Evangelistic Sermon: 1 Corinthians 15:3-7

2003-04-25

I would like you to think about one thing right now, and I mean to challenge you. I want you think of yourself primarily as an American in the twenty-first century, in which most of us are. What does this mean to you? You might think at first, to American is to be free. You might think about what it means to pursue the American Dream. You might think of Thanksgiving dinner with your family, finding a spouse and growing old together, finding success in the business world… You might have a lot of ideas in mind of what it means to be a twenty-first century American. Perhaps you don’t have the patriotic view of being American, but you probably think to yourself at least, that it is better to live here than in anywhere else in the world because we do have a lot more freedom than if we were to live in most other countries. Think of the culture we have! It is rich, representing many kinds of people from many different historical backgrounds. Think of the music, films, customs, books, famous people... I think of the smiles of actors from the middle of the last century. This is all apart of being an American, and much of the world has tasted our culture as it has infiltrated every continent in the world. America was designed by our forefathers for its citizens to be delivered from tyranny of taxation without representation from the mother country and religious strife that spread across Europe. We were born into a world that has reaped the blessings of circumstances of the political environment of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Now I want you to think about something more specifically American. Think of the victory over Britain in the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. Think about the preservation of the Union in the Civil War era, in 1865. We saw victory again in the World Wars. When we were attacked in 1941 in Pearl Harbor, that tragedy was turned into victory as we got into the War and turned it around. The balance of power was again restored. The Soviet Union rose during this era, and during most of our lifetimes, we saw that regime fold and the Communist bloc become dismantled. When we were attacked in 2001 on the homeland by terror, we also attacked the Taliban, and changed life for the Afghan people. And now we are supposedly nearing another end of another dreadful war against the Iraqi regime. We have known victory so well. Would anyone disagree with that? Even in the hour of defeat like Pearl Harbor in 1941, it has always been followed up with cheers of victory.

What if we were not victorious next time? Is that possible? Or is that possibility far from our minds? It is obvious that we are living in times that are drastically different from any other time in history. The technology is far more advanced than what people ever thought of twenty years ago. One of my professors in former times said in passing that there is enough nuclear power in the world to blow up the entire earth seven times over. To think that was a good number of years ago, where are we now? It is almost as if there something holding back all disaster from happening on the earth.

Now what about the end of these things? Where has all this change come from? We as people have brought ourselves into our current circumstances. We were the ones who created nuclear weapons that can cause desolation of the whole earth; the weapons did not appear by themselves. Notice I say ‘we’. We can attribute the political arena and the use of weapons as coming from politicians or scientists or foreign rulers or any big player on the world scene. In our personal lives, we often place the blame on other people. But the truth is that this dysfunctional and evil world is not only the product of a wayward few in the elite. There is not a mysterious ‘them’ out there who are the ones who made the world all bad, and an ‘us’ who are righteous and keepers of peace. I will explain more about that shortly.

Life in the future seems awfully bleak, when you ponder these things, doesn’t it? But I tell you, if you are here today [or reading upon this page], you are doing so for a reason. There is a message that God wants us to respond to, and there is a message that has been foretold since the beginning of time that is most applicable in these seemingly meaningless days.

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how 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 of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. (1 Corinthians 15:3-7)

There are four things I would like for us to see today; there are the four things that are applicable to our lives that are of most importance. The first thing is that I would like for us to see is that Christ died for our sins. Who is Christ? The author of this epistle, Paul, a Jewish Christian from the first century A.D., used this as the well-known title for Jesus. One key word I would like to mention before proceeding on what this means is the word ‘sin’. This word in our culture has been thrown around lightly as if it is something not to worry about. The real meaning of the word means ‘missing the mark.’ The author Paul stated that Jesus died for our ‘sins’, meaning that we have somehow ‘missed the mark.’ This is what he wants us to see. God, who created the world, expected people to serve Him and please Him. This is not that He created slaves, but people who voluntarily serve Him in love. But humankind has since chosen their own way to live life. They instead put themselves up as their own gods, being self-centered, going about life living only to please themselves. This is how we miss the mark. God wanted them to be perfect, but humankind chose otherwise. In other parts of the Bible, it is written, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Revelation 4:11). The basic point is that God created and sustains this world by His own power, and He deserves to be worshipped. We have all missed that mark.

Here is my challenge to you: You might be thinking that this does not apply to you. Maybe you are thinking like the example I just explained: that you are perfect and the rest of the world is the source of your problems. Think about this, God being the perfect creator of our world has awesome standards for us, as God said to the nation of Israel, “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2), and again, “Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God” (Deuteronomy 18:13). So let me put it to you this way, whether we are like Adolf Hitler in the massive amounts of death and torture he caused, or we have only told a ‘little white lie’ once in our lives, we stand condemned under this decree by God. Paul also states in another letter: “There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Romans 3:10-12). He writes later: “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and again, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). The sin of humankind has affected the world to the point that we have reached the hour in history where nothing seems hopeful, and nothing seems certain, but death. That is a scary thing to lead this life of despair: that all we do is futile, and all we have to look forward to is at some point in the future is going into the ground to rot.

Here is the second thing Paul would like us to see; Paul is not finished with what he wants to say. Paul wrote that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures. The first part reads that Jesus died for our sins. This means that God came in the form of a man, Jesus, and lived a perfect life. Jesus died to take the penalty of our sins away from us. He died so that there might be hope for us. It is written by Peter, a disciple and friend of Jesus, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Think of the United States in their many battles, and the countless soldiers that have died for the sake of freedom in this country. They died in our place that we might have peace on the homeland. God did what no other could do, for Jesus died for people that betrayed Him, hated Him, tortured Him, spat on Him, and then killed Him. We just finished the Easter holiday season, and this is what we celebrate the holiday for, but how often do we think about Jesus and not the Easter bunny and colored eggs?

Note how Paul says how Jesus died according to the Scriptures. Jesus did just not appear of nowhere in the middle of history and do this act of love toward us. Prophets from hundreds of years passed have testified of His suffering for our sakes. The prophet Daniel, who prophesied over five hundred years before Jesus, said, “after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself” (Daniel 9:26). Messiah is an equivalent Hebrew term with the title in Greek ‘Christ,’ meaning ‘the anointed one,’ speaking of Jesus. Again, the prophet Isaiah, who spoke about seven hundred years before Jesus, said that “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

Jesus died for our sins. Everything that we have ever done wrong, whether intentionally, or unintentionally, was covered by Him with His own love and sacrifice. God as our Father has truly loved us as His children to do such an act of love. He was buried, as Paul has also written.

The third thing that Paul wants us to understand was that Jesus rose from the dead: ‘he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.’ If this great act of love were left in the grave, what hope would there be? God in all His power raised Jesus from the dead, as Peter writes, “his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). This is the assurance of Jesus’ promise. Not only did Jesus die for our sins, but we share in the hope of the resurrection from the dead with Him when we believe in Him. Jesus Himself says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16), and again, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Once again, Paul also repeats the refrain, “according to the Scriptures.” The prophet Zechariah, who wrote five hundred years before Jesus, quoted what God had told him, saying, “they shall look upon me whom they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10).

The most wondrous thing about the resurrection of Jesus is that His grave remains empty! What else does Paul have to say? The fourth thing that Paul shares is that Jesus revealed Himself to Peter, and then His disciples, and then to over five hundred people. This is a large number of people that testify to the resurrection. Lee Strobel, a journalist, who wrote a book called The Case for Christ, was seeking the truth about the resurrection of Jesus as a true skeptic. After interviewing various specialists in biblical studies, law, medicine, and many others, he was convinced the resurrection of Jesus is real, and Strobel’s life was transformed from skeptic to a professor of Jesus Christ by God’s working. There is no relic or place one can go to see the body of Jesus. He is alive and is waiting for a time in the future to return to earth and bring the whole world under His perfect rule. The world has tried to solve problems in the Middle East, and in essence, the entire world, with plans of peace and to fight against poverty and hunger, and they have found no plausible or possible way. The time is coming when Jesus will come to set things right.

So, what does this mean to us? Let me review what I told you today. First, we have all sinned, or ‘missed the mark.’ We have always wanted to do everything and anything but to conform to God’s standard. Second, Jesus then submitted Himself to the point where He was put to death so that we will not bear the penalty of our rebellion of ‘missing the mark.’ Third, But in the amazing power of God, He did not remain in the grave, but arose. Fourth, He was seen by hundreds of witnesses. All of this was foreseen by prophets of God hundreds of years before, and there is an empty grave in outside of Jerusalem to this day.

Now what does this mean to us? As Jesus said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). We must believe for this promise to take effect in our own lives, as Jesus said. This requires explanation. As written in the Bible, as I have shared with you, that ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’ Look at your own life and see if this is true. God is not looking for a list of things you have done in your life to enter heaven and have eternal life. He is looking for something else.

Say you were to encounter God tonight, and you wanted to enter heaven. What if He asked you, ‘why should I let you in’, what would you say? Would you give Him the list of deeds in your life that were good? I can tell you, from my own experience in looking at my life, from people I have known, and what I know from looking at the Scriptures, He would probably find a hundred flaws for every good deed that you could mention. What God is looking for is a change of heart, to stop trusting in who you are and what you have done to reach heaven. You must trust Jesus Christ alone, in His death and resurrection, to get into heaven. Let me say it again: the way to get to heaven and have eternal life is to trust Jesus Christ alone in what He did. This is the only answer that God is looking for. And we can look at the world and wonder where God is, and why He is waiting. But what God is really doing is that He is waiting for you today. Peter wrote, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He is waiting for you, as well as everyone in the whole world, to come to Jesus and trust in Him alone for the salvation into eternal life.

Let me tell you on a personal note. I came to know Jesus as my only way to eternal life when I was eighteen years old, as someone who was broken and in despair, believing in magic and reincarnation and a whole smorgasbord of new age philosophies and finding them void of any value. My life was never the same since I have heard the message of Jesus. It wasn’t that life got easier, but life became meaningful, purposeful, and finally there was a reason to stay alive.

You might have had a difficult past or have much sin that is inconceivable. Perhaps you’re feeling depressed or guilty because of something that happened or is happening in your life. Perhaps you are feeling lonely and without purpose, or not worthy to live, as I have felt in the past. Bring this to Jesus now. Everything from murder to adultery to drugs, and to lies and stealing, or just being self-righteous and unloving... whatever your sins are, Jesus covered them all when He died and rose again.