Paul Toh, a University of Illinois, a Communication major, opened the re-Life Easter Retreat.
Here is Paul's manuscript:
Good evening! Welcome to our 2009 Easter Retreat. As the opening speaker I would like to welcome you all and thank you for coming in celebrating and thinking about the gospel. (Intro for those who don't know me) This weekend we have a lot of bible studies and activities prepared and we're going to be doing a lot of stuff together. For some of us this conference is just going to fly by and we'll be back at our homes before we know it.
But before we get involved in this mix I want to ask you guys a rhetorical question: Why we are here? What are we doing? What do you expect from this conference?
In order to navigate us through these questions 1 Corinthians lays out the clear purpose of our gathering together this weekend. Yes we are here to celebrate Easter, that is Christ's resurrection, but also we are here as Paul says, "to be reminded of the gospel."
This is what I hope we can start praying about this evening and this weekend, if we haven't already. How is God trying to remind you of the gospel?
if i've never heard it before what is it? if i have is it losing its practical relevance, do i find myself dry and empty? What is the gospel and what does it mean to me?
Being reminded of the gospel is not something anyone can do for you. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. This is not just a weekend for us to think about the gospel if we haven't thought about it much, but to be reminded in our hearts of what the gospel is and what it means to each of us. The mind is a start, but the heart is what God sees. This reminding will not be the result of anything I say, but it is done through God's Spirit speaking to us through his Word.
Let's pray for God's spirit to speak to us to remind us of the gospel this weekend. We are here to be reminded of the gospel. God brought you here to remind you of something. In what aspects and areas of your heart is God trying to remind you of the gospel? What that something is, I hope, we may all realize through meditating on his Word this weekend and praying for the holy Spirit to convict our hearts.
So why are we here? to be reminded of the gospel, So now let's ask God to remind us. Pray.
To get into this text we need to set up a context.
Context: This evening we are going to be looking at a passage from 1 Corinthians.
Set up the situation: problems in the church, are they even Christians? We are not unlike them
Paul's intention in this letter and his intention in this portion of the text is explicitly stated from the beginning, and this is our intention.
All this stuff is going on and Paul says:
I. "Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel."
(Some of us may be coming to this conference feeling like the Corinthians, all this stuff is going and Paul says, "I want to remind you of the gospel.")
A. Why does Paul want to remind them of the gospel? How will it help them resolve all these serious issues going on?
Before I address this question I want you to...
1. Think of a time when one of your friends got into a situation where they were hurting themselves or someone else, or a case where their life circumstances seemed beyond repair. What do you do to help them?
a. in the field of communication I learned about three different ways people try to help one another through difficult situations:
i. Avoidance: ignore the problem. Don't address it or even act like it exists
ii. Diversion: address the problem but create a diversion: that sucks, but let's go drinking, let's go watch a movie, etc
iii. Empathy: address the situation and ask them how they feel (this being the most effective)
b. What could Paul have done in his situation?
i. He could have ignored the problems in the church and pretended like they were good Christians
ii. He could have addressed them and asked them to focus on having good worship services, hoping these issues would resolve themselves
iii. He could address them and then try to collectively resolve these issues. In some respects he does this in this book, addressing each issue one by one
c. Paul decides near the end of his letter that he's moving beyond these three prescribed ideas, these three nice but without the gospel ineffective ways of helping people/to reminding them of thegospel.
2. Of all these things we try to do for one another when we are lost or broken or confused, what we really need is to be remind them of the gospel.
B. What is the gospel?
1. The word itself by definition means good news
2. Paul explains this good news in 3-4 “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
2. This is a brief and simple explanation of the gospel, but it lays out a foundation for passages we will be studying during our time together this weekend
C. So what? Why does Paul want to remind them about this guy who died for their sins and rose again? What relevance does this have to the things going on in the church?
1. This question comes back to thinking about the essence of the gospel
2. The gospel is about Christ who died for our sins: this is a demonstration of God’s love for us. It is in his love for us that we are able to love others.
3. Look at the problems in the church, brothers and sisters could not love each other because they had forgotten how God loved them by offering his only Son as a sacrifice for their sins. So we see the fruit of this: men treating women as sexual objects, people fighting with one another in courts of law, disputes breaking out over who different people follow.
Jesus teaches us to pray, “forgive us our sins as we also forgive those who sin against us.”
And on the cross we see Christ prayer. While we were nailing him there and mocking him with our selfishness and perverse hearts Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
The bottom line is without recognizing Christ’s love for us, our love for others remains shallow. We will either sweep our own sins and the sins of others under the rug with either bitter resentment or indifference. But through Christ’s love we see the mercy of God through which we can recognize we’re no good, yet were so precious to Him.
3. The gospel is about Christ who rose again:
His resurrection gives us hope, not for a better life in this world, for a nicely resurrected car or house or money. But in overcoming death Jesus gives us a hope that is connected to his eternal kingdom. In the gospel Jesus’ promises:
“Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.”
We need hope to live. Without this eternal hope, we cannot but put our hope in earthly things. And we are often attached to the things in which our hopes are placed.
Objects begin to become more precious to us then people or if our hope is in a person we run the risk of treating them like an object. If someone intentionally or unintentionally separates us from something we sue them, and try to squeeze every dime out of the them. This comes from lack of love, but also from having no hope in the eternal God and Jesus who promises to prepare a room for those who love him.
So when we wonder from the gospel we cannot know true love and when we wonder from the resurrection we cannot but put our hope in things that are perishing, spoiling and fading away.
7. And this is why we are here: God wants to remind us of this gospel, about Jesus who died for us and who rose again.
a lot of times we go through life avoiding problems, diverting our attention away from interior pain and habitual sin problems or trying to come up with effective strategies to make ourselves better people. For some of us we try to use empathy by journaling our emotions and thoughts and we find ourselves more confused at the end then when we begin, more consumed by the problem, more stressed and our prayers turn into long wish lists.
But its not until we gather under the cross and recognize our brokenness before him that true healing takes place, that God begins to redeem us not for ourselves, but for his glory.
To come back to the gospel which is our salvation and righteousness. Under the gospel we don't need to pretend like we're good people, we don't need to hide away our wounds or brokenness, we don't have to bury our questions. Being a Christian is not about being more morally upright then others, as if this is possible, but about exalting Christ
Under the cross we can confront all this emptiness and depravity inside of us and meet Jesus.
As self-centered people we often forget the gospel, we wander from it and like the Corinthians we find our selves empty of love, but full of knowledge, and full of hope that seems to cover up our insecurities. From these roots are born all the things that are born from the selfish and perverse hearts of people.
This is not what the gospel is about. If this is what your Christian life is like at times then God wants to remind you of the gospel and Jesus' love that covers over your brokenness. The gospel is about God who loves us and gave Jesus for our sins. The gospel is about living through Christ's mercy and kindness to us and glorifying our Creator, which is what we were created to do. Let's prayerfully ask God to remind us of the gospel.
(Looking at verses 2-4)
II. How do we respond to the gospel in our day to day?
A. Growing up in the church, the bible and the gospel can be really confusing if we don't learn how important it is to our everyday life.
B. The Corinthians were losing the connection between the words of the gospel and their everyday life. As a result they began to misrepresent Christ and find themselves trapped...
C. Paul mentions different ways in which the Corinthians had responded to the gospel and how he responded.
1. Receive the gospel: We can either receive it or reject it. I know for some of us the gospel is not the power of God to us, so Paul invites us to receive the gospel. Maybe this is what God wants to remind you of this weekend, to receive or re-receive the gospel. if again ask God to re-receive the gospel with a fresh mind and heart. break down the things you thought you knew and if just that show you the hollowness of your puffed up knowledge
2. Take a stand on the gospel: Maybe we know and have heard this gospel and have seen it work in the lives of those around us, but we don't want to stand on it because of fear or holding on to the lives we have now. if not the gospel what are you standing on?
3. Hold firmly to it: For some of us we have so many questions in our lives. "Why" questions that make things hard to explain. Our world offers so many alternative explanations and solutions that are appealing. To us Paul calls us to take a firm hold of the gospel, not just blindly, but to ask God to teach us and lead us in the truth.
4. For some of us the gospel is beginning to grow in our hearts, as we pray will be the case as we go through life. For such people we can pray to follow Paul who once receiving the gospel, passed it on as of first importance.
maybe God is reminding us of the gospel in a mixture of these ways or in two of these ways, but the point is God wants to remind you of the gospel, not just in your mind, but your life and your heart.
If you are curious about what the gospel is and what Christ sacrifice and resurrection means, pray and ask God to teach you and draw you to himself.
If you have a wound or a pain or a question, pray to bring it to Jesus and take a stand on his grace and love for you.
If things are beginning to rattle a certainty you once had, pray to come back to Jesus and ask for a deeper understanding of the gospel so that our holding firmly may not be out of naivety or the fruit of our own ambition, but of Christ's grace upon us.
If you are excited about the gospel and have tasted his grace, pray to continually grow in it and pass it on to others.
Wherever we are in life, Paul reminds us of something that should always be of first importance. the gospel... we will never grow beyond holding on to the gospel. There will never be a point in this life where we can say I got the gospel I'm ready to move on to bigger things.
In this life we are just broken and poor beggars gathering at the cross of Christ.
Are you empty of love? Then ask God to help you see how much he loves you in the cross, are you empty of hope? Then ask God to fill you with hope in Him and his kingdom
Everyday we must pray to receive the gospel, stand on it, hold to it, pass it on, until we grow in Christ and Christ is exalted in us.
Let's ask God to teach us to rely on His mercy and grace to keep our hearts near the cross and keep our faith in the resurrection, that we may live through God's power and share this grace for us in Christ with others. I pray that each of you may be reminded of the gospel in your life and that you may have wisdom and discernment to follow his voice.
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