1 Corinthians 15:12-34 Are We Pitiful?

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his sermon series titled,

First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Thanks for leading us in that prayer and continue to pray for that team as they're getting ready to go.

I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here and I'm really glad that we have the opportunity to be together this morning in this place.

I hope that resurrection comes to your mind more often than just once a year. And, you know, it's not

Easter Sunday, it is Palm Sunday, but I love that God just has us going through First Corinthians and kind of coming up against a passage right now that is about resurrection.

The next couple of weeks, just the next passages in First Corinthians are about resurrection. And I love that we have

Easter time as a reminder, it's a built -in reminder. But I also hope that the centrality of the belief in resurrection and the radical hope given to us through his death, burial, and resurrection follows you in every twisted turn of life, that it impacts the way that you think, the way that you live, the things that you do.

I've preached on part of this passage here before. In the past, a couple of years back, we opened our

Bibles and studied this very passage together, actually just a portion of it. But I'm not too worried about that because this passage is nearly inexhaustible in its scope and significance.

It's God's word, it's a very direct word about the centrality and significance of resurrection. And I still study this passage deeply and gain new insights, just like I think you can relate to that, like how often has

God, like you've read a passage multiple times and then it just hits you again, fresh in a new way.

I hope that that happens to you regularly, and that happened to me this week. But I love the way that Paul argues in this text for the necessity of the resurrection in the

Christian life. He goes so far as to say we are wasting our time here this morning if there is no resurrection.

You should be asleep, you should be out doing your own thing. We ought to turn the lights off, close the doors of the church and never look back if there was not a historical bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ our

Lord. And he states this in the most directive terms, you're going to see it here. We are, in his terms, we are basically epically pitiful if the resurrection is not true.

We are foolish, living for the wrong thing, focused in the wrong direction, and truly wasting the only life we've been given if there is no resurrection.

That's how strong he states it in this passage. So the question posed to us in the text this morning is our title for the message, and that is, are we pitiful?

Are we pitiful? So let's open our Bibles or your devices to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and we're going to start in verse 12 and we're going to read through verse 34.

Recast, this is God's holy word. This is what he desires for us to, what he desires to communicate to us this morning. And so I encourage you to give this reading and the text itself your full attention this morning.

So follow along, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, starting in verse 12. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised, for if the dead are not raised, not even

Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order.

Christ, the firstfruits. Then it is coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the

Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

For the last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.

But when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted, he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him.

When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?

Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our

Lord, I die every day. What do I gain if humanly speaking I fought with beasts at Ephesus?

If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Do not be deceived.

Bad company ruins good morals. Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning, for some have no knowledge of God.

I say this to your shame." Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in praise this morning.

Father, I thank you for hope. The power of the

Christian life is found in hope. We all look out and see the same world.

We all see the same brokenness. We see the same shame. We see the same disgrace.

We see the same sin. We see the same darkness. The difference for us from the world around us is that we have hope based on the belief and trust, the firm foundation of Christ's resurrection that this world is not all that we live for.

That this fleeting life of maybe 80 years, if we're fortunate, I think the average is 74 or something, and then we're gone.

We praise you that that's not all there is. That the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that the tomb was empty, showing us that there's more to live for than these fleeting days.

Father, what joy can we bring before you? What gladness have you placed in our hearts because we know that this is not all there is.

The hope that we have for those who have gone before us in the Lord, the ones that were in Christ, and we have hopes of resurrection and hopes of renewal and of reuniting with those that we love that were in you.

Father, we have hope because of what Christ has done for us, and so I pray that that hope would fuel our praise even now as we have an opportunity to have our voices mingled together in this room.

I thank you for this gathering. I thank you for bringing us together for the cause of remembering, the cause of hope, the cause of encouraging our souls, and the cause of lifting up your name for your honor and glory, and it's in Jesus' name that I pray.

Thanks to Zach for leading us in prayer. Thanks to the band for leading us in worship. I'm grateful for what they do for us every week.

I hope that if the band blesses you, I hope that you encourage Dave and those guys that are up there.

I hope you say something to them from time to time and let them know that you appreciate them. So, yeah, that's good.

That's fine. I encourage you to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open to 1

Corinthians chapter 15, verses 12 through 34. Whatever device or whatever you use to navigate to the

Bible, having that in front of you is going to enhance your ability to kind of follow along in what I'm saying here up front about it.

We're going to talk about that text. Not going to go off into my own thoughts, but we're going to try our best to make sense of that so that you leave here with better understanding about God's Word.

Last week, Paul gave us a list of people who saw Jesus after he was raised from the dead, and we saw that.

He included the apostles. He includes over 500 people in one gathering. He included himself in that.

He said, I myself beheld this. Paul clearly has zero question that Jesus is alive, and he staked his very life on that.

We'll see that by the end of the passage, how he went into risk. He went into danger because he believed that there was more to life than just this one.

There's a life beyond this. So Paul went through years of hardship and persecution, traveling around to make the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ known throughout the

Roman Empire. Paul didn't believe the resurrection in just some academic, theoretical way.

The resurrection impacted the way that he lived, what he hoped for, and even how he endured suffering in this life, and the very fact that he endured suffering in this life.

But according to verse 12, some people in the church in Corinth were saying, there is no resurrection of the dead. There's some who are saying that.

Now, down through the ages, there's been a common and hard -to -shake philosophy called dualism.

It's fairly common among humans in general, and it's creeped into the church as well. It's infiltrated the modern church in America, and it's all around us.

It's a philosophy that states that the material world is bad, the stuff of earth is bad, and the spiritual world is good.

So that kind of creeps into, like, having a quiet time matters, but working for my employer doesn't.

Or we have all different kinds of thoughts that we can think of as, like, yeah, my job delivering packages all day is not that valuable, not that important, but reading my

Bible is or something like that. Just doing the spiritual things are good. It's taken many forms in various areas of human history, but in Roman times, it was a very, very popular belief, and it took the form of a particular category of belief called

Gnosticism. It's likely that some in the church in Corinth were raised on this philosophy that we're all just souls trapped in a body seeking to get out, and the goal of life is to shed this mortal shell and be set free to go back to God as a pure spirit is the notion behind that.

And unfortunately, again, it's a common Christian error. Many think that our goal and final destination is to be free of this world, just to fly off to heavenly places to sit on clouds and strum harps forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, and I think my fingers would get sore after strumming that harp too long, right?

If that's all I got to do, of course, they're spiritual fingers, right? So I don't know. I don't know what people really think.

Does your hand pass through the harp, or is it a spiritual harp? I don't know. Paul is disagreeing with dualism throughout this passage.

Fundamentally, he's saying the grave was empty. Jesus raised physically. He's a physical being.

Even now, he is physical. In Corinth, there were some denying the resurrection, I believe based on philosophy, but nowadays we just have a tendency to dismiss it on the basis of science, right?

Like, scientism is kind of a big thing today, and unless we're in a horror film, dead people just don't come back, right?

They do frequently there, but not so much here, and that's what's observable for basically all of human existence.

We lay people into the grave, and they stay there, except for one. Except for one, and Paul wants us to focus our attention this morning on that one.

If it can be shown that a single person has genuinely been killed, genuinely been buried, stopped breathing, and no heartbeat for three days, and then come back with strength and vigor, then that ought to change our perspective on what is truly possible.

That changes everything, and that's what Paul is saying here in verse 13, kind of from the reverse side.

If there is no resurrection from the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. You can't say that there is no resurrection of the dead, but Jesus was raised from the dead.

No, then there's resurrection from the dead, right? But there are some very serious implications if Jesus was not raised from the dead on the

Lord's Day morning around 2 ,000 years ago. We're going to celebrate heavily next week, and so our outline this morning goes like this.

The first is negative implications if Christ is not raised, verses 14 through 19, and that's actually going to be six negative implications if Christ is not raised, and then the facts of his resurrection, or rather the fact of his resurrection, verses 20 through 22, and then ad hoc concerns about resurrection, verses 23 through 34, where he's going to address situational things pertaining particularly to the

Corinthians there. But verses 14 through 19 include six negative implications. We'll run through these.

We start right away in verse 14 with one of the negative implications. If Christ was not raised, then what is, where would we find ourselves if that's true?

If they're right in their contention that Jesus did not come out of the grave, then what does that mean for us?

And in verse 14, Paul says that if Christ hasn't been raised, you should pay no attention to the apostles' teaching because the apostles consistently say he's raised.

They're liars. If Christ is not raised, then you should throw out the New Testament, throw it all away.

The preaching of the apostles of Jesus, including Paul, is vain or empty. It's worthless.

It's useless. It's garbage. They're liars if Jesus Christ did not raise.

That's implication number one. Number two, the logical corollary to this is found in the remainder of verse 14.

You can see it there in the text, if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is in vain as well. Not just their teaching, but your faith is empty.

Do you truly think, and I want you to just kind of have a little internal dialogue with yourself for a minute, do you truly think that your faith is completely worthless or garbage if Jesus was not raised?

Are you that centered on it? Does it matter that much to you? It should. If we harbor any notions, like I think in my younger days

I might have thought this way, well, at least my faith gives me a moral and upstanding life, right? Like at least it gives me a direction, at least it gives a morality, a focus, or something like that.

But if there is no resurrection, that's not a noble thought. That's not a noble thought at all.

It only reveals my former appetite for hypocrisy. That's what it reveals to us.

If we're okay with a religion based on lies, but okay, at least it makes you a good person, that's not a good message at all.

How comfortable would you be with living a lie? Would you be all good if your faith and your life was based on a good lie?

A lie that produced morality, a lie that got you to do good things and give to the poor and stuff like that?

Is that good? But the way Paul speaks here leaves me no doubt as to where he would be on Sunday morning were the resurrection to be proven false, and it would not be in church.

He would not be here. He would not be going to church on Sunday mornings if that was just a lie, if it wasn't true.

In verse 15, we see the third implication. If the resurrection is not a genuine historical event, we could rightly be identified as those who bear false witness about God.

Every time we've shared the gospel, every time that we have declared that Jesus Christ is raised, if He has not, then we are liars.

And not just any run -of -the -mill liar, but we're a liar against God. How many of you think that sounds pretty severe?

Like lying and perjuring yourself against what God has done, about what He has done. We cannot have any middle ground on this church.

Either we are purveyors of truth when we proclaim the gospel, or we are in opposition to God when we proclaim

Him raised. Our religious message is not neutral if it is false.

It is one of the most terrible and wicked lies if billions of people since the times of Christ have placed a false hope in Him.

That is terrible. How many have been martyred? How many have given up pleasures?

How many have surrendered and sacrificed good things in this life at the hope of eternity? If this is a lie, it is a major, massive lie.

And it is a major and massive lie against the Almighty. Let me point out, though, that to apply verse 15 assumes that we are representing

God, that you are out -representing Him, that we are talking to the world about His resurrection.

Paul assumes that where the servants of God represent God, the resurrection will be discussed.

He expects us to bring that message and to be talking to others about the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior.

See, Jesus Christ died for our sins, and if that's where the story ends, if all that your gospel message ever contains is

He died for you and there is no resurrection, that's not good news yet.

It's not good news yet. Without the resurrection, Jesus gets a 50%, which last time I checked is not a very good score.

Right? That's not a good score. We have two primary enemies that have to be dealt with for us to be reconciled to God in relationship.

Those two enemies are sin and death. Sin and death are our two greatest enemies.

Both came into the world through Adam and Eve in the garden when they took the fruit, and both have been our constant enemies and barriers in our lives.

Death haunts us down every day of our life. We know that there's a day coming when we will not be here anymore, right?

That's sobering. It's meant to be sobering. It's meant to make us think about how we live and what we do and who we trust and whether this is all there is.

It's meant to cause us to think those questions. If sin is taken care of but death is not, then we have only hope for this life until death finally sweeps us away and we're done.

We need resurrection to complete the story. Fourth, and this is where 16 and 17 lead into the...verses

16 and 17 lead into the fourth implication of if Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile and we are still in our sins.

Take those two together. Our faith is futile and we are still in our sins. The resurrection shows the vindication of Jesus Christ before the

Father. How do we know that His sacrifice was acceptable to the Father? By the resurrection.

How do we know that our sins have actually been dealt with? By the resurrection. The word futile in verse 17 differs subtly from our faith being vain.

Verse 14 mentioned that our faith is vain. But here now it says that it is futile.

I don't know how to pronounce that. I say it both ways, futile, futile, whatever. Futile has a nuance of powerless in it.

Cracking up at my...I don't know. If you say it confidently, but what happens if you say it confidently two different ways?

I don't know. Futile has a nuance of powerless. The power of our faith is within the resurrection is what he's getting at here.

The power to believe that our sins have truly been washed away by the Son who is acceptable to the

Father. The power to have a genuine hope that this world is not all that there is. It's all wrapped up in the resurrection.

The power to live for something beyond my own pleasure and my own self -made kingdom is found in the resurrection.

A trust for a life yet to come. Verse 18 gives the fifth implication.

If Christ wasn't raised, and it comes out of left field to us a little bit. If Jesus was not raised, then all of our loved ones who have preceded us at death in Christ are gone.

They have all perished. This is an appeal to an emotional desire within all of humanity to be reunited with those that we love, right?

Is that not just a consistent and common thing in the human heart? A desire to be reunited with those that we love that have gone on and passed away before us?

I hold out hope that even the most hard -hearted person that I know who's passed on may have repented in their final moments.

I find deep hope in that one thief on the cross beside Jesus. Do you find hope in him? I certainly do.

You see, according to Matthew 27, verse 44, you can jot that down, don't turn over there, but according to Matthew 27, verse 44, both thieves, both thieves, both thieves were mocking and reviling

Jesus as they carried their crosses up to Calvary. They were mocking him.

They were making fun of him. They were reviling him, it says. Where they were all three were going to be crucified that day, but one of them, over the course of those hours hanging there on the cross observing the things that Christ said and the way that he was acting, they had a change of heart.

We don't even know his name, but in those very poignant moments before he died, he turned over to Jesus, and with a shocking simplicity of faith, he turned to him, acknowledged that Jesus had done nothing wrong, acknowledged his innocence, and asked him, acknowledged that he's a king, and said, remember me when you come into your kingdom, and what did

Jesus say to him? Today, you will be with me in paradise, and Jesus pledged salvation to him then and there in his final moments.

I take hope in that. I don't know what God does in those last breathing moments of somebody that I love.

I know I share the gospel with them. I don't know where that goes, but I have hope because God can save anybody in the last moments.

Paul expresses that the only logical reason for that hope is the resurrection of Jesus.

It is merely wishful thinking without evidence that we will see those who have gone on before us again without the resurrection.

The evidence must be the resurrection of our Lord and Savior. And the final implication is that if Christ has not been raised, this is where the title of the message comes from, then we have only hope in this life, and that makes us pitiful, or maybe even better translation, pitiable, worthy of the world's pity.

Oh, poor Christians. Look at all that they're sacrificing. Look at all that they're giving up for this fake and false mythology.

Oh, I feel bad for them. Oh, don't feel bad for me. The implication of the resurrection certainly has an impact on this present life and is meant to.

No, we don't climb up onto our rooftops watching the clouds waiting for the Lord to return. We have responsibilities in the here and now that are informed by this gospel message.

The resurrection breathes eternal life into us when we believe. The resurrection rearranges our priorities.

It makes us live for more than ourselves. It gives us a message to share and the power to share it with others.

That power can be defined in a word that I prayed over us earlier, and that is hope.

What does the resurrection provide to us in the here and now? Hope. The resurrection teaches us to cling less to this present life as evidenced in the life of Paul.

This existence is not the only one that I'm going to get. And so, I live with a new perspective.

Carpe diem is not to be the cry of the Christian, that this day must produce all.

We've got to just suck the moral out of this day. That's a living for now kind of perspective.

Carpe diem is a Latin phrase that means seize today. Do you guys remember the

YOLO craze a few years ago? I'm dating myself, yeah, but YOLO, you only live once, right?

So just go get it. Go get after it. I joked with Linda and my family and my kids roll their eyes, but I'm like, no,

YOLT. You only live twice. They never liked it.

They never liked it, but I'm going to guess by your laughter you didn't either. No, we ought to live by a different adage.

I actually eventually had it tattooed on my arm because I value this that much, and I was very thoughtful about my tattoo.

Carpe aeternum is Latin for seize or live for eternity. Seize or live for eternity.

We need not suck the moral out of this day because we have countless days to live.

Countless days. This day can never ever fulfill the longing of our hearts.

Have you had some good days? Raise your hand if you've had some good days. Days you'd like to put on repeat and live that baby a month or two.

I could just cycle through that day, right? Some good days. But death has placed a limit on our days.

While deep within us, God has given into every single human heart an eternity, a hunger and a desire for more that this day cannot fulfill.

You won't get enough. Ecclesiastes is emphatic about that. The wisdom of King Solomon who declared,

God has placed eternity in your hearts and you will always be longing for more. If the only thing that is impacted by Christ is a hope for better days here and now, and then we die, that's a pitiful story.

We are pitiable if that's the story. If he has not reversed the curse given in the garden, then we have an empty and powerless hope.

So are we pitiful, church? Is our faith empty and powerless? Are we bearing false witness about God when we share the death, burial and resurrection of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with a world that's in need of that hope? Are we still stuck in our sins?

And that leads to the second point of the text, the fact of his resurrection. Verses 20 through 22.

Paul states in emphatic terms, knowing all that is at stake in his answer, knowing that if he answers this wrong, he is perjuring himself against God Almighty.

He says this, by confidence in his own experience with the risen Christ, he says, in fact, in fact, it's true.

This is the center of this passage about the veracity, the truthfulness of the resurrection. This is where Paul expresses his strong and unwavering confidence that Jesus Christ was bodily raised from the grave.

So let's camp on that phrase, in fact, for just a moment. This is a sweet, sweet phrase in our world right now, the in fact.

In fact, I think we're living in a world that abuses the word fact, right? But Paul has dignified his readers with evidence that his facts are true.

He spells out the many witnesses to the resurrected Christ earlier in the passage. He explains that what he has personally at stake in all of this, and what he's laid on the line for this truth, including his very life, risking his very life, and yet he sticks to his guns.

Jesus has, in fact, been raised. He is risen. And his resurrection has significant ramifications for all who belong to Jesus Christ by faith.

The second half of verse 20 explains the relationship between the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of His people.

Jesus is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Now, this requires a little explanation.

In the Old Testament, there was an offering given during the harvest season called the firstfruits offering.

It was the first portion of the harvest, and it was given before the rest of the produce was harvested.

And this is all with intention. It was a sacrifice of faith that showed a trust in God that was willing to give the very first of the produce to God.

In this sense, it was fashioned as trust. Now, think about it in an agricultural setting where you're living like hand to mouth.

Like you've got to...you bring in that grain, you want to grind that up and make some bread, like right now, right?

Like right now. And so to give that offering to God in that way is pretty substantial.

It's a significant sacrifice to give that in hopes and trust that God's going to provide more.

He's going to bring in more harvest. In this sense, it was fashioned as that firstfruits sacrifice was trust in God to bring in the rest of the harvest.

So what is He saying when He says that Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection? He's the first down payment of many resurrections.

Just like that portion of the harvest is a first down payment of the harvest that is to come.

I heard an illustration on this once, and I don't remember where it comes from, so just know it's not my original content. I don't want to plagiarize anybody, but I don't even know who it is.

But it speaks to my heart well because I love ice cream. Anybody else love ice cream? Yeah. Illustrations that include ice cream get to me.

You see, the resurrection of Jesus is like the sample spoon at the ice cream shop. I think Baskin -Robbins still has the pink ones, right?

That pink spoon that gives you an opportunity to taste them all, right? It provides a foretaste of the ice cream that is to come.

It's like the firstfruits of really, really good things on the way. In Christ, we have the first of many resurrections.

He has secured our resurrection through His. And so we start to see the mechanism at work in resurrection in verses 21 through 22.

In the same way that death came through one man, Adam, resurrection and eternity, rather eternal life, has come through one man,

Jesus. Through a man came death. Through a man has come eternal life. All who are in Adam are bound to death.

All who are in Christ are bound to eternal life. And our last section requires less of our time by the nature of these concerns being ad hoc concerns.

Ad hoc means situational to the current events. Ad hoc meaning kind of just like a smattering of issues and questions and things that they might have in their context.

These spoke more directly to the specifics of Paul and Corinth. And for this reason, we encounter some confusing things here that need to be explained.

And it doesn't mean that just because they're ad hoc they don't speak to us, but they need to be explained a little bit. The first ad hoc concern pertains to a question that might have led the

Corinthians to even doubt the resurrection itself. And it's this question that likely they asked to him that he's answering here in these first couple of verses.

Why are the dead not popping out of the tomb regularly? If Jesus Christ bought resurrection, why do we bury them and they stay there?

Why is this not like just pop, pop, pop and people are just coming back? And verses 23 through 28 answer that question with a discourse on the timing of the resurrection to explain when it's going to happen.

God who is a God of order and not a God of chaos, as Paul has just said in a previous chapter, is working a plan.

And that plan has first the resurrection of Jesus and then at His coming, those who belong to Him.

And that will signal the end when Jesus will deliver the kingdom to the Father and destroy all sinful powers and remove all who oppose

His rule and reign. Two things are worth mentioning about this section. First is that Jesus is the

King of a kingdom that will be delivered to His Father. The kingdom, when you see the word kingdom, don't get confused.

Where there is a kingdom, there is a King in subjects. So when you hear the word kingdom mentioned in Scripture, think the

King. Oh, I know who that King is. When you hear the word kingdom, think about His rule and reign through Jesus Christ, His Son.

The kingdom is those people who are subjects of the King that's going to be in the end delivered to the

Father. Those who have been brought into allegiance to Jesus by His great grace and His mercy and His love.

That's what we're talking about when we're talking about the kingdom. But the end of verse 24 and 25 might sound harsh to our ears when we consider what it implies.

Jesus has enemies. Look at verses 24 and 25. Jesus has enemies.

There are real people who desire to stay outside of His kingdom.

They desire to stay outside of His rule and reign. Every single person who will be condemned and removed from His presence in the end is a person who hates

God and doesn't want Him and does not want His ways. This goes for the most religious person who thinks they deserve credit for all their own righteousness to the most hard -hearted worshiper of demonic idols and Satan.

The only person to be condemned will be the one who can't stand God. That's the person who's condemned.

Can't stand His presence. Can't stand His people. Can't stand His merciful ways.

They will be cast out from His presence because they do not want His presence. Do you hear me, church?

Those who are condemned do not want God's presence. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to agree with N .D.

Wilson who says they would be happy to be in heaven if they could change one thing, God's presence.

If they could remove God from heaven, they would be glad to go there. But they just can't abide being that close to Him.

They don't want to be there. And so Jesus will reign and rule His way, conquer

His way into an eternal kingdom without sin and death, without pain or sorrow.

And when it's all said and done, and He delivers this kingdom to His Father and He has subdued all of His enemies,

He says the last enemy to be defeated will be, what does it say? Death.

And then the Son will sit in joy under the reign and rule of the Eternal Father so that it concludes, this section includes, that God the

Father will be all in all. Meaning, God's rule will finally fulfill what we are called to commonly pray.

Jesus asked His followers, how should we pray? Jesus taught us this phrase in the middle of His prayer,

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Think that through. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth even as it is in heaven.

And that is what it means for God to be all in all. His sovereign will carried forward forever without sin or death.

That's a kingdom I long to see. That's an eternity worth living for. However many days

He gives me here. An eternal kingdom where He will reign in all of His righteous perfections and we will worship

Him by living for Him without sin or flaw. Does that stir anyone's heart here?

Does that stir you, the idea of worshiping Him without sin, without brokenness, without any barrier between you and Him?

The second ad hoc concern is short and confusing and found in verse 29. I believe that this verse pertains to an issue among the

Corinthians that I think was quite unique to them. I think this is something they were doing that very few other churches were doing, if any other churches were doing.

The most direct reading of what they were doing in verse 29 is that some were being baptized on behalf of the dead.

Dead friend dies, they would have a baptismal service. Somebody vicariously is baptized in their place on behalf of them.

Not a good thing. Not right. And yet, something that Paul uses as an illustration.

Just like we can use all different kinds of things as illustrations that we don't endorse, right? Paul doesn't endorse this activity and this never took root in the

Christian church. As a matter of fact, I did some research. The only group currently practicing anything like this, anything similar, are the

Mormons who are baptized and do perform baptisms on behalf of the dead. The only place that we find that is in a cult.

This was clearly something that was squashed in the early church, so you might just ask the question, why does it show up here? It's just merely an illustration from their practices and behaviors.

And I can illustrate what Paul is doing here by doing the exact same thing using something different. I think it's going to make more sense when

I do it. Have you ever noticed how Hindus believe in reincarnation? How many of you knew that Hindus believe in reincarnation?

You knew that. So they believe in reincarnation. And the fact that nearly a billion people on the planet believe in reincarnation shows that God has put eternity into the hearts of mankind.

He has put within our hearts the desire and the hunger for more than just this life. Even many wayward beliefs and practices like baptism for the dead or reincarnation demonstrate a human expectation for more beyond this life than the one that we are given.

And that's what he's doing here in referencing their baptism for the dead. Are you not betraying your own notion that there is such a thing as resurrection?

Are you not betraying the idea that there's something beyond this life by baptizing for the dead? By no means is he endorsing it.

He's just using their wayward expression to say, you're being hypocrites. If you follow through on this behavior, then you're being a hypocrite if you don't believe in resurrection but you're doing this thing.

He's not endorsing baptism for the dead. It's just like, I don't endorse reincarnation but I just use it as an illustration.

Do you kind of walk away from this message going, Don believes in reincarnation because he uses it as an illustration? No, and just like that,

I don't think Paul believes in baptism for the dead despite using it as an illustration. We can still use these things this way and not believe that they're true.

Verse 29 is an obscure comment on baptism on behalf of the dead. In all of the scriptures, it's unique.

I believe it's local and it's fading so fast that it's barely referenced at all again in the early church fathers, the early church writers.

It just doesn't show up there. The third ad hoc concern is verses 30 through 32.

It answers the question, why risk hardship if there is no resurrection? If there's no resurrection, what poses the question?

Why would we risk anything? We would live a very safe life if we thought that this world was all that there is.

Is that not a testament to the way that we live in our culture today?

All risk mitigated. Everybody, safety, safety, safety first. Why are we such a safety -driven culture?

YOLO. Right? We are safety -driven because YOLO. You only live once.

No. No, you don't. No, you don't. Certainly, it doesn't mean that you go all willy -nilly and just risk it all all the time.

Oh man, there's got to be risk in this Christian life. There's meant to be risk. Paul lived.

Did you know that Paul lived a very risky life as an example to us? He is exemplary in his risk.

Letting a lot on the line. Going out in dicey, stormy waters to get across the

Aegean Sea so that he could share the gospel with people in Greece and in Italy and all over the place. He was risky in his life.

Sowing this one life for the life that is to come. Sowing temporary time for eternal life.

Just like Jesus said, where should you put your treasure? There on the other side.

Put your treasure over there on the other side. In this sense, Paul serves as a model of serving Christ in a way that involves risk.

I don't think he literally fought beasts in Ephesus in verse 32. You can look there. There's no evidence that there was even kind of like a coliseum of that sort in Ephesus where they would put people to death by beasts or whatever.

But rather, I believe he's referring to wolves inside and outside the church. That he had a hard time planting the church in Ephesus.

And he had a lot of opposition everywhere that he went, including Ephesus. So he mentions it there. Why would I even put up with this?

Why would I put up with the stress of starting churches? Why would I put up with the stress of dealing with evil people if it wasn't for the resurrection?

And he's saying here that he lived in a way that was intentionally risky. Rather than carpe diem, he lived carpe aeternum.

Because he put his money where his mouth was. Rather than eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die, he suffered, he endured, and he sacrificed for Christ now because there is an eternity to live for after this life.

And we have a hard time getting past the fear that somebody might make fun of us at our workplace if we share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Are we sissies? Are we gospel sissies? Well, I think

I've been. At times and seasons and moments, I've just kept my mouth shut when

I knew I was supposed to open it. You guys know what I'm talking about? This isn't in my notes, I don't know why. Certainly the word sissy wasn't in there.

Paul lived risky. And we, even the most bold among us,

I think, live risky light. Right? I don't imagine that there's a workplace that any of you go to that's going to literally pick up stones and say, say it again, say that Jesus died and rose again one more time.

We're going to end this. But Paul faced that, didn't he? Beaten, stoned, left for dead for the cause of the gospel because he trusted and believed that the resurrection is true.

Beat this body to death, and it will rise again. That's the hope. How firmly do you trust that?

I would say I wonder if we really believe it. I wonder if we really believe it because we don't sow our lives like it.

Verses 33 through 34 represent the final ad hoc concern specifically to the church in Corinth. He is concerned for their local fellowship.

And he tells them to beware of what you put up with in the church. That's what he's getting at in this last ad hoc thing because they are putting up with some pretty crazy beliefs there.

And he says those who don't know God and are vocal about their false beliefs will corrupt a church.

That's what he's getting at. Just like bad apple spoils the bunch, bad company ruins good morals. And what he's implying here is that they ought to make the belief in resurrection a deal breaker for membership in the church.

In verse 34, he literally declares that some within the church of Corinth have no knowledge of God. That's what he's saying.

There are some in your church that don't even know God and you're giving up a platform. You should be ashamed to be giving a platform to those who don't even know

God and letting them speak, letting them talk, letting them convince and argue. Recast, I want to recenter us all in the glorious death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to deal with our enemies of sin and death.

And I want to remind you that his tomb was empty. His destiny is our destiny.

We will be like him when he raises us from the grave. Remember, like him, like this.

He ate fish. He let people touch his wounds. He walked the roads around Israel. He sat and talked with his disciples.

He was no phantom. And so, let me just say these things.

We draw near to the close. Christ has been raised, so our message is significant.

Christ has been raised, so our faith is significant. Christ has been raised, so we are speaking the truth about God when we testify to the gospel.

Christ has been raised, so our sins have been paid for. Christ has been raised, so there is hope for our loved ones who have died in Christ.

Christ has been raised, so we have hope for a life to come. Christ has been raised, so we are not pitiful.

In fact, in fact, in fact, Christ has been raised.

And so, we come to communion this morning, and as we come to these tables, please only participate if you've asked

Jesus Christ to rescue you from your sins. And if you're at peace with your brothers and sisters here, you look around and you don't have animosity, you don't have anything that you need to make right.

If you do have something that you need to make right, maybe this is a moment to walk across the room and apologize and confess to somebody.

Maybe there's some reconciliation that needs to happen somewhere here, and you need to make that right. Maybe it's a text, maybe it's a phone call before you take communion again.

And it's just about the unity in the body, being together and showing that you're together.

When you go to those tables, you're testifying that you're together, and so make sure that that's true. But if Christ is your

Lord and Savior, then come to the tables to take the cracker to remember his body broken for us, and take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed for us.

I don't say you, I say us with intention. I don't know if you've caught that, but when

I'm introducing communion, I say us. Christ died for us, his body broken for us, his blood shed for us, because we do this together.

And rejoice that death did not get the final word in the story. It doesn't get the final word in the story.

He was willing to endure the torment of crucifixion on Good Friday for us, and that's the Friday coming up.

But he did so for the joy that was set before him. And the Father gave him the privileged position of the firstborn from the dead.

Recast lets live out the resurrection by embracing the hope of eternal life that is only available by faith in Jesus Christ.

Don't live for the cheap and temporary pleasures of this world, not carpe diem, not YOLO, but live and sow your life boldly for eternity.

Share the glorious hope that you have with others around you. Tell them about your king who conquered death for us.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the glorious fact of the resurrection, the thing that drives us to trust in more than this life, no longer trying to just squeeze out of this day the greatest day we can have, but instead living for eternity, sowing our days, sowing our weeks and our months and our years for the cause of Christ, storing up treasure there by loving well, by declaring what is true and what is glorious and where we find our hope.

Father, doing all that we do for the glory of Jesus, and I do pray that you would make us more bold. I confess to missing opportunities, not looking for opportunities, not keeping my eyes open to opportunities, and I ask that you would help me, help us as a church to be more bold in these days.

We don't know how many more days we have as individuals. We don't know how many more days we have in freedom to share this message.

I pray that you would empower and give your church, your marching orders to go out with boldness to declare this glorious, glorious hope that your son came to earth, died on the cross, was buried and really, really, really dead and rose again victorious on the third day, just with power, with vigor, with purpose, that he would be the firstfruits of those who have come back from the dead, the promise that he's given to us.

I pray that you would empower us to live for that, to really believe it, to really trust it, and to really sow our lives according to it.