard it in this communal burial ground where they just threw the bodies out there. But God had a different plan. But He would end up with the rich at His death and buried as He was in that rich man’s tomb.

And then concerning the Old Testament scriptures and prophecies concerning Jesus’s resurrection in Psalm 16, verse 10, the Lord declared that the Messiah would come into the world, that He would die, but He would not remain in that dead condition long enough for His body to see corruption, but that He would be resurrected. And so Psalm 16, verse 10: "For you," David writes to the Lord, "for you," speaking to God the Father, "will not leave my soul in Sheol or Hades, nor will you," speaking to the Father, "allow your Holy One or Messiah to see corruption."

Then Paul turns to the actual eyewitnesses of Jesus’s resurrection. You notice in verse five, he calls the apostle Peter to the witness stand as an eyewitness to Jesus’s resurrection. Sometime on that Resurrection Sunday, it’s not recorded for us in scripture, but we know that it happened because of what Paul lays out here, Jesus privately met with Peter.

Peter having denied Him three times earlier that very same day, or had denied Him the three days earlier and then had wept with bitter tears. And the Lord, in a beautiful way, met with him privately and I believe to restore him and to encourage him that his apostolic ministry was not finished because of his failure, even as Jesus had told him ahead of time that he would deny Him three times. And so He privately recommissions him as an apostle and then would later do that before a larger audience up at the Sea of Galilee.

Then Paul calls the twelve to the witness stand in verse five. This refers to the twelve being kind of a beautiful reference to the twelve apostles. And we know that Judas, he was disqualified and left and all, and so they didn’t decide somewhere in here to start calling them the eleven. And so how complicated would all of that get. But it’s talking about the twelve that had been able to be with Jesus for the full three and a half years of His public ministry.

And so this refers to Jesus’s appearing to the apostles on the night of His resurrection. And there they were hidden behind closed doors out of fear for their life, as John 20 puts it. Thomas, as you might remember, he was missing, but that expression of the twelve indicates that the other ten were present there.

Then he calls the next group of eyewitnesses in verse six to the stand, being over 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus at the same event. And they were still alive to inquire of concerning having been eyewitnesses of His resurrection. We don’t know exactly what event this was. Paul doesn’t give us absolute clarity.

I’m inclined to believe that when Jesus instructed the disciples to meet with Him up in the Galilee region, and very likely that the word soon spread that Jesus was up in the Galilee, risen from the dead. And so the apostles were probably being followed by a large number of people hoping to see Jesus Himself. But it occurred in one context or another. And Paul said the overwhelming majority of this 500 is still alive for you to ask face-to-face at the time of the writing of this letter about having seen Him resurrected.

And then he calls James in verse seven to the witness stand. And this appears to be James, the half-brother of Jesus. He became a believer in Jesus, and Jesus appeared to him and he became a leader in the early church. And then Paul declares, "Then he appeared to all of the apostles." And so this is a reference to on the night of His resurrection, or seven days after that, that He appears then in before the apostles and then Thomas is finally present with them.

And then Paul declares himself to be an eyewitness in verses eight through 10. And he describes himself as one that was born out of due season. And so Paul considered himself to be abnormally born. That’s what the phrase means here. And because he lacked this three and a half year gestation period that the other apostles had in being able to be with Jesus day and night for those three and a half years.

He did not enjoy that luxury during Jesus’s earthly ministry. And so an apostle nonetheless, but not quite birthed as the others were. He declared himself to be not worthy to be an apostle because he had of course been a violent, very violent opponent to Christianity, persecutor of the early church.

And then he said that he had labored more abundantly in verse 10. He had worked harder than any of the other apostles. He traveled more, he suffered more opposition, wrote more of the New Testament epistles and founded more churches. And yet Paul, for all of that, he knew that it was the grace of God that had accomplished all of that through his life.

And so each of these eyewitnesses testified to Jesus’s death, His burial, but also to His resurrection from the dead. And this is the message that they communicated. This is the gospel which the saints in Corinth had believed and trusted in in verse 11. And so under the law of Moses, in a court of law, a fact could be to solidify or confirm something as a fact within a court of law under the Jewish law required the witness of two or three eyewitnesses.

So Paul comes in here and says, "I’ve provided you with 500-plus eyewitnesses, including the witness of the Holy Spirit through the scriptures." So very convincing proof indeed. I want you to notice in verses three through eight the repetition of the references to Jesus. Verse three: Christ. Verse four: He was buried. Verse four: He rose again.

Verse five: He was seen by Cephas and then by the twelve. After that, He was seen by over 500. Verse seven: After that, He. And then in verse eight: Then the last of all, He was seen also by me. And so there is a He behind Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. And Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection are the three greatest events in human history.

Don’t wait for three greater events or one single greater event to occur in human history. Those three are the greatest. But there is a He behind that gospel. There is a person behind that gospel. And so Paul takes and uses the word Christ and He and He and He and He and He makes it central to the passage in reminding the church at Corinth that someone, a real someone, a real Son of God, fully God, fully man, all at the same time, died on that cross for our sins and was buried and rose again on the third day.

And it is He alone that gave us and gives us the gospel. And the only one that gives the gospel its power that we want to remember tonight in partaking of the Lord’s supper. When Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me." If you would just turn a little bit to the left in your Bible to Luke chapter 22, we’ll read a couple of verses as we introduce the Lord’s supper.

Luke’s gospel, chapter 22, verse 19. And He. There it is. That’s our Savior. That’s our friend. That’s our Lord right there. "And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them saying, 'This is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.' Likewise he also took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you.'"

And so as we partake of the symbols of Jesus’s body and blood tonight, it is a time to stop and to remember Him. And to remember His death on the cross, not only for the sins of the whole world, but to consider it related to our own individual lives. That’s what it took for us to have the life that we have as Christians.

Remember His burial, remember His resurrection from the dead. And then to remember, I think, the personal impact of the gospel upon our lives as Christians tonight and just savoring those words of Paul as he spoke them to the church at Corinth. That gospel and the one behind that gospel. That gospel that we received, it’s a gospel that we stand in, and it is a gospel that has saved us. What a life that is ours because we’re Christians here this evening, and all because of what Jesus did for us.

Announcer: Well, that’s Pastor Damian Kyle on According to the Scriptures. Today’s message centered around the resurrection and the gospel. If you’d like to get the CD that contains today’s message from 1 Corinthians, give us a call: 209-545-5530. That’s 209-545-5530. I should also mention Pastor Damian’s messages are found at accordingtothescriptures.com, as well as oneplace.com and on most of the major podcast apps.

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