Sunday Sermon: If Christ Has Not Been Raised (1 Corinthians 15:12-19)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle 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.

First Corinthians 15, starting in verse 12. The Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth, now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised

Christ, whom He did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even

Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people the most to be pitied.

Let us pray. Lord, as we come to your word this morning,

I pray that our hearts are enlivened by these reminders of the resurrection of Christ.

That we have no reason to despair. That we have no reason to be without hope.

This season in which we are in right now, remembering the Christmas season, the advent of our

Lord Christ, who came to this world in the flesh. This season is not a time of darkness, though we are coming up on the winter solstice this week in which we have the darkest day of the year, the least amount of light, the most amount of darkness.

Yet it's at this very time of the year that we celebrate not the darkness which prevails over that particular day, but we celebrate the light that has come into the world in Jesus Christ our

Lord. And so it is this light that has showed us the way to the

Father, and it is through the Son Jesus Christ, who died and rose again so that all who believe in Him have nothing to despair of death.

Though we know the body perishes and goes into the ground, the soul endures.

And those who are in Christ Jesus will not perish, but will live forever with God in His glorious kingdom.

Deliver us into your kingdom, Lord. Remind us of the truth of your word in the resurrection of Christ, in whose name we pray this morning, and all

God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So this past Friday, I had the chance to take my oldest daughter to see the new

Star Wars movie. In case you have been living under a rock, there's a new

Star Wars movie out now. And there was a particular scene in the film, I won't ruin it for anybody, if you are looking forward to seeing

Star Wars and want to go see it. And by the way, this is kind of a new thing in which people are into this mode of like no spoilers, don't tell me anything,

I don't want to know anything about the movie. It used to be when movie trailers came out, they told you the ending of the movie, and then you would go see the movie to see how in the world they got to that ending.

Unless it was a murder mystery, in which case you're always, you know, clueless, whodunit, you know.

You get to the end and find out who it was. That was the only kind of genre that really had the surprise ending, the whole murder mystery.

But everything else, it told you the whole story, and then you went to go see how the story played out.

That's what you saw in the theater. But anyway, since we're in this age of no spoilers, I won't spoil the movie for you.

But there was a particular scene in the film in which the hero,

Luke Skywalker, is on this island. If you saw the previous film, you know he's living on an island. And there is a temple on this island, it's the

Last Jedi Temple. And in this temple, there are a series of books which are the ancient

Jedi texts. Now whenever George Lucas created the whole Star Wars saga, he really didn't have in mind this whole deep story into the

Jedi. It was just an excuse to have wizards in space that wield laser swords.

That was really the whole point of the Jedi. And so as the movies have progressed, they write a little bit more into the story as to who the

Jedi are, where they came from, and what their religion is, and so on and so forth. So with this latest film, the newest addition to the

Jedi is they have these ancient texts. Just a series of books that's just sitting there on a table.

It's not much in terms of volume. But at one point, Luke is kind of fed up with the whole

Jedi thing and he decides he's going to burn it to the ground, literally. So he lights a flare, he goes up to this old temple which is in this old tree, and he's going to burn it down.

And a cameo appearance of Yoda shows up, and Luke says, you can't stop me,

I'm going to do this. But as he turns around to the old tree, he realizes he can't do it. He can't burn it to the ground.

He can't destroy the last remaining text of the Jedi. So Yoda does it for him.

Yoda does it in his own little Jedi way, and the tree lights up on fire, and Luke is absolutely beside himself because he had a change of heart.

He wasn't going to destroy these last texts. And he looks at Yoda as though to say, what have you done? And Yoda says to him, have you ever read the ancient texts?

And Luke kind of stammers with an answer that was something to the effect of, well, I was going to. And Yoda says, page turners, they were not.

I went, sounded a little more like Grover than Yoda there, I think. Both Frank Oz, either way.

And it makes sense that the texts really are not important, because if you know something about the

Jedi story in the Star Wars universe, everything is based on feelings. So why do they need to follow a text?

Remember that first piece of advice in 1977 that Obi -Wan

Kenobi gave to a young Luke Skywalker? Stretch out with your feelings. That's like the entire

Jedi religion. So what's the point of a text if everything is based on feeling?

For us who are Christians who follow the true religion in Jesus Christ, and we follow what is said to us in the scriptures, the truth is not based on our feelings.

It's not even verified by our feelings. It is verified by the eternal character and faithfulness of our

Lord God, who said Himself, Jesus Christ, Mark 13 31, heaven and earth will pass away.

My word will never pass away. You understand that the words that we are reading now in the

Word of God, we will be reflecting upon and meditating on for all eternity. All the study that we are putting into this right now doesn't end with our time on earth.

The canon will only be expanded when we get into heaven, and all the things that we had read in mystery while we are here on earth will be enlightened to us forever and ever.

Amen. In 2 Peter 1, verse 16, the

Apostle Peter writes, For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ. A lot of religions in the world today, including fictional religions that are made up for movies like the

Jedi religion, honestly, they just get made up as they go along. But the

Word of God was clearly revealed from heaven to God's prophets and apostles. None of it contradicts, and none of it has changed.

It is as true to us now as it was in the time when it was first put down on paper.

Peter says, We made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.

We're not following cleverly devised myths. We were eyewitnesses to His majesty. For when

He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to Him by the majestic glory,

This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with Him on that holy mountain.

And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

There we have both of the ornaments that the kids hung on our trees this morning. The lamp shining in a dark place, the morning star that rises in our hearts.

Knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.

But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The truth of God's promises are given to us in the

Scriptures. And we need this. You need this to be reminded of your sin and your need for a

Savior. You need the holy word of God to remind you of the promises of God that were given in His Son.

Because you are people of the flesh. You are weak and you will forget.

You will be tempted. And at times you will fall into that temptation and give in to the trappings of this world rather than continuing and following in faithfulness to the glory of God that has been revealed to us in the

Scriptures. And so we need constant reminders of the gospel. When we fall into despair, when we lose hope, when this world gets hard, when temptation tries to woo us away, it is the power of the word of God that keeps us steadfast and keeps us focused, gives us hope.

There are a lot of people this holiday season that are celebrating something and they have no idea what it is they're celebrating.

It's a day off work. It's better deals at the supermarket or at Walmart or down at the mall.

That's what the Christmas season means. It's time with friends. It's time with family. People get to travel.

People get to see one another. For some, it's a time of incredible loneliness because they're not close to family and they don't have friends.

But we are not a people that have no hope, for our hope is in Christ.

We are not a people without a family. We are in the family of God. We are not a people without an answer, for the answer is given to us in Christ.

And again, everything that I'm saying to you here is given to us in the scriptures. This is where we find the answer, not on our feelings, not what we feel is right, but what we know is true because it was spoken to us in God's word.

So this is what we looked at last week in this first 11 verses, last few weeks that we have been studying in 1

Corinthians 15. We have seen the evidence of the truth of the resurrection of Christ.

It is affirmed by the scriptures. It's affirmed by eyewitness testimony. It's affirmed by Paul himself in his own personal testimony, who saw

Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, which we read about in Acts chapter 9. Paul says,

I'm not preaching this to you in vain. I'm preaching this to you so that you would believe, and you have.

That was verse 11. Whether then it was I who preached to you or they, the other apostles, the other witnesses who saw the resurrection of Christ, so we preach it to you and so you believe it, because the power of the

Holy Spirit has transformed your hearts from unbelief to belief. So now we get to verse 12 where Paul says, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, so he's calling back to his previous argument, the previous few weeks that we've been in 1

Corinthians 15. We know the eyewitnesses. The scriptures testified to it.

They've been testifying to it for 1 ,500 years. There are eyewitnesses to it.

I saw it. So if the evidence is there, if what has been proclaimed has been witnessed to and attested to 1 ,000 times over, how is it that there are some of you that say there is no resurrection of the dead?

Now as Paul comes to the Corinthians with this rebuke, he is not rebuking them for heresy in the sense that the church is founded upon this belief that there is no resurrection of the dead.

It's not like the Corinthian church has put that in their statement of faith. We believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

That's not what's going on here in Corinth. So this isn't a church that is steeped in heresy, but there are some in that church that think this is no big deal.

The resurrection? Whether you believe it, whether you don't, so what? And there may even be some that are still clinging to the

Greco -Roman understanding of the soul, of death itself, that at the moment the body perishes, so does the soul.

The soul isn't eternal. It doesn't go and live on. So when a person dies, they just die. They go into the ground.

Just as you don't remember anything that happened before your life came into existence, you're not even going to be aware of anything once your body dies.

So the body goes into the ground, so what? Big deal. Remember, we've got so many

Corinthians, as we addressed at the very start of this letter, who just believe

Christianity because it's an expansion of their philosophy. I have the new philosophy.

I have the thing that makes me smarter than you. That makes my knowledge more expansive than yours because I believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Yes, you can have your Plato. You can have your Socrates. You can have all of these other philosophers that have come and gone and have spoken one thing and started their schools, and they're dead.

They're in the ground, but I also have Christ. I have those philosophers and Jesus, so I know more than you.

That was the excuse for most of the Corinthians. That was why they were Christians, and so it was in vain.

And so as Paul is confronting this issue here, again, he's not confronting a church that's heretical, but there are some people in that church who are believing in heretical things.

To deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ is heresy. It is an essential doctrine.

If you would actually say to somebody else, there is no such thing as the resurrection, and it doesn't matter if you believe in the resurrection or not.

You would be sharing with that other person a heretical concept. What is heresy?

When we use that word heresy, what does that mean? It would be any teaching that would be contrary to the saving message of Jesus Christ, and part of that saving message, the whole reason why we even call it salvation, is because we get resurrected from the grave.

We need an answer to our mortality, to the fact that the body is going to die and the soul is going to live on, so what?

What's going to happen to you? How can I be sure that the grave is not final for me? And the answer is

Christ. Jesus, who is resurrected from the grave, gives you resurrection from the dead as well.

That's why we're Christians. Not because we need a new philosophy or we need religion. We need resurrection from the dead.

And Jesus, who conquered death, is the only one who can give it to us. And so this is an essential doctrine of the

Christian faith. It is necessary, essential, to believe in the resurrection of Christ.

And as Paul confronts this issue with the Corinthians, what follows verse 12 are seven points that follow one another as inexorably as night follows day.

So Paul gives if -then statements, and we have seven of them from verse 13 through 18.

If this, then this. If this, then this. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even

Christ has been raised. Why not? Because Jesus was a man.

Jesus was God. Yes, Jesus was God. Jesus was a man. He was God who came into the world and took on flesh and dwelt among us.

That's John chapter 1. We read in Philippians 2, 5 through 11, Christ, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself and took on the form of a servant and took on flesh and became human like one of us.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord to the glory of God the Father. This is Jesus who was in his very form

God and emptied himself and became a man, took on human flesh, dwelt among us.

As Chris pointed out in his prayer this morning, it wasn't just that he came to die for us.

He lived with us and he lives with us even now. His Holy Spirit that dwells within our hearts.

Christ lived a perfect life that we could not live. He was our substitute in his life as much as he was a substitute in his death.

He died the death that we were supposed to die. He rose again from the grave so that all who are in Christ would also be assured of this, that we will rise from the grave also.

We will receive a resurrection like his. And as Paul shared also with the Philippians next chapter,

Philippians chapter 3, we are awaiting for that day when Christ will be revealed and then he will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

This is what we are looking forward to as believers. We're looking forward to the resurrection of the dead.

Romans 6 .23 says, for all have sinned... No, that's Romans 3 .23. Romans 6 .23

is, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord. The wages of sin is death. Why do we die? Because we've sinned. Because all of this world has been subjected to futility because of sin.

We are just as participating in sin as Adam.

It's not that Adam did something and then, oh, we can blame Adam and Eve. What were you thinking eating that fruit?

Everything was perfect. You listened to a snake instead of listen to God. We're all willing participants in Adam's sin.

We can't blame him any more than we could blame ourselves. God subjected this world to futility because of the sin of Adam, and death came into the picture where death was not before.

And so, because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the wages of that sin that we've committed against God is death.

We need a solution to that penalty, and that solution is Christ, who lived perfectly, sinlessly, spotlessly, so that he would die and shed his blood as that perfect sacrifice for our sins, so that all who believe in Christ, your sins are forgiven.

And though your body will die, your spirit, which was once dead, has been made alive in Christ, and it will live on forever with Christ and his kingdom.

And even though your body dies, it doesn't perish into dust and become no more in the existence of eternity.

For as I mentioned to you already out of Philippians chapter 3, your body will be transformed to be like his glorious body.

Doesn't matter whether it's buried in the ground in a coffin. Doesn't matter whether it's cremated and your ashes are scattered to the wind.

God has the power to create all things out of nothing, so he has the power to gather your dust back into a glorious body that he will transform to be imperishable and perfect.

And these are the promises that we have in Christ that are spoken to us through his word.

Jesus Christ, who became a man himself and died, actually died in his body.

He died. His body died, his spirit did not. At no point over the course of Christ's humanity did he ever cease to be

God. For we read in Hebrews that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So he never stopped being

God. But as God, he took on human flesh and experienced everything as a man that we experience.

As it also says in Hebrews, he was tempted in every way that he might be made like his brothers in every way.

So Christ experienced the things that we experience in this world. We do not pray to a

God who is unable to sympathize with us and our weaknesses. We pray to a

God who experienced far more sorrow than we will ever experience in life, as long as we are in Christ Jesus.

For those who are not in Christ, you will experience deep sorrow that will last for all eternity.

But for those in Christ, we are assured that what we experience in this life is but nothing compared to the glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus.

So as Christ was human in all ways in his body... We talked about R .C.

Sproul this morning having passed away on Thursday. One of the videos that I watched, kind of in memory of R .C.'s

teaching over the course of the week, was a video with R .C. and John MacArthur.

There was actually probably eight different teachers there on the stage, but R .C. was at one end and MacArthur was at the other end, and the two were kind of bantering back and forth.

And at one point, they're on the same page, but then at another point they start disagreeing with each other, one correcting the other.

But at their moment of agreement, MacArthur said something about the mind of Christ, like his actual human mind.

And Sproul echoed back to that, right, Jesus was fully human. He had a fully human brain.

He did not have a divine mind. He was divine, but in his humanity, he had a human brain.

And he accepted the limitations of having a human brain.

Remember that the apostles had asked Christ about the signs of the end.

When will this be? When will the end come? When will you return? And Jesus' reply to them was not...

or his reply to them was, it's not for you to know the times and the seasons that have been fixed by my

Father in heaven, for no one knows when these things will be, but only the

Father. Only the Father knows. If Jesus is as much God as the Father, then why is it that Jesus did not know the time of his return?

Because he accepted all of the limitations of being human, that he would not know those things about the future.

Now, when he ascended back to the Father and was seated at his right hand, he knows those things now.

But when he was on earth with his disciples and accepting the limitations of being human, he did not know those things.

We read in the book of Luke, when you read the Christmas story in Luke 2, and you go on from there, it says that Jesus lived in Nazareth, and he grew in stature.

He learned the trade of his earthly father, Joseph. He became a carpenter.

And he learned how to be a carpenter, just how you learn a trade, and you make a living with that trade.

Jesus experienced that same thing. I remember hearing the joke when

I was a kid of Jesus and his siblings doing chores together, and when it came time to clean the pool, hey, no problem for him, he could walk on water.

But Jesus accepted the limitations of being human. He didn't abuse the authority and the power that he had as God.

For what he did, what he performed in miracles was done out of love and also affirmation of the claims that he made that he was

God. There was a reason for the miracles. It wasn't to just haphazardly show off, but that it would testify to who he was and the power that he had and what he could do for those who believe in him.

So as Jesus was fully human, so he experienced everything that we experience in our human bodies.

Very God and very man. And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even

Christ has been raised from the dead. His body went into the ground like anybody else's body.

Maybe his spirit went on to live with the Lord forever, but that's because he's God. If his body died and was not raised again from the grave, then neither will ours be.

That's the point that Paul is making. So you'll hear some critics and you'll hear some inventors of their own truth in a day like today.

They will say something like, well, Jesus died, his body went into the tomb, but all of the appearances that the disciples saw after that, all the appearances of Christ, they were spiritual appearances.

It wasn't his physical body that came out of the tomb. They saw just a spiritual manifestation of Christ.

And I tell you that's heresy because it's saying that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, that just his spirit lived on, but the body doesn't actually get raised.

And if that's the case, we have no hope for ourselves for not even our bodies are going to be raised.

Paul says if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised from the dead. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain.

That's not the first time we've seen Paul say that. At the very start of this particular chapter, he says,

I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are being saved.

If you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed it in vain. Did you believe this for yourself?

Is it because you wanted religion? You wanted philosophy? Is it because you wanted morality? If that's the reason why you believe this, then you believe it in vain.

But if you believe it to the glory of God, and you know that God, in his divine sovereignty and love and grace and mercy toward us, did not leave us dead in our sins and our transgressions, but he sent his son

Jesus to die for us, so that all who believe in him will have eternal life, to the glory of God the

Father, as is quoted in Philippians 2 .11, just as Christ did all these things to the glory of God the

Father, so we believe to the glory of God the Father, then you don't believe in vain. You believe to God's glory.

If Christ has not been raised, though, all preaching is in vain. Paul's basically saying,

I'm just out there to make a living for myself, to make a name for myself. To get some kind of recognition from the people that I am preaching to.

But it's in vain. It doesn't mean anything. Anything that I'm saying doesn't amount to anything if it isn't true.

It's all vanity. It's all for myself and for no other purpose. Oh, and by the way, your faith is in vain.

It doesn't matter how true you want to believe it is. If it didn't actually happen, it's vanity.

It's just to benefit yourself. This is the case if Christ has not been raised from the dead.

If there's no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

Doesn't mean anything. It's pointless. It's hopeless. There's no reason for you to come to church on Sunday morning if Christ is not raised from the dead.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that He raised

Christ, whom He did not raise if it's true that the dead are not raised. Read about this in Romans 8, that it is by the power of the

Spirit of God that Christ was raised from the dead. And that same power that raised Christ from the dead is the very power that lives in you as the

Holy Spirit dwells inside of you. That blows my mind.

The very power that raised Christ from the dead is the same power that lives in me. The Holy Spirit of God that has been given to all the children of God.

Everyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ. God is the one who raised Christ from the dead.

Now Jesus did say that I have the authority to lay my life down and to take it back up again.

And He did. But ultimately in the theology of it, we understand that it was God the

Father who accepted this sacrifice that Jesus had given Him on behalf of His people.

His blood atonement for sins. And God having received this sacrifice then raised

Jesus from the dead. Because Jesus was sinless. His sacrifice was perfect.

It was received in full. It is finished, Christ proclaimed, as He breathed His last and He died.

And so God the Father raised Him from the dead. This was not Christ acting on His own accord, but in submission to the will of the

Father that He was raised from the dead. It is part of the testimony of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ that God raised

Him from the dead. But if God didn't raise Him from the dead, we're misrepresenting God.

What's that called? That's blasphemy. When you use the name of God or you attribute something to God that is not true, when you use

His name in vain, remember this follows the previous statement that Paul made, if Christ hasn't been raised, our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain, which

God expressly said at Mount Sinai is absolutely not to be done. Third commandment, do not take my name in vain.

God is holy the way we use His name should be holy. We do not use it for our benefit but for His glory.

But in the case of Christ not being raised, we would not be using the name of Christ or of God to His glory.

In fact, we'd even be misrepresenting God, which is all blasphemy. It's all vanity. We will perish in our sins.

We will not be raised. That's the third if -then statement that Paul makes regarding the resurrection of Christ.

Verse 16, for if the dead are not raised, not even

Christ has been raised. Now notice verse 13, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even

Christ has been raised. Verse 16, for if the dead are not raised, not even

Christ has been raised. Similar statements said two different ways. A reminder to the

Corinthians once again that if the dead aren't raised, Christ isn't raised. I say it again, if the dead are not raised, not even

Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you're still in your sins.

So previously the statement was your faith is in vain. Excuse me.

Here we find that your faith is even totally futile. It doesn't amount to anything at all.

If your faith is in vain and if it's only for your benefit, if it's only because you wanted religion or philosophy or morality, if that's the reason why you are a believer in Christ or if that's the reason why you follow this faith, not only is it in vain, it's also futile.

It serves no purpose at all. There's no point.

You're going to die believing something that isn't true if it's the case that Christ has not been raised from the dead.

See, Paul understands the risks that are associated with the faith that he believes in.

And he doesn't believe in something by blind faith. We addressed that last week. We as Christians do not believe something by blind faith.

It is attested to. It is proven. It was testified about.

It was witnessed. It can be tested. You can test the claims that are made in Scripture.

And the Bible affirms itself. The things it claims, it follows through on.

The prophecies that were made in the Old Testament are fulfilled in the New Testament. We can test the

Scriptures and know what it is that is said here is true. This was not something that was written blindly without having seen or attested to the things that were written down.

There are eyewitnesses to the things that we believe. So we do not believe by blind faith.

We do not believe in something that is hopeless. We do not believe in futility.

Your faith means something. It is going somewhere. It is ultimately going to reap a reward if you endure to the end.

It is. As Dave welcomed us to church this morning and said, it's wonderful to see you here in church this morning and thanked you for being committed to attending church on Sunday and being fed by the

Word of God, being in communion with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

All of these things that he mentioned in his welcome and his greeting this morning are all for building up the body of Christ.

You are maturing in your faith. You are growing in sanctification. You are being filled all the more with longing for that wonderful day of Christ when it appears.

Your hearts and your minds are being prepared for that day. You are longing less and less for this world and more and more for the kingdom.

With every day that passes, with every word of God that is spoken and is received by your ears and stored up in your heart, it makes you long all the more for that day.

For we know that this world is passing away. We know it. You know how much we know that this world is passing away?

You know how much we're aware, we're cognitively aware that this world is dying as it progresses?

We're so aware of it that our evergreens this morning are fake.

These trees up here aren't even real. They're plastic. Why? Because if we put a real one up there, it'd be dead by next week.

That's how aware we are of the fact that this world is wasting away because we try to find ways to make it last longer.

Try to find ways to make our lives last a little bit longer. We'll listen to people, philosophers, the tech geniuses and gurus who say things like, we're just a generation away from discovering the singularity and then you can download your conscience into a computer and live forever, which is utter nonsense.

But we clamor after those kinds of statements because we know the world is passing away.

So we're looking for an answer to the decay. Something that will endure beyond this body that I'm losing.

This life that is fleeting, that has been fleeting for every single person who ever lived in it.

Even Jesus in his body aged, but with the power of God, he conquered death.

And so in Christ, we have our only hope for living beyond this life.

And if we don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our faith is in vain, it's futile, and you're still dead in your sins.

That, I believe, as far as these if -then statements go from the Apostle Paul, that's the scariest line to me.

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you're still dead in your sins because ultimately, folks, that's why we believe in Christ.

Because we're sinners before a holy God and it is only in Christ Jesus that we can enter into the presence of the

Holy of Holies and be sure that on that day we will not hear, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness,

I never knew you. We will hear, well done, good and faithful servant, now great is your reward.

It is only in Christ that we will be assured of those words and that reward on Judgment Day.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord. Jesus sent his disciples out in Luke 24, which we looked at a couple of weeks ago.

He told them that the gospel that they would proclaim would be the gospel for the forgiveness of sins. It's not just to grow the size of the church or give a person religion or make them live better, more comfortable lives.

It's because we know that all people in their sinfulness are perishing and it is only in Christ that they can be saved.

And so we preach the gospel for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in Christ. Paul goes on in verse 18,

If Christ has not been raised, then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If there's no resurrection of the dead, all your friends who have died, they're gone. And yes, you have a reason to cry today because they've died.

You can weep and be in sorrow all the rest of your life, for nothing comes of their soul and nothing will come of yours either.

If the dead are not raised, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

This was the lament of the Thessalonians. In Paul's first letter to the

Thessalonians, they were mourning over the deaths of their loved ones. When they had heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and believed it, they had heard about this time that Jesus was coming back.

But Paul was with the Thessalonians for a very short time. He was moved out of the city very quickly because the

Jews wanted to kill him since he was proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ. And so since he had to leave from them so suddenly and without much time to be able to share with them more about the coming of Christ, they did not know that at the appearance of Jesus Christ, the dead in Christ would rise.

They didn't know that. That's why we have Paul teaching that in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, that I tell you this, on that day of the

Lord, the dead in Christ will rise first. And then we who are left will be caught up with them in the air.

So Paul was saying to the Thessalonians, they're not going to miss out on that day. All of us are going to be participants in that day.

Whether you died or whether we're still alive, when the Lord comes in glory, all of us will be together in Christ on that day.

Your brothers and sisters in Christ who have died are still as much your brothers and sisters in Christ now as they were when they were alive.

Because their spirit is alive forever with Christ in glory. And on that day, we're reunited together in Christ.

We'll see them again. And so in Christ Jesus, you do have reason to hope.

You have reason to be glad, though you would lose a brother or sister in Christ in this body. It's right for you to mourn, for you've lost somebody who has been your encouragement in Christ while you were living together on this world.

And that's a little bit less encouragement that you have in the Lord in their absence.

But you can rejoice in knowing that being dead in the body means being alive with Christ.

Though the body has died, the soul is forever with the Lord. And you can rejoice in that truth and know that we will see our loved ones again when we're all rejoicing together around the throne of God for all eternity.

And not just with those whom we have lost, but with all of the saints whose names you don't even know.

What a glorious family gathering that is going to be at the wedding feast of the Lamb. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have not perished.

If indeed Christ has been raised from the dead. But if He's not been raised, you have a reason to mourn.

And then finally, verse 19. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people the most to be pitied.

Why? Because we believe in the resurrection of the dead. And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then we've believed something with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength that is not actually going to happen.

There is no other religion, no other philosophy on earth that asks of its adherents to do everything with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Only Christianity do you give all of yourself to, and for worshiping Christ, we are rewarded with eternal life.

There's no other religion that teaches any such thing. No other religion in which the

God or the deity that they worship came and became a man and sacrificed Himself for them.

And then rose again from the grave and ascended on high and will receive everyone to Himself on the day of judgment.

All those who were followers of Christ in this life. We're the only ones that believe in such a message, in such a gospel, the good news.

Every other religion is about how to make yourself right to prepare you for eternity, if that religion even believes that eternity exists.

Some of them don't. I don't even understand what the point of that religion is if they don't believe in something beyond this life.

Buddhism, at its heart, is atheism. There is not a deity to please.

This is just what you can do for yourself, and if you accomplish those things, then this is what you're going to get.

So everything is about what you can do to get X. But in Christianity, the message is, you can't do anything to gain this treasure.

Christ did it for you. And so for those who believe in Christ, you will get even greater than what you were aspiring to.

You are a fellow heir in His eternal kingdom. Now, if Christ is not raised from the dead and our hope is only in this life, we have no hope in the next, then we're of all people to be pitied for this religion that we follow, that we practice.

There are people who are unbelievers who pity you today. They pity you this morning because I've kept you past noon and you missed kickoff.

They pity you for that. What are they doing? They go to this building that has been built for religious services and they listen to fairy tales on Sunday morning and they don't get to catch the beginning of the game.

What was that? Oh, that's right.

I forgot. Now you can record the beginning of the game and you can still catch kickoff when you get home.

All right. Sorry, that argument's 15 years old. I apologize. No wonder none of you looked all that convinced when

I was sharing that argument. I'll just put it a little more simply without the promise of reward of football.

There are people that pity you just because you came to church on a Sunday morning, wasting your time on a

Sunday. And then if I could add reward to it, instead of sleeping in or getting to the lunch lines early.

There we go. Technology hadn't solved that one yet. And we're of the most to be pitied for we believe in something that will never actually be delivered to us.

But we know, and you know where I'm going with this, that Christ has indeed been raised from the dead and that is the beautiful, chill -inducing, hope -filling, rejoicing, awesome promise that's given in the very next verse.

And this is where we pick up next week. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.

The firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Firstfruits means there will be more.

And we rejoin him in eternity in glory for all who believe in Christ Jesus.

Amen, Eliana, you can clap. That's great. It is good news.

It is good news. You know, there are so many arguments that are made around Christmas time, even among Christians, that we shouldn't be celebrating this holiday because it's a pagan religion.

Because it was derived from paganism. It has pagan roots, pagan origins. I would present to you there's actually arguments against that particular statement, but not to go into all of those things.

It's probably futile to try to argue it anyway. The point is simply this, that at Christmas time, we remember that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

We remember the incarnation of Christ. And I, for one, am grateful that there's a holiday that reminds us of that every year.

Because I'm weak in my flesh, and I tend to forget, but the word of God reminds me of the promises of God, of the love of God, of what he did through that son who came into this world.

That by believing in Jesus, I know I have eternal life.

O come, O come, Ye shall come to thee,

That shall come to the sea,

Filled with joy and peace,

Rejoice, rejoice, Ye that shall come to thee.

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org. On behalf of our church family, my name is

Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, growing together in Christ, when we understand the text.