1 Corinthians 15 - Paul Risks His Life (season six, episode four)

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel Podcast. My name is Jason,

and I'm the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast, we are continuing our resurrection series as we look at the

text of 1 Corinthians 15 to glean

information about the reliability of the resurrection of Jesus Jesus,

and what that means for us now and in the future.

In this episode, we look at how Paul, by risking his life in pursuit,

proclaiming Jesus is evidence himself of the resurrection of believers.

He risks it all because of the reward of the resurrection. Thanks for joining us today.

This week, I was reminded of the concept of risk versus reward.

And the idea is what Paul is going to be talking about in the scripture passage today.

But where I was reminded of it was in a situation where I wanted to bless one

of my children. They had gone through a difficult season. They persevered through it.

And that particular night, they were coming home late from an event and had not had dinner yet.

So the rest of the family had had dinner, but this child did not.

And I wanted to bless this child by providing them with their favorite meal,

which is a to-go order from a restaurant in Huntington.

And so I showed up early because I wanted to get to the school to pick them up from this school bus.

I got there early and I sat in the drive-thru line. And when I say sat, that's what I did.

I did not move at all in five minutes.

And so I had to process through, okay, what's the best thing to do here?

Time was running out for me to get to the school to pick up this child,

but I also wanted to bless.

I had to balance this idea of risk and reward.

And so from that, I decided to get out of the drive-thru, walk in,

and at least place the order so that I thought I was going to get the meal quicker.

But I did not. But I placed the order, and I waited, and I waited,

and I waited to the point where I had to contact Jillian and say,

I'm not getting out of here.

You're going to have to go and pick up our child.

And then, from the receipt time to when I looked at my phone and I got my actual

meal, after 20 minutes had passed inside the restaurant, I finally got my bag,

and I was like, okay, I'm just going to get out of here.

But I had forgot that they had mopped the floor.

And as I was lying on my back, watching the french fries fly everywhere.

I was like, I did not see this as a risk tonight. But that's what life is like.

It is this balance of risk and reward.

I wanted to reward my child, and so I was willing to sit through a long drive-through

or to walk inside and wait for 20 minutes for this meal.

That was completely fine with me because the reward of celebrating what this

child had done was that important to me.

But sometimes risks come up that we can't really anticipate, that we can't see.

And as Paul is trying to remind and convince the Philippians that there will

be a bodily resurrection of believers,

he is using his example of risk and reward as evidence for this.

And as we get into scripture today, he's going to say, hey, I'm risking my life every day.

And what would it profit me if I'm just going to lie in a grave for all the rest of existence?

What good is that going to do? Like, I don't see that as a positive reward for

the risky behavior of following Jesus that I am going to do.

And as we continue on this series on the resurrection, making our way through 1 Corinthians 15.

This is the last of his defense or his logical reasoning for believing in the resurrection.

Next week, he's going to move on to what he knows of the physical resurrection of believers.

And so after this, he's convinced that he's proved enough to the Corinthians.

All right, this is the logic behind it. This is the reasoning why I believe in the resurrection.

It's important to quickly recap where we've been.

When we started this series, we talked about Paul and his evidence for the resurrection

of Jesus, which included eyewitness testimony of more than 500 people.

He also talks about how this was testified in scripture.

And we looked at Isaiah 53 and Psalm 1610 and other passages that showed that

the Messiah figure was going to die and then come back to life again.

Then he goes into his rationale for believing in the resurrection.

And he says, all right, so we have this common belief that Jesus arose based

on testimony. But if you say that there is no resurrection, then Jesus didn't resurrect either.

And so following their line of thought to its logical conclusion,

he tries to show them that believing in a bodily resurrection is something that's logic.

Because Jesus rose based on evidence.

Then he goes into talking about how Jesus is this first fruit of the resurrection.

And as we look at Jesus's life after he resurrected, we can see glimpses of

what our resurrection will be like.

So he's cooking on the beach. He's eating food. He's drinking beverages.

These are things that he experiences. people fall down and grasp, hold onto his feet.

This is obviously something physical and not just spiritual.

And so Jesus, as the first fruits, this is what it's going to look like.

And then we get to today's scripture passage, which we're going to start in verse 29.

But before I read, let me pray. Lord Jesus, we come before you and we pray that

you will speak what needs to be spoken today.

And we pray that you give us ears to hear what we need to hear today.

And we pray, Father, that your spirit will be here equipping us and motivating

us to connect with you and to tell you how worthy you are.

Jesus, I lay this all at your feet as our King and Master and Lord. Amen.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, starting in verse 29.

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

If the dead will not be raised, what point is there in people being baptized for those who are dead?

Why do it unless the dead will someday rise again?

Okay, so we're not exactly sure what Paul is talking about here,

and I'll get to that in a second.

But what we know he is talking about here is that there is a practice that's

going on in the Corinthian church,

and that this practice symbolizes the resurrection somehow, someway.

So in our case at Faith Chapel, we have a couple of different ceremonies that

we go through that proclaim the resurrection.

One of them is communion. The first Sunday of every month, we take communion together.

And what it partially represents is a wedding banquet that's going to happen

between Jesus and his church in eternity.

This is one of the concepts of communion,

that we are pre-celebrating that celebration that's going to come.

And if we don't believe in the resurrection, our physical bodily resurrection.

Taking communion contradicts that because it symbolizes that.

Part of what it symbolizes is this wedding banquet. And so if we take communion...

We are testifying that we believe in our bodily resurrection.

Same thing can be said about baptism. Baptism is a service where you go under

the water, dying to your sin nature, and rising again.

You are joining Jesus in the grave, and then you are coming out a new person, a resurrected person.

And baptism is also this symbol of resurrection.

And so if we participate in it, Paul is saying, but we don't believe that our

bodies will be resurrected,

then we're a contradiction in and of itself because we're testifying to it,

but we don't believe it. And so that's what Paul is getting at.

A practice in the Corinthian church is testifying to the resurrection of Jesus

and also to their resurrection.

And he is using this as evidence to them to say, you already are doing this.

So please understand you're testifying about the resurrection.

You know this because of the ceremony that you are doing.

Now, what this ceremony is, we do not know.

This is the only place in Scripture this is mentioned, and it's a really,

really bad idea to make a whole doctrine out of one verse.

That is not something that we should do. But because Paul doesn't go into it,

and because Paul doesn't chastise it in these verses, we can draw at least one conclusion.

It is not heretical in Paul's eyes.

Paul has no issue and no problem correcting wrong beliefs.

He's doing that all throughout chapter 15 here. And so he doesn't correct it. So it's not heretical.

And so we can only guess as to what it means. And there have been multitudes

of guesses as to what this actually means.

The one that stands out to me as possible is that Paul is using a phrase here

that the Corinthian church would know that is lost to translation.

That just signifies baptism.

And so it is something that we have words that people from other languages aren't

going to understand or comprehend what that means or what we are saying.

If we say things are cool, like people will literally think it is cool to the

touch, not exciting, not nice, not something that we get excited about.

So we have words in our own language that other people from other contexts don't understand.

And so what I think is the most probable explanation of this is that Paul is

using this in terms of just a regular baptism because we are dying to ourselves.

We are getting rid of our sin nature or professing through this action that

we're getting rid of it and we come out alive.

So being baptized for the dead means being baptized in our own bodies, dying to ourselves.

And so, again, there are multiple different people having multiple different

views, and what this literally means doesn't matter because what Paul is saying is clear.

You are testifying through this ceremony that you believe in the resurrection

of the dead, but yet you say you don't believe in it.

And so there's a contrast here that you need to work out.

So again, he's trying to process through this logically to them to help them

to understand and to get over their cultural biases about the of what happens in the afterlife.

Then he continues in verse 30. And why should we, we being the apostles,

ourselves risk our lives hour by hour?

For I swear, dear brothers and sisters, that I face death daily.

This is as certain as my pride in what Christ Jesus our Lord has done in you.

And what value was there in fighting wild beasts, these people of Ephesus,

if there will be no resurrection from the dead.

And if there is no resurrection, let's feast and drink for tomorrow we die.

And so this is where he gets into the risk-reward mentality.

The risk is his life on the line almost every day.

And in 2 Corinthians, he lists lots and lots of things that he's experienced.

Multiple imprisonments. He's been stoned and left for dead. He's been shipwrecked

and adrift at sea for more than a day.

He's received 39 lashes at the hands of the Jewish leaders on multiple occasions.

Over and over and over again, Paul receives these threats to his life.

And he's saying, what in the world would I be doing this for if I'm just going

to spend the rest of eternity in the ground?

It doesn't make sense. The risks that I incur don't make that worth it.

But what makes it worth it is that that's not where I'm going to end up.

I'm going to end up resurrected. I'm going to end up living with Jesus,

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for all of eternity in a bodily way.

That's what makes all of these things worth it.

And then he says another interesting phrase here. He fought the wild beasts,

those people of Ephesus.

And so this is a metaphor on a cultural practice back then where people,

criminals who weren't Roman citizens.

Prisoners of war, these people were let out, tied to stakes,

and wild beasts were released upon them to devour them in front of huge crowds.

So if you've never thought like the Hunger Games would happen in real life,

like it has happened, like that's based upon Roman history and the brutality of it.

People were watching this as a sport.

And so he's using that metaphor to describe something that happens in Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

In Acts chapter 19, Paul is visiting the city of Ephesus.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

And as he's visiting the cities, telling more and more people about it,

and the people who make idols are getting frustrated because they have less and less customer base.

They're making not as much money as they were accustomed to making.

And so they want to get rid of Paul and Christianity for their own pocketbooks.

And so they start a riot and this is one of my favorite phrases in all the Bible,

even though it's nonsense. I've said it to my kids multiple times.

Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Like that is something they repeat over and

over and over again for about two hours.

Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. And as this kind of riot is happening in

the city, we read in Acts chapter 19, starting in verse 29.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

Soon, the whole city was filled with confusion. Everyone rushed to the amphitheater,

dragging along Gaius and Aristarchus, who were Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia.

Paul wanted to go in too, but the believers wouldn't let him.

Some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, also sent a message

to him, begging him not to risk his life by entering the amphitheater.

And so he's like, remember this, Corinth and Ephesus aren't that far apart.

It's a boat ride. You have to take a boat to it, but they're not that far apart.

And so the people of Corinth heard about the chaos that was happening in Ephesus.

And Paul again is saying, why would I risk my life if there is no resurrection of the dead?

Why do I put up with those beasts of Ephesus?

Why do I put up with the Jewish leaders beating me 39 times?

Why would I do this? It would be better for me.

It would be more rewarding for me if I feasted and drank to my own pleasure.

That would be a reward if the only outcome is being in the ground.

If we're going to die and nothing's going to come of it, Thank you.

It's wasting my life. It would not be a risk reward that I would endeavor to.

And so this is the last punch, so to speak,

that Paul is using here to get them to logically see why it's beneficial for

them and why it's accurate and true for them to believe in the resurrection,

the bodily resurrection of believers.

So he ends this section with two more verses.

Don't be fooled by those who say such things, for bad company corrupts good character.

Think carefully about what is right and stop sinning.

For to your shame, I say that some of you don't know God at all.

And so he's saying, guys, if you have around you these people who are teaching

you false things, they're going to corrupt you.

They're going to bring you down and it's going to be an effort to overcome these obstacles.

Don't surround yourselves with people that you are learning from,

people that you trust who aren't teaching true and accurate things.

They will bring you down. They are your corruption.

And so he's saying, all right, this is what you need to do. You need to have

good theology and know who God is and his character and all of his attributes.

You need to know these things. So surround yourself with people who care more

about what God's truth is than what you think of them.

Surround yourself with teachers who care more about what God's truth is.

Who are going to say the truth, even though it costs them something.

Surround yourself with people who have this good theology, because that's how we become pure.

And he goes so far as to say, when we have the right beliefs,

when we have this correct theology.

When we're thinking carefully about what is right, it's going to lead us to repent of our sins.

It's going to lead us to confess when we fall short of God's glorious standard.

And ultimately, it's going to bring us closer and closer to God.

If we don't do this, Jesus's words in the Sermon on the Mount will be more likely to come true for us.

When Jesus says, many will come to me on the day that I return and say,

Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name and done many other good works in your name?

But Jesus will look at them and say, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

Depart from me. I never knew you.

And so if we don't, these words that some of us don't know God at all will ring true for us.

It's a very, very sobering concept and passage.

And it's ultimately, in Paul's view, leading people to repentance,

leading people to confession. And so I just want to leave you with this thought.

What is the risk and reward of following Jesus?

What is the risk associated with pursuing Jesus, with stopping sinning,

with following and pursuing him above all else compared to the reward that we get?

Paul is convinced and he saw the risen Jesus. On the road to Damascus,

he saw Jesus after he had died.

And he says, for me, it's worth it to be beaten. It's worth it to be imprisoned.

It's worth it for me to be shipwrecked and adrift at sea for God and his glory.

Because he knows the reward is such a big payoff.

So what is your opinion?

What is the risk of following Jesus? And is the reward worth it? Let me pray.

Lord Jesus Christ, we come before you, and I pray, Father, that we know you.

I pray, Father, that your grace is embedded in our lives in a way that we experience

it and draw us closer and closer to you.

And I pray, Father, that you give us the ability to see that the reward far

outweighs the risk because following you is totally worth it.

Jesus, I pray for this in your name. Amen.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion of the evidence Paul presents

of the resurrection by showing his own life would be different if there were

no hope of our resurrection.

Paul is willing to lose it all, not because he doesn't enjoy this world,

but because the world to come is way better than this one.

Next week, we will continue looking at 1 Corinthians 15 and study how Paul uses

the example of a seed to talk about what our resurrection will be like.

If you would like more information about Faith Chapel and its ministries,

please visit the website gofaithchapel.org.

Have a great week.