Let me begin by saying good morning
everyone. Here we are again this morning
meeting together this way. We've been using this media for
a couple years now at the church for those who for some reason
or another have not been able to attend in person the preaching
of the gospel and I must admit I never thought that this would
wind up being the only outlet as our means of meeting together.
And with that said, there are many religious organizations
now using social media in one form or another to conduct their
services. Some have used them for a while
now and others just started to do so during the recent pandemic. And many of these assemblies
are reporting record numbers of people listening to their
programs. I suppose there are many people
who never attend services in person that are now listening
especially today being religion's big day of the year, Easter. And again, let me say that it's
not my intention this morning to speak against false religion,
but I will make this bold and broad statement. If those listening
do not hear the gospel, the message of Christ and Him crucified clearly,
and simply proclaimed it won't profit them in any way. Now we
have those who love to be called reverend and doctor, some desiring
to be called both, reverend, doctor, so-and-so, but there's
no gospel that falls from their lips. So again today, it's my
desire, my heart's desire, to preach and show you the gospel. My message this morning will
come from several passages out of scripture found in Paul's
first letter to the church at Corinth. So first turn with me
in your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 9 if you would please.
1 Corinthians chapter 9. I want you to read with me verse
16 and I'll tell you that my message is entitled, The Gospel. Paul writes in the 16th verse
of chapter 9, 1 Corinthians, he said, For though I preach
the gospel, I have nothing to glory of. For necessity is laid
upon me, yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. And it's here that we find the
heart and the intentions of all God's preachers. I speak of those
who preach the gospel of Christ according to the scriptures,
according to the Holy Bible. Paul didn't say, woe unto me
if I don't preach. He said, woe unto me if I preach
not the gospel. Paul preached the gospel. And
I again remind you that the word gospel in the original Greek
language is pronounced, I'm going to do my best here, but it's
pronounced euangelioso. I think I'm pronouncing that
correctly. You know, it's hard for an old Kentucky boy to try
to speak Greek because Greek is all Greek to me. But the word
simply means to announce good news, to declare and show glad
and good tidings. In other words, to preach the
gospel. The Greek word you, of that Greek
word, means good. And the Greek word angelos, which
is the word that we get the English word angel from, simply means
messenger or message. So the word gospel, in short,
means good message. And boy is it. It's the good
message of how God saves sinners. I hear men talk about the gospel,
but they never tell their hearers what it is. They never tell lost
sinners how God saved sinners. Paul preached the gospel. He
preached, he declared the good message and glad tidings for
sinners. And when we preach the gospel,
we certainly have nothing to glory in, of, or about. It is us who did and does the
sinning, and it's God who did and does the saving. The gospel
is all about God getting the glory and the salvation of chosen
sinners. But I would have you to notice
that Paul here preached with necessity. Did you notice that
word in verse 16? Paul said, necessity is laid
upon me. Who laid that necessity upon
Paul? God did. Now that word necessity
is one that we should consider for a moment. My wife always
told and taught our children that words mean something. And
that couldn't be more true when it comes to the gospel. And that's
what we're talking about this morning. We're talking about
the gospel, the one and only gospel. And to the child of God,
necessity is laid upon us to both hear and preach the gospel. So it's important to understand
that this necessity Paul is speaking of was not a necessity of Paul
to preach in order to make a living. Paul made tents to support himself. The word necessity means distress. It also means constraint. The
heart of God's messengers and God's people are filled with
the necessity to preach the gospel. Not issues of morality, not on
how to live, not on what the church does for God, but what
God has done for sinners. Oh, please learn that. We preach
how Christ died to put our sin away. And that is a great necessity. God lays necessity on us. God
gives us distress of mind and heart over the lost souls of
men and women. He constrains and restrains us
from preaching anything other than the message of Christ and
Him crucified. Gospel preaching is of God, and
it's the only means that God uses to save the lost. And men
and women will often argue the fairness of God when you tell
them that God saves through the means of preaching. I had a man
one time ask me this question. He asked, what about certain
tribes in remote locations of Africa who have never and probably
will never hear the gospel? He continued, and he said, if
they must hear the gospel and never do, well, that doesn't
seem fair. I told him that if God has a
man or a woman in Africa that He determined to save before
the foundation of the world, that they will hear the gospel. My mind immediately runs to the
Ethiopian eunuch spoken of in Acts chapter 8. He was from Africa,
and God sent him a preacher. God is going to cross the path
of each one of his elect with the gospel message. You can count
on that. How do I know that? Well, turn
back to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 with me, would you? 1 Corinthians
chapter 1. And I want you to look at verse
17. We're talking about preaching
the gospel. We're talking about what the
gospel is. We're talking about how God saves sinners. 1 Corinthians 1 17 Paul writes,
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Now, how is the gospel preached?
Well, he tells us here, he says, not with wisdom of words. It's
not by the wisdom of men. He says, lest the cross of Christ
should be made of non-effect. To say that men and women can
be saved without hearing how and who saved them is not possible
according to the Bible. And to say that men and women
can do something in and of themselves to be saved makes the cross of
Christ to be nothing. It causes Christ's crucifixion
to be of no effect, not effectual at all. It makes His death on
the cross of no value. And man's wisdom declares that
you must lend God your will in the matter of salvation. That
you have to give God your heart. Let God have His way. Make Jesus
the Lord of your life. You know, the only problem with
all that is that you can't. And you never will. I recently
heard a man say that in this pandemic that God is trying to
get people's attention. that God is wanting people to
wake up. How can folks not hear how ridiculous
that sounds? Another man said that God is
wanting you to see some things in this time of trouble. No,
He's not. God is not trying and God is
not wanting. He's never tried and never wanted
to do anything. If God wants you to hear, you
will hear. And if God wants you to see,
you will see. How do I know that? The Lord
of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so
shall it come to pass. And as I have purposed, so shall
it stand. Isaiah 14, 24. The problem is
the little G-God of men and women's imagination may try and want
to do something but not the God that His holy book declares.
And this is why religion has come up with such foolishness.
Look at verse 18. For the preaching of the cross
is foolishness to them that perish. If one finds the gospel message
of Christ and Him crucified to be foolish, they'll perish. Read
on, "...but unto us which are saved the preaching of the cross
is the power of God. The preaching of Christ crucified
is the doing of God's power, and by no doing of our own."
Salvation is not by the works of righteousness that we've done.
Why? Because we've done no works of
righteousness. We're incapable in and of ourselves. And verse 19 says, For it is
written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I'll bring to
nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is
the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world? Verse 21, for after that, in
the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. What is it that pleases
God? It pleases Him to save those
who believe. How does God save them? By the
foolishness of preaching. It's what the world calls foolishness,
but it's not foolishness to the child of God. No, sir. It's the
power of God. You know, there's a song that
says it took a miracle. It took the same power and miracle
to save you, dear sinner, as it did to hang the stars in place. It took the same power and miracle
of God's grace in Christ to save a sinner as it took to hang the
world in space. Oh, it took the miracle, the
power of love and grace, and that's found only in the Lord
Jesus Christ. It took God, standing in our
room instead, to fulfill His law and to satisfy His justice,
and what power that is, and what power that took. Verse 24, but
unto them which are called, called by God, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, and He certainly
is. Verse 25, because the foolishness
of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger
than men. For you see your calling, brethren,
how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty. and base things of the world, and things which are
despised hath God chosen? Yea, and things which are not,
to bring to naught things that are. Why? That no flesh should
glory in His presence. But of Him are you in Christ
Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness,
and sanctification, and redemption, that according as it is written,
He that glorieth Let him glory in the Lord. Now let's move right
on into chapter 2. Remember that these chapters
and verses were added for us to easily reference and find
things in the scriptures. But this is one letter. It's
the same letter. And Paul is continuing on with
the same thought and message in chapter 2. Now Paul is going
to tell us something about his preaching. And I want you to
notice His humility. You know, I was thinking this
morning, there is no such thing as a proud preacher. God won't
allow it. Verse 1, And I, speaking of Paul,
brethren, when I came to you, I came not with excellency of
speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. You know, that's what preaching
is. Declaring unto you the testimony
of God. Verse two, for I determined not
to know anything among you save or accept Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. Did you hear that? Oh, I wish
the world could hear it. That's the issue. That is how
God saves sinners. That is all that a sinner needs
to know, who Christ is and what Christ has done. Has God revealed
that to you? When it comes down to the salvation
of our souls, all that we need to concern ourselves with is
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Paul goes on to say in verse
3, And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that
your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God." Beloved, our faith doesn't stand in the enticing
words of man's wisdom. Our faith and trust in Christ
stands tall in the power of God. Our faith stands firm in the
demonstration of the Spirit and the power of God's almighty work. It took God's power to put our
sin on Christ and then freely give us His perfect righteousness.
Only God can do that. Well, preachers need to get out
of the way. They need to point sinners to
Christ. Someone once said that the pulpit and its purpose was
for hiding the preacher so that men could hear from God and not
from the man preaching. Now that's not biblical, but
it is a good illustration. Men need to get themselves out
of the way and preach Christ and Him crucified. Kind of reminds
me of what my mother used to tell me. She'd say, get over
yourself. The world doesn't revolve around
you. I thought it did, but I discovered
that she was right, it doesn't. And this is what the gospel is.
Christ is God. And God died for the believer's
sin. Have you ever heard anything
like that? Well, that's the gospel. God did for you what you could
never do for yourself. And we need to be simple and
plain and get ourselves out of the way and preach Christ. You
see, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of Man be lifted up. The Lord Jesus said Himself,
if I be lifted up from the earth, I'll draw all men unto me. Now
He doesn't mean every man and woman in the world there. That
means every man and woman that God foreknew, that God predestinated,
that God predetermined, determined beforehand to be conformed, to
the image of His Son. That means that God sovereignly
purposed before time ever was to call and save some by the
preaching of the gospel. And He's going to save every
one of them, all of them, every single one. The elect of God
is who that's talking about. Not the whole world, but all
God's chosen in the world. We need to be simple and plain.
They're new believers among us, and Paul tells us that we must
teach them as babes in Christ. We must teach them the same as
we teach our children when they're young. And I am so thankful that
I had patient men who patiently taught me the gospel. I think
back on some of the things that I said when I first came to know
the gospel. Oh, they were so patient with
me. Brother Maurice, so patient with me. Brother Mahan, both
Henry and Paul for that matter. Brother Fortner, Brother Nybert,
Brother Shanks, all the list goes on and on. There was a time
when they couldn't speak to me as spiritual. as unto carnal
fleshly minded. You see, I still had way too
much of this world and the love for it in me. I was a babe in
Christ. And in the early years, it was
easy for me to put these men on a pedestal. Through their
preaching, I learned of the sovereign God of the Bible and His Christ. But man doesn't get the glory
in the salvation of sinners. Man doesn't get the glory in
the preaching of the gospel. A true preacher will tell you
straight up that's so, and that's exactly what was going on in
the church at Corinth. Look at verse 1 in chapter 3
here in 1 Corinthians. Paul said, "...and I, brethren,
could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal,
even as unto babes in Christ. There was too much of the world
still in me. He said, I fed you with milk
and not with meat. For hitherto ye were not able
to bear it, neither yet now are you able. For ye are yet carnal,
for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions. Are you not carnal? and walk
as a man? Do you know what their envy and
strife and their divisions were over? Who was the best preacher? Verse 4, For one saith, I am
of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos. Are you not carnal,
fleshly minded? The world and those in it concern
themselves with who's the greatest. That matter has already been
settled. The church at Corinth was consumed
with human passions and their conduct was no different than
the lost world in which they lived. But the child of God is
in the world, but they're not of the world. Christ has chosen
them out of the world. Then Paul asked this question
in verse 5, who then is Paul and who is Apollos? but ministers
by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man."
Again, speaking of every saved man and woman. Who was Paul? Who was Apollos? Who is any preacher
for that matter? They are but ministers, Paul
said. That word means attendants, waiters,
servers, servants. That's how Paul addressed himself
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ. Not Paul the reverend, not Paul
the doctor, not Paul the reverend doctor. But Paul, a servant of
Jesus Christ. Romans 1.1. Paul, a servant of
God. Not reverend Paul, not pastor
Paul. Paul, a servant, an attendant
of God. If God ever saves a sinner and
reveals the gospel to him, it'll be through a preacher. Preaching
will be the means by which he saves them, but the preacher
won't glory in himself. What do the preachers do? They
simply preach the gospel. Look at verse 6. Paul said, I
have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. That's
what preaching is. It's planting and watering, planting
and watering, planting and watering. Paul planted and Apollos watered.
Apollo's planted and Paul watered, but it was God and God only that
gave the increase. Some of you are gardeners. A
couple of you in our group are master gardeners. What do you
do in your gardening? You plant and you water. You plant and you water, but
God has to make your garden grow. That's something you can't do.
How much more true is it in the gardening of preaching? Verse
7, So then, now here's the result of what Paul has said, So then,
neither is he that planteth anything, and neither he that watereth,
but God that giveth the increase. He that plants is nothing. The
one that waters is nothing. They're nothing but unprofitable
servants that have only done that which was their duty or
their debt to do. And in the salvation of sinners,
all the glory goes to God. Now, one last place in 1 Corinthians,
and I'll finish up. 1 Corinthians 15. Will you turn there with me?
1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse
1. Read it with me. Moreover, brethren,
I declare unto you the gospel. That's what we're talking about,
the gospel. I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto
you, which also you have received and wherein you stand. Now what
did Paul preach? He preached the gospel. Paul
said you received it. That means you associated yourself
with the gospel. You bowed to it. You submitted
to it. You made sure that you remember
it. You took the side that was against
you. You took God's side against yourself. By the gospel you were saved
and by the gospel you will stand. Verse 2, by the gospel which
also you are saved. If you keep in memory what I
preached unto you unless you've believed in vain. Now let me
say it again. There is but one gospel. And
it's the gospel of God. It's the gospel of God's grace. It's the gospel concerning God's
Son. That's what it's all about. It's
all about who Christ is, why He's God. It's all about what
Christ has done. Christ, who is God, died for
the sin of His people. How the preacher is used, not
important. It's all about the message that
He preaches. Our Lord said, go ye into all
the world and do what? Preach the gospel. Brothers and
sisters, I'm delivering to you this morning what I have received. God gave this to me the same
as He gives it to all His people. He freely gives us the gospel. He reveals it to us. He makes
it effectual to our hearts. Look at verse 3. 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, speaking of Peter, 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 have
fallen asleep, some have died. And after that, he was seen of
James, then of all the apostles. And last of all, he was seen
of me also as one born out of due time, for I am the least
of the apostles that am not meet, not fit to be called an apostle."
Boy, I can sure relate to that. He said, I persecuted the church.
But by the grace of God I am what I am. And His grace which
was bestowed upon me was not in vain. But I labored more abundantly
than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with
me. Therefore, whether it were I
or they, doesn't matter. So we preach, and so ye believe. Today the world and its religion
is celebrating the resurrection of Christ. And sadly, many don't
even know why. The believer celebrates Christ's
resurrection every day of the life in which they live. Why? Because there's no salvation
apart from Christ's resurrection, Christ rising from the dead.
But many have left out that one little three-letter word that
I emphasized there in verse 3, and that's the word HOW. The
gospel is how Christ died. How did Christ die? Well, He
died according to the Scripture. He died according to what this
book says. According to the Scriptures,
He died as a common criminal. He died as a male factor. They
hung Him between two murderers as though He was the worst. He
died on a cross. The most shameful and painful
death reserved for the worst of the worst. He died for the
sins of His people. Well, He died according to the
Old Testament Scriptures. The whole Old Testament pictures
and points to the Lord Jesus. He died as His people's substitute,
sacrifice and sin offering. Oh, the gospel is that Christ
died, but that's not all. The gospel is that He was buried
and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. This was foretold long before
it ever happened. This was the will and purpose
of God. Without the resurrection, there
is no gospel. If Christ did not rise from the
dead, there's no hope for us. If Christ did not rise from the
dead, then God is not God. If Christ did not rise from the
dead, then Christ is no Savior and no surety. But He did. And we have proof. Peter saw
Him. The apostles saw Him. More than
500 people at once saw Him. James saw Him. And then Paul
said, I saw Him. Paul said, I'm the least of the
apostles. I'm not fit to be called one. But by the grace of God,
I am what I am. And the grace that God bestowed
on me was not in vain. Now let me give you just a few
things in closing. Christ rising from the dead is
tangible proof that there is a life after this one. Christ
rising from the dead is proof that this body will live again.
Did he not say, handle me and see, put your hand into my side,
see the nail prints in my hands? Christ rising from the dead proved
that all his claims were true. He said, I'll destroy the temple,
speaking of His body, and I'll raise it up in three days. The
Lord said, as Jonah was three days in the great fish's belly,
so was Christ three days and three nights in the heart of
the earth. And Christ's resurrection proves God's acceptance of His
sacrifice. It proves and gives evidence
that Christ fully endured the penalty that was due us, His
elect people. Now listen, this is so important.
If you don't get anything else that I said today, I hope you
get this. If a man is found guilty of a
capital offense, if that man is sentenced to die, if that
sentence is carried out and that man is put to death, What more
can the law require of him? What else can justice demand
from him? The law is done with that man.
The law and its justice can require no more. And if he could be brought
back to life, he's still clear from the law. He's already suffered
the penalty. He's free from God's holy justice. Now let me tell you why that's
so glorious. when Christ rose from the dead,
after having died, after having fully paid the penalty of his
people's sin, the believer in Christ is now clear from the
claims of the law. And justice cannot, I repeat,
cannot demand payment from both us and our substitute. God's
justice won't permit it. And that's why we preach the
gospel.