The Victory of Christ’s Resurrection

Grace Fellowship Church

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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.

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So, 1 Corinthians 15 verses 50 to 58.

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That's how we're concluding our study here in this 15th chapter of 1

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Corinthians. Short 9 verses. And what this means, if you're looking at your

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Bible, I don't know about you, but I'm on the last page of my Bible. Meaning, we are almost done this series.

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And I was reflecting on it a little bit and just thinking, praise

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God for getting us this far. Praise God that he has helped us to preach through this text.

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Praise our God that he has helped you to listen and to follow along. I think this is, for our church, the first time we've ever gone through a full book of the

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Bible. And for some of you, I know it's the first time you've ever listened to preaching through a full book of the

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Bible. And to that I say, praise God. Praise God. And today, as we turn our attention to the last few verses in this chapter 15, like I said at the onset, it is actually a very easy passage to read.

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It's an easy passage to understand. Therefore, it's a hard passage to preach. Because in some ways,

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I feel like we should read the text and then say, yes, amen, do it. But as I prayed and as I believe, there is benefit.

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There's truly a benefit in preaching the Word of God. And so, even as we go through this text, some of us might be tempted to think, we've already been preaching on 1

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Corinthians 15 for five weeks. I believe this is now week six. And some of you might be tempted to turn your ears off, turn your minds off.

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And I just want to encourage you to continue to listen, continue to pay attention.

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This is what we know. Paul has just spent the last 49 verses making a case for the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the dead.

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And everything that he's said up to this point, he's been countering two things. He's been countering false teaching and false ideas or false philosophies around the resurrection.

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And it's as if he's been saying to the Corinthians, he's saying, listen, listen, Corinthians. Listen, you lovers of wisdom.

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Listen, you lovers of new teaching. The bodily resurrection of Christ and the future resurrection of the believer is a reality.

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It's true. It's actually true. It's a fact. And he says, this is how we know it's true.

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We already heard that. We've seen the witnesses. We've heard from the witnesses. This is what the resurrection looked like.

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This is what the resurrection will look like. Paul's been emphatic in his defense of this doctrine.

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And then Frank Parker alluded to it last week when he was talking about application. He said, how would I like to finish with my application?

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He said, I would just like to read those last nine verses, verses 50 to 58.

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And what we see here, this is why it's important for us to pay attention, is because Paul is going to lay the capstone of this argument for the doctrine of the resurrection.

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He's going to lay the capstone in these last nine verses, and then he's going to give us the ultimate.

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We've seen application throughout, but he's going to give us the ultimate application of these inspired words in chapter 15.

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And so these words are tremendously important. Don't tune out. Now, because I mentioned it earlier, we have our annual members meeting.

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I'm going to be really efficient today in my sermon. Sometimes I give us long, drawn out introductions. I don't always know if those are even helpful.

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I'm not going to give us a long, drawn out introduction today. I'm not going to start us with a story. I'm going to trust that we're mature, and we're just going to get into the text.

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So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to give us the preposition of this text, the preposition of this sermon.

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That's the main idea that Paul is trying to convey, his thesis argument. And then we're going to dive right in.

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So this is what we see in 1 Corinthians 15, verses 50 to 58. Today, what we're going to see

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Paul teach us is that when Christ rose from the dead victorious, and because of the future promise of a resurrection, because of the reality of the resurrection, because of everything resurrection related,

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Christ has now declared a death sentence. A death sentence over three things that have, since humanity's fall into sin, stood as fierce enemies of the people of God.

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Children, how many of you like good adventure movies where at the end the bad guy loses?

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Oh, don't shake your head, Daryl. We all want the bad guy to lose, right? Light always overcomes darkness.

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Well, here we get to see how the resurrection overcomes, brothers and sisters, some of our greatest enemies, the greatest foes in the

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Christian life. And this is what we're going to see, that in Christ's victorious resurrection, we discover the victims of Christ's resurrection.

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And who Christ, what Christ has conquered is death, sin, and vanity.

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Or you could say vanity or doubt. I really wrestled with how to parse that one out.

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So we're going to see in this passage the death of death. I love that phrase, the death of death, the death of sin, and the death of vanity.

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So we'll get into our text, 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 50.

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We'll discover it for ourselves. I'll read the first six verses, 50 to 55. Paul writes this.

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He says, I tell you, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

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Behold, I tell you a mystery. Kids, who likes mysteries here? I tell you, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

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For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

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For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

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When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written.

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I love this phrase. Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory?

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O death, where is your sting? So the first thing that we see in our text, the first thing

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I want to relay to you is the death of death. So in verse 50,

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Paul picks up exactly where he left off last week, where we heard Frank Parker preaching, and speaking about the need for a resurrection body.

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We're going to get into that a little bit, not at length, but a little bit. In this verse, Paul says that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, or kingdom, yeah, sorry, cannot inherit the kingdom.

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And he says, nor can the perishable inherit the perishable. If you like literary devices,

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I'll let you in on this one. I like literary devices. Here Paul starts this section with something that's called a synonymous parallelism.

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Parallelism. Synonymous parallelism. And what that means is it's two parallel statements that are repeated using different words, but mean the exact same thing.

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And so we see this all throughout scripture, but we especially see this in the Psalms and the Proverbs. So Psalm 23,

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The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.

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Green pastures, quiet waters. The Lord is the shepherd, he cares for us. This is a synonymous parallelism where flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom.

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Perishable cannot inherit the imperishable. And what happens when an author of scripture uses a literary device like this is they're trying to convey something that's important to them.

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And this is very important because when we study the word of God, we want to find the authorial intent.

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What does the author mean? We've all been to Bible studies where people say, well, this is what the text means to me.

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That, in my mind, is a bad Bible study. A good Bible study is what did the author mean when he wrote these words?

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So Paul is trying to get our attention. He wants our attention, and it's for this purpose.

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What Paul is doing right here at the beginning of verse 50 is he is reminding us of the temporal nature of our physical bodies.

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You see all of this perishable, imperishable, mortality, immortality. And what

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Paul is saying is that human beings are made up of flesh and blood.

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Flesh and blood. That means that we are not immortal, but rather we're perishable.

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We know this as we're getting older, some of us, that we are liable to deterioration and decay.

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Frank Parker told us, maybe I'll ask the kids, what did Frank Parker say was the most unnatural thing in the world?

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Death. Death is the most unnatural thing in the world, and that's true.

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God made us very good. He made us for life. And yet, because of sin and because of the fall, nothing comes more naturally to the human being than death.

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From the moment we are conceived, the clock starts, and it ticks down to our death.

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Our bodies, the bodies that we inhabit don't trend towards life, but they trend towards death.

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Every single one of us, if you think about this in this room, within 100 years, statistically, young or old, every single one of us in this room will be in the grave.

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We trend towards death. This life doesn't last forever, and that's what Paul starts us with.

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Flesh and blood, perishable. We are going to die. So Paul starts here with the bad news, and he says, as long as we inhabit these physical bodies, every single one of us, we are doomed to die.

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And this has always been one of humanity's greatest problems. In the words of the author of the book of Hebrews, humanity is subject to a lifelong slavery to death and a slavery to the fear of death.

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Now what Paul has just said up to this point is pretty ordinary for the Corinthians.

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If we remember, the Corinthians loved wisdom, and so for the average Corinthian, especially those who were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy and thinking, they would have hardly agreed with Paul's words up to this point.

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The Greek worldview, if you know anything about the Greek worldview, when it came to death, was hopeless. It was full of despair.

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In fact, some of the tombs, if you were to look at some of the ancient tombs in Greece, there are inscriptions on those ancient tombs that refer to death as the great and the last enemy to be conquered.

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The Greeks viewed death with despair. If you think about the world that we live in, much like modern secularism, modern atheism, communism,

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Greek philosophy offered zero hope beyond the grave.

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Nothing. You die and there's nothing except despair amongst your family, your relatives.

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So perhaps that's why the Corinthians, if you think about the problem that the Corinthians got themselves into, the Corinthians were believing false teaching that the resurrection would not happen, that there is no resurrection of the dead.

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And this coincided really well with the Greek philosophy, that we're all going to die, and when we die, there's nothing afterwards.

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It's emptiness, despair. But Paul, let's look at this. Paul captures the

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Corinthians' attention in verse 50. And then he starts verse 51, you see that word, behold.

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It's that same word, look. Look at this, but pay attention. He doesn't leave us or the

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Corinthians stuck in despair. He says, look, there is a mystery that was hidden for ages past, but that has now been revealed through Christ, even though our physical bodies cannot inherit eternal life,

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Christ has, through his physical resurrection, made a way. Just as Christ was raised from the dead,

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God also will raise us from the dead and transform our mortal bodies to be just like his.

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This is a familiar verse, but does it hit home that all of us are destined to die, that in 100 years from now, all of us will be dead?

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And he says, but there's this mystery, something that was hidden through the Old Testament, that's now been revealed through the progressive revelation of God, that there is life after death.

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And he says this, when the final trumpet sounds, if we think about that vision or the imagery of a trumpet in Jewish apocalyptic literature, there was always the use of the trumpet.

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I won't get into it, but if you want to write it down, these are some areas where we see this trumpet in Isaiah 27 -13.

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Jeremiah 51 -27. Joel 2 verse 1.

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Zechariah 9 -14. Come talk to me afterwards if you need those texts. But this imagery of the trumpet, it was a rich image, and Christ used it himself in Matthew 24 -31.

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And my thing is going to glitch, so it's not going to read it for me, but this idea of Christ gathering all of the elect to himself from the four winds.

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Paul says that when that trumpet sounds, mortality will give way to immortality, death will give way to life, even for those who are still alive when

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Christ comes. Maybe this is something that the Corinthians wrestled with, I don't know. But even for those who are still alive when

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Christ comes, he will transform their bodies right then and there.

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He says, in the twinkling of an eye, like the twitch of an eye, the blink of an eye, faster than you can say glorification, he will glorify every man and woman in Christ.

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And everything about us that makes us subject to death will be stripped away.

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Everything about us that is ready to die will be put away, stripped away, and will be clothed with everything that prepares us for eternal life.

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What Paul is teaching here, if you guys like theology, the study of theology, Paul is teaching the doctrine of glorification.

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This is one of the main texts. If someone says, tell me what glorification is, they'll take you to 1

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Corinthians 15 and then in the 50s. And what glorification is, is this.

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It's the instantaneous process by which God transforms the believer.

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It's when God takes a man or a woman who is believed in Christ, who is right with him, who is destined for eternal life.

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He justifies them, the golden chain of salvation. He justifies them, or redemption.

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He sanctifies them. He glorifies them. It's an instantaneous process where he transforms the perishable to the imperishable.

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Where he takes the sinful person and they become a sinless person. They go from an imperfect person to the perfect person.

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It's when he transforms a Christian from the likeness of the first Adam to the likeness of the last

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Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, what Paul is teaching here, at the very onset, is that because of the resurrection, because of Christ's resurrection, the believer,

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I know we've heard this already many times, but the believer now gets to look forward to a future resurrection.

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And what that means is the death of death and the death of Christ. And so in glorification, we see this.

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If you wanted to teach glorification to someone else, you could point them to verses like Romans 8 and verse 30.

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And those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. Those whom he justified, he also glorified.

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Philippians 3, 20 and 21. But our citizenship, if you're a

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Christian, this is a descriptor of you, but our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a

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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.

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Glorification by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

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About this, picture this, the glorified man or woman in the presence of Christ, the

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Lord Jesus, in Matthew 13, verse 43. This is what he says, what you will be like.

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If you are in Christ and you die, or he comes first and he glorifies you at the last trumpet,

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Jesus says, then the righteous will shine like the sun, Matthew 13, verse 43, in the kingdom of their father.

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And he says, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. So here Paul introduces us to this awesome glorification, this awesome concept, this doctrine of glorification, and he heralds the death of death for the believer in Christ because Christ rose from the dead, defeating death and the devil.

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There is no death for the believer. Now can that possibly be for me to say there is no death for the believer?

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In one sense it's true that we will all die in this room, but for every believer in Christ, for everyone who has placed their faith in the substitutionary atoning work of Christ, you will not die.

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Does that make sense? Am I making sense? Paul is making this claim, in fact he turns it into a taunt.

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If we get back to our text here, in verses 54, B, and 55, he quotes from Isaiah 25, verse 8.

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In Hosea 13, verse 14, he puts those two together, and he says, death is swallowed up in victory.

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O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

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This is something we see here that it's a matter of already and not yet.

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It's something that has been fulfilled but not fully realized. Something that has been inaugurated yet not fully consummated.

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Everyone in this room, I'm going to read you a passage in a moment where Christ says this, everyone in this room will die.

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And yet for the Christian, there is no true death. You will not die because the sting of death is gone.

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The victory of death is gone. The victory of death has been swallowed up in the resurrection of Christ and in the future resurrection of the believer.

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And so, when I think about us as Christians today, how many of us, whether you're a

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Christian or maybe you're not a Christian, how many of you struggle with the fear of death? The uncertainty of death?

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What is to come when I die? Maybe the process of death itself.

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But what Paul is getting at here is when we rightly understand the doctrine of the resurrection, we recognize that death has been rendered for the

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Christian only. There's no promise for the unbeliever but for the Christian only, death has been rendered weak and impotent.

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Death no longer holds sway over the Christian. There's no reason to fear death.

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There is no sting. Death is likened to sleep and no more. I don't know about you, but I'm not afraid at night to go to bed.

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I look forward to it when I lay my head on the pillow and finally get some sleep. That's what death is likened to for the

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Christian. Paul writes almost in a parallel way in 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 -18.

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He says, But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

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For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

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For we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the

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Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, see the parallels here, will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, with the sound of a trumpet, the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

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Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

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Lord in the air. I love this. And so we will always be with the

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Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

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These are supposed to be encouraging words if we believe it. Christ said in John 11, 25 and 26, this is what

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I was referencing earlier, Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, listen to this, though he die, yet he shall live.

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And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. And then he asks, do you believe this?

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And I ask you with the Lord Jesus, do you believe this passage? Do you trust

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God when he says that in this word, though every Christian in this room will die, you will live.

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You'll never die. Certainly we'll experience the process of dying. And that can be difficult, but we can close our eyes like we do every night.

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We can breathe our last breath. And death ushers us as like the thieves on the cross, like the thief on the cross.

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When Christ said today, you will be with me in paradise. Now I mentioned for those of us,

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I'm not going to ask, I'll just ask rhetorically, maybe you're a believer in Christ. You're a Christian and you're afraid of death.

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I'm not sure if you are. You're afraid of the prospect of death. I think the biblical way of viewing death is like this.

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The biblical way of viewing death is to see death almost like a vehicle that ushers us.

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It's like getting on the bus and the bus takes us to our Lord and our

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God. It's a vehicle. You see this mindset in Paul, when he said in 2

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Corinthians 5, 1 to 8, he says, For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have this perishable, this temporal tent, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

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For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. If indeed by putting it on, we may not be found naked.

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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 by life.

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He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the spirit as a guarantee.

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So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the

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Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage. We would rather be away from the body and at home with the

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Lord. I'm going to end this really quickly, but we see examples of this.

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What does a Christian mindset look like in light of the resurrection? I was sorting through a couple of examples, and I found a few that I'll share.

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There's the example of Cotton Mather. If anyone knows Cotton Mather, he was Thomas Goodwin, and he was a

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Puritan in the 1600s. And when Thomas Goodwin was on his deathbed, instead of being afraid to die, he said to someone that was accompanying him, he said, ah, this is dying, how

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I have seen as an enemy this smiling friend.

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He understood that when the Christian dies, death is done, and life, in a sense, with God, with Christ, begins.

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And not only that, but we see this example, John Owen almost says that verbatim.

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When John Owen was dying, he was a Puritan pastor, he was an author. And I like using him as an example because he wrote the book,

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The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. In his last hours, when he was on his deathbed,

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Owen dictated a short letter to a friend. If anybody appreciates the Puritans, at least appreciate that you've got

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John Owen on his deathbed doing what? But dictating a letter.

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And John Owen dictating a letter to his friend says this. His secretary was recording it on his behalf.

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He said, I am yet in the land of the living, but I, and then he stopped himself and he paused.

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He thought, I'm yet in the land of the living, but he said, no, no, stop. Said to his secretary, alter that.

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Dictate this instead. Write this instead. He continued, I am in the land of the dying, but I hope soon to be in the land of the living.

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That is the Christian perspective on this life and on the death that is to come. Oh death, where is your victory?

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Oh death, where is your sting? The next thing we see in this text is the death of sin.

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We're going to look at two verses, verses 56 and 57. The sting of death is sin,

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Paul writes, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Why is it that people are afraid to die?

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Why is it that people want to cling to life? Why is it that celebrities, after they die, get put into cryogenic,

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I think Frank referenced it last week, cryogenic freezers, so they can somehow preserve their life at some point in the future?

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It's because of the sting of death. It's because of the stigma that is attached to death.

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It's because of the sharp end on the edge of death. And here Paul conveys what that stinging aspect of death is.

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The sting of death is actually sin. It's caused by sin.

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The reason why death is so hard for so many isn't just because it's painful. It's not just because it's shrouded in uncertainty.

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It's not just because it's final. But primarily, the sting of death is because in death, there is finally accountability before God.

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And even the most bold atheist, Lowell, I'm thinking about you, and apologetics, and presuppositional apologetics, would suppose, and it comes right out of Romans 1, is the idea that even the unbeliever, deep down in his heart, knows there is a

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God. And he knows that he is accountable to that God. He has suppressed that truth in unrighteousness.

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He has tried to deny the reality of God. But deep down, even the most bold atheist knows, where am

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I? The words of Hebrews 9 .27,

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It is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment.

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And the awareness of one's sins, and therefore the sting of death, Paul says, is increased by the perfect law of God.

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Now, I don't know how many of you have done, who here, I'll ask a question, who here has done a study on the law of God?

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Is anyone here? A couple that have? Just to do a cursory search of the law of God, this is what we see the law of God does for the unbeliever, for the person that does not believe in Christ.

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This is what the New Testament says about the law. Romans 3 .19 says that the law stops every boasting mouth and brings accountability before God.

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You'll see a lot of this is in Romans. Romans 4 .15, the law brings wrath.

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Romans 5 .20, the law increases the trespass. It increases the severity of the sin, or the awareness of the severity of sin.

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Romans 7 .7, the law brings the knowledge of sin. James 2 .10,

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the law brings guilt. Everything about the law of God heaps on guilt.

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It heaps on accountability. It increases the sting of death. I said earlier, humanity's greatest existential problem is death.

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How much money is given to fight cancer? I'm not saying that's a bad cause, but how much money is given every year to just prolong life by a day or a month or a week or a year?

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Humanity's greatest problem is not just death, though. It's death and it's sin.

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It's death and it's sin and the law brings accountability for that sin.

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But, for the Christian, if we listen and we look at what Christ has accomplished in our place, if we consider the propitiatory work of Christ in our place, taking our wrath upon himself, becoming a curse in our place, dying in our stead, going to the grave, and then rising on the third day, this is what we see, what

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Christ has done for the Christian in relation to the law. Sorry, I'm full of references today.

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Matthew 5 .17, Christ says that he fulfilled the law. Ephesians 2 .15,

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Christ abolished the law. Romans 10 .4, he became the end of the law to all who believe.

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Colossians 2 .14, he canceled the record of debt that stood against us with all of its legal demands.

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In the clearest of terms, if you want to know the Christian's relationship to the law,

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Romans 8 .1 -4 says this, There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

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For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own

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Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the

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Spirit. And so, some of this is a little bit technical, but what I want us to see is this, we don't, brothers and sisters, have to be afraid of death, because in the end, death serves the believer who is going to be resurrected.

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And in the end, we don't have to be afraid of death because the sting of death is gone, and the sting of death is gone because Christ has dealt with the sin that leads to death and with the law that led to condemnation.

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And so, Gordon Fee says in his commentary, The resurrection is the final triumph over sin that brought death to the world and over the law that has emboldened sin.

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To quote Matthew Henry, everything that Matthew Henry says is good, but he says,

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The sting of death is sin, but Christ, by dying, has taken away the sting.

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John MacArthur used the imagery of a bee. Who likes to get stung by a bee here?

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And the imagery he used, it's like a bee, but its stinger has been removed. The sting has been removed from death.

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Matthew Henry says, He has made atonement for sin. He has obtained remission of it.

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The strength of sin is the law. None can answer its demands, endure its curse, or do away even one of his own transgressions.

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Then he says, Hence the terror and anguish. This is 400 years ago almost, and yet in his generation,

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Hence the terror and anguish of death. Nothing changes. There's nothing new under the sun.

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And he says, And yet, death may seize a believer. One of us could die today.

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One of us could die tomorrow. One of us could die next year. Death may seize a believer, but it cannot hold him in its power.

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And he says, How many springs of joy to the saints! And of thanksgiving to God are opened by the death and resurrection, the sufferings and the conquest of the

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Redeemer. There is no sting left in death because, brothers and sisters in Christ, because Christ died for us on our behalf and rose for us on our behalf, the sin is gone.

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Because God gave his only begotten Son, and because Christ became our substitutionary sacrifice and our resurrected

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Redeemer, the Christian is dead to the law that brought wrath, and the law is dead to the

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Christian. And what that means is we only have eternal peace with God. We no longer need to live with the guilt of sin because Christ has put that sin to death.

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He has nailed it to the cross. He has removed our sin from us as far as the east is from the west.

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And what's more, we are no longer plagued by the guilt of sin. We should no longer be plagued by the guilt of sin, but in Christ we have victory over the power of sin.

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So what that means is when Christ died and rose again, not only did he put death to death in terms of consequence, but he put death to death in terms of power.

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And Christ is victorious over sin, and every Christian abiding in Christ, filled with the

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Spirit, reading the Word, understanding what it means to obey, can have victory over sin.

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Not perfectly, but at least partially. And again, there's this already and not yet aspect to this, because this is eschatological.

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This is something that Christ has fulfilled, and something that's yet to be fully realized. And so we see this example in Romans 6, verses 9 to 14.

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It says, we know that Christ being raised from the dead... See the resurrection of Christ in relation to sin.

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Romans 6, 9. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him.

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For death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

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So that's in relation to Christ. Now this is in relation to the believer, based on the merits of Christ's resurrection.

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So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal bodies. How many of you,

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Christian, how many of you let sin reign in your mortal bodies from day to day and from week to week?

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How many of you let sin reign on your smartphone? How many of you let sin reign in your mind, in the thoughts that you think?

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How many of you let sin reign in your hearts, in your thoughts about a person, in your actions towards someone of the opposite sex, in your thoughts about someone in this church?

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But Christ says it's not to be so. Christ has put sin to death, and he says, let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

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Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

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For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law. See all the connections here.

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The resurrection, our relationship to sin, our relationship to the law. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace.

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So Christians, this means that we no longer are subject to slavery, of slavery to sin.

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We don't need to obey its passions. You're not a helpless victim. In Christ, we're more than conquerors.

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And in righteousness, we can be more than conquerors. We don't have to obey every whim.

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And how many of us believe that when we give in to sin and temptation? That I am subject to this, that I am only human.

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I can't help myself. And yet, Christ died and rose from the grave.

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He is dead to sin. And he says to us, consider yourselves, that already and not yet, one day we will be fully dead to sin.

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But for now, consider yourselves dead to sin. And this is an example, and I think we need a mental break anyways.

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Joel Beakey tells a story of one of his neighbors, where he was coming out of the house,

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I think he was getting in his car or something, and he noticed his neighbor on the other side of the fence, working in his yard.

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And he was immediately convicted because he thought this neighbor had lived next to him for,

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I think it was two or three months, and he thought, I've never even introduced myself to my neighbor, let alone shared the gospel with him.

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And so he said to his neighbor, he said, or went up and introduced himself, and they had polite conversation over the fence in their yards.

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And his neighbor asked this man, he said, why is it that you're always going to that building across the road?

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And that was Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. And Joel Beakey said, well, I'm the president of that seminary, and I'm a pastor, and so that's why

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I'm always going there. And the guy said, oh, you're a pastor, and showed some interest. And Joel Beakey said, well, why don't you come?

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I'll invite you. Why don't you come to my church this Sunday? And you can worship with us, and you can hear the word of God.

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And the man said, absolutely, I'd love to come. And so I listened to this a few months ago, and I couldn't track it down.

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Some of my details are a bit fuzzy, but from what I remember, this man went to church, and Joel Beakey didn't see him.

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But the following week, he followed up with the man and said, oh, I didn't see you at church. And he said, I was there.

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He said, I was there. And he said, I have never experienced anything like that in my life.

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And, brothers and sisters, it's my ambition that our church services would be like this.

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But he said, I felt as if you grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and you held me up before a holy

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God, and I had nowhere to go because there were people in the pews to my right and my left, and I couldn't leave.

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And so I had to stand there and face God. And he confessed this deep conviction of sin.

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And so there in their yards, Joel Beakey shared the gospel with him and led him to repentance and said, you must repent and believe in the gospel.

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And the man said, well, what do I do now that I'm a Christian? And he said, you need to live for him.

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You need to obey him. As if to say, don't let sin reign in your mortal body.

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And the man said, but what can I do? I mean, I live with my girlfriend. He was a middle -aged man. I live with my girlfriend.

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We're not even married. And Joel Beakey said, well, maybe you should marry her. He said, okay, okay, maybe I'll marry her.

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And they wrapped up their conversation and left. And that was midweek. Well, a few days later on the

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Friday, Joel Beakey pulls up into his driveway, and his neighbor's driveway is filled with cars.

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And he thinks, what is going on? And so he gets out of his car, and as he's walking to his door, he looks into his neighbor's yard, and what's happening?

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But the man is marrying this woman in his backyard. And Joel Beakey says, I wish my church members would listen to me as well as this man.

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And he detailed, I won't tell it all, but he detailed the transformation of this man's life from an adulterer, in a sense, a fornicator, a man who was dishonest, not treating his girlfriend, his common -law wife, well.

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Immediately, the Lord put it in his heart, new ambitions. I will please

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God, whatever that means. I'll marry that girl two days from now. And so he detailed this transformation, and the man's baptism, and eventually the man moved away, but Joel Beakey says he was saved, transformed from a life of rebellion, a futility of sin, to a life lived in service to God.

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A life lived fully in service to God. That is what God calls us to.

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That is what God has enabled us to do through Christ in his resurrection. And I recognize fully that it is only partially, it's only imperfectly.

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I'm not preaching sinless perfectionism, but it's possible, brothers and sisters.

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I feel like the level of holiness, the level of righteousness that we expect from the average, ordinary, everyday

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Christian today, we have set the bar far too low. We have set the bar far too low in our expectations for ourselves, in the way that we use our time, in the way that we spend our money.

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I bring it up a lot because I know the struggle in the way that we use our smartphones, in the way that we use our words, in the way that we work at work, in the way that we talk at work, in the way that we talk to people, in the way that we talk about people.

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I believe we've set the bar too low. Do not present your bodies to sin.

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But one day, brothers and sisters, not only will this death of sin, be present, temporal, partial, but one day, because of what

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Christ has done, it will be perfect and it will be eternal.

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I came across a story about a man named Alexander White. He was a pastor in Scotland in the 1800s.

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And as he was preaching a sermon to his congregation, he said to them, I have discovered the most wicked man in Edinburgh.

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I've discovered the most rebellious man in this city. And I am going to name names in this sermon.

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And everybody drew forward. Their eyes were wide open, their ears were open.

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Who is this wicked and this unrighteous man? And with all eyes on him, one historian says, he bent forward and whispered, his name is

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Alexander White. Just like Paul said, he went from being the least of the saints to the least of the apostles, to the chief of sinners, to the foremost.

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Every Christian, every mature Christian, as we grow, I believe this wholeheartedly, as we grow to be more mature, more

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Christlike, the more we realize, woe is me. I am a sinner.

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And yet, brothers and sisters, one day, because of Christ's death, because of Christ's resurrection, because of the resurrection that we will look forward to, after death, when death ushers us into Christ's presence, we will be sinless and we will be perfect.

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Philippians 1 .6, Paul says, I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.

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When is that? Will bring it to completion next year? Maybe when you're 75.

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He says, no, we'll bring it to completion at the day of Christ. When we're resurrected,

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John says in 1 John 3 .2, I read this a few weeks ago, beloved, we are God's children now. Think about this, anticipate this, my brother, my sister.

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We are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. We don't even know what we're going to look like when that day comes, when that trumpet sounds, when

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Christ calls his elect from the four corners of the world. He says, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.

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We will perfectly reflect the righteousness of Jesus Christ when we are raised from the dead.

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And so in Christ's resurrection, he has put death to death. He has and he will put sin to death.

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That's one of the sweetest things. When I think about heaven, I don't like throwing up.

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I don't like having a stomach bug, but I suppose I could deal with a stomach bug in heaven.

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I don't like sickness. I don't like death. None of those things are good, but one of the things that I'm looking forward to the most, apart from being with Christ, seeing him face to face, is that finally all of the sin in my life, like Alexander White would say, the most wretched of man, the greatest sinner

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I know, being me, will finally be perfect. And so will every

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Christian in this room. And my thought is always, let us make that transformation as small as possible so we don't get whiplash when

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God glorifies us. Lastly, in here we see the death of vanity, and I'm going to be very quick here.

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Because of Christ's resurrection, we see this. I better read the text.

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Verse 58. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord. I'll stop us there. Here we see the death of vanity, or we could say the death of doubt.

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I wrestled with this. But the very first thing we see is because of Christ's resurrection, our faith is not in vain.

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We must be steadfast, Paul says. We must be immovable. As Christians, because Christ rose from the dead, we can be resolute in our faith.

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Children, let me tell you, all the kids here, the gospel is real.

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You really are a sinner. You really are. The wages of sin is death.

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You really do deserve death. I deserve death. Everybody in this room, your parents, the adults in this room, deserve death.

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But even while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

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He really did come. It's as much a historical fact as any other verified historical fact.

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It's as much a fact as this music stand exists, that Christ lived the life that we could never live.

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He died the death that we deserve. He went to the grave that we belonged in, and then he rose from the dead on the third day.

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It's true. And if you believe it, kids, adults, you'll never die. And if you believe it, you could put sin to death in your life.

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And when you go to be with Jesus, you'll be perfect. There will be no sin.

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No more getting mad at your sister, no more getting mad at your wife or your husband, your brother, your cousin.

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You'll be perfect. And Paul says we need to be steadfast and immovable.

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We need to believe the gospel. I like what Peter said in 2 Peter 1 .16. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths.

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We didn't follow a myth. It wasn't a rumor. It wasn't gossip that we heard and followed. When we made known to you the power and the coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

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We saw him. We saw when God said from the clouds, well done, this is my good and faithful servant, or well done, this is my son.

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Listen to him. We were there when they nailed his hands and feet to the cross.

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We were there when the sky was darkened. We were there when the full measure of God's wrath was poured onto Christ, when he became a curse on that tree.

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We were there when his body was wrapped and he was put into a tomb. We were there when the tomb was found empty.

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We were there when Christ rose from the dead. We were there when he talked to his disciples.

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We were there. It's not a cleverly devised myth. It's the truth.

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The gospel is true. And sometimes if Christians, I think, would only act and live and believe like the gospel is true, what would that do for us?

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They were eyewitnesses to the resurrection, Paul said earlier in 1 Corinthians 15. So he says, be steadfast, immovable.

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The vanity of faith is dead. Faith in Christ is never in vain.

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Faith in Christ is only the perfect faith. It's only the perfect trust.

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It's only right, proper, true, and appropriate. And if you don't, if you haven't placed your faith in Christ, then your life is in vain.

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And whatever you're trusting in is in vain. And then he says this, the second part.

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Be steadfast, immovable, believe the gospel. Don't move from it. And always abounding in the work of the

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Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

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Your labor is not in vain. How many of us live like the resurrection is real?

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How many of us live in such a radically different way from the world that if the resurrection is not true, what

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Paul says, we are of all people most to be pitied, is the case. Or do a lot of us live with one foot in the world and one foot in eternity, not going to fully commit because I don't know,

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I'm not that steadfast, I'm not that immovable, I'm not that invested in the future, or I really like the pleasures that this life has to offer.

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The comforts, the safety, the security, the familiarity, but what

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Paul says here is because the resurrection is true, we must throw ourselves headlong into the service of God so that our lives, if you're the only

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Christian in your family, everybody in your family should be looking at you going, the guy is nuts. He's so, like they say, he's so heavenly minded.

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He's of no earthly good. His life makes no sense. That's not the son I raised. That's not the daughter

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I raised. That's not, our life should not make sense in light of the resurrection of Christ.

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And Paul says here, he says, we should be always abounding in the work of the

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Lord, knowing that your labor, man, you were at the conference yesterday, kapi 'au.

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We learned about kapi 'au yesterday. Kapi 'au is toil.

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It's struggle. It's hard work. Paul uses here, it's a variation of that same favorite word of Paul's, kapos.

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What Paul is saying is this, you're toiling, you're struggling, you're suffering in service to me is the best investment that you could ever make.

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It's not worthless. To the contrary, it's the best way that you could spend your life is to lay it down in your service to Christ.

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Live as a dying man before dying men and women. Preach the gospel. Serve the

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Lord. Don't hold anything back. If you do, whatever you hold back is actually in vain.

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Peter says, Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober -minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all of your conduct.

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And this was the mind of Christ. We're told in Hebrews 12 that it says,

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Let us also lay aside every weight and every sin that clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, and listen to what motivated

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Christ's service, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and here is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

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The mind of Paul, he said, I have fought the good fight in 2 Timothy 4, 7, and 8.

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I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the

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Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day. This is Paul's reward.

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But then he says, And not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing.

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Everybody that looks forward to that trumpet day, that day when the trumpet is blown and Christ calls his elect, everybody that is living for that day,

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Paul says that there is a crown of righteousness awaiting that man, that woman.

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Are you going to be putting on a paper crown in heaven? Are you going to be putting on a crown that's beautiful and stunning and made with gold and precious metals and every other heavenly material that God has?

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I'll finish with this. The life of C .T. Studd. Have I ever shared the life of C .T.

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Studd before? C .T. Studd, kids, if you can picture this, anybody that likes hockey, he was the

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Connor McDavid of cricket. If you like basketball, he's the Michael Jordan or the

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Kobe Bryant, wherever you are on that spectrum of basketball. He was a premier cricket player in the 1800s in Britain.

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He was a household name. At 18 years of age, the Lord saved him, and he went from being the world's or Britain's greatest cricket player, destined for fame and fortune, to a missionary with Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission.

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He and the Cambridge Seven sailed across the ocean. He gave up the fortune. He gave up the fame.

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He gave up the popularity of being a world -class athlete in Britain, and he traded it for disease and for struggle, for suffering, for kapos, for toil and labor.

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And he said, when someone asked him how he could give up such a promising career as an athlete, such a promising fortune, he said, if Christ be

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God and died for me, there is nothing too great that I can do for him.

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And after he had served in China and then in India and then in Africa, he wrote of his experiences.

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He said, some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell.

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Some people want comfort. They want familiarity. They want the church, the exact church that they want right next to them.

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He says, some want the sound of chapel or church bell. He says, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.

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I want to get as close to death, to disorder, to despair, to the dying sinners, and I want to live my life there because my hope isn't in this life.

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My hope isn't in the familiarity of this life. My hope is in Christ, and it's in the future resurrection.