The Lord wants to bless you today. Do you believe that? We are so happy that we have one more opportunity to come together, to meet together and to worship the Lord and to study His word together. I am aware of the fact, every time that I speak, that at any time it could be the last time. And so every time we get together, what if we got together next week and someone here wasn't there? Now some people will not be here because they are in other places, but what if we got together next week and somebody was not here because they were not alive any more? You see, life is very serious. So, every time we have an opportunity to come together and worship, we want to receive all the spiritual blessing that God has for us. God wants to bless you today. He wants to fill you with His Holy Spirit. He wants to give you the mind of Christ. He wants to transform your entire life. He wants to do the same for me, and if we all open our hearts to the word of truth, the Lord is going to bless us.

In Revelation 14:6, the prophet says that he, "saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth--to every nation, kindred, language and people." Now if you will look at the context of that verse, it is talking about the last days. It is talking about the time of the hour of God's judgment. It is talking about the last days.

In the last days the everlasting gospel is going to go, according to this prophecy in Revelation 14:6, to every single person in the world. Is that what it said? Every language, all kindred. You all know what your kindred is. Those are the people you are related to. Now we generally consider that we are more closely related to people of our own nationality or race. In the modern world, there has been a lot of mixing up, but in the ancient world, before 1798 and during the Dark Ages, most people didn't travel very far. There were no cars or airplanes, few people traveled long distances by ship. So most people were born, lived and died within a close proximity and as a result, you find in Europe, different countries with distinct hereditary traits. Is that true? That is a result of thousands of years of this group of people speaking the same language and inter-marrying. In Revelation 14:6 it says, to every one of those groups, the gospel is going to go, to every language it is going to go--to every nation, to all people.

Now let me ask you a question, if the gospel in the last days is going to go to every single person, (now we just read in the Bible that it is going to) but if it is going to, would you think that the gospel should be able to be explained in a simple way? It would have to be, because there are people who cannot understand complicated things. Might that not be most of us? And so, if God has called you and if you have responded to that call and have decided that you want Jesus to be the Lord and Master of your life, God wants to use you to help fulfill this prophecy.

Do you know that there is nothing more exciting in life than realizing that God is using you to fulfill His plan? There is nothing in life more exciting than that. But if that is going to happen, you and I are going to have to be able to explain the gospel simply, very simply, in just a few words. How many words would it take for you to explain the gospel? Could you tell them the gospel in, how many words? There are many ways of telling the gospel, I cannot tell you that there is just one way because when you read the New Testament, even when you read the Old Testament, there are many different ways of explaining it; many different figures of speech are used. So, the way I am going to try to explain it this morning from 1 Corinthians is not the only way. There are other ways. But whatever way you want to explain it, you need to know in your mind that you can explain it so simply that a child could understand it, because this is a message that has to go to every single person in the world in the last days.

Last night I was thinking this through in my mind as I was reading my Bible and I thought I could explain the gospel in 10 words and then I thought that if I had to, I could explain the gospel in seven words, right out of the New Testament. Let me see if I can do it. It is in 1 Corinthians 15. Let's see here in a moment if you can do it.

1 Corinthians 15:1-4 says, "Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel." Now is he going to tell you what the gospel is? Yes, he is going to tell you what the gospel is. "which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures."

So if you wanted to state the gospel in the fewest possible words, how would you state it? There would be three sentences, and those three sentences would be: "Christ died." "He was buried." "He rose." That is seven words. Now if you wanted to get explicit, you could state it in, say, ten words. You could say: "Christ died for our sins." "He was buried." "He rose." That would be ten words. Now if you wanted to get even more explicit than that, you could add to it four more words and say, "He rose on the third day." That is not a very long message, is it? Do you know that if you just understand the meaning of those seven or ten words, if you understand the meaning and you have experienced what it is talking about, you are going to have eternal life? Those are an important seven or ten words, let me tell you. That is the gospel.

Someone who has never heard it before, might say, "What are you talking about? That is just a story. I've heard about the story, but how can you say just those few words are the gospel? I thought there was a lot more to it than that." I just read what the Bible said. Paul said that was the gospel he had preached. If you accept it, if you believe it and if you stay believing it, if you hold fast to that, you are going to be saved--have everlasting life. Is that too simple? "Well," somebody says, "you just have to tell me more than that. I cannot figure it out. You've got to have more words. You've got to explain it more. I cannot understand the gospel when you just state it in seven or ten words. I have to have more than that." Okay, if you want lots more than that, we will just add one short paragraph and see if you understand those seven words or those ten words.

Turn in your Bible to Hebrews 3:14. Now this verse is going to explain the spiritual meaning of those three sentences that we just read. And Paul says that is the gospel. What are the three things? "Christ died for our sins." "He was buried." "He rose the third day." If you understand those three sentences, that is the gospel. Now this text will explain to you the spiritual meaning of the gospel. Hebrews 3:14, "For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end."

Do you know what the word "partaker" means? We usually use that to partake of food, don't we? So we use it a different way. You could translate it, "we have become sharers of Christ". The meaning is, we actually have become part of Him. Or if you want to state it a different way, what Christ experienced, I experience. That is the spiritual meaning of the gospel and if you understand that, that is it.

That is the gospel. I experience what He experienced. Now Paul is going to go on and take over 50 verses to answer a bunch of objections and to explain some implications and ramifications of that belief to the Corinthians. But if you just believe, if you just believe those three sentences and understand the spiritual meaning, you know what the gospel is and you can explain it to somebody else. "Christ died." I'm to be a sharer of Christ so I must die. "Oh no," somebody says, "Stop. I don't want to die." What did we read in our Scripture today? "A grain of wheat remains alone except it dies. But if it dies, it will live again and bear much fruit."

We are going to read in the New Testament in a moment that you can never live (as a result of Adam's sin), you and I can never live unless we die. Christ died, I am to die. Christ is buried, I am to be buried. But then Christ was raised again the third day and when He was raised, He is never going to die again. We are to become sharers, partakers of Christ. What happened to Him, will happen to us.

Now, let's look at a text in the New Testament where Paul explains it just this way so we understand, "what does it mean to experience the gospel?" The gospel is that: "Christ died for our sins.""He was buried." "He rose the third day." Paul says that is the gospel. I am to experience the gospel. How does that happen? Look in Romans 6:6 "Know this, that our old man was crucified with Him. . ."

Am I to experience what Jesus experienced? Jesus died by crucifixion. My old man is to be what? Crucified. What is this "old man"? That is our sinful, carnal, fleshly nature. If you look through the writings of the apostle Paul, you will find that he talks about this old man over and over again. For example, look in Ephesians 4:22, it says, "That you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts." That is the old man. That is to be crucified. He says here in Romans 6:6 that the old man is crucified with Christ. What is that old man? That is the flesh, the carnal nature.

What are the works of the old man? Look in Galatians 5:19 first part, he says, "Now the works of the flesh are evident," and then he lists there, what are they, 17 different things? He lists the works of the flesh. That is the old man. All those things you see listed there, that is what the old man thinks, that is the way the old man speaks, that is the way the old man acts, and Paul says the old man has to be crucified. That is the old man and it has to die.

Romans 6:6 says, "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin."

Do you sin after you die? No! Even Hitler did not sin after he died. Once you die, you do not sin. Is that right? That is right. A dead man never sins. Now I am not telling jokes, friends, do you get what the apostle Paul is telling you here? If my old man has died and the body of sin has been destroyed, what does that mean? I will not sin anymore. If I do go on sinning, my old man has not been crucified yet. I have not experienced the first part of the gospel yet. This is the first part of the gospel. The old man has to die. It has to be crucified. I have to be a partaker of Christ. The same thing that happened to Him has to happen to me.

Now a person that is alive, have you ever had somebody say to you, "I've tried to stop.", whatever it is. Different people have different besetting sins. "I've tried a thousand times and I cannot." He talks about that in verse 6, he says we should no longer be what? Slaves. Have you ever been a slave? Now the word that is translated gospel, means good news and the reason it is called good news is first of all, it delivers you from the slavery of sin. And when people hear that it is going to deliver them from the slavery of sin, they say, "Oh that's wonderful, how can that happen to me?" The way it can happen is if you die and they say, "Oh no, that's not what I had in mind." But that is the gospel. I have to die. I have to die. My old man has to die. A dead man does not go on sinning. That old man, the sinful nature, the carnal nature, the fleshly nature, that has to die. And how does it die? It dies by crucifixion, it has to be crucified.

Now how often does this have to happen? Look at what Paul says about that in the same chapter. In 1 Corinthians 15:31 where he is talking to them; how often does he die? Every day! See the gospel is not something you hear when you are a little child sometime and then you accept it and then you sort of go into automatic and then that is all there is to it. No, it is a process that keeps going on in your life every day. I have to die every day to sin. If I am dead, then I am free. The Bible talks about this.

Do you remember the book of Job? Job was going through so much torture and torment, where did he want to be? He wanted to be in the grave. Why did he want to be in the grave? He said then he would be free from all of this. He said there the servant is free from his master and there is nobody that troubles him. That is where he wanted to be. You see, if you are dead, you are free from the problem. That is the gospel. If my old man dies with Christ, that way I am set free from my past life of sin.

That is the hard part, making the decision--I am going to die daily, I am going to crucify the old man. My old man has to die. But until that happens, remember what Jesus said. If the grain of wheat doesn't fall into the ground and die, what happens? It just stays the way it is. But if it dies, it is going to live again and bring forth much fruit. And when you choose to crucify the old man, then what happens? Then you get buried. Notice what it says in Romans 6:3,4 "Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." So Paul says that when you are baptized you are buried. That is a public statement that your old life is behind.

You have died to sin and have been buried with Christ. Now if you die with Christ and if you have been buried with Christ, that is the second thing, but what is going to happen? You are going to rise with Christ. If you die with Christ, that is, your old man dies, and if you are buried with Christ, the old life of sin is buried and you will arise and walk in newness of life. Then you are going to rise.

Let's see what Paul says about that here. Look at verse 5, "For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection." Verses 8-10, "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God."

So that is the gospel. Jesus died for our sins. By the way, what is sin? The transgression of the Law. Jesus died because we broke the Law and He was buried and He was raised the third day. And Paul says in Hebrews 3:14 that we have become partakers of Christ. We are part of Him. That is what Paul keeps talking about throughout the New Testament. We are part of Him. In fact, in one place, in Ephesians 5, he says we are "bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh."

He goes on to state some evidences that this is real. In 1 Corinthians 15 he states that six times Christ appeared to people after His resurrection and he says that one of those six times it was to over 500 people. When he wrote 1 Corinthians he says that most of those people were still alive. So there were a lot of witnesses to Christ's resurrection, a lot of people that saw Him after He was raised. The last person he mentions who saw Jesus after He was raised was he himself. And when did that happen? It happened on the road to Damascus.

Have you ever heard the story of two infidels who were talking about the Christian religion and how they could overthrow the Christian religion? They said that if you are going to overthrow the Christian religion, you would have to prove two things that Christians believe, are false. One, you would have to prove that the resurrection of Christ is a fraud and didn't really happen and the other, you would have to prove that the conversion of the apostle Paul was a fraud and didn't really happen, because it was through the apostle Paul that almost all of Europe eventually became Christian. As they talked about it they said, "We're going to do it." They each decided they would take an assignment. One would prove that the resurrection of Christ was a fraud and didn't really happen and the other one decided that he was going to prove that the conversion of the apostle Paul was a fraud and didn't really happen. They were going to overthrow the Christian religion. They separated and did not see each other for several years.

Many years later, when they met again, one of them asked the other, "Well, what happened?" The one who was asked was a little hesitant to reply knowing what could happen, but he finally came up with the truth. He said, "I studied it out and now I'm a Christian." So he asked the other one what he found out. The other one immediately replied, "I studied it out, my assignment, and I'm a Christian."

The resurrection of Christ is one of the most indisputable facts of history. When you are young you like to prove things. When I was a young preacher, one of the things that I liked to prove was the resurrection because the evidence is so powerful. There is more evidence for the resurrection of Christ than almost any fact of ancient history that you know about. That is not our subject today, but that is part of the gospel. The third part of the gospel. He died, He was buried, and He rose again and I can partake in that experience. If I share in that experience, I will have eternal life.

I was not actually intending to preach about this exact subject today. I had something else in mind that I have been studying. It is related to this subject and encompasses this subject but it is such a big subject and is so far beyond the average human mind, I decided it might even be beyond mine and maybe I should preach something simple and not get into something that is too complicated. If you can understand the simplicity of the gospel, then you can understand everything you need to know.

The problem is, that as human beings, we have a tendency to make things too complicated by our philosophy. So Paul is trying to help people. Now these people, by the way, were really mixed up. He tried to bring them back to the simplicity of what the Christian message is all about. The simplicity of the Christian message is that Christ died for our sins, He was buried, He rose again the third day, and I am to have that experience, we have just touched on it in Romans 6. This experience transcends our ability to comprehend.

I would like to look at how the apostle Paul develops this experience in 1 Corinthians 15, but first I would like you to notice in the last part of verse 3 and in verse 4, it says that He "died for our sins according to the Scriptures. . .and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures."

Do you know how to explain that text? Do you understand what that means? Christ rose on the third day and that is according to the Scriptures, Paul says. Can you go to the Old Testament and show that Christ was to rise on the third day? Can you? You should be able to. Notice what it says here in 1 Corinthians 15:20, 23. It says, "But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits. . ." Notice verse 23, "But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming."

What are the firstfruits? When was that? That was when the wavesheaf was offered. Now on what day was Christ crucified? In the Jewish calendar of feast days, on what feast day was Christ crucified? And Paul says to the Corinthians, it is not here in this chapter, it is in the fifth chapter, he says, "Christ our passover is crucified for us." The Passover represented a type of His crucifixion. What was the type in the Old Testament of His resurrection? What was it? Remember what He said in John 12, "If a grain fall into the ground and die, it will spring up and bear fruit." What was the first fruit that was born? That was His resurrection and those raised with Him on the third day. That was the wavesheaf. He says right here that Christ, in verses 20 and 23, he repeats it twice, that Christ is what? He is "the firstfruits", that is the wavesheaf.

Turn back to Leviticus 23:5, it says, "On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Lord's Passover." That is the fourteenth day, that is the Passover, that was when Christ was crucified. What happens on the next day? It says in verse 6, "And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; seven days you must eat unleavened bread." And you see there that is a yearly Sabbath or a holy convocation in verse 7. So the Passover was on the fourteenth day, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, that ceremonial Sabbath was on the fifteenth day. Now what happens on the sixteenth day? Look at verses 10 and 11, "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it." When was the firstfruits, when was the wavesheaf offered? It was the day after the Sabbath. When was the Sabbath? It was the fifteenth day of the first month. The Passover was on the fourteenth. The first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread was on the fifteenth and the offering of the wavesheaf was on the sixteenth, which is the third day. Paul says that Christ was that wavesheaf--that represented Christ. He was the wavesheaf, the firstfruits of those that had died. When is the rest of the harvest? Well, He says, in verse 23, that is when He comes again.

We could look here in 1 Corinthians 15 at how he develops this subject to some people who had forgotten about the importance of the resurrection. Some people even denied the resurrection. It is a good thing that that happened because that way he explained it in great detail so that we would know. This is one of the greatest chapters in the whole Bible on the subject of the resurrection. In fact, there is no other chapter in the Bible that I know of which gives such a detailed description of what it is like and what happens. We could read these texts here about the glorious, spiritual body that will be raised in verses 35-49, very fascinating verses.

Let me read to you a couple of interesting statements from the pen of Ellen White on this subject. First of all Selected Messages, vol. 2, 270, 271. "The very bodies that are sown in corruption will be raised in incorruption. That which is sown (that is, planted) in dishonor will be raised in glory; sown in weakness, it will be raised in power; sown a natural body, it will be raised a spiritual body." You see what He is talking about. The gospel has to do with more than dying when you are baptized. If you die and are buried, you are going to be raised the same way that Christ was raised when He comes.

This is Education, 110 (you will find a similar statement in Christ's Object Lessons, 87) "The seed dies, to spring forth into new life. In this we are taught the lesson of the resurrection. Of the human body laid away to molder in the grave, God has said: 'It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.' 1 Corinthians 15:42, 43."

Oh, friends, do you take in the meaning of the gospel? If you get a hold of this, if you experience it, you have eternal life promised to you. It is so real! One of the things I am always so concerned about when I am talking about this subject is that people realize how real it really is. Now we haven't read the text in 1 Corinthians, you will have to study it this afternoon because we are running out of time, but 1 Corinthians 15 makes it very clear that the resurrection is real and you are going to have a real body. It is not going to be the same kind of body that you have now. It will be a lot better one. Do you want me to read that to you? Ellen White said this. She says, "a much finer material will compose the human body. It is sown a natural body; raised a spiritual body." That is from Maranatha, 301. Isn't that exciting? It is real!

It is not something shadowy, spiritual, figurative--it is real! It is just as real as when Jesus was raised. And when Jesus was raised, do you remember the experience that Mary had with Jesus? She didn't know who it was. She thought He was the gardener and had taken away the body and she wanted to get the body of Jesus and if they were not going to allow it to be in that tomb, she would take it and put it in Lazarus' tomb which was empty. She says, "If you have taken Him away, tell me where you have placed Him, and I'll take Him." And what did Jesus say? He said, in English it is Mary, or in Greek Maria. And when He said that, what did she do? She lunged forward and grabbed Him by the feet. And she said, "Rabboni." Which is to say, Master or Teacher. Why did she lunge forward? She recognized His voice. He had the same voice. It was real.

Do you remember when the two disciples were on the way to Emmaus, Jesus came and walked with them down to Emmaus and He disguised Himself? That is, He did not allow them to see who He was because He wanted them to think about what He was going to talk about and He knew they would be so excited about who He was that they would not think about the Scriptures. But when they got there and He blessed, offered thanks and blessed the food, what happened? They looked and they recognized that was the way Jesus did it and they looked again and it was Him. It was real!

In the book, The Faith I Live By, 180, she has an interesting statement about the wavesheaf and about the reality of the resurrection and she says this, "The resurrection of Jesus was a sample of the final resurrection of all who sleep in Him. The risen body of the Saviour, His deportment, the accents of His speech, were all familiar to His followers. In like manner will those who sleep in Jesus rise again. We shall know our friends even as the disciples knew Jesus." Do you like that? "Though they may have been deformed, diseased, or disfigured in this mortal life, yet in their resurrected and glorified body their individual identity will be perfectly preserved and we shall recognize, in the face radiant with the light shining from the face of Jesus, the lineaments of those we love." Isn't that exciting?

That is the gospel, friends. That is the gospel. Don't focus all of your attention on the dying part. That is what the devil wants you to do. All you can see is the dark side of the cross, that is all the devil wants you to see. Remember this, friends, the gospel has three parts; He died, He was buried, but what then? On the third day He rose again. And when He rises again, Paul says, He is never subject to death again. Have you experienced the gospel in your life? Has your old man been crucified so that you are set free from your past, sinful life? By the way, maybe there is somebody here saying, "Pastor John, I don't understand how that could happen?" Let me tell you something, you cannot do it yourself. Did you know that it is impossible to crucify yourself? Have you ever thought about that? You cannot crucify yourself. You just think it through. You could not do it-- it's impossible. But if you are willing to die, you can come to Jesus and say, "Lord, I want to experience this. I want to be a partaker of You." A divine miracle is going to take place in your life. Your old man is going to be crucified, you will be set free from the old life. That will be in the past. When you are buried, friends, the old life of sin is in the past.

I want to say this as kindly as I know how, but I still want to say it because it is the gospel. You cannot experience the resurrection until you have been crucified, until you have died and been buried. You cannot experience the third part until you have experienced the first two, and that is the tragedy today. There are so many people, they want to experience the resurrection, but they don't want to die with Christ, they don't want their old man to die to sin and be buried. They don't want their past life of sin to be in the past, they want to keep living it and yet they want to experience the resurrection. But friends, it is not going to happen.

Well, is the gospel simple? Even a child can understand it. A child can choose to come to Jesus and say, "I'm surrendering my life to You, I want to be part of You. I want to experience what You have experienced." If you are willing to experience the death to sin and the burial, you will experience the resurrection also. I thought today, but I got too long-winded, that we would look at the latter part of 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul says, "I tell you a mystery. . ." not everyone is going to do this. The reason that is important to study is that we are living in the time when that is going to happen. What is the mystery that Paul talks about in the latter part of 1 Corinthians 15? The mystery is that there are going to be some people who will be alive when Jesus comes and their body is never going to die and be put in the grave and be raised again. That is going to happen to some people. That is what he says in the last part of 1 Corinthians 15. He says this is a mystery, but this is what is going to happen.

Friends, we are living in the time, if you experience the death to sin, the crucifixion of your old man to sin and if you are buried with Christ, some of you right here can have that experience. You could experience a mystery that is beyond any ability of any human to explain because you know the way we are right now, we cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. You know that. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:50, he says, "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom. . ." That is impossible. You cannot inherit the kingdom until you are changed. Your body has to be changed, you have to have a different body. Well, so that is what the mystery is about. I wonder how that is going to happen, if I cannot be saved, if I cannot go to the kingdom and inherit the kingdom right now, unless I have a different body, what am I going to do? Well, he explains that in the latter part of 1 Corinthians 15. Do you know how long it will take for you to get the change? He says it is going to be in the blink of an eye. Or as the King James says, "the twinkling of an eye. . ." How fast is the change going to be? It is going to be that quick. (he snapped his fingers.) You can have a new body, if you die first, you can have a new body in the resurrection. If you live, you cannot inherit the kingdom until you are changed, until you receive a new body that quick. It will be in the flash of an eye.

Is the gospel worth looking into? Is it worth making a commitment? When I used to be in a prison ministry, I used to ask the prisoners if they knew anyone that is 200 years old. They would say "no". If I am willing to follow Jesus, that is the way He explained it in John 12. If I am willing to follow Him here, if I am willing to follow. What does that mean to follow? I have to follow Him to the cross. I have to follow Him to the grave. But then I will also follow Him to glory. If you are willing to follow Him here, He says you will follow Him also there.

Do you want that experience? Are you willing to die to sin? Are you willing for your past life of sin to be buried so that you can experience this? So, that you can experience the real power of the gospel? Oh, friends, if you want to experience it, if you want to make a commitment with the Lord to experience it, I must not close this service without giving you an opportunity to say something to the Lord. Just say, "Lord, I am surrendering to You. I want to experience the power of the gospel in my life." The gospel is spiritual and you experience it by making a decision in your mind to follow Jesus. I want to give you an opportunity to do that right now. We need to talk to the Lord. We need to ask Him to help us experience this. We will not experience the last part unless we experience the first part. While I am praying, I want to give you the opportunity to pray in your heart, tell the Lord what is on your heart. If you want to experience the gospel in your life, tell the Lord you want to experience it.