Preached · May 26, 2019
Opening
Good morning, brothers and sisters. It is great to see a full house today. As Brandon mentioned, it's great that we get to have this family reunion — people from far and wide joining together for vacation and summer, but of course also to join together to celebrate the name of Jesus. So thank you for being here. Again, my name is Anthony, and it's my privilege to preach the Word of God today. And we're going to get right to it.
We're going to be in 1 Corinthians 15. We have been talking about the gospel. What is the gospel? For a church called Good News Community Church, we thought it might be important for us to know what the good news is. Because there are a lot of false gospels out there. There can be a lot of confusion about what the gospel is and what it isn't. Is it about heaven? Is it about hell? Is it about being a good person? Is it about what Jesus did and didn't do? What is the gospel?
So last week, Pastor Brandon kicked us off on a little three-week series explaining the gospel. And he made it very clear that the gospel is good news, not just good advice. Because nobody wants to go to a church called Good Advice Community Church. Right? "Good Advice Community Church: we'll tell you everything you're doing wrong and how to do it instead." Because everyone loves that person, right? No, not at all. The gospel is not just good advice. It's not somebody nagging at you on Facebook, or an email forward from your mom — "Well, if you would have done this better, your children would have come out better." No, it's not good advice. It's good news. It's about something that happened that changes the world — something that happened in history, in a place, in time, that changes everything.
Just like if I told you that Target was coming to Dickinson County. (It's not. That rumor has been started about 600 times in the nine years we've lived here.) But if I told you that, you know that your life would never look the same. You would never have to step foot into the crowded halls of Walmart ever again. You would just buy the same product at a slightly more expensive price and feel better about yourself. That's it. The gospel is good news, not merely good advice. And so that's what we're going to be exploring today.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Would you stand for the public reading of God's Word? We'll be referring to a lot of 1 Corinthians 15 today, but we're going to be reading just verses 1 through 11. These are the words of Paul to the church of Corinth. He writes,
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel, the good news that I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you — otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [that's Peter], and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also [that's Paul], as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve 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 to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them — yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.
Would you pray with me? Almighty God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — we trust and believe that you are here in our midst today, that it is your desire to illuminate, to open up the Scriptures for wisdom, for teaching, for reproof and correction. So God, as we pay attention to your presence and to your word, may we be a people who are changed — heart and soul and body, tippy-toe to the top of our head. May we be a people that are changed through what is preached today. Lord, would you use me as an instrument of peace. I pray these things in the unity of the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
A Working Definition: God's Already-Present Kingdom
So, what is the gospel? Over the course of this series you will probably hear quite a few definitions of the gospel, because it is really hard to box in, really hard to contain into just one simple statement. So I'm going to do my best to give what I would call a working definition of the gospel. Brandon already told us that it is good news and not good advice, and we know that this means that something happened, something changed.
So my working definition of the gospel starts with this: it is God's already-present kingdom. In other words, it is not merely about the future. It is not merely about the past. It is about something that is happening right now. The gospel is about God's kingdom. It is about the rule and reign of God. It is about what the world would look like if what God wanted came true, if God's will was being done. And the gospel is nothing if it is not about God's kingdom.
Now, many of us have heard false gospels, false stories, skewed stories — maybe just one puzzle piece of the story. But we have to start with God's kingdom. Let me give you just a few Bible verses about that. Let's start with Matthew chapter 4. This is the beginning of Jesus' ministry, and Jesus begins to preach. He says, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." And Matthew 4 continues: Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming — what does he proclaim? — the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. So there's proclamation, and there's action, and it's all about God's kingdom. In Luke chapter 4, Jesus said, "I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God, because this is why I was sent." In Luke chapter 8, Jesus traveled about from town to village, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. In Luke 16, Jesus says, "Since the time of John the Baptist, the good news of the kingdom is being preached." Acts chapter 1: this is after Jesus has suffered and died and been resurrected, and he shows up to the disciples — and what does he talk to them about? He appears to them over a period of forty days and speaks about the kingdom of God. You get the idea that the kingdom of God might be important. Acts chapter 8: "When they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus, they were baptized." Acts 19: "Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God." Acts 28: Paul witnessed to them from morning until evening, explaining about the kingdom of God, and from the Law and the Prophets tried to persuade them about Jesus; and again in Acts 28, Paul proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you believe me that the gospel might be about the kingdom? It just might be.
False Gospels
Now, what are the false gospels we've heard instead? A false gospel might have a nugget of truth, an element of truth, but it's distorted — or maybe it's just one piece and the rest is ignored. So let me give you a few examples.
One is the gospel of sin management, which is probably the gospel a lot of us are most familiar with: that Jesus came to make you more ethical, more moral, a better person — to manage your sin. And some of us really want to believe this gospel, because we've got sin up the wazoo. We've got stories about our sin that could fill this room. We need our sin to be managed, and so we come to Jesus expecting sin management from him. Now, don't get me wrong — it's not a false gospel because Jesus isn't concerned about our sin. He is. He desires us to be washed and cleansed, to be pure and holy, and he is going to do the work on our behalf. But the gospel is not merely about our sin management.
Some of us want to be vampire Christians. We want Jesus just for a little bit of his blood — like a sparkly Edward Cullen. (Some of you, this image goes right over your head. Consider yourselves lucky.) Now, here's the thing: Jesus doesn't need vampire Christians. Jesus doesn't want us to only want a little bit of his blood and that's it. This idea of vampire Christians comes from the philosopher and discipleship guru Dallas Willard, and he actually quotes someone older than him, A.W. Tozer. Willard writes:
Some years ago, A.W. Tozer expressed his feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout evangelical Christian circles: the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need him as a Savior, and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to him as Lord as long as we want to.
Willard continues:
The heresy has created the impression that it is quite reasonable to be a vampire Christian. One, in effect, says to Jesus, "I'd like a little of your blood, please, but I don't care to be your student, I don't care to have your character. In fact, won't you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I'll see you in heaven." But can we really imagine that this is an approach that Jesus finds acceptable?
So the gospel of sin management: a vampire Christian wants a little bit of Jesus' blood — enough to wash them of their sins, or to make them feel better about themselves, or enough of a sin-management system that they can live their lives concerned about doing the right thing all the time — and then they want nothing else to do with Jesus. I know some of you are dismayed at the image of this vampire, and I would say Jesus is more dismayed about a gospel of sin management, because when we have a gospel of sin management, we're missing out on the rest of the story.
Let me tell you another false gospel: the gospel of afterlife insurance. These are the folks who knock on the door, and you open it, and they say, "If you die tonight, do you know where you would go?" And so you accept the gospel so that you can go to heaven when you die — or, perhaps more accurately, so that you don't go to hell when you die. They're afterlife-insurance salespeople. And the gospel of afterlife insurance is so concerned about the future, so concerned about heaven, that we miss the rest of the story. We miss the fact that God's kingdom is already present. As some have said, people become so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good. This is not the complete story either.
Another false gospel is the health-and-wealth gospel: that Jesus came to make you rich and happy, to make sure you never have to suffer again — that suffering will do you no good whatsoever, and that God only wants you to experience happiness. Now, don't get me wrong: God wants you to experience holiness. But happiness and holiness are not the same thing. In the end, God will recreate a world in which there is no crying, no tears, and no pain. But the suffering that we experience now actually can do some good.
This is closely connected to the social-justice gospel, another false gospel, which basically takes the health-and-wealth gospel and applies it to other people. We want other people to stop suffering, we want other people to experience happiness, and so our gospel becomes all about using all of our strength and energy and resources to do that. And again, God asks us to go out into the world to reveal his kingdom — but if all we're concerned about is making sure other people don't suffer, or that we don't suffer, we've missed the whole story.
Revealed by Y'all
So, back to the working definition. The gospel is God's already-present kingdom. It has something to do with today, with God's will being done today, with the present. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, "I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand." You can't stand on the future. You can only stand on the present, on what is true today, on what God is up to right now.
God's already-present kingdom, the definition goes on, revealed by y'all. Now, just about every other language in the world has what's called a "you" plural — a "y'all," a "bunch of y'all." My brother lives down in Texas. We grew up in Indiana; he married a girl from Texas, moved down there, and he very quickly adopted the Southern "y'all," because our English doesn't really have another word for "you" plural. For us Northerners, it's "you guys" — "Hey, you guys!" But I think "y'all" sounds a little more pleasant to the ear. And in Scripture, there are all sorts of examples where a translator has the Greek or the Hebrew in front of them and is trying to translate a "you" plural, but all that's left is just the word "you." And so we read Scripture with a very individualistic, singular, me-focused reading, when the original writers of Scripture are writing about "y'all," "you guys," the group.
And God's already-present kingdom is revealed through a collective of people, a group of people — namely, a church. Scripture makes it clear — we see this in Ephesians, we see this in Colossians — that what God is doing in his project of remaking, recreating the world is that he is making a new humanity. It's like he's starting a new species of person whose primary characteristic is that they are in the family of Jesus. God is creating a new humanity, a new species of human person, known as the church. And through this new humanity, through the church, we reveal God's already-present, already-here kingdom — that God is up to something good and that we are joining him in it.
As one commentator has said, "No one is joined to Christ except together with a neighbor." A solitary Christian is nonsense. A Christian by himself or herself cannot exist. No one is joined to Christ, no one is known by the name of Jesus, except together with someone else, together with a neighbor. The church reveals God's kingdom, and we cannot fully experience or know or understand the gospel unless we are with the church.
Through God's Grace Presently Working Within You
So: God's already-present kingdom, revealed by y'all, through God's grace presently working within you. Ephesians 15, verses 9 and 10 says, "By the grace of God I am what I am" — Paul's got a little bit of Popeye in him — "and his grace to me was not without effect. I worked harder than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."
When we experience salvation, when we experience being joined with Jesus, we experience God's grace. And again, God's grace is not just about our past — erasing past sins, taking care of everything that happened before. It's not merely about our future — getting us to heaven when we die, avoiding judgment. God's grace transforms us now. Grace itself, the act of forgiveness itself, is transformative. Which means that the gospel does not stop at our conversion. It does not culminate in going to heaven when we die. It means that God's kingdom is available to us today.
We experience salvation — maybe we were baptized as an infant, maybe we went to camp and had an emotional moment, maybe as an adult we had a crisis of faith, a crisis of belief, and we came to Jesus. Praise God, hallelujah. That moment, that transformation, that beginning is necessary — but it is just the beginning. The gospel does not culminate in us going to heaven when we die. We don't become Christians and then sit around and wait for Jesus to show up, or wait to keel over so we can be with Jesus. No — the kingdom is available to us today. God's grace is presently working within you, and within you all, the collective, the church, to reveal God's already-present kingdom.
Until Your Resurrection
So: God's already-present kingdom, revealed by you all, through God's grace presently working within you, until your resurrection. If we were to continue reading through 1 Corinthians 15, you'd see that there is a controversy in the church of Corinth about the resurrection. There were some false teachers going around proclaiming that the resurrection had already happened — by like A.D. 40 or 50, 1,950-some years ago. And Paul was saying, "No, no, no. If the resurrection already happened, or if the resurrection doesn't exist at all, then our faith is useless and worthless." The resurrection of Jesus, and then the eventual resurrection of ourselves, is crucial, key, paramount to understanding the gospel. And so Paul writes the rest of 1 Corinthians 15 about this — about the resurrection, both of Jesus and of ourselves. And then he writes this in verse 58: "Therefore..."
Now, pay attention to that really quickly. Paul just got done writing a bunch of future-oriented stuff: the resurrection will happen; you will die, and then Jesus will come back and bring your bodies back, and you will be a brand-new kind of person, without sickness or disease. All future-oriented stuff. Paul writes, "Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."
Because of what God has done in the past — because of the resurrection of Jesus — and because of what God will do in the future — the future resurrection, the future new heavens and new earth — therefore, stand firm today. Therefore, engage in the work of gospel-making today. Therefore, engage in the work of kingdom-revealing today. Your labor is not in vain, because of the past, because of the future, and because of what God is doing in you right now. That requires that gospel work happens within us and through you all right now, today.
So the gospel is not merely about taking care of our past sins. It's not merely about making sure we go to heaven when we die. It's not merely about trying to make the world a better place on our own strength. It's about God's grace within us, revealing what God is up to right now, today.
The Gospel, Summed Up
New Testament scholar N.T. Wright puts it like this:
The good news is that the one true God has now taken charge of the world, in and through Jesus and his death and resurrection. The ancient hopes have indeed been fulfilled, but in a way nobody imagined. God's plan to put the world right has finally been launched. He has grasped the world in a new way, to sort it out and to fill it with his glory and justice, as he always promised — but he has done so in a way beyond the wildest dreams of prophecy. The ancient sickness that crippled the whole world, and humans with it, has been cured at last, so that new life can rise in its place. Life has come to life and is pouring out like a mighty river into the world, in the form of a new power — the power of love. The good news was, and is, that all this has happened in and through Jesus; that one day it will happen, completely and utterly, to all creation; and that we humans, every single one of us, whoever we are, can be caught up in that transformation here and now. That is the Christian gospel. Do not allow yourself to be fooled with anything else.
One more way to put it: because of God's grace, Jesus is forming a new humanity, filled with his Spirit, through whom he will remake the entire world into the place where the Father's will is done. And you're invited. That is the gospel. Nothing more — and, brothers and sisters, nothing less.
Invitation and Closing Prayer
So if you want to take part in that kind of gospel, that kind of good news, and you've never done it before — or maybe you did it a long time ago, and it's time to recommit to that kind of gospel — a prayer team is going to be available up front at the conclusion of today's service. And friends, I urge you to pray with them, to speak to them about this kind of gospel, because it is worth dying for, and it is worth living for.
I invite the worship team to come forward, and for us all to stand as we pray together. Father, Son, and Spirit: the good news is more than some of the lies we've been told. It's not just about us being good; it's not just about what happens after we die. God, you're doing something good right now, and we want to join you in it. And so, Father, for those of us who have been committed to this path for many, many years — would you reinvigorate us? Would you strengthen us? Would you help us to stand firm in that gospel? May we not grow weary in doing good. May we not grow weary in being faithful. By your Holy Spirit, would you strengthen us? And God, for those of us who have either strayed from the path, or maybe the path has never been clear to us until today — God, I pray that through your Holy Spirit you would convict, in the name of grace, that grace would transform, and that we would have new brothers and sisters today, that they would experience your power and grace in a new way. God, your gospel is bigger and wider than we could have ever imagined. Unleash our imaginations. Set loose our hearts, God, that we may experience all you have to offer, from today until eternity. Amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
