For our scripture reading this evening, I'd like to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We're gonna read the first 19 verses together. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse one through 19. It's page 1152 in the Pew Bible. Once again, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse one, page 1152 in the Pew Bible. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, and which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12. After that, he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James and to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles and not fit 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 did not prove vain, but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed. Now, if Christ has preached that he has been raised from the dead, how does some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there's no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain. Your faith also is vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You're still in your sins. And then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. Would you join me in prayer? Oh, our gracious Lord, thank you so much for this wonderful chapter and the things that we're going to learn in it. Things that will be reminded of and taught again to think through how wonderful your resurrection is and the guarantee that we too will share in that resurrection. Thank you, Lord. We look forward to what you have for us in this chapter in Jesus name. Amen. Please be seated. I decided to go ahead and start it tonight. I'm not going to get much more than a few verses into it and then I'll pick it back up on January 7th when we come back for the next evening service. At least that's the plan. If you. If you're a devout Muslim. You might go to the tomb of Mohammed in Medina. You could very easily look at that if you'd like to. There's pretty good pictures of it on the internet. You can find what it looks like. I don't know if non-Muslims, if they allow you to go there or not, but the Muslims can visit it. Buddhists, they can visit the tomb of Buddha. I was going to look that up where he's at. I'm sorry, I didn't. I forgot. But you can go there and you can visit him, the tomb. Another really weird one. The ancient Egyptians had a god named Osiris who was dead, but he's always pictured being propped up by the prayers of his followers. They'd always follow around and they're always praying and trying to prop him up and it's so weird. But he was a dead god. Every other religion has a leader that died and is buried. Where would you go to visit the tomb of Jesus? That truth sets apart Christianity from every other religion. Who's the oldest man in the Bible? Well, there was a time when if you asked me that question, my hand would have shot up and I would have said, Methuselah, 969 years. And I would have been wrong. No, Methuselah is Jesus. He's at least 2,000 years old now and counting. He will never die. He's always alive and he ever will be. We serve a risen Savior. We sing about that at resurrection time. Of course, now we're celebrating his birth, but that's okay. I'm going to celebrate his resurrection tonight. We come here to church to worship and praise him and to glorify his name. He's truly the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And this evening, I wanna start by asking one question, which we'll be talking about next time too in January 7th. How do we know he's alive? How do we know he's alive? Well, let's look at the apostles' arguments from 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I assume you're already there. I'm just gonna be looking at through verse five tonight. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and which also you stand, but which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas then to the twelve. We're going to be looking at the testimony Tonight, the testimony of the church and the scriptures, and then next time, the testimony of many witnesses, so you can be sure of the gospel you believe. This is almost a two-part message, really. Be sure of the gospel which you believe. Be sure because of the testimony of the church. The testimony of the church. Consider with me the nature of the testimony. When someone gives testimony, they're giving proof of what they witnessed and know to be true. If you witnessed a crime, you might be called upon to tell the court exactly what you saw. The most powerful testimony is eyewitness testimony when a person swears before the court of what they've personally seen. This section of the text is full of eyewitness testimony. I'm not going to quite get to it tonight. Verse five is the first when it says he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve, but I'm going to focus on the verses just before that tonight. There are other witnesses who can tell of the effect something has had in their life, and that's the first kind of testimony we're going to look at this evening. If you and I give a testimony, we're telling others exactly what Jesus did in our hearts, and a valid testimony should include what he's doing in each one of our hearts even today. That's not something that happened a long time ago, and when you were saved, it's something that's going on right now in your life, even today. It's a very much a valid type of testimony, and that's what Paul is reminding the church of in these first verses. the testimony of the church. The Corinthians themselves had a testimony. Again, let's look at verse one and two. I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, which also you received, and which also you stand, by which also you are saved. if you hold fast the word which I preached to you unless you believed in vain." Again, he calls them brethren, which implies brothers or fellow believers. He says, I make known to you the gospel which I preached to you, the gospel which you received, the gospel on which you stand, the gospel by which you are saved. Basically, he's saying to them, you guys know this evidence because you yourselves experienced it. The gospel which I declared to you, you yourselves have fully experienced it. You're born again. You've been saved by Christ. You felt the power of his resurrection. You know this yourselves. Now we need a course to recognize the qualifier that's here in this verse. He says, he's basically saying only genuine believers are gonna know this, not those who have believed in vain. The scriptures press upon us the need to be born again. And never does the Bible say that a person can become unborn again. Never seen that. Once you're regenerate, you're always regenerate. He doesn't ever unregenerate somebody. Once the heart is changed, it's changed. This is what we call a perseverance of the saints. Real believers that genuinely love the Lord will continue to love the Lord and follow him. It's a warning against those who would fall away. You're saved if you hold fast the word which I preach to you, he says. So that's the qualifier. Will you hold fast the word which I preach to you? You're saved, born again. The evidence of that is holding fast the word. Paul said something similar in Romans 11, 22. He says, Behold then the kindness and severity of God to those who fell severity, but to you, God's kindness. And again, he says, if you continue in his kindness, otherwise you also will be cut off, he says. So the idea is this perseverance, this continued belief. Belief, whenever I, it seems like it's usually a present tense verb. It's a verb that means a current state of mind. It's not something, well, I believed in Jesus 40 years ago, or when I was four years old. For me, probably a little more than 40 years ago, but never mind that. Yeah, I believed when I was four. Well, do you believe now? Is it something that you are fully convinced of now? Do you have a relationship with Christ right now? Is he your Lord and your master and you wanna serve him? And is this something that's fully in your heart? The testimony of the church is that we've experienced the effects of the gospel and we continue to experience those effects. We know Christ is alive because we hold fast the word of God which was preached to us and that word continues to affect us even today. The church, the true church, the real church of all ages is a witness that Jesus Christ is alive. Okay, be sure the gospel which you have believed because of the testimony of the church. Now secondly, be sure because of the testimony of the scriptures. the primacy of the message. Be sure, because of the testimony of the scriptures, look at how important this is, verse three. For I delivered to you, as of first importance, what I also received. That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. For I delivered to you, it was a special delivery. Paul says, I delivered to you. I declared what I received. God gave Paul the message, and Paul faithfully delivered it. He said, I delivered it as of first importance. That's important to think about. This is a prime thing. It's the foremost thing. It's like if I said to you now, now this is really, really important. You've got to pay attention to this. This is vital. It's of first importance. It's a prime. What is it? What did Paul deliver that's of such prime importance that he had also received? He says that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised from the dead. Paul's saying this is the foremost thing, the primost thing, the center of the gospel. I've asked people in the past, I told you this not too long ago, why are you saved? Why do you think you're saved? And sometimes they have no idea. Oh, I don't know. Asked a lady one time, why do you think you're, I was, her mom was about to die and she was unable to speak. She was, what do you say, comatose? Anyway, she was near death. And I said, why do you think your mom is saved? Well, we said the Lord's Prayer together last week. I was like, wow. That's one of those that's hard to deal with as a pastor. If someone asks you, why do you believe you're saved? There should be no hesitation in your heart. Well, it's because of what Jesus did. He died on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins. There should be no question in your mind. He lived a perfectly righteous life that gets credit in my account. I'm counting on him alone. He's the only reason that I'm gonna be right with God. It's just because of what he did. By the way, if you poured over this in Greek and spent hours of study on the words here, do you know what you find? Do you know what it means? It means he died. that Christ died for our sins. Means he died. Paul was saying here that the testimony of the scriptures is that Jesus died for our sins. He was also buried. Well, that's what you do with dead people. You bury them. Jesus went to the tomb. The son of God laid down his life on the cross. His body was indeed a corpse. No longer any life in it. The Roman soldiers were experts at figuring out if people were dead or not. Can you imagine what it would have been like for a centurion to go back to his commanding officer and tell him that somebody's dead and they really weren't? That would have probably cost him his head. They knew Jesus was dead. They were sure of it. He was buried in the tomb. And I don't want anybody here to make any mistake about it. The death was real. He was most certainly, fully, completely dead. And you think, well, pastor, why are you making such a big deal out of this? Because one of my friends came to work one day. Now, this was probably 30 years ago. And before seminary, before all this, before I understood a lot of things. But he said, that his pastor had preached that Sunday. In an effort to make the gospel more believable, he taught the congregation that one of the theories is that Christ simply slipped into a coma, and when he hit the coolness of the tomb, it revived him and he came back to life. That was a Lutheran church. I was stunned. I thought, why would anybody believe that? Well, like all churches, there's some conservative and some liberal, and it's at that time was a very liberal church, unfortunately. It was almost 30 years ago, and I still can't get over the sheer horror of a pastor teaching something like that to his congregation. That goes against everything in the scriptures. It's just absolutely not true. It defies the testimony of the scriptures. Jesus was dead. He was buried. And on the third day, he came back to life. He was raised from the dead. So why is that important? Well, let's think about that a little bit. In past sermons, I've talked about the demons that left the swine. Remember when Jesus cast out the demon out of the men? He left the men, I'm sorry, and they entered the pigs, remember? Why did that happen? Jesus was showing in a very visible way what was going on. How about the paralytic? The guy is lame. And what did Jesus say? Your sins are forgiven. Take up your pallet and walk. Why did he do that? So that the people around him could see very clearly that he had the power, the right as the son of God to forgive sins. It's a very visible thing. Why did Jesus come back from the grave? The reason he came back from the grave was to demonstrate to all for all time that God was completely, completely satisfied with the sacrifice. See, Christ's resurrection ensures our regeneration. It's a sure thing. Peter talks about it. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our living hope, resurrection from the dead. What's he saying? What's he saying? He's telling us, if you're a born-again believer in Christ, you have hope because of Christ's resurrection. Again, Paul said in Ephesians 1.18, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believed These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought about in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. The riches of the glory of the inheritance of the saints. The surpassing greatness of his power toward us. This is in accordance. With the strength which brought about Jesus resurrection from the dead. That's quite a comparison. That's an amazing truth. The power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in each one of us. The same power that raised Jesus from the grave is at work in you with surpassing greatness. You have everything you need to live a victorious Christian life. The resurrection of Christ is all you need to look at. to understand what he has accomplished. So really, what are we waiting for? What are we waiting for? Christ's resurrection ensures our justification. If you're a believer in Christ, you have been completely pardoned. Your judge in heaven knows all things. He has granted you a total and complete pardon. That's what it means to be justified. It's not just as if I have never sinned. Don't ever think that. I had a professor spend some time talking to me about that once. It'd be like coming in after a hard day's work and showering and say, there, it's as if I never got dirty. Well, that wouldn't explain much about the soap and all the scrubbing it took to get you clean. To justify you from your sins, Christ had to do a tremendous work dying on the cross. Even now, he's constantly at work to sanctify us and continue the cleansing of sin. Paul says here in verse 3 that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. You might not remember this, but it's been a couple of years since I started Romans, but this was an important verse that we talked about, Romans 4.25. He who was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification. Raised because of our justification. When Jesus was raised God demonstrated His approval of the sacrifice of His Son. That's the supreme demonstration. Paul says in Ephesians 6 that every believer in Christ was raised with Him. So sure is your exaltation in Christ that Paul speaks of it as an accomplished fact. He's a high priest. He was raised and went into the Father's presence to the mercy seat and offered his own blood for you and me. And he's there now and forever to plead your case. He ever lives to be our intercessor. You have everything you need to believe that you've been justified by the blood of Christ. The resurrection of Jesus proves it. Why would we doubt? This is the testimony of the scriptures. Christ's resurrection ensures that we will receive perfect resurrection bodies. 2 Corinthians 4.14 says, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. Second John chapter two, or verse two, sorry. Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not yet appeared as yet what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we'll see him as he is. All these truths go back to the resurrection and how important that is. We don't serve a dead savior. We serve a living, wondrous Lord. Make no mistake, the resurrection of Jesus Christ guarantees to every believer that you will be raised up one day and given a perfect body, a never to die again body. Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you are guaranteed a perfect body if you are in him. That's the testimony of the scriptures. Again. I'm not going to. Repeat it. I've already said the caveat that's there. If you hold fast the word which I preach to you, Paul is already saying if you're a genuine believer, these things are true. Well, this evening we started our study of 1 Corinthians. We've looked at the testimony of the church. We've looked at the testimony of the scriptures. And next time, we will start looking at the testimony of people that were alive at the time. Cephas, the 12. Then he appeared to 500 brethren at one time. Then he appeared to James and all the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to the apostle Paul. So all of these host of witnesses we'll look at next time and realize There is so much evidence for the resurrection of Christ. It could have passed any court case. And I'll talk about that next time too. This evening we started this study of First Corinthians 15. We looked at the testimony of the church, the testimony of the scriptures, and I hope that this will be an exciting subject to think about. To go over again in your mind. Most of you have studied it before, but I always say it doesn't hurt to go over it again. Tell it to me one more time. All the promises of God and Christ are guaranteed to us in a real and living way because Jesus did not stay dead. He rose again from the dead. He's alive for now and for all eternity. He's alive. He prays for you. He works in you through the power of his Holy Spirit. That came up this morning, I think. Where would we be without the Holy Spirit? Where would there be any hope for us to turn from our sin or to do anything that would please God? We looked tonight and we were reminded of Ephesians and also here that the power that raised him from the dead is working in you, in the believer. tremendous truth. Be encouraged. Your Savior is alive. Let's go to him in prayer. Our gracious Lord, thank you so much for this evening. We thank you for this time that we can consider the beginning of this wonderful chapter on the resurrection. There's so much here. Thank you for the evidence, the demonstration of the truth that's behind all this. Thank you, Lord, for the evidence of the resurrection. We praise you. We want you to be glorified in Jesus' name. Amen.