Turn with me in the Word of God to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Familiar passage, I'm sure. 1 Corinthians 15. And there we read just the first 11 verses. Hear the word of the Lord. Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you have been saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of 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. and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12, and 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, and then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me, for I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God, But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed. This truly is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we humble ourselves before your great word And even as we look at a passage of that inspired word that is very familiar to us, we pray that your spirit will bring out from your scriptures treasures old and new, so that we might once again be amazed by your grace and be delighted by your very powerful mercy, also that works in our lives for Jesus' sake. Amen. I draw your attention to the words of verse 10, from our passage, but by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me. Dear people of God, this chapter, 1 Corinthians 15, is the very well-known chapter on the resurrection. But let's be clear in our minds as to what Paul is addressing here, for his heretical opponents did not deny at all that there was something that we would call a spiritual resurrection. They fully believed in that. What was in question was, does the body have such importance in the economy of God that it will be raised? Will we be someday physically raised from the dead? For the Greek thinking often opposed the spirit over against the body. The realm of ideas was important, but the realm of matter, physical things, was a much lower, lower thing. And so the body being a physical thing was immaterial. It was not that important to many Greeks. And so Paul brings the gospel, he opens this chapter with a reminder of some of the key elements of the gospel. One of which is, the dead in Christ shall be raised. For if Christ is not raised, then the dead are not raised. And if you are not raised, if the dead are not raised, then Christ is not raised, and then our faith is vain. It is to be laughed at. And then the only hope we would have would be for this life and for nothing else. Everything would really end then at our death. But Paul says a part of the gospel, an essential element of the gospel, is Christ's resurrection, and with that, the resurrection of the dead physically. That is the gospel that Paul brought as an apostle. But he also notes that he is not worthy to be an apostle. I'm the last one. I'm untimely born. For I am not worthy to be it, because I was a persecutor of the church of God. Indeed, he was. And so when he says, by the grace of God, I am what I am, he makes a kind of personal confession. And it is a kind of personal confession that, in a way, every Christian could make for himself or for herself. And so this morning I want us to focus upon 1 Corinthians 15 verse 10 under the theme, God's grace remakes us useful. God's grace remakes us useful. And we'll see just two things in this passage. First of all, how the grace of God first reassembles us. Secondly, how the grace of God reenergizes us. Now Paul says something similar to this in the second letter that he wrote to the Corinthians. In 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9, Paul writes, but he, that is God, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. I find that fascinating that an apostle of Jesus Christ would talk about his own weaknesses. He writes that as a Christian in the second letter to the Corinthians. In other words, there were still elements in the life and ministry of the apostle Paul that had not yet reached fully, 100% sanctified living. He had weaknesses. And he prayed earnestly that they be taken away. And God says, no, my grace is sufficient for you. So therefore, when Paul writes these words, by the grace of God, I am what I am, you might say Paul himself was still a work in progress. That's interesting that he says, when he contrasts that with what he was in his pre-Christian days. Well, what was he like? Well, before he became a Christian, he's known as Paul of Tarsus. And in several places, both in the book of Acts and in his epistles, he describes himself. And one of the clearest passages would be Philippians 3. And you read those opening verses, and you say, what a pedigree. What a pedigree. Hebrew of Hebrews, no mixed ancestry in my case. I know my tribe, I'm from Benjamin. I was circumcised on the eighth day. My parents were keepers of the law, of the Torah. And as to zeal, I was very zealous. And in terms of keeping the Old Testament traditions, the traditions of the elders, blameless. Now when you say blameless, you say there's no, that's 100%, isn't it? Blameless. And he comes from a major city. Tarsus was no mean city. In other words, Paul did not come from Podunk. He came from a substantial city. And he was a Roman citizen of that city. And we know that he studied the Greek authors. He wasn't a sheltered little Jewish boy, but he read the Greeks. We know that because he quotes from them from time to time. In fact, later on in this chapter, He quotes, he makes a reference to a Greek comedy. It gets better. At some point early in his life, he goes to Jerusalem. And there he is enrolled in a Pharisaic academy and his teacher is Gamaliel. Now if my memory serves me right, even Jewish sources outside of the scriptures make reference to Gamaliel. He was a very important rabbi. I call him Gamaliel the Moderate. Because you remember that story early in Acts when there's this conflict in the Jews, well, what do we do with these Christians, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth? Well, one says this and one says that, and then Gamaliel with the stature of an important rabbi stands up and he says, wait a minute, brothers, let's be very careful here. Because if we go against them, and this is the work of God, we will be opposing God. But if this is the work of men, no worries. The whole thing will soon dissipate. So, Mr. Moderator, I move we take no action against the Christians. Gamaliel, the moderate. But his student, Saul of Tarsus, was no moderate. Oh, no. He was the kind of student who plunged himself into his studies. He identifies himself with the strictest of the sects, Pharisees. Now, whatever you want to say about the Pharisees, this was their agenda, that all Jews should live according to the cleanliness prescriptions of the priests. the highest standards of Jewish living. And so if priests are required to wash a great deal, we all must wash ourselves frequently to keep clean and unspotted from the world. Paul plunged himself into his studies so that when he graduated, he graduated summa cum laude, highest honors. He was immersed and devoted to the traditions of the Jewish elders. Get the picture? Here's a man well-catechized. He's well-educated in both Greek thinking and in Jewish teachings. He's zealous. He's on fire for the cause. He's a very active and zealous member of the covenant community. He was not Pharisaic in outward appearance just to please others around him. This is a man who is Pharisaic to the core of his being, to the very bone. Could someone answer this question for me then? How does it happen in a community where the best catechumen, the most zealous member of the community, well-educated, turns out, in fact, to be a monster, a brutal, brutal monster? How does that happen? You say, well, was Paul a monster? In effect, he says so himself. Because now as he looks back on his origins as a zealous Pharisee, he sees that in a much different light. Now, attendance in seminary guarantees nothing other than you get an education. Joseph Stalin went to seminary. When he left seminary, there were books missing from the library. He had beaten up several of his teachers. And he himself would say, when he left seminary, that he was an atheist and a Bolshevik. We know the rest of history after that for him. Timothy receives a letter from Paul, and Paul writes that he formerly was a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insolent opponent. You read Acts 22, read Acts 26. In those speeches that Paul makes to leading authorities, he tells something of his background. And we learn that he had been eager to arrest Christians. And if they wouldn't denounce Jesus, that he would push for them to be killed. He was determined to stamp out Christianity. He was not a couch Pharisee. I don't know if they had action committees back then as we have action committees today, but if there was an action committee to stamp out the Nazarene sect, Paul says, sign me up, I'll do it. But the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ was sufficient to take hold of this Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus, to take his heart, turn it around, and change him profoundly. I've read of people who have studied, you know, the academicians who, they want to look at the conversion of Paul, and they read about it, and they check the sources, and they come away themselves, if not converted, they come away shaken because they say there's nothing human, there's nothing natural that would explain why he, this zealous Pharisee, would become a follower of Jesus. Nothing natural explains it. Something must have happened to him. Well, we know the story. In Acts 9, Saul of Tarsus is on his way to Damascus, and he's got a letter signed by the high priests in Jerusalem. And those letters authorize him to find out in Damascus any followers of Jesus, to arrest them and then drag them back to Jerusalem for trial. But instead of arresting Christians, Jesus Christ arrested him, stopped him dead in his tracks and turns him around. By the grace of God, I am what I am. Arrested by Jesus. And now, he becomes a believer that Jesus is the Messiah. He's actually the one that was prophesied in the Law and the Prophets to come and to be the Messiah, the Anointed One. The one who dies on the cross to take away our sins. The one who conquers death by his glorious resurrection. And not just a believer, Paul is now enlisted as an apostle, authorized to go to others and to bring them this wonderful message of what Jesus Christ has done for the life of the world, to announce the coming of the kingdom of God. And not just any apostle. Paul says, I am an apostle whose field of ministry is among Gentiles. You know, those dirty people. those unclean people, those people who follow all kinds of demonic myths and superstitions. That's his calling. By the grace of God, Paul is now enlisted as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have to tell you a little story. It's a story about Barney. You've never met Barney. It's a man that I met about 10 years ago when I and a seminary student went to go on an archeological dig at Bethsaida. Bethsaida, north of the Sea of Galilee. Barney was an American who would volunteer his time to do this kind of work as well. Archeology, digging. Now I'm not trained as a professional archeologist. And so Barney would supervise the different spots where some of us would dig. And Barney was with, I was there for two weeks. Now, that's in June, and the sun and the heat are intense in Israel in June. We were there to dig for two weeks, getting dusty and dirty, and Barney stayed with us just three days. After that, he left us to go fishing on the Sea of Galilee. We're sweating, he's fishing. Now, I would see Barney from time to time during those two weeks, and I'd say, Barney, have you caught any fish? And every time he said, no. I was tempted to tell him that, well, take your nets and you throw them on the other side of your boat. I didn't say that, but I almost felt I was trapped in a cliche. I stayed at a place called Kibbutz Ginosar. Now, there's a museum at Kibbutz Ginosar where they keep the so-called Galilee boat, a boat that was excavated out of the sand and muck of the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. And they are able to date the wood back to the first century AD. Now, some people call it the Jesus boat, but we have no idea if Jesus ever saw this boat in his life on Earth. Well, also in this museum, in the lower regions, the downstairs, we saw something else that Barney would do in his free time. Barney would reassemble broken pottery. No, not the little stuff, that's a dime a thousand, but the bigger pots and jars and jugs and vases and casserole dishes. Yeah, they had casserole dishes. And he would spend hours, tediously, trying to take pieces and fit them together. Now, when you do a jigsaw puzzle, you can at least look at the box and say, well, this is the picture. And you look at the pieces and you kind of see where they go. But when you have no picture of what the final vase or pot looks like, you're just spending hours trying to fit pieces together. But he did it. I saw many, many, many jars and pots and vases that had been reassembled. Some of them were very large to hold grain or water or oil or wine, I'm not sure. Various uses, various sizes. Some were very thick because they were very large. Now a couple things that you should notice, we should note about them is number one, not all the reassembled pots and jars and vases had every piece there. In the providence of God, there would be pots that had pieces missing and probably never ever would be found. But secondly, what was it that held these pots and jars and casserole dishes together? Well, it was glue. Now, I don't understand the chemistry or the kind of glue that they would have to use, but it would have to be strong enough. For after Barney would find the fit to apply the glue to the edges, secure the fit, wait for it to dry, and then eventually the pot or jar would emerge. You know, the Bible uses the analogy, doesn't it? The word picture of God as a potter. You think of Genesis 2, where God takes the soil, the dust of the earth, and he shapes a man, and he breathes into his nostrils, and the man becomes a living being. And then Isaiah 64, the prophet says, you are our father. You are the potter and we are the clay. So I want to look at this verse, by the grace of God I am what I am, under that analogy. You know, when Adam and Eve sinned, according to Romans 7, the effect of their sin was to take the entire human race and to turn it into a collection of shattered and broken pots. A collection of cracked pots. I didn't say cracked pots. Cracked pots. Now we chuckle a little bit. What do we mean? We mean this, that when we enter this world, every human being is already guilty. Now that's a legal category. Guilty vis-a-vis the law. But secondly, when we enter this world, we also enter this world corrupted. Now that's a matter of experience. This is what original sin is. corruption, and guilt. And still, when you meet with, interact with people in our society, they seem to have all their life together. People, even in churches, know all the standard conventions that allows them to be presentable in society. How are you doing? Oh, quite well, quite well. We had a good week. And sometimes we all forget, society certainly forgets, but sometimes even in churches we forget that in fact we enter the world guilty and corrupted, broken and shattered by the effects of sin. And the remarkable thing and noticeable thing that is true even about Christians is that the grace of God that makes them to be what they are does not always assemble all of the missing parts. even in this life. Paul himself says in 2 Corinthians 12 that he experiences a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan that God allows in his life to humble him. Now, what was that thorn in his flesh? You read the commentaries. You read them and read them and you read many of them. And many of them have speculation. And most of them fall on, it was some kind of a physical problem. And I wonder if that's what they want it to be. Did Paul have poor eyesight? Did he suffer from recurring malaria fevers? Did he have epilepsy? All of these have been advanced as theories. But what I wonder is, was there something in Paul's life that many Christians can relate to in terms of struggle, spiritual struggle. Did Paul struggle with pride? Did he struggle with coveting, lust, anger? In the end, I don't know. I really don't know. And the commentaries at the end all throw up their hands and say, we really don't know what it was. But whatever it was, it had this effect in him, humbled him. humbled him and made him more and more and more dependent upon the grace of God. By the grace of God, I am what I am. By the grace of God, I carry out this ministry as an apostle. And that thorn reminds me I need God's grace on a daily basis. And if I may venture a guess, I suspect that Paul went to his grave still with that thorn in his flesh. But what does it matter? When he pens these words, he is a work in progress, but he also affirms in this chapter that the dead in Christ shall be raised, incorruptible, never to die again. The resurrection of the body will still lay ahead. God's grace restores us, doesn't it? It takes the broken pieces of our lives and starts to fit them together and reassemble us. This is good news. But God's grace also re-energizes us. Oh yes, it does. It puts us to work, back to even vigorous work. For once God's grace took hold of Paul's heart and life, it energized him so that he says in verse 10, I worked harder than all of them. Now is he boasting? Keep reading. But it wasn't I, it was not me that was doing this, it was the grace of God that was with me. This is still true for you and me. We're Christians of all kinds. All that training and all that talent, all that education and all that experience can now be taken and now used as God will in a new direction for the glory of the Lord, for the coming of His kingdom. For regeneration leads to new direction, empowered by God's grace. You know, in the church, we work, don't we? Pastors, elders. Any one of us, we work hard to see that God's grace is working in each other's lives. We are mutually accountable, and we seek to bring about that holiness that God lays out for us in his word. We work hard for that, don't we? And that's good to a point. To a point, perhaps. Let me ask you. Are you a failure as a Christian brother or sister? If someone goes to their grave as a convinced believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, but there's still an area of his or her life that's not yet what it should be, there's a part of the jar missing, what's more important in the Christian life, our success? in getting other people to look and act just like we do? Or is it the grace of God that works when and where it will for us and in others? Because if you're looking for your success in changing other people, I can guarantee you that you will be very exhausted in no time. But if you're relying upon the grace of God, who's far wiser and more powerful than any one of us. If you're relying upon the grace of God to do what it will, then there may be times in the Christian life when you and I are tired, we've all got tired, but we will never be tired of it. For the grace of God keeps re-energizing us for the tasks of the day and the week. Grace, do you need it? Ah, real men don't need grace. Just get a good education and be well catechized. Paul would say, been there, done that. It turned me into a brutal monster. Do you need grace? Yes, you need it. Not only preached, but also applied and practiced, because you will not grow as believers in Christ on nice moralisms, be good and you are good, on true but stale theological jargon, with Jesus Christ attached to the sermon in the last 10 seconds. I've heard sermons in Reformed churches that do that. Christ got tacked on in 10 seconds at the end. That was not Christian, I'm sorry. Grace? Do broken people need it so that the shattered elements of their lives can somehow be reassembled in a powerful way? Do you need grace to reassemble you and re-energize you? Yes, you do. When you look around at other people, even in churches, what do you see? What do you hear? Can you pick up on the subtexts? Do the cracks in the marriage, the family, the person himself or herself appear? Because if those things start to appear, then you and I need wisdom to apply that grace of God or to speak of it, to model it in such a way that it fits the situation that that person is in. We need wisdom. so that God's grace would not only bring those pieces back together, those pieces will hold. Here's where I feel so sorry for the legalist. Now, don't get me wrong, we need to know the law of God, and the Bible spells it out beautifully, because we need to know what the big picture is, personally, societally, and the law of God supplies it. It does. We need to know that. But the legalist imagines that maybe if I yell a little louder, induce a bigger guilt trip, threaten people a little more, then they will fall in the line. Well, they might for a few days, weeks. But it never works in the long run. The gospel shows us a much better way. For God's grace is not merely God's attitude towards sinners. Paul was not turned around on the Damascus Road by an attitude. He was turned around by something far more powerful. The grace of God as that was brought by the Spirit of God to the heart of Paul. Grace is a power. It is a divine strength that holds the pieces of life together. It's like glue. You don't really see it very much, but it's gotta be there. Because when it is there, it holds the pieces together. For God is working through His Son and His Spirit. The Father works to carefully, patiently, and really bring together in a powerful way our lives and make us useful again. Two things I think should be clearly applicable for us. Number one, humility. What do you have that you have not received? But if you've received it from God by His grace, where is boasting? It gets excluded in the Christian life, doesn't it? Humility. But secondly, this should result in a level of understanding about people that recognizes that grace is needed because some people are barely able to hold things together. Patience is not just a human virtue. Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. a genuine long-sufferingness that we exercise one with another because we all know we are broken by sin and only grace can fit the pieces back together. And then what? Having done all in the Christian life to speak grace, teach grace, model grace, and still there may be people who have sections of their life that are not in proper place. Then what? Remember, brothers and sisters, by the grace of God, I am what I am is a verse that occurs in which chapter of the Bible? The chapter on the resurrection. Yes, someday, someday we will be raised, we will be made immortal, never to die again. What is perishable now will become imperishable. And guess what? Then there will be no more cracks. no more sins, no more cancers, no more accidents, no more separations, no more tears, no more brokenness. Paul begins the chapter by reciting the central truths of the gospel, but he ends by saying, brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. By the grace of God, I am what I am. We are all works in progress, but guess what? The Scriptures is clear that that work is God's work. Praise the Lord. Amen. Let us pray. Father, we thank you and praise you that your grace reaches us. Keep from us all pride, for all that we have is a gift of your mercy. Keep from us that kind of short-tempered irritableness in which we complain about people who don't do it the way we do it, who are not as holy as we are. Teach us all that sweet patience that comes when we recognize what your grace has done for us, what you have done in transforming us and making us useful for your glory. For Jesus' sake, amen.