The Resurrection Body

Good morning, church.

Our passage today will be out of 1 Corinthians chapter 15, beginning with verse 35, following through verse 49.

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

But someone will ask, How are the dead raised?

With what kind of body do they come?

You foolish person.

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.

But God gives it a body as He has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.

For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.

There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another.

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star and glory.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead.

What is sown is perishable.

What is raised is imperishable.

It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.

It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.

It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

Thus it is written: the first man, Adam, became a living being.

The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural and then the spiritual.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

This is the word of the Lord.

Here we are.

Your word that you tell us and that we know quickens.

We want that today.

Please show us what you have for us today.

Teach us more about you and the plans you have for us.

Father, we just uh anoint Dylan here as he brings the word you'd have him bring to us today.

Speak to him uh boldly and confidently.

And let us know what you'd have us do, Father, because we're here and we're ready.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you, brother.

You may be seated.

Good morning.

My name is Dylan.

I'm one of the pastors here.

It sounds like I am breathing heavy into this mic.

I don't know what to do about that.

I'm not I'm not huffing and puffing.

Clearly, there's some in and out.

If it goes out, I'm just gonna keep pressing.

I don't have a naturally loud voice, so you just might have to lean forward a bit.

I uh I I normally when I bring a Bible up here, I try and bring one of the pew Bibles.

I I don't know why, I'd just like to have whatever you might be looking at, but we have this large print one in the back, and I thought I'd try that today.

And I hate to admit how much easier this is to read.

I just opened I just looked down and went, oh man.

It's uh I know Robert and I aren't old, I get that.

But you gotta remember that we met when I was 19, and the other day I walked in to where he and I often work in the back, and he's looking at his computer like this through his readers.

I hope he's watching.

I love talking about his favorite kind of readers and where he gets them.

Uh anyways, before we before we begin in earnest, even past that, uh you if you looked in that direction on your way in, you notice a new piece of furniture.

Uh it's it's some IKEA bookshelves.

By the way, IKEA's going out of business, and those were super those were just more on sale.

I felt like I checked with the security guards, so am I good?

Uh so just you know, I don't know.

Head to IKEA.

But we we we got some nice shelves out here, and what we're doing with that is calling that a family discipleship resource wall.

We have our regular resource wall right outside this door, but throughout the the year, what you're gonna hear more and more of is the ways in which we want to increase our efforts as a staff and as a as an organization of the church to equip you as parents and guardians and grandparents and and disciplers of your young people because we believe that the Bible is clear that the normative discipleship process for children is primarily at home.

And so, what that means is all the things that we offer, the programming, what's happening on Sunday mornings and Wednesdays and camps and all these other things are meant to be supplemental as a resource to you as you disciple in the home, but we also recognize that that is intimidating and we we don't want to mess it up, and we're afraid uh either that we're gonna say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or that we don't even know where to begin.

And so, as your church staff and elders and uh Katie and Luke, we are we are working on a what I hope is a robust offering in that way.

This bookshelf is meant to serve as a visual cue of what's to come.

If you haven't looked at it on the way in, check it out on the way out.

There will be more resources over the weeks and months, but currently we have moved everything that we already had over there.

There's also QR codes to register for new Christians class, parent newsletters, those sorts of things.

In the months to come, we will begin uh introducing regular opportunities for training and for sharpening one another, for having round tables to sit around, to not just hear from pastors or staff people, but to talk to each other as parents about how you are engaging the discipleship of your children.

And again, I don't want you to feel like we're about to just cut all of our support and what we're doing and say, go get after it.

But what we want to do is lean into what we see in scripture, and that is parents, raise up your children in the ways of the Lord.

And so you can join me in praying for that.

Definitely check out, uh, check it out on the way out, but recognize it, be checking it regularly as we add things as well as more events coming throughout the year.

Now, let me make a the full shift into our text this morning.

As a as a brief refresher, Paul began chapter 15 with with a beautiful summary statement of the gospel message.

That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and three days later he was raised in victory over sin.

That is that is the the core, the foundation upon which he says we stand, we we receive this, we we stand in it, and we are being saved by it.

Praise God.

And now last week he begins a longer discussion on the resurrection, affirming that if Christ was not resurrected, belief in the gospel message is meaningless.

It is in vain.

The resurrection of Jesus is our great hope, because that resurrection is then promised to us through our adoption by God through Christ's work.

And today, in verses 35 through 49, Paul gets us started by calling someone foolish, which should get our attention, especially when we're talking about the resurrection.

I want to make sure that I am not under that same charge when I and how I think about the resurrection.

So look with me again in verse 35.

I'm gonna read down through 38.

Paul wrote, But someone will ask, How are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come?

You foolish person, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

And what you sow is not the body that it that it is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain, but God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.

Paul does this throughout the the letter of the Corinthians and and other letters he wrote to other congregations.

He will often quote or reference the problem and then correct it.

Some some say, How will the dead be raised?

What kind of body do they come?

It would seem, again, based on patterns of others uh of Paul's writings and corrections, this was not genuine curiosity from the Corinthians.

This was this was a sarcastic line of questioning by those who Paul earlier called out for questioning the resurrection altogether.

Remember that this chapter 15 is a correction, even as it is an encouragement and lifting our eyes to the horizon of eternity.

Scholars think that these people, not unlike many today, were expressing what they thought to be the natural intellectual superiority of the time in the face of the supernatural claims of Christ and his disciples.

In other words, bodies can't be animated.

We know that resurrection is impossible, they must have been saying.

Paul's answer is this you are foolish.

You're foolish to deny or to question the resurrection in the face of the Creator God.

It is our very hope.

It is the linchpin of all of our salvation, not just that Jesus died for our sins, but that death could not hold him, that he conquered sin.

I won't dip it too much into next week, but we look with anticipation.

They lacked belief in the promises of God because what they thought of as the natural order of things couldn't account for the sovereign choice and the will of God.

Even so, Paul's rebuttal here both points to the supernatural will of God, but he kind of does through so through through appealing to the arguments of logic the Corinthians were using to deny it.

Paul does this frequently.

I'll use your own reasoning to disprove you.

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

It's an agricultural theme here.

And what you sow is not the same thing as what will grow out of that seed or that kernel.

And even by the laws of agriculture, to sow a seed is to place that seed in a grave.

That seed doesn't grow back up, something else, a transformed being from what was into what is.

God gives it a body as he has chosen into each kind of seed its own body.

Assuming that the current set of human knowledge somehow supersedes the creative and resurrecting power of God is foolishness.

Why?

Because we think too much of ourselves and our and our so-called intellects.

It's not that humans can't, by the common grace of God, observe and document how God has ordered his creation.

This is not me being anti-science or anti-intellectualism.

God has, in his mercy, allowed us to discover some of the ways that we can describe how his creation works.

But for the believers in the room and dwelled by the Holy Spirit, we desire God's wisdom, not our own.

This passage should remind us to trust in the sovereign and good purposes of God's will.

Maybe even more so in cases where to his glory and to our good God seems to violate what we would consider normal, like resurrecting the dead.

Praise God, He is not constrained to what we understand to be normal.

Amen.

Today is family worship Sunday.

So we have we have kids in here, more kids than normal.

So kids, teenagers, parents, uh all of you, just listen to me if you if you tune everything else out.

You can you can homeschool all the way through, or private school, or public school.

At some point, the world is gonna confront your belief in God based on some intellectual argument.

That's silly for you to believe that.

The world's gonna mock your belief in Jesus, often because the world fancies itself to be rational and reasonable and interested only in the facts.

But the problem is this our rationality and our reasoning and our facts are all based on our knowledge and wisdom.

And for those of us being saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ, we know that the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God.

It's not that we humans are incapable of finding truth, but truth is not a set of facts, it is a person.

Resurrected and given us the hope of the same.

It is sinful pride and arrogance that assumes that we we know something that God can't understand, or that he is not big enough to comprehend or to order or to guide his creation, even in resurrection according to his goodwill.

Children, uh adults too, but hear this, kids.

It is not foolish to trust the promises of God, even if the world around you tries to tell you that he won't keep them or he's incapable.

It does not make you foolish to believe in an eternal, loving God that loved us enough to create us and to redeem us in our disobedience.

It does not make you weak to follow the commands of Jesus as you make decisions about how to live your life.

The world standards of right and wrong are moving targets, anyways.

The moral ethic of a world devoid uh of the constraints of the law of Christ will will uh adjust that ethic with the news cycle, with what's on trend and what will sell, what is accepted by by the rest of everyone else, and that changes over and over and over.

But the very living word of God gives us unchanging and eternal guidance for this life and for the next one, hinged around resurrection.

And it does not make you anti-intellectual, it does not make you dumb.

Don't repeat that word unless you're allowed to.

It doesn't make you dumb to believe that Jesus Christ was dead, that he was buried, but that God resurrected him to new life, and we are offered that same hope.

That means you are trusting something bigger than yourself.

It means that you are striving towards trusting that the God of the universe, the creator, the Lord of Lords, the great I Am loves you and enacted his will to save you from your sins through the work of Jesus, including the resurrection.

Matter of fact, the word the Lord says is to believe anything else other than that is foolish.

Now, let's look back at verse 39 and following.

These get a little twisted up in my head when I read them.

A lot of back and forth.

Let me see if I can make some sense of these passages.

As we go, we we read of Paul building descriptive layers of God's good design, his sovereign will on how resurrection plays out.

I think the rest of this passage is hope.

There's application certainly, but I I think it preaches like hope and hope and hope, excitement for the resurrection.

Let me read 39 through 41 again.

For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.

There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another.

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars.

For star differs from star and glory.

In verse 39, Paul reminds us of God's creative freedom.

God's creative freedom.

Remember, Paul is rebuking members of the church.

This is a letter to the church.

As far as we can tell, it's not that these folks were outright skeptics of the entirety of the faith.

They were questioning the resurrection.

They were questioning the creative ability of God in the resurrection.

So again, Paul works up kind of this logical string of thoughts to demonstrate God's freedom and ability to create all manner of things in the first place and in the resurrection.

Many different kinds of bodies.

Why then could he not also exert that creative and redemptive power in something like resurrecting the risen Savior and giving us that promise of the same inheritance?

He goes on to describe various bodies, mentioning the specific expression of glory is different for each.

It's unique.

He's not limited by what you were.

Because even in the diversity of creation and resurrected bodies, the common theme throughout is for that those secure in the blood of Jesus, forgiven for eternity through the work of Jesus, we will be resurrected unto new bodies that are suited for eternal glory with God.

There is layer upon layer, but but regardless of the details, I think, we have this hope of what however God resurrects me, and unto whatever God resurrects me, whatever this means in detail, it is suited for the rest of my eternity with Him and glory.

That's all I need to know.

I'm good right there.

We will be resurrected into new bodies that are suited for eternal glory with God.

Not eternal equality of God, but glorified.

It's a theological term.

Gerald Bray defines it like this: the glorification of the Christian is that we shall share in God's glory, meaning when we are in our resurrected bodies in the new heavens and the new earth, we are experiencing deeper fellowship with God, unbridled by sin, and not being at risk of falling away into sin.

And God's glory will finally be our all in all.

The totality of our sustenance is the glory that we have to look forward to.

Again, not equality with God, but that we finally find all of our needs in Him.

Paul goes on to describe some of the specific changes that happen upon receiving our glorified bodies in the resurrection.

Verses forty-two through forty-four.

What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.

What is sown in dishonor is raised in glory.

What is sown in weakness, it is raised in power, it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

It's a list of facts.

We we are currently in this natural body, and what is coming is one of resurrection with particular things that we have to look forward to.

We are currently living in the perishable bodies, corrupted by sin.

The idea that we are currently corrupted and sinful by nature certainly means that we then sin in our actions and our thoughts and our deeds, but it also is why we decay.

Seemingly it's the only reason we die in the first place is that sin has entered and corrupted, and Jesus will redeem, Jesus has redeemed, and God will resurrect unto the new heavens and the new earth.

But currently we are living in these perishable bodies, but in the resurrection, that which was perishable is made imperishable, unable to wither away, and we are given eternity.

Where we were burdened by the weight of sin that dishonors.

Even currently, for those of us who are currently saved, we still wrestle under the weight of our disobedience.

Not that we are not saved or we have to continually earn it, but for for those indwelled by the Holy Spirit, we should be grieved particularly by our sin.

And we have this hope that one day we will be raised unto holiness, unto glory, unable to fall back into our natural tendency to disobey and to run.

Particularly looking forward to that one.

What is weak will be raised in power, not to conquer or to rule, but to live in eternity through the power of the gospel.

We are weak, even if you fancy yourself not.

We are weak.

What is currently natural will give way to that which is spiritual and therefore eternal.

It is not resurrection in the sense that we are just reanimated, we are transformed.

It is something different.

Seemingly Jesus was not immediately recognized by his disciples.

Now maybe he was keeping himself from being recognized, but there is there will be something different.

What will we look like?

What age will we be resurrected unto?

I'm not sure, and I don't know that it matters because we will be imperishable and glorified and living in power in the spiritual resurrected body.

What great hope.

What great hope.

It is not that at the end we just have to we we're just done and then we go into nothing and we don't have to be under the strain of the world anymore.

We get to live in the created order as God intends it to be, eternally participating in his glory through our resurrection.

All of it hangs on that Jesus died but was raised to new life, conquering death and sin.

What amazing hope.

What a wonderful God.

What what an amazing Savior.

I I I didn't plan to tee it off at the front and come back to it, but it works nicely.

I have in here a bit of a 36 now.

And I look, I know, depending on where you are, that's not old.

But there's kids in the room.

My when my kids recently asked me how old I was, I said 36, and you think I that's incomprehensible to them.

They said, Oh my gosh.

So not are you okay?

It's a whole I recognize that that's not that old.

But but what I'm learning in my 30s is that my physical body is no longer like made of titanium coated in rubber, right?

I I'm not invincible anymore.

You know how I discovered that or what really brought it to full force was a couple years ago, I've mostly had a truck since I was a teenager.

And and as you do, you just when you're in the back of it getting something, then you just jump out of it.

Like feet, it's so far down, but you just jump out of it.

And at some point a couple years ago, I just jumped out of it.

And the jolt of pain that shot up my back, that shot up my back, and then back down to my feet was like the Lord saying, Not anymore, right?

You're slowing down.

So now I have one of those steps.

I have one of those steps, and I walked down out of my truck like a that was weirdly difficult for me to receive.

That's a silly example, but but you see what I'm getting at.

It doesn't take a genius to recognize that these bodies are breaking down.

Just from the moment you are born, the the the descent begins.

You get a little bit stronger for a short amount of time, but it's right at the beginning of that graph.

But it takes belief in the resurrected Jesus to know that this isn't the end of the story.

And so that's okay.

I I I can live even in the silliness of, man, I can't jump out of the bed of my truck anymore.

It's not that in some silly kind of corny country song way, I hope I can jump out of my truck in heaven.

I I'm not gonna be concerned about any of that.

But I will be resurrected in power and glory and in living for eternity with the God of the universe in a resurrected body as a gift from Jesus.

Church family, to believe in something like the resurrection is not to suspend reasonable thinking, it is to hope in that which is an anchor for the soul.

The gentleman now, pretty famously, Brian something, making a lot of headlines, billionaire, doing all kinds of wild things, because he is convinced.

I listened to him on a podcast, that we are in the age where it is now possible, potentially, for a human to live forever.

I think, what a fool.

What a fool.

Uh he's got all kinds of money and qualifications, and he is very intelligent sounding, and it is all foolishness because we can live forever, but not through our hubris and our arrogance and our reason and rationality.

It is through the resurrected Jesus.

Someone needs to tell him we've already figured it out.

We recognize that human and wisdom, uh, human wisdom and knowledge is a moving target, usually motivated by human pride.

And we recognize that those believers who have gone on before us, uh, they share in that same hope.

They are currently asleep, the Bible says, but they will be resurrected unto new life.

In my silly example of being 36 and not being able to do what I used to be able to do, in a more meaningful way.

Uh I've I've stood in this pulpit and others uh quite a few times over a casket with people weeping.

Uh, but there is joy at the funeral of a believer that I hear from most families.

It's rare that I need to remind someone.

Nothing reminds someone of the resurrection more than the death of someone who slowly, at the end of life, it was almost it was almost a relief that they're gone because they're so broken down and beaten up by by this current natural perishable thing.

And when they are sown unto the earth, to the dust from which they came, they are done so with the hope that they will be resurrected into new life.

Imperishable.

What great hope! What what wonderful hope.

Foolishness.

What could be less foolish than this hope and the resurrection?

At the appointed time the dead will be raised, and those who are secured in Christ will be raised out of the perishable and into the imperishable, raised out of dishonor and into glory, raised from our weakness into power through the gospel.

Resurrected from the dust and into the spirit, eternal and unfading.

Praise God for the resurrection.

The last several verses of this passage lend themselves well to an invitation to the cross.

Let me tell you what I mean.

Let me read them and then tell you what I mean.

Verses 45 down through 49.

Thus it is written, the first man Adam became a living being.

The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural.

There's an order to things.

We are waiting on something, and that is God's intended order, seemingly.

It is the natural and then the spiritual.

Verse 47 The first man was born from the earth, a man of dust, and the second man is from heaven.

Verse 48, as was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust.

And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

If you have some uh theological curiosity by nature, we this is this is kind of classically called federal headship.

I'm not going to get into that this morning, but for your own research, federal headship, this idea that we we are initially under the headship of Adam, and our inheritance is the disobedience of Adam introduced through sin.

We see in Romans 5, verse 17, for if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, and in that way, those of us who bear the image of the man of dust will operate in that way, and that will be our ultimate end.

Romans 5:17

Perishable, weak, fading.

But there's a turn.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, those of us secure in Christ have the hope of the resurrection, which means we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

That is wild.

What what greater hope?

Uh what call me a fool?

Let the world call you a fool, because this is our hope.

We recognize that the depravity of the world around the sinfulness, the decay, that this natural body is wasting away.

And in the current state that we are in, naturally disobedient and predisposed to sin, separated from God in our iniquities, we are in the image of Adam.

But Christ came to save.

We read on in that Romans 5 passage.

It says, but uh I'll read it again.

For if because of one man's trespass death reigned through one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life.

We are invited through the resurrection, where we are once in union with Adam, we are now brought into union with the living and resurrected Jesus.

Today is Palm Sunday.

We are beginning today looking with anticipation through Holy Week.

Jesus is entering into Jerusalem, knowing what he is headed towards.

He is aware.

He comes humbly, he comes declaring his intents, he comes knowing of his betrayal, he becomes aware of the pain and the suffering that is to come and in all of that, he has to then must also recognize that his resurrection is on the horizon.

We have this great hope that we can participate not only in the suffering of Jesus, which we're called to do as well.

It is an opportunity, not a burden.

It's not that it's fun, but we are invited to participate with Christ.

And if participating with Christ, why not also in his sufferings?

But Jesus and his suffering understood the resurrection that was to come.

And we cannot lose sight of that either.

We will get short-sighted with Jesus.

I why I thought that because I'm a Christian or because I'm living for you, or because I attend church, or because I read my Bible, that somehow I thought this was supposed to be good.

And we've misunderstood that for now Jesus says we are still under the weight of the image bearer of the first Adam.

We are waiting for that resurrection, but I have gone ahead and I have set the example.

I have witnesses to my resurrected body, as we've read recently, and that hope is for you too.

We suffer now from glory to glory unto glorification.

We have hope that even if this life is full of toil and trouble, and frankly, it it will be.

You're not going to get to the end unscathed, but you can get to the end under the hope and the promise that this perishing, weak, natural thing will be raised to new life, imperishable, in the spirit, and suited to participate in God with glory.

Believers, take hope.

Believers, don't be shaken by what the world's sinful and arrogant tells you is rational and reasonable, because that textbook changes every six months.

I went my freshman year of college, I had to buy a history book that cost$300, and the next semester it was worth seven.

Because two more editions had come out on updates in six months.

I think of that book every time I read a passage like this.

What the world calls wisdom, the Lord calls foolishness.

It's not that there's no truth in those things, but we have the truth that is the person, Jesus, the hope of the resurrection.

May that be the great hope for you as believers, and for those of you who may not yet believe that you are invited.

This resurrection hope, the this idea that when we die, not through mysticism and not through magic, but through the power of Christ, we have the hope of resurrection, of forgiveness, of an eternity with God is our only need for sustenance.

I would hope that if you've wandered in here not a believer, it's because you have begun to recognize, maybe the Spirit has begun his work of convicting you concerning sin and righteousness, but you have begun to recognize that the answers that the world have to offer come up short.

Leave you wanting.

And particularly around the Easter season, people get curious.

We call it Resurrection Sunday.

What do we mean?

This that what is now is not what is to come.

And we have this great hope and this promise that we cling to that is called an anchor for our soul.

Because the wind and the waves will come, but for those who have built their house on the rock, that house will stand.

We have the great hope of the resurrection, and you are invited.

I I would be thrilled to have that conversation with you, as would many people in this room who have Jesus and have been commissioned to share him with you.

Don't leave without that conversation.

And this morning, as we move towards communion, which we take time to pause to come together to remember the broken body in the spilled blood.

And at the end of Paul's description of communion in chapter 11, it says, And as you do this, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes, the resurrected Lord will return.

Even in communion, as we remember the death, we look with anticipation to the resurrection and the power and the defeating of sin.

And we thank him.

We enjoy this time together.

Would you pray with me as we continue?

Father, we thank you and we love you.

Thank you for resurrecting Jesus.

And thank you for that for those of us who believe in Jesus by faith through grace unto salvation, we are given the right to be called your children.

And if children, then heirs.

And heirs to what?

The resurrection.

The resurrection.

Father, may every little ache and pain, Father, may every physical limitation or every illness or death, while we embrace the suffering, may it turn our eyes and hope towards the resurrection.

May we think of our limp and the rain barometer of our knees and whatever is ailing us as a reminder that we have this great hope that one day you will be our all-in-all.

And as we slog through a life, currently bearing the image perhaps of the first Adam, united with him in our sin, that we will one day be released, that we are currently forgiven, and one day we will be entirely delivered to sin no more, in full suitedness to participate with you in glory for eternity.

We thank you and we love you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.