Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Message Drift
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Message Drift
1 Corinthians 15:1-2
March 3, 2019
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kid’s Korner.
The sermon starts at 13:40 in the audio file.
Or, Reminders to Hold Fast to the Gospel
I care about why. The answer to why matters about almost everything. It might be connected to a smaller, personal decision, or it might be related to the generational direction of an entire group. Why am I doing this? Why should we do this, not that?
The why usually connects with a mission. Our church has a mission statement, so does the school. Your business might have one, maybe even your family. The Westminster Catechism answers the mission for every human being: “Man’s chief end is to glory God and to enjoy Him forever.”
But men get busy and forget their mission. Organizations get larger, get distracted, get a new group of employees or volunteers, and drift from their mission. It’s usually not mission rebellion; there’s not a fight, at least at the start. Instead there is mission slippage, which happens when there isn’t a fight to maintain the mission. In order not to drift the mission must be brought back to mind and kept in mind.
In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is not concerned about mission drift but about message drift. And the message that he’s eager to declare and defend is the primary message of Christianity. He’s not concerned about footnotes, he’s concerned about the faith once for all delivered to the saints. What he addresses is the fact that once delivered doesn’t mean always remembered.
Chapter 15 is a glorious chapter. It is the treasure room of the epistle’s house, near the last on the tour. If Paul had an editor, or mail delivery person, who wanted to limit what he could send to Corinth, I think he could have been happy keeping these 58 verses and cutting the rest. Why did he wait so long to get to his highest point? I don’t know his why behind waiting, but I do know his why behind writing.
The entire chapter reminds the church about the gospel, and the gospel as including, the gospel as requiring the truth of resurrection. Jesus died on Friday and rose again on Sunday, and every believer will be resurrected in Christ and by Christ and for Christ. He is the first-fruits, we will follow. The bodily resurrection of Christ is history, verified by many witnesses. And every believer’s resurrection in Him is as certain as it is still to come. This is the heart of the Christian message, a fundamental without which our faith is vain, and apparently some among the Corinthians were drifting from it.
The resurrection is when we’ll be fully alive, the ultimate state in which we will be men and women as God designed. The resurrection is our final change. God’s highest goal is not good times while we’re here on earth, nor is it intellectual existence in another realm as mere immortal souls, it is bodily resurrection. The resurrection is gospel grammar and gospel rhetoric, the most basic truth that we will adorn for eternity.
We know that some were drifting because Paul says it in verse 12: “some of you say that that there is no resurrection of the dead.” It’s there that Paul begins a serious set of conditional statements that demonstrate resurrection not only as something that Christ experienced, but as a truth that all believers will experience. A defense of the doctrine of resurrection fills the first half of the chapter up to verse 34. At verse 35 Paul drills down to resurrection as an eternal and bodily truth, finishing with an exhortation that your work in the risen Lord is not in vain, so work it.
I’m going to be working through chapter 15 more slowly than some of the previous chapters, and there are a couple reasons for it. The biggest reason is because this chapter is Paul’s biggest burden. The gospel is of first importance, and we need the reminders along with the Corinthians in order to avoid message drift[...]
View all episodes
By Trinity Evangel Church1 Corinthians 15:1-2
March 3, 2019
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kid’s Korner.
The sermon starts at 13:40 in the audio file.
Or, Reminders to Hold Fast to the Gospel
I care about why. The answer to why matters about almost everything. It might be connected to a smaller, personal decision, or it might be related to the generational direction of an entire group. Why am I doing this? Why should we do this, not that?
The why usually connects with a mission. Our church has a mission statement, so does the school. Your business might have one, maybe even your family. The Westminster Catechism answers the mission for every human being: “Man’s chief end is to glory God and to enjoy Him forever.”
But men get busy and forget their mission. Organizations get larger, get distracted, get a new group of employees or volunteers, and drift from their mission. It’s usually not mission rebellion; there’s not a fight, at least at the start. Instead there is mission slippage, which happens when there isn’t a fight to maintain the mission. In order not to drift the mission must be brought back to mind and kept in mind.
In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is not concerned about mission drift but about message drift. And the message that he’s eager to declare and defend is the primary message of Christianity. He’s not concerned about footnotes, he’s concerned about the faith once for all delivered to the saints. What he addresses is the fact that once delivered doesn’t mean always remembered.
Chapter 15 is a glorious chapter. It is the treasure room of the epistle’s house, near the last on the tour. If Paul had an editor, or mail delivery person, who wanted to limit what he could send to Corinth, I think he could have been happy keeping these 58 verses and cutting the rest. Why did he wait so long to get to his highest point? I don’t know his why behind waiting, but I do know his why behind writing.
The entire chapter reminds the church about the gospel, and the gospel as including, the gospel as requiring the truth of resurrection. Jesus died on Friday and rose again on Sunday, and every believer will be resurrected in Christ and by Christ and for Christ. He is the first-fruits, we will follow. The bodily resurrection of Christ is history, verified by many witnesses. And every believer’s resurrection in Him is as certain as it is still to come. This is the heart of the Christian message, a fundamental without which our faith is vain, and apparently some among the Corinthians were drifting from it.
The resurrection is when we’ll be fully alive, the ultimate state in which we will be men and women as God designed. The resurrection is our final change. God’s highest goal is not good times while we’re here on earth, nor is it intellectual existence in another realm as mere immortal souls, it is bodily resurrection. The resurrection is gospel grammar and gospel rhetoric, the most basic truth that we will adorn for eternity.
We know that some were drifting because Paul says it in verse 12: “some of you say that that there is no resurrection of the dead.” It’s there that Paul begins a serious set of conditional statements that demonstrate resurrection not only as something that Christ experienced, but as a truth that all believers will experience. A defense of the doctrine of resurrection fills the first half of the chapter up to verse 34. At verse 35 Paul drills down to resurrection as an eternal and bodily truth, finishing with an exhortation that your work in the risen Lord is not in vain, so work it.
I’m going to be working through chapter 15 more slowly than some of the previous chapters, and there are a couple reasons for it. The biggest reason is because this chapter is Paul’s biggest burden. The gospel is of first importance, and we need the reminders along with the Corinthians in order to avoid message drift[...]