1 Corinthians 15:12-28 The Main Event

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan.

You can go ahead and be seated, and please open your Bibles again to 1 Corinthians 15, 12 -28, if you lost your spot there or in your device, if you navigate over to there. And then I do encourage you to keep comfortable, and there's more coffee and juice and donuts while supplies last.

You can get up at any time during the message if you need to top off back there. Restrooms are out the double doors and down the hallway there if you need those. And just, again, welcome to those of you that maybe this is your first time here.

Glad that you're here. Originally, I racked my brain to try to come up with an April Fool's Day joke to just play on you guys, but somehow with the connection with Easter, it just didn't seem right. So instead, we're just going to go right into the message here.

So maybe that is the April Fool's joke, but let's just go right in. So if you've got your Bibles open, then you're going to start in verse 12, but Paul clues us in to what he's addressing right away in verse 12 there.

And we're jumping into the middle of a book, and even technically into the middle of a point that Paul is making that started back at the beginning of chapter 15. We could have read that in its entirety, but verses 1 through 11, just to summarize those 11 verses for you.

In those verses, he's making clear that a true physical resurrection was a major component of the gospel that Paul proclaimed. A central component to the good news is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and he wants to make it abundantly clear in those first 11 verses that that is indeed the case.

He gives evidence there in verses 1 through 11 for the crucifixion, I mean for the resurrection, including names of people who saw Jesus after he was raised. So he actually gives names of people and says that he appeared to over 500 people at one time in one setting.

And so Paul concludes that section by making clear that he himself encountered the risen Lord. He wants you to know that he saw with his own eyes Jesus Christ. Now, we know that that circumstance, that situation was on the road to Damascus.

He was a persecutor of Christians. He was going to arrest himself some Christians and to take them to jail, to persecute them. Even some of them would be put to death. And on his way there, on the road, he saw this blinding light and beheld Jesus Christ himself, the risen King.

The Corinthian Denial of Resurrection and the Pull of Gnosticism

And so it isn't until verse 12 in this text that we find the real issue and why he's even talking about that in those first 11 verses. And that's that there were some in the church in Corinth, maybe even a majority in the church in Corinth, who were teaching that there was no such thing as a resurrection from the dead.

That there was no resurrection at all. And I want to point out that skepticism is not a modern invention of industrial nations. Even in the days of the apostles, they had many who questioned the truth claims of the Christian faith right from the get-go.

People were wrestling with these things and going, resurrection, is that a real thing? And it's likely that this didn't take the form of believing that once you died, like in our culture, what's common is if you don't believe in resurrection, the immediate thought is then you're just worm food, right?

You just die and you cease to exist and that's that. But that would not likely have been the thought in Corinth. The likely thought in Corinth was that once you died, you were free from this earthly place.

You were free from the constraints of the physical world. You see, that was a big thing in their culture, a doctrine, a belief called Gnosticism. The idea that material stuff is bad. This is a bad table because it's made out of material.

Everything that is made, your body is bad because it's made out of material. And the soul is entrapped in a body and the goal was for it to set free from the constraints of the physical and to eventually be floating ethereally in the clouds.

And that might be a common thought among us. It's not the truth. That's not the hope that we celebrate today. That's antithetical to what we celebrate today.

That's the opposite.

The notion like a far side cartoon where you're floating in the clouds and strumming harps and that's that, right? And it's this idea of being a disembodied soul in heaven and that's the goal, isn't it?

And no, it's so much more than that. But that's probably what they were thinking about in Corinth that Paul is arguing against here. It's a common notion in the Greek world. And that idea that what you wanted to do was shed the physical body.

But unfortunately, as I said, that heretical thought has crept into a lot of Christianity, even into churches here around us and maybe even to us to some degree. And Paul is going to make in our text a strong case for physical resurrection.

And let me just tell you one thing that's not on my notes that that means for us. Something that I feel is undersold to Christianity. It's something that is so vastly downplayed and it is this idea of heaven.

It is this idea of we lack a holy imagination to what the new earth is going to be like because we don't even think of it in terms of new earth. We think of it in terms of heaven. So all we've got is floating in the clouds and strumming.

But God has created mankind from the beginning in a garden and told them to be fruitful and to multiply and to subdue and to create and to alter his creation. There's going to be engineering on the new earth.

There's going to be technology on the new earth. There's going to be tables to sit at.

There's going to be food to eat.

There's going to be games to play.

There's going to be sports.

There's going to be music. There's going to be all of the things that God has created our race to accomplish. I believe that, and now I'm getting out there, but I believe it will colonize other planets.

I believe that we will expand beyond what our imaginations are capable of taking in because we'll have eternity without sin. How many of you want to sign up for that place? How many of you want to go to a place like that?

Now, what we've done in our minds is we've made it an eternal church service.

And let's just face it.

Some of us are kind of like, take it or leave it, right? And I mean, for how many years could you sit in a church service? I mean, an hour and a half is pushing it for a lot of us, right? Even me, I'm up here preaching, and I'm like, Don, could you wrap this thing up?

I mean, you know what I'm talking about? And so we've had in our minds this faulty, wrong, wrong-minded thinking about what the hope is.

Why was the grave empty?

Because the resurrection is physical. It's real.

It's bodily.

Christ is in heaven right now in physical form. You take that in? That's astonishing.

That's amazing.

And he's going to return here, fix this place, renovate it, and say, Go for it. I wonder how much it's going to look like this place. I think it's going to be very similar. Just the thing that we can't imagine is it without sin, right?

So that's where we get kind of up against some things that we can't imagine in our minds. But that's what this is all about. So that's why he wants to correct the Corinthian notion that when you die, you just float away.

You just float on up to God, and that's the end of it. No, he's coming back, and he's going to raise all those who have died in him, according to these verses. So verses 12 through 13 set up the problem.

If the Corinthians are right, and there is no resurrection of the dead, then he just makes it abundantly clear right away that not even Jesus Christ has been raised. Now we're in trouble. If there is no such thing, he says, Corinthians, if there's no such thing as resurrection of the dead, then how could Christ be raised?

Logically, that's not possible. And since the good news that Paul brought to them is tied in so closely with the resurrection, Paul is telling us in verse 14 that there are dire consequences to suggesting that Jesus has not been raised.

He goes so far as to say that if Christ has not been raised, then Paul's preaching was in vain.

The word vain there means empty or worthless.

And then he says, then your faith is also empty and worthless as well. All of that if Christ has not been raised from the dead. It's a worthless waste of our time to be here this morning if Christ has not raised.

If you find yourself in a pinch regarding doubt in your relationship with God, go back to that fundamental place where you go, do I believe that Jesus Christ raised from the dead? That's a fundamental exercise that I've exercised in my own life as well.

When doubts creep in or struggles creep in or whatever, it always comes back to that one question. That's fundamental. That's the main thing. Do you believe the tomb was empty? If you do, then everything else falls into place after that.

Now certainly there's some issues that can come up in different things, but you're on the right ground if you're believing that the tomb was empty and that there is hope beyond this life. That's fundamental to all of us.

And so he tied it in so closely in saying that his preaching was in vain and their faith would be in vain or empty. And so my question then to all of us to recast is how central is the resurrection to your faith?

Do you recognize it as the main event in history? Are you believing that and trusting that? Paul tells us that the message of hope he proclaimed rises and falls on the resurrection. So do you realize that if Christ did not raise, then this is all a charade?

You might as well be sleeping in this morning. You see, the cross is the sacrifice. And many of us have been taught in churches that we've grown up in, it's the cross and then the resurrection. What's that really got to do with anything?

Okay, yeah, well that's good for God's PR and he didn't leave his son there and ended up, you know, raising him up and he's in heaven now. But we've almost tacked that on to the end of our gospel, but it's fundamental because the cross is the sacrifice,.

But the resurrection is the victory.

The crucifixion is the atonement. That's the place that your sin was covered and accounted for. But the empty tomb is the vindication of his son. The suffering of Jesus is the love of God towards us, but the resurrection is the power of God toward us.

The power of God to win. That's the resurrection. At the cross, Jesus appeased the wrath of the Father, but on Sunday morning, Jesus dealt a death blow to death itself and to the evil one. At the end of the movie, The Passion of the Christ, some of you maybe watched that just yesterday or the last couple days, it gets something a little out of order.

It shows Satan, you know that one weird scene where Satan is shrieking and it looks like he's in hell and Jesus has just died. Does anybody even know what I'm talking about? Did I do it good enough to remind you what I'm talking about now?

I mean, good acting, right? I believe that at the death of Christ, Satan gloated all the more. I believe that's the point where Satan was thinking,.

I got him now.

I've killed the Son of God.

Oh my goodness, things are rolling my direction. Things are going my way. At the cross, Satan thought, got him. And then Sunday, then Sunday, at that time that the stone rolled away and Jesus walked out triumphant, Satan's doom was sealed.

That's the point of victory. Our gospel must have a resurrection. We need that victory. Without the victory, there is little hope. And that's what Paul is all on about in this text. That's what he's going on and on about.

All of these bad things, all these things that wouldn't be true, all these things that would be problematic for us were not for the resurrection. You see, without the resurrection, this Bible doesn't have a happy ending.

Did you know that? What is the message of Scripture without the resurrection? It is simply this, God came in flesh and we killed him, done.

That's the message.

That's a story, if I can take some liberty, that's a story that sucks. You see, Friday leaves us heavy. Friday is bloody. Friday shows humanity flying our colors, doing the things the way that we do them.

But Sunday morning brings the power of God to restore, to fix, to heal, to correct. So you see, the cross takes away my sin. But without resurrection, then the value of that forgiveness is very temporary.

So if you believe in the cross, but you didn't believe in resurrection, what would you be left with, Paul is kind of saying? The cross would only matter until we're lowered into that six-foot hole that's waiting for all of us at the end of life.

The resurrection shows that God can animate cold, lifeless flesh. And the resurrection of Jesus shows that God intends to do just that for those who are in Christ. And in verse 15, Paul takes his testimony up a notch, saying that if Jesus did not indeed rise from the dead, then he has been lying.

Paul has been lying about God and misrepresenting him. Paul, who traveled the world telling everyone that he saw Jesus Christ, he saw the risen Lord. Paul, who traveled the world telling everybody that the apostles had seen the risen Lord.

Paul, who told the world that the tomb was empty, says, and I know fully that if I'm wrong, then this is a lie, and it is a lie about God Almighty. For a religious man like Paul, he knows how dangerous this is if he's lying.

And he uses that as an evidence for the resurrection. In verse 16, he repeats his basic premise that if the Corinthians are right in their view that people don't rise from the dead, then Jesus must not have either.

He says you can't have your cake and eat it too. They can't say that the tomb was empty and at the same time say that there is no resurrection. And a further implication of life without resurrection is that their faith would be futile and they would be left in their sins, them and us also.

The word futile, by the way, means powerless. Unlike the word vain that's in the text that means empty, this means powerless. In other words, you have a worthless, powerless faith that has not been able to do anything for your problem with sin if there is no resurrection.

If Jesus died, and end of story, then on what basis do you believe that the sacrifice of Jesus was even acceptable to the Father? How do you know that was okay with God? The fact that the tomb was empty shows us that God accepted that sacrifice.

I want to suggest to you that Paul sounds somewhat cynical here, just a little bit. He says this, if the benefits of Christ are for this world only, are only for this life,.

Then it's not worth it.

Think about what he's saying there. He's saying if the only benefit to receiving Christ is that in this life you would have something better until you're buried, then there's nothing after that, there's no benefit after that, then it wouldn't be worth it.

That sounds pretty opposite of what some of the health, wealth, and prosperity preachers say. They're going to hold out hope for this life and almost solely for this life. The primary hope would be in this life, right?

According to some preachers that you might hear on TV or might take in on the radio, they might say that love God and you'll be wealthy in this life.

Isn't that the message?

How many of you heard that message before? In this life, this is the hope in this life. Hope in Christ and you'll get cars. Hope in Christ and you'll get promotions. Hope in Christ and you'll get big fat 401Ks all your life.

And hope in Christ and you'll get clean medical checkups every year, right? Isn't that the message that many are out there proclaiming and preaching? You might understand why Paul would have none of that.

Paul would say, no, no, no, no. This life is a waste if we don't have one after this.

Why?

Well, consider Paul's life for just a second. Paul who was beaten by rods, stoned and left for dead, mocked and ridiculed for his faith, plagued by some physical infirmity thorn in the flesh that God refused to take away from him.

Paul who was shipwrecked and spent a night and day in the Mediterranean Sea. And there's bad things living in the Mediterranean Sea. How many of you like to spend a night bobbing in that ocean?

None of us, right?

And all of that because of his hope in Christ. That's why those bad things came to him. Because his hope was placed firmly in Christ, he was having none of this idea that hope in this life is what it's all about.

Actually, quite to the contrary. What it's all about is sowing this life in suffering for the cause of Christ. With a firm conviction that there is a much better life on the other side, in the new earth, in the resurrection.

Why could people face suffering with joy? Why our forebears and those who came before us in the faith, how could they suffer with joy? How could Paul and Silas be singing with their backs exposed from the whip, in a dark and dank dungeon?

How were they singing? They believed in resurrection. They believed that this life is not all that there is. Why did the martyrs give their lives for the cause of Christ? Couldn't they have just lied and gone on to share the gospel with more?

Couldn't they have just faked it and survived for the cause of the gospel or something? Why would they sow their blood to the cause of Christ? Because they believed in the resurrection. And they believed in the resurrection enough to stake their very lives on it.

What a sorry life to live if there's no hope for resurrection. But now ask yourself this. Am I living in a way that people would pity me? The word's pity there. Most to be pitied. Would people pity me if there was no resurrection?

That made me say ouch this week. That made me come up short a little bit and think this through. It really cut me to the quick. In other words, if there is no resurrection, people will look back at my life after I'm gone and what would they say of me?

Sorry fool.

Would they say that?

Or would they say at least he enjoyed some Netflix? At least he had comfort. At least he avoided controversy and all the tough things that can be thrown at a person. At least he got to cheer for Michigan basketball.

At least he got to go on fun trips during spring break. Ask yourself how would you be pitied? And even further, just ask ourselves, how would we be pitied if we've staked nothing on the resurrection? If it hasn't changed our hearts, if it hasn't changed our behavior, if it hasn't changed our lives.

I believe that many of us, and even myself, many of us have tried to have our cake and eat it too. Many of us have sidestepped suffering so that we can have hope in this life and maybe hope in the life to come too if it comes around.

We'll try to put our eggs in both baskets and see which one really pans out. But let's just say that this life has some really great benefits now, doesn't it? If we put all our eggs in that basket, there's some immediate things that we could really get for ourselves.

But hear me carefully. Some of us are pretty down on ourselves right now. You might be thinking through what I've just said. If you could follow that logic, then you're thinking, yeah, maybe people wouldn't pity me.

Maybe they would say how good I had it. But the point is not then to live an ascetic lifestyle, pushing out all entertainment and joy and the blessings that God gives. That's the way that we'd swing the pendulum the other way and go, I need to just be miserable for the cause of Christ.

I need to just do these kinds of things like some of the monks used to do where they'd take these metal things called a cellus and they'd put it around their thigh and tighten it every time they had a hunger pang or a sinful desire or something, and they'd just tighten that until it dug into their thigh so that they'd hurt all day, make themselves uncomfortable.

That way people would pity me, right?

Something like that.

But that's not the point. It's ready. The point, listen carefully, the point is to be ready at a moment's notice to leave it all behind for the cause of Christ, to not become so attached to the nice pleasantries and comforts and good things,.

To say thanks for the good things.

How many of you have some good things in your life that you can offer thanks to God for, that you might even feel guilty at times for having because you look around the world and you're like, I don't have fresh, I mean, they don't have fresh drinking water there, or they don't have some of the good things that we have here.

So you can begin to get this sense of guilt. But are you willing to leave those comforts, to sacrifice comfort, popularity, security, riches, entertainment, and any and all the gifts for, hear me carefully, for the cause of the king because he wants you to?

Don't leave here at all feeling guilty that you have nice things. In some ways, in some reality, that's not your fault. It's not your fault that you were born in America. Is that anybody's fault? That's nobody's fault.

I didn't choose this. I didn't choose to live in a town that has fresh drinking water. It's where I was born. It's where I was raised. It's where I have an opportunity to minister. So don't feel guilty that you have nice things.

The only guilt you should feel this morning is when you have forsaken your calling to represent the king so that you can keep your nice things. You should feel guilty about that. If you've watered down your witness so that you can stay cool and popular or in with the people at work who talk about other things and you just wouldn't share the gospel with them because you might suffer a little bit for that.

Have you been unwilling to share your wealth with those in need if you're so busy entertaining yourself that you don't have any time to serve the king? Don't feel guilty for having nice things, but feel free to feel guilty if you're worshiping those nice things.

Paul goes on to declare further problems if there is no resurrection. Those loved ones that we know who have gone on before us, he says, have perished. Many of you raised your hand and admitted that death has impacted your family.

It's impacted you personally. And so without resurrection victory, without vindication in the power of God and resurrection, those who have gone on before are lost in their sins. There is no covering for their sins.

There is no reason to believe that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was acceptable. What Paul is painting is ultimately life without hope. The sum total of his argument is that for those who are alive now, our hope is based on the resurrection.

And for those who are already gone in Christ, our hope for them is the resurrection. But in verse 20, Paul turns a corner. Up to that point, he's been arguing from their perspective. But now he states definitively that, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.

Now remember that Paul recognizes that if he's lying, then he's perjured himself before the Almighty God. And yet he is so sure about his encounter with the risen Christ that he uses the word fact for it.

This is a fact. It is true. And in one short statement, Paul gives a breathtaking hope to me and I hope to you as well. One that gets here. He calls Christ the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Now it probably doesn't get here when I say firstfruits. Does that just get you in the feels? When you heard the firstfruits, you were like, oh yeah, but understanding what that means. Firstfruits, in the Old Testament, were the first tenth of a crop.

When the harvest is ready, you go out in the field, and the first 10 of anything that you get into a bushel basket is given to God.

Right away.

And it was given to God at the temple as a sign and promise of more to come. There's more on the way. This resurrection, says Paul, this resurrection of Jesus Christ is just the start. It's the firstfruits of many who will be raised from the dead.

There's more to come, folks. This is one we celebrate, but man, how many of you are looking forward to all of those we're going to celebrate? More to come. In this sense, the resurrection of Jesus is a sign.

His resurrection was not an isolated occurrence, but rather the seeds of a huge harvest that is coming. And that harvest is coming among those who are dead in Christ, those who have fallen asleep. They will one day rise from death, and resurrection of Jesus is the model of that resurrection that will happen.

And in a very real sense, we can expect our resurrection to be very similar to his. His body was no longer in the tomb. It was physical.

He wore clothes.

He talked with people. They were able to touch the scars on his body that God, in his grace, decided to leave there, and he ate fish. His resurrection was physical. It's fundamental to this whole thing.

Paul now appeals to some familiar territory to us. He goes back to the origin of the problem with humanity in the garden to show how the resurrection impacts the whole arc of history. Through one man, Adam, came death.

And so all who are in Adam die. Anybody know anybody who just isn't going to die? They're just going to keep going on and on? No, that's part of what it means to be in Adam. How do we get the designation in Adam?

Well, through being born.

The way that you're in Adam is you were born. You were born into the human race by birth. But so also through one man, Paul says, has come the resurrection of the dead. And so all those in Christ shall be made alive in body and soul.

So if we're in Adam through the natural birth, how is a person placed in Christ?

Through a second birth.

Through a new birth. Jesus spoke clearly about this to Nicodemus in John 3, telling him that you must be born again. You're born once in Adam, you need to be born again in Christ. So in this text, Paul connected the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the amazing cosmic story of God down throughout history.

We were created in the image of God, but we fell through sin. Death was the consequence of our sin, but now through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our sin and death are being done away with.

Some may be tempted, by the way, to read Universalism into verse 22. That's the notion that everybody one day will be saved and come into the kingdom. But notice that Paul clarifies in verse 23 that Christ was raised first, and then he will bring back to life at his coming those who belong to Christ.

It is very clear that this is the resurrection to a positive end that we're talking about here. Resurrection to a positive end for those who are in Christ and belong to him. I love the imagery here, by the way, of belonging to Christ that's mentioned in the text.

I am his, and I trust him with my life, and I hope that you will too. I can't think of a better place to invest your trust than with the one who possesses the power of resurrection. How many of you think that's a good place to put your trust?

And in the end, Jesus will defeat all the enemies of God, and in an ultimate and amazing ceremony that I plan to attend, the Son will deliver a glorious, sinless, properly ordered, very good kingdom to his Father.

The end of this text gets kind of a mashed-up section that can be very confusing, but it's ultimately about the kingdom of God being delivered from the Son to the Father. Jesus, in this sense, is truly the Restorer.

He is making all things new. And for this time in his reign right now where we live, he is slowly but surely putting all enemies under his feet. God told the first woman that one would be eventually born of a woman, and Jesus was born only of a woman, and he would crush the head of the serpent.

This is the notion of all enemies being put under his feet. And the final enemy to be destroyed will be death itself. And what we have here in our text is nothing less than the ultimate death of death.

The finality of death as something that is over the human race. And I don't know about you, but my heart leaps in my chest when I hear that statement in verse 26. The idea of death being done away with.

I don't share a lot of stories about myself up here very much. I like to keep things toward the Bible and focus there. But let me tell you what this verse means for me personally. Where I live and where I come from.

I met this ultimate enemy early in life. Some of you know my story. My dad died when I was eight years old. He was only 36. He died of cancer three days after my eighth birthday. That same enemy came to visit me six months before Lynn and I were married.

My mother passed away. I was 22. She was 45. Just a few days before her 45th birthday. And so you can imagine, I think you can kind of imagine. Some of you have experienced death in your immediate family.

And so as a person who was well acquainted with death, death has, the enemy has defined my life in many ways. I think I am, in a sense, a product of the experiences and circumstances of my childhood and growing up.

Without a father and many of those things. And so my entire life has been defined by this last enemy. He's been, for many of us, the one sure thing in life. Right? The thing that's always over everything.

The thing that's always impacting everything. He's going to have his end. He may be the last enemy to be defeated, but he will indeed be defeated by my King. My King is coming to defeat death itself. And when this happens, the promise will finally be fulfilled that all things will be subject to the Son of God.

And He will finally be completely in His kingdom. He will deliver that ultimate kingdom up to His Father as a finished and complete work. So we've walked through this text and hopefully leave with a better understanding of the resurrection.

But my prayer is that this is by no means just an academic exercise. A very brilliant biblical scholar, one who is very academic and wrote a book this thick on 1 Corinthians. His name is Gordon Fee. I love to read his stuff.

He's very brilliant and he's very analytical and he's very detail-oriented. Picking down to the level of words and details of the Greek and all of that stuff. A brilliant scholar, but he makes this statement.

Bear with it because it starts out academic and it gets to the heart at the end. So hold on. This is what Gordon Fee says. Paul makes plain in this passage, this passage we're talking about, Christ's resurrection is set in motion, a chain of inexorable events that absolutely determines our present and our future.

Okay, a lot of academic things in there. In other words, Christ has set in motion things that are going to happen and it impacts our present and our future. Christ is the first fruits of those who are his, who will be raised at his coming.

And that ought both to reform the way we currently live and to reshape our worship, here it comes, into seasons of unbridled rejoicing. What does it mean to be bridled? Restrained, held back, and we should have no more restraints on our rejoicing when we come to realize what this text is teaching us.

We ought to be undignified in the way that we worship. We ought to, at times, just let the snot bubbles flow with our hands raised with enthusiasm and weeping of joy and gladness and cheering and delight.

How many of you got excited about the game last night? Anybody here a Michigan fan that's kind of like, that's the way you liked it to end and I'm like jumping up and down and then when it comes to this stuff we're like, yes, Lord, thank you for the resurrection.

Thank you, thank you for that empty tomb. And we ought to just be jumping up and down like bonkers, oh my goodness, the victory, the victory. And I want to live like that. I don't live like that. My wife can tell you I don't live like that.

But I want that joy and it's there for the taking. Why do we not have that joy and that exuberance every day? I'm convinced because we settle for our sight being cast down on lesser things, the foolish concerns of this world.