INTRODUCTION:  A young minister in Kentucky was asked by a funeral director to hold a grave-side service for a homeless man, who had no family or friends. The funeral was to be held at a new cemetery way back in the country, and this man would be the first to be buried there. The minister was not familiar with the backwoods area, and soon became lost. Being a typical man, he did not stop to ask for directions. He finally arrived an hour late. He saw the backhoe and the open grave, but the hearse was nowhere in sight. The digging crew was eating lunch. He apologized to the workers for his tardiness, and he stepped to the side of the open grave. There he saw the vault lid already in place. He assured the workers he would not hold them up for long, as he told them that this was the proper thing to do. The workers gathered around the grave and stood silently, as the minister began to pour out his heart and soul. As he preached about “looking forward to a brighter tomorrow and the glory that is to come,” the workers began to say “Amen,” “Praise the Lord,” and “Glory!” The fervor of those men truly inspired him. So, he preached and he preached a gospel sermon like he had never preached before, all the way from Genesis to Revelations. He finally closed the lengthy service with a prayer, thanked the men, and walked to his car. As he was opening the door and taking off his coat, he heard one of the workers say to another, "I ain't NEVER seen nothin' like that before, and I've been puttin' in septic tanks for thirty years!"

Someone has observed that “the end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.”  Today, I want to talk about the gospel of Jesus in such a way as to bring us a fresh appreciation for its meaning and impact on our lives. We’ve been in a sermon series from I Corinthians entitled “The Ties That Bind.”  The Corinthian church was fractured and divided.  We’ve seen that they were divided over the use of spiritual gifts.  Paul wrote to them in chapters 12 – 14 certain principles that, if internalized and applied, would correct that problem and bind the church back together in unity.  I call these principles “The Ties that Bind.”  So far, we have seen that the church is bound together by teamwork (chapter 12), love (chapter 13), and the Word of God (chapter 14).  But they were also divided because some of the members were claiming that there is no resurrection from the dead.  Some were saying “When you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s all there is.”  To correct this error and heal this division, Paul returns to the core belief that makes a church a church – the gospel.  Today, as we continue this series in I Corinthians 15, we’re going to see how the church is bound together by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel binds the church together by producing three results that all Christians share: salvation, conviction, and inspiration.