The Resurrection Body

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Back here and see everybody. I recognize some of you, some of you I don't. So thanks for inviting me. Greetings from Bethel Gospel Chapel. And thanks for playing a lot of my favorite hymns this morning, this afternoon I should say.

In fact, Be Thou My Vision was played at our wedding coming up to 48 years ago. So one of my favorites, one of my mother's favorites actually. So thank you very much, whoever chose the hymns. Okay, I got a question for the kids.

What is the most unnatural thing in the world? What is the most unnatural thing in the world?

Hmm. Any ideas? Most unnatural thing.

Close...death.

Death as the Last Enemy and the Hope of Resurrection

Realize that is the most unnatural thing in the world. And that's why when a loved one dies, what do we do? We mourn. We shed tears because it's not natural. That's why we get obsessed with trying to postpone death.

We try to get...we want to...we can go so far as to get our bodies cyberogenically frozen so that someday, some future, a scientist will find a cure for whatever it was that beset us. And, I mean, that's a bit extreme.

I expect nobody here is going to get into cyberogenics. But that shows you just how...the extremes which we might go just to postpone death. In other extremes, we start to maybe comfort ourselves with some myths or fairy tales, like, well, he's in a better place, or she's no longer in pain, or she's an angel watching over us.

We do that, not to make fun of those things, because they're real. What it shows is that we need hope. We look for hope. We need to find some hope when we're faced with the reality of death. Now, the Bible doesn't deny death, and it doesn't deny the human tragedy of death.

I don't want to belittle that, either. But the Bible doesn't try to hide death, either. It doesn't try to hide it behind any silly stories or shallow platitudes. It acknowledges death for what it is, which is an enemy.

It's the last enemy. And the Bible makes that very clear. The Bible also offers us the only real hope, which is the resurrection from the dead, or of the dead, to eternal life. So, this idea that there is something beyond the grave.

And even the most ardent atheist, I would say, has this idea, a seed, that says there's something more. That's why death is such an enemy. We have this seed, because we're born for something bigger, something better.

And so, life beyond the grave, eternal life, that's the promise of the resurrection. That's real hope, and therefore it's good news. Gospel.

I think you all know that.

So, before getting into today's passage, and thank you for reading it, I want to take a few minutes just to put death and life into a wider biblical perspective. A wider biblical perspective, or context.

So, why is death not natural? Well, to answer that question, we go back to creation, to Genesis. We won't go there. But, if you want to understand life, if you want to understand the gospel, you need to understand the book of Genesis.

You need to understand especially the first ten chapters of Genesis, because that provides the foundation for all true understanding of life, and puts the gospel in a proper context. I'll just summarize a bit from the first couple chapters of Genesis.

Everything that God created was flawed, or what, Noah? Everything that God created was perfect. Yeah, it was perfect, it was good. And therefore, there was no sin. And if there was no sin, there was no death.

In other words, we were made, originally, to live forever. Perfect, no sin, therefore no death. We were made to live forever, to live for eternity.

There's only one rule.

Elise, do you know what that rule was? Pretty close. Genesis 2 .16, And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.

See, there was the possibility of death, but not the actuality of death, when Adam and Eve were created. So, they're in this pure innocence. You know, sometimes we say a baby's born, a baby's all innocent.

Well, they're not, actually. And it doesn't take long to figure that out.

They're cute, I love babies.

At the beginning, there was pure innocence. There was no knowledge of good, because there was no evil. See, good stands in contrast. Without evil, it just is. It just is. It's just perfection. And so, life is lived in this full, perfect relationship with the Creator, in whose image we are made.

I'll talk a bit about image in a few moments. So, then comes, in Genesis chapter 3, temptation to sin. Follows disobedience. Follows after that disobedience, a deliberate attempt to remove God and His perspective from our decision-making, from human thinking and action.

Sin is not a thing. Sin is the absence of something, which is God. God's perspective in our living and in our decision-making and our actions. And so, sin followed from disobedience, and from that followed death.

Romans 5 .12,. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, in other words, Adam, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. Note that last phrase. We can't blame Adam.

We can't blame Adam. We can't even blame God. Adam tried that at the beginning. He blamed the woman, and then he tried to blame God for making the woman. And so, he tried to shift blame. We can't do that.

We've all sinned. In fact, Shane mentioned that in his prayer. So, death. Death is that separation from the Creator, from our life-giver. We live because of the life He has given us. And so, it's the logical outcome of sin.

Death is the logical outcome of sin. And last week's message in verse 22,. For as in Adam, all die. Therefore, defeat of death is a logical part of the Gospel. A logical part of the Gospel. In fact, it's the only basis for real hope in life, is this defeat of death.

The Old Testament sets the stage, I'll say, a geopolitical, historical, spiritual stage for the good news of God Himself entering into humanity to take the punishment for our sins. That's why in Galatians 4 .4 it says,.

But when the fullness of time had come, in other words, when God had decided everything had been put together, that's a whole different story to study, how everything was put together in history, in geography, spiritual conditions, at the right time, God decided when it was right, the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive the adoption as sons.

He's saying that too. And because we are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

So Jesus died to atone for our sins, and that's a sin of all humanity, but it's also personal. It's my sin. It's your sin. Jesus died to atone for that, and it was all placed on His shoulders, placed in His heart, in a sense, so that He, the Bible says, He became sin for us.

And that's a really important theological concept. In fact, it's a practical concept too, because all theology, good theology, is practical. That His, our sin, my sin was placed on Him, He became sin for me, and for you.

He actually became my sin. And since the penalty of sin is death, Jesus had to die. But since Jesus was also God, the author of life, as Peter declared at Pentecost in Acts 2 .24, God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it.

He died a real death because He was a real man. He couldn't stay dead because He's also a real God at the same time. He's the author of life. Last week, Steve made the point that the resurrection was the defeat of death.

Verse 22, as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. That's why Jesus became a sort of firstfruits from the dead. In other words, the first part of the harvest, a great harvest. Firstfruits was Jesus, rising from the dead.

And what does that do? It secures eternal life for those who are His. And I don't mean just eternal life in a spiritual sense, but when He returns, when He returns, the last enemy to be destroyed is death.

It's going to be death.

And therefore, we have eternal life in a physical form as well. We will be made complete, body, soul, and spirit. And that's when life comes in all its glory and completeness, in all that body, soul, spirit existence.

And that's when real life starts. That's the life we were intended. Right back to the garden, we were intended to live forever in perfection, body, soul, and spirit. And that's exactly what will happen at the completion, at the return of Christ.

So 1 Corinthians 15 is called the resurrection chapter. But I think Steve, in his opening message last month, several weeks ago, made the point that more accurately, it is actually a gospel chapter. You can't separate resurrection from gospel.

Because without the resurrection, sin has not been fully dealt with. It hasn't been fully dealt with. And so we're still in our sins, and death still is an enemy. So without the resurrection, there's no life beyond the grave, therefore there's no eternal hope.

And without eternal hope, the preaching of Christ is nothing more than just another moral philosophy that goes alongside every other moral philosophy that we can take, and we can parse, and we can sample, and we can reject it, and try something else.

And then, in which case, as Christians, we're living a lie. We'd be living a lie. As verse 19 says, of all people, we are most to be pitied. If there's no hope beyond the grave, we might as well grab what you can while you can.

Or as verse 32 says, eat, drink, for tomorrow we die. Now, at first blush, that sounds like, wow, yeah, let's just do that. Except that is the ultimate philosophy of despair. The ultimate philosophy of despair.

Hedonism. So that's kind of a longish introduction, but since chapter 15 is one long proposition, I thought it was important to remind ourselves how each portion fits on the previous portions, and they all work together.

And it's also important, I think, to fix our minds on how the gospel sits firmly on the foundation of the Old Testament, especially in Genesis. And hopefully that'll give you a proper context for today's message.

The Foolish Question About the Resurrection Body

So today's message, I had it written down here to read the whole thing, but it's been read. Thank you very much. So we won't read the whole thing again, but we're going to go through it in parts. And I'm going to give some commentary as we go through it.

So we're starting at verse 35. But someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? And the answer is, you foolish person. So why is that a foolish question? Because it's based on an incomplete understanding or poor understanding of the gospel.

And it's much like in verses 12 to 19, the idea that there is no resurrection from the dead. It is a skeptic's question. It's a skeptic's question. Jesus, when he was confronted by a group of Jewish skeptics, the Sadducees, who incidentally didn't believe in the resurrection, they were skeptics.

When he was confronted by them about the resurrection, in Matthew 22, 29, he says, you are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. I think Steve, I keep quoting from you, Steve, because I listened to all your messages and read your notes.

You came up with this term, disordered theology. If you don't know the scriptures or the power of God, you will come up with a disordered theology. And it comes from trying to understand life, including God, including the idea of God.

Try to do that from a secular point of view. From a secular point of view. In other words, we start with us. But the theme of 1 Corinthians is seeing life, including God, from his perspective. You start with God.

You start with God. That's how you come up with ordered theology. And ordered theology is logical. We get the word logic from the Greek logia. Logia. Theologia. The study of God. And every other logi that you study at a university, biology, botany, that doesn't have a logi in it, does it?

Any other logi you think about? Give me some, Steve. Psychology. There's one. Sociology. All those logias, or logis, are the study of something. It's where we get our word logical from. So you go to your course at university, or even high school, or wherever it is you're studying, you want it laid out logically.

You want to be able to understand it. Logia. We also get the word logos from it, from the word which we use, which is translated as the word, in other words, the Bible. It's logical. 1 Corinthians 2 .14.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. He is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. So ordered theology does not discount the miraculous.

It doesn't discount the miraculous. And that's why we have to start with God.

We have to start.

If you want to understand anything, actually, in life, it doesn't have to be just theology. You have to understand anything in life properly, you start with God. And that's why creation is important, because God spoke creation into existence.

It's the power of God. And so we don't discount the miraculous,.

But we start with God.

You can't understand the miracle of being born again without starting with an all-powerful God, and spiritually discerned. And that's why in John 3, Nicodemus had such a hard time coming to grips with this idea of being born again.

He wasn't starting with God. Now, thankfully, I think he got it in the end, because he was one of the two members of Sanhedrin who actually took down the body of Jesus and buried him. So I think he actually got it in the end.

But because he didn't start with God, he didn't understand it. Similarly, resurrection is not about renewing what we already have, because what we have is going to die. This body is going to die. It's destined to die.

The resurrection is something that's entirely different, a new creation. And so next, Paul uses creation to illustrate his point. Let me get back to our text. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. So he uses this metaphor of the seed.

Now, I have here... Okay, kids, have a look at this. What have I got here?

What kind of seed?

Sunflower seed. Actually, this is not the seed. This is just a husk. I'll get the seed out. It's inside the husk. So there's the seed. It's inside it. I won't give it to you to eat, because I use it for feeding my birds.

So it's just a tiny little thing. In fact, here's some smaller seeds. I've got some mustard seed in there and some sesame seeds. See how small they are? Now, if you take these seeds, in fact, you take one with a really tough husk on it, like a sunflower seed, and you put it in nutrients, put it in water, put it in your garden in the right temperatures and conditions, and this husk breaks down.

And this seed inside, if you were to look at it under a microscope, you would see a whole bunch of molecular machinery starting to move, and things are starting to happen. And a few weeks later, maybe even less than a week, it pops out of the ground.

You might even see a bit of the husk sitting on it, but it'll disappear. And so this seed is growing and growing and growing, and pretty soon it doesn't look like the seed anymore.

What does it look like?

I forgot my sunflower. I left it over here. Okay, this isn't really a sunflower. But this is the biggest flower I could find in the house, and it's not even a real flower. But you get the idea. In fact, if a sunflower, it grows, it could be as high as the ceiling here, and the face of it could be bigger than my face.

So you can imagine, it came out of here. All because inside there's these little molecular machines. Who designed those machines? God put it together as He chose. And so we have this beautiful flower.

You have this seed. In fact, if I were to take the mustard seed out of here, or the sesame seed, and plant those, it's even smaller. Actually, the molecular machinery is probably about the same. And it all works together, and comes out of the ground, and it's all different from one another.

This is incredible, actually, the way God has put all this together. In fact, you ever see, there's a documentary called Unlocking the Mysteries of Life, and it shows you these molecular machines inside our own DNA.

This is implanted engineering. This is God, what He made. It's incredible. And so when you think, actually, in a sense, the seed is buried in the ground,.

It dies.

The seed actually dies. It's not what comes up out of the ground. See, it's buried, it's in the ground, it dies, comes up,.

It's resurrected.

Into something completely different. Now, DNA decides all that, but who put the DNA together? It's incredible. So we have this metaphor of death and resurrection. And it's interesting that all these seeds come up differently, and they reproduce after their own self.

In fact, if you were to have a, let's pretend this is a sunflower, and this face here, which is actually much bigger, what's it full of? Do you remember?

Yeah.

Seeds!

In fact, from one seed, you get, I don't know, maybe hundreds of seeds in a big sunflower. It's amazing. And then the next summer, you have a whole garden full of sunflowers, unless the birds get them first.

Which, in my case, is probably what I'm hoping. So we have this metaphor. And one of the great ironies, one of the great ironies of the Gospel is that death is the way to life. And so he's illustrated that with this picture, this metaphor, from the seed.

Jesus said in John 12, 24, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. And so we have one of the marvels of God's creation is this intricate design, just microscopic design in the most minute detail.

So we design, but also diversity. Verse 39,. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another kind for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. And it takes us back to creation, to Genesis chapter 1.

Humans, animals, birds, fish, they're all created separately.

We're not,.

We didn't all come out of some common primordial soup. In humanity, men and women were created separately from the rest of creation and uniquely in the image of God. We were created uniquely in the image of God.

In other words, we are qualitatively different from all of the rest of creation. Therefore, therefore, we have worth and purpose. And therefore we have hope. Because we're made in the image of God. We're not just evolved pawn scum.

We have worth, we have purpose,.

And we have hope.

And creation displays the glory of God, not only in his design and diversity, but in its immensity.

Verse 40.

There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory for the sun, another glory for the moon, another glory for the stars, for stars differ from star in glory.

Now, I don't know if you've ever watched a moonrise. It's really nice. It's really kind of spectacular. Or a sunrise, for that matter. Or a sunset on a clear day. It's actually quite glorious. You're all going to go to Metal Lodge Bible Camp this summer sometime.

I'm not speaking prophetically.

That's hopeful.

If you go out there at night, on a clear night, you go down to the lower meadow, and especially if there's no moon out, and you look up, and you see this immense star field. Incredibly immense star field.

How do you feel? You feel just tiny, like this. But you know, you're the only ones who really appreciate it, and could actually measure it,.

Us humans,.

And see it, and understand it to some extent. I remember once, I was at a girls' camp. I was telling a campfire story, and one of the questions after the story was, how do we know God exists? And I didn't arrange this, but almost like on cue, the northern lights just burst out around us.

It was awesome.

Truly awesome.

So, the immensity of creation out there. The psalmist says in Psalm 91, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims his handiwork. So, we have creation. We have this minutest detail, and the immensity of it, the diversity of it all, and it gives us an insight into re-creation.

Verse 42. So it is with the resurrection of the dead, what is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.

It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Now, our present bodies are perishable. We will decay and die. And at death, we will lack any honor.

Anything we had in life will not be there. In fact, you might say that death is the ultimate physical weakness. And we will have none of the strength we had at our peak. I think everybody here is younger than me, probably much younger than me.

And you're probably stronger than me, but I was as strong as you once. And as I'm entering my seventh decade, I feel my strength ebbing almost every day. And you will too, if you live at least seven decades,.

Probably before that.

So, whatever the peak is, which most of you guys are probably at, it's going to fall off. I'm getting to the good part, don't worry. See, there's nothing supernatural about a dead body. There's different types of glory as you get older.

Gray hair.

There's nothing supernatural about a dead body. And whatever our physical or social or political status is in life, when we die, we're just like any other dead body, and death is that great leveler. And yeah, this is a downer message.

The whole idea of death is somber and it's discouraging, except for the hope of the resurrection. Except for the hope of the resurrection. Back in chapter 6, verse 14, it says,. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.

Verse 17, He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him. 2 Corinthians 5 .4,. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up in life.

Swallowed up in life. That even if Christ returns before we die, those in Christ will be changed. Without getting too much into next week's message, verse 54 says,. The present bodies will put on imperishable new eternal bodies.

But I'll leave that to Shane for next week to get into that part. Now, this is going to sound bizarre, but I love most funerals and memorial services. I love them. And I think they're important. I know people won't go to one because they'll only be faced with the reality of death, with their own mortality.

But for most, for Christians especially, I love funerals and memorial services. In fact, they're important for us personally. The mourn. Mourning is a natural outcome of the fact that we live with the prospect of death.

And so the mourn and the cry is a perfectly natural thing to do. And so we should do it. Psychologically and sociologically, those memorials are important. But they also remind us of our own mortality.

The reality of death.

It helps us to face the reality of death. But as a Christian, it's also a time of worship. Let me say that again. As a Christian, it's a time of worship. It reminds us of hope beyond the grave. Because the defeat of death by our Savior, it's sometimes the greatest time to worship.

In fact, some of my most intense worship experiences have been at funerals. Yesterday, we were at a funeral just down the hallway, the other end of this building. A dear old saint, 95 years old. She had finished her course.

She had run it well. She had kept the faith. She had 47 great-grandchildren. 69 were all there, I think. But 69 great-grandchildren? I stand corrected. My wife keeps track of these things.

She had a lot of great-grandchildren.

A lot of them were there. But, you know, it was such a great time of worship. She was ready to go home. We sang her favorite hymns. Great message from the Gospel. And we had good fellowship with believers.

There were about 350 or more people in that auditorium down at the end of the hallway. What a legacy. Now, I don't get that every Sunday when I come together with living people. But when we come, and we're celebrating a life that was well-lived for the Lord.

I've been to other funerals, and I'm sure you have as well. There is no Christian message. There is no Gospel reading. There are no prayers that make any sense. And I come away just totally deflated. There is no hope.

But when a Christian goes home, and the Gospel is preached, and the resurrection is proclaimed, it's a time of worship. Because if we're in Christ, we have the certainty of our resurrection with Him.

This is new life.

This is new life that is imperishable. In other words, it's eternal. It's glorious, because we share in the glory of Christ. It's powerful, because it's the same power that raised Christ from the dead.

And we're raised a true spiritual being. That's a great cause for thanksgiving, for praise, and for worship. So finally now, Paul, he takes these contrasting elements of life, and he situates them on these contrasting foundations of life in Adam and life in Christ.

Verse 45,.

Thus it is written,.

The first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural. And then the spiritual. The first man was born from the earth, a man of dust.

The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as of the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

So because of the original sin of Adam, we all bear, even though we're made in the image of God, we all bear this image of sin, because all have sinned. And we're all subject to the same curse and to the same death as Adam.

But, as new creations in Christ, we are being transformed, and in a sense, we have already been transformed into his image. Into his image. We're being transformed, and we have already been transformed.

That takes us back to, when we start talking about the image, it takes us back to creation, Genesis 127. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

But it's even better. It's even better than that. Because Adam and Eve were created perfect, but they always had this threat of death. Genesis 217, If you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die.

I've edited that a bit.

You shall surely die. They always had the possibility of death before them. But in Christ, death is defeated. If death is defeated, it's destroyed. There is no more death. There is no more sorrow. There is no more pain or sin or fear.

No more fear. In Christ, sin no longer has dominion over us. Hebrews 2, 14 -15, Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things. In other words, God the Son took on flesh and blood and became a real man.

He partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

If you don't know Christ, the prospect of death is fearful. It's fearful. But if you do know Christ, the prospect of death is perhaps something we'd like to postpone, perhaps something we think is coming too early, perhaps it does come early in certain cases, but we don't face it with the same fear of the unknown.

I'm not denying mourning. Mourning is natural, as I said. But it shouldn't be as if we had no hope. What's more, the image of the first Adam, which is the image of sin and death, earth and dust, as Paul says here, has been erased.

It's been erased. And those in Christ are marked with the image of the second Adam, Christ himself. We're marked with his image. Marked with his mark. He's put a seal of ownership upon us. Because we bear his image, God has already, as it says in Ephesians 2, seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

But while we're still living in these old bodies, getting older every day, battling the sin nature, the battle at sin nature, God's using that battle. He's using that battle to conform us more and more into the image of his Son.

2 Corinthians 3 .18. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

So, we are already seated in the heavenlies. In other words, we have already acquired the image of Christ, but we are being transformed, molded, as it were, into his image as long as we are living in this body.

We are becoming more Christ-like. It's not always a happy prospect. It's not always a joyful thing to go through. But as we yield to Christ, he is molding us into his image. So, that brings us to the end of the day's passage.

What an application. Well, it's really tempting. It was really tempting, after I finished studying this, to say, I'm just going to read the final eight or nine verses, because that brings all this argument that Paul has been making, this thesis that he's had, it all brings it to a glorious conclusion, but I'll leave the glory to you, Shane.

Suffice it to say, the reality of the resurrection of Christ and the promise of our own resurrection in him should make a difference in two profound ways. First of all, it should make a difference in how we view death.

1 Thessalonians 4 .13,. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep. Notice how death is portrayed here. Sleep. Can we see death of the saints as a sleep, as opposed to a finality?

That you may not grieve as others who do not have hope, or who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

In other words, those of us who have died in Christ. There is hope beyond death, even as we mourn in the present. Secondly, it should make a difference in how we view life and living. A difference in how we view death, how we view life and living.

I'm going to give you a long quote from Romans 6, because I think the picture of baptism is a beautiful picture of our death and resurrection in Christ. Romans 6, starting in verse 3,. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Notice, the rising up, it's not rising up to go to heaven, it's rising up to walk in newness of life, to live the new creation.