Raised In Glory

Michael Coughlin

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Well, good morning to you. Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure to be here. It's an honor to be asked to preach anywhere.

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I was a pastor for a little over two years and I had begun to,

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I guess the phrase would be, guard my pulpit so seriously when we considered bringing in a guest that it started to occur to me how significant it was that another elder would allow me in his pulpit.

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And so I'm very grateful to not only the whole church, but the elders here especially.

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I count it a privilege. If you're able, I'd appreciate it if you'd stand with me as I read the scripture to you.

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And we will be continuing in your study in 1 Corinthians. So I'm going to start. I'm going to start in verse 41 and read to 50.

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There is one glory. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say 1 Corinthians 15? In case somebody didn't remember.

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1 Corinthians 15 41. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars for stars differ from star and glory.

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So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in a corruptible body. It is raised an incorruptible body.

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It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness.

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It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body.

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If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, the first man,

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Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life -giving spirit.

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However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural. Then the spiritual.

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The first man is from the earth, earthy. The second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy.

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And as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.

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Now I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the corruptible inherit the incorruptible.

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So that is the word of God. Why don't you remain standing and pray with me. Father, we ask you today to visit us in a special way.

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Although we confess that you're omnipresent, we know that you have ways that you meet with your people in a special way.

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And we believe that happens at the gathering of the saints during the worship service on Sunday.

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The Lord's Day is the day that we remember the body and blood of Jesus in communion. We practice the scripture reading, the preaching of your word and prayers.

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We offer up our worship to you together. And we ask that today by your spirit's power, you would make our worship pleasing to you.

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And that you would anoint me with your spirit to tell people what is true from your word and that it would pierce to our very hearts.

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Amen. You may be seated. Now I know you guys have been going through the book of 1

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Corinthians for probably quite a while now. I think I was here at some of the earlier chapters and I haven't,

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I'm not here very often. And, and as you, you

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I'm sure have noticed now, Paul is a very logical writer. In fact, if you read through almost everything

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Paul wrote, it can be very easily outlined into basically a logical argument that he makes.

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He doesn't really write, you know, what we'd call love letters in some sense, right? It's a very logical argument that he follows, either asking a question or responding to some objection.

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And if you remember, chapter 15 begins with Paul addressing the, the issue that there are some people who are saying there's no resurrection, that there's no resurrection of the dead.

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And Paul handles that issue in the first 19 verses or so, you know, convincingly in my, my opinion.

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Of course, I think the Holy Spirit inspired scripture does everything quite convincingly. And then in verse 35,

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Paul anticipates a possible question that could be asked. Some, some men who've commented on this say that they think

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Paul might have a particular person in mind at Corinth who was actually saying these kinds of things.

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And we know there was a, a lot of problems at Corinth, right? And something I'm sure you've addressed at some point through your study in the

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Corinthian letters is that even a church with a lot of problems is still a church in the eyes of God that he loves.

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And the apostle Paul dearly loved them and was willing to, you know, lay out his heart for them.

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And so that's something we should all remember, that we'll be known by our love for one another.

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But the question that Paul anticipates next was, how are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?

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And he addresses that question for several verses all the way from last week's passage and then into the passage that I've, have been assigned for this week.

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So I'm kind of dipping into last week a little bit. But the question that is asked, how are the dead raised?

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The way Paul phrases it and the way he addresses it and answers it is he's letting everyone know that that question that they may have heard, the question that has been maybe batted around in the

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Corinthian church when they have group discussions and when people are talking about things that Paul knows, and thus the

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Holy Spirit inspired Paul, that this isn't a legitimate question someone's asking.

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There isn't a person sitting there that honestly adores Jesus Christ and loves the

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Word of God and loves the Lord and is thinking to themself, huh, I'm not quite sure about the resurrection because, well,

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I just don't know how, how the body will be worked out in that case. Right now there, because there's two, there's two ways you can ask a question, at least two ways we'll say.

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One is you might have a legitimate question, right? You could stand up today and you could say, how is the body going to be raised?

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What kind of body will we have? And I might look at you and say, yeah, you know, it sounds like you're genuinely wondering.

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You're not just asking a question in order to cast doubt on something.

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You're just asking a question because you're genuinely interested. Paul's addressing the scoffer here.

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He's not addressing a person that genuinely asks a question. So if you're a person that thinks to yourself,

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I wonder what kind of body we'll have, when Paul says you fool in the next verse, he's not talking about you.

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He's talking about somebody that's actually making a rhetorical argument in the form of a question by saying, well, how is the body to be raised or what kind of body will we have?

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And they think that by simply asking that unanswerable question, they have now discounted the resurrection and the truth of it.

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Now that can be applied in a lot of ways, and you'll see it throughout your culture today.

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Here in the United States, we deal with a lot of scoffers. And one of the common ways scoffers scoff is that they ask what amounts to an unanswerable question sometimes, or maybe a question that's extremely difficult for us to be able to answer.

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And then they think because we don't know the answer, there isn't one. Well, Paul's argument is effectively the same argument that he's talking about in 2

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Corinthians when he talks about how people become born again by the word of God.

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And his argument is the God who called everything out of nothing is going to be able to do whatever he chooses to do with our bodies.

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And we don't have to be able to have an answer to that scientifically, because first of all, it's a miracle.

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But then second of all, we don't have to know the answer for there to be an answer. And that's part of what faith is, right?

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Faith isn't blindly jumping off a cliff, hoping you're not going to hit the ground and die.

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Faith is knowing that I don't know the answers, but I know the one who does.

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And I don't need all the information. So some of you who may have been in the military have heard that phrase, you're on a need -to -know basis, right?

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We are on a need -to -know basis. And God who knows everything and has the end worked out, he has told us everything we need to know.

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And I would argue he has told us that right here in his word. And that is what we need to study and become more familiar with.

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So getting into verse 42, Paul is continuing the same argument that he started, that you studied last week.

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So he says, so also is the resurrection of the dead. So the resurrection of the dead also is like the seed that when it's sown comes out of the ground with a completely different form than it went into the ground with.

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That's his argument. You plant a tomato seed, it doesn't look like a tomato. It doesn't look like a tomato stem.

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It doesn't look like the leaves. There's nothing about the seed that looks like the thing it's going to become. This is true of literally every seed that we know of, even human embryos and stuff, which are humans.

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We all agree that at fertilization we have a human being with a reasonable soul and is to be protected.

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And you notice I said at fertilization, not at implantation. Those are two different things.

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Fertilization creates a human. Implantation is one of the places where people want to draw that line so they can still kill humans that didn't make it to implantation.

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So anyway, that's a different story for a different day. But the resurrection of the dead is just like that.

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He's saying that something completely different is going to come to be. We could say something completely new.

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There's going to be something newly created, but rather than out of nothing, God is going to use existing material.

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And this is an important aspect of Paul's argument, because if it was just going to be out of nothing again, then your body really doesn't matter much.

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But God is actually going to use your body to create your new body.

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There's going to be something about you that was true here materially that's still going to be true in the future state.

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I can't explain it, but it's part of the argument. There was a similar problem.

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If you turn to 2 Timothy, you can read along with me. 2 Timothy chapter 2. There was a similar problem that Paul had to address with the church that Timothy was at.

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In verse 16 of 2 Timothy 2, Paul says, Avoid godless and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, and their word will spread like gangrene.

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Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus. So he actually names two false teachers, or even if they weren't false teachers, he names two people that were causing a division because of bad teaching, which that's a big no -no in a lot of churches today.

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Don't actually name the person that's saying the thing that's leading people to hell, basically, sometimes, right?

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He says, They've gone astray from the truth. Listen, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they have set the faith of some.

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A similar problem to saying there's no resurrection is telling people for whom the resurrection has not occurred yet that it's already taken place, because it's effectively leading to the same conclusion.

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This is it. This is the future state. This is all we will know, and what we do doesn't matter.

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The resurrection of the body is such an important phrase that it's included in one of the oldest creeds, the

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Apostles' Creed. Do you know that? You read the Apostles' Creed, which would have been one of the original statements of faith that Christians would have had to confess before they were baptized, and it says,

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We believe in the Holy Spirit, and in that last phrase, the second to last line, it says,

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We believe in the resurrection of the body. It's not talking about Jesus's body. Say, We believe in the resurrection of our bodies.

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This is something that everyone that considers themselves a Christian, even if it's what we know, you know, with the

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Reformation, even if it's people that we don't consider born -again Christians, they still would confess these same things.

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This has always been an essential part of the belief of Christianity. So, the resurrection of the body is utterly important.

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So, Paul says it's sown a corruptible body. It's raised an incorruptible body. Now, Paul's going to draw a number of just quick analogies for us, and I just want to remind you,

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Paul's not going to tell us almost anything new that he didn't tell you in the passage last week.

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Right? It's just one long argument where Paul's just stacking more and more information on top of it, and the depth that we can go into God's Word to understand what it says is simply miraculous, and the applications that God allows us to draw from his variety of analogies that he'll give us is important for our lives.

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So, I want to tell you that I have application points at the end of this that I think are really helpful, and for me, it didn't happen the first time

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I read the passage or the second time. This passage just seems to be a logical argument about the resurrection, and so hopefully

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I'll have something that maybe seems to draw something out of there that you wouldn't see on the surface.

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But it's sown in a corruptible body. It's raised an incorruptible body. That's a promise.

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In 1 Peter 1 .4, if you want to turn there, I always encourage you to turn there.

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I say if you want to. What I mean is turn to 1 Peter 1 .4. I don't like to be overly commanding, especially if maybe, you know, you have trouble turning fast or something, but I think the change that happens in your heart comes from the

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Holy Spirit working through his word on you, and if you just listen to me say it, that might work a little bit, but I think you reading the word and having that encounter directly with God actually, not necessarily mediated through me, is where you get the most help.

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Peter says you're going to obtain an inheritance that's incorruptible. Undefiled and unfading haven't been kept in heaven for you.

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Corruption is something that we know so intimately that we don't know the opposite of it.

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Like, we are so inundated with being surrounded by being part of the curse.

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We don't know. The idea of living forever is senseless to us.

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We can't fathom it. If I told any of you that, you know, when you have you ever heard that honey never spoils?

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You ever heard that? The reason that's such a neat fact is that literally everything spoils, okay?

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I mean, we make stuff and it breaks. We buy things and then we're disappointed that they wear out.

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Most of us are wearing clothes we wouldn't have worn, you know, maybe at least 10 years ago. Things just wear out.

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That's just the nature that we are a part of. Well, God promises that one day there will be a new creation.

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There will be a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness will dwell. And part of what will happen there is we will be in an incorruptible state ourselves.

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We will no longer deteriorate. Our bodies won't die.

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When you die in this world, you become far more corruptible even than now. Some of you, you know, some of you know that, what is the phrase we'll use?

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Everything that you see on another human being is dead, right? Their skin is dead, their hair, you know, everything's actually the dead cells.

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And over the course of only a few weeks, you're actually now completely new cells than you were before.

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You're still the same person, right? Isn't that kind of neat? That God has a way of holding the material together and with the soul and you're a body and a soul.

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And now, but you're corruptible. You're able to die. You're also corruptible by sin.

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Some of you have been born again for a very long time and you have the spirit of God indwelling you and he sanctified you in ways that you wouldn't have even imagined when you first got saved and yet you still cry out, oh wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death.

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Because even on your best day as a good Christian, you're in a corruptible flesh that is constantly trying to drag you into the sin that the flesh itself actually desires.

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So, that's why we need the promise of a new body. It's great that God saved us.

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I love being saved more than being not saved. I'm glad I'm saved, okay? But if God justified you in his sight, gave you his

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Holy Spirit and left you in this same body that you have right now, that would be less than what he has promised and it would be disappointing.

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Because what he has promised is to make all things new. So, the resurrection of the dead is sown in a corruptible body.

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It's raised in an incorruptible body. 43, back to 1 Corinthians 15,

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Paul says it's sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. Jesus Christ himself came into the world and suffered shame.

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Turn to Hebrews chapter 12 where it talks about the author and perfecter of our faith. The author of Hebrews tells us to run with endurance the race set before us.

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And in verse 2 he says, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

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We are sown in shame. We are, in a sense, if you're a

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Christian and actually have the ability to blush, we at all times are, in some sense, should be blushing because of our sin.

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You know, in Jeremiah, one of the judgments upon people that God pronounces is that they have lost the ability to blush.

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They no longer know what it is to feel shame for their sin. And here

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I am in Mansfield, Ohio, which compared to where I'm from, this is just a small town, Ohio. I'd call it rural.

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I don't mean that offensively. That's the way it would look to me at least. And yet in Mansfield, Ohio, you know, they have a pride parade and a festival, don't they?

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Feeling a sense of shame is actually a very good thing because it tells you that you have a different spirit that's indwelling you than the spirit of this world.

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And yet Adam and Eve felt no shame when they were naked in the garden in Genesis 2. And we will one day be raised to a new state.

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You will be in a state where you will no longer be able to sin.

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And God's will will be your wish at all times. And you will no longer have to feel that sense of, oh,

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I can't believe I did that again. You know, if we have church services in heaven, there won't be a confession of sin.

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You know that? Right? I mean, somebody gets up here and they do a confession of sin every week, right?

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And they barely scratch the surface of really what horrible weeks most of us probably had. And if you didn't do it outwardly, some of you know what it's like to have that inward, wow,

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I just wish I wasn't who I am anymore, right? One day that shame will be taken away because you'll be raised in glory.

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God promises glorification. There's justification. That's what happens at the beginning when God declares you righteous in his sight.

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There's sanctification when God's practically working out holiness in your life and it's in your body, okay?

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And then there's glorification. That's what happens at the finish. And to make it rhyme, when

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God conforms believers perfectly to Christ's image. That was the Shilin quote, to attribute that to him.

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So one day, your body of death will be made to sin no more.

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And that will be heaven. When you see Christ and you can see him face to face because you are no longer in an incorruptible body.

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And not to dip into next week, but that's what the next week's sermon starts with verse 50, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

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For you to see God and be in his presence, you need to be sinless. Right now we can do that through the mediator,

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Jesus Christ. We do it through communion, right? But one day you'll just be in his presence, made perfect.

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You'll see Jesus face to face. You'll be like he is. What glory. The next phrase

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Paul uses, he says in verse 43, it is sown in weakness. It's raised in power. It's hard to imagine anything that is weaker than a dead body.

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Dead bodies can do nothing. But the power of God can actually raise a dead body.

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And he did it multiple times. When he walked the earth, he did it through his prophets and he did it with his own self,

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Jesus Christ. The neat thing about Jesus's resurrection, which is the most important event in the history of the world, is that Jesus raised himself from the dead.

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The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead and it says the Father raised him from the dead. The whole trinity is always at work in all of the trinities will add extra action.

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So every operation that God does, every member of the trinity is in fact simultaneously, not even simultaneously, they're just one act.

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But the Bible appropriates to the members of the trinity different roles at different times, but they all are clearly seen in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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And if Jesus Christ was resurrected, that's the promise that you will be resurrected. He is the first fruits of the resurrection, meaning that the resurrection has begun with him and it's not completed until God resurrects you from the dead.

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In Philippians 321, we see about this power of God to resurrect.

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Death is a powerful force. We have entire disciplines of our existence that are dedicated to preventing death, stalling death, postponing death.

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We just had a worldwide, I don't know the word to use,

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I don't even know, a pandemic, right? We had this worldwide circumstance that was based on everyone's going to die, so we have to do something, right?

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And whether you agreed with all the stuff they did or not, the point was is the fear of death is enough to control huge populations of people across sovereign borders.

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It's a powerful force. Not more powerful than God.

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Philippians 320 and 21, Paul says our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly await for a

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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You know your citizenship is in heaven already if you're a

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Christian. You've already been placed in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus if you're a

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Christian. You're just waiting for your body to catch up in a sense, right?

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But listen, Jesus Christ in verse 3, chapter 3, verse 21 of Philippians, he will transform the body of our humble state, our weak state, our humble state, into conformity with the body of his glory by his working through which he is able to even subject all things to himself.

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Even death is not more powerful than the Lord Jesus Christ and his power to raise.

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In 2 Corinthians 13, we see that Jesus Christ himself, the one that we hope to follow in a resurrected body, also led us in weakness.

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Look at verse 4, for indeed he was crucified because of weakness, yet he lives because of the power of God, for we also are weak in him, yet we will live with him because of the power of God toward you.

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Jesus Christ became weak like we are so that we would have hope that when we look to his resurrection, we can say, well,

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God can do the same thing with me that he did with Jesus. In 1

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Corinthians 15, 44, Paul continues, he says, it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

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He's concluding the answer to the objection, which is, how is the body to be raised?

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What kind of body will they come with, right? The answer is, it's a spiritual body. And if your question is, well, what's that?

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I don't know. I don't know if Paul knew, but God knows and I'll trust him.

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Look, I don't know if there's going to be fishing in heaven, but I know if you love fishing, you're still going to love heaven, even if there's not fishing in heaven, right?

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God can do whatever and things are going to be so extraordinarily different is what

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Paul's trying to say that it's not even worth trying to compare. I don't need to tell you what an apple seed is going to look like in 30 years to tell you, go ahead and plant one because you're going to be glad 30 years from now or whoever comes after you will be.

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I don't need to be able to explain to you exactly how your body will be or how heaven will be or how the science of it works based on the science we actually even understand right now.

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All I need to tell you is that God has promised that he will glorify all those that he called, those whom he called.

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He justified those whom he justified he'll glorify, right? And that you will be sinless and you will be able to be in the presence of Jesus Christ, the one whose presence we all should long for.

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Hebrews tells you to eagerly await his coming. I've heard people say they hope he delays so they can do something.

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I know there's exciting events in this world. We want to have grandkids or we want to get married. I get some of that but there is nothing in this world, nothing that compares to the first moment you'll be with Lord Jesus Christ.

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I hope everyone can come to understand that. It's sown a corruptible body, it's raised incorruptible.

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Oh, I'm sorry, I skipped, I went backwards back to 44. If there's a natural body, there's a spiritual body.

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One thing to clarify is that a spiritual body isn't a not body, okay?

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Some people read this like, well, if there's a natural body then there's a spiritual state and then they just imagine like apparitions or ghosts or spirits, you know, bodyless beings.

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And no, the whole point is that right now you have this natural body from the earth and one day you'll have a spiritual body and it will still be a body.

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Jesus's incarnation is extremely important for a lot of reasons and one of them is it validates that flesh is actually good, right?

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There was a Gnostic heresy that started a long, long time ago and it still pervades a lot of ways today and that's the idea that everything fleshly is bad and only spiritual things are good and it's just false.

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Jesus became flesh and he was good and you will be some form of physicality for all eternity and you will be made good.

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So Paul's going to expand on that. He says in verse 45, so also it is written the first man,

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Adam, became a living soul. So he quotes Genesis 2 verse 7 and he says this man Adam became a living soul.

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So he was dust of the earth and God does whatever he wants with it. He forms it into a man and he blows the breath of life into Adam.

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And then Adam has this perpetual ability to continue to pass life on, right? You realize that you have life today and that at one point in time the only life was

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Adam. And we all come from Adam. We all come from Adam and Eve in fact. Even down in Noah's family we have an even smaller lineage if we go just to Noah, right?

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We're all from some one of the eight on the ark. But Adam became a living soul, able to pass on that life to others, right?

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So we have this earthly life that we received from Adam. Now we know everything's from God but God uses means and those means are where your parents, right?

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And then their parents and we all understand how to do ancestry and things like that. But Paul says the last

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Adam became a life -giving soul, right? A life -giving spirit. Well the last Adam, if you didn't know this, is

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Jesus. That's a phrase that Paul uses to describe the Lord Jesus Christ. Adam came and Adam was the head of a covenant.

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The covenant of works that was made in the garden. I hear you guys studying Reformed Theology in the Heidelberg. And so there was a covenant of works according to Reformed Theology where Adam was in he was the head of it.

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And God made a covenant with Adam and said, hey don't eat from that tree but you can eat from all these other trees. And we all know

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Adam failed. And then everybody who is born from Adam, that's all of us, is stuck under that covenant with Adam.

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You are a sinner in Adam from the moment of your conception, you know that?

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So you're a human being with value that we need to protect. You're also a God's condemnation simply because you were made by ordinary generation from Adam.

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And then Jesus came, the last Adam. And God made a covenant with Jesus Christ as well.

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And he told Jesus Christ the works that he had to do and he accomplished every single one of them perfectly. And then

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Jesus Christ by grace through faith brings people into the covenant with him. And he regenerates them and he grants them all sorts of spiritual gifts.

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And everybody in here that's a Christian has a gift of the Holy Spirit, at least one. And he gives you evidences of your salvation.

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He gives you encouragement. And you are in a covenant where Jesus Christ represents you.

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And there isn't a thing about your works that is keeping you in that covenant or got you in that covenant.

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Amen. And it's a perfect parallel. You didn't sin in the garden,

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Adam did, but you're under it. He's the federal head. Jesus Christ is the one that did everything righteous that you couldn't do.

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And you're just riding his coattails for lack of a better phrase. So you're going to go wherever Jesus goes, just like previously we went wherever Adam went.

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So Paul in verse 47 then says, the first man is from the earth, earthy.

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The second man is from heaven. He's just continuing to draw the comparison between that which is corruptible, that which is weak, that which is dishonorable, and that which is incorruptible, that which is powerful, and that which is glorious.

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Jesus Christ came from heaven. He wasn't made from the dust of the earth. He's a life -giving spirit.

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Just like Adam was able to pass on life to Cain and Abel and Seth and ultimately everybody else that you know,

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Jesus is able to pass on life to all those that he wills.

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But it's a spiritual life and it's beautiful. And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, so we all in a sense look like Adam.

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We have his sin. Have you ever heard the phrase, we have that Adamic nature? You ever heard that phrase?

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That's just a way that we say, you know, we're like our father Adam in that way. We all have this propensity for sin.

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Now some of your propensities for sin are, you know, maybe more culturally acceptable than others.

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But we all have that propensity for sin which ultimately isn't measured by how bad your sin is and how devastating it happens to be to the culture around you, but it's measured by the fact that you're a constant offense to God who made you.

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That's the measurement of your sin. Those who are prideful, the

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Bible says, will not go unpunished. So you could just secretly harbor pride in your heart because God has maybe given you a disposition that's rather righteous compared to others, and you're going to go to the same hell as guys like Hitler and child molesters and stuff.

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So Jesus Christ is what we all need to cleanse us of that Adamic nature and then give us a new nature when we put on Christ.

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And then we bear the image of the heavenly according to verse 49. When you bear the image of the heavenly, it doesn't mean we're going to look like Jesus in any physical sense.

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And some of you are going to be disappointed when I say this. In some way you might kind of look in heaven like you do now or like you did at some, you know,

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I think there's some features God maybe preserves, this variety of people. And looking like the heavenly man, looking like the last

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Adam, bearing his image has to do with acting like him, loving

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God from the heart like he does, wanting to obey God's laws, loving the things

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God loves. And I'll add in this life, hating the things God hates,

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Lord willing, I think in heaven there won't be a lot of things God hates, right? When we get to the new state, it'll be a different kind of thing.

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We can't even imagine it. You are so surrounded by your own sin, your own corruption, the corruption around you, the reality of death in this life, the reality of our hatred towards God by nature.

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We're so surrounded by it that you can't imagine what it's actually like yet to be in heaven.

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And yet God, who's so kind and gracious, I think actually gives us a taste of it on Sundays. Sometimes we mock

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Christians or some people might mock Christians a little bit and say, oh, you know, Christians, they just put on a nice face for their

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Sunday worship and then they go home and they're still, you know, rude and, you know, whatever else at home.

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And it's like, you know what? Praise the Lord that we get the nice face for a couple hours maybe, right? You know what

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I mean? I mean, for a little while you sing songs to the

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Lord and you're not thinking wicked thoughts and you're not thinking about your job and the stuff that you did that hurt somebody even that morning you kind of forgot about and they forgot about it.

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And then a guy talks about forgiveness and you start thinking, well, wait a second, do I need to forgive anybody?

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And all of a sudden we start kind of acting a little more like the Lord would have us act. You get a little taste of heaven,

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I think. Hearing the saints worship him in spirit and truth, that's a gift.

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And one day you'll be able to do that all the time. I know Johnny Erickson Tata, they asked her, they said,

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I bet you can't wait for heaven because she won't be in the wheelchair. If you don't know who she is, she's been in a wheelchair a long, long time and it's why she got saved.

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So she's thankful for it. And she said, I can't wait to be in heaven because I won't sin.

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You know, that's the glory of it is being with the Lord and being able to be in his presence and have him be your friend and not your enemy and your judge.

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So a little encouragement for you from application standpoint, point one of application, what you do and what others do with yours or their bodies matters.

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Your body matters, okay? You can't just do whatever you want with your body because, well,

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God's going to say, I'm already saved. I'm just a spiritual being. If you ever heard the phrase, we're spiritual beings having a physical experience, it sounds really pithy and almost, you know, kind of smart.

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And then you think about it, it's like, no, we're physical and we're spiritual. We are body and soul and both are important to God and God's going to redeem both.

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He just did it in a little bit. He does them in a different order. The redemption of your soul is the down payment that your body's going to be delivered.

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So we're not Gnostics. We believe in the resurrection of the body along with the apostles' creed.

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In fact, if you deny it, your Christianity should be questioned as a matter of fact.

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Now, if you're just asking about it, you're not sure, that's fine. We can talk through. There's a lot of questions new believers are going to have that are believers and they need those answered.

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But there's a difference between asking a genuine question because something's hard to understand or it's new to you and being an outright heretic.

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And if we were a little harder on heretics, maybe we wouldn't be in the situation we're in in our country right now.

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So so we should try to grow in grace and love for God and his law.

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Don't just, you know, there's that phrase, don't be so heavenly -minded, you're no earthly good, you know.

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Well, there is a little truth to that where some people, I think, they forget that they have to fight the deeds of the flesh.

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They have to do things in their body that actually show that they're spiritual. If you go, if you're rude to your wife and she says, you know, why were you just rude to me?

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It's like, well, I wasn't being rude in my spirit. It's like, well, physically you were rude, you know.

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We do things physically and I think sometimes that's God's way of letting you know that's how you really are spiritually.

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You just are denying it. You're lying to yourself, right. Not that anybody in here has ever done that,

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I'm sure. The second thing, I don't want to dig too far in this one, but if you disagree with me, we can have a discussion.

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I think part of understanding the resurrection of the body would dictate proper burial practices.

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You do not find cremation in scripture. It's a kind of a debate

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Christians have. I think that we show people what we think of the body and what's going to happen by the fact that we bury bodies.

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We don't tear them apart. Now, look, if you get eaten by a shark, you know, I get it.

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God's going to find a way to resurrect you. He can deal with all that, but we as a practice show what we think of the resurrection of the body by the way we treat dead bodies.

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So, something to think about. There's a lot of arguments about that both ways, actually.

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You can read yourself. We should fear what God will do with the bodies of those who do not repent.

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If you have loved ones, if you have neighbors, people in your lives, co -workers, people who have not turned to Jesus Christ, you need to understand that God is going to raise them to have a new body, and that new body is not going to die, and it's going to exist in unspeakable torment for all of eternity because of sin.

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And if that should drive you to want to evangelize people and to love them and to tell them about the gospel that they might be saved.

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You should have hope for the dead in Christ. Some of you know friends, family, neighbors, co -workers, people that you know that have died already.

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And the lie that there's no resurrection of the dead is pernicious partially because it's telling you that your dead one's gone.

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Your dead loved one is gone never to come back. But in 1 Thessalonians 4, we're reminded that the dead in Christ shall rise first.

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I won't turn there. And that they will be given new bodies. And it's actually the hope that Paul gives the

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Thessalonians is don't be like those without hope for your dead ones, right?

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If you're an atheist and your friend dies, it's like, well, it was fun while it lasted. I guess all you can say, right?

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You come to a Christian funeral, and it's like a celebration. People are so excited that the person's closer to Jesus, and we're going to see him again.

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That's real hope. No resurrection, you have no hope of that. But resurrection of the body, we have that hope.

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And then finally, I want you to have hope for yourself. Romans 8, if you want to turn there, this is a good passage to memorize or at least reread once in a while.

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In Romans 8, Paul is addressing the problem that a Christian has where he says, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

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Why do I keep sinning even though, Lord, you have told me I'm a Christian? You've told me I'm saved? Your spirit bears witness with my spirit that I'm a child of God, and yet I still do things that I hate.

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And I'm worried. Maybe I'm not really saved. Maybe I'm one of the fakers the

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Bible talks about. Maybe I'm one of the ones that's going to stand before you, and you're going to say, depart from me. I never knew you, which is a reality.

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And Paul's assurance to people that I want to give you today, if you're in Christ, starts in verse 16.

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The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children also heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.

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For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

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Your difficulties right now, your cancer, your hospital visits, the bum leg, your sin issues that you're fighting against, they are not worthy to even be compared with the glory that God's going to reveal to you in the next life.

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So I'm just going to close with verses 35 to 39. Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

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Will affliction, or turmoil, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

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Just as it is written, for your sake we are being put to death all day long. We were counted as sheep for the slaughter, but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us.

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And I'll insert here, because of your future bodily resurrection, when you will be made new and be brought in union with Christ, completely in body, you're already united with him.

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Paul says he's convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. Be encouraged today that because there's a future resurrection of your body, what you do with your body matters.

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Remember the verse before the rhetorical question said, stop sinning, 1

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Corinthians 15. What you do matters, but you know what evildoers do to you won't matter, because God's going to make it all new one day.

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And all the pain, and turmoil, and difficulty, and persecutions, and all the suffering that you face in this life, whether it's for Christ or just because you're part of this cursed world, will all be gone.

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And there will be no more tears and no more sickness. And so that is your hope. Father, please impress upon our hearts this hope that your word has promised to your people.

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We should not be people who despair. So Lord, through your

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Spirit's power, by grace, help us to see Jesus as the first fruits of the resurrection that we are also a part of.

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And I pray if there be anybody here today that has not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ and recognized his resurrection as the conquering over their sin and their death, that you would do that work in their heart that is most necessary.

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I pray that you would be with us as we all go out from here, that as we gather together for this taste of heaven, that we would go out and we would share that with everybody that we encounter.