I Declare Unto You The Gospel Series

I Declare Unto You The Gospel

(This message is reworked from a sermon preached at Littleby Baptist Church near Mexico, MO on April 28, 2025; but is not an exact transcription.)

Introduction: Good evening and it’s great to worship the Lord together with you this evening! These joint meetings are something we’ve been doing for, what, 15 years now? And it’s always great when we meet some brothers and sisters in the Lord down here. I do believe Heaven will be an even better place because we’ve had a chance to meet together and worship our Lord together while we were down here.

Now let’s get to the message. Last Sunday was Easter Sunday, and that’s when we remember our Lord coming back to life as He was raised from the dead. Even though Paul might never have seen Jesus before the Crucifixion, he did see Jesus while on the “Damascus Road” journey (note to readers: see Acts 9 for that story). I doubt he ever got over it, and we have a glimpse of what he may have thought about as we read these words in the text.

Text: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, KJV: 1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 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; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: 6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. 7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. 8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 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 laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 11 Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.

We have a teacher of English here with us this evening, and it’s partly in her honor that I’d like to quote a “couplet” or two-line rhyming poem, It’s based on a high school class I took on “Mass Media” and, I have to be honest, I don’t remember much about it except what the teacher called “counting the headlines” of newspaper articles.

This poem, though, is something that I hope my teacher would be glad I remember! Here it goes:

“I have six faithful helping friends, who taught me all I know;

Their names are What and Where and When and How and Why and Who!”

Well—close enough for a rhyme, anyway, no?

For this evening, though, we’re only going to look at maybe a few of these, and we’ll start with the Who of this text. Clearly, the first person is Jesus Himself because He gave His life for us! The greatest day of human history, up to that point, was that Sunday morning, the first day of the week, when ‘up from the grave, He arose!” Just think: if He had been nothing but a philosopher or “great teacher (C. S. Lewis, though, had something to say about that in “Mere Christianity”)”, we would be worse off than most of the rest of the world.

But we don’t worship someone who’s dead! When our Lord died, He—His body—didn’t stay in Joseph’s tomb or anywhere else after Resurrection Day! The flesh of His body didn’t decay or turn into dust, and nobody has found any of His body’s bones, either. I remember a college speech class where a fellow classmate gave a speech on our Lord’s resurrection. He closed by saying that there were three different places where people say the Lord was buried, but they had one thing in common—all three of them were and are empty!

And Jesus proved He was alive to Paul, as I mentioned, on the Damascus Road. Sure, at the time, he was till Saul of Tarsus, a genuine persecutor of believers in Jesus. He mentioned that here, in verse 9, but also (sadly, maybe?) recalled what he had done when he gave his testimony before Agrippa in Acts 26. But even as the Lord Jesus explained in the Parable of the Two Debtors in Luke 7, Saul was forgiven much, and loved much, proving it by doing what he was doing.