What Is To Come

INTRODUCTION

Good morning and welcome again to First Christian Church. I am so excited for you to be here with us this morning. I want to invite you to go ahead and turn in your Bible to 1 Corinthians 15, and we will be starting in verse 50 today. If you don’t have a copy of God’s Word, then there is a Bible in the pew in front of you, or the scripture will be on screen.

This past year, we surprised Tommy with tickets to see a live performance of his favorite YouTube group, Dude Perfect. They are a group of Christian guys who do trick shots and crazy athletic feats with sports stars. It is the perfect 8-year-old boy show. He got the tickets as a Christmas gift, and the show was actually in July of this year, just a couple of weeks ago.

While Tommy was super excited for his gift, he also had to learn the skill of waiting. He was handed a ticket to see his favorite group, but had to wait 7 months. As a kid, 7 months might as well be an eternity. We would get questions constantly about how much longer till Dude Perfect, what date the Dude Perfect show is, what month, and on and on.

Waiting for something that we are really excited about can be very difficult. For believers in Jesus, we are awaiting the resurrection. We are awaiting the eternal state with God forever. We know that the next stop for us is eternity with God, and there are times and days when waiting seems very difficult.

Today, in 1 Corinthians 15, we are going to see Paul discuss this eternity that will come, and what we are to do now while we are still waiting for what is to come. We anticipate eternity, but recognize we are here now with work to do. Would you join me in prayer this morning?

PRAY

What Will Come (v. 50-56)

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 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. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 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.”

55 “O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

1 Co 15:50–56.

Paul takes these 7 verses and is describing to the church, and to us, what will come. There is an eternal state coming for the believer, a time and place that is not inherited by our flesh and blood. Why can’t our current flesh and blood inherit this? Why does Paul say that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God? Well, the issue for us is sin.

When Adam sins in Genesis, it brings death into the world. Sin always and only breeds death. Because sin and death have come into the world, we see the degradation of the world. Now, flesh and blood have been impacted by it. Our sin-stained bodies are not going to be the ones that enter into the resurrection with God. What a blessing! This body that has felt the effect of sin, whether through my own doing or the natural breakdown of the body, will be renewed into a perfect state. This perishable body will put on the imperishable. I think we could all let out an amen to that.

The Mystery

If the future event we look forward to is our bodies being resurrected in the return of Jesus, what if we are not dead? As I studied this week, I saw this passage in a light I had not seen before. Paul says:

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 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.

1 Corinthians 15:51–52.

Paul is explaining the mystery of the resurrection. Have you ever thought about this? If you are dead when Christ returns, boom, you rise in an imperishable body. But what if you are alive? The term resurrection implies that you are raising something that is dead back to life. Paul is comforting the church at Corinth, and us today, that we won’t have to die in order to be resurrected and put on the imperishable body. I think this week was the first time I realized, “Oh, some people may have been worried they couldn’t be resurrected if they were alive.” Paul tells us that we do not have to worry.

We await the trumpet sound and the immediate call of us to the savior we know. In the smallest amount of time, Paul calls it a moment, a twinkling of the eye, we will be called up to our savior. We await this promise because we have been told it will happen.

In John 14, Jesus told the disciples to await His return. In John 14:3 it says:

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

John 14:3.

Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, and He will return to take us to Him. Some of us will not die before we get to go to that place that is prepared. There will be a time when the trumpet will sound and we will be called home.

Even after Jesus goes back to the Father, after his resurrection, the disciples are told again:

and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Acts 1:11.

Just as Jesus went back to heaven, He will return. We await this today as well. It is the next big event in the timeline of the Church. We await his return, coming the same way He left, taking us to be with Him, being made into imperishable bodies.

When this happens, our transformation will lead to triumph. When we transform from this perishable life to the imperishable, we can fully understand what Isaiah tells us in chapter 25:

He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,

and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken.

Isaiah 25:8.

Death is swallowed up and gone forever. What a future to look forward to! All the negative parts of life, all those things that sin has impacted and destroyed, will be gone. We look forward to an eternity in the presence of our Savior, glorifying our God forevermore. The pain of this life in our past is not even a figment of memory in our minds. It is a glorious future to look forward to.

Sin and death will be gone. Now, we see the reality of sin. We feel the sting of death. That is what the law does. The law of God reveals the standard of God. When that standard is broken, it shows man’s sin. The law could never save us, but it can show us the need for a Savior.

What About Now?

If we know that in the future we will spend eternity with God, and we are awaiting that call from God, what do we do right now? Just like Tommy was waiting for the Dude Perfect tour, and in waiting had us watch every Dude Perfect video a thousand times till we nailed down our favorite guy, what are we to do in the time until eternity? What is our plan of action until then? Let’s look at how this passage ends.

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 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.

1 Corinthians 15:57–58.

What is the first thing we need to know in the meantime? We have victory in Jesus! I don’t know if you understand what that means. Real victory, the joy that comes with it. In my senior year of high school, we finally beat a team that had just destroyed us for years. It was a come-from-behind, overtime victory that was great to experience. In the moment, I was excited and in my head was jumping up and down to celebrate. On film, later, I saw I was actually lightly skipping. In that moment, I was experiencing true victory.

While I do not expect you to jump up and skip today, we can celebrate that we experience victory through Jesus Christ! Today, our body may not feel victorious, we may feel worn down and tired, but we know we have experienced victory through Jesus. Even better, this victory is not because of anything that you or I have done. It is not because of our own actions; it is through Jesus. Not through me or you.

Why is it not through us? Because we couldn’t win a victory over sin, we have victory through Jesus. You can try and beat sin on your own, and you might have a minuscule moment of success, but you cannot have victory over sin on your own. We know that we cannot do it ourselves, but through Jesus, we can have that victory. Jesus did all that we could not. Jesus takes our curse and condemnation on himself and gives us victory.

In the meantime, we need to live in the victory that we have through Jesus. We live in that victory and look forward to the coming final victory over pain and death. We are not to walk around like those who are beaten, but should recognize that we can have victory.

Not only are we victorious, but we are to be steadfast and immovable. This means that we need to stay in the will of God. Being strong in what we know, learning, growing, and having a solid foundation of our faith. When we recognize that we have victory, and we are plugged into what God is doing, then we can be steadfast and immovable. That means we have work to do. We cannot be stagnant and lazy in our faith. We have to be strong and steadfast. How are you doing this? When is the last time you opened your Bible and were not at church? What are you studying in the word? How are you serving?

We need to have that strong base to stay in the will of God. When the base is strong, then the waves and wind of doctrine and false teaching that blow through the church won’t blow us off course. It won’t stop the wind and waves, but it will allow us to fight against and stay on course. I would argue that so many of the issues that rise up in the church would stem from this place. When we do not grow in our faith, when we don’t know the Word, then we are easily swept away by all of those things.

Living in victory, being steadfast and immovable, and abounding in the work of the Lord. When we work for the Lord, we do not work in vain. Our labor is not wasted. Church, we are expected to do be doing the work of the Lord. This passage doesn’t say, Pastors do the work, elders do the work, deacons do the work, it says that we all should be abounding in the work of the Lord.

Abounding could be translated to exceeding the requirements, overflowing, or overdoing. Not working so much that we burn out, but that we do not get to be passive in our work. We do not get to sit by and watch someone else do it. We don’t let things be someone else's concern. No, we abound in doing the work.

During the times of the Roman Empire, it was very common that if a child was not wanted, they would be left outside of the city, typically near the trash dump, to die. Whether that child was handicapped, or most often, they were a girl, that child would be left to allow nature to take its course. Recordings from early church times tell us that in places where the Gospel started taking over a town, the Christians would begin to adopt those children. They were doing the work, caring for the least of these, they were abounding in the work of the Lord. This also helps explain why the early church had a larger female presence at the time. This stuck out to the world around them. Seeing believers take these abandoned children into their homes. But it was the natural outpouring of what had taken place in the life of those people. Was it hard? I bet. Did the neighbors talk about them? You know it. Was it what God would want done? Absolutely.

We live in a day and age where relaxation and leisure are peddled to us as the peak of our existence. John Macarthur, a pastor and theologian from our time, claims that leisure and relaxation may be the 2 biggest idols in the modern church and society. I agree. We must guard ourselves from that. We are not to be lazy, but abounding in the work of the Lord.

Our takeaway from today is simple. We have a lot to look forward to, but we have work to do right now.

Why? Because someone in our life, maybe several people, took the time to show that love of God to us.

GOSPEL.

The unbeliever is not sick; he is dead! He does not need resuscitation; he needs resurrection.

Warren W. Wiersbe