"Linked By The Resurrection" 2 Corinthians 4:13-15 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Let me read for us 2 Corinthians 4 verses 13 through 15.

2 Corinthians 4:13–15

If you're using the Pew Bible, the Marin Pew Bible in front of you is page 966.

Page 966 in that Bible.

2 Corinthians 4, 13 through 15, the middle of this chapter, Paul writes, Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, I believed and so I spoke.

We also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.

For it is all for your sake, so that his grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.

If you're not familiar with the Apostle Paul, he wrote much of the New Testament, more books than any other author.

He was the apostle that God used to bring the good news of Jesus Christ, to bring the gospel from the Jews, because Jesus was Jewish and this was a, in a sense, a Jewish gospel.

He was the Savior according to the Jewish Old Testament law.

But Jesus himself said that he would be the savior for the world, that all those in the world could only have salvation if they came to God through him.

And Paul is the instrument that God used to bring the gospel outside of Jerusalem into the Gentile world.

That was Paul.

Paul led an extremely persecuted life.

Not before his conversion to Christ.

Before his conversion to Christ, he was a hoity-doity, well-to-do individual.

He had money and wealth and power.

But after his conversion to Christ, the world turned against him, or you could say he turned against the world.

It's hard to tell which way to play that.

And the world was opposed to Jesus Christ, and so they became opposed to Paul.

The Romans were opposed to Jesus Christ, so they became opposed to Paul.

The Jews were opposed to Jesus Christ, they became opposed to Paul.

And so Paul had one persecution after another.

They said instead that they opposed Paul.

And they opposed Paul because he kept talking about Jesus.

They opposed Paul because he kept talking about their own sin.

They opposed Paul because he kept confronting them.

And can't he just mind his own business?

And so Paul was persecuted from the world, he was persecuted from the culture, and he's persecuted now in 2 Corinthians from the church.

And the church accused him of all kinds of things.

They accused him in chapter 1 of 2 Corinthians of being callous, not caring about people, to which he says, that's not true.

My heart breaks for you.

They accused him in the second half of chapter 1 of being wishy-washy, of being flippant, of being unable to make a decision and stick with it, of kind of deciding things willy-nilly.

And he says, that's also not true.

I stick by what I say.

My yes is yes, my no is no.

They accused him of being too hard.

And he says, No, my heart breaks for you.

They accused him of being too soft.

And he says, Hey, don't make me bring the hammer, because I will.

They accused him of being unforgiving, and he says, I'll forgive you right now.

And then here in chapter 4, they accused him of being too weak.

And what's interesting about this is all of the other accusations they threw at him that he's immoral, that he's too hard, that he's too soft, that he's too wishy-washy, that he's too callous.

He fought all of those tooth and nail.

He rejected all of those accusations and fought against them to vindicate himself, but when they accused him of being too weak, he pleads guilty.

He says, You're right, I am too weak.

In fact, the language he uses up in verse 7, he describes himself as a jar of clay.

And we don't really have that idiom now.

A jar of clay, for us, a jar of clay is maybe something your kindergartner brings home from art class.

But in the Romans, in the Roman world, a jar of clay was like a privy pot.

You had nice vessels and nice jars for bringing water and wine into the house, and you had these clay vessels, clay jars for bringing it back out of the house.

And Paul says that's what he is.

He's weak, he's easily broken, he's disgraceful.

That's all true.

He is a weak, weak person.

That's an interesting defense, right?

Guilty.

If it's true, if Paul is weak, then why does he keep preaching?

If Paul is being persecuted and he lacks the personal strength to stand up to it, why does he keep preaching?

Think about all that he's been through by the point of 2 Corinthians.

He has been arrested repeatedly.

He's been arrested rejected by the Jews, arrested by the Romans several times.

He's been beaten with an inch of his life many times.

Five times he was beaten 39 lashes.

You weren't allowed to beat a Roman citizen 40 times, so 39 times, five times it happened to him.

He was beaten with rods three times.

He was stoned and left for dead outside of the city once.

He was shipwrecked, floated all night and most of the next day on the sea.

He describes this in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 26.

2 Corinthians 11:26

I've been on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at the sea, danger from false converts, in toil, in hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposed to the elements.

So he's saying, I am getting it from all sides.

He's persecuted from the right, the left, above, and below.

He's surrounded by it.

And now in 2 Corinthians, he's persecuted from Christians.

I know these Christians, the Corinthians, they were a mess, a hot mess.

They made it clear they didn't want his help.

They were happy leading their own moral lives.

After all this, you would expect Paul to lose heart.

Notice what he says in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 1.

2 Corinthians 4:1

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.

He pushes on.

Why won't he just let it go?

Why won't he go back to leading a nice posh life?

Why does he keep pushing on in the face of persecution?

And the short answer is because you cannot persecute a Christian into oblivion.

Persecution fans the flames of evangelism.

And it's like a cortisone shot of boldness to a Christian.

And this chapter explains why.

2 Corinthians 4 explains why persecution just makes Christians stronger.

And it does so in a very Easter-like way.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Let me give you an outline.

Three questions to ask in the face of persecution.

Three questions to ask in the face of persecution.

And of course, the church history is filled with stories of persecution.

You don't have to look at the Apostle Paul.

I know many of you saw Pilgrim's Progress in the Theaters yesterday.

It was just released.

I would prefer the book over the movie, but I take what I can get.

Written by John Bunyan, 1600s.

If you're familiar with his life, he was married once, and his wife brought him to church.

And I don't know if he was converted then, but his wife died.

He was remarried and went to a new church.

And this was a church, a Baptist church, and he sat under the preaching of the word and he got converted to Christ and baptized as a believer.

And then he was happy being a tinker.

He was a handyman.

He made shoelaces for a living.

They weren't exactly wealthy, but one day the pastor was sick and he fills in and preaches in the pastor's absence, and the congregation responds well to his preaching.

And so he preaches once a month or so until the pastor surprisingly dies, and Bunny just fills the pulpit.

He won't get paid.

He doesn't want to be a pastor.

He just preaches.

And the church is growing, growing, growing.

And he's he's a tinker.

He's a handyman preaching.

He finally gets arrested and tried for preaching without a license.

And his defense was, I'm not paid, and so I shouldn't have to be licensed.

And they said, Off to jail with you.

But it was very interesting.

He appealed his sentence.

And the judges told him, You can have your freedom whenever you agree to not preach anymore.

Just go back to being a tinker.

Just stop preaching.

And he said, Quote, if I was out of prison today, I would be preaching the gospel again tomorrow.

He had a bunch of kids, one of whom was blind, a daughter from his first marriage, who his second wife was raising blind.

And I mean they're starving because he can't work for them and he's stuck in jail.

Do you think he wanted out of jail?

Of course.

But he wouldn't take it.

He wouldn't take his freedom because it would require him being quiet.

And that leads to my first question from this text.

Why won't Christians just be quiet?

Why wouldn't Paul just shut up and mind his own business?

Why wouldn't John Bunyan just say, okay, for the sake of providing for my family, I will keep my mouth shut, I won't keep preaching.

Why do believers insist on bringing the gospel to a world that doesn't want it?

And that's what Paul is getting at in verse 13.

In verse 13, he writes, Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, I believed, and so I spoke, we also believe, and we also speak.

Let me translate that to my answer.

The answer to this question, why don't Christians just be quiet?

Because our faith compels us.

Our faith compels our speech.

We have a certain kind of faith inside of us as believers in Jesus Christ that makes us speak.

This is what Paul says in verse 13.

Since we have the same spirit, that same as a linking word, the same spirit of faith according to what has been written.

So, in other words, whatever spirit of faith is behind what he's about to quote, that's the same spirit that Paul says he has.

And then he goes on to quote Psalm 116, verse 10.

Psalms 116:10

Now, Psalm 116 is one of my favorite psalms.

It is a fascinating psalm.

You should definitely read it.

Just don't read it right now.

All your focus, 2 Corinthians 4, you can read Psalm 116 Monday or something.

But it's an incredible psalm.

In Psalm 116, the psalmist says that the snares of death have entangled his feet.

He uses the analogy of vines.

You need to picture a tree that's up, and you see this all the time in Virginia.

Big vines grow up around the tree, and the vines start to pull the tree over.

And that's what he says his life is like.

He's being pulled down, the psalmist is being pulled down by persecution.

He can't stand upright.

He's being pulled down by those who are opposed to God.

And then he goes on to say, and the pangs of the grave, the pangs of Sheol are inside of me.

Because of the fierceness of persecution, he says the inside of me feels like a graveyard.

So he's being pulled down from persecution outside, which produces a feeling of death inside of him.

In other words, he's not happy about this.

And so why won't he, just the psalmist, be quiet then and mind his own business, hoe in his own row, and not worry about other people's fields?

And he says in the 116 verse 10, Because I believed, therefore I spoke.

In other words, I wanted to be quiet.

I actually wanted to, but I had a kind of faith inside of me that would not let me be silent.

He felt like death inside of him, but his faith was stronger than death.

He he wanted to be quiet and let the vines go away and let the opposition of the world go away.

But his faith wouldn't let him.

Jeremiah had the same experience.

The prophet Jeremiah sent by God to prophesy to Jerusalem.

And Jeremiah didn't want that job, if you remember, he didn't apply to be a prophet.

God drafted him in the prophet draft, brought him out of oblivion, obscurity, and said, You'll be my mouthpiece.

And Jeremiah said no.

And God said, You don't get to say no to me.

I'm God.

It's in the fine print.

Trust me on this.

So Jeremiah goes to Jerusalem and he is opposed every which way.

He tells them, if you don't repent and put your faith in God, there will be no rain.

And they listen to him and listen to him and listen to him and finally decide we have had enough, Jeremiah.

And they grab him and throw him into a well to try to drown him, but because there was no rain, there's no water in the well.

So now he's stuck in the mud, bog at the bottom of his cistern.

You know what he does while he's down there?

He makes a vow.

He says, I promise I will not preach anymore.

I quit, God.

I won't do it.

I'm done with this.

Why am I in a muddy bog in a cistern?

I'm done.

And then he says, Jeremiah 20, verse 9 If I vow to not mention him or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart a burning fire.

Jeremiah 20:9

It's shut up in my bones.

I am weary with holding it in.

Indeed, I cannot.

In other words, as I want to be quiet, I want to go back to leading a normal life.

But I can't.

I can tell myself, don't preach, don't speak, don't bring the gospel to the world, and it does myself no good because there's such a fire in me, I cannot contain it.

And that is exactly the experience of the psalmist in Psalm 116.

He says, The world's bringing me down like vines, but I can't keep my mouth shut.

And that is what Paul says in verse 13 here.

I have the same spirit of faith.

We also believe, he says at the end of verse 13, so we're also speaking.

In other words, Paul says, I can't, I can't keep quiet.

You can't persecute me into silence.

You cannot oppose me to get me to mind my own business.

It won't happen.

Christians are opposed by the world, and I use the sense of the world in like the broadest sense.

Culture opposes Christianity, not just our culture, every culture.

Often churches oppose the true gospel.

And yet real believers refuse to stay quiet.

They'll face the persecution, they'll face the opposition because they have this kind of faith that compels their speech, which naturally leads to the second question.

What kind of faith is it that compels this speech?

What kind of faith compels speech?

Not just any kind of faith, of course, because the world is filled with people with faith.

If it is true that faith is the fuel of Christian speech, and if it is true that faith is the fuel of Christian ethics, and if it is true that faith is the Christian's motivation to holy living, what kind of faith is it?

Say it differently.

Jesus, the Gospel of Mark, says, set his face towards Jerusalem, spent three years of his life marching towards the cross.

He was drawn magnetically towards the cross.

He couldn't have avoided it, he says.

What kind of faith draws him?

What kind of purpose does he have that will lead him to his own death?

What kind of faith is that?

And the answer that verse 14 gives is faith in the resurrection.

Faith in the resurrection.

Verse 14 says, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will raise us also with Jesus.

Now it's not generic faith that makes a person speak in a way that opposes the world.

Generic faith in God is obviously not adequate.

The world, as I said earlier, is filled with those who have faith in God that don't lead this kind of transformed life.

There is no shortage of those who say, bother no man about his religion.

Let every man do their own thing, let every man plow in their own aisle, so to speak, plow in their own lane, and just let everybody mind their own business and go along.

That's not the kind of faith Paul has.

Paul does not have a live and let live faith.

He doesn't have the kind of faith that says, just, just, hey, do your own thing, I'll do my own thing.

That's the way most people's faith is.

That's not this kind of faith.

Moreover, it's not just a kind of faith in Jesus.

There's lots of people who believe in Jesus and don't live this kind of transformed life.

So specifically here, it is faith in the resurrection.

And not just the resurrection generically either.

It gets even more particular.

Look at verse 14, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus, the He.

So you have to ask yourself, who raised the Lord Jesus?

And the answer is God.

And particularly the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit brought Jesus back to life.

And so you have to get your mind around what that means.

You understand that on Friday, Jesus was crucified.

He was put to death.

God put our sins onto Jesus, transferred our guilt to him, so that Jesus suffered and died in our place.

This is on Good Friday, 2,000 years ago.

He dies on the cross, bearing our punishment from God.

When he is dying, as God is pouring out his wrath and the punishment that you and I deserve on Jesus, Jesus lets out a cry to telesty.

It is finished.

And after crying that out, he breathes his last and he gives up his spirit.

The spirit or the soul of Jesus leaves his body.

What is left there on the cross is the flesh of Jesus, but it ain't Jesus.

It's his body, but he is gone from it.

His soul has left it.

So what is there is his flesh, the atoms, the molecules that were previously animated, previously had life in them.

They have no more life in them.

The body is dead.

They cut open the side, the water spills out, the blood spills out, they take him off of the cross, they wrap him, they were going to anoint him with spices.

They ran out of time, so they quickly treated his body and they put the flesh of him in the grave.

But again, what's placed in the grave is not Jesus.

It's what used to be him, it's his body, but he's not there.

It's just flesh that's dead.

There's really no significance to what's in the grave except that it marks where Jesus, the body he used to incorporate.

Now it's just nothing.

And it's wrapped and it's placed in the grave and they put the stone in front of the hole.

Now, what should have happened then is the body decomposes and eventually goes into the ground, or animals get it at some point and turns into grass and sheep eat the grass and you eat the sheep.

I mean, that's the natural cycle of life.

That's what happens to people that die.

Their bodies decompose and returns back into, we're made out of dust, we go back to dust, and that's the way the world works.

That's what should have happened to his body.

But instead, on that Sunday morning, the Holy Spirit brings the soul of Jesus, the person, the true person of Jesus, back into the body of Jesus Christ, back into that inanimate, fleshly object shaped like Jesus, brings his soul back into it, and the body of Jesus now comes alive.

It's reanimated, it's resurrected, it comes back to life.

The decomposition of day three here is reversed instantaneously.

And he is now alive.

And this happens by the agency, by the work of the Spirit of God.

And that is what Paul says his faith is in, that the Spirit, the He, the God who raised the Lord Jesus.

And again, it's not even sufficient or adequate to say that I believe in God or I believe in Jesus or I believe in the resurrection of Jesus.

There's even more to it than that.

He says, it's the kind of faith that says, I believe that the one who raised the Lord Jesus, verse 14, will raise us also with Jesus.

So it's my own personal resurrection, he says.

I'm also going to be raised from the grave.

And this is done by the Holy Spirit.

This is why we are brothers and sisters of Christ and we put our faith in Christ, because the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead also gives us life.

And you've experienced this already.

In an extent.

When you are.

Born, you're born apart from Christ.

And then at some point in your life you place your faith in the gospel.

That's regeneration.

You go from death to life.

Your spirit comes alive again.

This is what the Bible calls being born again.

I mean, how do you get born again?

This is what John chapter 3 says, by the agency of the Holy Spirit.

John 3 · chapter mention

The Holy Spirit regenerates you, gives you life and faith.

And then seals you.

And so when you come to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit seals your heart, dwells in you, takes up residence inside of you.

And so, do you understand what's happening when you become a Christian?

The spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now dwells in you.

The same spirit.

So you have a union with him.

This is why you're adopted into his family.

You're bound together.

You have matching uniforms with Christ, namely, the spirit that raised him will dwell in you as well.

And because that same spirit dwells in you, what do you think will happen to you when you die?

You also will be resurrected.

I saw on the wall of the National Archives outside, etched in the wall, this saying, What is past is prologue.

I just read it walking by and I just couldn't stop thinking about it.

That's a great saying.

What is past is prologue.

And it's it's true definitely in the case of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead and the Holy Spirit dwells in you, what is past, Jesus' resurrection, will be your future.

It's the introduction to your life.

That's the kind of faith that if you believe that, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and died on the cross for sin, rose from the grave having paid for sin, that spirit that raised him now dwells in you.

If you believe that, then you believe that you also will be resurrected.

That's the kind of faith that makes you speak.

That's the kind of faith that changes your life.

That's the kind of faith that animates you.

That you can't keep silence.

Well, there's a second part of this answer that's even more specific.

Not just faith in the resurrection, but secondly, faith in life after death.

Faith in life after death.

That kind of faith compels speech.

Now you might look at that and say, that's redundant.

Faith in resurrection versus faith in life after death.

Yeah, but I want to make sure you notice something.

When you say you believe in your own future resurrection, do you know what you are also believing in?

Your own death.

It's very nice to say I believe in a resurrection from the dead.

I just don't want to die.

Right?

I totally believe in the resurrection.

Just don't make me die.

But it's a package deal.

If you believe in the resurrection, then you are at the very least not adverse to death.

Now, not every person who's alive will die, the scripture says there will be those who are alive when the Lord returns to earth, but that is the exception clause.

That's the footnote exception clause exemption.

Does not apply to most of the people who have lived.

The normal human condition is that you are born and you will die, and then you will be resurrected.

So if you believe in the resurrection, you're saying, I believe in my own death.

And this is why there's such a surprising verse in Psalm 116, which again we we made a deal, we're not looking at it now, but there's a surprising verse in Psalm 116.

Where after he says that my feet are ensnared with death, and my life is being pulled over by death, and the grave is inside me, and then he says, I love the Lord because I called for forgiveness and for uh uh redemption, and the Lord forgave me.

The Lord released me, rescued me from my enemies.

So praise God that I've been rescued from the persecution, I can live to fight another day, I can walk in the land of the living, and then he says something outrageous.

He says, Precious in the sight of Yahweh, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.

And that's a contradiction because he says, I was ensnared with death, and I cried out for forgiveness and redemption and freedom, and you rescued me.

Precious in the sight of God is when you don't rescue me and I die.

Why would he draw attention to the fact that God delights in people's death right when he rescues them from that death?

That's the nature of this kind of Easter faith.

That God delights in being reunited with his people, that you're alive here on this earth spiritually, you will die physically, and then your soul will be in God's presence, and there's a delight and there's a joy in that, even though God sometimes delivers you from persecution, even though God sometimes lets you go through suffering and trials in this life and brings you out of them, you know that ultimately, if you have a resurrection faith, ultimately it will be a joy to be united with God.

And even God will delight in it.

So it's not just faith in a resurrection, it's faith that you will, if the Lord doesn't return, die.

And like I said, you know that you've already had this experience.

So you're again born in this world as a baby, named by your parents.

Maybe you're born into a denomination or a pedophistic world.

You might even be baptized as a baby.

And you grow up and you take your first steps and you learn to talk and you ride a bike and you go to school and all those first, and then at some point you place your faith in Christ, and what happens at that point is that old you, that that person who was named by the parents and baptized and walked and rode a bike and went to school, that person dies at that point.

This is what Paul's gonna say in 2 Corinthians 5.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has what does passed away even mean?

You know what it means.

When you come to faith in Christ, the old you is dead.

Now you wish you'd be buried, but you gotta carry it around for a while.

And behold, there's a new creation.

That is resurrection power through the Holy Spirit, causing you to have faith, bringing you to spiritual life.

And you've also experienced the shadow of that future resurrection.

You've already encountered it in your own conversion to Christ.

The old you dead, the new you alive.

And that's what he means in verse 14 that I believe that Jesus will also raise us and bring us with you into his presence.

All those who are in Christ will be united in heaven.

And it's already, in a sense, happened that you've already died before.

The deposit on your future resurrection has been paid by the Holy Spirit, giving you a shadow of an experience of it.

So death and persecution can beat on you in this life.

Death can chisel away your body.

He's gonna say that and uh we'll look at this passage next week that uh we're being going through momentary affliction, and then in chapter five, our tent is withering away.

Death will erode the soil of this life, it will erode the flesh of this life, it will chisel away at your body, and ultimately it will win in this world.

Your physical body will die.

Persecution will be victorious and crush you, but then you will die physically and you will be raised physically in the future.

So death will be swallowed up.

This is why Paul was invincible.

This is why persecution couldn't stop him.

This is the dilemma of the Roman emperors in the first century of Christianity, wanted to wipe out Christianity by just killing all the Christians.

They didn't like Christianity, they viewed it as a threat.

Let's just kill all the Christians.

That will solve that problem.

And it seems like every few generations, some culture in the world has to learn the lesson that doesn't work.

There's just really interesting writings from the first century describing this kind of persecutions where the emperor would send somebody, you know, an inquisitor, to go kill Christians, and he would come back and say, It's it's not working.

You know, I threatened him with death.

If you don't stop preaching about Jesus, I'll put you to death.

And the inquisitor will say, they respond by saying, We've already died.

And the emperor would be confused.

The emperor would say, Well, did you already kill them?

No.

Why did they say they already died?

They said they already died.

Well, did you kill them then?

Yes, but they weren't afraid of it because they said that you see how they have a hard time getting their mind around what's going on.

It's hard to threaten somebody with death when their response is, you know, the best thing can happen to me is death.

I've already died.

That gives you a kind of confidence to stand boldly in the face of persecution when you realize the worst the world can do to you is kill you.

And the best thing that can happen to you is your death.

That joy transforms a life.

Charles Wesley, in the song we sang earlier, his poem, Christ the Lord has risen today, wrote it this way.

We sang this stanza earlier.

Soar we now where Christ is led, following our exalted head.

Notice that language.

We're gonna go to heaven.

Soar we now where Christ is led.

You're not blazing your own trail into heaven, you're following him, following our exalted head.

Made like him, like him we rise.

Do you get that?

You're made like Jesus, so like Jesus you will rise.

What does that mean?

Made like him?

Well, he tells you the next line: ours is the cross, the grave, the skies.

There's an order to that.

Don't confuse that order.

You die, you're buried, and then you're resurrected.

So you understand that.

You stand for Christ in this world, you put your faith in Christ in this world, and then you die.

Your body goes into the grave where it will decompose, put you in a box, put you underground.

There's where your body goes.

Your soul, your spirit goes into heaven, you're in the presence of the Lord immediately, and you're rejoicing, you're reconciled, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.

And then in the future, your soul will return to earth, your body will be reconstituted, reanimated.

If you've decomposed and sheep have eaten you, those molecules, God will summon them back and re-incorporate you, and your body will be resurrected as it's united with your soul, and you will be with the Lord forever.

That's the future.

And you know that because that is what happened to Christ.

Which leads to a third question.

Why would God allow this?

Why would God make the world this way?

And this it's a very profound question, and I hope you understand what I mean by it.

Let me try to explain it before I give you the answer.

If God causes you to be born, die, and then live forever, why the middleman?

I mean, it's a lot of work.

Why not just be born and live forever?

Instead of being born, dying, and living forever.

Or just get rid of the dying part.

Wouldn't that be just such a nicer world?

No death, no funerals, no widows, no orphans, no cancer, no pain, no suffering, just born and live forever with Jesus, put him on the throne in Jerusalem.

Let's do all the prophecies fulfill them all, just no death.

Or to say the question differently, if you're having a hard time understanding what I mean by this, this is a big book right here.

Chapter one and two, people are in the garden and they live forever.

Chapter three, they sin and die all the way through till Revelation 20, the very end.

And in Revelation 20, 21, really, and 22, you have people back in the garden living forever.

Imagine how much shorter this book would be if you just got rid of death.

It'd be four chapters long.

And this would be a shorter sermon.

So there's pros and cons, I confess that.

Why does God make the world in such a way that you have to die in order to be resurrected?

Or the the Bible in such a way that it unveils world history through death.

Or a third way of saying it is, why does there have to be the cross?

Why can't there just be the empty grave?

Why does Jesus have to come and die and live forever?

And the answer he gives you in verse 15 is for the multiplication of his glory.

That's the word he uses.

It is all for your sake, so that as grace extends, and that's the word multiplies.

Same word from Romans 5, uh 20.

As sin abounds, grace increases all the more.

Same word.

As grace extends to more and more people, it will extend or increase or multiply thanksgiving to the glory of God.

It's a simple mathematical equation here, is the way Paul puts it.

It's divine mathematics.

If being born causes you to glorify God, you're born, so you say, Praise God for giving me life.

I didn't deserve life.

God made me and gave me life.

Praise be to God.

You're glorifying God a little amount.

And then you come to faith in Christ.

The old has passed away, the new has come, you glorify God again more.

And then you die and you're resurrected.

You glorify God again even more because of that.

In other words, God's glory is multiplied.

It's it's really an exponential increase too when you put evangelism into this.

So you believe that there's a future resurrection, you'll be united with Christ, and so you put your faith in that.

Again, you're glorifying God, let's just say X.

Some number of some number, you're glorifying God, that amount.

You tell somebody else the gospel, and they then put their faith in Christ.

Now it's X squared.

It's increasing, and they tell somebody else, and it's growing exponentially.

God's glory is being multiplied through faith in the resurrection spreading through the world, which would not happen if everybody just lived forever, which would not happen if there was no middle of the Bible.

Or to say it this way: you learn more about the nature of God by the cross and the empty grave than you would by no cross.

God's glory is seen, not just seen, but multiplied through a world where there is sin and forgiveness rather than a world where there is no sin.

In other words, the whole Bible shows you the glory of God better than the first two and last two chapters would.

And it doesn't mean it's selfish of God.

He says, I'm doing this for your sake in verse 15.

It's all for your sake.

In other words, it's actually for the Corinthians' good that Paul faces persecution even from them, so that if just one or two of them can experience the gospel and believe the gospel, they will grow in their understanding of God's glory.

That is for their good.

Grace refers here to the divine work of God in the heart, causing people to turn from sin and place their faith in the resurrection.

And it's for their good.

And the more people that do that, the more God's glory is multiplied.

So how do you multiply God's grace?

How do you magnify and multiply God's grace?

By believing that Jesus died on the cross for your sin.

And that the grave is empty today.

By surrendering your life to Christ and saying, I'm tired of just hoeing my own lane here, my own row.

I want to lift my eyes up and I want to bring the news of the resurrected Jesus Christ to the world.

That's how I want to live.

That's the kind of spirit of faith that, if it dwells in you, will make you share the gospel, will transform your life, it will turn your world upside down.

But that only comes to those who believe that Jesus died on the cross bearing the penalty for their sin and he was resurrected so that we would be as well.

Lord, I pray for anyone who's here this morning that has never given their life to you.

I pray this morning they would place their faith in the resurrection.

They would believe that you died bearing our penalty, and they would believe that you rose from the grave so that we would rise as well.

Lord, we will be united not just with you, but with the Apostle Paul, with the Corinthians who were believers, with those in our church who are believers, all believers from all time united together because of the resurrection of Christ.

That's the kind of faith that we possess.

Maybe you thanks for that spirit of faith.

In the name of Christ.

Amen.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at ibcva.com.

Here is a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBCVA.com.

If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

We're located in Northern Virginia, and for more information about when and where we worship, check out our church website.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.