Firstfruits of Hope: Christ’s Resurrection and Our Eternal Promise - 1 Cor 15:20-24

Good morning, and Happy Resurrection Day. Welcome to the Preaching Service of

Dillingham Moravian Church.

My name is Pastor Simon, and we are thankful that God has led you to study His

Word with us this morning.

According to the ABC News, on May 11, 2018,

an Australian man was credited with saving the lives of over 2.4 million babies

with his blood plasma, made his final donation.

According to the Australian Red Cross Blood Service,

James Harrison, or nicknamed the man with the golden arm,

has a rare antibody in his blood that is used to make a life-saving medication

called anti-D, given to mothers whose blood is at risk of developing rhesus-D

hemolytic disease, or HDN,

or antibodies that attack their unborn babies.

Harrison was the first donor in a national anti-D program that started in 1967.

And prior to the creation of that program, HDN killed thousands of babies every year.

James Harrison's blood gave life to 2.4 million babies who would have otherwise died from HDN.

And just as James Harrison's blood gave physical life to so many babies,

Jesus' blood, which was poured out of his slaughtered body on the cross,

saves all those who believe in Jesus Christ as God and Lord,

and the power in death and sin.

The slaughtered blood of Jesus brings eternal life, and life is eternal.

Of freedom from the sin slavery so that we as disciples of Christ can live or

abide in God's love so that we can lead others to abide in God's love and one

day live with God in heaven forever and ever. Let's pray.

Oh, Heavenly Father, we are so grateful. We are thankful that you are God And you are Lord.

We're thankful that through the resurrection, you have honored and glorified your Son.

You showed that He is, in fact, one with you, that He is Yahweh, the only one true God.

Through his resurrection, you have triumphed over the grave. And we are so thankful.

Lord, we pray that as we go to your word today, teach us, guide us,

show us what you want us to know.

And may you work in us through your Holy Spirit so that we can apply it,

so that we can live for you always.

In our precious son's name, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.

Turn with me today to 1 Corinthians 15,

20-23, where Paul wrote, But now Christ has been raised from the dead,

the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

But each in his own order, Christ's the firstfruits after those who are Christ's at his coming.

Christ is the firstfruit of the promise to come. Here in Dillingham,

we have a long and consistently freezing winter, but for the last few weeks,

the weather has been consistently getting warmer, even to the point that we

could receive a large dump of snow,

although some of it has melted.

Our kids are thankful for that snow. But for me, the hope of spring is in the air.

Over the last week or so, I've been hearing some of the spring songbirds returning

and singing their hearts out.

With spring and summer, fish will come again. The berries will grow again.

Here in southwest Alaska, we know that when the kings come, the rest of the salmon do.

Although, sadly, the kings have not been doing very well lately.

Or when salmon berries' bushes bear fruit, the other berry plants will begin

to bear fruit in their appointed time.

The remarkable thing is that these first fruits of harvest are a reminder that

there is a lot more to come.

And this concept of the first fruit of the harvest is like what Paul was instructing about in verse 20,

where Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 20, But now Christ has been raised

1 Corinthians 15:20

from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To begin with, Paul taught that Christ Jesus, who was crucified on the cross,

was raised from the dead.

The word for raised literally meant wake up from death. Christ woke up from

death as the firstfruits of those who are asleep, or meaning those who have died in Christ.

What then did Paul mean that Christ was the firstfruits of those who have died

or fall asleep in Christ?

The concept of firstfruits comes from Leviticus 23.

Let's read Leviticus 23, verse 9-11 together.

Leviticus 23:9–11

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the sons of Israel and say to

them, When you enter the land which I am going to give you, and reap its harvest,

then you shall bring in the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priests.

He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted.

On the day after the Sabbath, the priests shall wave it.

You see, ancient Israel was a nation that depended upon agriculture for its crops and meat.

With farming, the farmer does not know what size or quality of crop that they are going to get.

When God asked Israel for its first fruits offering, God was asking for the

first fruit of grain at the very beginning of the season before the full harvest was ready.

This was a huge sacrifice because the farmers would not have known what they

were going to harvest that year or how much they were going to make.

In fact, the first fruits of the harvest may have been the whole harvest.

And so to ask the people to give possibly their only crops of that year was

asking a great deal. This was a sacrifice.

God wanted His people not to give out of their excess, but to give when it really

hurts so that they can prove that God really was their treasure.

The first fruits were the foretaste, the larger promise of the harvest to come.

And what Paul was getting at in verse 20 is that Christ's resurrection was the

first fruit or the foretaste of

the promise that one day all believers in Christ will rise from the dead.

The resurrection was a guarantee that all believers would be resurrected.

What can we learn from this truth? The first way we can apply this truth is

that for us as believers, we know that because Christ rose from the dead,

someday our spirits will rise to be with Christ when we die.

And then later, during the resurrection of the dead, our bodies will rise and

we will be transformed and live forever with Christ. This is the truth,

and it's more guaranteed than any bank on earth can guarantee anything.

The second application is that Christ's resurrection is the guarantee of a new

life here on earth, where we are free to live as Christ's disciples,

to live in His love by faith,

shown by our obedience as we love God and others and make disciples for His glorious kingdom.

The questions we need to ask here is why couldn't have God made humanity to

never die in the first place?

Why did Jesus need to die and be resurrected?

These are particularly important questions

because Paul answers them in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 in two parts.

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

First off, Paul explained where death came from, and then Paul explained where life came from.

Death came through a man, so that life must come through a man.

In Adam came death to the human race. Paul continued in 1 Corinthians 15,

1 Corinthians 15:21–22

verse 21-22, For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

The question we need to ask ourselves is, where did death come from?

Paul taught in verse 22, For since by a man came death, and in Adam all died.

Death is a fact of life now on this earth, but it was not always so.

To find out what Paul was referring to, we must go to Genesis 3 to find out.

Adam and Eve listened to Satan, who was disguised as a serpent,

and because of allowing Satan to deceive them, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and

ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

When God asked Adam and Eve why they had disobeyed, they made excuses and passed

the blame on to someone else.

And thus, from Adam as head of Eve and head of humanity, sin spread to his offspring

and from their children all the way down the line to us.

And as a product of sin, death also spread to all people as well.

Let us go to Genesis 3, verse 22 to 23.

Genesis 3:22–23

Verse 22, Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

And now he might stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to cultivate the

ground from which he was taken.

God removed Adam and also Eve from the garden because there was the high probability

that Adam, who now knew good and evil like God, would eat the fruit of the tree

of life and live forever.

Remember that Adam and Eve were not prohibited from eating from the tree of life before this point.

And it was the tree of life that would have kept them alive forever.

So why was this such a problem for God? The key to understanding what was going

on in God's mind is found in verse 22.

Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

Many have interpreted this phrase to mean that Adam now has the ability to discern

good from evil. But that's not what God said.

God said that Adam knew good and evil.

Here's what I mean by this. before their transgression, Adam,

and also Eve, knew only good.

And what was that good? God.

After the transgression, Adam and Eve knew good and evil.

You see, by knowing evil, Adam and Eve then had the ability and knowledge to sin, and so they did.

God knew good and evil, but Satan's lie was that by knowing good and evil,

Adam and Eve would be like God.

And that was impossible. Holiness is God's very nature. And so he could not

sin, but humans could and do.

Adam and Eve proved that. And this is crucial. Please listen to this.

As human beings, we were never designed to know evil.

We were created to know good, the good God himself.

We only have to watch TV or movies to know that the world understands good and

evil, and yet it doesn't help them know the good God.

And the knowledge of evil does not help them do good. Rather, it aids in doing evil.

See, God did not want a sinner to eat from the tree of life and then keep on

living forever in God's presence. So God cast Adam and Eve out of the garden.

And when Adam and Eve were in the garden and sinless, they would have lived forever with God.

However, due to sin entering Adam and Eve, their relationship with God changed, it was broken.

Adam and Eve could no longer be in the presence of the holy God of the universe

because sin and God cannot be together.

God absolutely abhors sin.

And so Adam and Eve had to be cast out of the garden. This is where death came

from, and this is how it spread to all the human race.

This is the reason why there is physical and spiritual death today.

First off, we have learned here that death came through the man,

an Adam, and that means that life had to come through a man.

The good news was that even in the midst of humanity's rebellion and sin against

God, God so loved the world that He gave up His only begotten Son,

so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

Hebrews 9.22 describes that the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed

with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Due to the reality of sin, every human being owed God the sacrifice of all their

lifeblood as atonement for their sins.

Forgiveness was not possible without the shedding of all of our blood.

This was a debt that we, as human beings could not pay ourselves.

Out of his love, God allowed in the law of Moses the blood sacrifice of animals

for the forgiveness of his people.

And yet the people of God continued to sin. And the blood sacrifice had to be

offered every day by a priest who also was a sinner.

There was no true repentance. There was no restoration of relationship between humanity and God.

And this is why the sacrificial slaughter of Jesus, his only begotten son, was so important.

Jesus Christ, being God and perfect and completely without sin,

was able to take our place and be the blood sacrifice in our stead.

But this is also why Jesus had to be fully man as well.

Why? Because according to 1 Corinthians 15, life had to come through a man because

the cause of the problem of sin and death came through a man.

A human had to pay the blood price for our sins. and not just any human, but one without sin.

Being both fully God and fully man, Jesus completely and finally atoned for our sins.

As a result of Jesus' blood slaughter on our behalf and our blood debt God paid,

God has made all of us who are in Christ alive in the Holy Spirit.

A couple of years ago, I went down to my set net site at Snag Point Beach early

in the morning to check to see if there were fish in my net.

And I was standing by the seawall talking to an old friend who has now gone on to glory with Jesus.

And as we talked, an eagle swooped down from above us and grabbed onto a salmon

from one of the nets and pulled at it until the fish came out of the net and

then flew away with that salmon clutched in its claws.

My point is that the eagle seized and carried off that salmon.

This idea of seizing and carrying off something or someone is what Christ will

do for those who believe in Him when He returns.

Paul went on in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 22-24, For as in Adam all die,

1 Corinthians 15:22–24

so also in Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own order,

Christ the firstfruits, after that those who are Christ at His coming.

Then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to the God and Father when

he has abolished all rule and authority and power.

The word that Paul used for made alive meant to cause to live,

to make alive, to give life to, especially in transcendent sense.

What Paul was saying was that if by the sin of Adam, death was brought to the

world, then by death and resurrection of Jesus, eternal life is given to all

those who have responded by faith to what Christ has accomplished on the cross.

When we die in our bodies, we are instantly raised to life with Christ.

To explain this truth, Paul taught in 2 Corinthians 5, 4-8, for indeed,

while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we don't want to

be unclothed, but to be clothed. So that...

What is mortal will be smalled up by life. Now he who prepared us for this very

purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a pledge.

Therefore, being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home

in the body, we are absent from the Lord.

For we walk by faith, not by sight.

We are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body,

and here it is, and to be at home with the Lord.

Back in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 23, I want you to see that Paul taught that

1 Corinthians 15:23

there was an important order to the resurrections.

Jesus, who was the firstfruits promise, had to be resurrected first.

Then when Christ returns on the clouds of heaven, he will rapture those Christians

who are alive in Christ and also those Christians who have previously died.

We call this concept rapture because it comes from the Latin word, to seize, to carry off.

In 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13, Paul instructed, But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren.

1 Thessalonians 4:13

About those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with

him those who fall asleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain

until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of

the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the

clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And so we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore, comfort one another with these words. One of my favorite parts of

this passage is that as believers in Christ, when we lose loved ones to death,

we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Why?

Because we have hope. Hope because Christ died on the cross,

destroying the power and sin and death.

Death is no longer the end.

Before the cross and resurrection, death was the end, but now in Christ we go to heaven after we die.

Not only will we go to heaven, but Christ will return, and the physical bodies

of those Christians who have died will be resurrected along with those who are still living.

The resurrected Christians will be caught up in the air with Christ.

This is what is often called the rapture from the Latin word,

which means to seize or carry away, as I said before.

I want you to notice why the resurrection of the dead happens.

And here it is. So we shall always be with the Lord.

This is crucial because the purpose of the resurrection has always been that

God will dwell with his people.

This is why Christ died on the cross, and this is why he rose from the dead.

You see, our sin blocked us from dwelling in the same place as God.

And now due to the cross and resurrection, God can now dwell with his people forever.

What Paul writes next absolutely blows me away. I write this to encourage you.

Paul was writing to believers that were being hunted and slaughtered for their faith in Christ.

And when the Thessalonians and other believers at that time made the faith allegiant

to Christ, their faith brought them into immediate conflict with the religion

of Rome, where they worshiped multiple gods, but more importantly,

Rome worshiped the emperor as the main god in control of the earth.

When a person became a Christian and denied the deity of the emperor,

this was a death sentence.

For Christians who had witnessed their children, families, and friends dying

because of their faith, Paul wrote to encourage them that death was not the end.

There was absolute and certain hope that they would see their loved ones again.

Even more important is that there was absolute and certain hope that Christ

would return and take His people

from this earth, and He will resurrect those who have died in Christ.

It is absolutely certain that the believer will dwell forever with their Lord

and Savior Jesus Christ after they die.

There is absolute and certain hope that Christ will return and that He will

conquer all those nations and religions who oppose God.

Christ will crush all opposition and hand over dominion to the Father.

As Christ's second coming is guaranteed by His resurrection and Christ rose

so that God can dwell with us, His people, how then do we live so that God dwells with us and in us?

First of all, it is God who put His Spirit in us so that we can abide in the love of Christ.

Jesus, in John 14, verse 23-24, said, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word,

John 14:23–24

and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.

He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear

is not mine, but the Father's who sent me.

John 14 passage is often taken to mean that in order to love God,

we have to obey and keep His word.

But this is not the case. The word that Jesus used for loves indicated a direction

of will in finding one's joy in something or someone to delight in,

meaning that obedience is the result or evidence of our love for Christ.

And the more and more we delight or find our joy in Christ, all our will is

directed towards pleasing Christ.

And as our will is focused on Jesus and his word, our words and our actions will be.

Do we, you and I, find our joy in Jesus so much that we obey him?

When we find our joy or delight in something or someone, what are we doing?

We're valuing that person or something as good for us. Yes.

And here's the essential truth. This goes back to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

As disciples of Christ, we are to be going back to God's original design for

us, to view and know God as our only true good.

This is how we love God. This is how we live so that God lives in us.

What has God taught us today? God has taught us that the resurrection of Christ

is the firstfruits promise and guarantee of eternal life when we die and the

resurrection of the body one day.

The guarantee of the resurrection was based upon the sacrificial death of the

Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human.

The second truth we have learned is that as children of God,

we are called to know with every fiber of our being the greatest and only true

good, Jesus Christ, our God and Lord of the universe, who is the same God from the Garden of Eden.

Lastly, it's also absolutely certain that Christ will return and He will resurrect

and carry away those who have died in Christ and those Christians who are alive

at the time of His return.

The promise is that we will dwell with the Lord forever.

And no matter what trial and struggle that we are going through.

The great comfort is that this life is not the end.

It's only the beginning of an absolutely awesome life ahead of us with Christ

our Lord and Master forever.

And if you're here this morning and if you have not put your faith and trust

in Christ or you wish to do so, I implore you to commit your life to Jesus Christ,

your Lord and Savior today.

Do not leave the most important decision of your life to the last moment.

Life is short, and it's fleeting, and we don't know when Christ is returning,

nor do we know when we will die.

So I encourage you to put your faith and trust in Christ.

Let us pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, we are grateful.

We are thankful that you are our most high God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, one God.

And so, Lord, we thank you for your word.

Thank you for teaching us. May you take your word that has been spoken and implant

it in all our hearts so that we may grow to be staying in you,

abiding in you so that

you are always working and operating us in your Holy Spirit thank you Lord Jesus

thank you Father Holy Spirit one triune God we are so so grateful for you in

your precious son's name Jesus Christ we pray Amen,

I'll leave you with this blessing from Psalm 67 verse 1 through 2 may God be

Psalms 67:1–2

gracious to us and bless us and cause His face to shine upon us,

that your way be known on the earth and your salvation among all the nations.

Have a wonderful Sunday. May the Lord bless you. Amen.