We Shall Be Changed

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Don Filcek; 1 Corinthians 15:50-58 We Shall Be Changed

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsick preaches from his sermon series titled,
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First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. I'm Don Filsick, I'm the lead pastor here, and good morning and welcome.
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I am glad to be together in the house of God. The opportunity to worship him together with his people is, it just forms the weekly cadence for my life.
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I hope it does yours too, and we're here this morning for what amounts to a rare, but much needed, message of encouragement in the book of First Corinthians.
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I say much needed because if you've been a part of this series over the last year, it's felt like I've been beat up every
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Sunday in the best of possible ways, but God's word sets the agenda here.
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And so, as we walk through the Bible, and we walk through books of the Bible, we realize that our gatherings cannot simply be a pep rally for your week.
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It can't be a rah -rah thing that you just walk away from here every single time, encouraged, and like we're trying to give you your vitamin
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C, Christ, right, your vitamin C for the week, and boom, now you're ready to go. You know, it's like, no, that's not what this is about because the word of God sets the agenda, and has set the agenda since the beginning 15 years ago here at this church, and so you know, as you read the
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Bible, the word of God convicts, the word of God rebukes, the word of God corrects. What it does in my heart, quite often, is encountering it early in the morning, it exposes the darkness of my own heart and my need for a savior, amen?
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Oh yeah, that's what the word does, but occasionally we encounter a passage like this where the word also builds up, provides encouragement, provides strength, the word is the source of gladness and true hope in the
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Christian life, right? It's the place that we turn to find what is true of us in the darkest sense, but also what is true of what
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God has done for us in the brightest sense, and so this morning, we look at a passage that wraps up a long chapter about resurrection.
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It's a message of hope, a message of power, a message for motivation for our daily lives.
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When we think about resurrection, we might primarily think about either the past or the future.
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The past, of course, Easter, thinking about the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, that empty tomb 2 ,000 years ago.
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Our mind might wander there, or for some of us, maybe it wanders towards the future, a day coming when we will be raised to new life, to live with our savior and his people in eternal light and life without sin, without death for eternity.
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I mean, how many of you look forward to that? You're looking forward to that destiny. But my question, and I think the question from Paul as he wraps this idea up is what about today?
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What does resurrection say to your today? What does it say about this life?
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And maybe more to the challenge and more to the question, what does resurrection say about your tomorrow morning,
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Monday morning? You're gonna wake up, the alarm's gonna go off, and back to your week, back to the routine, back to whatever might be the grind for you, and what does resurrection say about all those other in -between times?
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The victory of our savior over sin and death calls out to us in this very passage to joyful thanks and exuberant praise all of our days, not just with our singing, not just in the gathering for an hour and a half on Sunday morning and then the rest of the time just go about our business, but all of our days with steadfast faith, all of our days with enthusiastic, joy -filled service to God, and also a life lived through doing all that we do as unto the
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Lord, all that we do for the glory of God. So this passage is where the rubber meets the road.
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This is where the flames of the welding torch touches to the metal, really touches the metal to bond our future reality to our present calling, the future reality of resurrection, and welds it to the present calling in the day here and now.
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Passages like this one are meant to bring our present actions into alignment with what we say we believe about the future.
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Do we really believe it? If we really believe resurrection is coming, that's gonna impact the way we live in the day in and day out.
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We will, church, those of you who belong to Jesus Christ, you will one day be raised.
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You will one day be raised to new life. We, as the title of the message this morning is, we will be changed.
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That's my hope. I hope that's your hope as well. We will be changed. If we truly believe that we will be changed and brought back with imperishable bodies into his eternal kingdom, then we will live in this present life with more joy, with more thanks, less fear, eager service to our king and eager service to his people, because we are those who know that our labor here in this place is not worthless.
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Our labor here is not empty. Our labor here in these days is not, as the text says in the
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English standard version, not in vain. So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1
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Corinthians 15, verses 50 through 58. I'm curious, how many of you still have those scripture journals that we started with over a year ago?
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That's kind of cool. Hopefully that over the course of this time, you've been able to kind of build up some memories and taken some notes through that, and those are good.
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And then when we go through Hosea, that's gonna be the next full book series that we're gonna take on, the book of Hosea, after we finish this in a few weeks, and then we're gonna go to the
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Psalms over the summer, but we're not gonna be able to preach all 150 Psalms. So we got a plan for that, and then in the fall, we're planning on picking up Hosea, and I plan on getting some of those scripture journals for your benefit then too, if you want them.
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But church, this is 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 50 through the end of that chapter, through 58, recast
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God's holy word. This is what he desires to communicate with us this morning. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
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Behold, I tell you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
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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.
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When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.
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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.
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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
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Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in songs of praise this morning.
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Father, I thank you for a message of encouragement. It seems like the
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Corinthian church was getting a lot wrong. We've been hearing just wave after wave of issue in that church, of brokenness, of sinfulness, of waywardness.
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And Father, I just pause to just reflect on my own heart and just identify to you in humility that the same thing is true of me.
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Waves of sin interspersed with moments of joy and gladness and hope in the gospel, trust and faith mingled with sin and repentance and confession.
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Father, I pray that you would meet us in the pages of your word and in these verses this morning for encouragement, for recognition that the things that are done in this life for your honor and glory will not go unrewarded.
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They will not be empty, they will not be vain. But we have a hope for an eternity that is waiting for us where you sent your son and he ascended and sits at your right hand where he will return for us.
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And he told his followers, he goes to prepare a place for us and that place is better than this place.
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It's such an amazing place, as a matter of fact, that it requires a transformation of these bodies, of this existence that we live in now in order to accommodate for who we are and what we will be.
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So Father, I pray that you would speak your words into our hearts of truth, of gospel, of hope, of sin being destroyed, of death being destroyed and even taunted in this passage, of the law being fulfilled and done because of what
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Christ has done for us. And I pray that from the joy and gladness of Christ being our law keeper,
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Christ being the sin destroyer, Christ being the death defier,
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Him being the one. Father, I pray that our praise would rise up to you from glad hearts, hearts moved.
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Heart, not hearts that are cold and lifeless and distracted and thinking about all the other things, but that you would move us this morning to really reflect on the gospel, to really reflect on the hope that we've been given and then to just burst forth in praise and gladness to you, even in these coming moments.
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We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for, thank you to the band for leading us in worship.
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I hope you were able to praise God, not just enjoy some music, but to actually step before His throne this morning.
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Encourage you to get comfortable and reopen your Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 50 through 58.
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And make yourself at home. I know that some of you, maybe this is your first, second or third time here, but as I say every week, if you wanna get up at any time during the message and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, use the bathrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side.
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So you're not gonna distract me, but our goal is to keep our focus. I pray against distraction, just simply that God would help us to keep our focus as much as possible on His word, that there be clear communication from His word through the
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Spirit to our hearts this morning. I wanna point out what is maybe obvious, maybe not to some of you, is that 1
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Corinthians chapter 15, 50 through 58 is what we would call in pastoral language a funeral passage.
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It's used quite frequently at funerals. And therefore, it could be associated with seasons of pain and hardship in our lives just simply because the subject of resurrection always comes with death as its backdrop, right?
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How many of you know that without death, there is no resurrection, and so it has that as its backdrop and presupposition.
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But the encouragement of the gospel always comes to us with a dark backdrop. The gospel comes to us with a dark backdrop of human sin and depravity.
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The victory of Christ over forces of darkness has the fall of Satan and demonic hordes as its backdrop.
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Most of our epic tales require a negative event, right? We don't celebrate the destruction of the ring of power without a dark lord of the rings who is seeking to overcome
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Middle Earth, right? There's no celebration of the destruction of the Death Star unless there's an evil empire seeking to rule the galaxy through tyranny, right?
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So all of our stories have kind of like a sinister darkness that needs to be overcome, right? And in our real lives, that's just a pattern that we've learned from what is true, what is real.
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We've borrowed that from reality, that there is a darkness, there is spiritual opposition, and there is victory coming over that.
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And our thanks to God and gladness in the victory of Jesus is set in the backdrop of sin and death.
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So yes, the darkness is great as it hangs over the grave. Cemeteries are reminders, can
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I say very grave reminders? Oh, you guys see what
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I did there. You guys got it right away. I didn't even have to tell you. But it is very grave reminders of the darkness though, right?
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It's the darkness that hangs over, yeah, just a little death humor there, I don't know. It hangs over all of humanity's existence in a fallen world, right?
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Like we know that that's a true thing that is coming for us. But this entire chapter has been focusing our attention on God's glorious solution to the problem of death, his solution to it.
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He's been making a strong case that the Corinthians are thinking all wrong about resurrection and therefore they have concluded wrongly that bodily resurrection is undesirable.
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That's their philosophy, that's their way of thinking. To come back into this body is undesirable.
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The Greek philosophy taught them that this plane of earthly existence is the place of suffering.
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Well, they got that kinda right, right? But they also equally then drew some conclusions from that that are false, that the body is a prison for the soul and the hope of any good philosophy to the
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Greeks was to be set free from the body. That was the way that they looked at the world, that's the way that they thought.
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But Paul has been educating us about what resurrection is like all throughout chapter 15. And it is not merely, he's been emphatic, it is not merely a resuscitation, a rebreathing life into this existence, into this body.
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Though he starts with his body and your grave will be empty. Jesus' tomb was empty, he begins with this stuff and makes it better.
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And so we begin in verse 50 with him reiterating that. These bodies, merely breathing again, will not be able to enter the eternal kingdom that God is preparing for us.
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It's not their physicality, don't read too much into this or get it wrong in the angle.
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It's not that the physicality of these bodies, the fact that they're flesh and blood material that prevents this, but rather the effects of sin that have corrupted our flesh that is the problem.
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The body, our bodies, are by nature mortal. This flesh is perishable, your flesh is perishable.
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This body has nerve endings that receive and transmit pain to my brain. This body is susceptible to cancer and disease and illness of all types, right?
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This body, though not itself evil, is not all that it was designed originally to be due to the fallen nature of that first man,
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Adam, who ate of the fruit given to him by his wife, tempted by the serpent. And so Paul corrects the false notion that our eternal existence and eternal body will be like this one, but just forever.
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I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I hope the healthcare system is better there than it is here if we're just getting back to this, right?
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I mean, long lines, but you got a lot of time, right? I don't know, so. Yeah, the waves, the waves of laughter have been across the room there, but nobody will enter
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God's eternal kingdom with a body like this one. Not even Jesus did. Jesus was given a resurrection body before he ascended to heaven.
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And heaven, by the way, just to clarify, is not the eternal destination of humans. It is a temporary destination for those who have gone on before, but he's coming back with them.
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He's coming back with them. And he's gonna reunite them with their body and transform them. New heavens and new earth are the future of humanity, a physical place with real substance.
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That's where we're going. But this flesh and blood, perishable body, that's what he means when he says flesh and blood, perishable body, will not cross over to the other side without change.
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In the eternal kingdom of God, we will be made imperishable. We will be made immortal.
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And that spells out a unique circumstance for those who are alive during the return of Jesus that he highlights for us in the text.
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Those who are alive when Jesus comes back for his people have a unique and different experience.
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Paul is revealing to us something that he declares in verse 51 as a mystery. Now, mystery in Paul's writings, and often in the
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Greek language, means something formerly hidden, now made clear. It doesn't remain a mystery when it's declared a mystery.
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It's something that he's saying, I'm now clarifying for you something that's unknown aside from God revealing it, and God is revealing it through me.
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And here is what has been revealed to him. We, as in all Christians, will not sleep.
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There are some who will not die. But we will all be changed. So not all of us in the whole big picture, capital
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C Christians of all the world, there's coming a generation that will not sleep.
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Oh, that's pretty cool. But all will indeed need to be changed in order to enter his eternal kingdom.
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So sleep is a bit of a conundrum, and people take it too literally. It is a well -documented
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Greek metaphor for death, and I just want to point out to you that every culture that has existed uses euphemisms for things that make us uncomfortable.
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If it makes us uncomfortable, we have a tendency to soften it with metaphor and language. So death is couched in softening terms in almost all cultures.
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We speak of someone passing away, no longer being with us, or we will talk about someone going on to be with our
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Lord or going on to be with Jesus, which is true, but is just a softer way of saying they died.
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It seems pretty crass and disrespectful and even a bit unloving to go to somebody who has just lost a loved one and report to them,
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I'm really sorry, but such and such person that you love died, and that's all you say.
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So we have a tendency to soften it, right? And I think scripture intentionally uses the metaphor sleep for death to highlight intentionally the temporary nature of it, not to identify what the person and the individual is doing during that time.
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Now, there are some cults that believe in a thing called soul sleep, that the soul is residing in the body until the time that Jesus returns, but the soul does not stay in the body in the grave, and I could give you evidence for that later if you have an interest in that.
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There's some passages in Revelation that demonstrate souls of people in heaven. They are there cognizant, they are there aware of their surroundings, and they are there even talking to God in the midst of having already died.
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They're there, present. So it's clear in scripture that those who die go to heaven or paradise.
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Jesus said today, you will be with me in paradise, to the thief on the cross. For the redeemed, that's where they go, they go to paradise or heaven, and then
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Hades for the condemned, holding place in both situations, not the eternal destiny of either group.
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But verse 52 is still focusing on those Christians alive at the return of Jesus when you look at it, verse 52, and it tells us that they will be instantly transformed or changed at the last trumpet when
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Christ returns 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 all be changed.
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It tells us that those who are alive in that instant will be instantly transformed, changed, at the last trumpet when
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Christ returns. It will be sudden, and the emphasis in the Greek language is to double up this idea of it being so sudden of a transformation, that all of a sudden, just like, people are immortal.
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All of a sudden, people are imperishable. Again, the blink of an eye in the smallest measurable amount of time is kind of the first word in Greek there.
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So I want you to just pause for a minute, church, and just take deep comfort in the power of God to transform these lowly and weak imperishable bodies into powerful, immortal, imperishable bodies in the time it takes you to blink.
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Who's your God? Who are you serving? The one who can transform everyone in the blink of an eye.
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Like, that's just amazing to me. These perishable, mortal bodies must be changed to spend eternity with the king in his eternal kingdom, and it won't be anything to God to do that.
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Just in the blink of an eye, done. I took care of that. And that day, church, that day, real day, is coming.
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We will be changed. Verse 54 envisions a day when the perishable will put on the imperishable.
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Look with me at verse 54. When it starts, when, like as in, the day that it happens, when the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass what is written in Isaiah, death is swallowed up in victory.
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Church, we look forward to an actual day when the mortal puts on immortality. We look for a when that, there's a day coming.
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That day will be the day when death is defeated. And Paul quotes from the Old Testament book of Isaiah there to show that the defeat of death has been
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God's plan from way back when. Death will be gulped down whole by the victory of God.
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Not in bite -sized chunks, but swallowed whole, death defeated in one fell swoop, in the blink of an eye, death done.
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Death gone, the blink of an eye. That will happen on a day, church. And there has been no end of bad leaders declaring when that day will be, right?
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You can look it up and find somebody probably today in a pulpit somewhere who is declaring the day that he thinks it's gonna happen, but let's set aside any predictions of days and specifics and instead consider what
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God does want us to know about that day. What does he want us to know? Why does he even talk about the future that way if he doesn't wanna tell us the date?
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Well, he wants us to know in no uncertain terms that a day is coming when we will be changed.
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Changed. There's a day coming when we will be changed. That's a date on the calendar. It blows me away to consider it.
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I don't know when, I don't know how long, I can imagine it being this afternoon and I can imagine it being 5 ,000 years off, right?
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You guys get what I'm saying? I mean, enough of the headlines going like, oh, this is as bad as it can get.
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Where's your creativity? This is the worst that you can imagine?
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Are you kidding me? Where we're gathered together in church this morning freely and you're going like, yep, oh, probably this week because things are so bad.
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Have you read the headlines? Oh, man, if you had lived in the Roman times, man, buckle up. Like, there have been bad cycles and Jesus refers to the end as, all these things as cyclical.
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So, building up to one big cycle in the end, an actual tribulation and all of that. So, no,
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I think it could be 5 ,000 years. I think it could be this week. Maybe he'll surprise us and it'll be in the next 10 minutes, I don't know. But there is a day, and I wanna point out to you that without predicting, there is a date.
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There's a date. It will come on a day of the week. Like, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, one of those days is blessed to be the day of the return of our
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Lord. It's gonna happen on a real day. It'll be a week, it'll be a month.
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What month will it be? Will it be January? Will it be June? We don't know. But a month is blessed to be the day when our
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Lord and Savior returns for us. There's a month blessed to be the day, the month in which death is defeated and is no more.
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A day. It's real. It's history. And it's going to actually occur on the calendar.
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No, no, this isn't where I interject my predictions. The final trumpet will blow and Christ will return for his people.
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And that day can rightly be called the day when the perishable puts on the imperishable.
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Or the day when the mortal puts on immortality. How about that day, church?
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How about that day? That is a day to end all death. That is a day of all days.
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Are you living for that day? Are you living for that day? I fear that many of us in this room,
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I would include myself in this from time to time, many of us here in this room have set our sights on things far too small, far less worthy to focus our time and our attention.
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We live for the wrong days. And I think I can say that for all of us.
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Some of you are living for your wedding day. Some of you are living for the day of your graduation, the day of that promotion, the day of a birth, the day our cruise leaves the dock, the day of that package arriving from Amazon that's gonna solve all of your problems, right?
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The day of our retirement. And those days, someone's close or maybe they're far off,
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I don't know. Those days come and go, don't they? And if you've lived a bit, you've lived through some of those days and some of them were really good.
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Some of them are really momentous, right? Hopefully the day of your wedding is a day you look back on those of you that are married and you look back on it and you go, that was a day, that was a momentous day.
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But all days, church, all days pale in comparison to the day when the perishable puts on the imperishable.
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When death is swallowed up in victory, that is a day to live for, recast, are you living for that day?
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All who trust in the king will be clothed in a new body, fit for his eternal kingdom forever and ever and ever.
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And on that future date, the people of God will finally taunt. There's taunts in this passage.
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Taunt our gravest enemy. We will thumb our noses at death and ask, where's your victory?
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Where is your power to torment death? Are you kidding me? The logical answer is, what victory?
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What power? In the face of our God and the one who defeated death from within, nothing.
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No power, nothing doing. For we who belong to the king and his eternal kingdom, the power of death will be ultimately, eternally, and finally broken.
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But let me correct us lest we fall into a trap of missing the time stamp on the taunt and begin too early.
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Have any of you ever seen that? You see the guy who's carrying, I didn't even think about this till just now, but have any of you seen those videos where the guy is carrying the football across the line and he drops it right here in celebration and it bounces back and the other team recovers, no touchdown, doesn't quite break the plane with it?
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And if you ever watch those videos, go look them up, they're hilarious. Celebrating a bit early, right? Taunting a little bit early.
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Those are really funny. I've seen some that just really crack me up. But some of you aren't into football and it's not that funny, but it is to me.
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I even distracted myself here for a second. Understanding the time stamp on the taunt, not celebrating too early.
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Verse 55 is not written about our present attitude toward death. It is not to say that it is nothing when you lose a loved one.
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Don't hear me now taunting death and I would discourage you from taunting death in the here and now.
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As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, death is sinister, it is absolutely a terrible, terrifying dragon of an enemy.
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Not just a little lizard that our Savior defeated, but it is the full -blown thing. It's the dragon, death is dark.
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Death casts a long shadow over every human life since the fall. It's stalking us, even right now, right?
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Oh, that's, yeah, that got scary, but it is. But I love the quote from Timothy Keller on this passage that helps us to put it in perspective.
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Timothy Keller, who has now actually experienced death and is with his Lord now. Death used to be an executioner, he said, but Christ has made him just a gardener.
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He's a gardener that plants people. That's what he does, he plants people to be raised to new life.
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Death truly sucks, but we look forward by faith to the day when our hero will raise all who are his from their graves and change us into immortal and imperishable people for his glory and honor forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and no end to those evers.
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Verse 56 can seem a little bit mildly anticlimactic because he gets a bit teachy here in verse 56 in the middle of taunting and talking about the glorious defeat of death and kind of like crescendo and oh, by the way, let me teach you a couple things.
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But Paul is bringing something into the equation for our joyful consideration and even in his teaching here in a moment to pause and to bring in a couple of other things, it is vital that we understand this in the defeat of death, the defeat of death is not merely the defeat of death, but where death is defeated, so is sin.
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Where death is defeated, so is sin. You see, death is the torment brought to the human race because of and through our sin.
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Death cannot be dealt with unless that which produced death is also dealt with, sin.
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And further, the law fuels rebellion and sin. At the risk of getting too technical, verse 56 needs some significant clarification because it's powerful in its scope, but it can seem just a little clunky to our ears when we read it.
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Here it says, the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law and it requires a bit of understanding about the way that Paul views those three things.
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Powerful, what he's saying here in its scope and it even results in Paul bursting out in praise and thanks in the next verse.
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But the way that Paul consistently speaks of law, sin and death is in terms of the fall. Like you could refer and go back to Romans chapter five for example, where he weaves this idea of sin and death and the law together.
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You see, law exists in part at least to show us how far we stand away from the holiness of God, how unrighteous we truly are.
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To say the power of sin is the law is to say that law turns sin, law turns sin into rebellion against God.
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Knowing rebellion against God, that's Paul's consistent teaching about the law. What does the law do?
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It shows you that when given instructions, you will oppose God. That's what the law does.
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Here's an illustration. Without a speed limit, I'm free to drive however fast I want and there's no criminal activity there.
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There's nothing wrong. You're not breaking any law to drive as fast as you want. You're not in rebellion against any law giver, right?
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Because nobody's given a law about it. But the moment a law is made, breaking it puts you in a category of rebel against the laws of the state or whoever makes those laws.
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Now, common sense might let us know and maybe nobody here in this room would try to hit 100 miles per hour between the roundabout in McGillen here in Matawan, your way in the church.
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Let's see, let's see what this car can do. Probably not many of us would do that depending on the time of the day.
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But once the speed limit in Michigan state laws have been established, you now exceed that limit in rebellion against the state government.
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Do you understand what I'm saying? You're now rebelling against a known law when the law is declared.
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Like this, but to a greater degree, the sacred law given to us in scripture takes what many might call regular human activity, which our culture is increasingly stating about all kinds of sin, just normal human activity, and it turns it into rebellion simply because the scriptures tell us that God says no to us at various levels, right?
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Over various things. So Paul sees three problems that need to be dealt with in the victory of God.
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For us to be okay, for us to be brought into his eternal kingdom, there are three things that must be dealt with.
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His primary focus all throughout this passage has been death, resurrection. That's what chapter 15 is all about.
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But here, he cannot help but include the other two. When speaking of the victory of God, he also references law and sin.
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And in an outburst of praise, Paul thanks God for victory over all three in Christ.
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He doesn't spell out that victory very clearly, he leaves it a bit nebulous, but in other passages and all throughout the Bible, it's enough that it's worth mentioning for our encouragement how he sees these things dealt with.
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Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, the law has been fulfilled by a human, a representative of us.
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The law completely kept by our representative, Jesus Christ. The law will have no claim to accuse us on that day of judgment because our
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Savior kept the law completely. His righteousness imputed to us.
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His righteousness imputed to us, credited to our account. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, sin has been washed away from his people on the cross.
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We sang it earlier. There he took my penalty and was punished in my place. My sin is no longer on my shoulders.
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And my prayer for each one in this room is that you come to some place in your life where your sin is removed from your shoulders and put on Christ.
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Where you recognize that he died for you and you embrace him by faith and trust him. That your sin, he was dealing with there on the cross.
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And death has been dealt with through the empty tomb. He who was raised to new life will change all of us, he says in this passage, in the twinkling of an eye, in just a moment.
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Whether our bodies are raised from the grave to be remade immortal, or our living bodies are transformed as we rise in the air to be with him, we will all be changed if our hope, if our hope, if our hope is placed in him.
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There are so many application points to this very practical passage, but one takeaway might just be to give him more thanks.
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That'd be a good place to land this morning. Thank him for keeping the law on your behalf. Thank him for removing sin and paying the price and taking your punishment on his shoulders.
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Thank him for the future resurrection that he will make good on. He keeps his promises, church.
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Note that all thanks for victory belongs to God. And how are you doing? I mean, just to think about how you were saved.
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Because here, Paul is emphatically giving thanks to God for the victory on our behalf.
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So if there's any pride in you, if there's any sense in which you have, you know, I believed enough, I studied enough,
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I came, it was my will and my desire, and look at what I've done. I believed. Well, how are you doing with that whole law thing?
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You doing okay? You keeping it? Crossing all the T's? Dotting all the I's? Just like me,
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I dot the T's and cross the I's or something. But how are you doing it, resolving your sin issue?
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How's it going with fixing that whole, solving that whole mortality thing that you've got going on? Thank God for the gospel, church.
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Thank him for the plan to rescue. Thank him for sending forth his only son.
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Thank him for the manger, the cross, the empty tomb, and the promise to prepare a place for us in this huge and cosmic story.
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To include little me, to include little you in this cosmic thing that God is doing.
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Anybody's mind blown that you're brought in? I am not worthy of that. And so now we come to the place where hope for a future resurrection is welded to our present daily, hourly, moment by moment living here in the end.
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The word therefore that starts verse 58 kind of amounts to this, because resurrection is your real destiny.
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Because he will fix you. Because you have eternal days ahead. Because of all of these things, therefore, therefore, now, because of all these truths, be steadfast.
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Be immovable. Abound in the Lord's work. Know that your work is not in vain.
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Let's pick apart these application points as we come in for a landing here. The first, be steadfast. I wanna point out that being steadfast works as a beneficial instruction only if you're standing in the right place.
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Being steadfast in the middle of an intersection during rush hour traffic is not a good plan. How many of you know that where you're standing, steadfast matters?
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Being steadfast on what? On the truth, on the gospel. Be steadfast in the gospel church.
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Be steadfast in your trust in the gospel. Be steadfast in leaning on Jesus as your only hope for salvation.
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Steadfast has the nuance of being in the right place. And so, this first point is a good place to check up and consider whether or not you are standing firmly on the hope of the gospel.
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Do a little introspection, even now. I mean, go ahead and skip whatever else I'm saying for a minute here just to reflect in your own hearts.
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Am I believing the gospel? Is that my hope? And what would you say your salvation is based?
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Would you give God the credit? Would you give God the praise for your salvation? Would you identify what he has done historically on your behalf?
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The thanks for his work in rescuing you through Jesus Christ his son, is that where you're at? I think any other answer to that question other than giving
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God credit for it may indicate that you are standing on shifting sand. If you are not currently standing steadfast and the gospel is revealed through the
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New Testament, I encourage you to come and talk with me or the elder on duty or Dave Bunt or I would even just recommend that you grab a rando here.
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I think you could grab anybody and they would love to tell you about Jesus and what he's done for them. And if they can't, then take them too and then find somebody else because they need it as well.
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So if they can't answer it, then let's go together and I wouldn't mind a crowd standing around talking about this, right?
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Let's understand, let's come to a place where we are standing firmly, we're steadfast on the truth that our only hope, our only hope for our sin to be dealt with, our only hope for the law to be fulfilled on our behalf, our only hope for resurrection and for eternal life is bound up in the work of Jesus Christ our
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Lord, what he has done for us. And then the second thing, so there's steadfast and then there's immovable and some of the commentaries wanna put these two words together.
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Paul chose two words here, I think mildly intentional. This is so close to steadfast that it seems to a lot of commentaries to be redundant and to, but I like,
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I'm choosing to break it out separately because Paul did. While for steadfast,
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I would emphasize where you are standing, for immovable, I wanna highlight the way you stand there.
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Both kind of have that same notion of firm, firm standing, but immovable is definitely focused on that in the
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Greek. Don't let false teachers knock you off the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the call to be steadfast, the call to be immovable implies something very vital for us to understand.
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You are gonna be tempted to be knocked off the game. You are gonna be tempted to be knocked off the gospel.
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Did you know that? Some of you have already, I mean, you've been around for a while, you know. You know that there are things that the world wants to throw at you to try to knock you off the rock of Jesus Christ, to see how firm you're standing.
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And people in your workplace and people in your family and people in the media are wanting to push your buttons and test you.
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Are you true? Is it real for you? Be immovable. You will be tempted.
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You will be tempted to move. You will be tempted to move away from the gospel and it might be through the siren's call of the culture to come step away into deconstruction.
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Some of you have friends who have heeded that call. The voice is telling us your faith is so ancient, it's so outdated, it's so passe.
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Come join the cool kids with updated ideas and more progressive ways of thinking. More loving to the culture, right?
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No, no, no, church, please, I plead with you to stand immovable on the ancient good news. We are sinners and he is the only one who can rescue.
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Some will be called, some might be called to the progressive side, but others of us are called to the more ancient falsehood.
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Some will be called and hear the voice while standing there, you know, kind of saying, like, I trust the gospel,
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I'm on Jesus Christ, I believe that he's the savior, but there's a different type of draw for you to step away.
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It's the old patterns of religious thought that keep coming back. Have you given enough?
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Have you worked enough? Have you loved him well enough? Even is your faith pure enough?
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And our minds can pester us to move away from the gospel and the patterns of self -trust.
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Well, I did give a lot last year, so it seems right that he would rescue me.
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I did attend church faithfully. Look at all I've done for him. If push comes to shove, yeah, he ought to save me.
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No, church, be immovable in the gospel. Be immovable in the gospel.
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And the way we grow stronger in our immovability in the gospel is through rehearsing it regularly to ourselves. Remind yourself regularly that you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, for the glory of God alone.
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And for the one who is steadfast and immovable on the rock of Christ, the third application calls us then to abound in the work of the
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Lord. With feet anchored to Christ, now get busy. Sow this current life in the service of the
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Lord who told us his two greatest commandments. Love God with your everything, heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
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You see, and what I think Jesus was saying there when challenged with the greatest commandment, and he says those two, is he means to combine those two.
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Serve God by the way you serve your neighbor. You show me, you tell me that you love
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God and have nothing to do with his people, have nothing to do with serving others around you? Uh, are you lying?
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Are you lying? Serve God by the way you serve your neighbor, and then you might just be tempted to ask the follow -up question.
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Who's my neighbor? And I would contend to you, here's a litany of people who are your neighbor.
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The guy who just cut you off in traffic, neighbor. The lady at work who super annoys you and you try to avoid her, neighbor.
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The person at church you try to avoid, neighbor. The extended family member who makes you glad that the holiday season only rolls around once a year.
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We all have them, neighbor. I say this because that's how
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Jesus illustrated it. When he was asked, when put to the question, who is my neighbor? The neighbor in the parable was the one who the beat -up
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Jew hated the most. The one he would have hated the most, the one he despised the most, the one who annoyed him the most, the one he thought was the furthest from God was the one who
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Jesus says, now that's your neighbor. Now abound in the
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Lord's work, church. And this is not just work done at church. I wanna clarify that.
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The Lord's work follows you to your employment on Monday to Friday, too. It follows you home after work.
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It is the Lord's work. I'll give you a tautology as a definition here. It is the Lord's work when it is work that the
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Lord has for you to do as his follower. All of it.
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All of it that the sovereign God puts in front of you today and tomorrow and the rest of your breathing days.
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Don't over -spiritualize this work in the Lord. Abounding in serving the Lord, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God, says
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Paul elsewhere. Drive as though you're driving for him. Work for your employer as if Jesus is your boss.
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And in the family, be the parent, child, grandparent, or spouse that models his love and kindness, the very things that he calls us to and the various roles that he's given us in the word.
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And do this all with the final, very encouraging application. I'm telling you what, this just set my heart on fire this week.
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It just gave me joy and gladness to just hear this. I needed this this week. And sometimes the word, you ever do that?
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The word just meets you and gives you something that you just needed to hear. Know that your labor is not in vain.
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It will not return empty. It will be rewarded. Even if it's just, even if it's just merely, and I say just merely, like it'll be awesome.
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Like well done, good and faithful servant. How many of you think that? Like hearing that from Jesus would be like over the moon. Like I get chills thinking about it.
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Eugene Peterson gifted me with a phrase that has impacted me really strongly on this whole, like thinking through my calling and my life.
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I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I remain here as a pastor at Recast Church 15 years in because of this phrase.
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Words have impact. Words can have meaning. Words can drive a life. About year seven of planting this church, so that's how, we're now double that, over double that.
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But about year seven of planting this church, I was getting itchy to see what God had for me next. And it was around that time that I began to be aware of the pastoral theology and extensive writings of Eugene Peterson, who's now my homeboy.
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He's in heaven, and I look forward to meeting him. But the phrase is simply this, a long obedience in the same direction.
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I really think that's my next tattoo, and some of you just go, I don't even wanna hear about it, but I'm really fairly confident that that's where I'm going with an arrow.
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That phrase anchored me to the benefits of longer work with endurance, with the longer view in mind, longer work with the end in mind, a long obedience in the same direction.
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What direction, church? What direction are we going? A long obedience toward the day when death is swallowed up in victory.
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A long obedience toward the day when this mortal puts on immortality, when the perishable becomes imperishable.
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Are you working toward that day? Are you looking to that day? Well, could
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I serve God elsewhere? Yeah, probably. God has transformed this impatient and often impulsive man into a man who values steadfastness and movability, abounding in the work of the
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Lord right in front of me, knowing that my labor is not in vain. How about you?
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How about you? We are being called to quite specific present time applications in light of the hope of a future resurrection.
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Let me ask you, where are you standing? Where are you standing? Are you standing on the gospel?
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Are you standing on the rock of Christ? Are you growing in the strength of your stance, immovable, increasingly immovable, as the world turns up the heat and tries to knock you off the gospel game?
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Are you standing firm? Are you immovable? Are you abounding in His work for you? Are you trusting that your work will be rewarded?
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I like how the message translates, it's verse 58. I usually will read that every week and sometimes it's hit or miss.
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And yeah, that's by Eugene Peterson. I did not come into becoming a Eugene fanboy through the message translation.
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As a matter of fact, I came in despite the message translation. So I didn't like that back when it came out and parts of it are,
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I think, worth carrying on. But verse 58, this is what he says in that translation. With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground and don't hold back.
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Throw yourself into the work of the master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.
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Let me say that again. With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground.
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Oh, do we need to hear that today? Oh, do we need to hear that in our culture? Stand your ground and don't hold back.
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Don't reserve yourself. Just don't try to preserve yourself for maybe another five years of life here when you have eternity coming.
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What would you hold back from service to the master just to try to squeak a little bit more out of this world?
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Throw yourself all in. Throw yourself into the work of the master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.
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Our master gave himself in brutal death to redeem us, to pay the penalty for us. And so we end every service together with a symbolic reminder he himself gave to us in that upper room that night before he was, that night he was betrayed, the night before he was crucified.
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We take a cracker to remember his body broken for us. We take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed in our place to cover our sins, to wash our sins away.
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So if you belong to Jesus by faith in his work and you're at peace with your brothers and sisters here, then
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I encourage you to come to the tables during this next song and take the cracker and juice back to your seat, eat and drink after considering the hope and salvation he has given to us, his people.
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We together church, we together recast are the recipients of his completion of the law, his dealing with sins at the cross and his dealing with death through his resurrection.
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So thanks, thanks, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our
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Lord. Recast, we will be changed. So don't hold back, throw your whole self into the work of the master starting today.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this encouraging call that doesn't just tell us to get to work and get busy, just go do stuff.
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But you take the time to not just because I said so us, but to actually demonstrate reward, demonstrate hope, to draw us in with your love poured out for us through Jesus Christ, your son, who paid the penalty for us, who demonstrated such intense and amazing sacrificial acts of love on our behalf, to draw us into this life that you desire for us to live for you.
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I pray that the byproduct of this message in our hearts would be the spirit grabbing a hold of us in a way that sets us on fire for the things that you desire of us in our
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Monday through Saturday living, and yes, even on Sunday next week and moving forward, that we would throw ourselves into your work as those who are standing on the gospel.
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You give us a firm footing before you ever ask us to leap. And so Father, I thank you for the firm foundation that we have of Jesus Christ, the firm foundation of being loved and embracing and being embraced by the good news.
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So as we have an opportunity to take the cracker and the juice together, I pray that you would be with us as we have our faces lifted up, standing in line, making eye contact with one another,
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Father, that we would rejoice together in this gathering that you are redeeming for your purposes.