Are We Pitiful?

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. I hope that the centrality of this belief and the radical hope that's given to us through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our

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Lord follows you in every twist and turn of life and is your source of hope.

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I have a small confession to get out of the way at the start of this message. I'm going to introduce it, then we're going to jump into some songs here, and then we'll really tackle the text head -on.

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But here's a minor confession. I've preached this passage here before. We're going to be looking at a passage that I've already talked to you about.

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A few years back, we opened our Bibles and we studied this together. I don't have a huge issue with that.

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I hope you don't either because God's Word is powerful. If I only picked passages that I've never studied before to preach to you,

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I've studied a lot of the Bible, so we'd be limited. But I'm not really worried about that this morning, and I hope you can get past that too.

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Some of you may even, like in the margins of your Bible, have some notes from a previous sermon. But this passage that we're looking at this morning is nearly inexhaustible in its scope and significance for the

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Christian life. It is, of course, God's Word. It is a very direct word about the centrality and significance of resurrection.

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I still studied this passage deeply this past week. I'm not preaching to you the exact identical same words that I preached a few years ago.

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I wrote a new sermon for this Sunday here in 2022, and I believe it's going to speak to all of us through the

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Word. I love the way that Paul argues in the text that we're looking at this morning for the necessity of the resurrection in the

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Christian life. He goes so far as to say in this text that we are wasting our time here this morning if there was no resurrection.

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Your time might be better spent sleeping in this morning if there is no resurrection. We should turn the lights off, close the doors of the church, and never look back if there was no historic bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ our

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Lord. It's that central. It's that significant. And Paul goes on about that in the text that we're looking at this morning.

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And he states this in the most directive terms. We are epically pitiful if the resurrection is not true.

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And I think we could say pitiful might also look like foolishness.

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We are foolish. We are living for the wrong thing. We would be focused in the wrong direction and truly wasting the only life we have been given if there is no resurrection.

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So the question posed to us in the text this morning is the title of the message as well. A question that we all need to ask ourselves.

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Are we pitiful? Are we pitiful? So let's open our Bibles and see the

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Apostle Paul's answer to that. And really God's answer to that through the Holy Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 15 12 through 21.

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We're going to read that before the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. But 1 Corinthians 15 verses 12 through 21.

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Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

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

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We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testify about God that he raised

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

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

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Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

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But in fact, let me read that again. But in fact,

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Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

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For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

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Let's pray. Father, we come before you on this day, a day that can be routine for many of us that are getting up in age.

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We have spent many Easters on this planet. And for those of us who have been kicking around the church for a while, it can become a routine.

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We have these things that we say to one another. We have these patterns of life. Father, I pray that you would speak new and fresh glory, new and fresh enthusiasm and excitement into our hearts over this resurrection of Jesus Christ, the significance of it, the meaning of it.

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What we would be lacking without it is astronomical. We would have no hope. We would be lost in despair were it not for the resurrection.

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So Father, I pray that you would press that deep down into every heart that's here. Father, for those of us that are hearing this again for the umpteenth time,

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I pray that you would move by your spirit within our hearts to rejoice in genuine gladness, genuine awe.

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Let our jaws drop to the floor once again in awe and wonder. Let our eyes be raised up to you in praise and thankfulness to you for the hope that has been given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the acceptance of that in the resurrection.

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And the hope that that spells out for our destiny forever and ever with you. Father, if there's anybody here who does not know you,

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I pray that today would be a day of reconciling accounts, a day of meeting you in a new and fresh way that leads to faith and trust and hope in the start of a relationship with you.

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Father, I thank you that we get to mingle our voices now in praise to you. I pray that this would be so much more than an exercise of our vocal chords, but it would be an exercise of our hearts in worship to you in gratitude and thankfulness.

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You have done it. It is nothing that we could deserve, nothing that we have accomplished, nothing that we brought to the table, but with empty hands we have come to you and you have rescued us.

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So please receive our songs now as worship to you this morning in Jesus' name, amen.

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Make yourself comfortable like I say every week and if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice,

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I think we pretty much crushed all those donut holes, so I think we nailed them where they're gone. But there is more coffee and there's more juice back there.

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If you need the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side, so take advantage of that too. And it would be really great if you had your

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Bibles or your devices open to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 12 through 21. We read that earlier, but that's actually what we're going to walk through.

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It wasn't just a scripture reading, it was the scripture text for the morning. And I think it's good for us to set some context because most of you that attend here regularly, you know

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I like to march through books of the Bible. We're actually going through 2 Samuel right now, taking a break to get a resurrection message in here.

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We'll be back into 2 Samuel next week, actually in a couple of weeks. I'm going to be out at a conference this next week, but really when it comes down to it, it's good for us to gather the context and that's why

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I like to march through books of the Bible so that we're getting the full picture of it. Well, we're dropping into the middle of a letter here, and so what comes immediately before our text in 1

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Corinthians 15 is a list of people who saw Jesus Christ after he was raised from the dead.

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The Apostle Paul gives us that list. You could go back maybe this afternoon and read all of 1 Corinthians chapter 15 for a little bit of context, but he includes in that list the apostles all saw

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Jesus Christ raised. He includes over 500 people in one gathering saw Jesus Christ, and he of course includes himself.

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You see, Paul clearly had no question that Jesus Christ was alive as he penned these words. He saw him with his own eyes.

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And further, the Apostle Paul went through years of hardship and persecution traveling around to make the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ known.

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He spent the rest of his life after encountering the risen Christ telling everybody he was raised.

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And he went all throughout the Roman Empire doing so. Paul didn't believe in the resurrection in some academic or theoretical way.

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The resurrection impacted the way that he lived. It impacted what he hoped for, and it impacted how he suffered.

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He willingly suffered for this truth. He willingly was pelted with rocks and beaten with sticks and was shipwrecked a day in the deep in the sea.

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He went through all kinds of hardships to share with anybody who would listen this message of Jesus Christ crucified and raised again three days later.

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But according to verse 12, there were some people in the church in Corinth that were saying, now you need to understand about Corinth real quick is that this is a church that the

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Apostle Paul started. Like he's the founder of this church. So when he's writing them a letter, he's kind of a little, probably a little disappointed in the direction that the church is going because there's some thinking that's crept in there.

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And there are some, according to verse 12, that are saying there's no resurrection of the dead. Well, it's fundamental to Paul's message.

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So how is this creeping in there? Well, I suggest to you that down through the ages, there's a common and hard to shake philosophy that is, it's even found in our day and age.

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It's called dualism. It's infiltrated even the modern church in America, just like it did back then.

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There you see yin and yang there. It's kind of similar related to that. It's a philosophy that states that the material world is bad and the spiritual world is good.

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Material bad, spiritual good. And some of us maybe were raised on that dualistic principle and didn't even really realize it, but it's a real problem even among Christians today.

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Something that we can get kind of out of whack and it makes us misunderstand the resurrection. So Paul is attacking that concept here in this text.

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You see, it's taken many forms. This dualism has taken many forms in various eras of human history, but in Roman times, it was an extremely popular belief.

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It's likely that some within the church in Corinth were raised on this philosophy and they were thinking that we are merely souls trapped in a body.

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And Greek philosophy was such that the goal was to, and Plato wrote about this, by the way. Any of you ever heard of Plato? Socrates?

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You've heard of those guys. He believed that the soul was an immaterial part of us that's trapped in a human body and the goal of human existence is to get up into where the forms are, up into the spirit realm, and to shed this mortal shell and then we'll be okay.

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In Christian terms, the idea is free to go back to God as a pure spirit. Unfortunately, that's still a common

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Christian error. Many think that our goal and our final destination is to be free of this world and just fly off to heaven to sit on clouds and strum harps forever.

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Not much thought about how in the world does a spirit strum a spiritual harp. I don't know what that looks like, but we're gonna be there floating on the clouds forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

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And a bunch more evers, right? And I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound quite, that doesn't resonate and that doesn't strum my heart strings in terms of what

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I believe I was created for. Anybody on that kind of like? I remember as a kid thinking, at least I'm not going to hell, right?

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But there was no pro to that. There was no like, I get to go to heaven. I get to go be with God. I get to go to this place.

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There was no imagination given to me for the physicality of our destiny. Where is this all going, church?

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Do we believe that we're just gonna be disembodied spirits up there or do we believe the story?

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Do we believe that God created us and put us on earth in the garden before sin and said, work it.

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Make it better. It's a good creation. Very, very good. Now make it better. That's our destiny.

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That's our eternity, church. You let that sink in and that's coming from this doctrine of resurrection.

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But Paul's disagreeing with dualism throughout this passage. In Corinth, again, there were some denying the resurrection based on philosophy.

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But nowadays, I think we just have the tendency to dismiss resurrection on the basis of, here's the word, science.

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I mean, we observe the world around us and we go, well, this doesn't seem right. It doesn't match my experiences unless we're in a horror film.

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Generally speaking, dead people don't come back to life, right? And even in the horror films, it doesn't look good when they do.

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So that's not good. But for almost all of human observable existence, we just don't have this pattern of resurrection.

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Now, there is one who was raised and we know we're celebrating him today and we've got implications that Paul's gonna draw out in our passage about this one that's raised.

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And some of you might even just go, well, aren't there others? Like, we had Lazarus, right? We had Jesus show up at a funeral.

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Like, literally, the parade happens to go past Jesus for this young boy who has died and they're carrying him in his coffin and Jesus opens the top and says, come on out.

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Like, I mean, he had the power of resurrection and he's showing us that Jesus has the power of resurrection.

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But I would not wanna have been Lazarus. I'm just being honest. Like, dude had to die twice, right?

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Like, I mean, he died, was buried and then Jesus, like, calls to him, hey,

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Lazarus, come out and it's like, oh, dude, but I'm in heaven, okay. And then he obeys and he comes back and he steps out of the grave and hangs out for a while.

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It says that even the Pharisees, I mean, he lived long enough, at least, that the Pharisees were, like, literally, like, plotting to kill him too, right?

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They're plotting to get rid of him. And yeah, the dude had to die again. Not where, anybody with me on that?

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Are you tracking with me? Some of you are, like, looking blank stares, but I mean, all of these others died again and what we're talking about when we're talking about the resurrection of Jesus is something radically different.

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Raised up to eternal life, never to die again. Eternally raised to permanent life.

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Sound good? Anybody for that? An incorruptible body, no sin, no brokenness, no tears, no movement towards corruption and decay.

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And I mean, some of us that are getting up in age and we're starting to get older, we're feeling it a little bit. Anybody got that little lower back pain or aches and pains you work out and it just doesn't recover like you thought it should?

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And I stopped playing basketball a while ago because I found I was getting dangerous. Like, I was pretty confident

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I could get to that ball and instead I undercut the other dude and I was like, okay, I'm gonna hurt somebody out here because younger

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Don would have got there. I'm not getting there right now. Some of you know what? Anyone?

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You're gonna leave me on it? Okay. Linda's not playing basketball as much as she used to.

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So, just kidding. So, Paul wants us to focus our attention on the one resurrection that matters most.

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The significant one. The one that is onto eternal life. If it can be shown that a single person has been genuinely killed, genuinely buried, stopped breathing with no heartbeat, for three days, and then come back with strength and vigor to ascend to God forever and ever, that ought to change our perspective on what really is possible.

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If that's a true story, if that's true, how many of you know that that should change everything? Changes everything for us.

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And that's what Paul is saying in verse 13, but he says it all here in the text from the reverse side. If there is no resurrection from the dead, then not even

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Christ, we can't even credit Christ with a resurrection. You can't have your cake and eat it too is what

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Paul is getting at in verse 13. You can't say there's no resurrection from the dead, Corinthians, but Jesus was raised from the dead.

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You can't say that. But there's some very serious implications that Paul spells out for us throughout this text.

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If Jesus was not raised from the dead on the Lord's day morning around 2 ,000 years ago, there are some significant implications to that.

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First, we see in verse 14, there's gonna be, I think there's gonna be five of these. Yeah, five of them.

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First, in verse 14, Paul says that if Christ hasn't been raised, you should pay no attention to the apostles' teaching.

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You shouldn't be here listening to me today. Tear out the New Testament, throw it away. The preaching of the apostles of Jesus, including

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Paul, would be vain or empty. It is worthless. It is useless. It is garbage. It is not worth reading and not worth your attention if Christ wasn't raised.

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Seem like a radical statement? It's pretty radical and yet true. The resurrection is that central to us and he's gonna continue to spell that out.

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The logical corollary to this is found in the remainder of verse 14, which is our second thing. If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is in vain.

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Now, vanity is kind of one of those words that we picture somebody in front of a mirror who can't get over themselves, but vain in the

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Greek phrase is empty. It has the idea of worthless, worth nothing.

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So if Christ has not raised, then your faith is empty. And I wanna just ask you a genuine question to wrestle with this morning, do you truly think that your faith is completely worthless and garbage if Jesus wasn't raised?

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Or could you still see some benefit in it? Are you still kind of like, well, I still might have some benefit. If we harbor any notions in our heart like this,

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I can imagine somebody might say, well, at least my faith gives me a moral upstanding life.

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Even if there is no resurrection, at least it makes me a good person. And I wanna suggest to you that that's not a noble thought.

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Not according to Paul here. It only reveals your appetite for hypocrisy. True story.

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How comfortable would you be living a lie? That's the question posed here. How comfortable would you be living a lie?

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Would you be all good if your life was based on a real, I mean, a lie, albeit a good lie, would you be okay with that?

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The way Paul speaks here lets me know where he would be if the resurrection wasn't true.

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And I'm pretty confident that Paul would not be in church on Sunday morning. He wouldn't be here with us if the resurrection wasn't true.

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In verse 15, we see the third implication of the resurrection. It's not just that the preaching would be in vain and that faith would be in vain, but if the resurrection is not a genuine historical event, we could rightly be identified as those who bear false witness about God.

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We cannot have a middle ground on this church. Either we are purveyors of truth in the gospel or we are in opposition to God, Paul says.

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Our religious message is not neutral if it's false. It is one of the most terrible, think about this.

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We present to the world a gospel that says, Jesus died for your sins and after this life there is one to come and you will be raised up to newness of life and have eternity forever and ever and ever with Jesus Christ in a material place on a new heavens and a new earth.

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And we say that to people. I hope we're, are we saying that to people? I hope we're saying that to people and let that be a challenge to you if you're not saying that to people that it's understood that it's a message that the church is carrying out.

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We are declaring that, we are to be declaring that. But that, think about it from another perspective. That is the most terrible and wicked of lies if billions of people since the times of Christ have placed a false hope in his resurrection.

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If it's not true, how many of you know, that's a pretty, that's a huge lie. That is a long con. That is a deep and dark and gross con if that's what's really going on here and Paul's identifying it.

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He says, oh man, we are testifying falsely about the almighty God that he raised

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Jesus from the dead. And if that's not true, we're all in trouble, testifying falsely.

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I mean, I just think about, just think about what implications that would have. How many have been murdered, literally giving up their lives for this truth?

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How many have given up pleasures for this truth? How many have surrendered and sacrificed good things in this life because of the hope for eternity?

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If this is a lie, it is a lie against almighty God. So let me point out though, that to apply verse 15 assumes, and I said it a little bit earlier, we are representing

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God and in our ambassadorship to the world from God and his son,

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Jesus Christ, we ought to be talking to the world about resurrection.

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That needs to be part of the message that we're sharing to the world around us. Paul assumes that where the servant of God represents

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God, the resurrection will be discussed. Jesus Christ died for our sins.

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And if that's where the story ends, if that's all that there is, there is no resurrection, it's not a great story.

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It's actually a pretty bad story. Without the resurrection, Jesus gets at best a 50 % grade and I think

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Paul's gonna make a case that he gets zero. He gets a zero. That's the score of Jesus in what he said he came to accomplish and then what he actually accomplished if there is no resurrection.

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You see, we have two primary enemies that he came to deal with and they have to be dealt with before we can be reconciled to our creator.

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Those two enemies are sin and death. Both came into the world through Adam and Eve in the garden and both have been our consistent barrier throughout life.

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How many of you are constrained by this thing that you know is true of you, you have limited time? Any of you felt that constraint?

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You feel it. You're limited to what you can do. I would love to be able to learn to play guitar like Dave Burnt.

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I would love that. I'm saving that for the new earth, okay? That's gonna take me a while to get there but I'm looking forward to being able to do that someday.

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You know what I'm saying? Like I have a limited amount of time. I'm not even taking guitar lessons right now. I don't have time, right?

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How many of you know what I'm talking about? The things you'd like to do that you just don't have time to do. It'd be a bad story if it's only about this life and those two primary enemies have to be dealt with and we have this consistent barrier of death that is always stalking us.

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There is the reality that we live all of our days here on this planet in the valley of the shadow of death.

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That's human existence but if sin is taken care of and death is not then we have only hope for this life and then death takes us and sweeps us away.

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And that's where verses 16 and 17 lead into the fourth implication. If Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile and he says, no, this is where he gets to zero.

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Jesus also, we have no reason to believe he's conquered sin either. Of course, if there's no resurrection, he hasn't conquered death but we can't quite credit him with conquering sin either.

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The resurrection, what is he getting at here? Well, I believe it's this angle. The resurrection shows the vindication of Jesus Christ before the father.

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How do we know, ask yourself this, how do we know that his sacrifice for our sins was acceptable to God?

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How do we know that? If he dies and never comes back, we're kind of just left going, well, that's a guy who died on a cross, right?

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We know it by the resurrection. How do we know our sins have actually been dealt with by the resurrection? The word futile, by the way, in verse 17 differs subtly from back in verse 14.

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He said, your faith is vain or empty but the word futile has the nuance of powerless. It has no power in it.

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The power of our faith is within the resurrection, the power to believe that our sins have truly been washed away by the son who was acceptable to the father.

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The power to have a genuine hope that this world is not all that there is is wrapped up in the resurrection, of course.

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The power to live for something beyond my own pleasure and my own self -made kingdom is found in the resurrection.

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And verse 18 gives the fifth implication, if Christ wasn't raised and it kinda comes a little bit out of left field for some, it doesn't so much for me.

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And in part, I posted this morning on Facebook that this day is always mildly more personal and I think it probably is for a lot of us who have lost people before that we love.

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How many of you have just lost somebody that you love that you think, wow, resurrection, that's hope. There's a real tangible hope.

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I lost my father when I was eight. I lost my mother when I was 22. And this day, I never wake up on Easter without reflecting on the hope of resurrection in a very personal way, not in some theoretical abstract.

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I think the Bible teaches something about that in a way that places it as a central hope in my life for years.

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Anybody relate to that? Anybody just like, there's a reunion you're looking forward to and that's the fifth implication.

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If Jesus was not raised, then all of our loved ones who have preceded us in death are gone.

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They're just gone. That was the end of them. He says that in the text. They've all perished.

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This is an appeal, of course. We recognize it because it hits us all in different ways, but it's an appeal to an emotional desire within us to be reunited with those that we love.

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We know that that's put in our chest. Somehow that there's a desire for more beyond this life, right?

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Amen. Now, I hold out hope, by the way. You can take this from a negative stance too.

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Maybe there's somebody that you know that's going on before you. You're not confident about where they stood. As a matter of fact, they may have seemed to be quite in opposition to God at the time that they died.

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And I find deep hope in those kind of contexts. I find deep hope in the one thief on the cross beside Jesus.

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You see, according to Matthew chapter 27, verse 44, just mere hours before, maybe even mere minutes before they were placed on the cross, both thieves, according to Matthew 27, 44, were mocking and ridiculing and reviling

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Jesus on the way to the crucifixion. Both of them. Both of them, it says in Matthew, were reviling him, mocking him, making fun of him on the way to the hill.

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But one of them we know had a change of heart in those very poignant moments just before he died. And with a shocking simplicity of faith, he turned his head to Jesus, acknowledging that Jesus had done nothing wrong.

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And he asked him to remember him when Jesus came into his kingdom. And in that simplicity of faith,

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Jesus pledged salvation to him then and there. Today, you will be with me in paradise.

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Does that give anybody hope? We don't know what God does in the heart and mind of an individual in their dying moments.

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There's always, always hope, particularly if we were faithful to share the gospel with them.

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Particularly if we know that they knew the truth. I say this because I have hope for those who have gone before me in death.

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And Paul expresses that the only logical reason that any of us would have any hope beyond this life is the resurrection of Jesus.

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There's no other place to turn. There's no other hope beyond this life except in the resurrection of Jesus.

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It's merely wishful thinking without evidence that we're gonna see them again. And the evidence is, of course, the resurrection of our

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Lord. The final implication, I said five, and I'm gonna go ahead and go to six. The final implication is that if Christ had not been raised, then we only have hope in this life, and that makes us to be pitied.

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That's where the pitiful question comes in. You see, the implications of the resurrection certainly have an impact on this present life.

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I don't wanna dismiss that. I don't mean by this that we climb up on our rooftops waiting for the

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Lord to return as if there's no significance for this life, but it's not only for this life. The implications of the resurrection do impact our day to day, and they should.

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We have responsibilities that are informed by the gospel message. The resurrection breathes eternal life into us at the moment that we believe and trust

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Jesus Christ and say, forgive me of my sins, wash me, cleanse me, and be my Lord and be my

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Savior. The resurrection, of course, rearranges our priorities. It should. It makes us live for more than ourselves.

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It gives us a message to share and the power to share it with the world in need around us. That power, of course, can be defined in one word that the resurrection gives us.

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Hope. Hope. That is the power of the resurrection. The resurrection teaches us to cling less to this present life.

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This existence is not the only one that we get, church. How many of you are glad that YOLO, well, first of all, that that phrase isn't used anymore.

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Okay, and then how many of you equally are glad that that's not a truth? YOLO is not a truth.

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As a matter of fact, when I was in high school, any of you have seen the movie Dead Poets Society? Did you see them step up on the desks and what did they say?

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Captain, my captain, and what was his catchphrase for the class? Carpe what?

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Carpe diem. That's not a real good philosophy, church. The idea behind carpe diem, it's a

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Latin phrase that means seize the day, and its implication is that this might be the only day you get.

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Without resurrection, that's a reality. Without resurrection, that would be the truth. You have to suck the morrow as Robin Williams' character says, suck the morrow out of this day because it might be the only one you get.

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How many of you know that message sucks? I said that on, my wife is not happy with me right now.

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But I said that on Easter. Golly. Carpe diem is not my cry.

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Church, it's not our cry. It is not the cry of the church. Rather, we ought to live by a different adage.

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Who knew that there was a Latin translator? So I typed in this phrase, and this is what it spit out for me for Latin.

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Carpe aeternum. Any guesses? Seize eternity.

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Seize eternity. We need not suck the morrow out of this day because, church, we have countless days.

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I don't need to pack all the guitar lessons in today. Amen. I don't need to try it out on you next week either.

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But hear me carefully, church. I mean, when we think about the resurrection and we're thinking about what it launches us out to, the hope that it gives us, the way that it fuels us, this day, and we know it in our hearts, this day can never fulfill the longing of your hearts.

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It never can. And it never will. One day is not enough for you. God hasn't designed you that way.

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He hasn't put you together in such a way. He hasn't created the created order that one day is enough for the human heart. How many of you ever had a really, really, really good day?

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Like the sun rose and it was beautiful and maybe over the beach and you sat in a chair, sipping your favorite drink and it was just a good day and then the sun set and you were with friends and maybe there's a bonfire and some singing or something and just whatever it is for you and it was just a really good day.

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Have you ever had a day you would like to set on repeat? Just live that thing over until you're tired of it and maybe not get tired of it?

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We have that desire. We know that death has placed limit on our days here on this earth, but deep within us.

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And it would be cruel if it wasn't true. It would be cruel for God to give us what he's given us. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, what?

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He has set eternity in the hearts of humanity. He has set a longing for eternity in you and me.

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That's why one day is never enough. We're not designed for one day. We are made for eternity.

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That's what the resurrection brings to us, church. Amen? Endless days of worship in the way that we're designed.

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Not strumming harps, not just one big church service. I remember as a kid, like again, I emphasize this a lot because it really did strike me.

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But I remember thinking, oh goodness, is it just a church service? Is that what we're gonna do?

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Is it gonna be just like sitting in rows, singing songs, maybe hearing some preacher talk for a long time about stuff?

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Like what's eternity gonna be like? And again, my emphasis in my mind was, at least it's not fire.

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It sounds like maybe, like if the fires of hell is here, like when I was painted, the picture of heaven painted for me was like, here,

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God has created us material beings. He is raising us as material beings.

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He is giving us a new heavens and a new earth. The resurrection was physical, it was bodily.

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And in that we have hope of endless eternal days with our Lord and Savior, with those that we love, and with a created world to continue to subdue, to continue to exercise the

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God -given dominion that he's given us in perfection without sin. That sounds good to me.

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But if the only thing that is impacted by Christ is hope for better days here and then we die, well, that's a pitiful story.

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If he has not reversed the curse given in the garden, then we have an empty and powerless hope. So ask yourself this question this morning, church.

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Are we pitiful? Is our faith empty and powerless? Are we bearing false witness about God when we share the death, burial, and resurrection of our

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Lord? Are we still in our sin? Paul states in emphatic terms, knowing all that is at stake in his answer, but to basically perjure

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God himself and to lie about God himself if this is not true, he says it this emphatically.

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In fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. In fact, in fact.

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Let's camp on that phrase for just a minute. I love that phrase, in fact. Think about it. This is a sweet, sweet phrase in the world right now.

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I think we are all living in a world that abuses the word fact. We don't know who to believe anymore, am

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I right? We don't know what a fact is anymore. I think we're living in a world that has got all of us backwards.

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We're learning to be skeptical of all sources in church. I think in some ways that's wise. I think it's good that you're growing in skepticism towards the world out there.

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Deep fakes and fake news and all of the angles and the spins and the opinions and different thoughts thrown at us.

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Paul at least dignifies his reader with evidence that his fact is true. He spells out the many witnesses to the resurrected

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Jesus earlier in this passage. He explains what he personally has at stake. He explains that he saw with his own eyes as an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus.

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And yet he sticks to his guns. Jesus has in fact been raised. Church, he has risen.

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His resurrection has significant ramifications for all who are his by faith. The second half of verse 20 explains the relationship between the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of his people.

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Jesus is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. And this requires a little explanation as I'm wrapping up here.

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In the Old Testament, there was an offering given during the harvest season called first fruits.

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Now this was a little bit of a radical sacrifice offered. It was the first portion of a harvest and it was given before all the rest of the produce was harvested.

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How many of you like, kind of like when you've prepared something or when you've labored after something would like to be the first to use it?

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You put something together, you build it, you wanna be the first one. You bake a batch of cookies, you wanna have the first cookie.

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I mean, isn't that just our human nature? You're kind of like, I made these cookies because I wanted a cookie, so now I'm gonna eat a cookie.

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But imagine that the calling to give that first cookie to God. I mean, burn it on an altar or whatever.

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That's the idea of first fruits. He gets the first ones out of the oven. And why would you do that?

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Well, it was a sacrifice of faith that showed a trust in God that he was going to give the first, you're gonna give the first produce to God.

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And in this sense, it was fashioned as trust in God to bring in the rest of the harvest before all the rest of the harvest has come in, you're giving him the first.

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The first stuff that comes out of the field is his. And I heard an illustration on this once, the idea of Christ being the first fruits of the resurrection, the beginning portion, the one that came first.

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And this illustration, by the way, speaks to my heart really well because it's got ice cream in it. You see, the resurrection of Jesus is like the sample spoon at the ice cream shop.

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Now, how many of you ever had a sample of ice cream? Go ahead and raise your hand. Go ahead, be honest, okay.

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How many of you ever, now, I'm gonna ask you another question. This is gonna require radical honesty. How many of you ever sampled an ice cream you had already tasted?

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And you feel a little guilty and you're hoping they don't catch you, but it's like, have you ever had this one before? I actually had somebody at the ice cream shop ask me that.

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You've never tasted that one? I don't know, I just wanted a sample. I don't know, I just wanted to be reminded of what it tastes like, you know?

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But you guys know what I'm getting at. But what does that sample spoon have to do with this? It has to do with first fruits this way.

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The sample spoon provides a foretaste of the ice cream that is to come. This isn't unique to me, by the way.

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I heard this illustration given in a sermon a while ago and then I couldn't even find it this week, so this is not original content.

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But it provides a foretaste of the ice cream that is to come. It is like the first fruits of really, really, really good stuff coming down the pipeline toward us.

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In Christ, we have the first of many resurrections. He has secured our resurrection through his.

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That's the hope. And so we start seeing the mechanism where I'm going to end this morning in the same way that death came through one man,

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Adam. Resurrection and eternal life has come through one man, Jesus. Just like all of us are guilty under the sin of Adam, all of us have the opportunity of resurrection through Jesus.

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And I'm ending this message at a strange spot in the text, but I encourage you to go on to read the rest of the chapter on your own, maybe this afternoon, maybe with your family.

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But there's more content there that spells out the implications of the resurrection. But church,

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I want to recenter us all on the glorious death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to deal with our enemies of sin and death.

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And I want to remind you that his tomb was absolutely empty. We have no room for this dualistic philosophy.

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He was not raised as an eternal spirit. He was raised physically.

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His destiny is our destiny, meaning we will be like him when he raises us up.

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The disciples actually feared when he appeared to them in the upper room that he was a ghost and he said, no, give me a piece of fish so I could show you.

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I can eat. He ate fish. He let people touch his wounds. You go, well, why are his wounds there?

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God apparently decided to allow him to keep the wounds, I think as a testimony of what he did for us.

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He walked the roads around Israel. He sat and he talked with his disciples. He was no phantom church.

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So here's the conclusion. You think about the opposites of these, but now Christ has been raised.

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So our message is not vain, but it's significant. Christ has been raised. So our faith, our faith is significant.

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Christ has been raised. So we are speaking the truth about God when we testify to the resurrection. Christ has been raised.

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So our sins have been paid for. Christ has been raised.

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So there is hope for our loved ones who have gone on before us. Christ has been raised. So we have hope for a life to come.

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In fact, church, Christ has been raised. And so as we come to communion this morning, please only participate in this if you've asked

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Jesus Christ to rescue you from your sins. If he is your Lord and Savior, then come to the tables to take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us and take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.

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And rejoice that death didn't get the final word in the story. He was willing to endure the torment of crucifixion on Good Friday for us.

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He did indeed die, but he did so for the joy that was set before him. And the

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Father gave him the privileged position of the first fruits from among the dead in his resurrection.

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So recast, let's live out the resurrection by embracing the hope of eternal life that is available by faith in Jesus Christ.

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If there's anyone here who does not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior, you know that phrase doesn't even necessarily make sense to you or doesn't mean anything to you, but you're curious,

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I would love to talk with you after the service. I'm gonna be out there by the door. Grab me and just say, hey, I'd like to talk with you for a second and I would love to walk through with you how you can start and embark on your pathway of eternal life today.

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But for the rest of us, I encourage you to live for eternity. Share this glorious hope that you have with others around you.

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Tell them about your king that died for his people. Tell them about your king that conquered death for you.

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Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we have in the resurrection. I thank you for this day to set aside to remember and to reflect.

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I pray that this message would again just saturate our hearts and minds with the reality, the truth, in fact, as Paul puts it, in fact,

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Christ was raised. And that fact changes everything for us. I pray that we would launch out from this place with hope, a hope that is centered and rooted on the truth of being loved by you enough that you would reconcile us to you through the cross and empty tomb of our

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Lord. We thank you for him and ask that even now as we take the cracker to remember his body broken for us and the juice to remember and reflect on his blood shed for us, that you would unify us together as a church in love for you.