The Root of Our Hope

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Yesterday afternoon, or evening, I was sitting there looking out the back window of our house and watching the trees just swaying back and forth. The radar was showing something like 50 to 60 mile an hour winds, and I believe it, just watching those trees rock back and forth. And we’re all kind of familiar with the idea that trees try to bend with the wind and not break, and they’ll grow deep roots in order to be able to withstand the storms. But it’s not just that the deep roots enable the tree to withstand the storms. The storms actually contribute to the deep roots of the tree.

I was surprised to find that out. There was a study that the Scotland’s Forestry Commission released about 30 years ago that talked about how when a tree experiences a storm or high winds, it will drive that tree to actually grow a longer tap root down into the ground to try to steady itself better in the future. So the more wind a tree experiences, the deeper those roots will grow to try to find some stability to the point where, hopefully by the time you get a really big storm, that tree has roots deep enough to help it withstand just about anything.

I think sometimes that’s why we see in really big tornadoes or hurricanes, we see sometimes a big clump of dirt ripped up with the whole tree because it wasn’t taking that root out without doing some damage. But I thought about that last night in preparation for this message. That’s what you and I ought to be doing.

When we face minor storms of life, we ought to use that as an opportunity to send us in search of planting our roots deeper in the truth and deeper in our source of hope so that we can withstand even bigger storms when they come along. and that happens to be the type of thing that Paul is talking about in the passage that we come to this morning in 1 Corinthians 15. If you’re new with us this morning, we’ve been studying our way piece by piece through 1 Corinthians and we’re now up to chapter 15, so we’re getting close to the end of the book.

If you would, turn with me there as we look to see what Paul has written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for us there, 1 Corinthians 15. And once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. And if you don’t have it, don’t have your Bible or can’t find 1 Corinthians 15, it’s all right, it’ll be on the screen for you as well.

But here’s what he says writing to this church at Corinth. He says, Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in 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, that means Peter, then to the twelve.

After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then 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. And you may be seated.

As we’ve studied our way through 1 Corinthians, we have seen a multitude of problems that that church had. They were the poster children for churches in chaos. As a matter of fact, sometimes it was literal chaos, as we saw throughout chapter 14.

Paul now moves to a different tactic with them. He spent all this time correcting some of their misbehavior. But now he’s getting deeper into the root of dealing with some of the theological problems that they had.

One of the things that we’ll see over the next few weeks as we continue in this subject of resurrection and hope is that some of them had questions about the resurrection. Some of them had questions about the reality of anybody rising from the dead. Because in Greek culture, resurrections did not happen.

the very idea did not happen. That’s why they laughed at Paul when he preached this on Mars Hill in Athens. And so some of them had kind of come around, okay, if Jesus did this, I can see a resurrection there, but surely that doesn’t mean you and I are going to be raised.

I mean, this is just crazy talk. And some of them were losing hope because of that, because they just couldn’t see the reality of being raised to new life. They were operating off the assumption that, yes, The gospel helps us to live a godly life while we’re here, and then that’s it.

And some of them were in despair over loved ones who’d already passed on. And the thought that, I really don’t see us being raised. I don’t see any of this mattering beyond this life.

And Paul takes them back and sort of does a Sunday school refresher course for them here about what they had believed and what they had been taught and what the evidence said. And he’s pointing them to their hope for the future by taking them back to the past. And folks, just like the Corinthians, you and I have a hope for the future, and it’s rooted in a historical event. Now, if you’ve been around Central any length of time, I know that you have heard the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15 preached.

Because I’m a little bit obsessed with the resurrection story, if you haven’t picked up on that by now. It’s the subject of my dissertation. I talk about it every chance I get.

I love to talk about the evidence for the resurrection, and a lot of those conversations begin and end here. So some of what you’re hearing this morning will sound a little bit familiar, but stick with me, because as I’ve told you before, preaching passages here and there throughout my ministry from 1 Corinthians has been one thing, but to preach them in order and see how Paul fits them together in the case he’s making, I realized, wait, I missed that angle all these years. I miss this detail of what he was talking about when you put things together.

And so looking at 1 Corinthians 15 here in context of everything we’ve studied and everything that’s coming up, there’s more than just what I’ve preached to you before. But it does start with this reality that we have hope for the future, and it’s rooted in a historical event. And he was addressing people who by and large had a very shallow understanding of the gospel.

It’s not that they were. . .

Paul here, even though this passage is great as an argument for the resurrection, he’s not so much trying to convince them that the resurrection happened as he is trying to remind them of what they already believed. Because it’s easy sometimes if you don’t have a very deep understanding of the gospel to think, well, yeah, I believe Jesus. I might even believe that Jesus died on the cross.

But you may be missing something from your understanding of the gospel. One of the biggest things people miss from their understanding of the gospel is that Jesus died for me, for my sins. Jesus died to pay for sins that I had committed or will have committed.

Jesus died to pay for those because there was no other way for me to be right with God. Sometimes we think of Jesus dying on the cross in some kind of abstract way, that He died for us as an example. He died to teach us something.

And don’t get me wrong, He did teach us something by His death. He did set an example by His death, but that was not all that that was for. The Bible teaches us that Jesus’ death on the cross was a sacrifice to pay the price for our sins.

And people can have a very shallow understanding of the gospel and then walk away from that. And it appears to us that, well, they believed and now they don’t believe anymore. When in reality, they might have believed something, but they didn’t quite have it.

They didn’t quite understand. And so they believed aspects of the gospel, but they weren’t really clear on what they were believing, and now they’re not really clear on what they’re rejecting. And so Paul intended this as a reminder for these people who were, some of them were kind of shallow in their understanding.

This was a reminder of the basic truth that they had been taught. Now the way this is written, the way Paul phrases this, indicates to us that this was a formal creed that was in use by the early churches. The creed is something that they would memorize and they would recite, and it would be a teaching tool.

It would be a tool for holding one another accountable. You might have heard of the Apostles’ Creed. I believe in God the Father, God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord. And it continues on talking about what Jesus did. It talks about the Holy Spirit.

It talks about the nature of the church. This was one of the earliest creeds we have written record of. And I’ve called it the Corinthian creed.

I don’t know that anybody else calls it that, but I call it that just for shorthand. But he tells us here in the earliest verses of chapter 15 that this is something that he taught them, something that they knew, something they memorized, something they probably even recited. And he’s taking them back to this very basic teaching of Christianity.

We know that Paul taught this to the people at Corinth during his visit there prior, and he was there about A. D. 51.

He tells us that he had learned it during his time with the apostles in Jerusalem in A. D. 37.

Why does that matter? Because that’s four years after the crucifixion. I promise this whole thing is not a history lesson, but this is important.

This is four years after the crucifixion. The church at Jerusalem was using what we now call the Corinthian Creed. And not only that, he says here that it was already formulated.

It was already formalized. That’s the word I was looking for. It was already formalized by the time he learned it.

So four years after the crucifixion, the church at Jerusalem was already using as a creed what we see in verses 3 through 7 mostly, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and He appeared to Peter and then to the Twelve, and He appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now. I think that part, but some have fallen asleep, as Paul put in parentheses in there because of what he’s about to talk about. Then he appeared to James and then to all of the apostles.

Within four years, the church already was using that statement of faith and then teaching it to people, including Paul, which tells us that this creed goes back to within months of the crucifixion. Now, why is that important? Because it shatters the idea that the resurrection was a myth made up generations later.

Within months of it happening, within months of the events they’re talking about, the church at Jerusalem was using this as their basic creed, the idea that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried and rose again according to the Scriptures. And then He started appearing to people.

Now, you can disagree with them if you want to, But that was the message of the earliest believers within months, if not sooner. That this is what we believe and this is what we stand on. And that tells us that Christianity, uniquely among world religions, I think I talked about this a little bit on Easter, Christianity uniquely among the religions of the world can trace its origins to a set of events that somebody witnessed, things that were external, things that we can evaluate whether the eyewitnesses are true or not.

Most religions started when somebody had a spiritual experience, or at least says they had a spiritual experience. And I don’t say these things to attack anybody, but to say where we’re different. There’s a testimony of Joseph Smith about receiving revelation from an angel and receiving these plates that became the Book of Mormon.

He may very well have believed that was true, but he was alone when it happened. It’s very difficult for us to go back and evaluate a spiritual experience that happened in secret. The same thing with Muhammad.

He went off into the wilderness and had a revelation from Allah through the angel Gabriel or Jibril. He may very well have believed that that experience was true, but it’s very difficult for us to evaluate later on something that happened in private. Did anybody else see it?

Did anybody else witness it? Buddha sat by himself under a tree and achieved enlightenment. It was an experience inside of himself.

Somebody walking by, even seeing him sitting there may have no clue what was going on inside of him. How do we evaluate that? Again, I don’t say that to attack anybody for what they believe, but to tell you there is a difference.

Because with Christianity, we’re talking about an event that was external, that eyewitnesses could look at, that we can evaluate their testimony because multiple people saw it. Everyone in Jerusalem said that Jesus was crucified. I’m not talking people in the YouTube comment sections.

Okay, I’m talking about actual historians, biblical scholars, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re, you know, hardcore conservative Christians like me or whether they are atheist or agnostic or what on the other end. Almost unanimously, scholars today acknowledge that Jesus was a real person who was crucified. Everybody in Jerusalem knew he was crucified.

You read the gospel accounts, on top of that, the burial of Jesus, where his body was laid was the worst kept secret. in Jerusalem. Seems like everybody was there.

I mean, they give lists of the people who were there watching Joseph and Nicodemus bury him. Everybody knew. The next day, the Jews and Romans go out to secure the tomb because they knew where he was buried.

People go to check the tomb after the story of the resurrection because they knew where he was buried. He was buried, and then he rose again. How do we know he rose again?

Because dozens and dozens of eyewitnesses saw him alive afterwards. And these were people who went to their deaths refusing to say anything other than I saw him alive when they had really no motive to lie about it. They didn’t get money, they didn’t get women, they didn’t get power.

Those are usually the three things that compel somebody to lie. They didn’t get any of those things. All of them got tortured and most of them got killed for their troubles.

In terms of comparison between Christianity and the basis of our faith and the basis of any other belief system, there is an incredibly compelling case to be made that this was a historical event, that Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead. And Paul reasoned from that point, both to ensure that they understood the gospel, and to reason with them about the hope that they had as a result of it. So Paul’s intention here is twofold.

He wants to make sure they understand the gospel. If there’s anybody there still in the church at Corinth that said, yeah, I believe in Jesus. He died for me.

I’ve got to trust him as my Savior. He rose from the dead. He wants to make sure they understand what the gospel actually is.

But he also wants to make sure they understand what the gospel means for us, that we have hope because of what Jesus Christ did. And he’ll elaborate on that a little bit after verse 11, which we’ll look at, like I said, in the coming weeks. But he even points to the fact in verse 6 that some of the eyewitnesses had even fallen asleep.

Because, again, some of them were worried about people at Corinth who had died. Can we really be sure that they’re going to be raised? I mean, they believed and looked, they still died.

And he says, even the people who saw Jesus alive, some of them died. And even as they died, it didn’t shake the witness of the others of saying, no, we saw what we saw. Yes, they died.

Yes, if the Lord delays His coming long enough, we’re all going to die, but we still saw what we saw. And I hope, I hope for you, that you understand that our faith is not true just because our parents told us, not just because it’s what we’ve heard all our lives, not just because we were born in America and that’s what everybody does. It’s not true just because it feels true.

It’s not true because we want it to be true. It’s not true because it works for us. What we believe is true because these events happened.

Because Jesus died. Jesus was buried. Jesus rose again.

And He appeared to multitudes of people who put their lives on the line declaring that they had seen Him. And this gospel that is rooted in this historical fact It’s a simple message with profound implications. I want to walk you through fairly quickly.

What is the gospel? What is it that Paul’s talking about? The gospel is wrapped up here in this Corinthian creed.

And in church, we talk about the gospel. We say we’ve got to share the gospel with people. We need to believe the gospel.

The gospel needs to be first and foremost. Sometimes we may say all those things because we know they’re right, but we may not fully understand what is the gospel. I remember once as a teenager thinking, yeah, I’m told we’re supposed to share the gospel. church is supposed to preach the gospel we stand or fall on the gospel we live or die by the gospel what exactly does the Bible mean when it says the gospel?

here’s what we’re going to look at verse 3 tells us Jesus died an essential part of the gospel story is that Jesus died that he died on that cross shedding his blood laying down his life and by the way he was a willing voluntary participant in that sometimes the world will talk about it like the father was a child abuser Jesus sacrificed himself. Right before it was about to happen, Jesus told Pilate, no man takes my life from me. I lay it down and I take it up again.

Jesus also looked Pilate in the eye and said, you wouldn’t have the power to do anything to me unless I let you. But the gospel requires that we teach that Jesus died. Not only that, but that we teach that he died for our sins.

It says he died for our sins. He didn’t die just as an example. I mentioned earlier, yes, he did teach us by his death.

He did provide an example by His death. He did many things by His death, but those were secondary. The Gospel includes the truth that Jesus died for our sins.

He didn’t die as an accident of history. He didn’t die to make a point. He didn’t die because He made the Romans and the Jews mad.

Jesus died for one reason, and that’s that you and I had sinned against a holy God. It started when Adam sinned against a holy God, and then we’ve all inherited that gene down through the generations. We are sinners by nature, and we are sinners by behavior.

And that sin nature is why I’ve never had to sit any of my children down and say, this is how you lie, we’re going to have lessons on this. They just know it. I’ve never had to teach any of them, this is how you hit your brother, this is how you pull your sister’s hair.

No, they just know it, because they’re little sinners, and they inherited it from me, just like I inherited it from my parents, and so on and so forth, back to Adam. And by God’s standard, which is absolute perfection, we all fall short. And you and I could do all the good we could ever try to think of to make things right with God, and it still would never be enough to erase the wrong that we’ve done.

And so a perfect sacrifice was needed. Because while God is loving, God is also just. And that sin has to be paid for. And so Jesus came to earth to die for our sins as the one and only payment.

Then we see in verse 4, He was buried. Now this gets left out of our discussions a lot. We don’t have to spend a lot of time on that point when we’re talking to somebody about the gospel.

But it is important for us to know that Jesus was buried, because if the Bible didn’t record that he was buried, there’s no empty tomb. If they didn’t know where he was buried, the story of the empty tomb doesn’t hold up. But we know that he was buried.

We know who did it. Like I said, it seems to be the worst kept secret in Jerusalem at that time. He was buried, and then that tomb was empty the third day.

He rose the third day. That’s incredibly important because the death doesn’t have the full meaning without the resurrection. Anybody, and I mean no disrespect toward our Lord, but anybody can get themselves killed.

And anybody can tell people, I’m doing it for you. I could tell you that I’m dying for your sins. It doesn’t make it true.

And please don’t put your trust in me to pay for your sins because I’ve got them of my own. So I needed Jesus. But anybody could say those things.

Jesus proved it by rising from the dead. I’ve heard people recently say, well, him rising from the dead doesn’t prove anything. You are welcome to believe that.

You’re welcome to believe that. But when somebody says, I’m going to die to pay for your sins and I’m going to rise the third day, and then he actually does it, I’m listening to that guy. I don’t care who you are.

I don’t care how big a TV show you’ve got. I’m listening to the guy who predicted and accomplished his own resurrection. He rose the third day to prove that he could do the things he said he would do.

And twice in here, it’s mentioned that it was according to the scriptures, both his death and his resurrection, that these things were according to the scriptures. That tells us that this was God’s plan all along. God knew from before time began how much trouble we were going to be.

Do you ever think about the fact that God could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had just never created us? Because we’re a lot. And yet before he created us, God loved us in spite of the trouble that he knew we were going to be.

And God’s plan from eternity past was that a sacrifice was going to need to be made. And Jesus willingly said, I will go. All of this was done according to the Scriptures because God leaves a trail of clues throughout the Old Testament that point to what Jesus was going to do.

This was all God’s plan from eternity past. Then we see verses 5 through 8 that say He appeared. How do we know that any of this is true? Because we have the eyewitness testimony of people who corroborated their stories by refusing to back down even in the face of death.

I mentioned to you, I think at Easter, that we know the names of at least 27 of these people. There were more than 500, and we know the names of 27 of them. But He appeared to Peter.

He appeared to the disciples as a group. He appeared to more than 500. He appeared to James.

That’s not either of the James apostles that have already been mentioned. That’s His brother. That’s His brother who thought He was a lunatic up until that point.

Then all the apostles, that’s even more than the 12. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also. What Paul is saying there is, it was after his ascension.

I wasn’t part of his group that followed him. I was on the other side. And then he came to me a couple years later on the road to Damascus.

He appeared to me, called me out, and changed me. He said, I wasn’t with those guys in the beginning, so I was like the one that was born out of season. But he appeared to me as well.

Jesus rose again. Jesus appeared to people. And then we look at what Paul says about himself after having been approached by Jesus.

He says, I’m the least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle. He said, I don’t deserve to be where I am because I persecuted the church of God. He murdered people for following Jesus.

And now he’s one of their leaders. He said, I don’t deserve to be here. Verse 10, but by the grace of God, I am what I am.

I am an apostle purely because of God’s grace. And his grace to me did not prove vain. He said, I didn’t take that grace and do nothing and let him down.

God gave me that grace and I took it and I labored even more than all of them. He said, I worked harder than the other apostles. And he says, but not I, but the grace of God within me.

He still gives God the credit. But what we see here is that Jesus appeared to these people and Paul’s own story that he was transformed by the grace of God when Jesus came into his life. Jesus offers grace that transforms us.

Folks, that’s the gospel. It’s a simple message. Jesus died to pay for our sins.

He was buried, but He rose again three days later. Everybody saw it, and our lives are never the same because of what Jesus did for us. Now, we have to clarify for people sometimes that that doesn’t mean we have to earn or deserve the grace.

If we have to earn it or deserve it, it’s not grace. But we simply believe that He is who He said He was, believe that He did what He said He would do, believe that He died as the one and only sacrifice for our sins and rose again, and then ask for that forgiveness. I’ve been talking to old Charlie as he’s been asking questions about the gospel and trying to bring it down to his level.

And it’s made me realize we make it so complicated. It’s very simple. Jesus died to pay for our sins and rose again.

Believe that and ask for His forgiveness, and He’s going to change you from the inside out. That’s the gospel. That’s the root of our faith.

That’s the root of our hope. That’s what we have to dig down and tap into so that we can withstand every wind that blows against us. And the church will, this brings me to my final point this morning, the church will fall unless it understands the gospel and stands firm on it.

I wrote that out in my notes and I thought, is that really what I mean to say? Because I thought of what Jesus said, that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. And I realized the same Jesus who said that is the same Jesus who said in the book of Revelation to several of the churches, I’m taking away your candlesticks.

meaning the light had gone out of that church. And I realized the promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church was not a promise that any particular congregation would be around and going strong until He returned. He’s talking about there would always be believers on this earth until He returns.

But any given church, any individual church, ours included, will only be as strong as our understanding and commitment to the gospel. That’s why He starts and ends this passage with these appeals to the people. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

Before he even goes into the gospel, he says, I’m reminding you of these things that are most important, what I’ve taught you, what you’ve believed, what is going to hold you steady. These things are what I’m coming back to remind you of. The gospel is paramount.

And then he comes in verse 11 after giving his own testimony again, and says, whether then it was I or they, whether I taught it to you, whether some of the other apostles taught it to you, whoever it was who taught it to you, this is what we preach, and this is what you’ve believed. The gospel is paramount. He’s reminding them this because the church at Corinth, we’ve discussed and we’ve diagnosed so many of their problems up to this point, but one of the biggest problems they had is that they had lost sight on the gospel.

They had wavered on the gospel. folks there are a lot of things that our church can get wrong and still be a church that glorifies God if we understand and stay committed to the gospel but folks hear me on this there are a lot of things we can do right and there are a lot of things we can do well and we still will have lost our candlestick if we lose our commitment to the gospel at the beginning and end of this passage he tells them this this is the key this is the key this is what’s going to hold you steady this is what’s going to get you home is the gospel and for some of you these are things you’ve heard before, many times maybe. Some of you could have gotten up here and explained the gospel better than I could, potentially.

But we need to be reminded over and over of what the gospel is, because it is so important and because it is so easy, like the Corinthians, to get distracted by anything and everything else. Everything else is secondary to the message of what Jesus did for us. When I say that, am I saying nothing else is important?

No. There are plenty of other important things. I’m saying everything else is less important than that message right there, what Jesus has done for us.

And the health of this church or any other church will be determined in large part by how well we understand the gospel and how well we stay committed to that. For each of us individually, our spiritual health will be determined in large part by how well we understand the gospel and stay committed to it.