1 Corinthians 15:12-33
I wish Phil Raker were here today.
That’s because my sermon title is actually a triple pun. Can you figure it out?
First of all, I will be speaking of a number of things Paul brought up in this
text, matters having to do with resurrection; resurrection matters. Second of
all, I will be sharing Paul’s point that it really matters to us that Jesus
Christ was raised from the dead; resurrection matters! The third meaning in my
pun has to do with the Biblical truth that the resurrection of the dead is a
physical resurrection, to the material world; resurrection matters because it
is about matter! And guess what, I actually sent an e-mail to Phil on Thursday
to see if he could figure it out and he did! In exactly the same order I just
gave you. He put it this way: 1. You're talking about the things of
resurrection - those could be referred to as "resurrection matters".
2. Resurrection makes a difference - it matters. 3. Our eventual resurrection
will be a physical one - a material one. I miss Phil. And Audrey.
So what are these resurrection matters we learn about in this portion of our Holy Scripture? 1. We preach that Christ has been raised from the dead with his physical material body. 2. If it were not so, our faith is based on a lie, is no faith at all and therefore cannot save us from our sins. 3. If Christ is not raised from the dead, neither is, or will be, anybody else. 4. Jesus’ resurrection in a physical body is the proof we need so that we know we can trust him for our own resurrection one day. 5. Jesus IS risen! Because He is risen He is now exalted to the highest place! Everything is under his feet! He is victor and conqueror of all. LOVE conquers all. Truly it does! The resurrection proves it. The resurrection maters!
In driving his point home Paul used two proverbs at the end of this section. He said in verses 32 & 33, “If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” This one is not so hard to understand. Truly if there is no resurrection, then there is no afterlife and the only life worth living would be the one we have now. He was using that to emphasize how silly it would have been for him to be putting his own life on the line, risking death, for the sake of the gospel, if this current life is the only one he’s going to have.
The other proverb, “Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”” Is to be understood as Paul’s warning to avoid the corruption of the gospel brought about by paying any attention to those who claim there is no resurrection. To deny the resurrection is to totally undo any good that could come from the gospel. But already in Corinth there were supposedly good Christians going around saying that the resurrection, whatever it may be, is not about getting a physical body back again after we die. This means that there were already people even back then trying to look at life and biology from a more scientific point of view that would seek to deny the miraculous and believe only what was easily observable in nature. So they were talking as if what the disciples meant by “resurrection” must have been more like, keeping his memory and teaching alive in their hearts.
The Corinthians were influenced by Greek philosophy that said, “Matter is bad! Only the Spirit is good! Why would anybody want to come back with a new body when all our philosophers have taught us for generations that our physical bodies are the source of all our problems? These bodies are corrupted and imperfect. They get old and die. They limit us and hold us back from the spiritual ideals we are seeking. That is why we sin.” That’s Greek Philosophy. Paul says, “Poppycock! We know that evil does not flow from the body to the spirit causing us to sin, but rather from the spirit in our hearts we choose evil and live it out through our physical hands and feet and mouths. Of course we get a physical body back! And we know that the new one will never get old. It will be immortal!”
Last Thursday Jane asked me a question about our resurrection. She wanted to know if we will all know each other in our resurrected bodies. The Scripture says we shall know and be known. One piece of evidence we have for this knowledge is seen on the Mount of Transfiguration. When Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Jesus, Peter apparently knows who they are without being told. Moses and Elijah, in their glorified bodies are fully known and readily identifiable by anyone, almost as if they are wearing name tags.
Then Tony asked the same question that some of the Sadducees posed, “If a man had more than one wife, is he going to know them all and to whom will he be married? Or is he going to have a harem?” Jesus said, “There is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.” So relationships are definitely going to be different in our next lives. But that doesn’t mean we won’t all know each other. We’ll actually all know each other better. And in a paradise where there is forgiveness and grace and no more tears and sorrows, if someone’s multiple spouses are there, there will be no hard feelings to worry about.
This knowing each other really matters. On a personal note, this aspect of our hope in glory is a pretty important source of strength since my mother-in-law passed away Friday morning. She was a saintly lady. She loved all her kids and prayed for them all her life. She prayed with Kathy on the phone every Monday and Thursday morning for years. We’re going to miss her terribly for a while. But even though we didn’t get to say a proper Good bye for such a long journey away, we will get to say, “Hello” when we meet again in glory. Yes, I know we will, because of our shared faith in Jesus.
Furthermore, it really matters to God that resurrection must be physical because God began creation with physical matter and so he will finish His redemptive work with matter. If God, who created a whole universe out of solid matter, had to settle in the end for an immaterial spiritual world only, then satan will have won! God created a material world. His victory can only be complete if he ends up with a perfected material world. That is what redemption and restoration mean, putting things back to the way God wanted them in the first place.
Resurrection matters. It makes a difference. It is the perfect divine logic to solve the problem of sin. Perhaps nobody can understand exactly how it works in any scientific sense. God’s ways and wisdom are so far beyond our comprehension. And yet from what he has told us about it in his word, there is something very elegant and fitting about taking sin out of the world by doing the opposite of what brought it in and doing that through the same vehicle that brought it in. By one man sin came. By one man sin will go. By one act of imperfect disobedience sin came. By one act of perfect obedience sin will go.
Resurrection matters because it is uniquely Christian. No other religious leader claimed to ratify the truth of his or her teachings by dying and rising again. Buddha is dead. Socrates is dead. Mohammed is dead. Name any other religious leader. Anyone you can think of; they are all dead. They will rise again at the Judgment Day and they will stand before Christ along with all the rest of us, in a living flesh and blood body. What happens next will depend entirely upon what they believe about Jesus Christ the Lord, who remains the first and only person to ever rise from the dead with no one else’s help. As Jesus said, he had the power to lay his life down and the power to take it up again. And only Jesus claimed to have such power. Only Jesus based his entire ministry not on what he taught, but on what he himself would personally do for us in the flesh. And that makes what he taught all the more important.
The resurrection makes all the difference in the world, because in spite of our modern culture’s ideas that all faiths are legitimate, the Bible makes it clear that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved. Jesus Christ is the only God, Lord and Savior, and anyone who doesn’t believe that is in great danger! That’s not because God is mean. It is because there just is no other way. Jesus himself said, “I am the resurrection and the life. No one comes to the father but by me.” He went to great lengths at great cost to provide for our salvation and tell us all about it. To reject God’s plan of salvation is the same as telling a firefighter at your window in a burning building, “Oh I don’t need your ladder. I’ll find my own way.”
God revealed himself to the Abraham first, who became the Father of all the Jews. If Jesus had not come as God in the flesh to proclaim that he is Messiah, the best any of us could do would be to be Jewish! But he did come. And he is a light to the Gentiles. You and I get to be saved from our sins and granted eternal life because Jesus said his death would apply to whosoever believes in him. That’s the universal promise in John 3:16.
We come to the communion table to proclaim his death and his resurrection because resurrection matters. Let us pray.
So what are these resurrection matters we learn about in this portion of our Holy Scripture? 1. We preach that Christ has been raised from the dead with his physical material body. 2. If it were not so, our faith is based on a lie, is no faith at all and therefore cannot save us from our sins. 3. If Christ is not raised from the dead, neither is, or will be, anybody else. 4. Jesus’ resurrection in a physical body is the proof we need so that we know we can trust him for our own resurrection one day. 5. Jesus IS risen! Because He is risen He is now exalted to the highest place! Everything is under his feet! He is victor and conqueror of all. LOVE conquers all. Truly it does! The resurrection proves it. The resurrection maters!
In driving his point home Paul used two proverbs at the end of this section. He said in verses 32 & 33, “If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” This one is not so hard to understand. Truly if there is no resurrection, then there is no afterlife and the only life worth living would be the one we have now. He was using that to emphasize how silly it would have been for him to be putting his own life on the line, risking death, for the sake of the gospel, if this current life is the only one he’s going to have.
The other proverb, “Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”” Is to be understood as Paul’s warning to avoid the corruption of the gospel brought about by paying any attention to those who claim there is no resurrection. To deny the resurrection is to totally undo any good that could come from the gospel. But already in Corinth there were supposedly good Christians going around saying that the resurrection, whatever it may be, is not about getting a physical body back again after we die. This means that there were already people even back then trying to look at life and biology from a more scientific point of view that would seek to deny the miraculous and believe only what was easily observable in nature. So they were talking as if what the disciples meant by “resurrection” must have been more like, keeping his memory and teaching alive in their hearts.
The Corinthians were influenced by Greek philosophy that said, “Matter is bad! Only the Spirit is good! Why would anybody want to come back with a new body when all our philosophers have taught us for generations that our physical bodies are the source of all our problems? These bodies are corrupted and imperfect. They get old and die. They limit us and hold us back from the spiritual ideals we are seeking. That is why we sin.” That’s Greek Philosophy. Paul says, “Poppycock! We know that evil does not flow from the body to the spirit causing us to sin, but rather from the spirit in our hearts we choose evil and live it out through our physical hands and feet and mouths. Of course we get a physical body back! And we know that the new one will never get old. It will be immortal!”
Last Thursday Jane asked me a question about our resurrection. She wanted to know if we will all know each other in our resurrected bodies. The Scripture says we shall know and be known. One piece of evidence we have for this knowledge is seen on the Mount of Transfiguration. When Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Jesus, Peter apparently knows who they are without being told. Moses and Elijah, in their glorified bodies are fully known and readily identifiable by anyone, almost as if they are wearing name tags.
Then Tony asked the same question that some of the Sadducees posed, “If a man had more than one wife, is he going to know them all and to whom will he be married? Or is he going to have a harem?” Jesus said, “There is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.” So relationships are definitely going to be different in our next lives. But that doesn’t mean we won’t all know each other. We’ll actually all know each other better. And in a paradise where there is forgiveness and grace and no more tears and sorrows, if someone’s multiple spouses are there, there will be no hard feelings to worry about.
This knowing each other really matters. On a personal note, this aspect of our hope in glory is a pretty important source of strength since my mother-in-law passed away Friday morning. She was a saintly lady. She loved all her kids and prayed for them all her life. She prayed with Kathy on the phone every Monday and Thursday morning for years. We’re going to miss her terribly for a while. But even though we didn’t get to say a proper Good bye for such a long journey away, we will get to say, “Hello” when we meet again in glory. Yes, I know we will, because of our shared faith in Jesus.
Furthermore, it really matters to God that resurrection must be physical because God began creation with physical matter and so he will finish His redemptive work with matter. If God, who created a whole universe out of solid matter, had to settle in the end for an immaterial spiritual world only, then satan will have won! God created a material world. His victory can only be complete if he ends up with a perfected material world. That is what redemption and restoration mean, putting things back to the way God wanted them in the first place.
Resurrection matters. It makes a difference. It is the perfect divine logic to solve the problem of sin. Perhaps nobody can understand exactly how it works in any scientific sense. God’s ways and wisdom are so far beyond our comprehension. And yet from what he has told us about it in his word, there is something very elegant and fitting about taking sin out of the world by doing the opposite of what brought it in and doing that through the same vehicle that brought it in. By one man sin came. By one man sin will go. By one act of imperfect disobedience sin came. By one act of perfect obedience sin will go.
Resurrection matters because it is uniquely Christian. No other religious leader claimed to ratify the truth of his or her teachings by dying and rising again. Buddha is dead. Socrates is dead. Mohammed is dead. Name any other religious leader. Anyone you can think of; they are all dead. They will rise again at the Judgment Day and they will stand before Christ along with all the rest of us, in a living flesh and blood body. What happens next will depend entirely upon what they believe about Jesus Christ the Lord, who remains the first and only person to ever rise from the dead with no one else’s help. As Jesus said, he had the power to lay his life down and the power to take it up again. And only Jesus claimed to have such power. Only Jesus based his entire ministry not on what he taught, but on what he himself would personally do for us in the flesh. And that makes what he taught all the more important.
The resurrection makes all the difference in the world, because in spite of our modern culture’s ideas that all faiths are legitimate, the Bible makes it clear that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved. Jesus Christ is the only God, Lord and Savior, and anyone who doesn’t believe that is in great danger! That’s not because God is mean. It is because there just is no other way. Jesus himself said, “I am the resurrection and the life. No one comes to the father but by me.” He went to great lengths at great cost to provide for our salvation and tell us all about it. To reject God’s plan of salvation is the same as telling a firefighter at your window in a burning building, “Oh I don’t need your ladder. I’ll find my own way.”
God revealed himself to the Abraham first, who became the Father of all the Jews. If Jesus had not come as God in the flesh to proclaim that he is Messiah, the best any of us could do would be to be Jewish! But he did come. And he is a light to the Gentiles. You and I get to be saved from our sins and granted eternal life because Jesus said his death would apply to whosoever believes in him. That’s the universal promise in John 3:16.
We come to the communion table to proclaim his death and his resurrection because resurrection matters. Let us pray.
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