Victory Over Death - [1 Corinthians 15:55-57]

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You know, I read something recently online about aging being a treatable disease.
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They actually want to research this, they want to find a cure for aging. And I thought about that and I'm going, hmm.
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You know, imagine, you know, like in Genesis, living to be 782 or something like that.
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And I just thought, you know, as they work on these things, even if they could cure them,
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I mean, are they going to add a single day to their lives that God has not ordained? And the answer is no. And I thought about my own body, my own body of death, and I thought, would
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I want to be trapped in this body for another 600 or 700 years? I don't think so. I'm looking forward to going home.
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But we live in a culture that is obsessed with death and more succinctly obsessed with avoiding it.
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Death is inherently a bad thing for most people. Even a few days ago, with John Cristoforo and his brother,
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Jim, as their father passed away, it is a difficult thing to watch someone die.
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It is a difficult thing to have someone who is near and dear to you die.
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But as we will see this morning, our great hope is not in this life, not in the things that we have, not in what we get to do now, not even if we could live 700 more years on this earth, but in what lies ahead.
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Let's read 1 Corinthians 15 verses 51 to 58.
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Paul writes, Behold, I tell you a mystery.
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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.
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For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.
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But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written,
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Death is swallowed up in victory. Verse 55, O death, where is your victory?
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O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
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But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the
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Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. Now let me just briefly set the context a little bit.
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And Paul is answering, if we were to turn back to verse 35, you don't need to, I'll read it. He's answering two questions that come up in verse 35.
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But someone will say, first, how are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?
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These are the opponents that Paul had been writing or teaching about false doctrine about the resurrection.
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Even as he addressed with the Thessalonians, that maybe they'd missed the resurrection or missed the second coming. And here they were teaching against the resurrection.
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They didn't understand it. But the truth about the resurrection is that we, believers, had to be transformed from our fallen bodies, from our corruptible bodies, to bodies that were no longer subject to corruption.
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Bodies fit for eternity. Bodies that would indeed not be subject to aging. That would not be subject to the penalty of sin because we wouldn't have the presence of sin any longer.
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Every single believer, alive or dead at the return of the Lord, will be fitted with a new body.
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Will be fitted with what he says is imperishable. With what he describes as immortal.
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One that will not die. One that will not change. One that will not ache and creak and break.
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And this is all, Paul writes, because of the work of Christ. In chapter 15, verse 45, he says,
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So also it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living soul.
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The last Adam became a life -giving spirit. The first Adam. The first created man.
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Given one, two, couple of commandments. Don't eat that tree.
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Be fruitful, multiply, tend this garden. Couldn't do it. He fell.
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And because, Paul writes in Romans, because of Adam's fall, all of mankind was what?
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All of mankind fell in Adam. All of mankind was plunged into sin. And it was the last
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Adam, Jesus Christ, who came, did what Adam could not do and did not do.
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He redeemed us from the curse and gave us a life. An eternal life.
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This morning, as we walk through this passage, at the end of 1 Corinthians, I'd like to draw your attention to three truths about death, and we're going to move rapidly.
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Three truths about death, so that you will not fear death, and that you'll live in light of the great promises of this book.
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We're going to see three truths about the life -giving work of the last Adam, Jesus Christ, that ought to give every believer not only hope, but purpose.
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Every single day, he or she is granted on earth. First, we're going to see the victory of death denied.
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Look at verse 55. He says, Oh, death, where is thy victory? Where is your victory?
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In the New American Standard update. And this is really a bit of holy mocking. I mean, we don't typically get away with sarcasm, but the
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Apostle Paul writes in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he says, Oh, death, where is your victory?
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He personifies death. He makes it out like it's a person, and then he proceeds to mock it. He quoted the prophet
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Isaiah. Now, Isaiah 25, verse 8. You don't need to turn there, but he says, He will swallow up death for all time, and the
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Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and he will remove the reproach of his people from all the earth, for the
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Lord has spoken. He did that in verse 54, and then he went on to explain it, and he also went to Hosea.
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He was talking about how death no longer holds sway over the people of God.
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He mocks death because it has been defeated. The power of death has been broken by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but death itself has not yet been destroyed.
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We're all going to die unless the Lord comes first. Death will be destroyed, though.
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In Revelation 20, verse 14, we're told, then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
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Eventually, death will serve no more purpose. But for now, death is a tool that God uses.
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I mean, how does he use it? Think about it. Every time someone dies, it is a reminder of our own mortality, a reminder of what lies before us, a reminder of the urgency with which we must live.
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Secondly, Paul writes, first we saw the victory of death. No longer do we need fear death.
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We have victory over death through Christ Jesus. Secondly, the sting of death reversed.
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Again, in verse 55, O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is the pain of it, the penalty of it.
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When you think about it this way, when someone dies, we lose them. We feel the pain, the suffering.
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It's especially heart -wrenching when an unbeliever loses another unbeliever because there's no hope for them.
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They don't know what to do. I don't know if you've ever been at a funeral like this, but if you hear someone say, well, they're in a better place now, it's hard when you're a believer to kind of contain yourself.
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You want to go, what are you thinking? How do you know that person's in a better place? But it hurts us even when as believers, we see another believer die because we miss them.
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And it takes us a little while to really get the proper frame of reference. We need to think, we need to think, well, wait a minute, it hurts me, but how much better for them?
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It's actually, to be honest, it's a little bit of selfishness. We miss that person. We want that person back, but they're far better off than even being with us, obviously.
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They're in the presence of Christ. Third, the victory of Christ over death.
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Verse 56 shows us the cause of death. What is the cause of death? As we look at the victory of Christ over death, first we have to look at the cause of death.
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Verse 56, the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
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Sin causes death. It says right there, the sting of death is sin. It is because of sin that we suffer.
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The sting of death, the pain of death, the separation of death. The law brings about sin.
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You could almost make it a causal thing, but I really won't, but it's the awareness of the law, the law written in our hearts, the law given to mankind that lets us know when we fall short of the glory of God.
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When we fail to perfectly keep his law, that is sin. When we don't love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, which is every minute of every day, when we don't do that, we sin.
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When we don't love our neighbor as ourself, we sin. And when we sin, we are subject to death.
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Actually, the wages of sin is death. From the moment we are born with a sinful nature and we first sin, we are subject to death.
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We're subject to death by virtue of Adam's sin. And that's the whole point. If we talk about, I used this word the other night while talking to a young man, imputation.
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Imputation, we typically think of our sins being imputed to Christ, which is true. And then we think of Christ's righteousness being imputed to us.
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That's true as believers. But there's one other imputation we don't often talk about, and that is
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Adam's sin being imputed to us. It is accounted to us. He was our representative.
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And because of him, all of mankind was plunged into sin. And the result is the universal, spiritual, and physical death we all experience.
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We come into this world physically alive and spiritually dead. Unable to help ourselves.
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Unable, separated from God. Unable to reconcile ourselves to him. But the last
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Adam, sometimes called the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, reconciles us to the
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Father. He removes that sting of death. He is, in fact, the cure for death.
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Look at verse 57. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our
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Lord Jesus Christ. And by the way, note that gives us the victory is a continuous, ongoing action.
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Every single day, every minute, God is giving us the victory. What kind of victory?
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The victory over sin, over death, over worry, over fear, through our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is, first of all, the cure for spiritual death. It's through him that we can be reconciled to God, be born again, have spiritual life, and he is also the cure for physical death.
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You say, well, what do you mean? We're still going to die, aren't we? Yes, but we don't need to fear it.
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If we lose a loved one who is in Christ, where is the pain? Where is the sting? We know that we will be reunited and that that person is far better off than ever.
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Now, what do we do with this? Look at verse 58. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the
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Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. Our service to the
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Lord, in the Lord, is never in vain. What does that comprise? Service to his people, service to the church.
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Christ builds his church, Matthew 16, 18, but he uses believers to do it.
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How are you serving? What are you doing? He also uses us when we think about our toil in the
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Lord not being in vain. Sermons preached to the unconverted. We need to give them a gospel. We need to tell them who is
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God, that he is holy. We need to tell them who is man. We need to confront them with their own sinfulness and their need of a savior and of reconciliation to God the
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Father. They need to understand that apart from the finished work of Christ, they stand condemned before a holy
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God. Then they need to understand that Jesus came to earth as God and man, 100 %
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God, 100 % man, lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death, in other words, a death that we deserved on our behalf, and then was resurrected on the third day.
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Why? So that we would not know the sting of death. So that we would not be under its penalty.
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So that we would not fear death. So that we would not fear going to hell for eternity.
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We also need to tell them what God commands them to do, to repent, to turn from their sin, to turn toward Christ, to rely entirely upon Him.
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This, the resurrection, is the most important event in all of history. The most important event of all history.
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Not Christmas, Easter. Paul writes in this chapter that without the resurrection, we have no hope because all of our hope is in Christ.
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If He is still in the tomb, then we are of all men most miserable. Why? Because the one whom we have trusted to bring us to God has not been raised.
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But Paul writes, He has been raised. We can rejoice in that.
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We need not fear death, but we rejoice that just as our Lord and Savior was raised from the dead on the third day, so we shall be raised from the dead.
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We shall put on immortal bodies and we shall be with Him forever. Let's pray.
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Father, what a joy it is to think, to consider this great truth that You would not allow
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Your Holy One to undergo decay. That You raised Him from the dead. That He rules and reigns and intercedes on behalf of those who trust
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You. Father, I would pray for anyone here who does not know You that they would repent, receive
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Christ, and know the joy of living apart from fear of death.
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Knowing that eternity with You is theirs. Father, would