Amen. What a hopeful thought that is. All the earth will fear our God. Well, would you take your Bibles again and turn with me to 1 Corinthians and chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Let's ask for God's help. Oh Lord, we pray that as we look into your word, that we would do so with humility and expectancy. And Lord, we pray now that you would provide for us and that you would speak to us through me, that you would use me as an instrument but that our minds and hearts might be focused upon you, hearing from you, and receiving what you have for us. And we ask these things through Christ, amen. 1 Corinthians 15, beginning in the first verse. Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preach to you. which also you received, and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas, then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by over 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that, he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then, last of all, He was seen by me also as one born out of due time, for I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy 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 towards me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believe. Central to Christianity is the gospel. Whether you're a seasoned Christian or you're just new to the faith, you will immediately recognize that, won't you? You've heard this word gospel many, many times, and you know that it's central to the faith. You might even know that it means good news. That's what gospel means. It means good news. And in this case, it's good news about Jesus Christ and what he has done. It is what a Christian must know. What a Christian must love, embrace, proclaim, and defend. It is truth that sets free. It is the power of God to salvation for everyone he believes. It shapes how we ought to live our lives. It is the means by which we come to know, enjoy, and glorify our God, the one and only true and living God. And this sermon this morning is about an experimental commitment to the gospel, an experimental commitment to the gospel. Now, that word experimental might need a little explanation. We're not talking about doing an experiment in the lab, and we're not talking about saying, well, I'm going to experiment here. I will commit to the gospel for a little bit and see how it goes, and then decide how it works out. that's not what we're talking about. It's an older way of talking about a true living out or experience with the things that we talk about. So it's not just intellectual, it's not just far off or out there, but it's something that actually enters into our life and we interact with really truly in what we do and say and how we live and how we think. And that's what I want to talk with you to proclaim to you this morning. If you have a Bible in front of you, look with me at the passage which I just read. It's structured like a sammage. So in verses one to two, Paul is appealing to the Corinthians to persevere in their commitment to the gospel that he has communicated to them. And then in the center, verses three to eight, we've got the content and the proof of that gospel. So he's first of all saying, continue, persevere in your commitment to it. This is what it is. And then at the end, he comes full circle and in verses nine to 11, And he's giving his own example of perseverance by the grace of God, and his perseverance not only in the faith, but also in communicating that gospel to others, including the Corinthians. What we see here are three things coming out of this text. First, it gives us a wonderful summary of the content of the gospel. It's a really helpful place to go to to understand what we're talking about here. And then in the outer frame, we have this emphasis on commitment to it. And in the outer frame, we also have an emphasis on the communication of the gospel. In 1 Corinthians so far, Paul has been addressing a number of issues like division, immorality and relationships, Christian liberty, public worship, and in each area, the Corinthians were too much like this world. The answer was always to live for and through Christ. That's what Paul has been pulling the Corinthians back to all throughout the book. and all of this now climaxes in Paul's treatment of the resurrection. You see, worldly intellectualism was posing a threat to the Corinthians' commitment to the gospel. The resurrection is the linchpin of the gospel, but that is exactly what was being attacked in Corinth. Look at verse 12. You see, Greek intellectualism prioritized spirit and intellect over matter and body. The resurrection, which centers around the renewal, recovery, everlastingly of people who are both bodies and souls, that was anathema to the Greek intellectuals. Remember the reaction of some of the scholars at Athens when Paul proclaimed to them the resurrection. Do you remember? They mocked him. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, they mocked. And because of that same worldly pressure, some of the Corinthians were beginning to deny the resurrection of the dead. And Paul saw it for what it was. It was an attack on the gospel. No resurrection, no resurrection of Christ. No resurrection of Christ, no gospel. No gospel, no salvation, no salvation, no hope. And this is why he begins this new section of the book on the resurrection by going back to the gospel, going back to its content, going back to its communication, going back to a commitment to it. So this morning, my title is Gospel Commitment, and my points, you may already be able to guess, they are content, communication, and commitment. Content, communication, and commitment. So if we think, first of all, about the content of the gospel in verses three to eight, we see that it can be summarized in four basic statements. Christ died for our sins, He was buried, He rose again, and He was seen. Now these are four basic statements, but they're really two couplets. So we have statement one and three accompanied by the phrase according to the scriptures. and the statements that follow one and three, that's two and four, they give a proof of the statement in front of them. So Christ's death is proved by his burial. His resurrection is proved by those who saw him. And that proof is greatly expanded because the resurrection is the theme of this section. In form, this is probably an early creed. Paul is probably referencing a summary of gospel truth that the church had. And that's one of the reasons why we recite creeds in our morning service. But I want you to notice four things about the content of the gospel here. The first is that it is all centered on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is Christ who died. It is Christ who was buried. It is Christ who rose. And it's Christ who was seen. The gospel is all about who Christ is and what he has done. And if we're gonna say anything about the gospel, we have to always remember that it's centered in him. It's not just some idea. It's not just some system of thoughts. It's all about a person. It's all about the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel centers on Christ. But the second thing is that the gospel in its content deals with the problem of sin. What is man's biggest problem? Now there's all sorts of different answers to that, right, in our culture. Some people think it might be economic. Some people might think it might have to do with ecology and the environment. Some people think it might have to do with lack of education. or opportunity, many, many different things people might think are problems for mankind. But scripturally speaking, and in reality, our biggest problem is sin. We are creatures of God. Remember Psalm 100. That's fundamentally what we are. We didn't make ourselves. We didn't create ourselves. We owe our very life to someone else, to God Himself, and we are accountable to Him who is our Creator and Judge. brings us into difficulty with our Creator because it is disobeying Him or failing to live up to His standard. and it comes out of a heart of pride, seeking to make ourselves God, to make ourselves the ones who decide what's right and wrong, and the ones who can arrange our lives as we like it. That's why, or one of the reasons why this assisted suicide bill is so terrible, because it's people saying, I'm not gonna submit to God, I'm gonna decide when I die. So we see that sin is disobeying God, failing to live up to his standards, and it is coming out of this heart of pride. And it affects all that we do with our head, how we think about God, how we think about others, how we think about this world, those thoughts that we don't think, but we ought to think. Things like God has given us this great gift, or this beautiful scene that we're seeing in nature is God's handiwork. Sometimes we don't think these things, but we ought to. So it affects what we do with our heads, it affects what we do with our hearts, what we love or hate, what we are, bitter about, and what we don't love, and what we don't hate. It affects what we do with our mouths, what we say and what we don't say, and it affects what we do with our hands, what we do and what we don't do. And the Bible says the wages of sin is death. If sin is your way of living, if you're in opposition to God, then what you're gonna get is death, because that is how God has designed things. That is, in this life, you will die physically, but there will also be all sorts of dysfunction and misery in this life, all sorts of sorrow, emptiness, all sorts of consequences, broken relationships, difficulty, all sorts of consequences in this life and then forever and ever and ever in hell where God judges sin with no end. Naturally, the Bible tells us we are slaves to sin. We present our bodies to do what it commands us to do, and we're ruled by sin. And this is our greatest problem, because we are creatures. We ought to be presenting ourselves to God for his glory and enjoying him, and instead, we rebel against him. But the good news of the gospel is that God has done something about that situation. Where there is dysfunction and separation in our relationship with God, he has done something about that. Where we can expect to only receive his just anger and wrath, he has done something about that. where when we look into the future, all that we naturally could anticipate is the fearful expectation of judgment. He's done something about that. What has he done about that? Jesus Christ. Remember, he's at the center of the gospel. He's sent into this world his very own son, his only begotten son, who took on a real human body and soul to become like one of us and to take the penalty of death that each one of us deserves for our rebellion against an infinite God. And because he is fully God, he can fully use up all of God's wrath, infinite wrath against him. He can drink it up. And because he's fully man, he can do it as a man. God couldn't die for men. but a man could, a perfect man. And so he sent his son into this world to live perfectly with his head, with his heart, with his mouth, and with his hands. He sent Jesus Christ to reconcile sinners like you and me to himself. Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. But the good news of the gospel doesn't end there. The second half of it is that he was raised from the dead. And this is partially, in the grand scheme of salvation, this proves that Jesus' sacrifice for sin was accepted because he didn't stay in the grave, he was raised. It inaugurates new life. so that now the Holy Spirit can be given to people who were formerly rebels against God, and they can be made new. It's also the deposit of the restoration of all things. God isn't only interested in restoring individual souls, but he is interested, ultimately, in restoring this whole universe, in restoring peoples, in restoring government and institutions, and in restoring all things. And one day all of that will come to completion when He comes again. But now we have this new life spiritually. One day we shall have it physically when our bodies too are restored. Now we have increasing victory over sin because of the resurrection. One day we shall have the complete absence of sin in our lives because of the resurrection. One day we shall fully participate in the new creation. Today, we are to seek to exalt Christ in every area of life and to work for His glory. One day, He shall reign absolutely unopposed. That's what the resurrection means. New life for us individually, new life for this entire world. bringing it back to being under the lordship of God. Bringing it back to what it ought to be and better. And this gospel is something that is reasonable to believe. And that's what is the point here when it says that it's according to the scriptures. Paul is saying that God has been promising one who would die and one who would defeat the devil and get rid of all the effects of sin. He's been promising that for a long, long time, and now he followed through. He proved that he wasn't just gonna promise, but he was gonna follow through. Remember back in Genesis chapter three, verse 15, There was one promised who would defeat the devil and all that he had done to destroy this world. Remember, in Isaiah 53, we're told that there would be one who would be a sacrifice for sin, an offering for sin, who would be bruised for our transgressions. But it says, therefore I will divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul unto death and he was numbered with the transgressors and he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. So not only was he gonna die, but he was going to reign and be raised up in glory. Or Psalm 16, where the resurrection of Christ is foretold. For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption. In the words of one theologian, the prophetic scriptures, however, are full of this doctrine. For on the one hand, they predict the suffering and death of the Messiah, and on the other hand, his universal, perpetual dominion. What this is saying is all of the scriptures leading up to Christ were promising in one way or another a Savior and a King, one who would die for sins and one who would rise again to restore all things. And now, God has provided. In your own life, when you see someone who promises something and then they follow through and they do it, you know it's reasonable to trust them, right? That's the kind of friend you want to have because you can rely on them. Their word is their bond. And what this is saying is that God is reliable. It's reasonable to trust him when he says that Christ died for our sins and he rose him from the dead because he's been faithful to his word. He said it, he promised it, and he did it. But more than that, it's reasonable because there's lots of evidence to support it. Sometimes we have sort of a bias against ancient things. We think they were a bit backwards back then and couldn't have possibly gotten it right. But just think for a minute about the mountain of evidence there is in our text for the resurrection. Sometimes people go to prison or have all sorts of punishments put upon them on the testimony of just a few witnesses. But what do we have here? We have the witness of Cephas and then of the 12, but it's not as if it's just the closest associates of Christ. People would say, well, maybe they're biased. I mean, there's all sorts of reasons why that's not true. They wouldn't have died martyrs' deaths. It's not something that could easily be fabricated. But maybe people could have said these inner circle of Christ were biased, but 500 people? How do you get 500 people to go along with a lie like the resurrection and to do that under difficulty and persecution? It doesn't happen. And then it's not only these 500, but James and last of all, Paul himself. There is a multitude of witnesses to the resurrection. And probably some of these, like James and Paul, are added in here because the Corinthians would have known them personally. And so their weight comes from either them knowing them personally or them being particular leaders in the church who the Corinthians would trust. But the point is that there's lots of evidence. And that remains true today. No one has ever been able to disprove the resurrection. When we proclaim the gospel, we're not asking people to take some blind leap into the dark. We're asking them to believe things that are eminently reasonable because God has proved that he does what he says and because he has provided irrefutable evidence for the truth of what he says. So the basic content of the gospel is that Christ died for sin and that he rose again. And we see that the gospel is all centered on Christ, it deals with the problem of sin, but it goes beyond that and it talks about the restoration of all things in the resurrection of Christ. And that it is reasonable to believe. And that should convict us. that this really is true. That whatever our situation this morning, we have to deal with this fact that God is God, we by nature are sinners, and that the only hope that we have is the death of Christ. If you're not in Christ this morning, the fact that your sin is still on you, should be a serious concern to you. The fact that you will one day stand before this God and you have no covering for your sin should make you quake in fear. But the gospel says you need not end there. There is a comfort. There's a comfort for each one of us who has placed our trust in Christ. And that is that he has taken that penalty that we deserve. And more than that, that he's not only just taken the penalty that we deserve, but God is winning. We sometimes are tempted to be discouraged when we look at politics, when we look at our culture, we look at all sorts of things, but we have to remember that Christ is risen, that Christ is exalted to the right hand of God the Father, that all authority in heaven and on earth is his, and that he is winning. There's great comfort in the gospel. And there should also be great confidence God is faithful to his word. Our faith is reasonable. We don't go out there proclaiming something that people have to check their brains out to believe. Yes, it's supernatural, but it's reasonable. So here is the content of the gospel. Christ died and he rose again. But the second thing that's emphasized in our text is the communication of that gospel. And it's clear that it's communicated verbally. So look with me at verse one. Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel. And look at verse 11. Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach. Remember what Christ did when he left this earth. He entrusted his people with the verbal proclamation of the gospel. Matthew 28, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Or Mark 16, and he said to them, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. This message is to be proclaimed verbally. And that's why the verbal proclamation of the gospel has to be central to everything the church does. We might do all sorts of things. But if anything ever encroaches on the centrality of the vergal proclamation of the gospel, we've got something massively wrong. We cannot spread the gospel just by our actions or by our influence. These things, of course, are very important. but at the center of all of it has to be this proclamation. And so we should pray, pray for the proclamation of the gospel from this pulpit, pray for the proclamation of the gospel from the pulpits all around this city, this nation, pray for ourselves as we speak words about Christ and his death and resurrection to our neighbors and our friends and our family. We should remember that this proclamation is a proclamation. It comes with authority. This is not just sharing a nice thought or inviting people to something that they can either refuse or not. This verbal declaration is authoritative. Paul says, I declare to you the gospel. God's ministers and God's people Do not go cap in hand to people begging them to accept the gospel. We go out there saying Christ is Lord, He expects you to bow the knee, and He's provided a way for you to do that. Don't go to judgment, don't ignore Him, bow before Him because He is merciful and gracious. This verbal proclamation is authoritative. And this is a verbal proclamation, it's a communication which must be received. Do you notice Paul didn't only proclaim it to the Corinthians, but they received it. And receiving here is not just intellectual, but it is experiential, or experimental as I said earlier. It requires repentance. It requires seeing that you are an enemy of God and turning from that. It requires truly resting in Christ, not just knowing that he died for sins, not even just agreeing that he died for sins, but resting in Him for the sins that you commit and which ought to send you to hell. It is receiving Christ through repentance and faith. And you will only do that if you have a true sight of your sin. If you see it as being terrible, that you who have been given life and breadth and every good thing by this God, by nature, just wants to do things your own way. It's bad enough when a child is provided with all sorts of things by their parents and yet they just want to arrange their life however they want to do it and do things their own way. And the ingratitude is jarring, isn't it? But how much worse is it when we do that to the God of the universe? How much worse is it when we do it to the God who's given us even the very breaths that we're taking this very moment on whom we rely every moment of every day. You must have a sight of your sin and therefore you must come to hate it. And not only must you have a sight of your sin, not only must you hate it, but then you must have a sight of Christ and see that He's not only a Savior, He not only saves some people, but He is your Savior. You must go to him and plead with him for that assurance. You must go to him and plead with him to apply his death to you. This gospel is a verbal proclamation, it comes with authority, it must be received with repentance and true saving faith, and it leads to salvation. Verse two, by which also you are saved. What's your relationship to the gospel this morning? Do you just think it's interesting information? Maybe you've heard it a thousand times, and it's just commonplace to you. It fails to stir you to thanksgiving, to wonder that God would reconcile his enemies to himself, that God would actually himself take the penalty that you and I deserve. What's your relationship to the gospel this morning? Is it something that your heart sees your own need of and embraces afresh, whether you've embraced it before or not? We must receive this gospel, all of us. And we must prioritize the proclamation of Christ We must never let, in this church, that verbal proclamation of the gospel become second place. And if you ever feel like it is, come immediately and speak to the elders. We must pray for the proclamation of the gospel. We see the content of the gospel, we see its communication through the verbal proclamation of it, But then finally, what Paul is exhorting these Corinthians to is a commitment to the gospel, to stand, to stand in this gospel, to hold fast to it. Verse two, by which also you are saved if you hold fast that word which I preach to you unless you believed in vain. What he's saying here is not that true believers can fall away. Christ says in John 10, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. But brothers and sisters, friends, there is a type of belief that is not worked by the Holy Spirit, that is self-generated, that is intellectual only, that is not truly resting in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is a vain belief because it doesn't really connect with Christ at all. Remember the parable of the sower. The seed going out on the ground represents the proclamation of the gospel that we've been seeing. And some of that seed goes on stony places, which represents those who have no root in themselves. Faith hasn't been worked in them by the Holy Spirit. They might receive it with joy, but it's all worked up by themselves. And so when tribulation or persecution arrives, they fall away. Or likewise, the seed goes out and it goes amongst the thorns and the plant seems to spring up, but it's choked out. It's choked out by the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches. Because again, it was self-generated. It wasn't worked by the Holy Spirit of God. There is a faith like that. And what this passage is saying is Christ is presented in the gospel as the only way of salvation. Think about it this way. Imagine a woman who doesn't know how to swim and she falls into some deep water and a man sees this and he dives in and he seeks to save her, to bring her out of the water from drowning. If she holds on, then she will be brought out and saved and imagined further for the sake of the illustration that they fall in love and he marries her and then he brings her into a life that she could never have imagined before. That's what Christ does for us. He not only rescues us from the danger of our sin, but He brings us out of that and He gives us fullness of life. But she has to hold on. Now, of course, the illustration isn't perfect because we not only hold on to Christ, He holds on to us. But the idea is if we don't hold on, then we show that we weren't His in the first place, that we didn't have faith that was generated by the Holy Spirit, but rather was self-generated. And we are not to live in sort of a morbid introspection, always wondering, do I have that faith or do I not? What we're called to do is to fix our minds and hearts more fully on Christ. because he is the only way of salvation. What good are you gonna do if you are wondering whether you're Christ or not? What good are you gonna do if you constantly look at yourself? You can't save yourself. The very problem if your faith proved to be just self-generated would be that it's all from yourself. So what you need to do is look away from yourself. and hold more fully to Christ. That is what Paul is calling the Corinthians to do. And this commitment to the gospel is not just about something you did years ago when you prayed a prayer or made a confession of faith, but it's about what you're doing every day when you wake up. It's not about if you have your membership card or not in a church or in the kingdom of God more broadly. It's about are you walking with Christ day by day. It's about where you are right now with Christ. And Paul, in verses nine to 10, he gives himself as an example of what it looks like to hold more fully to Christ. He says, for I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy 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 towards me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all. Yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me. Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believe. Paul comes to this with humility and says, I don't deserve anything. In fact, it is a wonder that I'm even a Christian. Because I wasn't just an enemy of God, I was enemy number one. I persecuted the church of God. And yet God, in his undeserved mercy and grace towards me, changed me. and brought me to himself. And he's made me not just a Christian, but he's made me an apostle to lead his church, to be part of its foundation, to expand its boundaries all over the Mediterranean. And so Paul comes to this from a position of humility. He says, I know that I deserve nothing. I know that if I do anything for Christ, if I persevere at all, it will all be because of God's work in me. And yet, that doesn't make me sit back and do nothing. It makes me serve him all the more. because I'm in wonder, I'm in awe of this God who would be so, so good to me. And that's what our attitude must be as well. That's the way to stir up your commitment to the gospel of Christ. The Corinthians, were in danger of straying from the gospel because they were being tempted by this Greek intellectualism. But that need not be the issue for you. In what way is your commitment to Christ endangered? Is it through the responsibilities and busyness of this life? Is it through familiarity? You just see it as so commonplace, you don't wonder at it anymore. Is it because you care too much about the approval of others? And you need not be on the verge of apostasy, but maybe your sense of the sweetness of Christ is lessening. Maybe your sense of the hope that you have in Christ, the hope that we as his people have in him as the resurrected Savior and King is lessening. How should you seek to stand? Well, you should first of all, remember your own sin. Again, not for morbid purposes, but because it will show you the greatness of the grace of God. And as you remember all the reasons why you should not be His, but are, your zeal for him, your love for him will be renewed, and your desire to serve him will be strengthened. Through the gospel we are saved, brothers and sisters, if we hold fast that word which was preached to us, unless we believe in vain. But just like Paul, your believing, your service to Christ and his people will not be in vain if in humility you continue to meditate on the grace you have been given and wonder at the God who's given you that grace. Central to Christianity is this gospel, this good news about the Lord Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins to reconcile us to God, that he rose again And if you're not a believer this morning, you need to take this seriously because this is your only means of life. Your sins will destroy you if you do not run to Christ. But Christ will have you if you run to him. If you're a Christian, you need to know this gospel, to love it afresh, to embrace it afresh, to proclaim it and defend it. You need to grow in wonder that you of all people have been made a son or daughter of the most high God. that you might love him all the more and serve him all the more faithfully. Let's pray. Lord God, we pray that our faith would not be in vain. Those are fearful words, Lord, but let them drive us back to your son, for in him true safety is found. He will not let one of his weak lambs perish. But if we are full of him, he will hold us fast to the end. So Lord God, make us full of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Humble us as we see our own sin. and give us a wonder that that sin is paid for, that that sin is being destroyed in sanctification, and that sin will one day be completely taken from us in our glorification. Oh Lord, we don't deserve it, but you are gracious. Help us to commit afresh to you. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Please take your hymnals and turn with me to hymn 483. Hymn 483, we have a gospel to proclaim.