1 Corinthians 15

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0:00 The rest of us, we are going to talk about this idea of lineage. We've been working through these four core values, story, peace, lineage, and life, story, peace, lineage, and life. And we talked a couple of weeks ago about story and how the scriptures are this story of what God is doing in the world. They're not a compendium of doctrine. The narrative from which we learn the character traits of God, which the chief character

0:31 trait of God is that he comes to save. And so the goal of scriptures is that we would learn the characters, ourselves and the God. And then we talked about how our story is important, how the gospel is not an abstract idea, but a specific delivery to us personally. That the gospel applies to our struggle with pride or greed or identity. That the gospel is specific to us. And then we talked about peace and we talked about how the peace of God is this active thing.

1:03 It's the presence of something. The scriptures say the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds, so it's doing something for you. It's working for you. The peace of God is. And then we talked about last week where Jesus said I didn't come to bring peace, but the sword. And this idea that Jesus suggests that under his reign, in his kingdom is the presence of this peace that guards your hearts and minds. But the challenge is that when we live under the reign of God, that means we don't live under other reigns.

1:40 And so there will be difficulty, even violence around the people of God as they choose to live under his authority and different authorities' rebellions. There will be times of clashing. You see, obviously even in Jesus' life, when the government and the church conspire to kill him. And so it shouldn't surprise us then that there are other powers and authorities who react violently against the way of Jesus.

2:15 This week we're looking at lineage. And the text that came to mind for me is from 1 Corinthians in chapter 15, but just a little bit about how that ended up as one of our core values. It's like, you know, the way church exists among this group of people is casual.

2:48 Maybe I describe people to people it's casual. The dream for me when Megan and I, over the years, were imagining a church that we would be a part of if we didn't work for it, was like a group of people who cared about one another and gathered regularly around the gospel. So when I try and describe to people what it's like, if they're like, maybe I should come and check out your church. I'm like, you totally should. Come and check it out.

3:18 Just a heads up. It's pretty casual. They're like, where is it? I'm like, well, I can describe it to you. You know? And they're like, what is it like? I'm like, imagine a group of people who are friends that gather in a warehouse regularly around the gospel and one another. That's the goal. Right? So it's pretty casual because for me, church is something that we are not something that we do or perform.

3:49 And so it's kind of the cross Orlando is always trying to be like, so, you know, not starting on time is because you all catching up with each other is just as important about being church as moving through a liturgy in a timely fashion. Making you all sit in little groups together is so that it's harder to come in and be anonymous and isolate yourself. You end up having to sit next to someone. Moving around the front is so that trying to get it to where you don't sit in the same spot every time.

4:24 You know? And where you have to end up sitting next to each other. Not having screens was like an idea to suggest that to really try and drive home the point that churches isn't something you watch other than church. It's something you watch other people do. It's something that emerges from amongst the people. Even the way we prep for Sunday morning, the goal has always been that Sunday morning is not something that we pay people to prepare for all week long for one hour as though church is encapsulated in one hour on Sunday morning.

4:56 It's a group of people living under the rain. And so it ought to be a moment, a collective moment to gather and empower us to live our week. So I go through all that to say for sure the cross Orlando has a unique way that matches us. It's unique because we're unique, a unique expression of the church of God in Orlando. But it's not unique in the sense that it's never been imagined before or that we sprung out of the ground on our own.

5:29 And so for me, lineage is one of our core values because we're going to pursue a unique expression of the being church because we're unique. But I also want us always to remember that we didn't make this stuff up, that we come from somewhere. And what's interesting when you read the story of scripture is like this is happening all the time. Even Jesus, remember? Jesus comes and he's teaching his unique understanding of the way of God on the Sermon of the Mount.

6:06 Like he's walked up on a hill and is delivering teaching and they're like this is kind of blowing their mind. And they're like where did this come from? And he's like don't think I came to abolish the law and the prophets, individual people. He references the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Hosea and Malachi like people. He says don't think I came to abolish the work those people did.

6:40 I came to fulfill it. I'm in line with that tradition. So even Jesus recognizes that he inherits a lineage and he doesn't despise it or reject it. He embraces it and says this makes me who I am and where I'm going. But the text I wanted to look at that brings that out that I think of when I think of lineage is in 1 Corinthians 15. If you want to look there with me, that's cool. 1 Corinthians 15 and just a reminder here.

7:16 Paul, we have two letters of Paul to the church in Corinth. Most scholars think that this is actually a collection of sometimes some people think up to four letters that's been divided into two. So there's a fair amount of correspondence back and forth between Paul and the church in Corinth. They usually will say that he was writing these letters when he was in Ephesus. So he had been to Corinth already and then went to Ephesus.

7:49 We know he started a church in Ephesus and had correspondence with them. That's the book of Ephesians. But he's in Ephesus for about a year. They call it like his Ephesus residency where he's there inaugurating a group of people that want to live under the reign of God in Ephesus. And he's dealing with these questions mostly from people who have been sent from Chloe's household where they're organizing the church in Corinth. And they're asking in these questions back and forth. And because of the timeline of Paul, if you follow when he outlines his life, either in Galatians or some of the stories in Acts, they start to date the letters, the correspondence with Corinth as his first letters.

8:35 Which means these are probably in the middle 50s. So like 55, 56, somewhere between 55 and 60. So just to put ourselves, to orient ourselves here, if Jesus is born around 3 or 4 AD, they don't think the numbering got quite right. And then he's like around 30 to 34 when he dies, then that puts us at 34 to 37. So if Paul is writing this at 55, this is what?

9:08 20 years after the ascension of Jesus. And if we understand that Paul, or Jesus made a visit back out of heaven to get Saul on the Damascus road and turn him into Paul. But he made that visit a couple of years after the ascension because Paul was already starting to persecute the followers of the way of Jesus who already had spread some. They were growing in Antioch. So then if Jesus ascends somewhere around 37, maybe he comes to grab Paul around 40.

9:45 Now we're only 15 years after Paul has received the call. I've been in Orlando for 15 years. Imagine Paul writing this letter to Corinth 15 years after everything was changed. He had three days blind, he changed his name, he abandoned the way of life that he knew. He hid out with Ananias on Straight Street.

10:15 Where were you 15 years ago? I remember 15 years ago when I was starting Credo. And it was such a weird thing. It happened so quickly. And it was so all-encompassing. And it was so kind of out of the left field. I did not expect, I have said people six months before I started a coffee shop. I had no idea I would start a coffee shop.

10:45 I just did not expect it would be what I was doing. That I remember having the question, who will I be on the other side of this project? This won't take the rest of my life, but I wonder who I'll be on the other side of this project. When Paul's writing this letter to Corinth, there's no way 15 years before he could have expected who he was becoming. This great ambassador for the reign of God. In 1 Corinthians 15, he tips his hat to something that's happening in the first century in the church that's really interesting.

11:19 There's a lot we could say about the letter, but it will sidetrack us. So go to 1 Corinthians 15, we'll just start reading, Bob. Now I would remind you brothers and sisters of the gospel, which I preach to you. The gospel, it's become a word on its own, but we don't use it in English very much, but it means the good news. Specifically the good news of Jesus.

11:53 The gospel, the good news I preach to you, which you received and in which you stand, and by which you are being saved. Just real quickly on that, this is kind of important, but you could read past it if you're not careful. Paul makes the active agent of their, what does he say, that saved and being saved. So he says, the gospel I preach to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved.

12:31 Hold fast to the word that I preach to you. So the gospel, the good news of Jesus is what does the work of giving you firm ground to stand on, and the ongoing act of salvation. So Paul doesn't say, you made a decision and were saved and done. He says, remember the gospel which I preach to you, by which you are being saved. So the story of the good news of Jesus is this active agent that has this ongoing outcome or work to do in people's lives, that Paul describes as salvation.

13:09 And he says, the salvation is this ongoing work of the good news of Jesus. Okay, that's not the main point, but it's an interesting one, Beverly. Okay. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, he says, by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. So this is, he finishes this, it's doing this work of salvation if you hold on to the story, the word that I preach to you, the gospel, the good news of Jesus, unless he says you believed in vain.

13:50 Meaning when I was there and I announced it to you, you believed it. That moment would be wasted if you've walked away from it now. That's interesting. You were saved, it will continue the work of saving you if you stand in it, but if you walk away from it, that moment will have been in vain for nothing. Okay. Then he gets to where he got it.

14:20 This is the part that makes me think of lineage down here. Chapter 15, verse 3, for I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received. Before we get to that, Saul's walking on the road and he has a clear goal. The problem is, the Pharisees understand that the future of the church is in its purity and purity to keeping the laws.

15:06 The Pharisees in 1st century are pretty sure Israel was selected by grace. We can't figure out how Israel got to be God's people other than God wanted to pick them. But now the job of Israel, the way they stay Israel is by doing all the right things, which is why they had all the rules. They are looking for a Messiah to return, but the way that the Messiah returns is that everybody keeps the rules. And actually, most of them started to say, there's no way we'll get all of Israel to keep all the rules.

15:42 But we are pretty sure if we can get all of Israel to keep the one rule of the Sabbath perfectly, then the Messiah will come back. And Saul, the Pharisee of Pharisees, the Zella and committed to the mission has this problem that the rogue itinerant rabbi has convinced people, there's another way to live in which Sabbath wasn't made for man, so it's like about the Spirit, not the letter of the law.

16:16 This is a problem. And they're starting to follow him all over as though he already were the Messiah. Even though they can't even figure out how to keep the Sabbath. And people he's going into synagogues and announcing this way. And so Saul is on a mission, man. He's going to solve the problem and purify the church so that the Messiah comes. And when he's on the road to purify the church, Jesus of Nazareth, whom he knows is dead, comes and appears to him on the road, and says, Saul, why are you persecuted me?

16:52 And the experience immediately, Saul knows that this is the Lord, but he also registers that it's Jesus of Nazareth. And most scholars think when he continues on into Antioch and the straight street there with Ananias, that he stays there for up to three years, unraveling what he knows. Building the theology of the way of Jesus backwards from the realization that the Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth, first of all, which is a crazy thing.

17:31 Because there should be no distinction between God and man, but now he sees that there is one God-man. And then that the God-man was killed, he starts to go, the main thing that Paul begins to realize walking away from the road to Damascus is that the problem of sin is much larger than he thought. If it's just like we mess up, but try again and mess up, but try again, and one day we'll get it exactly right and we'll be fine, then God would have continued to expect us to get it right.

18:11 He says, but the fact that the divine came in a person means the only way it was solved was the sacrifice of God. And so that's like the first unique thing, but then he goes further because then he realizes this is where he really blew the doors off for James and Peter because he's like the solution then is much broader than the sacrifice of bulls and goats.

18:41 He's like, if we've got the God-man sacrificed for our shortcomings and birthing something new, then everyone can come in, all of humanity through the door. And so when he says like, after I delivered to you as a first important, what I also received, he's about to go through what he received. And he has like two ways that he gets this. One, we think Paul's a genius, right?

19:14 A disciple of Gamaliel, Pharisee of Pharisee Hebrews, he's a genius. Also, he's in like a group of people from the beginning. And he's like forming this theology within Nias there and the group in Antioch there. And then he goes down to Jerusalem and gets it checked with the Council of Jerusalem before he goes out. And so if he's got 15 years before he's writing this letter, he says, there's a truth that I've received.

19:51 He's like, I didn't imagine it or make it up. It was given to me. And then this is what he says it is. For I delivered to you as a 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.

20:24 And that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 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. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

20:54 For I am the least of the Apostles unworthy to be called in Apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. I love that this is most people recognize this as a formula already in 55, that which I received. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. That he was buried and raised up on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

21:25 That he is quoting there and a profession of faith that the Church is already using. Most of the baptisms in the first century are individuals and whole families because it is the first generation of people coming into the way of Jesus. If you are coming from pagan religion in Ephesus or Israelite faith in Antioch and you are coming to join the way of Jesus, they would baptize you.

21:56 But you would make a profession. And this is the beginnings of that profession. Already 15 years, 20 years after the ascension of Jesus, they have the core of it. Paul says that I am preaching to you that which I received. The Gospel which is the active agent of your ongoing salvation. That Christ has died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. That he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

22:29 What I love about that, there is a lot that I love about that. But one of the things I love about it is that the profession of faith that emerges at the very beginning is a narrative. Not an abstraction.

22:59 The first profession of faith, the good news which accomplishes my salvation, isn't an abstraction about the nature of God. Our hymns sometimes. God immutable, unchangeable, God only wise, omniscient, omnipotent. So we have categories that have developed about the nature of God from a logical extraction about what God must be. God must be perfect.

23:29 God must be unchanging. God must be all powerful and all-knowing. These things might be true about God, but our lineage has always understood God coming out of the story. When the original convictions of faith are a narrative, Jesus, a person, the Christ died was crucified. And buried. Ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of God, Father Almighty.

24:01 There are truths we pull out of this story. But the gospel, the good news that accomplishes our ongoing salvation in which we stand has always been a narrative. This is the kicker, a narrative that involves people. Paul says that he appeared to the twelve.

24:32 I mean Judas was gone by the time the resurrection happened, right? So the eleven. Does he say eleven? He says the twelve. Yeah. He got it wrong. Maybe I didn't have Matthew. Maybe the other than the new guy already? And then he says this is interesting. So he appeared to the twelve. And then he says, and then to the five hundred.

25:06 So I don't know how they got, how they knew exactly how many he appeared to. It's probably a round number suggesting he appeared to a lot of people, more than fifty, more than a hundred, less than a thousand. Five hundred. Most of whom are still alive. I love that idea. So you could talk to him and ask what it was like to see the resurrected Christ. What does the glorified body look like? You know? We know that he ate meals, he ate several meals with him. But then it says also that he appeared to James.

25:37 And he says that separate. He already said he appeared to the twelve. There were two Jameses who were disciples in the twelve, but he already mentioned that. So most people assume this is his brother, James. And remember that his brothers first thought Jesus was crazy. But after the death and resurrection before the ascension, he went and talked to James.

26:11 James of course becomes the bishop of the church in Jerusalem and writes a letter, a piece of our scriptures. And gets a specific call out here. So I'm saying like our lineage, the gospel on which we stand and which accomplishes our ongoing salvation, has always been a narrative, a story and not just a story, but a story involving people. Even Jesus, we talked about it where he said I didn't come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them.

26:45 And he calls out the prophets. Who were a mess? As much as you and I, maybe they were better than you and I. But James didn't even believe and he gets called out and elevated. So the chief part of our lineage is the story of Jesus.

27:27 Jesus Christ, born in Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified down his berry, descended into hell, third day rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father, Almighty, from thence he will come to judge the living and the dead. So the seed that we had in 55 in the letter to Corinth by 70 is structured in a kind of Trinitarian format. I believe in God the Father, Almighty maker of heaven and earth.

27:57 And I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian Church, the Queen of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection, then life of the world to come. This like creed, which we end up calling the Apostles creed, not because any of the Apostles wrote it, but because it becomes out of the era of the Apostles when they were still walking. Capital A Apostles, we know the Apostles are the ones sent by God of Jesus himself. So it's that first generation, the Twelve, James, Paul, the Apostles.

28:34 This teaching, which holds the narrative, we have been extracting truths from to address the problems of the day. So like I was talking to someone the other day who's like struggling with the idea of the Trinity. They're like, I don't know, like, it sounds kind of like three gods to me.

29:06 I'm like, okay, cool, cool, cool. Like I don't really, I don't need to fight over the word Trinity. Do you believe God made the world? Yeah. Do you believe God is in the person of Christ? Yeah. Do you believe God continues to aid you today? Yeah. Father, Son, Spirit. Done. Don't talk about the Trinity then. I'm saying like we have been pulling doctrines out of this story to address specific questions.

29:39 You know why they built the doctrine of the Trinity was to protect the divinity of all three actions of God. So that none were lesser or more. So that the God who creates on whom we cannot look is just as much God as the person of Jesus. The Word of God incarnate with whom we can interact is just as much God as that we encounter in the gospel that enlivenes us today. So the Trinity is an application of the story. The story is the lineage we inherit, the application we discern.

30:13 And so we have been discerning application, developing theologies out of the story as the Church of God through generations, among nations and scientific theories. So from, you know, the Council of Nicaea where we expanded the Apostles' Creed because we needed to further define the divinity of God and how it plays out in the world against other claims of divinity. And then we go, and then Augustine begins to go, how do you interact with the body politic?

30:46 And he starts to think about the difference between the Church and Rome. He starts describing the Spirit and the letter of the law and building out. And he starts to describe, you know, do we can get into Pelagianism and synergism? And like the Church has been building the story or extracting truths out of the story of Sintz Paul. Not all perfectly.

31:20 I was describing a problem the Church came up on to a friend who their pastor, it turns out their pastor had made choices that disqualified them from ministry for a while. And they were worried because someone they knew had been baptized by them and they had been taken communion from them.

31:50 And they were like, now I'm wondering does this even work? And I was like, oh, we have a heresy for that. She was like, what? I was like, in Roman Empire, there was a period of time when the Church was supported and okay and bishops developed. And it was after Nicaea, so copies of the Scriptures had been passed around. But then an emperor emerged who did not like Christianity and began to persecute it again.

32:23 And systematically went to bishops to get them to turn over their copies of the Scriptures. Some of the bishops ran and hide with their copies of the Scriptures. Others of the bishops turned over their copies of the Scriptures to be burned and saved their life. When that emperor died and then it was okay to be Christian again, the question emerged, can we welcome these bishops back? One, the ones who turned over the Scriptures. The second one, a movement started by this guy named Donatus who started to say,

32:58 if you were baptized, confirmed, married, communed by any of the bishops who turned over their Scriptures, all their sacraments are null and void because they clearly didn't have faith. You got to get it redone by a bishop whose faith was pure and never faltered. Literally. And the church said, oh, that's heretical. The efficacy of the sacrament is not based on the faith of the bishop, but the gospel of God.

33:29 Okay, the church learned. Never again do we make the mistake of the Donatus and suggest that the personal faith of the person can tarnish the work of the good news of God in the world. It's the God that is the actor, not the person. It's the word of God that does it. It's the story. I didn't give you that example just to say, the church has been developing true theologies or abstractions from the story of Scripture for a long time.

34:07 And not perfectly. Donatus was wrong. Marcia was wrong. Pelagius was wrong. I was also described, I think I mentioned it last week, like, you know, that they sold access, the church sold access to heaven to build St. Peter's Basilica. Bummer. Wrong move.

34:38 So the church has been right. And it's been wrong. Both. How can you know whether it's right or wrong, the teaching of the church? Anybody encountered wrong teaching? Yeah, man, of course.

35:10 But that doesn't mean we run from it all. I like that lineage is one of our core values because I do not see anywhere in the story of Scripture that it's just me and God. That's all we need. You always need the church, the people of God, together. Always. And the people of God are formulated and held together by the story.

35:47 And then we apply the story to our life, pulling from how people have done it in the past. Why might we do that? Because consistent at every stage of the church has been this little germ that Paul gives us.

36:25 We might pursue good abstractions or truths that pull out of the story of Jesus because we need saving. You need saving. I need saving. The church needs saving.

37:00 It's a thing that happened in space and time, but also is happening. And so we pull on this story. Our primary lineage is the gospel of Jesus. And we have secondary ones, the applications of that that the church has pulled out that are good. But the reason that we would do the work of trying to mine the history of the church and find the truth that applied to us is because we need saving.

37:32 You need saving and I need saving. And it has worked more times than it hasn't. I mean, the fact that the church endures through the persecution of Rome, through the intellectualization of Aquinas, through the dark ages of power and corruption, through the Reformation,

38:02 the fact that each of us, like when I try and describe the cross Orlando to people, they're like, what's your church like? I'm like, imagine a lot of people who are giving the church one more try before they quit. It's their last stop out the door. The fact that faith persists at all in your heart and mind. Last week we talked about the peace of God that has a life, freedom and health.

38:37 In the gospel is the key for you to live. You have inherited it. You didn't imagine it or create it. You didn't find it on your own. It's been given to you. By family, by church, by friends, you inherited the great hope of the world. The story of Jesus, the gospel of the Christ. Don't lose it because people have applied it wrongly.

39:10 Cling to the little peace that matters, that has always mattered. Whether you're Paul or Augustine or Aquinas or Luther or Beverly or Demetrius or Kevin or Brian, it's the part that matters and gives life. Let's pray that we could hold on to the lineage that we've received. Hey Lord, thank you that you do not leave us alone, but you put us in line with your people.

39:41 Teach us to respect and receive the lineage, the gospel, on which we stand and by which we are being saved. Save us again today for the sake of your son that his gospel would not be in vain in our lives. We ask it.