1 Corinthians 15. Paul has been teaching the Corinthians
from the beginning, from the first time that he ever was in
their midst, even unto the present time, which is several years
down the road. And the message that he has for
them is the same that it has always been. And as that message remains the same
throughout all the ages, and it doesn't make any difference
where a man is, what he knows, or where he may be going, or
what he might be doing, the gospel is going to be the same. according to their nature being corrupt will corrupt the
most pure things that there are. And that shouldn't surprise us
because all we have to do is look at ourselves and know that
that is the case because we are constantly denying the things that we claim
we believe and things we know to be right, yet we go contrary
to it. And the gospel and the preaching
of the truth of the gospel has been committed into the hands
of sinful men. And sinful men will do what they
usually do, and that is make all manner of things to come forth. And if the Lord is not pleased
to give men a clear vision of the truth of the gospel, it will
be perverted. And it was in that measure things
occurred in the Corinthian church that were indicative of the corrupt
nature of men. And evidently there were some
among them, as Paul said, there be some among you that say that
there is no resurrection of the dead. Now that is a pretty serious
thing actually. Now, Paul did not call for a
church tribunal to take them out and string them up and, you
know, rid the church of this vile untruth, but he said, look,
he said, here is just the truth of the matter, that if there
is no resurrection of the dead, if there is no such thing as
that, then Christ was not raised. Because obviously if there's
no such thing as a dead man coming out of the grave, then Christ
couldn't have come out of the grave. He was a man. He went
into the grave. So if you say there's no resurrection
of the dead, then Christ could not have been raised. And he
said if Christ is not raised, then we might as well all go
home and just hang our heads in shame and sorrow because we've
got no hope whatsoever. And we have believed in vain. He said, the things I preached
unto you and you heard and you received them into your heart
unless you have believed in vain. Unless you have believed in vain.
And he said, if there is no resurrection, then that is a fact. You have
believed in vain. We have got no legs to stand
on. Everything we have said is a lie. You know, we're just playing
church. We're just having some religious
activity here because our whole life, our whole expectation,
he said, you know, as he goes on to say in this very same passage,
he says, you know, we die daily. I mean, we go out here into the
marketplace and people hate us. He said they hate what we're
saying. The religious people of the world absolutely hate
the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now I know it's kind of all got
mixed in a little bit and you've got a lot of religious organizations
and stuff on the face of the earth. But I'm going to tell
you this, when it comes right down to it, there's not a religious
organization on the face of the earth that loves the gospel.
They primarily love their organization. That's not to say everybody in
every organization, on the other hand, is not a believer. I don't know who the Lord's people
are. I do know what the gospel is, though. And I do know what
Jesus Christ did. And I do know that everything
that a man would gain, would stand to gain, is resting upon
what Christ has done. I know that. Beyond a shadow
of a doubt. And if anybody comes preaching
any other message, as Paul said, if anybody came, because Paul
never told anybody any different than that, did he? I mean, did
he ever tell anybody, now you go out here and you do these
good works, or you do this, you do that, and the Lord will reward
you in the end. Did he ever say that? No, he
said it's Christ and Him crucified. He said, God forbid that I should
glory in anything else. He said, if anybody on earth
had a reason to have some confidence in the flesh, it would be me.
He said, I was raised up from the time I was knee high in the
Jews' religion. And he said, I was raised up
not just in the religion, but I was taught by the very greatest
teachers of the day. And I've joined the sect of the
Jewish religion that was the most revered and holiest of men
that could possibly be, the Pharisees, who were held in great high esteem.
See, we don't realize that. Sometimes we come across in our
mind and think that the Pharisees were like these despised people. No, the Pharisees were not despised. The Pharisees were almost worshipped
by the people. I mean, they said, man, these
are the holy men. I mean, when they came marching
down the street, people backed off and they gave them away because
these were holy men. These were men of God, they said.
Paul said, I counted every bit of that as dumb. He said, it
wasn't worth a plug nickel. It wasn't worth nothing. Now
that's a hard thing for a religious man to come to grips with, dear
brethren. To say that all of his effort
and all of his trouble and all of his time and all of the things
that he put his whole heart, soul and life into is not worth
anything. Who wants to say that? I mean,
who wants to look at their life and say, I just wasted every
minute of my life. Who wants to do that? I mean,
we want to think that what we've done is worth something, don't
we? I mean, honestly, all of us do.
We don't want to be somebody just, when we die, they say,
well, you know, he never did nothing in his whole life. Well,
Paul said, I never did nothing. He said, if done, it's worthless,
it's useless. Oh, that I might win Christ."
He said, that's the only thing that matters. He said, I just
want to be found in Christ. I'm not trying to build anything. I'm not trying to promote anything.
He says, I'm not trying to get a following. I'm not trying to
build a church. I'm not trying to do anything.
He said, all I want to do is declare the riches of Christ
to men and rejoice to see men believe those things. But he
said, what I have told you is the truth whether you receive
it or not. Now, dear brethren, I believe
that is a necessary part of being a true preacher of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. It is to declare the truth of
God if everybody on earth goes against it. It does not make
any difference if anybody believes it. Now, I've had people say,
well, you know, you can see how true what you're preaching is
because look at the little old handful of people you've got.
Well, in the first place, I ain't got anybody anyway, you know. But if anybody believes the truth
of God, it's because God showed it to them. And it's not because somebody
came along and told it to them, because God has to show a man
the truth. And Paul said this. He said,
I preached to you. And he said, I saw Christ with
my own eyes as one born out of due time. And He was raised from
the dead. And I'm telling you, it's the
truth. And if it's not the truth, he said, we can all go home,
because it ain't worth anything. But he has said, Christ must
reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. Now that's a
glorious consideration, is it not? He must reign, not he may
reign. Now that's really, if you had
to characterize What we hear around us and what the average
person believes in our day and time calling themselves to be
Christians is they say that Christ reigns as best He can. He may reign, He may triumph,
but we've got to wait and see if everybody is going to go along
with it. I can't think of anything more
ridiculous than that. I mean, I know at one time I
thought that was kind of the way it was. I'm telling you things
that I've thought. How ridiculous is that? He must
reign. It's not He may reign or we hope
that He reigns. He must reign. Why must He reign? Because He made the heavens and
the earth and everything that's in it. And he must reign because
he is God. See, if he had not wound things
up to see what would happen, isn't that kind of how people
think normally? Well, God is waiting to see what
is going to happen. He is wondering, you know, what
so-and-so is going to do. Now, some of them, they will
go along and they will say, oh, we really believe in a powerful
God. We believe He knows what is going
to happen. Now, he doesn't cause things
to happen, but he knows what's going to happen. He just kind
of stepped back and he went through all these scenarios. He said,
yeah, old Josh is going to do this, and Daniel is going to
do that, and this, that, and the other, and I'm going to work
it out where this happens and that happens because he's doing
this. Uh-oh, wait a minute, Bobby was going to do this and almost
forgot, and I've got to do this. No, dear brethren, he knows in
from the beginning. He says, I called a man from
a far country and he comes. I send a bird and he flies that
way. He says, I got a fish in the
ocean or in the sea that has a piece of money in his mouth
and I'm going to send Peter down to the seashore and I'm going
to tell him that fish to come to the shore. I don't know how
the fish caught him on a line or the fish just jumped up there
out of the water with the piece of money in his mouth. I don't
know. But the fish and the money and Peter all met up at the exact
right place at the exact right time, did they not? Now, dear
brethren, that's exactly what this means when it says, He must
reign. Now, He must reign in the natural
realm. Some people can kind of receive
that. They have a little bit of trouble
with it. But Paul's not primarily speaking here, He must reign
in the natural sense over all these different things that happen.
But he's talking about He must reign in the spiritual realm.
Because you see, a lot of people think there are forces of good
and forces of evil. And you know, the Lord just does
just enough to overcome the evil. He has to keep steady at it.
But, buddy, He is working hard. And as soon as Satan comes up
with something, the Lord figures out a way to overcome it. Listen, Satan is God's devil. He made him according to the
good plans of his will. He'll bring him to total destruction
according to the same will, according to what the Scripture says. There
are no forces of good and forces of evil. There's the force of
God, and He ordains all things. And some people get real worried
about this, but God ordains evil as well as He ordains good. He said, I make peace and create
evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.
It belongs to Him, dear brethren. And what can anybody say? I mean,
who's the man going to say, Oh, well, God couldn't do that. Well,
that wouldn't be right. I mean, well, who can say that? Who's got the right to say that? Nobody has the right to say that.
So the Lord must reign. Now, here's the amazing thing
is that the Lord has set forth an order in the world, and He
put man right where He wanted to, and He didn't put man in
the garden to find out what he would do. He put man in the garden
to demonstrate the glory of His grace because He knew what man
would do. Why? Because He created man just
like He made him. And when He said to Adam, in
the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die, He didn't say
if you eat thereof that you are going to die. He said in the
day that you do eat it, you will die. Now did the Lord wait to see
if Adam was going to eat the thing? No. Did He wonder where
Satan went when the serpent came and appeared to Adam to eat? No, not at all. You see, this
is all ordered in the hand of God according to the good pleasure
of His will, dear brethren. The amazing thing is that He
has determined to manifest the glory of His grace, and He could
have done it any way He wanted to. But the way that He purposed
to do it was in the giving of a law to the same men that He
knew would never keep the law. But He didn't give the Law to
men so they'd keep it. Now that's an amazing thing.
You can't say that to just anybody because they'd say you was crazy.
But the Lord didn't give the Law so that men would keep it.
He gave the Law to men to show them what they were. Because
when He gave the Law, everything about the Law is contrary to
the natural bent of a man, is it not? I mean, isn't there a
law against everything you really want to do? You know that's true. I mean, you know that it's so. But the Lord would demonstrate
His reign by creating a world, putting man in it, sending forth
a law under the hand of Moses that condemned sinners, And then, dear brethren, He would
deliver those people whom He loved in Christ from before the
foundation of the world, He would deliver those people out of it
by the hand of Him who is the ruler over all things, not by
dispensing with the law. You see, He could have just said,
These are my people, I'm snatching them out of this." He could have
done that. He wasn't under any obligation to do anything any
particular way, but he did things according to the good pleasure
of his will, and the way that he would manifest the glory of
his grace was in the deliverance of his people out of the bondage
into which they were put. Has it pleased him? And you see,
he subjected himself to the rigors of his own law
when he condemned sinners to death. That's what we're remembering
right here today. He didn't just bypass it, dear
brethren. He underwent it. Because, you
see, He would demonstrate the love that He has for His people.
He would show it, that through the ages to come. It might be
a demonstration. Now the angels, see, the angels
in Scripture say they desire to look into these things, because
they've never seen anything like this in their existence. They saw a third of the angels
cast out of heaven. There was no mercy shown there,
was there? I mean, God never said, I'm going to give you a
second chance. He never said, I'm going to redeem
you. He just cast them out. And then man comes along and
the angels see man do the exact same thing that these angels
that were cast out of heaven did. And they said, yes, buddy,
we know what's coming next. But brethren, they can't get
it. They don't understand it. It's
an amazing thing. Because you see, they see the
unfolding of the grace of God in delivering the people that
He loves. They've seen the display of grace
like they could never have imagined it. They can't look into it.
They can't comprehend it because you see, they've never been the
objects of it. But the Lord Jesus Christ, He
must reign. He must reign over all of those
things. And He will demonstrate the glory
of His grace in the redemption of His people. And we come to this table here
this morning to remember that, what He did in our behalf. And He said for us to remember
it till He comes. Now brethren, what are we doing
here this morning if there is no resurrection from the dead?
What would this mean if He said, You do that until I come, but
I ain't coming? Huh? He said, Do this until I
come, but I won't be there. No, He said, If I go away and
prepare a place for you, I will come again. that where you are,
that where I am, there you may be also. And so we come here today to
remember the Lord's death till He comes. Because we understand
that the whole purpose of His reign as far as He's revealed
to us, the purpose of His reign is to demonstrate the glory of
His grace in the redemption of sinners. And that is exactly
what we come to remember today because He shed His blood to
pay for our sin. He gave His body as it were to
be burned, to be destroyed. He put His body in the ground
and when it pleased Him, He rose from the dead. And thus we have
hope. And thus we have a reason this
morning to gather in this place to remember His death. Well,
His death wasn't unto death. Now a lot of people, unfortunately,
and it breaks our heart to consider it, a lot of people die unto
death. I mean, they just die and they're dead. I mean, that's
it. But you see, God gives eternal life. unto those who believe." Now, he could have said, I give
eternal life to all those that I put an X mark on the top of
their head. And we'd all go in the bathroom and we'd shave our head
and we'd look in the mirror to see if that X mark was there.
He didn't say that, did he? He said, Him that cometh to me,
I'll in no wise cast out. He said, All that the Father
gives me comes to me, and those that come I won't cast out. Now we're many times constantly
in a state of doubt about that. Dear brother, He said if you
come to Him, He wouldn't cast you out. And we come this morning
to rejoice, to be reminded, because, you see, we're strengthened.
And we remember what he said. He said to his disciples, if
these things weren't so, I wouldn't have told you. And, dear brethren,
as we look at this right here, this is the symbols of his body
and his blood. He gave those to us in a physical
form, not that that's his body or that's his blood, but he said,
These things do as often as you do it in remembrance of me. He
knew how weak we were, and so He gave us these things so that
we'd have something we could touch and feel and be reminded
of those things that He has given us a heart to believe. And you
see, a man that doesn't believe will never come to this table
desiring that which Christ did. Now he may come to this table
because everybody else did, Or he may come to this table because
it's a religious ceremony or whatever. A lot of people do
that sort of thing. But I'm telling you that a man that comes to
this table desiring that which Christ did will not go away without that because that's what
this shows, the death. in the broken body of Christ
for our sake. And it is a testimony of faith,
is it not? We believe what He said. He said
it. We believe it. Now, how strong
do we believe it? Not very strong. You'll forget
it tomorrow. You'll wonder if it's true tomorrow. You know, but He keeps bringing
you back, does He not? Because you can't help it. I
mean, you just believe it. I mean, it's worth to believe. And that's who's invited to come
to this table, those that believe. Those that desire a part in what
Christ did. And he said, those that come
to me, I'll never cast away. Oh, that the Lord might write
those words large on our hearts. that He might teach us that what
He said He will do, and He will come for those whom
He loves.