Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Speaker: Mr. Chris Villi

Safe in God’s Hand

About this sermon

Many people feel less safe than they once did, but those who belong to Christ are secure in God’s hand. Their security rests on God’s purpose: the Father gave his sheep to the Son before the foundation of the world, and the Son gives them eternal life in time. It rests on God’s power, because no one can snatch them from the hand of the Son or of the Father, who are one. It rests on God’s preservation, because God works in believers to will and to work, so they persevere to the end.

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Sermon transcript

Well, good evening. If you would, open your Bibles with me to John chapter 10. As you are doing so, I will say it is truly good to be here this evening. It is good to be back here this evening. I know I have met many of you in the past. It has been a little while since I have been here. It has been three or perhaps five years. I believe the last time I preached was the Sunday just before your pastor began his ministry. He was actually present at that time. He had moved here and was ready to begin. So it is good to see you. I think there are many connections we have made simply through speaking with one another. There are some I remember, and there are others whom I am thankful to have met for the first time. There are also those I look forward to meeting after the service.

This evening, in John chapter 10, we will focus on a brief section of the chapter. We will examine two verses closely, and we will also consider the broader context. We will reflect on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. We were already prompted to consider this doctrine in the confession.

As we begin, I will read the passage, and I will expand the reading slightly. Please listen to the word of our living and true God—the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of our God. John chapter 10, beginning in verse 22.

At that time, the feast of dedication was taking place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. The Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me. But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.”

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.

Please pray with me for God’s blessing on the preaching and hearing of His Word. Our Father in heaven, we come before You and ask You, God, that You would work in our hearts this evening. Work in us so that we may be attentive to Your word, and that You, by Your Spirit, would take that word and press it upon our hearts. May we come to know You better and be more fully conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and King. We pray in His name. Amen.

I am wondering this evening how you feel. Do you have a general sense of safety and security? Or are you perhaps prone to worry, anxiety, despair, or even depression? Statistics show that people generally feel less secure and less safe than they did in the past. Various reasons are cited, such as crime and political instability—these are examples of things people mention when explaining why they feel less secure than they once did. But I want to take this idea and apply it for a moment to your salvation, to your eternal life.

Do you feel secure? Do you feel safe in your soul, in the hand of God? Brothers and sisters, that is our focus this evening. As we look at these few verses, I want us to be encouraged. If you are in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you believe in Him, if you trust in Him, if you have turned from your sins and are His son or His daughter, then you can feel safe in His hands. You have security. So this evening I want to encourage you to be confident, and in that confidence to rest in the strong hand of our God. Be confident and rest in the strong hand of God.

We have good reason to be confident in God’s security. And this evening, as we consider this passage, I want us to consider together three reasons that arise from this passage for why we can be confident in God’s security. Let me first state these three reasons, and then let us walk through them together. The first is this.

We are secure because of God’s purpose. Secondly, we are secure because of God’s power. And thirdly, we are secure because of God’s preservation. Therefore, we have security because of God’s purpose, His power, and His preservation. Let us begin by considering how we are secure because of God’s purpose.

As we look at the text, one important truth that should stand out is that God has a purpose. God is not merely the God of the present moment. God is the God of the past, the present, and the future. Our eternal salvation, from beginning to end, is due to the purpose of God. Salvation is God’s work from beginning to end.

You may ask, where do we see this in our text? Let us examine a few passages that point us in this direction. First, verse 29 states that the Father has given the sheep, the elect, His people to His Son. We are a gift of love from the Father to the Son, and this occurred before the foundation of the world. Furthermore, it is not only from the foundation of the world that this is true.

God is also at work in you at this time. For example, verse 27 says that we hear the voice of the Son of God, we hear the gospel, and we believe. We continue to hear His voice and follow Him as He leads us. We come to know Him. He gives eternal life to His people in time. Verse 28.

And so here we have a salvation that began with the foundation of the world and takes place in time. The focus of this passage is primarily that He holds us in His hand now, in time, and into eternity. God has a purpose, and salvation is His work from beginning to end.

Jesus Christ, as the author of Hebrews tells us, is the author and perfecter of faith. If we had more time this evening, I would ask you to turn with me to Ephesians 1. There we would read how God has predestined us from the foundation of the world. In that passage, Paul speaks of redemption in Jesus Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. Throughout this passage, the purpose of God is clearly stated. We are secure because of God’s purpose.

We read Romans chapter 8. I will refer back to it several times. Remember the well-known verse that many of you may have memorized: those who are called according to His purpose. God works all things together for good for those called according to His purpose.

If you have children, or if you are a parent, you will understand this. If you do not have children, you will still understand, because you once were a child or have had a parent. If you do not have a child, you were once a child. Or perhaps you are still a child in some way. Children, especially young children, often do not fully understand the purposes of their parents.

And of course, that makes sense. There is growth. There is development. There is maturity that takes place. And that young one must trust the parent. That the parent has their good in mind. That the parent is making the right decision. That the parent is leading them. And when they say, “Hold my hand,” crossing the road, or whatever the situation may be, the child trusts the parent. Because the child does not fully understand everything, but they know that the parent has their best interests in mind. They know that the parent cares. They know that the parent has an understanding that they do not have. And in many ways, we are like those children, are we not? And perhaps the distance between us and God is infinitely greater than the distance between a child and a parent.

But do we understand the purposes of God? No, but we know that God has a purpose. And we know the God of purpose, that God is good, that God is loving, that God is all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful, and that God cares for us according to His purpose. As we consider the purpose of God, the other thing I want you to see is that eternal life is the purpose of God.

Jesus mentions eternal life in this passage. And when we say the words “eternal life,” sometimes we become accustomed to saying them without truly reflecting on their meaning, thinking simply that it means going to heaven. But if you consider eternal life, it is a gift from God. And it is a gift from God that, by definition, is eternal.

One commentator said it quite tersely: “You cannot have eternal life that is not eternal.” Think about that. And ask yourself: Am I secure in the hand of God? Will God hold on to me? If you have eternal life, you always have eternal life, because eternal life is by definition eternal.

You go back to John chapter 5, and Jesus says, “Those who have eternal life will not come into judgment, because they have passed from death to life.” If you have eternal life, you will not come into judgment. You have been declared not guilty. John chapter 3, of course, verse 16, that well-known passage, says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” And here He uses the same words. Look again at verse 28: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” This is actually a very strong construction. In the Greek, it is two negative adverbs in a row. It is “ou me.” And what this means is no, you will never, ever perish. It is an emphatic statement declaring an absolute impossibility. Verse 29 tells us that we are the Father’s gift to the Son. It says there, “The Father has given them to the Son,” and this is a perfect tense, meaning He did something in the past that has ongoing effects now, even into the present. God has given His people to the Son, and this is a foundation for security. This is a foundation for us to feel safe and secure. If you will just reflect with me for a moment on John chapter 6, there Jesus uses the same language in verses 37 through 40 about the Father giving us to the Son. And here there are some repercussions of what this means. There are some extensions of what comes as a result of this. Verse 37 says, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me, I will never cast out.” For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Everyone who is given from the Father to the Son will come to the Son, and the Son will lose none.

But raise Him up on the last day. So, brothers and sisters, to understand the unconditional election of God and the gracious redemption of God is comforting. Trust in the purpose of God. You may not understand all the details or how everything works, but we can trust in God and know that His purpose is a wonderful source of security for us. Secondly, we are secure because of God’s power, His purpose, and His power.

Do you feel weak? Do you feel weak? Perhaps you do. Maybe once you were young and thought you were invincible, but now you feel more weak and frail. You have a sense of your humanity. Yes, you are weak. All of us are. But know this: the good news is that you do not depend on yourself. You do not depend on your own strength, the power, or the faithfulness of God. That is the ultimate reason why any believer, including you, is secure in salvation. God, as we said, has the purpose to save. And you know what? God is faithful. And God is powerful to accomplish His own purpose. God will do it, and God can do it.

R.C. Sproul said this: “If it were left to us, we would all fall away from the faith. But He keeps us secure.” Our security is not because we hold tightly to Him, but because He holds tightly to us. The preservation of the saint is the work of the triune God. And he is right. This is not because of our own strength. If you are trusting in your strength, in your power, or in your grip, then of course you have reason for insecurity, because you cannot do it. But God is powerful, and God will do it.

And notice what Sproul said. He said, this is the work of the triune God. You get a glimpse of this in this passage. Let us consider that for a moment. First, consider the fact that Christians are kept and protected by God, the Father. You see this in verse twenty-nine. Verse twenty-nine says, “No one is able to snatch us out of the Father’s hand.” Think about that.

The Father holds you securely. No one has the power. No one has the ability. No one can open His hand and remove you from it. Consider an infant, a newborn. When the mother picks up the newborn and holds her, the infant is powerless. The infant has no strength, no power, no ability to rise and leave the mother’s hand. In a similar way, we are like that infant in the grip of a good God who holds us with kindness.

Notice the conjunction in verse twenty-nine, the word “and.” “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” These two clauses are connected. No one is able to snatch them, to take us out of the Father’s hand. Why? Because the Father is greater than all. No one can force open His hand. No one.

I have heard various arguments, and I have had conversations with people, including some that were illogical, about why salvation can be lost, why one could escape the hand of God. I once spoke face to face with a man who said, “No one can take you out of God’s hand except yourself.” This idea is illogical and contradicts the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why does He say that we cannot be taken out of God’s hand, nor can we take ourselves out of it? Because no one is stronger than God. God is greater than all. And you know what?

If you could take yourself out of the hand of God, then you would be greater than God. And if the next believer could take herself out of God’s hand, then she would be greater than God. And if every believer could take themselves out of the hands of God, then every believer would be greater than God. But Jesus Christ said, and we believe, and we know, by common knowledge even, that God is greater than all. And what a wonderful comfort it is to know that.

Who would want to be greater than God? John Calvin said, the salvation of the elect is no less certain than the power of God is invincible. See that? We know God has invincible power. God is omnipresent. And he says, the salvation of the elect is no less certain than that knowledge. If God is all powerful, then you are secure. Christians are kept and protected by God, the Father. Secondly, we are kept and protected by Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And here we see that in verse 28, Jesus himself says, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Notice the parallelism there between the Father and the Son. Of course, He says in verse 30, “I and the Father are one.” And again, there are conjunctions here in verse 29. Here we have two of them. He says, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” And again, these three things go together.

To be given eternal life is to never perish, is to be held in the hand of Jesus Christ always. To perish is to be snatched out of His hand. Those who will not perish, therefore, will always be in the hand of Jesus Christ. Believers cannot lose their salvation. If you go to Jude, verses 24 and 25, there it says, “God is able to keep us and to hold us and to persevere us.”

Let me briefly take you to a couple of passages. First Thessalonians, chapter 5. Now, you must know that Jude said, God is able. Wait, that is from First Timothy. Let me correct that. It is First Thessalonians. I was looking at the passage and thought it was in the wrong place on the page. Have you ever done that? You read your Bible and you know where something is on the page, but it is not there. I knew it was not supposed to be there.

First Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 23. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. This is a powerful truth. Jude says He is able. And Paul says here that He is faithful. He will surely do it.

Philippians 1:6 says that the God who saved you is faithful and He will complete what He began in you. Christians are kept by God the Father and by Jesus Christ. Christians are also kept and protected by the Holy Spirit.

This is part of the reason I had us read Romans chapter 8. I already mentioned verse 28 about God’s purpose. Then, of course, we saw the chain of redemption in verses 29 and 30, from the beginning to the end. I should have mentioned this when I was speaking about God’s purpose, from beginning to end. But you also see in verses 26 and 27, just before that, where it says the Holy Spirit intercedes for us according to the will of God. This shows the work of the Trinity. I wish we had more time to return to Romans 8 and walk through verses 31 to 39, which state that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Nothing. So you may feel weak. And you should. But He is strong. I can remember years ago we went to the beach, and my two older sons, who are now eighteen and almost nineteen, and my sixteen-year-old son, who is already taller than me, were small at the time. I can remember that trip to the beach, especially my older son.

And I would take him out into the water, during low tide. I would hold his hands, and he would face away from me. I would hold his hands, and the waves would come and push against him, moving him back and forth. I would hold him, and I would lift him. He had so much fun. But he knew that if he went out there alone, he would be overwhelmed by the water.

Yet he knew that when I was holding his hands, he was safe, because I was strong enough to hold him. Brothers and sisters, we are secure because of God’s power. He holds us. You will never perish. You will never be snatched out of His hand. No one is able to do so.

Therefore, you should have confidence, not in yourselves, but in God. We are secure because of God’s purpose. We are secure because of God’s power. Thirdly, and finally, we should consider that we are secure because of God’s preservation. God’s preservation. You may ultimately think, yes, I understand. I believe that God has a purpose. I believe that God has power. But I am also doing something. God calls me to believe in Him. God calls me to trust Him. God calls me to obey Him.

It is God who works in the believer to bring about perseverance. We call this the perseverance of the saints. Are we not to persevere? The believer willingly obeys. The believer takes responsibility for perseverance. So I want us to consider this for a moment. What about this perseverance? What does it mean? What does it look like? We read about it in the confession. We have said it. So a few thoughts as we consider preservation and perseverance. First, those who are not true believers do not persevere. You know this. You may already be thinking about it, asking yourself: What about the person who was excommunicated? What about the one who denied Christ and walked away from the faith and has not returned? What about that?

Well, this doctrine does not mean that those who accept Christ can live any way they want and have no fear of hell. It does not mean that all you need to do is pray a prayer or sign a card or say a certain thing, and suddenly you are in and saved, and then you can do whatever you want. This is why the term “eternal security” sometimes receives criticism, and we prefer the expression “the preservation of the saints” or “the perseverance of the saints.”

But if you look at the context, you see, for example, that just one verse earlier, in verse 26, Jesus says to the Pharisees, “You do not believe because you are not among my sheep.” They are not his people, and this is evident in the fact that they do not believe. And then they live and pursue an ungodly life. You see this clearly if you read through passages such as John 6 through 10.

In chapter 6, a large group of disciples turns away. A disciple is a learner, a follower, right? They were following him and learning from him. But they turn back and walk away, saying, “This is a hard teaching. Who can hear it?”

Then Jesus looks at Peter and the other eleven and asks, “What about you?” Peter replies, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Thus, there is a clear contrast between those who turn away and those who say, “Where can we go?” And in chapter 8, verse 30, it says that many believed in him. But did they truly believe? Because in verse 31, Jesus looks at those same people and says, “If you truly believe, you will abide in my word. You will remain in me and persevere.” This is a good time to be reminded of that confession. I think it was 17-1.

It says this: Those whom God has accepted in His beloved, who have been effectually called and sanctified by His Spirit, cannot totally or finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere to the end and be eternally saved. True believers will persevere in faith and will not reject God.

Now, this does not mean that a Christian will never fail. This perseverance does not imply perfection. It does not mean that we will live a perfect life without ever stumbling. But what it means is that we will not fall and never get up. We may backslide; we may grieve the Spirit, as the Bible says, but not permanently, not completely, not finally. You may ask, why cannot a believer persist in a lifestyle of sin? I wish we had a whole session to study this thoroughly. I brought this up. When we read the articles here, something was said that caught my attention.

It says, in Article 2, the perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decrees of election. We have covered that. It flows from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father. Yes, upon the efficacy and merit and intercession of Jesus Christ. That is correct. He accomplished our redemption. The abiding of the Spirit. There is the whole Trinity. And here it is: the seed of God within them. The nature of the covenant of grace from which arises also the certainty and infallibility thereof. So you have the seed of God in us.

I have this in my notes: First John chapter three, verse nine. And there John says, why cannot you continue in a lifestyle of sin if you are truly a believer? Why is it that you cannot persist in a lifestyle of sin? He says, because God’s seed abides in you. And if God’s seed abides in you, then He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

So we persevere, but this is where I want to bring it together. Why do we persevere? We said that the seed of God abides in us, and I think that begins to make the connection for us. We persevere because God preserves. We persevere because God preserves.

Consider the coin. Here we have two sides of the coin. On one side is perseverance. This is the side that we see, live, and experience. We are persevering. We are placing ourselves under the means of grace. We are loving the Lord. We are fellowshipping with the saints. We are striving to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. But what lies beneath this perseverance, what energizes and empowers it? It is the fact that God is preserving us. Let me give you a few passages. Jeremiah, we will go briefly to the Old Testament. Jeremiah, chapter 32, verse 40. God says, “I will make with them an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me.” See that? Why is it that they do not turn from Him? Why is it that you do not turn from Him? Because He has put the fear of Him in your heart so that you will not do so.

Ezekiel, chapter 36. This is Ezekiel’s version of the same promise. Ezekiel 36, verses 26 and 27. God says, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules.” God says, “I will give you my Spirit. I will cause you to obey and to walk.” And Jesus says in our passage, “My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me.”

They walk with me. One more New Testament passage: Philippians chapter two. Love this passage. Philippians chapter two, verses 12 and 13. A well-known passage. A great passage that brings both of these ideas together. Also, Philippians chapter two, verses 12 and 13, Paul writes this:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. See that. It is God who is at work in you. And because God is at work in you, he is stimulating you to love and good deeds, to will and to do according to his good pleasure.

And he says, therefore, go and work out your salvation with fear and trembling. He does not say work into your salvation with fear and trembling. He says, go work it out. Go do your part. Why? Because God is at work in you. There is this two-sided reality. So perseverance may seem like an impossible task, that is, until you understand preservation.

True security is found in knowing that we are secure in Him. We are secure because of His purpose. From beginning to end, our salvation rests upon His purpose. We are secure because of His power. The whole Trinity holds us in His hand. We are secure because of His preservation. He preserves us, and He causes us to persevere.

What great reason we have for confidence. And this confidence leads us to rest, giving us the ability to rest in Him. We can rest in our salvation. We can rest even in our daily lives. Instead of living in worry and panic and anxiety and fear, we can rest, knowing that He has a hold on us. Be confident. Rest in the strong hand of our God. Let’s pray.

Our God and Father, we thank you for the great security we have, not in our own strength, but in you. Thank you, God, for your great purpose, which we cannot fully understand, for your wonderful power that holds us, keeps us, and preserves us. We thank you for preserving us, God. We do not deserve it, but we are thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ, who secured our salvation. All who are given to him will come to him and will never be cast out, and all will be raised on the last day. We look forward to that, and we are encouraged by it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

If you would open to Psalm 121, I will say a few introductory words. Psalm 121 is one of many psalms we can consider when thinking about the power of God, the preservation of God, and the security we have in God. When you read Psalm 121, the psalmist begins by saying, “I lift my eyes to the hills. From where will my help come?” Some commentators believe the psalmist is looking toward the hills, where bandits were known to hide. There is reason to fear, to be afraid, and to doubt one’s safety and security.

Where will my help come from? Who will help me? Then the psalmist says, “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth—the one who made the heavens and the earth.” As we sing this psalm together, I want you to notice that throughout the psalm, we are reminded of the God who is our keeper. I may not have used the word “keeper” during the sermon, but it is a synonym for all that we have been discussing. In verse three, it says, “He will not let your foot slip. Your keeper will not sleep. He does not slumber.” He will keep Israel at your right hand. The Lord, your keeper, is your constant shade. Again and again, we are reminded of how God keeps us. In verse seven, it says, “He keeps your life secure.” Praise God. Let us stand and sing this psalm together. Psalm 121.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

July 26, 2026
Resurrection Identity and Victory

About this sermon

Paul contrasts the first Adam, a living soul made of dust, with the last Adam, Christ, a life-giving Spirit from heaven. Believers bear Christ’s image, and that union establishes their true identity. At the last trumpet the dead will be raised imperishable in the twinkling of an eye, and death will be swallowed up in victory. Because Christ has won that victory, his people’s labor in the Lord is never in vain.

More sermons from 1 Corinthians · Browse all sermons

Sermon transcript

for this evening is 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 45 through 58. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and as I’ve been here for the last few times, we’ve been working through this text, and this evening we’ll finish the chapter together. So beginning in verse 45, We’ll read through the end of the chapter. Please hear God’s word. His holy, His inspired, His inerrant word. Thus it is written, The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood not inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 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. 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. 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 Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Please be seated. Let’s pray as we prepare to focus our eyes and hearts upon the exposition of God’s word. Our Father, we thank you for your word, that you have spoken and that you have had your prophets write your words for us. Let us know as we embark on this study this evening that this truly is your word, and that when you speak, we listen. And so God, consecrate our hearts right now to hear your words and to obey them.

In Christ Jesus’ name, amen. Intergenerational poverty is described as poverty that persists from one generation to the next. It has been stated that families, quote, face barriers that often trap them in poverty for multiple generations, unquote. As I was reading about this, perhaps one of the most interesting findings of the study that I saw was that 9 out of 10 or 90% of those experiencing intergenerational poverty would describe themselves as being on strong footing. Strong footing. Now this evening as we open up the Word of God and as the Word of God opens up us, this text will assure us that Christ’s resurrection provides strong spiritual footing. So you want to talk about strong footing, there’s no better place to go than the Word of God. And here, in a spiritual sense, we have strong footing for us to escape the poverty of death and to be victorious now and for eternity.

As a result, I urge you, I encourage you to cling to and live out the victory that you have in Jesus Christ. If you are in Jesus Christ this evening, if you have placed your faith in Him, then these promises are yours. And therefore, you can cling to them and you can live them out. So cling to and live out that victory that you have in Jesus Christ. And this evening we’ll look at three aspects of the resurrection that will help us do that very thing. We’ll begin with Christ’s resurrection as we see it establishes our identity. Christ’s resurrection establishes our identity, verses 45 through 49. There’s a lot of talk about identity. People say, well, I identify as this, or I identify as that, and this is my identity. Your identity can be the foundation of good or ill.

Think about that for a minute. What is your identity? How do you identify yourself? Furthermore, how is your identity established? Who establishes your identity? How is your identity established? Where is your identity found, grounded? What is it tied to? Well, here in our text, we find those answers. Remember that Paul began by asking two questions back in verse 35. If you look up at the page at verse 35, someone will ask, how are the dead raised and what kind of body do they come? He asks these questions, he proceeds to answer them. This morning we saw this. He illustrates his point with kernels and wheat and grain and seeds in verses 37 and 38. He illustrates his points further with animals and birds and fish, the sun, the moon, the stars in verses 39 through 41.

He proceeds in verses 42 to 44 with a series of contrasts of how the body is sown and how the body is raised. Now verses 45 through 49 extend and explain these contrasts by providing a grounding contrast between Adam and Christ. And this gets at the root of our identity, because we will either be identified ultimately in Adam, regardless of how we think we want to identify ourselves, we are ultimately identified either in Adam, or in Jesus Christ. And here there’s a contrast between the first Adam and the last Adam. I want you to notice in these verses, verses 44 through 49, the use of the term man. The word man here is found eight times in these five verses. One commentator says this, Paul treats Adam and Christ as representatives, not simply individuals. They’re men, but they represent man, mankind, all of us.

They’re representatives. They’re not just simply individuals. And if you think about it, you are under a representative. You’re either under representative Adam or you’re under representative Jesus. These two are the only two representatives of the human race. And here we’re told in verse 45, Adam was a living being, but Christ was a life-giving spirit. You see this contrast begin. You remember Adam was made of the dust. Even here in this little section, he’s called the man of dust. You go back to Genesis 2, and you see the creation of Adam, and he’s formed of the dust. Genesis 2, verse 7. And in a sense, we could say, well, Christ is not the one formed. He’s the one who does the forming. He is the creator. And yet, nevertheless, he came also as a man. And you have the man of dust and you have the heavenly man, Jesus Christ.

You see, we need the resurrected Christ. It’s not enough to be in Adam. If we are only in Adam, we are only united to Adam, and Adam is our only representative, we’re actually in big trouble. We need Christ. We need to be united to Him and represented by Him. Verse 46, it says, But it is not the spiritual that is first, the natural, and then the spiritual. Here there’s a general law that the lower precedes the higher. You’ll see that as well if you read John chapter three and Jesus speaking about Nicodemus. He says something similar there to him. But the lower precedes the higher. Now John Calvin helps us a little bit with that. And he explains, he says, look, you’re born before you’re born again. Right? The natural birth takes place before the spiritual birth.

And that does relate to what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus. And so there’s a relationship there. But there’s also a relationship when you think about resurrection. We live before we rise. The natural precedes the spiritual. The natural body precedes the resurrected body. We are born in Adam. But then we need to be born in Christ, united to Christ, raised with Christ. Verse 47 says, the first man was of the earth, a man of dust, but the second man is from heaven. Hodge says this, Adam therefore had a body suited to the earth. Christ had a body suited to heaven. I want you to think about this with resurrection in mind. Adam was given a natural body. And of course under the fall, as we talked about this morning, that body is subject to death and decay and disease and all these things.

And we being in Adam, we have these natural bodies. We’ll see in a minute those are called flesh and blood. And yet Christ, in His resurrection, has a heavenly body. And we, if we are in Christ, will have the hope of having that sort of heavenly body as well. I mentioned last week in an illustration funerals. And I said you go to a funeral, and if it’s a funeral of a believer, you say, I want to see that person again. Well, there are other dynamics that happen at funerals as well. Sometimes you go to funerals and you may have had this experience where even if the person’s not a believer, everyone wants to hope that they’re in a better place. And they’ll say, well, he or she, they’re in a better place. As if everyone goes to heaven.

And yet the Bible teaches us that that’s not true. We are born in a natural state, and we are born under condemnation, and we need to be united to Jesus Christ so that we can be where he is, and we have that hope if we are in him. There’s a reminder here that we need Jesus Christ, because apart from him, we are not suited for heaven. We are born with that natural body. We have that in Adam. We are born of the human race, and we have all the things that constitute us as humans, and yet that’s not enough. And this is what the text says. We need to be like the man that is of heaven. There’s a union that we have naturally with Adam. We are of the dust. But those who are in union with Christ are of heaven.

We bear the image of Christ. We have the hope of heaven. Look at verses 48 and 49. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as of the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. You see, those who are in Christ will be like Him, just as we have borne the image of the man of dust. we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. What a wonderful promise that is. But it’s also a reminder that we ought to be sure that we are in union with Jesus Christ. And it’s as simple as knowing that we believe in him, we trust in him, we’ve turned from our sins and we’ve given our lives to him. And if that is the case, we are in union with Christ.

Our identity is in him. Our identity first and foremost is His name, Christ, Christian. We have His name stamped upon us. We are united with Him and we bear the image of Jesus Christ. Romans 8.29 says this, God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. What a wonderful promise. For those who are in Jesus Christ, we are predestined to be conformed to His image. Remember, as an unbeliever my identity was self-constructed. I identified myself various ways, I acted certain ways, and the way I portrayed myself with my self-proclaimed identity and the way that I acted was in a worldly way. And as I became a Christian and my identity changed and my heart changed and my desires and my passions changed, the way that I wanted to live was different as well.

I had a different identity. And now, being in situations and contexts and places where I would formerly be comfortable, I was no longer comfortable. And that’s good, because I had a different identity. And here, what Paul is saying is that in Adam, We are of the dust. But in Christ, we have a new identity. We have a different representative, and we have hope in Him. Because we are identified with Jesus Christ, we have that hope. So we said that Christ’s resurrection establishes our identity. Secondly, His resurrection secures our victory. It secures our victory. Verses 50 through 57. And brothers and sisters, this section It’s such an exciting section of Scripture. You think about victory, and we’re victors with Christ. We’re on, so to speak, the winning team. It’s not because we went and secured the victory.

It’s not because of our might and our power, our strength, our wisdom, any of that, but only because Christ Himself has the victory. So I want us to see three things about that victory as we scan through these verses. 50 through 57. First of all, verse 50 talks about the nature of our victory. Take a look at verse 50. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Here we come up against that phrase, flesh and blood. One commentator said this, in Jewish parlance, flesh and blood usually denotes the frailty of human creatures. Think about that man of the dust, Adam. You think about our natural constitution. I said we have decay, we have death, we have weakness, we have all these things.

And flesh and blood, that phrase denotes that very thing, the frailty of the human creature. Jesus said in Matthew 16, to Peter. He said, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. You could see the contrast there between the natural, the flesh and the blood, versus the Father who is in heaven. So as we had read through this whole section, you saw words like that, like natural, or earthly, or of the dust. And all those words that we saw, even just in that previous section, 45 through 49, those are the same thing. To be natural, to be earthly, to be of the dust, that is to be flesh and blood. And yet we need more than that. He says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

We can’t just take, as we said this morning, our bodies as they are and just recycle them up into heaven. He says no, flesh and blood as it is in Adam cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Christ is the giver of resurrection life. And when we think about that, we can think of the new birth in John 3, 3, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, that we need to be born again. We need to have spiritual life pumped into us. We need to be born from above. And yet, we also need resurrection life. And that spiritual life that we have through the new birth, through the regeneration, that in a way is a down payment of that resurrection life that we will partake of when Christ comes again. That flesh and blood will be transformed. You can think of that as those corruptible bodies, those perishable bodies.

That will be transformed. That flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, but at the resurrection we’re transformed. And so you can see the emphasis not just on the body or not just on the spirit, but the whole person. Spiritually speaking, yes, we have that regeneration, but physically speaking, yes, we have resurrection. And so it’s the whole person, not just the body or not just the spirit, that is renewed and perfected for eternal life. That is the nature of our victory in verse 50. Verses 51 to 53 speak of the swiftness of our victory. When we have this resurrection, when Christ returns and we are resurrected, what will it be like? What will that victory be like? Well, there’s a swiftness to it. Now when I think about speed and I think about swiftness, one thing I don’t think about is me getting up in the morning.

That’s not the picture of speed. That’s not the picture of swiftness. Actually, as I was walking in this evening, we were speaking together and we were talking about the afternoon nap and And I had an afternoon nap, but it took me a little bit to get going. My wife said, let’s go for a walk. And I said, OK. And she said, why are you so slow? I said, well, it takes me a little bit. But you see, that’s not what it’s like here in verses 51 to 53. Here we have this phrase. If you look at verse 52, it says, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Here there’s a strong emphasis. that this resurrection, when it happens, will be instantaneous. This isn’t a slow process. No, this is instantaneous. It’s the Greek word atomos.

Think of the word atom. Think about the smallest particle. A-T-O-M. Atom. And you say, well, what is an atom? Well, we might define it as an indivisible particle. And yet here, this Greek word that it’s derived from, atomos, in this context is translated in a moment. And the idea here is that it is an indivisible moment in time, not an indivisible particle, an indivisible moment in time. It’s the quickest, fastest, most instantaneous thing that you could think of. And the best they could do in the English to translate it is say, in a moment. The instantaneousness is further intensified by the phrase, in the twinkling of an eye. And you say, well, what does that mean? And I think that’s not a hard one to get. Just even in our common language, we speak that way.

If you look at Robertson’s word pictures, he says this. This phrase was used by the Greeks for the flapping of a wing, the buzz of a gnat, the quivering of a harp, the twinkling of a star. Another commentator says it this way, since the eye can move more rapidly than any other part of our visible bodies, It seems to well illustrate the sudden transformation of believers. It’s like what we would say of the blink of an eye, right? The blink of the eye, perhaps one of the fastest movements you could think of. And he says, this is perhaps the best he can do. And so Paul’s straining with his language to try to describe the instantaneousness, the quickness as best as he can. It’s atomos, it’s sudden. It’s the blink of an eye. But he also uses the word trumpet in verse 52.

It says there, at the last trumpet, the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable. Here Hodge tells us this, as the trumpet was used for assembling a people or marshaling a host, it became the symbol for expressing the idea of the gathering of a multitude. And so there the trumpet used to gather and to marshal the host and to bring in together the group and here, The multitude will be gathered at the last trumpet. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 16. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel and the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. The swiftness of our victory. You also see the impact of our victory. Verses 54 through 57. What is the impact of the victory?

What is the power of it? What is the effect of it? Let me just ask you a question for a minute. How would you illustrate victory. If you had to illustrate it and you had to use language to try to describe the impact of victory, what sort of language might you use? Well, the language Paul uses is found in verse 54. He says, 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. His illustration is the swallowing up. He describes victory as swallowing up death. And that’s not an illustration that would be unheard of or uncommon or unfamiliar to the reader. The reader of Scripture would have several things come to mind. And perhaps you’re thinking of several things now from scripture that uses that sort of language.

Perhaps you’re thinking of Aaron and Moses in Egypt. And Aaron throws down his staff and it becomes a serpent. And the magicians, the sorcerers, throw down their staffs and become serpent. And Aaron’s staff swallows up the sorcerer’s staffs. Or perhaps you’re thinking of Korah and his rebellion. And Korah stands and everyone gets out of the way and the earth swallows him up. Or maybe you’re thinking of the Red Sea that swallows up the Egyptian soldiers as they pass through, seeking to overtake the people of God. Or a New Testament reference you might think of, perhaps, 1 Peter 5.8, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Same word, swallow up. Here, Paul assures us death will be swallowed up in victory. Isaiah 25, verse 8. He will swallow up death forever.

The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces. The reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. The Lord will swallow up death forever. What a wonderful, wonderful promise. Verse 55. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? Here death is pictured as an animal. An animal with a poisonous stinger. We saw a bumblebee this morning outside, and there’s a stinger. My two boys were both stung by wasps at my dad’s as we went to cut his grass last week, and they have stingers. Here, some of the commentators would argue that the animal in view perhaps is the scorpion. This scorpion that has this powerful stinger, and yet it’s rendered powerless. Powerless. Hosea 13, verse 14 says this, I will deliver them out of the power of hell, or Hades.

I will redeem them from death. Where is thy penalty, O death? O Hades, or O hell, where is your sting? Sting is gone. The power is quenched. Death will be swallowed up. There will be no more sting. Verse 56, he says, the sting of death is sin. and the power of sin is the law. Romans 7, verse 5, there Paul says our sinful passions are aroused by the law and bear fruit to death. And now in this sinful state and in this state of struggle, he says that the power of Sin is the law, and yet we are reminded just a few verses later in Romans 8, verse 3, God says what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, God did. God did by sending His Son. See, those who rely on the law as if it’s a means or a mechanism for salvation and righteousness find that all they can do is break it.

And Paul illustrates that in Romans 7, that there’s a heaviness and a weightiness of that law-breaking that weighs you down, that guilt. And yet God did what the law could not do. by sending His Son, Jesus Christ. And verse 57 assures us in these words, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. He gives us the victory not because of our hands or our work or our law-keeping. No, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. How? Well, because Christ kept the law. Romans 10, verse 4, it says, for Christ is the end of the law. A better translation, I would say, is fulfillment. Christ is the fulfillment of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Isn’t that wonderful? Christ fulfilled the law. The demands of the law And therefore his righteousness and living according to that law can be applied and is applied, is imputed, counted to everyone who believes.

And therefore we have victory through the Lord Jesus Christ. Hodge says this, because he has satisfied the demands of the law, it has no power to condemn those who are clothed in his righteousness. If you are in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. And you are clothed in his righteousness. It’s as if your dirty clothes, your filthy attire is just covered over. And now he’s given you new attire. He’s given you his robe of righteousness, clean and pure and spotless, without blemish. And you are covered in that. And now death has no power. The law has no sting. Praise be to God. through the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to understand that your victory, although you don’t feel it day to day, all the time, you need to be reminded that it is certain.

You have a certain victory. It is tied to Christ’s victory. And His victory is full. It’s complete. It’s It’s stamped in. He’s already died on the cross. He’s already rose from the dead. He’s already ascended into heaven. And he sits at the right hand of God as king. It’s in place. It’s secure. It is sure and certain. And in Christ, we have victory. We will someday experience the fullness of it. That victory is tied to his life, to his death. to His resurrection. What will it be like for you? What will it be like for the believer? Well, verse 51 says we will be changed. Verse 52, we will be imperishable. Verse 53, we will be immortal. Verse 54, we will be forever alive and forever victorious. He not only clothes us in His righteousness, He also And this is good news too.

He empowers us even today, even now, to obey His law, to live our lives for His glory. glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever. And so that brings us to our last point this evening, and I want us to see that Christ’s resurrection motivates our ministry, verse 58. We’re going to briefly look at verse 58. Let me just read it first. Your labor is not in vain. Christ’s resurrection motivates our ministry. Even in the present tense, we have a motivator here. Paul gives us built-in application. And there are three parts to this, and let’s just quickly, briskly walk through those. First of all, he says this, be steadfast and immovable. What does that mean? It means firm, seated, settled in your thinking, settled in your beliefs, settled in your conviction. Be steadfast, be immovable. The gospel. combats hopelessness.

The gospel gives you and me purpose for our lives. This ties back to our identity. Because we are identified with Christ, we have victory in Him. And because we have victory in Him, we have purpose. And now we can go out and live with that purpose, be steadfast and immovable. Secondly, always abound in the work of the Lord. To abound is to excel. It’s related to the word abundant, and one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture with that word abundant is 1 Corinthians 9.8. Listen to what it says. It says, “…God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” You hear that? All grace, all sufficiency, all things, at all times, in every good work that you may abound.

Thirdly, he says, know that your labor is not in vain. Vain, vanity, empty. He says your labor is not vanity. It’s not empty. This is a word in Greek. It’s the word kinos. And interestingly enough, in this little section, we saw the word victory and the word for victory is Nikos. It’s the word that they get Nike from. And so there’s a little word play. These two words kind of sound like each other, kinos and nikos. And he’s saying, look, there’s a contrast between nikos and kinos, between victory and vanity. He says, your labor is not in vain. Why? Because you stand in the victory of Jesus Christ. See, there’s a practical application here. as we live our lives, as we minister the gospel. And no matter what that ministry looks like, you can say evangelism or any other sort of thing that you’re doing for the kingdom of God.

As we prayed for Uruguay and as we prayed for the university and any other thing that we’re praying for, your work for the kingdom of God, there is meaning, there is purpose, there are results that last forever. Why? Because God’s word does not return void. Isaiah 55, it always accomplishes because the Spirit of God always accomplishes the purpose for which it is sent. Therefore, know that your labor is not in vain. The hope of the resurrection, one commentator says, makes all the efforts and sacrifices worth it. No work done in his name is wasted in light of eternal glory and reward. So let’s just pull all of this together. Earlier we said that Christ’s resurrection provides strong spiritual footing for us to escape the poverty of death and to be victorious now and for eternity. 2 Corinthians 8, 9 says, for you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. that though he was rich, he became poor for our sake, so that you, by his poverty, might become rich.

Cling to and live out the victory that you have in Jesus Christ. His resurrection establishes our identity. It secures our victory. It motivates our ministry. We have victory in Jesus Christ. Do you believe it? Will you live in accordance with it? Cling to and live out the victory that you have in Jesus Christ. Let’s pray. Our God in heaven, we thank you for the victory that we have in Christ. And we pray, God, that you would apply that to us, helping us to know that in him we have hope for eternity, that we will be raised to be like him, but also that we have the ability to walk in confidence, knowing that you will accomplish your purposes, even through our weakness here on earth. For we pray it in Christ Jesus’ name, amen. Well, please stand for the singing of Psalm 33.

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July 30, 2023
A Glorious Resurrection

About this sermon

Some ask how the dead are raised and with what kind of body. Paul answers that a seed must die before it grows, and God gives each kind the body he chooses. The body is sown perishable, in dishonor and weakness, and raised imperishable, in glory and power. God who turns a caterpillar into a butterfly will transform his people’s lowly bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body.

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Sermon transcript

Well, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15. This morning we’ll be reading verses 35-44. 1 Corinthians 15 verses 35-44. Please hear God’s word. But someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? You foolish person. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body, for not all flesh is the same. There is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. But the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another.

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Well, praise God. Please be seated. Let’s begin with prayer. Our God in heaven, we thank you for your word. And now, as this word is expounded, we pray, God, that you would be ever-present, that your spirit would take our hearts and mold them by your word. We ask God that you would make our minds attentive to your word.

Not just that we might be good students. No, that we would be those who are being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. And we ask that you would use even this, even this sermon, even right now, even today, as a means of transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ, a means of grace. We pray it in His name. Amen. Perhaps one of the most amazing transformations in nature is that ugly little caterpillar that hides itself in the cocoon and then emerges shortly thereafter. as a beautiful butterfly. And of course, all of you perhaps are familiar with this very one. It’s an amazing, amazing transformation that we find in nature. How does it happen? Well, I can bore you with a talk of enzymes and the chrysalis, metamorphosis. But instead, what I’ll do is I’ll simply remind you that the amazing transformation as part of God’s creative design.

It’s part of God’s wonderful handiwork. That’s what we want to think about this morning. You see, if God could transform this homely looking caterpillar into a majestic butterfly, is He not able to raise us up from the dead? To transform our lowly bodies? at the resurrection. That’s what we want to think about this morning. Here as we begin in verse 35, what you find are two questions. If you cast your eye down on verse 35, you’ll see them. How are the dead raised and what kind of body do they come? Here in the text that follows, Paul answers these questions for the Corinthians and for us. His answers are rich. He roots them in the nature of God Himself, of Christ, and man, and salvation, and eschatology, or the end times. So much richness in His answers.

And His answers provide for us instruction and encouragement. And this morning, I pray that you would walk out of here being instructed and encouraged by the words of God. Trust in the Lord. and in His glorious resurrection work. Trust in the Lord and in His glorious resurrection work. Paul is going to help us this morning to do that very thing. He’s going to direct our attention to three gracious yet powerful actions of God. You think about the work of God, the actions of God. Here Paul gives us three. They’re gracious. but they’re powerful. So let’s dive right in. The first gracious and powerful action of God that we find in the text is this. God brings resurrection life from the dead. God brings resurrection life from the dead, verses 36 and 37. How is it that we’re raised from the dead?

How is it that we can be resurrected? Well, God is the one who brings that resurrection life from the dead. If you look back at those questions in verse 35, you see there are two questions there. And here Paul begins, he’s going to begin in reverse order. He’s going to answer that second question first. With what kind of body do they come? But before he even does that, what he’s going to do is he’s going to dismantle some of the presuppositions that the Corinthians have that are false presuppositions, the things that their neighbors, their culture are telling them that are mixing up their ability to understand the truth. And so this section here of God bringing resurrection life from the dead, verses 36 and 37, Paul is really dismantling these presuppositions to get ready to answer that question with what kind of body do they come?

And if you remember from last week in the evening when I was here, their issue is really an issue with the bodily resurrection. Not the bodily resurrection of Christ, but the bodily resurrection of themselves. See, they live in the midst of a Greek culture, and this Greek culture had a dualistic mindset. Dualism. You say, what does that mean? Well, simply that the spirit is good and the body is bad. And you see, if you have this dualistic mindset, spirit is good, body is bad, well then how can you raise up, or how can God raise up this bad body? How’s that going to work? And apparently they didn’t understand how the material bodies These bodies that we have, subject to sin, subject to sickness and death and decay, how could these bodies, these weak bodies that we live in, we just prayed about that very thing, how could these weak, decaying bodies be raised up and live eternally?

See, the problem is, they were thinking that the bodies that are raised up are gonna be the exact same bodies that we’re in now. And if you were thinking that way, you would be confused too. You’d say, well, I don’t want this body for all eternity. Because it’s weak. It’s decaying. And maybe if you’re young, you might say, I’m good. But you won’t always be. That’s going to get older. It’s going to get weaker. Remember when I turned 40, I was thinking, hey, I’m pretty good. But it wasn’t long afterwards where I think I feel a little difference. It happens. They assumed that the future bodies would be the same as they are now. And what does Paul do? Look at verse 36. He says, you foolish person. He calls them fools. Why? Well, Ephesians helps us out.

In Ephesians 5.17, he says this, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Just think about that for a second. Do not be foolish. Okay, what does it mean not to be foolish? He says understand what the will of the Lord is. So to be foolish is to go and to listen to those voices of the culture and those people around you who are telling you all these things. But to not be foolish is to understand the will of the Lord. In other words, start with the Scriptures, the importance of the Scripture. That’s our beginning point. That’s our foundation. That’s our rock. That’s where we begin and hear the truth of God. And we ground our understanding and we solidify our convictions, not what the people of the world tell us.

This is a good reminder for us that we must begin with the Word of God. What are the things that you believe? How is it that you live your life? And what is the root of those things? Is it based on what the culture is saying? Or what you’ve heard by some guru or scientist or expert or self-proclaimed expert? Or is it derived from the Word of God? Well, here Paul is going to now, again, dive in. We said he’ll be dismantling their presuppositions. I want us to see how he does that. Let me begin by sharing with you a quote by a commentator. He says this, he says, that of the seeds in verses 36 through 38 illustrates both the genuine continuity of the future body with the present one and the reality of its transformation.

So Paul’s gonna use this botanical illustration, the seed illustration, And the seed illustration’s a really good one because it emphasizes both continuity and discontinuity. And I want us to see both of those. So let’s think about them in turn. Let’s begin with continuity. See, this was their concern, continuity. Problem was they were thinking 100% continuity. I’m gonna be the same then as I am now. But what Paul does is he begins by affirming continuity. There is some continuity. In other words, our current bodies are not the exact bodies that will be resurrected, but they are still our bodies. There’s continuity. It’s not like that body’s gonna be completely, it’s not like that’s not gonna be you anymore. It’s not gonna be somebody else. It’s still you, there’s continuity. Look at verse 36, he says, what is sown is what comes to life.

It’s not something different that’s sown, it’s something completely, 100% different that comes to life. Verse 37, what is sown is a kernel of what is raised. It’s not exactly the same. We’re gonna look at the discontinuity in a minute, but it is a kernel of what is raised. There is continuity. You can even go back to the opening illustration of the caterpillar and the butterfly. They’re vastly different, but it’s not a completely different being. The seed and the plant are not exactly the same. there is some continuity. You can think about that idea of germination, but it’s enough just to say that there’s continuity between the seed. I wouldn’t expect to plant an apple seed and have a pear tree emerge. There’s a continuity between the two. The same is true for our bodies throughout our lives.

Think about your body throughout your life. You’re born And then perhaps so many number of years later, you die. And that body undergoes many changes. And if you study biology, they’ll tell you that these cells die and new cells grow and all these sorts of things. Nevertheless, it’s still you. you’re still you from conception all the way to natural death. And I think this is a good thing for us to stop and ponder for a minute, the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, because there’s continuity. That child that is conceived and that is formed and fashioned in the image of God, Psalm 139, all the way to that person who dies, the natural death, there’s a sanctity there because there is no change at some point where this begins to be a person or this ceases to be a person.

And you see, these are the sorts of things from the scripture that energize our worldview and that are in direct conflict with some of the voices that we hear around us in our culture. Continuity was their issue. However, there was also the discontinuity. And this is where Paul really pressed in to the Corinthians. The discontinuity. Because remember, they believed continuity. They just had a little too strong of an opinion about continuity. So let’s hear what Paul has to say in these two verses about discontinuity. First, I want you to see this. that Jesus used a similar illustration. John 12, verse 24, listen to what Jesus said. He said this, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.’” See, the body sown is not the exact body that will come up from the ground in every single way.

There’s a difference. There’s a transformation between our current bodies and our resurrection bodies. Verse 37, he says, what is sown is not the body to be. Yes, there’s a continuity, but it’s not exactly the same in every way. Charles Hodge in his commentary gives a very helpful comment. He says this, In what sense is a sprouting acorn the same as a full-grown oak? Not in substance, not in form, not in appearance. It is, however, the same individual organism. The point of the illustration is that what comes up is very different from that which is deposited in the ground. You sow a seed and a plant appears. Isn’t that amazing, right? What a wonderful illustration. I have a hard time not looking at Bruce as I think about his garden through all of this. What a wonderful illustration.

My wife actually said this morning, make sure you tell him how good those tomatoes are. What an amazing thing though, that you can plant a seed in the ground and by the work of God it comes up different. Same organism. different in appearance, different in form, different in substance. And as we get down to verses 42 to 44, Paul’s going to emphasize discontinuity between the present corruptible bodies and the future immortal, incorruptible bodies. We’re going to get there in a few moments. But remember, Paul prepares to answer the question, with what kind of body do they come? He greases the skid, so to speak. He sets the stage. He says there’s discontinuity and there’s continuity, and you’ve got to understand that with God. But now he’s ready to answer that question, with what kind of body do they come?

So we said that God brings resurrection life from death. through both continuity and discontinuity. But let’s see how he answers that question now. The second gracious and powerful action of God that Paul wants us to see is that God molds the resurrection body. God molds it. God is the one who crafts and forms that resurrection body. Verses 38 through the beginning of verse 42. God molds the resurrection body. And that’s the first thing I want you to see and really digest and really, really just meditate upon this in your hearts and minds, even as we’re thinking about it right now. Verse 38, but God, but God gives. it a body as He has chosen. But God gives it as He has chosen. You see this. The resurrection body is a product of what? Not of natural processes.

Not of something that we do or think or say. No, it is a product of the sovereign God. But God gives. God affects the transition between seed and plant. God is the one who gives. And he does it by his sovereign choice. And when you think of that word give, you could turn it around and say what is given is what? It’s a gift. This is a gift from God. The body is a gift from God. Our current bodies are gifts from God. Our resurrection bodies will be gifts from God. So think about your body even now. Consider how it is that you view your body even now. How is it that you take care of your body? How do you steward your body even now? It’s a gift from God. I want you to see in verse 39 that God’s creative work is not limited to a single ingredient.

It’s not as if God had one ingredient. And He made all the creatures, the birds, and the animals, and the fish, and us, and we’re all the same thing. Same ingredient. That’s not the case. His creative work isn’t limited in that way. Here Paul answers that question with what kind of body do they come? And I want you to pay attention to that word, kind. Because he uses it three times in the first three verses of this section. And what he’s saying is there are different kinds. even now, before the resurrection takes place. And this, again, illustrates to us how the resurrection body can be a different kind, continuity at this continuity, but be a different kind from our current bodies. And so he illustrates and says, even now there are different kinds. Humans are different from animals.

Animals are different from birds. Birds are different from fish. These are different kinds. You go back to Genesis in the creation and he creates them as kinds. And you take this idea, you combine it back with verse 38, God has given it a body as he has chosen. And we see that humans are clearly distinguished from animals as a result of God’s sovereign design. You want a strong biblical argument against macro evolution, Darwinian evolution, this is it right here. God has made us according to our kinds, and he says there are different kinds. We are not the same. Birds don’t turn into animals, and fish don’t turn into birds, and animals don’t turn into people. God decreed and God made them differently. But I want you to see in verses 40 to 42, the beginning of 42, that God assigns glory.

Paul says God gives heavenly glory and He has earthly glory. There are different categories of glory here. You have heavenly and you have earthly. We just talked about the earthly. There are different categorizations even within the earthly glory. The birds, the fish, the animals, the humans. And now He gives us a second one. There are heavenly bodies and heavenly glory as well. So there’s differentiation within each category. Within the earthly, there are different kinds. And within the heavenly, there are different kinds. And yet the earthly and the heavenly, both are different as well. I have humans and animals and birds and fish over here. I have moon and stars and heavens over here. And he distinguishes between the two and he distinguishes within the two. Look at verse 40. there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies.

But the glory of the heavenly is of one kind and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and so on.” So God is creative in His handiwork and I want you to think about the implications for us. Our current bodies and our resurrection bodies belong to two different categories. That’s what Paul is driving at. Yes, there’s a continuity, but there’s a discontinuity, and praise to God for that. They belong to different categories. One is earthly, and one is heavenly. Not heavenly in the same way as the stars and the moon and the planets. Heavenly in a very spiritual way. Look at verse 44, for example. He says this, It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there’s a natural body, there’s also a spiritual body.

Verse 49, just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. So you see there’s this contrast between the dust and the heaven, the natural and the spiritual. And he’s saying here, our bodies now are a different glory, a different kind than our bodies that will be raised. They both are consistent with the glory assigned to their kind. Since the Corinthians recognized that heavenly bodies differ from earthly bodies, they should not expect the resurrected body to be a recycled earthly body. Think about that for a minute. They get it that there’s differences in the sun and the moon and the animals and the birds and all that stuff. And so they should understand by way of illustration that, hey, This makes sense.

It’s not just a recycling of the same old earthly body. God chooses and God gives the body. God assigns the glory. Now you might be saying at this point, well I don’t understand how that all works. How does God do it? And let me just say this, it’s enough to understand that God does it. We don’t have to understand exactly how God does it. And let’s take another illustration. One commentator I think had a really good illustration there. He said this, the farmer does not know how the seed grows in the earth. And you actually see that in Mark 4, 27. The Bible actually says that very thing. The farmer does not know how the seed grows in the earth, but only trusts that God is active and will bring it to pass. I may not have to know or understand exactly all the things that are happening under the soil, but if I know, I can know and I can trust that if I plant that in the soil, that if God, by his good kindness, desires for that thing to grow up, to full growth, he’ll do it.

He’ll do it, and I can anticipate that. And that’s encouraging for me with the resurrected body. How does that exactly work? I’ve had a friend of mine ask me questions before, well, but you have certain molecules in your body and the cells and all these things, and how does that work? Who cares? I mean, it’s neat to think about, but ultimately, God can do it. If God can make it in the first place, God can do it the way that he said he would do it. How’s that all work? I don’t know, but I’m glad that God does it. So we need to trust in the sovereignty and the promises of God, regardless of whether we can get our minds around it. At the end of the day, it’s foolish to question God. If God tells us how something’s done or why something’s done, then fine.

If not, we trust what He told us. And we know here this, that God brings resurrection life from the dead. We said that was our first point. We also know that God molds the resurrection body. That was our second point. But there is a third gracious and powerful action that we must see in this text. And that is that God transforms us from humility to glory. He transforms us from humility to glory. And what a crescendo in the text. Verses 42, the end of 42 through verse 44. Remember the two questions in verse 35. With what kind of body would they come? That was actually the second question. He just answered that. And now verse 35, the first question, how are the dead raised? Here, Paul is going to take up the answer to that question.

How will the dead be raised? That word raised is significant. One of the things I like to do in studying the Bible is to pay attention to repetition of words, because repetition typically indicates emphasis. And this word raised is found four times in these three verses. There’s an emphasis on this idea of being raised. Brothers and sisters, we get so caught up in our earthly lives. Sometimes we forget, oftentimes, perhaps too often, we forget that we will be raised up and it will be glorious. We ought to be reminded to look forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead. We ought to yearn for it. Oh, we we need to be awakened. And may this text do that very thing. Here in this section Paul uses a series of contrasts to show that our new body will differ from the present one.

While our current bodies are sown natural and they’re sown perishable, they’re sown in dishonor, they’re sown in weakness, Paul says that our resurrection bodies will be raised spiritual. imperishable in glory and in power. So you have these four sets of contrasts. It’s sown natural and it’s raised spiritual. it’s sown perishable, it’s raised imperishable, it’s sown in dishonor, it’s raised in glory, it’s sown in weakness, and it’s raised in power. And let’s just quickly look at those four together and consider those. First, he says it’s sown perishable and it’s raised imperishable, or your translation might say in corruption and in incorruption. In other words, imperishable. It’s corruptible. That’s what we talked about earlier, that there’s decay, there’s sickness, there’s death. And when it’s imperishable and it’s incorruptible, there is no more sickness. There is no more decay.

There is no more death. Think about even the pictures that God paints for us in the Old Testament. Oftentimes, the Old Testament’s like a picture book, and you see little pictures of this. For example, Jonah’s life. In Jonah 2.6, when he’s under the sea and he’s drowning, it says his life is brought up from the pits. You think about Daniel 3, the men who are in the fiery furnace, and they’re found to be without harm. You see, this is a picture of the fact that we will be imperishable. We will be incorruptible. Listen to this, 2 Timothy 1, verses 8-10. Wonderful New Testament passage assuring us of this very thing. Paul writes this, Now listen to this, which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, here it is, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Immortality, imperishability, incorruptibility. And Paul is tying in there all the same things that we’ve been tying in here. He says this was given to us in Christ Jesus by the will of God. Remember we talked about Him giving it as a gift. And he says Christ has brought this to us. And therefore, we can suffer for the gospel, he says. We can live our lives in ways that have meaning and purpose and value, because we know these truths. We’re convicted of them, and they drive us to live according to them. You know, your actions will reflect your convictions. So he says, first of all, from perishable to imperishable. Secondly, he says, we are sown in dishonor, and we are raised in glory. In other words, there is no more shame because of sin, that dishonor, that shame that we have.

Even today, we confess our sins to God. He says there is no more shame because we’re sown in dishonor, but we’ll be raised in glory. There will be no more sin. There will be no more temptation to sin. Thirdly, he says what’s sown in weakness is raised in power. We’ve prayed about those who are weak, frailty. We’re frail physically, but we’re also frail in some ways via our temptation. What’s sown is weakness. We’ll be raised in power. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13, verse 4, I love this passage, he says about Christ, for He was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. We also are weak in Him, but we will live by the power of God. You see that we’re united to Christ in His death. And we are united to Christ in His resurrection.

Therefore, we can live by the power of God. 1 Corinthians 6.14, if God raised the Lord, He will raise us up by His power. Not only are we raised spiritually and regenerated by the power of God, we will be raised to newness of life for all eternity in resurrected bodies by the power of God. The fourth one, he says, is what is sown is natural. what is raised is spiritual. There will be no more limits in this time and space sphere. The natural limitations that we face are gone. Again, another one of those things, it’s hard to wrap your mind around exactly what that means, but it will be a different kind, in a sense, a different glory, and God will do that. We’ll look at that a little bit more tonight, what it means to be natural, and we’ll see this phrase, flesh and blood, and we’ll consider that together this evening.

But what’s sown, flesh and blood, or natural, is raised spiritual. There’s an already and a not yet sense. In a way, we have these things in a seed form now. There’s already a seed planted in us if we are in Christ. and that seed will grow, and that seed will sprout, and that seed will come to fruition on the last day. And we’re gonna talk about that more this evening, so please, please be here as we hear that word together this evening. Aren’t we thankful? Aren’t we thankful that God is at work? God is at work in wonderful ways, even more wonderful than the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. God is at work in you, brothers and sisters. Philippians 3, verse 21 says this, He will transform our bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body.

Let that soak in. He will transform our bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body. He is at work. He is at work and we see his gracious yet powerful actions. God brings resurrection life from the dead. God molds the resurrection body. God transforms us from humility to glory. Are you clinging to, are you relying upon God’s gracious and powerful work? Trust in the Lord and in his glorious resurrection work. Trust in the Lord and in his glorious resurrection work. Let’s pray. Our God, we thank you so much for your powerful word and your goodness and your grace. We pray, God, that you would truly impress this into our hearts, that we would trust in you. and in your powerful work, that we would know the continuity, the discontinuity, we might not understand all of the details about it, but that we could at least understand that it’s true.

That it will be me. It’ll be all of us, not somebody else, who will be raised from the dead, and yet we will be gloriously transformed. And not at all because of anything that we do, but only by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. So may we be humbled. And may we know that in your time we will be exalted. In Christ Jesus’ name, amen. Please turn in your Trinity Psalter hymnal to Psalm 113, selection A. Psalm 113, selection A. Please stand to sing. Remain standing for the benediction.

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July 30, 2023
Christ’s Resurrection, Our Foundation

About this sermon

Some Corinthians doubted that the dead would rise, and Paul answers that if there is no resurrection, then Christ has not been raised and their faith is worthless. Christ has in fact been raised, the firstfruits of those who sleep, and the resurrection is the foundation of the church’s faith, hope, and love. In Adam all die, and in Christ all will be made alive, as he reigns until every enemy, even death, lies under his feet. Belief in the resurrection has consequences, so believers must wake up from sin and live holy lives before a watching world.

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Sermon transcript

The text for the sermon this evening is from 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We’ll be reading verses 12 through 34. I recognize last time as I started, it just dawned on me to wonder what version of the Bible you use is your chair Bible or your pew Bible. And I notice now that it’s the New American Standard. I was reading from the ESV. For those of you who are using the one in the pew, you’ll find the reading on page. One thirty eight in the New Testament, I’ll read from your New American Standard so that that will be easy to follow. First Corinthians chapter 15 will read. verses 12-34. Please hear God’s message. Now, if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do you say that there is no resurrection from the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain. And your faith also is vain. Moreover, We are even found to be false witnesses of God because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. And those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, all men, most to be pitied. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who died. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive, but each to his own order. Christ the firstfruits. After that, those who were Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end. When He hands over the Kingdom to the God and Father. When He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says all things are put in subjection, it is evident that He is accepted who put all things in subjection to Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.

Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, then why are they baptized for them? Why are we also in danger every hour? I affirm, brethren, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. Become sober-minded as you ought and stop sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.” Please be seated. Well, please pray with me. Our God, as we have read Your Word and are prepared to hear an exposition of it, to meditate upon it, we ask God that You would presently work in our hearts and our minds, that You would do a mighty work in us, that You would clear away distractions from our midst, that You would focus our minds, focus our hearts, and that You would take Your Word by Your Spirit and impress it upon us, that we wouldn’t just be hearers of Your Word, but we would be doers.

And we pray this in Christ’s name, Amen. The Corinthian church had its share of problems. It was a young church situated in a pagan city. And Paul writes to them in this first letter to address various issues. And there’s a whole array of various issues that he’s addressing. But here in this section, chapter 15, the particular issue in view is their doubt that the dead would be raised. Now, it’s arguable that they believed that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. They believed the Gospel, that which He proclaimed and declared to them and which we find in the first 11 verses. Yet, the surrounding culture around them would have them to believe that they would not be raised from the dead. That they wouldn’t be resurrected. That that was a foolish thing. One commentator said it this way.

He said, the concept of a physical embodied existence after death was known mainly from popular fables and was thought by the educated. Paul deals with the Corinthians denial of and confusion about the future bodily resurrection of Christians. Over these next few times I’m with you together tonight and then I’ll be here next week in the morning and evening we’re going to look through 1 Corinthians chapter 15 together. We’re going to look at this section and then the two following ones and we’ll look through the entire remainder of 1 Corinthians 15. I actually believe I preached the first 11 verses not long ago. I guess previous when I was here, probably around two years ago. But as we dip into this text, I want us to think about foundations. Think about foundations for a moment. Perhaps as a little child, you’ve read the book, The Three Little Pigs.

And you remember the three little pigs. There’s the one that builds his house out of the straw and it gets blown down. And then the one with the wood and that gets knocked down as well. The strong house, the one with the brick remained. Perhaps you have been in a context where there was a tornado warning, or perhaps even worse, there was a tornado. And if you are in a structure that had a foundation, perhaps you were thankful, you were happy, you had a better sense of security. See, a foundation, in many contexts, is essential. And spiritually speaking, that’s the case as well. Jesus Christ, you remember, in Matthew chapter 7, He said, Build your house on the foundation of the rock, not on the shifting sands. And here, as we come into 1 Corinthians 15, beginning in verse 12 this evening, I want us to think about the foundation that the resurrection lays for our faith.

The resurrection is a foundation. And we ought to stand on the foundation of the resurrection. So our foundation here in this text, the resurrection, is our foundation in three ways. We’re going to see that it’s the foundation of our faith, the foundation of our hope, and the foundation of our love. And if you’re taking notes, that’s going to be our outline this evening. So let’s just jump right in and let’s consider how the resurrection is the foundation of our faith. Here we’re going to be thinking about verses 12 to 19 together, the resurrection as the foundation of our faith. Paul comes into this section of the text hitting hard. Paul comes out of the gates blazing. And Paul argues that the resurrection is the foundation. And right away, he’s reminding the readers that Christ has been raised.

Christ has been raised. To believe in the resurrection of Christ and to deny the resurrection of the body of the believer is not consistent. And so Paul goes back to the Gospel in chapter 15, verse 1, those first 11 verses, and he reminds them of the Gospel that they believed, and he calls them to hold on to that Gospel, and he says, you know what’s fundamental to the Gospel? You know what is foundational to the Gospel? Jesus Christ. On the third day, He rose again. They were confused. I would say anyone who would claim to believe that Christ rose from the dead and deny their own resurrection is confused. And it happens. It’s not so far out. I had a roommate in college who had that same confusion. One commentator says this, Paul argues that there is a seamless connection between the resurrection of Christ in the recent past and the future resurrection of believers on the final day.

So you see what Paul’s saying in v. 12 and then now in v. 13. He’s saying, if we are not raised, then Christ hasn’t been raised. He’s arguing for that unity and that connection. And he says, if we’re not raised, Christ hasn’t been raised. V. 13, v. 16. And that follows out of that beginning of the chapter where they claim to believe that Christ is raised. And if Christ is not raised, he says, our preaching is in vain. Our message is futile. Your faith is in vain. All of Christ is God and for nothing. If Christ hasn’t been raised, His resurrection matters. It is literally the foundation of Christianity. It’s essential. And through Christ, being united to Christ by faith, we are not just raised spiritually, We are. We’re regenerated. And we are spiritually alive.

We’re born again. But we will be also raised physically as He was. And this becomes a cornerstone to his argument. So he says Christ has been raised. But then he goes on and he says the Gospel has been preached. How can you say there’s no resurrection from the dead? if Christ is proclaimed as being raised from the dead. Here we have the importance of preaching. Back in v. 1-11, he says, I proclaimed this Gospel to you. I testified. And so have others of this very truth. He goes on again to say, you have been forgiven. And you have been changed. V. 17 That restates and it extends v. 14. It proclaims that there can be no forgiveness of sins apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In v. 18, if Christ has not been raised, then those who have died are gone forever.

Now, I want you to think about that for a moment. This is really an emotional argument. It evokes emotion because we eagerly await seeing our loved ones who have died. And at the funeral, particularly, I’m thinking of a funeral of a believer. Because for others, sometimes they want to borrow these ideas and say the same things, and it’s just a groundless hope. But for the believer, there’s a true hope. And when you say, I will see that person again, you say it because that person was united to Jesus Christ. And you, through faith, are united to Jesus Christ. And you’re not just saying something that’s a salve to make you feel better. You’re saying that because Christ will come. And all those who are dead in Christ will rise. And here Paul is saying in verse 18, if that’s not true, then those people are gone.

Verse 19 If in Christ we have only hope for this life. We are of all people to be most pitied. I want you to think about what it’s like to be a Christian. And you know this from your experience. It’s not always an easy thing to be a Christian. Especially in our day and in our age, you are oftentimes a minority. You may be laughed at or ridiculed. You face difficulties and dangers in the society. apart from the social dimensions, we live in a cursed and a fallen world. And we know that we only have a certain amount of time. And Paul is saying, look, if Christ has not been raised and we’re not to be raised and we’re living in a way that Christians live, self-control, discipline, restraint of impulses and passions, Thinking of others first.

Deferring to others. Loving others rather than thinking of yourself first. Emphasizing giving over receiving. Standing in the midst of persecution and tribulation in a way that an unbeliever wouldn’t do. If we step into all of this for nothing, Paul says we’re the biggest fools there are. But there is a resurrection. And we have something to look forward to. And we have a reason to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. And not to indulge in all the things of the world. We have the hope. We have the forgiveness of Christ. And that’s something that we live in daily. So the resurrection is a foundation for our faith. But it’s also a foundation for our hope. And I want us to look at that next. That is the second point this evening, the resurrection as the foundation of our hope.

Here, we’ll look at verses 20 through 28. First, you ask the question, what is hope? And there’s some really good definitions. One writer defined it this way. Hope is the confident expectancy, not wishful thinking. but a firm assurance about things that are unseen and still in the future. You see, hope is a future gaze. And it’s not just how we use hope often. It’s not a wishful thinking. No, this is a confident expectancy about those things that are to come. In a way, faith looks backwards and we have faith and we believe in the things that God has done and that Christ has done and we look back in faith, but we look forward in hope. Hope, you could say, in a sense, is anchored in the past. It’s looking forward in the future, but it also has an impact on the present.

It impacts you even now, even here. And I want us to think about a few anchors of hope that we see in this text. Actually, there are three, and all of them point us to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the anchor of our hope. And we see it here in three ways as Paul expounds His resurrection to us. First of all, we see that Christ is the firstfruits. Look at verses 20 and 23. He says Christ’s resurrection. And everything flows out of this fact. Everything flows out of this truth. And because He is the firstfruits, Those who are united to Him will also be resurrected in the same way as Him. That’s this whole idea of Him being the firstfruits. And you say, well, firstfruits, that’s not a familiar term. That’s not a word I use all the time.

What is firstfruits? What does that even mean? Well, it is an agricultural term. And it refers to the first sample of a crop. So you can think about a harvest and they take a sample, a first sample of the crop, the first fruits. And that sample indicates the nature and the quality of the rest of the crop that’s going to be harvested. There’s an indicator there. There’s a similarity. And Christ being the first fruits is an indicator. of the nature of what the rest of the harvest will be like. And we are part of that harvest. His resurrection then becomes an indicator for our resurrection. He is the firstfruits in that He is the first of many others who would be raised from the dead. And since Christ is the firstfruits and He has been raised, then we, the remainder of the harvest will be raised also.

Isn’t that wonderful news? Praise be to God. That is an anchor of our hope. A second anchor of our hope we find is that Christ is the second Adam or the last Adam. You see that in verses 21 and 22. Here you have a double contrast between Adam and Christ. Adam brought death, but Christ brought resurrection from the dead. Adam failed. But Christ succeeded where Adam failed. Adam tore down and Christ built up what was torn down. Take a look at that. Verse 21. It says, “…for by a man came death.” by a man has come the resurrection of the dead. I don’t want us to gloss over that. I want to see that use of the word man. Christ is truly God and He’s truly man, but we are men. We are mankind. There’s a connection there.

He is our representative as the perfect man. And as mankind, We who are united to Him will share in all the benefits of His work as the God-man. So, He’s our representative. He is our head and that headship matters. We don’t have to be self-made people. We don’t have to go out and do it on our own. We don’t have to go out and earn our own salvation. We don’t have to go out and resurrect ourselves from the dead. We don’t have to go out and create our own identity. And this world wants you to identify with so many different things, and yet, our identity is squarely found in Jesus Christ. We identify with Him. He is our head. He is our representative. There’s a third anchor of our hope here that we find in the person of Jesus Christ, and that is that He is King.

Look at verses 24-28. Here you have His resurrection as the beginning of the dawn of the last days of a new age. And now you see His reign as King, that He was raised up. He ascended to the right hand of the Father. And He reigns as King of kings and Lord of lords. And here in this section, you also see the end. That He will come again. That we will all be raised up. The general resurrection. We will be judged. He will judge the living and the dead. And then you have the consummation and you have the eternal state. But there in verse 25, we find an emphasis that He is ruling and reigning now. It says, for He must reign. until He has put all enemies under His feet. You think of Psalm 110.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. All things are in subjection to Him. And then verse 27 quotes Psalm 8, verse 6. Christ has been given dominion. And all things are under His feet. All things are in subjection to Him. And as we say in our catechism, He will come and destroy all His and our enemies. And brothers and sisters, there’s great hope in knowing this. That we will be raised from the dead. But we will be part of that crop that will be like Him and will be with Him. And as He sustains us even now as King from Heaven, He is ruling and reigning even as He brings us forward to that day. And He has us and He holds us in His hand. Christ is King. And that’s good to know in a world that seems to be swirling out of control.

What a comfort to know that He is King, that He is in control. And to know that because we are in Him, we will be raised with Him. We have hope. We have hope. The resurrection is the foundation of our faith. It is the foundation of our hope. But I want you to know Paul is teaching us that it’s the foundation for one other thing. And I already told you up front what that is. That the resurrection is our foundation the foundation of our love, verses 29 through 34, the foundation of our love. You say, our love? Really? Where is that in the text? Where do we see love in the section? Is it really there? Or is it just making a nice outline, faith and hope and love? I’ll say this. You may not see the word love, but you see the idea.

You see the concept. You see it there in perhaps a derivative way, an implicit way. I want you to remember this. He said, if you love Me, you will do what I command you. That concept is here. We’re going to look at it in just a moment. with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s here. We’ll see it. The so what part of the text. Have you ever had a so what moment? Where you’re learning facts and information and things and truths perhaps, even powerful ones, and you say, so what? What do I do as a result? And of course, our catechism tells us that the Lord wants us to know what we are to believe concerning Him, but also what duty He requires of us.

And here we have, in some ways, a so-what moment. You see, beliefs have consequences. Paul began this section by arguing about the consequences if the resurrection of the dead was not true. Remember what he was saying in the beginning? If the dead are not raised, then Christ isn’t raised. And if the dead are not raised, then my preaching is futile and your faith is in vain. If the dead are not raised, then even those who died in Christ are gone for good. All these things he’s saying in the beginning. If there is no resurrection, there’s consequences. But now he flips it over. And he says there is a resurrection. And there are consequences. We ought to live. in a way that reflects the fact that there is a resurrection. So what? So we live it.

If Christ was not raised, but Christ has been raised, so what? We ought to live as if our belief in the resurrection has consequences. And here in this section of the text, He gives us two motivators to do that very thing. I want us to see the two motivators. The first one is this. Good theology motivates godly living. Remember, I just said in the Catechism, what should we believe about God and what duty does He require of us? That theology becomes a foundation for how we live. You read the book of Romans. The first half is theology. The second half is application. Read the book of Ephesians. Read the book of Colossians. It’s the same way. Good theology motivates godly living. You know, it’s not all theology. Sometimes it has interesting applications or implications. Here in verse 29, you see an interesting example of that.

And this is the one that everybody’s probably scratching their heads about. Verse 29, it says, Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized of the dead? And you start to ask this question. We read this text a couple of nights ago in our family worship at home. And that’s the very first question that’s asked. What does it mean that people were being baptized for the dead? To leave you in suspense for a moment, there have been over 40 solutions that have been proposed to this problem. Over 40 solutions offered on baptisms for the dead. And you know that my favorite one is actually not a solution. Here’s what this commentator said, and I think this person got it right on the money. He said this. One may consider it as axiomatic that when there is such a wide divergence of opinion, No one knows what in fact was going on.

The best one can do in terms of particulars is point out what appears to be the more viable options, but finally admit to ignorance. So let me just pause there for a moment. 40 things that it could be. And it’s kind of vague. And what he’s saying is at the end of the day, we don’t really know. But listen to this part of what he says, because this is where it’s really important. He says this, what is certain, is how the text functions in the argument. Whatever it was that some of them were doing, those actions are contradicting to the position that there is no resurrection from the dead. You see, that’s the point that really is driven home is how is Paul using it in his argument? Paul is arguing against the position that there’s no resurrection from the dead.

And here he even pulls an example of bad theology. And I would venture to say something Paul doesn’t agree with and Paul is not promoting. But he’s saying, look at this practice. Even this proves that you’re not correct in thinking that. Look again at the verse. I read half of it on purpose. Look at the other half. Verse 29, otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? Look at the second part. If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? He doesn’t say they’re right. But what he’s saying is if that wasn’t true, why are they doing this? You see, this is an implication. This is something that affects the way people live their lives. Theology drives practice. Regardless of what baptism for the dead was, Paul is employing it to support his argument.

And here he’s transitioning from that argument to say why that is wrong and what that meant to transition to now say, what are the implications for the fact that it is true and how do you live your life? He’s employing this to show that the resurrection not only has implications for our hope tomorrow, but also for how we live today. The mention of the practice is at least that much. Implications for health. Maybe more than a few years ago now, there was a book written that many folks in reformed churches like to poke holes in and to maybe argue against. I’ll perhaps do the same. But Joel Osteen wrote a book called Your Best Life Now. And I haven’t read the book. I don’t intend to read the book. But the premise of the idea is that God wants us to be living our best lives now.

As Christians, there’s maybe a prosperity sort of gospel idea to that book. And what Paul’s saying in terms of how we live our lives now in hope of the resurrection and in light of the resurrection, I think is a bit different. Look at what he says in verses 30 to 32. He says this, he says in verse 30, Why would we be in danger? See, if the Christian life was compatible with living the best life now, everything’s going to be peaches and cream. He says, why would we put ourselves in danger? Verse 31, why would we sacrifice the way we do? Verse 32, why would we put ourselves in harm’s way rather than just living the good life? Well, we do it because we have hope of something greater. Jesus Christ said, what would it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his very own soul?

But when we have hope of something greater, we’re willing to live even in the midst of difficulty and challenge and persecution and hardship. We don’t seek it out. We don’t necessarily desire it, but we know there’s something greater on the other side. This was the problem of the rich young ruler. Remember when he comes up to Christ and he says, let me follow you. And Christ says, well, give away everything you have and come and follow me. And he wouldn’t do it because he loved his money and he wasn’t willing to part with that. He loved that more than he loved Christ. Another man came up to Christ and he said, I’ll follow you wherever I go. And Jesus said, foxes have wings and birds of the air have nests. But the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.

He says, are you still willing to follow me? You see here, Paul is driving home. There are implications of how we live our lives in hope of the resurrection. Theology matters. Does your love for Christ compel you to live for Him? Good theology motivates godly living. Lastly, good influences motivate godly living. You see that in verses 33 and 34. Here, He corrupts good morals. Or other translations say good character. What is the world telling you? What was the world telling the Corinthian church? They were hearing these opinions from the world, voices from the world, ideas from the world, but the only truth that matters is that one truth that is found in the Word of God. Not that the world can’t have any truth. God has given some common grace. Yet, any opinion that conflicts with or contradicts the Word of God, we need to be able to block out.

Because influence of bad company corrupts good morals. We’ve got to be careful regarding the company we keep. Hanging around worldly-minded people can be dangerous. 2 Corinthians 6-7, Paul says there, he says, does the church have to do with the world? What does light have to do with darkness? He says, don’t be unequally yoked. Bad company corrupts good morals. And then v. 34, He calls them to account. He says, do not go on sinning. Sometimes we need to be jostled out of what He calls here a drunken stupor in v. 34. Sometimes we just need to be jostled out of that stupor into holiness. We need to realize that just as others influence us, our actions and our words, our lives influence and impact others. And he says in verse 34, wake up from your drunken stupor. as is right.

Do not go on sinning, for some have no knowledge of God. I say this to you.” There are many who do not know Christ, and yet they are watching our actions. They are listening to some degree to our words. So we need to be grounded. We need to have a firm foundation. And that is why this evening I pray that all of us here would be encouraged and motivated, knowing that the resurrection is the foundation for our faith, our hope, and our love. It has a real impact. We have been forgiven. We have been changed. We are united to Christ. Christ, the firstfruits. Christ, the second Adam. Christ, the mediatorial king. The one who rules and reigns over all. And these beliefs have consequences. They ought to motivate us to godly living and godly relationships.

Stand on the foundation of the resurrection. Let’s pray. Our God in heaven, we thank you for your word, for your truth. And we pray that you would enable us to stand on the foundation of the resurrection. We thank you that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. And in him and by faith in him, we have the hope of eternity that we too may be raised from the dead. Father, we give You thanks and praise, and we pray it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. We’ll sing Psalm 8, Selection B together. Please stand.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

July 23, 2023