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Congregational Reading

Our sermon text can be found in 1 Corinthians 15:50-58. I invite you if you are able, to stand with me for the reading of God’s Word.

50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption.

51 Listen, I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will 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 incorruptible, and we will be changed.

53 For this corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body must be clothed with immortality.

54 When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place: Death has been swallowed up in victory.

55 Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?

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

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

58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Reader: This is God’s Word

Audience: Thanks be to God.

Reader: You may be seated.

Intro

To give you a little insight into how we operate, these sermons and sermon series are planned well in advance. That’s simply because we want to prepare well, study well, and long in advance… saturate these sermons in prayer that God’s will may sweep over us all as a people, WHATEVER that means.

With that said I received this assignment some time ago and immediately my heart LEPT, thinking about this morning with you all; because I believe what we are pouring over today is so CENTRAL and so ESSENTIAL to the Christian faith.

When we consider what the Gospel accomplishes, what it is that is made possible because of Christ’s work on the cross, what we are talking about today is so essential, so hopeful, and yet so often it is an aspect of our belief that tragically so often falls to the backburner of our minds and of our hearts

That being the resurrection.

We are right to consider Jesus and what a relationship with Him means on this side of heaven, but I’m afraid that so many of us suffer from CRIPPLING tunnel-vision that we miss what it is that Christ is ultimately working us towards.

We see this life on earth as the pinnacle of our existence when it’s not… it’s just not. And we see death as this punctuation, this period when it is just but one faint breath away from the eternal embrace of our Savior.

We have been steeped in this series for weeks now. This letter from Paul, a church planter, written to a church whom he loved! And yet there was so much going haywire. This is a corrective letter. You’ve seen that on display over the past number of weeks. And whether or not you’ve known it you’ve received teaching about right doctrine.

Doctrine about how we partake of the Lord’s Supper, doctrine regarding biblical distinctions between men and women, doctrine about how we rightly discern spiritual gifts for the mission of the church. Doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, and today is no different.

Paul pens this part of this part of the letter to correct this beloved church on how we are to rightly understand life, death, and resurrection.

There is much that chapter 15 has to offer on this truth but if I can distill it down for you, about what it is that we are take away from these words of Paul it is this.

Main Idea: Because of the resurrection, believers are called to be an eternally-minded people.

And because of that, I want to relay to you 3 ways that the resurrection changes our lives.

Namely that the truth of the resurrection changes our actions. The truth of the resurrection changes our thinking. And the truth of the resurrection changes our reality.

But before I get too much further, let me pray for the Lord’s help this morning.

Father in Heaven,

What a great gift it is to know that what you offer us is not improvement. It’s not a deeper responsibility to do better.

Father, what you give us is not a burden to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps; but what you offer us, through no earning or merit of our own is victory over this fallen world’s greatest problem, and deliverance into loving your embrace.

By the power of Jesus we join in with Paul in this cry of victory:

Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting? It has no place in the presence of our savior.

What we know not please teach us. What we have not please give us. What we are not please make us.

It’s in the matchless name of Jesus we pray

Amen.

The Truth of the Resurrection changes our actions

Chapter 15 has so much to offer us about how we are to rightly think about the resurrection of all things. About the resurrection body, about how belief in the resurrection is central to this gospel message. And all of it hitting this climactic and resounding cry of victory over sin and death in vv.50-58. And we walk away knowing that this truth of the resurrection changes our actions.

Paul is highlighting all the more here that a life with Jesus has very real implications. That because of what Jesus has done for you and for me, His dying a sinner’s death in your place that there is this great and scandalous exchange going on.

Our corruptible bodies will be changed out with the incorruptible. That mortality will be exchanged for immortality. What is sown in sin, will be harvested in holiness, because of Jesus.

These bodies, they will ache no more. Disease and the frailty of this flesh that becomes more and more apparent with each passing day, we will know a day where it is no more.

We’re not talking about some theory or metaphor. Paul is talking about a physical reality! We’re talking about at a moment in time that will seem like a blink, all of the sadness and brokenness and sin that we’re chained up by, ALL OF IT WILL COME UNTRUE.

God has in mind a moment in time where the physical woes of these bodies and this earth will be done away with. We are working towards a Revelation 21 reality where all tears are wiped away. There will be no more mourning or sadness, no more pain. All of these things will have passed away and death shall be put to death.

You cannot hold this truth in your heart and not be affected in the everyday stuff of life. This changes everything. We are called to be an eternally-minded people and that has real-world implications for how we live.

I had a seminary professor, retired marine sniper, black belt in jiu-jitsu, probably knows six ways to incapacitate you with his pinky finger. He’s the kind of guy that when he speaks… you listen. I’m sure you know someone like that.

Sitting in class one day he stares at us all and says, “Men, show me a man’s checkbook and his calendar and I’ll tell you what god he really serves.”

You could hear a pin drop, not too dissimilar from now.

But what he was saying was this… the Gospel… changes… everything. We’re not a part of some country club where we’re only focused on “what can this Jesus guy do for me?”

No, if you are in Christ, you are a blood-bought people. And that changes the way that you act, the way that you deal with people, your desire for people. It changes the way that you parent. It changes the way you love your wife, the way that you love your husband. It changes the way you carry yourself amongst co-workers, amongst friends, amongst classmates. It changes the way you invest your 401k, it… changes… everything.

As an eternally minded-people you desire to see the uttermost corners of this earth to know about Jesus, even if it means watching your kid move to across the globe.

Husbands you lay aside your pride and selfishness to see your bride deepened in her relationship with Jesus.

And the thought of your co-workers living in eternal separation from Jesus grieves your heart so much that you lay all vulnerability aside and nervousness to strike up a conversation, a real conversation about things that matter.

As an eternally-minded people with the truth of the resurrection embedded into our hearts, you are called to action.

The Truth of the Resurrection changes our thinking

But that’s not all. Beloved, I hope and I pray that you would not walk away today thinking, “well I have to do this, this, and this. If I want to display that I really believe I have to go, go, go.

No… you go, you do, you act, because the Spirit of the living God has first touched the depths of your soul and changed your heart, your affections, and your mind. Because of the resurrection our actions change, how we carry ourselves, change, but because of the resurrection we have what the apostle Paul calls in Romans, “A renewal of the mind,” and the truth of the resurrection changes our thinking.

There’s a statue that stands 525 feet from home plate at Target Field where the Minnesota Twins play. Because that is how far Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew hit the longest recorded home run in club history.

If you can imagine the logo for Major League Baseball it is Killebrew’s silhouette that you’re looking at. Hall of Famer, record holder, icon… dead.

In 2011 he wrote these words as he neared the end of his battle with esophageal cancer:

It is with profound sadness that I share with you that my continued battle with esophageal cancer is coming to an end. With the continued love and support of my wife, Nita, I have exhausted all options with respect to controlling this awful disease. My illness has progressed beyond my doctors’ expectation of cure.

Death does not care if you are a hall of famer. Death does not care about your bank account, your assets. Death does not care about how good of a fisherman you were or how polite you raised your kids to be. Death is the great leveler. No one gets out of this life alive.

Or do we?

We grieve and our hearts break over the brevity of this life as we. But as a Christian, your gaze should be elevated, away from the falsehood that this world is all that life has to offer and cast your eyes towards heaven and fix your sights on the hope of Jesus.

The truth of the resurrection causes us to run this race of life with endurance, it causes us to live as an eternally-minded people, here and now, eternity starts now.

We live with the Kingdom in mind, right now, knowing that the glory and the blessing of life that we see here and now will only be amplified in the time to come. We live as eternally-minded people, now. You don’t take the things of this earth that will rust and decay and fade away and project them onto your idea of the kingdom of heaven.

I’m asking you to cast your eyes heavenward!

Heaven is not an eternal vacation. If you look to heaven and all you imagine IS SPENDING ALL YOUR DAYS ON A CRYSTAL LAKE FISHING… YOU’RE THINKING INFINITELY, CRIMINALLY, TOO SMALL.

If it’s an eternal spa day that’s in your mind, THINK BIGGER.

It’s eternal JESUS! ETERNAL PRESENCE WITH HIM. ITS ETERNAL AND COMPLETE SATISFACTION IN HIM, FILLING THESE CAVERNOUS HOLES IN YOUR HEART THAT YOU TRY AND CRAM FULL OF ANYTHING BUT HIM.

We join Him in this beautiful gift of the resurrection. Paul earlier in the chapter says it like this,

“But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man (that being Adam), the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man (Jesus). For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ, all will be made alive.”

This is that beautiful exchange at play, that with Adam as our first-father, we stand in judgment, but because of the work of Christ, we are made alive, truly alive. And the words of the old hymn come alive too:

...the things of this earth with grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace.

The Truth of the Resurrection changes our reality

The resurrection changes the way that we act, it changes the way that we think, and the truth of the resurrection changes our reality.

...Death has been swallowed up in victory.

55 Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?

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

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

Our reality, our eternal standing… because of the resurrected Jesus, the pangs of death, and our woeful cries become shouts of victory.

One of the greatest showings of resurrection in the Bible, aside from that of Jesus himself, can be found in John 11, the story of Lazarus.

You may know the story. This beloved family in Jesus’ eyes gets word to him that the brother, Lazarus, is sick, and is going to die. So what does Jesus do but wait… he waits. Two more days he waits, flying in the face of every bit of what our instinct tells us to do.

A loved one is sick. Go and be with them. Be at their bedside. Be present with them in the midst of pain… But no.

When Jesus heard it, he said, “This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Even through this. In the face of death, Jesus is single-mindedly laser-focused on the single most loving thing he could possibly convey to this family. God’s glory.

After a two day delay, as one could predict, Lazarus dies. Jesus and his followers decide to go there and the scene on display is not too dissimilar from what we might know personally when we approach a family who has lost someone dear.

17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.

18 Bethany was near Jerusalem (less than two miles away).

19 Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.

20 As soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary remained seated in the house.

21 Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.

22 Yet even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

23 “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her.

24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.

26 Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this?

Fast forward to his encounter with the other sister, Mary.

30 Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met him.

31 The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw that Mary got up quickly and went out. They followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to cry there.

32 As soon as Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and told him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”

33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled.

34 “Where have you put him?” he asked. “Lord,” they told him, “come and see.”

35 Jesus wept.

36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

37 But some of them said, “Couldn’t he who opened the blind man’s eyes also have kept this man from dying?”...

You’ve been here before. By the hospital bed. In the doctor’s office. You’ve gotten that chilling phone call in the early hours of the morning. And in just a matter of moments, you are overcome with the deepest sorrow that you have ever known.

And through your unceasing tears and the pit in your stomach, you bellow out the same cry given by Martha and Mary.

WHERE YOU AT, GOD? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, GOD? IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS WAY, GOD. IF YOU WOULD HAVE JUST BEEN HERE THINGS WOULD BE DIFFERENT, GOD!

We read verses like that of today, “Where death is your sting?” And we want to cry out, “Well God, it’s stinging pretty bad right now!”

Brothers and sisters, what you need to know here today is that even through the worst that this life has to offer, John 11:35 is a Gospel-Truth!

Jesus weeps with you in the midst of your pain. Jesus is there for you in your darkest night. And yet, still, we are so prone to wander, prone to stray, prone to leave the God we love.

John the gospel writer includes a note here that Jesus was, “deeply moved, and troubled.” In the original Greek, the word they translate this phrase from can also be translated as, “angry.”

Which is interesting.

He weeps.

He’s angry.

Is he angry because he is outmatched? Outmatched by death?

Is he angry because he feels overwhelmed by any point of this situation?

No...

Jesus surveys the scene and not only sees those he loves in pain but also in doubt. In doubt of His goodness.

Mary and Martha, doubting--“Jesus if you had only been here!”

The other grievers asking the question we all want to ask from time to time, “Couldn’t he who opened the blind man’s eyes also have kept this man from dying?”

Brothers and sisters, more than Jesus wishes you to be comforted in times of difficulty, he wants you to trust in him and believe in him.

Verse 38,

38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.

39 “Remove the stone,” Jesus said. Martha, the dead man’s sister, told him, “Lord, there is already a stench because he has been dead four days.”

40 Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

41 So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you heard me.

42 I know that you always hear me, but because of the crowd standing here I said this, so that they may believe you sent me.”

43 After he said this, he shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

44 The dead man came out bound hand and foot with linen strips and with his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unwrap him and let him go.”

A dead man obeyed the word of God.

And so too it is with anyone who has been saved by Christ…

Eric! LIVE! And a dead Eric came alive.

Jesus stands before you and commands the same thing. LIVE!

He stands before the shipwreck of your life, and with the stench of death that sin has left on you by the power of His word he calls out to you,

“Come out of there! Be alive!”

Where death is your sting? Where death is your victory.

Brothers and sisters we will feel the hurt of this world far more frequently than we ever hope to, but because of Jesus’ power over death and over the raising of our bodies, Beloved, what was once a cry of uttermost pain and heartache we now cry out in victory!

If you believe in Jesus you're coming out of the grave!

You’re not going to die, follower of Jesus, not really, not truly.

Invitation

Because the grave of our savior forever stands empty, so will ours.

There are many of you in here, I pray, who would draw great hope from God’s Word today in the midst of the hard season that you are in.

But I am also confident that there are some of you in here who stand before the impossible weight of an eternity apart from Jesus and I want you to know that you have been prayed for, by myself, by the staff and by so many in this church who so desperately want any and every hearer of the gospel to come to a saving relationship in Jesus.

Some of you hear these words of Jesus, standing before the tomb of your life and he is calling out to you...

“Come out of there. Live”

I’m going to ask the band to join me on stage and as they return, I’m going to ask you to bow your heads and close your eyes…

With your heads bowed and your eyes closed, I pray that every one of you would consider the weight of what we’re talking about.

Eternity has been imprinted onto our hearts, every one of us. And the good news of 1 Corinthians 15 is that in Christ, our hearts find what truly satisfies them. Where death, is your victory? Where death is your sting?

Father in Heaven,

I pray that everyone here today with eternity n the heart would see the victory that has been won for them. No more do they have to labor and strain but in you, our restless hearts find peace.

Father, I pray that as we submit to your call that we would cast our eyes heavenward and live with your eternal glory as our deepest satisfaction.

It’s in the matchless name of Jesus we pray...