Sunday Sermon: The End (1 Corinthians 15:50-58)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the Corinthians.

This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

The Resurrection Passage in 1 Corinthians 15

1 Corinthians chapter 15. Since I believe it was the weekend right before Thanksgiving, we have been in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and today marks our last Sunday. I had tried to plot that out that I would finish this before I had taken off to Atlanta, but I think I stretched one particular sermon into two, two different Sundays.

We are now finishing up our study of 1 Corinthians 15, verses 50 through 58. In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand? 1 Corinthians 15, verses 50 through 58. The apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth, I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment. In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed.

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. Let us pray. Lord, as we come to this word this morning, I pray that you would continue to uplift us and encourage us for how weak we are in the flesh that we would forget even such great promises of God.

But the devil is still at work in this world. And at work in our members is our sinful nature that we were born with in Adam. Even when we were given a new nature in Christ Jesus, that man-centered nature is still trying to get out.

And so as we war between spirit and flesh, we have that tendency to forget what great and awesome promises have been given to us in Christ Jesus. That by faith in Christ, His death on the cross, His resurrection from the grave, the promise of His return, we have been assured that though this body will die, our spirit will live forever with God.

And even a day will come in which this body will be raised and be made imperishable and reunited with our spirits. And so we will be in a glorified body, living forever with our Lord God, praising Him for all eternity.

I pray that these promises echo through these scriptures as we come to them today, that we would be convicted in heart of our sin and enlivened in spirit for the joy of the Lord that is set before us.

We pray and ask these things in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So because of the advent of computer technology and the fact that you can read entire books now on a tablet, no longer do you have to have your library of books and references, but you can carry an entire library in your cell phone because books have been digitized and they have been put on Amazon or through Google and other means that you can purchase these books.

There was a university study that was done a few years ago that wanted to find out what the most common words, phrases, and sentences were in all of English literature. And it should have come as no surprise to anyone when after doing that research, they discovered that the most common sentence in the English language was two simple words.

The end. The most common sentence to every book, the most common sentence to every play, the most common sentence to every screenplay. The end. And one of the things that that emphasizes to every one of us is that everything must eventually come to an end.

Now sometimes the end is good news. Sometimes the end might be bad news, especially when we're talking about death, the end might be bad news. Maybe if you're really enjoying that television series that you've been watching for the last seven or eight years and it finally comes to an end and when they put that on the screen, the end, now that's heartbreaking.

I love that series. I love these characters. They were like part of my family and now it's come to an end. Or when you have been part of this church for the number of years that God has brought you here, he works through the military to bring you to Junction City, Kansas, and you have come to know this congregation and then love them and grow up with them maturing in the faith and then come those words from your commanding officer or whoever.

Now your time has come to the end and it's time for you to PCS or a change of station to another location that may be good news to a certain degree or going to a warmer climate than Kansas perhaps, but it's bad news when you consider the family that you've grown up with and learned with and become friends with and now you must start all over again.

As I mentioned, it's not always the greatest news whenever we have to say the end to a friend, a family member, a loved one who has passed on and gone to be with the Lord. But at the same time, that's good news when we consider that they're no longer with us, but they're forever with God in heaven.

And someday we must also face our own end. When our body dies and we go to be with the Lord, it will be bittersweet for there are people that we must say goodbye to, but we know we will see them again in glory for all those who are in Christ Jesus.

Very first song I ever learned to play on the piano, well, the first song I learned to play was Jesus Loves Me, so I guess I should say it's the second song I ever learned to play on piano, was Friends by Michael W. Smith.

And in the chorus of that song, it says, friends are friends forever if the Lord's the Lord of them. And a friend will not say never for the welcome will not end. For it's hard to let you go. In the Father's hands, we know that a lifetime's not too long to live as friends.

If we are in Christ Jesus, we have nothing to fear of the end. As a matter of fact, the end will be a great day for death in the body means life forever with the Lord. In this closing section to this study that we've done in 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection of the dead, the Apostle Paul issues his closing cadence, and we have this divided up for us into three parts.

All of this centered around the end. The first part is the end of our bodies. The second part is the end of sin. And finally, the end of our work. As Paul says in verse 58, that the work that we do now, the labor that we are doing while we are in this body on this earth, if we're in the Lord, it's not in vain.

That applies to anything, our friendships, our worship, the work that you do, the daily grind that you go through Monday through Friday, eight to five or whatever your schedule might be. Some of you have graveyard shifts and some of you might even come to church on a Sunday morning having not been asleep yet for the last 15 or 16 hours.

And yet we know that the work that we do even in this to earn a paycheck is not in vain if it is all done to the glory of God. But even this work that we do here in the body will come to the end. Praise God for that.

We don't always endure in that for the Lord will even redeem that at His coming. So let us look at this first part. The end of our bodies. Beginning in verse 50 where Paul says, I tell you this brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

And this is coming off of the argument that had been presented in verses 35 through 49. Paul said in verse 35, someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? This is a person who is arguing against the concept of the resurrection of the dead.

It is absolutely absurd to us in our physical bodies, which we feel decaying, which we know will die inherently in your members, you know, your body is going to die. It is absurd for us to think that after death, the body can come back to life.

So in an argument against this concept of the resurrection, an argument that comes from the flesh, not from the spirit, someone might say, well, how are the dead raised? Like how would that even happen?

With what kind of body would they come? If the body that we've died in is dead and decaying in the ground, how could it be possible that anyone would come back from the dead? One of the biggest fads in entertainment right now is zombie movies and zombie TV shows.

There was an article I remember reading a couple of years ago, talking about how a zombie apocalypse would never happen. Not just because you're talking about a reanimation of a dead corpse, but should that happen, that graves would open up and bodies would actually come out and start wandering around attempting to eat people.

They would last three or four days before decay in the body sets in so much that the bones aren't even able to hold up the body anymore. You'd have flies and maggots and all sorts of different creatures and insects that would eat away that decaying flesh to the point that that body just can't even walk around.

So after two weeks, our zombie apocalypse would just end. So such things wouldn't even happen. And yet we've got what, a TV show called The Walking Dead that's been going on for however many seasons and those dead corpses are still walking around eating people?

And George Romero, is he still making his Dawn of the Dead series, his zombie movies that come out every few years or so? But such an apocalypse would simply never happen. And we know that that would never happen.

We know that's complete fantasy, that nothing like that would ever take place. A reanimated corpse, who would have ever heard of such a thing? And that's basically the argument that the skeptic would be presenting here that Paul is responding to following verse 35.

Who has ever heard of a body coming back from the dead? And that's what drives Paul to say in verse 36, you foolish person. When he says you foolish person, he's especially talking to those who are in Christ, who know that he has risen from the dead, and yet they would still argue against the resurrection of the dead.

For Paul had pointed out in verse 34, wake up from your drunken stupor as is right and do not go on sinning, for some have no knowledge of God, and I say this to your shame. Yet those who do have knowledge of God, you would still argue against the resurrection of the dead?

Then the argument that he provides comes from nature. What you sow does not come to life until it dies. And we see that in the example of the seed. The seed that goes into the ground dies and then something new comes out of it.

Something bigger and greater and more beautiful than the seed that went into the ground. So as you observe this even happening in nature, so you should be able to discern from nature. A resurrection of the body, we see it in nature.

So how much more it should be for our own spirits, our souls, when the man who is from heaven has died and come back to life, and through him our very dead bodies will be made alive like his glorious body.

That was an argument that was presented in verses 20 through 28. Christ, the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ, then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom of God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and every power.

Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. As Jesus Christ has been raised, so we also will be raised, all those who believe in him. What is sown is perishable.

These bodies that we inhabit, these sinful bodies, the sinful man, our sinful nature that is still warring within our spirits, that's all perishable. That's all dying. And it's going to die because we're all sinners.

Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin, the wages of our sin and rebellion against God is death. Wages, what's a wage? Wage is something that you earn. What have you earned for your sin? Death, that's what you've earned.

Death came into the picture because Adam sinned. And then all who are born from Adam are born with his nature and so all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Romans 3, 23. But 6, 23 goes on to say, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

We've deserved death, but God has given us a free gift of his grace, unmerited favor, in that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. That atoning sacrifice by his spilled blood, we're able to stand before a holy, righteous God, worthy because we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Christ who has conquered death, who has destroyed sin by the death of his perfect body, and then by his power, raised up from the grave. His body did not see decay, as Peter points out, a fulfillment of the prophecy as he preached at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.

He was so received by God, his sacrifice so perfect that when he was buried, his body didn't even see decay. And so if God has that power to do that for Christ, don't you know that all who are in Christ will receive the same?

And even though our bodies would decay and become like dust and ashes in the ground, yet on the day that Christ returns, our bodies will be made imperishable. If God has the power to bring all things into existence out of nothing, don't you know that he has the power to bring life into your dead body, even though it'd be nothing but dust?

At least there he has something to work with. When he created all things, there was nothing. And so he has this power to bring your bodies back to life. This is the God whom we worship. This is the God in whom we place our trust.

Tell me, my brothers and sisters, who else can give you that? Where do you find the resurrection of the dead? Anywhere, in anything. Even those religions that believe in some sort of afterlife do not teach and talk about the resurrection of the dead.

They just say that we're some ethereal spirit that goes on and dwells in some sort of abstract existence that no one's ever actually seen and no one's ever be able to come and tell us about. It's complete theory.

It's complete myth that such an existence outside the body is even there. So how do we know that when our body dies, we go to be with the Lord? Because the one who's told us that is the one who came from that very place we're going.

Who has descended from or who has ascended into heaven except he who has descended from heaven, the Son of Man, as Jesus shared with Nicodemus. And so we have he who has come from heaven to tell us about this place that he is preparing for us, for all who are in Christ Jesus.

We have no hope in any other belief or religion, any philosophy devised by man, even the greatest knowledge on earth, E equals MC squared. Guess what, folks? It perishes with the rest of the earth. Though we should absolutely apply our minds to learning and education, when we learn the things about what God has created, it should stir all the more in us praise for our great king for the amazing things that he has made.

So apply yourself to education, learn, apply what you have learned to benefit others, have a job, have a career, climb the corporate ladder. But in all these things, give glory to God who made all of these things and realize that the knowledge you learn while you are here in the body is not sustaining you for all eternity.

The only thing that gives you eternal life, the only thing that raises our body from the dead is faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and nothing else. By grace, you are saved through faith. So this first movement that Paul gives here in this closing section, verses 50 through 58, he talks about the end of our bodies.

We can't even inherit the kingdom of God until the body dies, until the perishable becomes imperishable. But do not think that this means that every single person ever, in all time, will always experience death because Paul goes on in verse 51 to say, behold, I tell you a mystery.

We shall not all sleep. There are some whose bodies will not die because on that day that Christ returns and the trumpets of victory are blasting as he comes back with his army of angels from heaven, as talked about in 2 Thessalonians 1, inflicting vengeance and fire on those who did not believe, but rescuing for salvation those who did.

When Christ returns in this way, those who are still alive in the body will not experience death, but will be raptured to meet the Lord in the air. And those of us who have died and our spirits are with God, our bodies come up out of the grave and are reunited with our spirits.

This is what Paul talks about in the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5. And so there are some that will not see death. Paul says, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

Every one of us will be changed. Even those who don't die, even they must be changed in order to live forever with God. The perishable will be made imperishable. And when will this happen? In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

So we're sure that what Paul is talking about here is not sanctification. It's not something that happens over a long period of time and eventually the body is made perfect. Because a person strives for holiness and they grow in perfection and righteousness.

That's not what Paul is talking about here. He's talking about the return of Christ and in that very moment what was perishable is made imperishable. It happens faster than I snap my fingers. It happens in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

The word, the Greek word for moment there in verse 52 is atomos. This is actually where we get the English word atom from. The Greeks believed in this small tiny super particle that held all things together but it wasn't just matter.

Whenever we use the word atom, what we're talking about is exclusively matter. We're talking about the smallest building blocks of all matter. But when a Greek used that word atom, it wasn't simply matter, it was also time.

It was also as things exist in the moment in which they exist. That's what that word atomos meant. So Paul uses it here to signify the moment. At the smallest, slightest inkling of time, time ends and it becomes the eternal that has been promised to us.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, whenever I read that phrase, twinkling of an eye, I think of the cartoons, like Disney tunes with the doe-eyed characters. They got those bright eyes. Whenever they'll do some sort of close-up on the character, you'll have that little shimmer in their eyes.

They're shaking or something like, that's what I think of a twinkle. I don't really know exactly what a twinkling is supposed to be, but we know it's something instantaneous. It's something as fast as the eye can perceive light.

That's how fast this transformation takes place. And it's amazing to consider, because with the high school students on Wednesday night, we've been going through the book of Revelation. It's amazing to consider that the things that John is describing there in the book of Revelation are probably happening.

A lot of those things are happening in that moment, in that instantaneous moment. He's taking chapters and verses to explain, excuse me, some of these things that he sees, but some of those things are happening in an instantaneous moment.

As Paul is talking about here, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will all be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality.

As I mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago, we theorized what that might be like. What is it like the moment that you die and then you go to be with the Lord? Even when we hear accounts from those who have had near-death experiences, where their bodies were declared clinically dead, but somehow they were rejuvenated, resuscitated.

They were brought back to life before the body passed to a point that no life could be brought back into it ever again. And when they are asked, what was that experience like? Oftentimes, unless they're making up something about some vision of heaven that they saw.

I don't doubt that they saw something, but it wasn't heaven, a dream or some sort of state. But oftentimes when they come back and we ask them what it was that they saw, they will just say, it just felt like I was falling asleep.

Felt like I was falling asleep and now I woke up again. Because you brought me back, thanks a lot. Anyway, to some people that's probably a good idea, they need a second chance, but to others, they're ready to go home and be with the Lord.

But their account of dying, of that experience, it's just as though the body had gone to sleep. I remember when I was a little kid, I was in still one of those booster seats. I still wasn't sitting in the seat with the harness on my shoulder.

Although I'm rather frustrated with the seatbelt laws that they passed today. I think I was sitting in a seat with a seatbelt around me at five or six years old and now our kids have to be like nine in order to get out of the booster seat and sit in the front seat.

But anyway, that's a rant for another time. There was one time we were driving in the car, we were coming back from my grandmother's house. I lived in South Carolina at the time. My grandmother was in Columbia and we lived in a little town outside of Columbia called Blythewood.

And I remember looking outside the window and watching trucks pass by. I love doing that in my seat, just watching the trucks. And I remember watching trucks and then suddenly I was waking up in my bed.

And it was so bizarre, it felt instantaneous. It didn't feel like any time had passed at all. I'm watching vehicles pass by and then suddenly I'm awake. And I got up out of my bed and I'm running into the kitchen.

It's the next morning already. Mom is fixing breakfast. I don't remember this amount of time passing by. And I asked my mom, I said, Mom, what happened? I was sitting in my seat. We were coming back from Meemaw's and now I'm waking up in my bed.

And she said, well, when we got home last night, you were asleep. And so your dad took you up in his arms and he brought you to your bed. And he laid you down and you woke up in a different place. So my friends, though I could not tell you exactly what the experience of death passing from this life into the next is going to be like, I imagine it's probably something like our loving Heavenly Father taking us up in his arms and transferring us from one place to the next.

And we go to sleep in this life and we wake up in glory. What a beautiful day that will be. And so Paul says the imperishable must, or we are made imperishable, and this is what inherits the kingdom. The perishable body must be put off.

It must be made imperishable. And this mortal body must put on immortality. This is our first movement in these nine verses that we are considering, the end of our bodies. And then the next part of this movement is the end of sin.

The End of Sin and the Defeat of Death

Sin exists in our mortal body. Praise God, it does not exist in our immortal body. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? Does anybody know what it is that Paul is quoting here? What is this saying that he's talking about? Clearly, it comes from something poetic or something song-like, the way that it's probably formatted in your Bible.

It's put in quotation marks. So Paul is quoting something else. What is he quoting? He's quoting from the prophet Hosea. Turn with me to the left to Hosea chapter 13. Daniel and then Hosea. If you hit Joel, Amos, and Obadiah, you've gone too far.

Hosea chapter 13. Joel, Amos, and Obadiah come after Hosea. I should point that out. Hosea chapter 13. So here's some background into what's going on in this particular letter. Hosea is Israel's last prophet.

Judah will still go on as a kingdom for several more kings, but Israel, the northern kingdom, is about to be conquered by the Assyrians. They fell in sometime around 722 BC. Hosea was the last prophet to prophesy over Israel before the Assyrians came in and sacked that kingdom.

Hosea was referred to as the deathbed prophet of Israel because what he prophesied was Israel's death. They were about to be taken from their land. They were about to be distributed in a new area, and many of them would never return.

And so, because Israel had whored themselves out with other gods, they had worshiped false gods instead of the one true God. As part of the ministry of this prophet, God told Hosea to marry a prostitute.

Her name was Gomer. And Hosea had children with Gomer who had very dreary names. I would not have wanted to have been a child born in that family, particularly the names that they had to have been given and what they meant.

And God told Hosea, here is what it is that you're supposed to name your kids. Anyway, you can study Hosea yourself and find out what those children's names were. But when Hosea's wife was unfaithful to him, the Lord told Hosea to take her back, for this was going to be prophetic about the way God was going to take his own people back, though they had whored themselves out with many gods.

And so Hosea is prophesying about the end of Israel, but also contained within his prophecy is a resurrection of Israel. Look at Hosea 13, verse 4. It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought.

But when they had grazed, they became full. They were filled and their heart was lifted up. Therefore, they forgot me. So now I am to them like a lion, like a leopard, I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs.

I will tear open their breast and I will devour them like a lion as a wild beast would rip them open. In the book of Revelation, Christ is described as both a lion and a lamb. To us who are in Christ, my friends, he's our lamb.

He is the sacrificial lamb. He is gentle and warm and kind and loving. But to those who do not know Christ, he is a lion and he will devour those who have rebelled against the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Friends, this is why we need to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. So that those who are still in their sin and in their rebellion against the great king will not fall to that king in the final judgment.

They will instead become part of that kingdom and be rescued by that king in the final judgment. But that rescue comes only by belief in the message of the gospel of Christ. The good news that Jesus died for our sin, though we were enemies of God, Christ died for us.

So that all who believe in him would be forgiven and become members of that kingdom. My friends, you're members of that kingdom now. As George Whitfield preached, you are immortal right now and will remain in this body until the work on earth is done.

As we sang about this morning, that great song that was penned by Keith Green. We must share the gospel so that those who are right now pray to that lion would turn from their sin and become a sheep to the shepherd and follow him into safety for all eternity.

But as this lion comes against his enemies, God declares in verse 9, he destroys you, O Israel, for you are against me, against your helper. Where now is your king to save you in all your cities? Where are all your rulers?

Those of whom you said, give me a king and princes. I gave you a king in my anger and I took him away in my wrath. Once again, as I stated earlier, there's nothing in this world that can save you. No hope and trust that you can place in anything, no government, no counsel, no philosophy, no religion that will save your soul.

Only Christ, only Christ. The Lord continues to threaten the iniquity of Ephraim is bound up. His sin is kept in store. The judgment will be against the sins that have been committed against God. The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son, for at the right time, he does not present himself at the opening of the womb.

But then see this promise that God gives to this people that he is going to devour, yet he will redeem them. Verse 14, I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol. And look at how instantaneous everything transitions in what is being said through Hosea.

It's like we don't even get a transition or a segue, okay? Like in my years in radio, one of the things that we were taught how to do is to segue from one topic to the next, particularly when you're interviewing somebody.

Because questions can just kind of roll off or conversation can lead to another question, but it always must have a segue. Otherwise, it just sounds like you've derailed the conversation entirely. Everything needs to be smooth.

That's the way the listener wants to see it. Like butter on their ears when everything that's coming from the radio is just nice and smooth, right? So we learned how to segue. This is a terrible segue.

It goes from gloom and despair and threats and wrath and judgment, and all of a sudden, we're instantly into redemption. This is not how you segue from one topic to the next. But my friends, I point out that we've already read we will be changed instantaneously, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

And so God, in his moment that he deems right, the moment that God has appointed, the one that is for his good pleasure, he redeems those who have sinned against him. I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol.

I shall redeem them from death. Oh, death, where are your plagues? What did we read in 1 Corinthians 15? Oh, death, where is your sting? What is that? It's all the manner of ways in which death would come about.

None of those ways are pleasant, by the way. Death is not something that you look forward to. And in the sense that I'm talking about, the way your body is going to perish, that's probably not something that you want to have happen.

We don't enter into death going, yay, death! For death is the result of sin. It is an enemy. It is a punishment, and it's painful, and it's gloomy, and it's full of despair. Our hope is not in the fact that we're going to die.

Our hope is in the fact that we don't stay dead, and we are resurrected in Christ. God says, I shall ransom them from the grave, from Sheol. I shall redeem them from death. Death, where are your plagues?