The Abolishment of Death

Good morning, everybody. Good to see you all and happy Easter. As dad often says and I wholeheartedly agree with, every single

Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection. Every Sunday is the Lord's Day. Every Sunday by simply going into the word of God, preaching his whole counsel, contemplating these things together, we celebrate his resurrection.

But there is something very special about Easter Sunday, even if in large part plays into tradition just as much as the history itself, because it is one of those rare days where you have our brothers and sisters on a global scale, gathering together in our own unique local church environments and things like that, and commemorating this grand historical event at the same time.

And there is something very special about that. And it can bring great joy, it should bring great joy.

And of course, today is no different. And it's a wonderful opportunity to get to bring this message and to be with all of you this morning.

If you'd like to turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter one, 2 Timothy chapter one.

You know, it kind of goes without saying with everything going on around the world, it's always crazy, there's always chaos.

There are always things that we can be up in arms about, stressed out about, anxious about.

That is one common theme, of course, that has strung together every generation for all of human history.

But certainly in the last 2000 years of Christian history, since the resurrection, the persecution has never stopped.

It has gotten better, the Lord's grace and mercy has shown itself in so many different ways. But if you're talking about that global scale we mentioned a second ago, you know, life is tough and it's especially tough for believers.

But what's interesting about it is it's tough for everybody else too, but in a different way.

And we're gonna talk about that a little bit to kind of set this up, to give us some contrast with what we rest in as believers that this passage is about to expound upon for us a little bit.

And it's a really interesting thing. Let's start with the scriptures first and then talk about the solution to the problems that humanity faces today.

Let's look at 2 Timothy chapter one and start in verse seven with me. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me his prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose in grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our

Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, whereinto

I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for bringing us together this morning. Thank you for giving us this wonderful opportunity in a world that has quite literally gone mad in so many ways to have this pocket of peace that we as a local church can experience together to join in our worship and in our fellowship and in our praise of you to celebrate the resurrection of your son, the day that we were set free, the day that our salvation in him was sealed.

We thank you for this opportunity for us to celebrate that, for us to open up the pages of your word and look at what it has to say, what your apostles, what

Jesus himself has to say about this glorious event, what it means to us, what it means to humanity at large.

We thank you again for giving us this time together. We ask that you bless it. We ask that every word spoken is consistent with your word, that you bless our time and our fellowship together and that you bless all of it once more.

We ask these things in the name of your son, amen. Now, to go back to what

I started with a second ago, humanity has a number of problems, a number of problems that need solutions and ultimately those problems culminate in a particular one.

But let me start with this before I get there. When God created time, he created it for our benefit and that can be a little bit tough for us to grasp sometimes.

It can be hard for us to kind of comprehend that reality without thinking about it for a bit because we feel the heaviness of time as we live our lives now.

When things are good, it's going by too fast. When things are bad, it seems like it slows down and even more than that, the decay of all that which we love becomes more and more apparent as time trucks on.

But even though that's the case, and like I said, that can make it a little bit tough for us to comprehend this truth, we need to remember that first truth.

When God created time, he created it for our benefit, not as a curse, but for our benefit.

And the reason, or at least one reason why we can figure this out and start to think through it is because time itself is a creature just like we are.

Now, it goes without saying, it's in a category of its own, but it is fundamentally a creature just like we are.

And so when the eternal Godhead determined to create a universe that would be of a finite nature, something that had limitations by design, that had a finite nature, it required time as a grid in order to allow sequence to occur, in order to allow linear time to unfold and for events to happen in a particular order and all of these things.

It was meant to be a measurement of progress in time, of man's progress in time, of his subduing and of his dominion.

So if you think about that a little bit, had Adam hypothetically never sinned, what would have happened is the human race's progression in sequence, in time, would have been a completely positive thing.

And therefore time, again, we can deduce, was a good thing to rejoice in in the Garden of Eden.

It wasn't something to be feared. It wasn't something to find a solution for. It was something to rejoice in because what it meant was progress was taking place.

And more than that, sinless progress was taking place. And so what do you have?

You have Adam put in the garden. You have time given to him to measure that progress, total subduing, total dominion, total expansion of heaven on earth.

But at the same time, without defacing the creation itself, which we have to be honest, one of the results of the fall, one of the results of our sin is that as we take dominion now, there are times when we can really make things ugly in the process.

You know, you can set up a solar field in Indiana and have a bad hailstorm, and then those heavy metals sterilize that soil for a millennia.

You can look at a number of ways. Landfills, plastic is just awful. The more

I think about it, the more it bothers me. I won't get on a soapbox on that, but the point is when we try to take dominion, when we try to subdue, sometimes we can make things pretty ugly in the process as well.

But that wasn't the case in the garden. In the garden, it would have been perfect subduing, perfect dominion, perfect conquering, with time as a positive thing to measure that progress as Adam and all of his offspring that would have come even without sin.

Again, this is totally hypothetical because the lamb was slain before the foundation of the world, we know that.

But it's a thought experiment we're thinking about because it actually reminds us of what is to come in the restoration of earth.

And so that would have been the case for Adam and for Eve and for their offspring. Total subduing, total dominion, total expansion.

That was what the Lord delivered to his image bearers at the beginning of time. But the moment that sin did enter the picture, time became a perceived enemy of humanity, and that's why we have to grapple with it now.

That's why all of the sudden, it doesn't seem like this thing that was originally instituted for our benefit.

It seems like something that is kind of there to hurt us to some degree, to bring that decay about.

It all of the sudden, when sin entered the picture, became a measurement of decay rather than a measurement of sinless progression.

Now, it's because of this that we start to see where some of the problem lies for the human race.

It's because of this that mankind runs into a severe issue, and that is the problem of time and coming up with a solution for it.

How do you escape that? How do you escape this ticking clock?

Could be a clicking clock as well. But how do you beat that? How do you escape it? How do you avoid the measurement of decay and the progression of decay rather than the progression of that sinless subduing and things of that sort?

How do you fix this? To what degree can time be changed into a positive progression again rather than one of decay?

Well, as it turns out, this has been an incredible source of frustration for mankind, certainly for the thought leaders and the philosophers of many past generations, certainly of our present generation.

And this is partly because man was created with an innate desire to have dominion. We have to remember that which was instilled in Adam's being at creation when life was breathed into him, that has carried on in perpetuity in every human being.

Every human is an image bearer of the living God, whether they recognize that or not. And so when people try to fight against nature, when they try to harness nature itself in opposition to how

God, for lack of a better term, programmed it, it's always going to lead to failure because regardless of whether you want to say there's a

God or not, you're going to follow in the paths that have been set.

And so because man was created with this innate desire to take dominion, they are left with this problem, this negative feeling that comes with the continuation of time because in order to take dominion, the way that we have been programmed to desire, the way we've been programmed to yearn for, dominion implies victory.

In fact, dominion necessitates victory. It necessitates a point when all things culminate in that victorious moment of, again, dominion, of subduing, of bringing heaven to earth once and for all and to make all things new.

And so when victory is removed from the big picture, when victory is removed from the set that we have fallen into and with that continuation of time, all of the sudden, meaning and purpose is lost with it.

If victory is removed from the big picture, so goes meaning and purpose. And of course, this is a terrible place for humans to find themselves because as we know, a life without purpose, a life without meaning ultimately leads to destruction.

In the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 9 .3, he says this, this is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event or one destiny or one fate unto all.

Yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil and madness is in their heart while they live.

And after that, they go to the dead. This is the reality. For the large majority of human beings, certainly anyone throughout all of history that has denied the lordship of our king and has refused to yield to his will over their own, it leads to destruction because when you remove victory from dominion, you remove purpose, you remove meaning.

And so man is left with the choice and that particular crossroads, you've denied

God and so now what, time is continuing to move, decay is happening around me, I have this yearning to take dominion and yet I have these natural forces that are against me.

What is to do now? What do you do when you are left with a decision that in which

God has been removed from? One of the decisions is to essentially fall off into the void of meaninglessness.

You just say, well, can't do anything about it anyway. And so you live a life of vanity, you live a life of essentially indulging every whim that you can think of.

We do what is right in our own eyes as was the case in the time of the judges in the time before the flood and all chaos ensues.

So a person can choose to simply fall off into the void of meaninglessness or the other option would be to take matters into their own hands to try to construct a solution to the problem of time.

And of course, we know that many choose the former, many choose the option, the route of simply indulging in their sin to become a slave of it deeper and deeper and a deeper level until their life is up.

And as Solomon says, after that, they go to the dead. Sadly, the great tragedy of the human experience throughout time is that a huge majority of people have opted for that option.

Or the other thing you can do for those that want the influence, for those who want to construct a solution, those who choose that will ultimately do anything and everything that they can to achieve their goal to ascend to the heavens by their own power.

And this goes all the way back to the beginning as well, all the way back to the beginning of human history. This is nothing new.

This is something that we've dealt with for a long time. When that happens, when that choice is made, history then becomes nothing more than an instrument of control for mankind to wield.

And because of that, those that want a solution, they will attempt to seize any amount of influence, any amount of power, any amount of wealth, any kind of technological advancement that they can grasp.

They will do that so that they can achieve immortality or at least continue to attempt to achieve immortality continuously.

Now, in the pagan and secularist perspectives, the reason why they find themselves in this situation is because they have denied

God. And because of that, they believe that mankind is a product of nature. Rather than being children of the living creator, they believe they're a product of nature.

And because of that, man's only hope is left in their ability to bend the rules, to bend the rules of nature, to reverse the effects of time so that decay is no longer that ever -present enemy that is bearing down upon them every moment of every day.

But it's when you start digging into that that you realize what the real problem actually is.

Because it's not actually time that's the problem. Remember, God created time for our benefit.

He created it as an inherently good thing, something to measure the progress of his image -bearers in a sinless state.

But what makes time feel like a problem is actually death. And of course, death is the wages of sin.

That is why time feels like a problem. And so mankind struggles against nature in this battle against death itself, racing against time to expand their life and hope that they'll discover the secret to preserving life indefinitely, because it was built in them.

They desire dominion. And ultimately, because of that, they desire victory. Well, how are you gonna get it with all of nature against you, as it were?

How are you gonna get it? And of course, it's no wonder that literally every philosophical school of thought you can look at throughout time always ends in some form of a utopian idea, because that's the victory that they're shooting for.

You could look at Plato's Republic. You can read Marx and Engels' Manifesto. You can look at Thomas More's Utopia.

You can look at the Tower of Babel in Genesis. You can look at the transhumanists of today that are trying to use technological advances to extend life and to transcend the human experience in that way.

It doesn't matter which form you look at it in or in which context you look at it in.

The goal is to do whatever it takes, whatever it takes to achieve a state of perpetual harmony outside of God.

And of course, that's the problem. Because it's outside of God, even if that harmony has to be forced through strength to get there, they will do it.

And of course, you know what I'm alluding to. The utopia is always what's on the horizon, but right now, we have to bear down with authoritarianism, with totalitarianism, with everything we need to do to get there.

We have to remove the problems forcefully. We have to go from the top down forcefully, but someday we'll get there.

Someday we'll experience this secularist harmony, which of course will never come.

In fact, it ultimately brings hell on earth every time. The project ends, the idea dies, and then a new one is born.

And that's why we have so many different examples that we can look at. Now, of course, the natural desire to detest death is, well, as I just said, it's completely natural.

And so when we look at humans trying to work through these things and come up with these solutions, it's not that trying to find a solution is anything different from how we might feel ourselves.

The desire to detest death and to want an escape from it is natural.

But part of the problem here is that the solution is not what man has ever wanted.

The actual solution for this problem is not what man has ever wanted. Like I said a minute ago, the wages of sin is death.

And what that means is that you can't sustain life unless death itself has first been conquered.

And that's not something that man will ever figure out how to do by his own strength.

You can't escape death. You can't escape the problem of time that it infuses into it unless you know how to conquer death, and man can't do that.

And so the answer to this problem of death, which defiled the very nature of time itself in this life, remember, death is what makes time feel awful now.

It's what makes it really drag on when we go through some of the worst phases of life, some of the worst tribulations we may experience.

It's what makes it speed up when we actually are enjoying the moment we're in and want to experience that in a prolonged fashion.

It is what makes everything lead toward decay. That is why time is this perceived enemy.

It's ultimately death. But we have to remember, the answer to this problem is for sin to be justly and vengefully punished, brought to open shame.

And that has never been the solution that mankind wants or even wants to look at, because what it does is it puts a spotlight on the evil deeds that they do in the dark in some cases.

In some cases, it's so demented, they may even be fine with bringing it to the light to a degree. But no man wants to have to look at that and to find a solution for that straight on.

They want to figure out a way to do it through technology, through social sciences, through government, through political structures and things of this sort.

They don't want to have to stare death in the face as a result of their sin and in payment for their sin, as a punishment for their sin.

Mankind has never wanted it. They've never even wanted to look at it. And yet that was the requirement.

That's the requirement. But where it gets really interesting is that though that was the requirement, this required death couldn't have been the only part of it.

You can't leave it at a death and then move on and say, well, sins have been paid for now.

This required death had to be conquered in order to ensure that such a sacrifice would never have to be made again.

And that is why the story of the gospel doesn't end at the cross. You can make an argument, it doesn't even begin there.

You can make an argument that it begins in the incarnation when God became flesh, when

Jesus Christ was born and when he started living that life of perfect obedience at every point of God's law.

That's when the gospel began because what we saw was a second Adam coming into this world to live out that law on our behalf because he knew in his loving kindness that we would never be able to do it ourselves and therefore it would need to be done for us.

And so that's really where the gospel starts in many ways. But then of course, we have this pinnacle in many ways of the cross where the fulfillment of that Passover lamb is now on full display.

The presentation of the blameless lamb without blemish is on display for the world to see, to be mocked, to be scourged, to be humiliated, to be spat upon, to be cursed, all of the things that occurred in the lead up and during the crucifixion itself.

That was a perfect sacrifice, but how do we ensure that that sacrifice never would have had to happen again?

How do we ensure that that sacrifice would never need to be made again? It was what came next that assured victory in time and space, that assured the redemption of humanity, the redemption of creation, and the redemption of time.

The solution to this problem that mankind has needed to deal with in somewhat frustrating fashion for millennia, this is where the solution was found.

A victory that could give meaning and purpose back to man once again.

The victory that mankind lacks in the final analysis of every single attempt to prolong life and to conquer the decay that we experience that death and time bring to bear is found in one place, and it can only be in one place, and that obviously is the victory of Jesus Christ on the third day.

And perhaps the most glorious thing of all is that this victory was not merely spiritual.

It wasn't something that Jesus came to fulfill on the spiritual plane, because that is in some way a greater reality than the reality that he brought into existence here within his creation.

It wasn't a victory merely on the spiritual level, and it couldn't have been. It was also victory in history.

It was historical. It took place in time so as to redeem time itself and everything else with it, so that one day that time can turn back into the measurement of progress in a sinless state, not a measurement of decay.

By his physical resurrection in the same body that was crucified, he proved his power and lordship over the spiritual realm, yes, but also over history itself, and he did so simultaneously.

History is God's. It's not something that man can wield as an instrument to try to figure out the answer to these solutions, to the problems they brought into creation in the first place beginning in the garden, as we said before.

History is the Lord's. He came to purify it, and he came to do that in history itself, in time and space.

This is what Christ did at his resurrection. Remember the passage we started with, he hath abolished death, past tense.

I want us to look at this passage one more time, 2 Timothy chapter one. Let's break it down just a little bit.

Far too much here to go into today. There's really one particular reality that I want to pull from this text, but the context, of course, is glorious, and if you really want to dive into this opening chapter of 2

Timothy, just come to Sunday school, at some point in 2027, I will be there. If you know, you know.

We're slowly working our way through the pastoral epistles, but let's look at this one more time.

Verse seven, 2 Timothy chapter one. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me as prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel, according to the power of God.

God didn't want cowards when he created his people. He didn't want robots, he didn't want puppets, he wanted pursuers, he wanted people that would yearn for him, that would desire him, that would seek his face, but he wanted us to do that in a position of confidence, in a position of strength, not in a cowardly way.

This is why Paul is telling us this here. He gave us a spirit of, not of fear, but of power, and of love, and a sound mind.

So don't be ashamed of the testimony of his gospel. He doesn't want cowards. When we are cowards, it's a shameful thing.

It's something to be ashamed of. But we also know that the best of us can be cowardly at times.

This is a temptation that all of us need to be aware of, especially in a secularist age, when it is very unpopular to bring truth to bear, certainly in the public square.

It can bring mockery, it can bring severe persecution. May start merely as a verbal persecution, but you never know where it could go.

We need strength, we need fortitude, we don't want to be cowards, but it will be a temptation for even the best of us.

Think about Peter, one of the greatest men that ever lived. When it mattered the most, he denied his

Lord, he denied his gospel. And so what Paul is telling us here is, may we never be ashamed of the testimony of our

Lord. Verse nine goes on to say, who hath saved us, talking about God the

Father, who hath saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began.

This right here is why we don't have to be ashamed. This is why we can't have confidence.

This is why we don't have to go into any situation, as bad as it may seem, in a cowardly, with a cowardly posture.

We can partake in the afflictions of the gospel because we have been called to this fight.

And not only have we been called to this fight, but as Paul tells us in this verse, we've been called since before the world began in Christ Jesus.

That is as solid of a foundation you could possibly stand upon to infuse that confidence into your life and to never be ashamed of the afflictions of his gospel at any point.

And then verse 10, and this is really the key verse, but is now made manifest.

So what did he just tell us? This promise was given to us in Christ before the world began. So that is on an eternal scale, one that we can't really comprehend, a transcendent scale, if you will.

And then Paul says, but at the beginning of verse 10, is now made manifest by the appearing of our

Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

This promise that was given from father to son with us in him at the moment this covenant was made between them, it wasn't stuck in eternity past.

It wasn't made and then left there in the spiritual realm while all of us meager humans are just out here flailing and trying to figure things out until we can escape these bodies, these corruptible bodies, and just go into the spiritual realm, and this kind of gnostic idea of the earthly material realm being inherently evil.

That's not the case. He didn't leave this promise in eternity past or in the spiritual realm.

It's not an abstraction, in other words. Rather, it was made a manifest promise.

It was made flesh and bone in the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And it was in this appearing of that Savior that resolved the problem of time, or more specifically, the problem of death and decay that defiled time.

When he says, who hath abolished, who hath abolished death, abolished, the word there, meaning to render idle, to inactivate, to cause to have no further efficiency, to deprive of force, influence, power, to cause to cease, to put an end to, to do away with, to annul, to abolish.

The last enemy of God and man was made inoperative at the point of his resurrection, which is what's in view in this passage here.

Paul is clearly alluding to the resurrection when he says it was manifest in the appearing of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Oftentimes in the New Testament, when you see that word appearing, epiphaneia, literally the epiphany of Jesus Christ, it's often referring to a second coming in the clouds.

But here in this particular context, he's referring to the epiphany, to the appearing of Jesus out of the grave when he came out of the grave on the third day.

When he did that, he abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Now, this word, this particular word, as strong as it is, it doesn't mean to ban from existence wholesale.

It doesn't mean to annihilate. What this word means is it kind of carries the force of breaking the power of something.

So it's something, it's something bad, it's something devastating, it's something that carries a lot of power, but that power has been broken.

It's made inoperative. It is made ineffective. It means to render something ineffective. And the reason this is important for us to note here when we read this verse, this is something written 2 ,000 years ago.

It's something we can read and be edified by now. But when we read this, we know that it was appointed unto men once to die, and that's in Hebrews chapter nine.

And we still have to deal with parting with our loved ones in order for them to enter heaven. So we know that's still a reality.

But the point of this verse is that Christ has done something in the past to break the power of death over his people.

This is Satan's chief weapon of fear and torment, that of death. And that something that Jesus did in order to break the power of that, to break the spell, so to speak, was raising himself on the third day.

And so the reason that Paul can say half abolished, past tense, in the sense of making death totally ineffective in the lives of believers is twofold.

The first is this, Paul tells us elsewhere, we are confident, I say, in willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the

Lord. And so he can say that he's abolished death because we know that the moment a believer takes their last breath, they don't go into some intermediate state.

They don't go into some place of darkness and confusion waiting out and hoping that maybe the prayers of the saints back on earth will get them into heaven eventually or something like that.

On this side of the cross, there's no intermediate state. Death for the believer means instantaneous presence with the

Lord Jesus Christ himself. So Paul can easily and with absolutely no hesitation say death has been abolished in the appearing of our

Lord Jesus Christ because he knew then, as well as every believer knows since, that the moment that last breath is taken is to be in the presence of our

Lord immediately. So that's the first reason he can say this and why he can say it confidently. But the second reason he can say it is because what

Christ did with his resurrection, with this abolishment of death, with this conquering of death, is he proved a future reality for all of us.

And if you wanna turn with me to 1 Corinthians, I'll show you what I'm talking about. Turn with me to 1

Corinthians chapter 15, unbelievably famous passage. One of the greatest chapters in all of scripture is

Paul gives us the doctrine of the resurrection and not simply the resurrection of Jesus, although that was foundational, but the doctrine of the resurrection of us, of our loved ones, of those who have already passed.

This is the doctrine that gives us that hope of a certain future event that we will embrace those loved ones in the same body that we once knew.

Again, unbelievable chapter through and through. But for the purposes of today, start at verse 20 with me.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 20. This is another reason why Paul can say he hath abolished death, past tense.

He says at verse 20, but now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept.

Those are those that have passed on before. Verse 21, for since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

In other words, by Adam came death, and by the second Adam came also the resurrection of the dead.

This is why we have to affirm in order to stay thoroughly orthodox within our understanding of the

New Testament, within the testimony of scripture, we affirm the total humanity of Jesus Christ.

Yes, we affirm his total deity as well, but he was 100%,

I don't even like percentages, let me put it this way, he was fully man. In every sense of the term, he was fully man, and this is why

Paul says, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. He came as the second

Adam to make all things new. Look at verse 22. For as in Adam, as if it couldn't be more clear, as in Adam all die, even so in Christ, or you could say the second

Adam, shall all be made alive. And here's the key verse. But every man in his own order,

Christ of the firstfruits, afterward, they that are Christ's at his coming. Now in the ancient world, this term firstfruits was incredibly significant.

It's kind of lost on us a little bit today, especially if you're not in agriculture in some way. And because we,

I mean, I'm not necessarily trying to, make modernity sound all that bad.

I mean, I'm very thankful for the fact that we can buy produce and things that other people have labored to grow to feed our families and things of that sort.

But when you live in that type of environment, you also lose sight of some very important principles and some very important realities that most of mankind throughout history has leaned into, relied upon, understood the meaningfulness behind it.

And here we find one such example. In the ancient world, this term firstfruits was really significant because often when we think of spring, we may think of the leaves appearing on the tree for the first time, the blossoms, the tree starting to flower.

We may even think about that the first signs of fruit starting to bud and it's hard.

It's not even close to being ready yet, but we see it's there. It's kind of exciting. We know that spring is in progress and there are more things to come.

That's often what we think about. But this term firstfruits, it doesn't have to do with any of that.

It's not making reference to any of what I just mentioned. It's a technical term that references the first ripe fruit that is ready to be picked, or more specifically, that has already been picked.

In other words, it is the sign of harvest. It's not just the sign of spring getting started and kind of winter dying away and new life coming through spring.

It doesn't, it's not those things. Those things have already occurred. Firstfruits references the first ripe fruit that has already been picked.

It's the beginning of the harvest. It's not just a sign of it on the horizon. What this means is that in Christ's resurrection, because that's what

Paul is saying, is that the resurrection was the firstfruits. He's using an analogy here. He's using an agricultural type that the ancient world would have understood without even thinking about it.

Even we can grasp it. He's using this analogy to emphasize the power of what happened, not just because it was the resurrection of Christ, but because it was the beginning of our own resurrection.

It means that in Christ's resurrection, the firstfruit has already been plucked off the tree.

The planting and the cultivating of the tree, the growth, the pruning, it all worked.

That's what Paul is saying. All of that is done, and it worked, and it's gonna be a bountiful harvest.

And that is more than a sign. When you see the firstfruit, it's not just a sign of things to come.

It's a guarantee that the rest of the harvest is coming. And we know that there will be a resurrection of the saints because it has already begun in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is Paul's whole argument. He has broken the power of death and has raised us up together to sit with him in heavenly places.

And this is what Paul is forcefully proclaiming in verse 10 of our earlier passage of 2

Timothy chapter one. This is what he is forcefully proclaiming in making that statement. He hath abolished death.

For death to have been abolished by Christ means that it no longer has the sting that it once had.

It is completely impotent over the soul and over the spirit of all believers already.

It will be impotent over the body in the future as well, just like it is impotent over Christ's body. Never again will he have to make that sacrifice because of the resurrection.

Never again will a perfect blameless substitute without blemish have to be made a sacrifice ever again because of the resurrection consummating that sacrificial work.

Death is impotent over all of it because of the resurrection. And this is why

Christians have the ability to grieve and hope when a fellow believer passes away because we know that's not the end.

We can grieve with hope, not in despair, which Paul teaches us in his epistle to the

Thessalonians. Now, at the very end of verse 10, I know I had y 'all turn to 1 Corinthians 15.

You don't have to turn back, but at the very end of verse 10, back in 2 Timothy one, that verse ends after saying he hath abolished death, he goes on to say, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

So in his resurrection, he brought the total victory into the light for all to see.

And of course we see this, we even feel this, and we are heartbroken over the fact that so much of our fellow humans around the earth, our fellow image bearers are still grasping for a solution to the problem of time or more specifically the problem of death.

They are still trying to work their way out of it. I mentioned the transhumanists earlier. I mean, they are just on fire right now.

They're running around with their hair on fire trying to figure out answers to this age old problem of how do we achieve immortality?

Maybe we can stick our brains in a freezer and hope that someone figures it out later and we can reanimate or something like that or stick our brains in a robot,

I don't know. When you start listening to some of the things and some of the things they're pursuing,

I could sit up here and say it and you all think, Ben, you sound ridiculous. Talk about a conspiracy theorist.

And of course the conspiracies are a lot of fun. But when you start reading their actual literature, their actual pursuits, the things they want to accomplish, it sounds bonkers, but they're the ones saying it.

And they're not gonna be able to accomplish anything. I could give you some egregious examples that would make our stomachs turn with regard to the ways in which they're trying to achieve some of these things.

I'm not gonna go there because this is Easter Sunday and we need to think about joyful and lovely things.

But the point is, is they're out there, but their other problem is that the solution has already been brought to bear and they just don't want to look at it.

They don't want to think about it. They don't want the thought of someone else that did not deserve death to have bared their sin on behalf of them and that because of that, they now need to yield to his lordship to make him lord over their life rather than them being lord over their life.

That is not what mankind in general wants. And so when we read this and we see that in his resurrection,

Christ brought this victory that mankind has sought for from the beginning, from the time of the fall, he brought it into light for all to see.

This is why we celebrate this apex of human history today, to play our part in that great proclamation of how he brought that victory into history.

Hebrews chapter 2, 14 says this, "'For as much then as the children "'are partakers of flesh and blood, "'he also himself likewise took part of the same.'"

Think about that for a second. He being the perfect eternal son, also himself likewise took part of the same, partakers of flesh and blood.

That through death, he might destroy him that had the power of death, and that is the devil.

So he didn't just destroy death itself, he also made the devil inoperative.

He also took the keys of Hades and death away from him. And he goes on to say, "'Because of that, and deliver them,' that is us, "'deliver them who through fear of death "'were all their lifetime subject to bondage.'"

And that bondage is kind of where I started. That's the bondage that mankind is still trying to figure out how to free themselves from.

That bondage to time, to decay, to death, to their own sin, he came as a man, a partaker of flesh and blood, to abolish death and to even abolish the one who wielded death as a weapon, to ultimately deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

It's really unthinkable. In the resurrection of Christ, we find the abolishment of death, thus robbing the devil of his greatest weapon that he had possessed since the time of the garden and removing the sting that was once felt by all of humanity.

Let's end with the Gospel of Luke. Let's go to the Gospel of Luke and we'll end here. Just a couple thoughts.

Luke 24, post -resurrection. Jesus has already conquered death.

He has already come out of the tomb. And the

Gospel of Luke gives us some amazing detail as to some of the things that transpired after he came from the tomb, such as the road to Emmaus.

We know the story there. And even the scene we're about to read right now, kind of the emphasis that Luke puts on the narrative here,

Luke the historian, he was very specific, very articulate. Some of the things that he emphasizes here are of so much importance.

And they equipped Christians in the first century to battle the heresies that they had to deal with, such as Gnosticism and things like that.

And you'll see what I'm talking about right here. Look at Luke 24, verse 36. And as they thus spake,

Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and saith unto them, peace be unto you. But they were terrified and affrighted and supposed that they had seen a spirit.

And you see, that's where the Gnostics would love to say, that's what I'm talking about. Is this all spirit? It's just this ghost.

It's just this apparition that is here to give this version of the

Gospel and all of this, that and the other. And that's what the disciples felt for just a second.

They were affrighted and supposed that they had seen a spirit. But look at verse 38. And he said unto them, why are you troubled?

And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold, my hands and my feet, that it is

I myself, handle me and see. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have.

And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet. There's no greater marvel than for a person to bear the scars of death while still alive.

That is something that is hard to comprehend. Like I said, perhaps no greater marvel.

And while we with our own eyes will one day look upon those scars ourselves as a perpetual memorial of his death for our sins, his bearing of those scars while standing as the lamb slain will act as the everlasting memorial of his resurrection.

We won't simply have the memorial of the crucifixion, but in his life still as the second

Adam, still fully man, now sitting at the right hand of God the Father, who will come as the seed of David, who will reign in his stead.

That is the everlasting memorial of his resurrection because he is still a man. He's not a ghost.

While the lost world grasps for meaning and purpose, seeking everything by their own power, a solution to the problem of death and to reverse the decay of time, something that, again, will just bring more and more frustration, compounding frustration as it always has, is everyone around us grasps for that.

We can stand firm on the truth that victory in history and time and space has already taken place and that all of history from the time that it began has led to and now looks back at the resurrection of our

Lord, the apex of history. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day.

Thank you for bringing us together and for giving us this momentous occasion to, again, worship you, but to worship you on a day where we commemorate the resurrection of your

Son, along with our brothers and sisters all around the world. We thank you for the snapshot of unity that we may be able to have because of this glorious day.

And we ask that we don't take it for granted, that none of our brothers and sisters take it for granted, but are refreshed by it and are encouraged and inspired by it to press on for another year, bringing your kingdom to bear on earth as it is in heaven.

We ask for the strength to do that. And we know that by continually looking back at the great event of the resurrection, we can have that strength.

We can be strengthened by it. We ask for it. We ask that you constantly point us back to it so that in the most practical terms imaginable, we can allow the resurrection itself as that historical event to give us the strength in the day -to -day, in the grind of life, the grit that life brings every single day, unexpected things, things that may seem small in the moment, may seem mundane in the moment, with our eye constantly on the horizon, looking for greater things, thinking about the future, thinking about future generations, thinking about heaven.

We know that the resurrection itself is what will give us the strength and the reminder of purpose and meaning that we have in all of it, regardless of how small, regardless of how big, we ask that you remind us of these things daily.

We thank you so much for everything that you do for us. We thank you for sending your son, for allowing him to go to the cross on our behalf and for raising him again to new life on our behalf.

And we ask that you be with us for the remainder of our services this morning, or I should say the remainder of our fellowship time.

Bless the Lord's Supper we're about to partake in. And we ask these things in the name of your son, amen.