A Sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 has been lightly edited for ease of reading.
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Please take your Bibles now, if you have them, and turn with me to the book of Acts. I’m sorry, nope, I didn’t write it down right. We’re going to 1st Corinthians. Yeah, I announced that twice and I still forgot.
So we’re going to 1st Corinthians. We’ll be in chapter 15. We’re going to read the first 11 verses, but we’ll touch on a couple other verses throughout that chapter as well. So after I read, keep your finger there at least.
A couple weeks ago, I kind of made a joke that I was putting off the sermon on Jesus’ death an extra week or so, so that you would forget what I had said about his suffering, because there was a lot of overlap between the sermon before Christmas and the sermon on Christ’s death.
Well, in truth, the section on Jesus Christ in the creed has a lot of overlap, and that overlap is centered around one specific word. And that word is “crucial.” We learned before that Jesus’ union as the truly divine, truly human savior, it was crucial for the virgin birth for that to be true.
And then we learned that our that it’s crucial that Jesus suffered, that he died. It’s crucial for our salvation this week. We’re going to see that the resurrection is crucial for our salvation. We’ll see the same thing about the ascension and the return of Jesus.
So which is it? Which of those things is truly crucial for our salvation? Well, the truth is that they all are. All of Jesus’ life, all of Jesus’ ministry from his miraculous conception to his ongoing ministry of intercession in heaven today and on to his return.
All of those things are crucial for our salvation. And so you may hear me use that word or that concept even moving forward the next two or three weeks. But as a summary of truth, the creed reminds us of what we what absolutely must be true for us to be the children of God.
And so with that in mind, we look now toward the to the resurrection of Jesus and to the importance that it has for our salvation. First Corinthians 15, beginning in verse one.
“Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel, you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received, I passed on to you as a first or primary importance.
That Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter and then to the twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
And last of all, he appeared to me also as one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve 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 to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them, yet not I. But the grace of God that was with me, whether then it was I or they, this is what we preached. And this is what you believed.”
Let’s pray.
Holy God, word made flesh, life giving spirit. Let us come to this word today, open to being surprised, open to being changed.
Silence our agendas, banish our assumptions, cast out our detachment. Confuse our expectations and clear the cobwebs from our ears. Lord, penetrate the corners of our heart with this word.
We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
INTRODUCTION
So when I was growing up, when I was a teenager, early 20s college age, “snob” was a word that was bandied around quite a bit.
I was accused one time of being a snob simply because I was shy and didn’t want to talk to somebody. But one of my favorite terms related around the idea of snobbery was coined by C.S. Lewis. And he coined this term “chronological snobbery.”
Now, what did Lewis mean by chronological snobbery? Well, it’s the idea that since we have access to better and more advanced technology. We are superior in our intelligence to the generations that preceded us.
We have smartphones and our grandparents only had those silly things that hung on the wall and you had to dial the numbers on a rotary. So, goodness, I must be smarter than my grandparents. Now we know statistically this is not true. But we also know from history that this is not true.
Why do I bring this up? Well, we live in a world that is built on the assumption that the supernatural does not exist. And we can supposedly know that the supernatural does not exist because we got better technology that shows us that everything is just natural. And so what this natural technologically advanced world teaches us is that Jesus didn’t raise from the dead.
And one of the things one of the excuses that we give for that is to say that Jesus merely passed out from his wounds and woke up three days later to wander around the countryside.
And the assumption here is we know more about life. We know more about death. We know more about medicine than they did 2000 years ago. So they couldn’t really know that he was dead. Let me assure you, brothers and sisters, a foot long chunk of iron shoved through your side and into your heart makes you dead.
And they knew 2000 years ago what death was, even though they did not have the medical advancements that we have today. And the creed does not allow us to profess that Jesus didn’t really die. It says that he died, says it very clearly.
He died. Should we doubt that? It says he was buried. What do you do with dead people? You bury them.
And then it says he descended into hell. And that’s where we get a little confused sometimes because we have an idea of hell that the creed did not have or they did have, but it’s not what they were referring to. It’s a difference between the grave or Sheol in the Old Testament, Hades in the New Testament, and Gehenna.
Sheol and Hades, this Hebrew and Greek concept, are the realm of the dead. We all know that when we die, our soul and our body are split in a way that they should not be. It is not natural for the soul and the body to be split.
But the soul goes to a place of holding, if you will, Sheol or Hades. And that’s what the creed is talking about. And what the creed teaches us in relationship to Christ’s death is that every aspect of death that could be faced by a human being was faced by Jesus.
He went through the process of dying. He went through the event of dying. And for those three days, he suffered the separation that comes along with dying, a separation that will be undone when Jesus returns.
Some will be reunited with their body to everlasting torment, while others will be their souls will be reunited with their body to everlasting glory and everlasting life. And so that is what the creed means when it says that Jesus died, was buried and descended into hell. And yet that was not the end.
Hallelujah. Thanks be to God. That was not the end.
Because the next phrase says on the third day he rose again. And that is what I want us to focus on today. Church life is shaped by the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
We do not gather on Saturday, brothers and sisters, because we gather to celebrate every Sunday the resurrection of our Lord. He was raised on the first day and we celebrate on the first day Resurrection Sunday every week. And so this what I want us to focus on today is some defenses that Paul gives to us for the truth of the resurrection.
We will briefly look at the application of the resurrection to the Christian life and then hopefully leave you with the comfort and joy of knowing that our God is a God who lives and reigns.
PAUL’S DEFENSE OF THE RESURRECTION
So first, Paul’s defense of the resurrection. While many while some people look at the swoon theory or the theory that Jesus really didn’t die, he just passed out and woke up a few days later.
Most current objections to the resurrection center around this idea: “Well, we don’t see resurrections today, so it can’t happen.” Remember, we live in a natural world where we deny the existence of the supernatural.
And so science determines truth for us. And since we cannot scientifically verify Jesus resurrection, well, then it must not have happened.
This is nothing new either, because Paul dealt with this objection in Athens, in Acts chapter 17. I encourage you later today to read Acts 17:17-34. But in verse 32, Luke says “Now when they heard [these philosophers in Athens,] when they heard of the resurrection from the dead, some of them mocked.”
Brothers and sisters, thinking people are idiots for believing in the resurrection is nothing new. It was just as surprising to them 2000 years ago as it is to us today.
But the problem is when the church begins to embrace the idea that Jesus didn’t really raise from the dead. And that’s nothing new either, because Paul is dealing with that very thing in the passage that we read from 1 Corinthians 15 and on throughout the rest of 1 Corinthians 15.
Paul gives two lines of defense in 1 Corinthians 15 to prove the resurrection. And the first line of defense is the historical line of defense in verses 4 through 8. He talks about Jesus being raised from the dead and then he gives a list of people.
He says,
“He appeared to Peter and then to the 12. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James and then to all the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born.”
Paul lists these peoples, the apostles are Peter first and then the apostles and then a group of 500 or so people and then to James, presumably James, the brother of Jesus, because James, the disciple would have been included when Paul said “to the apostles.” He goes on to say then to the apostles again and lastly to Paul. What is Paul doing here by giving us this list of people? He’s providing verifiable witnesses, credible witnesses to the truth of the resurrection.
In a criminal case, detectives, law enforcement officers oftentimes differentiate between hard evidence and circumstantial evidence. Let’s say somebody robs, I don’t know, GoMart and a search of all the cell phone tower records at that time that GoMart was being robbed, pings that I was on property at the time. Is that proof that I’m the one that robbed GoMart? No, absolutely not.
That’s called circumstantial evidence. I just happened to be there. Maybe I was pumping gas while it was going on inside. Maybe I was laying down on the floor fearing for my life while the guy was robbing the cash register. It’s a mere coincidence that I was there.
But what the investigating officer needs is either an eyewitness or security camera footage to prove conclusively that I was or was not the person responsible for robbing GoMart.
And don’t worry if you ever hear a rumor that I robbed GoMart. It’s absolutely not true.
Paul is giving the people of Corinth hard evidence, 520 to 550 people that they could potentially run into at some point in their life and say, “Hey, did you really see Jesus?” And they could go, “Absolutely. I sat at such and such a place at such and such a time. My brother-in-law was with me and we heard him preach after he rose from the dead.”
Paul is telling the people of Corinth that the resurrection is a historical reality.
Our faith, brothers and sisters, is rooted in content as much as it is feeling. Historically verifiable facts rest at the bottom of our faith.
There are other historical defenses of the resurrection that we could go through. But that’s where Paul ends his discussion of the historical proof of the resurrection. But he doesn’t only give a historical defense of the resurrection. He also gives a theological defense of the resurrection.
And this comes from the rest of the chapter. I’m just going to summarize as we go through.
The first thing he says is that if the resurrection is not true, then preaching is useless.
The core of Christian preaching is those things that Paul lists as first importance, primary importance earlier. The death, the burial, the resurrection, the sinlessness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is what we stand in the pulpit and in Sunday schools and in Bible studies and in small groups. That is what we proclaim.
As a caveat. The church is built upon the preaching of those things that Paul calls primary importance, which means that if you are in a church that does not proclaim those things that are of primary importance, you are not at a church.
Paul goes on to say that if the resurrection isn’t true, then your faith is useless. Remember what we just said a few moments ago. Faith involves content, historical facts.
If you don’t have those historical facts, then, yes, you believe blindly in something that is not true. If you put your hope in a lie, brothers and sisters. You’re wasting your time.
This is one of the proofs that many people look at of the resurrection. The apostles died horrific deaths. They lived hard and abused lives, lives for the sake of the resurrection. How crazy would they have had to be to live those kind of lives, to die those kind of deaths for a lie? Your faith, brothers and sisters, is useless if it’s not true.
Related to the first defense, he says that if the resurrection isn’t true, then prophets, apostles and preachers are lying to you about God. Earlier, for a call to worship, we read from Psalm 16, which says that God would not allow his anointed one, his holy Messiah, to suffer the horrors of the grave. If I preach that message and God allowed Jesus to rot and molder in the grave, then I am blaspheming God.
And lastly, if the resurrection isn’t true, you are still in your sins. And Paul gives two reasons for this.
First is a reason that exists within the world where God exists. If God exists, and he does, if God has said you must live this way or I will judge you, and he does and he has, and he sent Jesus to be righteous on our behalf, and Jesus didn’t raise from the dead, that means his righteousness, his life was not satisfactory to God. It was not enough to save sinners. And we are still liable for God’s judgment.
On the flip side of that, Paul says, well, if God doesn’t exist, and there never was a God, there never was a resurrection, then the best that we can hope for is to eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow we die, and none of it matters anyway.
Brothers and sisters, our faith is dependent upon the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we have the proof, that spirit illumined proof that we need to trust that it is the truth.
HOW THE RESURRECTION BENEFITS OUR SALVATION
So what? The resurrection is true.
How does this benefit us? Well, there’s three different ways that I want to look at today. There are many more, but three specific ones that I want to look at today.
The first is regeneration.
The doctrine that we were once dead in our sins, according to Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 3. And yet God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, made us alive so that we can put our faith, so we can put our hope, so that we can find our rest and our peace in Jesus alone. That regeneration, that spiritual resurrection, if you will, in our heart, is dependent upon the power of the resurrection. Looking at Ephesians 2, Ephesians 2, verses 4 through 6, we read these words.
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. Even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace that you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”
How are we regenerated? How are we changed from those who are dead in their violent rebellion against God to those who are alive in Christ and beloved children of the Most High God? Well, we were raised with Christ. His resurrection is the power for the life that is ours.
Secondly, our justification depends upon the resurrection.
Paul says in Romans chapter 4, verses 24 and 25, he said,
“…but also for us to whom God will credit righteousness. [That’s what justification means. We’ll talk more about it in just a second.] But also for us to whom God will credit righteousness, for us who believe in him, who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
What is justification? Justification is that courtroom declaration that those who believe in Jesus are righteous before God. You are at peace with God because Jesus’ righteousness is placed upon you. It covers you. It is his righteousness becomes your righteousness.
So that when the accuser stands there and says, “Ike deserves hell.” Jesus says, “Yes, he does, but he is covered with my righteousness. So he gets life.”
That justification is dependent upon the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
And thirdly, your future glorification is dependent upon the resurrection. Going back to our passage in First Corinthians, verse 20 and 23 says,
“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep…But each in his own turn, Christ, the first fruits. Then when he comes, those who belong to him.”
What are we talking about when we talk about first fruits? You’ve heard me use this illustration before. It’s been a while. But have you ever grown tomatoes? You start with seeds that you either buy at the store or maybe you are doing heirloom tomatoes and you’ve harvested your own seeds from last year’s crop.
And you plant those seeds in your seed starters and they begin to sprout. You tenderly care for them. You you water them. You keep them warm. And when it’s finally warm enough outside, you take them outside. You plant them in the ground. You you stake them. You prune them. You weed them.
You continue to water and feed them. Soon you get a whole bunch of blooms. Many of those blooms will turn into these green little balls that grow.
And you sit there and you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait. Eventually one of them starts to ripen and it turns red or purple or yellow, whatever, whatever type of tomato that you have there. And you are excited. And one of the reasons that you are excited is because you know that if this one is going to ripen. A lot more will ripen as well.
That’s first fruits, brothers and sisters. What Paul says is that Jesus rose first. He was glorified first. And when he returns, those who believe in him will be glorified as well.
Jesus is the assurance. His resurrection is the assurance that you and I will experience the glorified, resurrected life.
A preacher that I regularly listen to passed away several years ago. And as he was stepping away from the pulpit, he had a cancer diagnosis. In his one of his farewell sermons kind of centered around that and centered around the hope that he had. And in the midst of talking about the hope that he had in the middle of his cancer diagnosis, he told a story of a lady that he used to visit on a regular basis.
And this lady suffered for years with pain and illness. It was a chronic condition that she suffered from. And this minister sat before her one day and he said, “I asked her, I said, doesn’t it hurt? Doesn’t it ever get you down?” He said that she looked up at him and said, “Oh, pastor, it’s nothing that my resurrection won’t cure forever.”
That’s the hope that we have because Jesus has raised from the dead and whatever you and I suffer in this world, it may be financial problems. It may be relational problems. It may be problems that we created on our own because we made bad decisions.
Whatever we suffer in this world, we can know that it is temporary and short lived because our savior has risen from the dead.
CONCLUSION
Why spend so much time on all of this? First, we need to be reminded of this over and over and over again. Paul talks about it throughout almost all of his letters, the hope that he has in the resurrection, the hope that he wants us to have in the resurrection, the power that comes to us from the cross and the resurrection.
But we need the reminder that the worst that can happen to us in this world. Sickness, persecution, whatever, the worst that the world can do to the child of God is usher them into the presence of God. But secondly, we also need to beware.
I talked earlier about the idea that the denial of the resurrection can creep into churches. The denial of the resurrection can creep into churches because oftentimes churches want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want the culture to accept them.
So they say, yeah, it’s a scientific impossibility. So, yeah, Jesus is still in a cave or a box somewhere in the Middle East and we may or may never find his bones. But they want to be able to proclaim a spiritual resurrection, that Jesus is raised from the dead.
As long as you love your neighbor, as you love yourself or as long as you help the poor or as long as you live a life of humility. Well, then Jesus is raised in your heart. Once that takes root in a church, brothers and sisters, it is almost impossible to get out.
You have to know that if I ever say anything like that, you need to run me out on rails. If any minister stands in this pulpit and says something like that, their time needs to be short in this pulpit. Because without a truly raised Jesus, we are without hope.
Our hope is rooted and grounded in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus. Your salvation depends upon it.
Let’s pray.
To the great God above who has given life in this world, we ask that you would drive home to us the truth and the hope of the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May those words, I believe that on the third day he rose again from the dead, not just be words. But may they be our rallying cry.
May they be our hope in this sin darkened world. Lord, may we share the light of Jesus resurrection with those who come across our paths, in our homes, in our workplaces, in the community.
We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
As you go this week, take this blessing upon you. Please notice that this blessing is linked to the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
“Now, may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will. And may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.”
He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
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