24-0915a Transcript

Preacher: Tony Bodeker

Good morning, brethren. The base text is 1 Corinthians 15, 1-4, which thankfully was read. Before we get into that, I want to say thank you to all of you, brethren. We’ve been through, many of us have been through some very rough times. I’ve had my nightmare scenario in losing my beloved.

We’ve seen the church go through this terrible situation with COVID and shrunk. There’s been a gleaning, it seems. And it’s easy to get down over things.

And I just want to offer some words of encouragement before we get into the text. And I don’t say this, that I’ve got this all together. No, not at all.

Just a word of encouragement to realize we have these rough times, and we need to think about the good things. And when I think of Philippians 4, and sometimes I have to force myself to write down, because I don’t have enough in me, enough self-discipline and joy and happiness and all this, I have to think about what it says there. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I would say rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there’s any virtue, if there’s anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things, the things which you learned and received and heard and saw and meet. These do, and the God of peace will be with you.

Now, I have to actually sometimes write those eight things down. Well, all right, pure, noble, true, lovely, good.

I have to do that, and it helps me. I’m just telling you that it does help me, and I think it would be good for the church to remember what Mark was told in preacher school. Think about what you have, not what you don’t have.

We have a lot. We have a lot. Just my two cents there.

1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 4, we hear the term the gospel, right? Good news. What we’re hearing, it is defined, and it’s something that is very important. Written in Galatians 1, but even if we are an angel from heaven, preach you any other gospel to you, then what we have preached to you, let it be a curse.

This sounds important, doesn’t it? Somebody preaches a different gospel, let it him a curse, anathema, the word there. We see Mark 16, verse 15 and 16, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved.

But he who does not believe will be condemned. So the gospel is to be preached. It is to be preached to every creature.

In Romans 10, verse 14, How shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe in him in whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? We see some elements in here, the need to hear, the need to believe, the need to call, right? We’re going to get into the idea of calling. Later on, how we call. Because people will use this terminology, but not in a biblical way, because it’s defined in the Bible, calling on the name of the Lord.

Alright, that is a defined thing. It’s not, oh, well, I say some sinner’s prayer. No, no, that’s not what the Bible says.

Verse 2, By which you are saved. This gospel is something that saves us. Saves us.

And what’s really important, and the reason I picked Romans 3, 23, we need salvation. We’ve got to have it. We have got to have salvation.

And people that don’t realize they need salvation, this is a seminal error. How many people have you worked with and talked to and said, well, I’m a good person and, you know, I have not done anything bad enough to go down there. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Do we realize that millions upon millions of people ascribe to a doctrine and a philosophy, actually, smarter people than me have actually thought this through.

The seminal error of the whole progressive leftist thinking is we’re good people. We’re just good people. We’re going to be saved because we’re good.

We’re good. That absolutely contradicts everything the Bible says from start to finish. From Genesis chapter 3, with the fall of man, we see before the end of that chapter in Genesis 3, we have the prose beyond belief, that first ray of God is going to save us.

We need to be saved. We’ve got to be saved. We’ve got to realize we need to be saved.

If you have people that think, well, I’m just basically good and all these other people are good and then they define sin out of existence. I mean, we’re living in a world right now that is at war with truth, is at war with reality. We’ll just declare something that God has unambiguously declared as sin, we’re going to say it’s not sin.

It’s still sin. One of the things I’ve been talking about some of the other preachers, and I’m kind of nervous because it appears I’m going to be more busy with preaching and everything. Sometimes I think, I’m just not worthy of this.

I think about 1 John 2, 16 and 17, all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world. The world is passing away in the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever. I’m subject to all this.

I’m subject. And one of the brethren said, we all are. We all are.

All of us. Romans 3, 23. So we need salvation.

He’s got to save us. And it’s on his terms, not ours. We don’t earn it.

We’re not good enough. I’m struck by how wrong people that oppose Christianity are in their perception of reality. They don’t perceive things as they are.

Well, you Christians think you’re better than everybody. What? We’re the ones that realize we need a Savior. We’re not going around saying, I’m better and I’m a good person.

No, we’re the ones that get it. By which you are saved. If you hold fast that word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

If. That’s a big two-letter word, isn’t it? Conditional. People don’t like conditional.

They don’t like conditions. And we’ve got millions holding to a doctrine that once saved, always saved, right? In Hebrews 3 verse 6 we read, Whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing firm to the end. What did Jesus say in Revelation 2 verse 10? Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.

There’s conditions. In Romans, we’re told, Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but towards you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. Romans 11.22.

There’s a condition. Whether we like it or not, that’s how it is.

When we consider what happened for our salvation, that should really motivate us to listen to what God says, shouldn’t it? We took the Lord’s Supper here. Jesus died, and when we go over what happened in that. In John 18 and Matthew 26 we read of a kangaroo court.

Jesus suffered the greatest injustice in all history. There’s never been an injustice as was done to Jesus. When we’re done wrong, we feel bad.

We’ve never been done wrong as bad as Jesus was. None of us ever has been done as wrong as He was. This was done to Him by people who should have known.

If you ever think about the scholarship that the ancient Jews had, it was incredible how they studied the scriptures. To become a rabbi, the amount of learning they had was just staggering. And yet, who went after Him? The ones that should have worshipped Him, worshipped.

Isaiah 9 verse 6, one of the descriptions of the Messiah, mighty God. By the way, He did refer to Himself. Read John 8 verse 58, also read Revelation 1 verse 8. He calls Himself the Almighty.

That’s how He identifies Himself. They should have been worshipping Him, but they didn’t. Jesus had said leading up to this terrible trial and torture and crucifixion, do you think that I cannot now pray to my Father and He will provide me with more than 12 legions of angels? How then could the scriptures be fulfilled that it must happen thus? Matthew 26, 53 and 54.

Why? Why did He do it? For our sins. Our sins. One of the scriptures that just so often that I use in the Lord’s Supper, 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

It’s because of our sin. We will read Romans 3, 23 and maybe not always consider how consistent that is throughout the Bible. I mean, He’s actually saying something that has been said over and over in the Old Testament and now in the New Testament.

None is righteous, no not one. Romans 3, 10, which you could go to Psalms 14, 3. Psalms 53, 3. This is consistent. The Bible is consistent.

It is consistent. We need this Savior and He did it for us. Verse 4, and that He was buried and He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

Even Jesus burial was according to the scriptures. As we read of Jesus' body being put in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, Matthew 27, 57 through 60, and they made His grave with the wicked but with the rich at His death, Isaiah 53 verse 9. He fulfilled everything. Everything that was prophesied concerning His death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, which we memorialize each Lord’s Day.

That’s what we do. That’s how He wanted it. Do this in remembrance of me, right? Not once a year, each Lord’s Day, which we read Acts 20 and 7. The disciples gathered together on the first day of the week to break bread.

That’s what they did. In closing, let’s go right to the point of what we need to do to be saved. It shouldn’t bother us.

It shouldn’t bother us that on this fundamental question of what we need to do to be saved, there’s so many answers, so many different answers, so many different ways that you will hear. But the only way is God’s way. Jesus had said, He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my word hath that which judges him. The word that I’ve spoken will judge him in the last day, John 12, 48.

We’ve got to go to the word for what it said. We had already read Romans 10, 24, which goes to some of these elements of believing and hearing.

We need to do that. We need to repent. Jesus said, Unless you repent and you all likewise perish, Luke 13, 3. We need to confess Jesus' name.

Whoever confesses me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 10, 32, 33.

We have an example of his name being confessed, what we call a good confession, in Acts 8, 37, the Ethiopian eunuch. What did he say? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Now there are people that go that far, but they won’t go any farther.

But the Bible has more to say about this. Acts chapter 2, we have recorded the first gospel sermon. All those Jews gathered together on the day of Pentecost.

Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus whom you have crucified both Lord and Christ. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said to them, Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Verse 39, For the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.

That is the plan of salvation that applies to unworthy and far off. If we go through the book of Acts, we will see incredible consistency.

Paul describing his conversion. He’s blinded on the road to Damascus. Think he believed? I think he believed.

He called Jesus Lord to his face. They confessed Jesus to his face. He showed repentance.

Who are you, Lord? He changed his thinking, didn’t he? And we also read in other accounts that he had fasted. He had prayed. But what we know is that he was not yet saved, was he? Because we know in Acts 22 verse 16, what was he told? When he saw Ananias there? And now, why tarriest thou? Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on his name.

That’s how we call on his name. And in doing that, that is obeying the gospel. We reenact it.

If you read Romans chapter 6, do you not know that as many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore baptized into death, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. Even so, we also should arise to walk in newness of life. We reenacted the gospel.

The death, burial, resurrection of Christ. Death, burial, resurrection. I don’t know the hearts of anybody here.

But if somebody has not obeyed the gospel, please do so. If you have obeyed the gospel, but you have not remained steadfast in the apostles' teaching, and you require the prayers of the church, please make that known. Together we stand and sing.