A Story to Tell

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Transcript:

We do have a story to tell, as I mentioned earlier. We have a story to tell, and it’s our job. It’s not an option to tell that story.

It’s our job to tell that story. We’re going to talk this morning about what that story is. And as we study over the next few weeks about that story and about the job of telling it, there’s one thing I want to make clear, and Brother Ray alluded to this in Sunday school, and I never got to explain why I was so excited, but I nearly jumped up out of my chair and said, I’m glad you said that.

that he said it’s all of our job to preach. I thought that’s exactly right. I’m not asking you to raise your hand where we can see it, but in your mind, if that makes sense at all, in your mind, raise your hand.

If you are a born-again believer, you’ve trusted Christ, you know he’s your Savior, you know where you’re going if you die, you know why he should let you in there, I want you to raise your hand in your mind. You got them up if they need to go up? If your hand is up, you’ve been called to preach.

I know that’s a little shocking to some of you. You’ve been called to preach. I don’t mean necessarily called to preach like what I’m doing right here.

There are certain, God’s given me a specific calling to preach from here, but I don’t preach in general because I’m the pastor. I preach because I’m a Christian and he’s given us a story to tell. I did a little study just like I did on the word worship when we started that series.

I did a little study on the word preach and preaching and preacher and all forms of the word preach this week before I got started and couldn’t come up with three points out of the word preach and what it meant because all the words that it uses in Greek and Hebrew in the Bible all came back to one thing, to proclaim or to declare. One of the words was laleo, which means to make words. Can’t get much simpler than that.

If you can make words, that means to preach. Now, obviously, as a pastor, as a teacher, God’s given a specific calling, and that’s what we think of when we think of preaching. We think of what I’m doing right now.

And I know God has not called every one of you to do what I’m doing right now. But for each of us, we have a calling to go and make words. We have a calling to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ. We have a calling to preach Christ, and as the Bible says, to preach Christ crucified.

To tell the world what it is that Christ did for them. If you’ll turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 this morning, We’re going to go through this material fairly quickly. We’ve got a lot to cover and a short time to do it, but that’s all right.

I’ve been encouraged this morning by the music and by the testimonies and everything else that’s gone on here. You’ll notice in your bulletin there are quite a few notes. The good news on that is it seems like when I have fewer notes to go on and I’m just extemporaneously preaching, I preach longer.

When I stick to a lot of notes, we get through it more quickly. So we’ll see if that holds true today. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 1 says, Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain.

And what he’s telling them there is he’s giving them a refresher course on what the gospel is, the gospel that he’d already preached to them, the gospel by which they were saved. And he tells them to keep these things in mind. And so it’s a reminder to the church at Corinth, which if you know anything about the book of 1 Corinthians, they were a church in chaos, in turmoil.

There was sin, there was division, there was bitterness between people, there were factions, there was heresy and false teaching. And folks, anything bad you can say about a church just about we see addressed in the book of 1 Corinthians. And he tells them the thing that they need to remember, the thing that will get them back to where they need to be is to remember the gospel.

Because for some of the people in the church, I’m sure based on some of the things they were doing, probably were not saved and they needed to hear the gospel. Some of the people needed to be reminded that their life was not their own, that Christ had died for them and paid for them. They were bought with a price and they needed to be reminded of the gospel.

Some of them probably had time to be fighting and have factions and all these things because they weren’t out doing the work they were supposed to be doing and they needed to be reminded of the gospel. And so he tells them, moreover brethren, Here’s the gospel I’ve preached to you and you’ve received and wherein ye stand and by which you’re saved. And he says, keep these things in memory.

In verse 3, he explains what the gospel is in two short verses. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received. And by the way, I think I’ve told you about this verse before and what it means.

When he says what I received, Paul had not received the gospel second hand. Now, it’s no less credible for me to tell you what the gospel is when I received it well into double digits. The gospel, when I got saved, my mother shared it with me.

I heard it before at church, and that got me under conviction. And then my mother shared it with me, and I got saved at our kitchen table. And somebody led her to Christ, and somebody led that man to Christ, and so on and so forth for about 2,000 years.

Doesn’t make it any less true, but it adds a little extra believability in people’s minds that Paul hadn’t heard this message second-hand. He’d heard the gospel from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself. Paul had an experience with the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus.

And what he said, he didn’t hear second-hand. He says, I preached, I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received. How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. about four different points we could make there, that it was Christ, the Son of God, we’re going to get into that, that He died, He literally did die, He died for our sins, and He did it in accordance with what the Bible said He would do. And that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures.

And that’s the Gospel. He goes on for the next couple of verses, and just in case they don’t take His word for it, He says, and then was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, that would be Peter and the twelve, apostles. After that he was seen of above 500 brethren at once of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

And after that he was seen of James and then of all the apostles. And then, and last of all, he was seen of me as one born out of due season, for I am the least of the apostles that am not meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. And so he makes the case that there would be people who would say, and there are people who say today just as there were back in Jesus’ day and in the Apostles’ day, that that story about him dying and coming back from the dead, that couldn’t possibly have happened.

But he says he was not only seen, he was seen by over 500 people, crowds of over 500 people who saw him, and many of whom were still alive, and if it hadn’t happened the way Paul said it happened, they would have been there to correct the story. And just in case anybody dared say that they were mistaken, how would they really know it was him risen from the dead? he was seen of the 12 people who knew him best in the world.

And so all these people who were still alive that day said, yes, it happened just like that. Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and he was buried and he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Folks, we could spend days and days and days talking about the gospel.

We could write books and fill libraries on the implications of the gospel, And yet the gospel is also so simple that it can be summed up in these two verses. It’s an incredible thing that God did for us. It has such far-reaching implications and yet is so, so simple.

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures. These two verses, this passage, sum up what the gospel message is.

For those of you who think, okay, I’ve been called to preach. I know I’m supposed to share my faith, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to say. I have people tell me that all the time.

I have no idea what I’m supposed to say. Folks, it could not be any more simple than to tell people this and explain it a little bit, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried, and He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.

This passage sums up for us the three things we’re going to talk about and the points beneath it that we’re going to move through. the things that we need to remember. And when we share the message of Christ that we need to make sure people understand, it sums up three things, the first of which is that Christ-centered preaching.

Get out of your mind thinking preaching is what I’m doing here. That’s part of it. That Christ-centered preaching is when any of us go out and make words, whether with our mouth or we’re writing it to somebody, yes, you can share Christ with somebody by email.

It’s probably better if you do it face-to-face, but you can share Christ with people by email. Tracks convey the gospel. Folks, anything we do to make words, I’m not talking about interpretive dance or miming here, but anything we do that makes words, we preach the gospel, and when we preach it, these are the things that we need to make sure we convey to people.

First of all is that Christ-centered preaching means telling who Christ is. It means telling who Christ is. You’ll notice it has the word Christ there, but they would have understood what that meant.

People have all kinds of ideas about who Jesus is, and most of them are wrong. The world around us, you go out and poll people, you will find all kinds of wrong ideas about who Jesus Christ is. A lot of people think he was just a good moral teacher.

Ladies and gentlemen, if he was just a good moral teacher, but other than that, a man like you and me, he didn’t have the power to save anybody. There are people who think that he was, the Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you he was the Archangel Michael. I have no idea.

I’ve spent years researching cults and studying their literature. I have no idea still how they get the idea that he was the Archangel Michael. And yet Jesus was an angel, he was a created being, and folks, if he was a created being, he was something less than God, and he didn’t have the power to save anybody.

The Mormon church will teach you that Jesus Christ, I think they may not use these exact terms anymore, but it’s what they’ve taught for years, that Jesus Christ is the spirit brother of Lucifer. Folks, the Jesus I worship of the Bible is not the half-brother of Satan. Can we just get on the same page about this?

He’s not the half-brother of Satan. in that he is the firstborn of God the Father, but not the unique, the only begotten Son of God. Because you see, he’s the firstborn and he’s the Son of God in the same sense that you and I are the sons and daughters of God.

Well, folks, not so according to my Bible. According to my Bible, when we trust Christ, we become adopted into God’s family. Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God.

And if people put their faith in some moral teacher, if they put their faith in the archangel Michael, if they put their faith in the spirit brother of Lucifer, if they put their faith in a created being, if they put their faith in anybody other than the biblical Jesus Christ, they’re trusting in a false gospel and it will not save anybody. And so when we convey the message of Christ, when we preach the message of Christ to people, we’ve got to convey who Jesus Christ is. Now there may be people like me, for example, I was raised in church, practically born in church, and so I had a pretty good idea of who Jesus Christ was.

And folks, you will still find non-believers out there who know who Jesus Christ is. May not be as numerous as they used to be, but still believe what, you know, he was the son of God and all this, but haven’t understood or believed the rest of the gospel. There will be other people with whom you will have to make this abundantly clear who he is.

But we need to make sure whether they already understand it or we explain it to them, we need to make sure that when we tell people that Jesus Christ died for them that they know exactly which Jesus Christ it is. If I talk to a Mormon, I’m not going to just tell them Jesus Christ died for you. They need to know which Jesus.

They need to know who Jesus was. Some of the things shared in the Bible about Jesus and telling who Christ is. He’s the only begotten Son of God, as I mentioned earlier.

One of our most well-known verses, John 3, 16 says, For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. And there are other places in the book of John where it talks about him being the only begotten son of God. One issue I have with some Bible translations is that they’ll translate John 3.

16 to say his one and only son. Well, he’s not God’s one and only son. God has adopted other children.

I think it’s much more theologically accurate, much more precise, much more correct to say he is the only begotten son of God. God didn’t create him because he is God. Now, again, I don’t completely understand how all that works.

But God the Son is God. He was not created. He was not adopted.

He’s always been God’s Son. And so the Jesus Christ who died, the Christ who died for our sins according to the Scriptures, is the only begotten Son of God. Second of all, He’s fully God and fully human.

Fully God and fully human. A passage we looked over several times back during Christmas, John chapter 1, says in verse 14, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father.

See another place where it calls him the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And I’ve given you the scripture references there in case you don’t have time to turn to them today. I encourage you to go look these up and make sure I’m telling you the truth.

I am, but I want you to make sure of it. Because I’m not able to just camp out in one text like I like to do. It says the word was made flesh.

It had talked about in John 1. 1, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Skipping down 14 verses, this God who was the Word became flesh.

Folks, He was both fully God and fully human. If He had been anything less than fully God, Jesus Christ would not have had the power to save anybody. If He was anything less than fully human, He wouldn’t have had the capacity to die for us.

If Jesus Christ had been born as God in the flesh, but God in the flesh of cattle, They sacrificed cattle all the time. And it didn’t really do anything to atone for our sins in a permanent way. But by coming as God in human flesh, he was able to die and once for all be the all-sufficient, that means good for everything, sacrifice for mankind’s sin.

And if we are telling people about Jesus Christ, they need to understand. I say they need to understand. They need to know that he was fully God and fully human.

He’s not just a spirit being who couldn’t die, and he’s not just a man who couldn’t save. folks he’s the God man I say they need to know that don’t say they need to completely understand it because I don’t completely understand it either I just believe it because it’s what the Bible says third of all telling who Christ is he is the promised Messiah folks for centuries for millennia God has been promising to deal with man’s sin problem and he’s been pointing at it at times he shouted to them shouted to the Israelites who their Messiah was going to be through the prophets at other times he hinted at what was going to happen. I think God started putting hints for them in the garden when he took an animal and made skins from that animal, made garments out of skins to cover their nakedness.

I believe that began hinting at the fact that the innocent animal would die for the guilty. And all throughout the Old Testament, God was pointing people to the fact that a Messiah would come and pay for the sins of mankind. Folks, Jesus Christ was that Messiah.

Now, am I saying people need to understand all the Old Testament theology and prophecies of the Messiah to be saved? No, I’m not saying that. But when I say we need to convey to people that he was God’s promised Messiah, they need to understand that he was God’s sacrifice.

He was God’s provision for sin. I’ve heard people say Jesus came and got himself killed because he shot his mouth off to the Jews and Romans. Folks, it wasn’t by accident that Jesus was crucified.

He was sent here by God the Father, and he came willingly, And he knew at what point he understood. I don’t know if he understood everything when he was a baby. But at some point, surely by his earthly ministry, he knew where he was headed.

And he went there willingly. And God the Father sent him. And he was God’s plan A to deal with sin.

Folks, there is no plan B. So who was Christ-centered preaching means, first of all, telling who Christ is. It means explaining that he is the only begotten Son of God.

In fact, God in human flesh, fully God and fully human, and that He was God’s plan A to deal with our sin. Second of all, Christ-centered preaching means telling what Christ did. It means telling what Christ did.

And I know I’m moving through this quickly. I apologize for that. But it talks about in the passage we read from 1 Corinthians, that Christ died, and then it talks about in verse 4 that He was buried.

He rose again. It talks about what Christ did. If Christ was just who he was, he’d still be worthy of praise, but there wouldn’t be a gospel to tell anybody.

Folks, he had to come and die to deal with the problem of sin. So what did he do? What’s involved in the gospel that they need to understand of what he did?

First of all, he lived a sinless life. Christ lived a sinless life. 2 Corinthians 5 says, For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

The Bible says he knew no sin. He had no sin in his own life. As a matter of fact, one of the disciples, it may have been Nathaniel, I’m not sure offhand without going back and looking, one of the disciples, when they first saw him, realized there was something so radically different about Jesus and his character.

He said, wait a minute, never mind, I may be getting the story mixed up. I don’t want to tell you wrong. All of a sudden, I don’t remember if Jesus said that about the disciple or if the disciple said it about Jesus, that there was an Israelite in whom was no guile.

I don’t want to tell you wrong. But the Bible is abundantly clear, abundantly clear that Jesus Christ had no sin. He was tempted in every way that we are, and yet without sin.

As a matter of fact, I’d go so far as to say Jesus was tempted beyond anything we can even imagine. Now, how’s that possible? You don’t know some of the things I’ve been tempted with.

I believe Jesus was tempted beyond what we can imagine. I heard a preacher say a while back, because we always give in so quickly. Isn’t that true?

We always give in to it so quickly. There’s no need for Satan to tempt us with everything he’s got. and yet Satan would have thrown everything he had at Jesus and yet Jesus didn’t sin once.

I can’t imagine that. I don’t even know if I’m sinless since the time I got up in the pulpit. I know I’m not sinless today and we can’t even go a few moments without doing something sinful because we’re born sinners and we can’t help it and yet Jesus Christ never sinned.

Why does that matter? Because if he’d sinned when he died on the cross it would be to pay for his own sins and not ours. I can’t die for you because I’ve got, quite frankly, I’ve got my own sin to deal with.

And you can’t die for me because you’ve got yours. His death would have just been paying the penalty for himself. And yet he was the perfect sacrifice.

He lived a sinless life. And the world needs to understand he was not just any other man. He was God in the flesh who did not sin.

He gave his life on the cross. And I’m not going to tell you, these are the only things that matter, what we’re talking about today. There are many other things that matter, many other things that I would call essentials, like the virgin birth.

But just in terms of a quick presentation of the gospel with people, things that they need to understand, he lived that sinless life, and then he gave that life on the cross. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And the Bible says in many places, in many places, that that death was for us, that he gave himself a ransom for many, the Bible says.

Folks, it says here that he died for our sins. When he went to the cross, he gave his life. He didn’t just die.

He didn’t get himself killed. He gave his life for a purpose, and that purpose was to pay for our sins. And that’s where a lot of people get hung up with the gospel too.

There are a lot of people in our world, a lot of people in our own community that you’ll come in contact with who understand that Jesus died. They believe he was the Son of God. they believe he died on the cross for the world.

They believe he died for the world. They don’t understand that he died for their sin. I guess they believe he died for all of us in some abstract way.

They don’t realize it was for them. Maybe some in this room this morning who never realized the fact that it was for you. Folks, when he died, it wasn’t just to save the world the way some charities say, let’s save the world.

Folks, he died for you specifically because you had sinned against God. I had sinned against God. I owed a debt, and Christ paid for that with his life.

He gave his life on the cross to pay for our sins. And third of all, he rose from the dead. We don’t hear a lot about the resurrection in the gospel presentation, but I submit to you it’s one of the most important facts of it.

If Jesus Christ had not been raised from the dead, we have no proof that he could do what he said he would do. When he said he was going to give his life for his sheep, When he said he was going to die for us, when God had promised all this time that he would be the Messiah and he would come and he would die for our sins, and then Jesus died, folks, anybody can get themselves killed. Anybody can claim that, you know, God sent me here and now I’m going to die.

But folks, it takes some kind of power to be able to back it up with something like the resurrection. Something nobody else in history has managed to do. People have done all kinds of parlor tricks and things where they’re able to give the appearance of raising other people from the dead, but the one person in history who has credibly, I add, credibly been able to claim to have risen from the dead is Jesus Christ. And folks, if he could raise himself from the dead, if he could conquer death for himself, there’s no reason to believe that he couldn’t conquer death for you and me.

And with his resurrection from the dead, he validated all the claims he’d made up to that point. And so when we tell people about what Christ did, folks, they need to understand that he lived a sinless life, making him able to die for our sins. that he did die for our sins, and that he rose again proving that he could die for our sins.

And third of all, this passage talks about when it says Christ died for our sins, which I’ve already, if you didn’t get that already, Christ died for our sins, if I hadn’t mentioned that already. When it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 that Christ died for our sins, it talks about why Christ came. And Christ-centered preaching means telling people why Christ came.

They need to understand who he is. They need to understand what he did, and they need to understand why he did it. Why he did it.

First of all, he obeyed his Father in all things. A lot of this stuff ties in together and overlaps. He obeyed his Father in all things.

When the Father sent him, he went obediently. Because if you disobey the Father, that’s sin. And if you have sin, you can’t be the perfect sacrifice.

So he obeyed the Father in all things. I’ve already referred to it but Philippians chapter 2 says let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross and at the father’s word at the mere expression of the father’s wishes Jesus Christ gave up everything stepped into human flesh so that he could go to the cross. He obeyed his Father in everything.

And while he was here, he obeyed his Father in everything. Second reason why Christ came is that he saw men hopelessly lost. There was an element in there to be sure that Jesus Christ died for God’s glory. But also, I heard somebody say that the only reason Jesus Christ died was to glorify God.

And that’s absolutely wrong because he said the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. He glorified God when he died on the cross. He definitely glorified God when he rose again from the dead. But folks, there was also compassion there that he saw men hopelessly lost. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

All have sinned. He saw us lost. He saw that we disobeyed God. He saw us separated from God because of our sins and hopelessly lost because there’s not a thing that you and I can do to make up for that.

I’ve given you this example before. If I were to go out and murder somebody this afternoon and stand before the judge, and he says, son, what do you have to say for yourself? And I said, well, judge, I promise from here on out I won’t kill anybody else, just that one guy.

I won’t kill anybody else. The judge would be absolutely wrong to let me go, wouldn’t he? Just not killing the rest of you doesn’t justify killing somebody.

If I don’t kill the rest of you, I’m merely obeying what the law told me to do in the first place. There’s still that offense. I haven’t gotten extra credit by being good.

That’s what was expected to begin with. And folks, we all have the dark stain of sin on our souls because we’ve disobeyed God. And just being good from here on out doesn’t get us any extra credit.

That’s just what God expects to begin with. It’s what God demands to begin with. And you and I are powerless to do anything about our sins.

We are powerless to reconcile ourselves to God. We’re hopeless. And Jesus Christ looked down and saw mankind hopelessly lost, realized that left to ourselves, it didn’t matter the good we could do, It didn’t matter the money we gave, how often we went to church, that we would still be condemned to hell for all of eternity, and rightfully so, because we’d sinned against God.

And he looked on us and he saw us hopelessly lost and had compassion on us. At the cross, he satisfied God’s holiness and justice. That’s the next line in the bulletin.

He satisfied God’s holiness and justice. See, I read an article this week that was talking about the difference between every other religion and Christianity. And first of all, every other religion says you have to do something Christianity says you’re hopelessly lost. Folks, you want an ego boost?

Don’t become a Christian because we have to. My pastor used to say all the time growing up, the church and the hell’s angels are the only groups you have to admit to being bad before you can get in. We have to admit our sin to come to Christ. So every other religion says do, and Christianity says you can’t.

Well, all these other religions, if they believe their God forgives sins, for example, the Islamic religion, they believe that Allah forgives sins, but that means he overlooks it. And so he shows mercy. If he shows mercy at all, he shows mercy at the expense of his holiness and justice, because he has to just let bygones be bygones and pretend that sin didn’t happen.

Folks, we can’t ask our God to stop being God for a minute and just let our sin go. Christianity is the only religion in the world where God meets out mercy along with his holiness and justice. By submitting his own son, by God himself going to pay the ultimate price.

His judgment on sin was accomplished. The penalty was paid. God’s holiness was intact because he didn’t compromise with sin, and yet now he’s able to show mercy.

So Jesus Christ came to pay the penalty for us, but also to keep God’s holiness and justice intact. And finally this morning, he made God’s mercy available to mankind. As I said a moment ago, God couldn’t just give mercy with no penalty being paid.

Wait a minute, I thought God could do everything. Folks, God can do anything consistent with His nature. And to say that God would just give mercy without the penalty being paid would be to ask God to stop being God, to ask Him to stop being holy, to ask Him to stop being just. And Ephesians tells us, Folks, the message that we have to preach, the story we have to tell, is about Jesus Christ dying for our sins according to the Scriptures, being buried and rising again on the third day according to the scriptures.

It really is that simple. If I’ve made you feel today like it was hard by saying, oh, there are all these things I have to explain, all these theological things. Folks, you may not have to explain all these things.

Some of the stuff about who Jesus is, people may already know. Folks, the gospel message is very simple, that Jesus Christ died for us, that there was a penalty paid, a transaction was made, but they also need to understand who did it and why he did it.