THE PRIORITY OF THE GOSPEL

The Christian faith is not a mere collection of doctrines — a bag of truths. Christianity is a comprehensive truth claim that encompasses every aspect of revealed doctrine, but is centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And, as the apostolic preaching makes clear, the gospel is the priority.

The Apostle Paul affirms this priority when he writes to the Christians in Corinth. In the opening verses of1 Corinthians 15, Paul sets out his case:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word 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 in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy 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 was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Paul points directly to the events of the cross and resurrection of Christ. He is not concerned with just any gospel, but with the only gospel that saves. This is "the gospel I preached to you," Paul reminds the Corinthians. The same Paul who so forcefully warned the Galatians against accepting any false gospel reminds the church at Corinth that the very "gospel I preached to you" is the gospel "by which you are being saved." Their stewardship of the gospel is underlined in Paul's words, "if you hold fast to the word I preached to you."

THE CORRECTIVE OF THE GOSPEL

Paul's statement of priority is a vital corrective for our confused times. Without hesitation, Paul writes with urgency about the truths that are "as of first importance." All revealed truth is vital, invaluable, life-changing truth to which every disciple of Christ is fully accountable. But certain truths are of highest importance, and that is the language Paul uses without qualification.

And what is of first importance? "That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures," and "that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures." The cross and the empty tomb stand at the center of the Christian faith. Without these, there is no good news — no salvation.

Paul gets right to the heart of the matter in setting out those truths that are "of first importance." Following his example, we can do no less. These twin truths remain "as of first importance," and no sermon is complete without the explicit affirmation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So it was then, so it is now, and so it ever shall be until Christ claims his church.

THE CENTRALITY OF THE GOSPEL

As Paul reminded the Corinthians — and now instructs us — the gospel is at the center of our faith, and the cross and the empty tomb are at the center of the gospel. "So we preach, and so you believed," Paul encourages us. [1 Cor. 15:11]

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Near the end of his letter to the church at Corinth, following some final travel plans for Timothy, Apollos and himself, the Apostle Paul ticks off in rapid succession a series of final instructions much like a Little League coach does to his pitcher before he takes the mound. He closes the list by saying, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:14). If it was good for the Corinthian Church to check everything they do by love, as chapter 13 urged, surely it is good advice for all churches, including us.

All of us like the emotional thought behind that statement. Yet as the Corinthians discovered, when there were things dividing them, it was difficult to do all that they did in love. As we have seen from the letter to the church at Corinth, love included some very pointed and stern rebukes from the Apostle Paul. He considered what he said to be in love when he exposed their behavior that was not in keeping with the gospel message. For this reason he can truthfully conclude the last sentence of his letter by saying, “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen” (1 Cor. 16:24).

At the end of his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul deals with some very personal issues as well as some final instructions. One of those personal issues is how to handle giving in the church. Paul gives some very practical directions on the collection of money for the poor Christians in Jerusalem. Paul follows up these directions with some more theological motivations for giving in his second letter to the Corinthians in chapters 8-9. In both letters he directs the Christians to give on purpose with a regular giving plan according as the Lord has prospered each Christian. His directions are refreshingly clear, simple, yet honoring to each individual as created in the image of God. He allows each Christian to have control over their giving while urging that giving be on purpose and motived by the grace of the Lord Jesus. Paul writes, “I say this not as a command, but to prove the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:8-9). So, like the Corinthians, give on purpose motivated by the grace of the Lord Jesus who died for you and through God “has given us immeasurable riches of his grace” (Eph. 2:7).

 

This week, our family returned from vacationing in the hills of Ashville, NC. In some ways it was one of those vacations where you return more exhausted than when you left—while in other ways it was very refreshing to our spirit. We spent many hours sitting on the deck of a log cabin on the side of a mountain marveling at the beauty of God’s creation as we looked in awe at mountain after mountain as far as the eye could see. We slept late, lingered long in our Bibles, read books, watched the Olympics, played games, ate good food and chased the sun down as we waited for the moon to rise. It was refreshing to our spirit.

In the evening around the dinner table, I found myself thanking God often for you—the people of Grace Bible church who pay me enough money and give me enough time off to refresh my soul in Jesus and His creation. After listing some names, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16:18 (ESV) “for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.” Thank you for making it possible for our family to refresh our spirit.

What extraordinarily rich truth we are seeing in this letter to the Corinthians! On the one hand, that is not a surprise, as this is the eternal Word of God. On the other hand, most of Paul’s message is corrective and, well, many (most?) corrections we are given in life are not filled with rich grace and truth.

Paul bases his corrections in the Gospel, verse seven of chapter four; everything that we have that is of eternal value has been given to us by God – salvation, right standing before God, being made part of His eternal family, the teachers that passed the truth along to us, the ability to even understand such truth, and everything else that is of significance – all are gifts from God. We have no room to boast in achievement, and, having been freed from sinful tyranny to self, we are free to follow the model of Christ Jesus and love and serve others.

Now we are in chapter twelve, and among the many rich nuggets is this: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” (Vs. 7) Not only are we greatly privileged to be part of the universal body of Christ, the Spirit has also given each one of us yet another gift(s) – a gift we did not have before – beyond the natural abilities the Father weaved into us before we were born physically. He has given to each of us at least one spiritual gift, through which we have the great privilege of building up the church family.

I find it sadly ironic that so many churches have disputed and even divided over spiritual gifts when the purpose of the spirit distributing gifts to Christians is for the common good of the church body. For the next several weeks I hope we will walk humbly with each other as we discuss the purpose and use of spiritual gifts in the church. Gifted and godly men and women who love Jesus, with whom we will enjoy great friendship in heaven, have different opinions about the meaning and appropriate use of the various spiritual gifts. I hope that at the end of this discussion of 1 Corinthians 12-14, regardless of our individual understanding of the spiritual gifts, all of us will practice our gift given by the Spirit, distributed as he wills for the building up, help, and unity of the church body. As your pastor, I desire that none of us would see our gift as more important or less important for our church rather that we would see all of the gifts given to our church as equally important and necessary for the good of our church family. However, I pray that most importantly, we follow the more excellent way of love with each other (1 Corinthians 13).

This Sunday's sermon will be from 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 and it pertains to the Lord's Supper. This is the second correction from Paul to the Corinthian church regarding some of their behavior in corporate worship. The ESV Study Bible summarizes this section like this:

The Corinthians were using their gatherings around the Lord’s Table as occasions to make social distinctions between rich and poor. Paul is profoundly troubled by this development and argues strongly against it.  

If you’re like me, potentially one of the questions that can come from a cursory reading of this section can be, “Can I take the Lord's Supper if I've had a bad week spiritually?” By God’s grace I found a helpful answer to this question from Pastor John Piper. Here is what he has to say:
 

It depends on the transaction of the moment, not the quality of the week gone by.
 
Nobody brings a successful week to the Lord's Table, period. Nobody. We all call into question—and rightly—the effectiveness of our devotions or the quality of our communication with our kids. It's never been perfect. Therefore, we bring to the table our sin.
 
That's the point of the table. It is a recognition of our sin.
 
However, what you do in preparation—when you take stock of yourself—is that you confess all known sin. You do Psalm 19: "Cleanse me of hidden faults, and hold back your servant from presumptuous sins."
 
So you pray specific confession for the sins you know, you pray general confession for the sins you're unaware of, and you receive afresh the cleansing, the application of the blood of Christ (1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness").
 
Now, after you've appropriated afresh the work of Christ and are enjoying that forgiveness, you eat. And you eat worthily, not because you had a good week, but because you have a great Savior and are united with him by faith and are renouncing all those sins.
 
That's what I encourage our people to do. "Set it right with God now, in these next three minutes." And then as the trays come we celebrate that, we remember the foundation of that forgiveness, by eating.

This past Sunday we heard Pastor Merritt unfold God's Word to us from Psalm 46. Merritt reminded us that "The LORD of hosts is in control and with us, through all trouble and rebellion." What a great truth to be reminded of! Even better is to know that since it was God who put Psalm 46 in our Bibles, we can trust that He will give us the grace to believe this truth when we find ourselves in times of trouble and rebellion.

Desiring to extend this sermon throughout your week, here is a little devotion on the first verse of Psalm 46. 

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Suffering is a fact of life in a fallen and broken world. The truth is if you have not already, you will experience suffering, trouble, or trials of various kinds. A wise man once wrote, "...all we have to do is live long enough, and we will suffer."* Well I guess I've lived long enough. Over the past three years, Lauren and I have gone through several trials: family, job, and even personal. Before the Lord gifted Lauren and I with Payton Anne, we had three miscarriages. This is not one of those things that gets easier with experience. There was significant weeping with heavy hearts.

Through this time, there has been one verse in particular that has continued to be a "rock" under my feet, Psalm 46:1.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1 ESV)

This verse is great news for sufferers like you and me! Amazingly, when I'm suffering, when you're suffering, God is not far off from us. Rather, because of the Gospel, God is very present to sufferers. The Gospel makes God's closeness to sufferers, like you and I, possible. If you've by grace trusted in Jesus' life, death and resurrection for the forgiveness of your sins, then you have been permanently brought near to God. He is now and will always be very near to you.

Amazingly, Psalm 46:1 informs us that God is more than merely near to you and I in times of trouble. Psalm 46:1 would remind us of 3 characteristics about our Present God that He graciously wants us to be informed about when we're suffering. Our Heavenly Father wants these specific characteristics to inform, correct, instruct our thinking about who He is in relation to us when we're experiencing times of trouble.

1. God is our very present refuge. If you're like me, when trouble comes I often respond by fleeing to the TV in hopes that it will give me peace, rest and comfort (distraction tactics). This is clearly a hopeless response. Where do you tend to flee when trouble comes? Psalm 46:1 would remind us that only real lasting peace, rest and comfort will be found in God. He is our very present shelter in times of trouble.
2. God is our very present strength. God's grace is the only means by which we will endure through suffering. When suffering, do you like me, ever feel unable to go on? Or feel battered and bruised from the spiritual battle that can ensue? Where do you instinctively tend to look for strength to go on? This verse would remind us that real strength is found in our very present God.
3. God is our very present help. God is ever faithful to sufferers like you and I. "...he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." (1Cor. 10:13 ESV) Psalm 46:1 would remind us that when times of trouble are tempting us to feel helpless, we have an ever present help in our God.

I would encourage you to keep a verse like Psalm 46:1 in your arsenal. God put Psalm 46:1 in our Bibles so that we could be reminded of these great truths when times of trouble come. Praise God who is our very present refuge, strength, and help in [times of] trouble!

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RESOURCES (audio, PDF, video)

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Like I promised Sunday, here is a message to listen to detailing why the Gospel is for Christians and how to think about the Gospel more fully. Mike Bullmore has been extremely instrumental for many Christians so they can walk in and enjoy the ongoing grace that came to us, through Christ's sacrifice. I am not sure I could find a more helpful "ground floor" resource for you to listen to, in order to grasp these important truths.

 
The Functional Centrality of The Gospel in The Life of The Local Church | Mike Bullmore

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In an effort to illustrate for you how "Gospel-Centered" thinking can begin to function in a local church, I have included the following links. Matt Chandler is pastor of The Village Church in the Dallas area. His church is a Gospel-Centered church and in these helpful messages Matt is leading his church to think about how the Gospel should inform various categories in his church. PLEASE NOTE: These messages are just meant to help you process what this important understanding could look like in a local church environment.

 
Matt Chandler
Gospel-Centered Worship

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Gospel-Centered Community

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Gospel-Centered Service

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Gospel-Driven Sanctification by Jerry Bridges
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John Piper - You Need The Gospel Everyday

The Spirit of God is a mystery to me. I guess that is the nature of any spirit—without flesh and blood it is very difficult to see what he is doing. I take it by faith that Jesus promised that he would give his Spirit after he left the earth. He told the disciples, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said” (John 14:25-26).

The Spirit lives in us and is always with us because we have loved Jesus and continue to believe in Jesus. The Spirit replaced the physical presence of Jesus on the earth. It is his job to continue to teach us what Jesus taught us. He always reveals Jesus and continues to show us the mystery of God—Jesus, our Messiah who came to save us from our sin. In fact the Apostle John and the Apostle Paul both tell us that without the Spirit, we would not believe what God has prepared for those who love him (John 14:14-24; 1 Cor. 2:6-16).

Full disclosure—I really struggle with public speaking. I often find myself in tears and even get angry at God for pushing me toward preaching. Go figure—the guy who was so shy in Junior High that he ducked to hide from girls, the guy who had such fear of public speaking that he feigned sickness to get out of public speaking in High School—that is the guy God called to preach. I feel pushed by God to preach and it creates such inner conflict that I often question if I heard God right!

Words are so difficult for me—I just don’t have many words—ask my wife! I often joke that I use more words on a Sunday A.M. then I use all week! For that reason, it takes a great deal of pain for me to understand the meaning of the words God said in the Scripture and then even greater pain to understand what words God wants me to say to you. Because words are such a great struggle for me, I find great comfort in the apostle Paul who was with the Corinthians “in weakness, fear and much trembling”; he recognized that his speech was not in persuasive words of wisdom, so he deliberately decided not to know or talk about anything except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is the best I can do too. My prayer is that my words will be in “the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith will not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:2-5)

Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving. The heart of thanksgiving is to recognize that what we have did not come by our hand alone. The opposite of thanksgiving is pride and boasting. Pride always precedes boasting. We say boastful things because first, pride was in our heart. However, it is important to remember that we can flip boasting upside down and say self-deprecating things because we want to hear someone else boast for us and about us. Either way, it is still boasting! The irony is that we boast about things that matter very little to God. (They matter to God only as far as they bring glory to God.) So we boast about our GPA, our athletic skill, our rank, our accomplishments, who we know, where we have been, or what we have done.

However, we talk very little about the important things that we possess as Christians—things that did not come by our own hand—our righteousness, our sanctification and our redemption. Maybe we don’t talk about them because we cannot boast in them? Could it be that we would rather boast in ourselves than in the Lord?

God continues to remind me that there are only two responses to Christ on a cross—most who are perishing consider it folly, but for the few who are being saved it is the power of God. Those who consider it foolish that God on a cross would save people usually stumble over the idea. Like the Jews who lived with Jesus, they continue to seek a sign, evidence, or proof that Jesus was really God. Or they think it complete and utter foolishness to claim that God would give himself as a sacrifice to save the human race from destruction—none of the Greek gods would ever act in such a way, for we don’t want God to be weak. For most people this is foolishness, this is weakness and certainly not a display of power. But for the few who believe such “folly,” to those who are called by God, it is both the power and wisdom of God to die on a cross to save them.

I think most people struggle with Christ on a cross because the idea is so foolish, so counterintuitive, without evidence of power. It is so difficult to believe in a power that is unseen and unrealized. So what about you? When you hear the “word of the cross,” is it folly or is it the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18)?

Mondays are my day off and I often enjoy long walks in the woods with my dog and reading or memorizing some texts from my Bible. Yesterday, I found an old chair that had been washed down stream. So I cleaned it off, sat down, listened to the babbling brook, watched a young Bald Eagle and read the entire book of 1 Corinthians—it was near heaven!

What struck me on this reading was that God chose to start with their lack of unity and obvious divisions inside of the church—in fact he returns to it in various ways throughout the entire book. The question I kept asking myself is out of all the issues they were having, why did God start with the issue of divisions in the church?

One of my initial thoughts is that it must illustrate their lack of understanding of grace. If they understood God’s undeserved gift of grace to them in Christ, then why weren’t they following Christ rather than human leaders and why wouldn’t they extend the same undeserved grace to their brothers and sisters in Christ? The answer can only be that they did not understand and or live by grace. A church functioning without grace is in a very bad place.

As we start our long series in 1 Corinthians please pray that God would open our eyes to see the connections between the grace given to us by God, in Christ Jesus and the practical effects of that grace that is operating in our lives in the person of Jesus. Through faith in His work done for us on the cross, I pray that many would believe the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection—the Gospel and experience the joy of having their sin’s forgiven. I pray that we would understand how this good news—Jesus, not only saves us from condemnation but how Jesus continues to be an effective work of God’s grace in our lives.

I have called this series Lessons on Grace from a Dysfunctional Church because God wants us to understand from this letter that it is His grace—God’s unmerited favor on us who deserve only His wrath, that saved the Corinthians. I want us to see that it is God’s grace that will keep these Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:7-8) strong to the end and even blameless on the day that our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed—in spite of some severe sin and dysfunction. I want us to see that through faith in the Gospel, the same grace of God is effective in us through Christ Jesus and that grace will keep us until Jesus is revealed—in spite of sin and severe dysfunction in our lives.