Immortals
Notes
Transcript
The Perfect Body
The Perfect Body
This… is my body today.
Yes, this is awkward.
This is my body 32 years ago. Jono’s body is shown on the right for scale.
These are not the same.
We went for a little run, literally, to McDonalds on Wednesday with the youth group. I volunteered to be the caboose. You know, to make sure all the kids get there safely.
Or… because I am in nothing like the running shape I was 8 years ago.
This is not about Dusty complaining about getting older. I’m proud to be 40 years old.
But did you know the Bible has a plan, a program, even… secret information on how to get the perfect body?
Perfect body, perfect life, perfect living.
Sounds pretty good.
Can anyone guess the answer? You already know it.
Resurrection.
Living for Resurrection
Living for Resurrection
Recall that some in the Corinthian church were denying that resurrection from the dead was even possible. And we don’t exactly what all their objections were. It is likely that there were several different objections because Paul seems to address several possible things.
Some may have argued from a practical matter. Look… the flesh is decomposing. If you resurrect that… that’s how you get zombies.
Or what if the parts are buried in different places?
What if you lost an arm in battle… then came to Jesus… then died. Are you resurrected with the arm or without? What if you were born without arms?
Are you resurrected at the age of 33, at the age you died… how does this work?
You can come up with some weird scenarios. Some of the Corinthians certainly seem to be arguing that physical resurrection of the dead is impossible.
Similarly, some of the Corinthians seems to be arguing that physical resurrection of the dead is unnecessary. Something like this: I have already arrived. I have the spirit, I am filled with the Spirit of God, I am already a spiritual being.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I have received my inheritance and I am good to go! Recalling that these are young Christians, the most “mature” being just a few years old in their faith, you could maybe fool yourself into thinking you have arrived at wholeness and perfection for a minute.
Paul is clear. Bodily from the dead is possible… and absolutely necessary.
First, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the absolute foundation of our faith. If He is not risen… we are all to be pitied above all for our faith is futile and empty. But He IS Risen, by the witness of hundreds, by the witness of Paul, by my own living witness of His transformative life and power in me: Jesus is alive!
Because He lives, our faith is not in vain.
And Paul lives his life in such a way that it ONLY makes sense in the light of Jesus’ resurrection.
Amen. That was three weeks ago.
But that speaks to Jesus’ resurrection. Good for Jesus; what about me? What can I expect, do I need resurrection, will I get resurrection...
And where are the character creation options. I want to run like I could when I was 33, strength from, say, 37… I want to be able to fall like I could when I was 8, though.
In responding to those who claim our own bodily resurrection is impossible or unnecessary, Paul gives us some profound insight into the nature of our humanity and what we have to look forward to in eternity.
Impossible Resurrection
Impossible Resurrection
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”
This isn’t someone curious about how it works but someone trying to say resurrection is impossible.
Today someone might argue that resurrecting a body is like reversing entropy… what if some or all of the body is decomposed, or missing?
Paul responds with two powerful truths.
There is continuity of person, but substantive difference between our current body and our resurrected body.
And God is infinitely creative and resourceful.
The gospel principle of transformation.
Seed of Grain
Seed of Grain
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.
Hold on to that. The body we have now, is like a seed to what is to come. The plant really doesn’t need to look anything like the seed it comes from… but that seed does hold all of that potential, the code is there, the DNA is there.
There is continuity of a sort, there is discontinuity because the seed “dies” … and there is transformation.
Then Paul grabs another metaphor.
Bodies and Glories
Bodies and Glories
For not all flesh is the same, but 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.
Glory? What does it mean here?
Splendor, radiance, in particular as it fulfills the purpose for which the LORD made it.
Likewise the Moon. As in, the sun is great… for all the reasons the sun is great. And those reasons are different from the moon, which is great for its own reasons, and the stars. All great, differently great, differently glorious.
It is “diversity of resurrection glory.” Look at how creative our God is, how he can make infinitely creative and different glory, from awesome to awesome. How small-minded can you be challenging the “impossibility” of resurrection.
Not hard for He who made the stars. And our new bodies will be “glorious”, indeed!
So is it 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.
What is a “spiritual body?”
Spiritual != not real.
We ultimately find the answer in Christ, the 2nd and last Adam.
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
The risen Jesus is then our model of “spiritual” body.
There is a sequence here: Seed comes before the plant, natural comes, in us, before the spiritual, Adam comes before Jesus.
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.
This is where some folks look for a contradiction.
The contrast is not “physical vs spiritual.” It is “natural vs. spiritual”.
Jesus’ risen body was physical. Touch my hands, touch my scars, eat and drink. The new heaven and new earth… physical reality.
And Jesus is called the spiritual man, both before and after his resurrection.
“Dust” is what God breathed on into Adam to give spirit. When Adam and Eve sinned and they experienced spiritual death… what was left? The dust they came from.
“Alive” in the weakest and most temporary sense. Cut off, spiritually dead, severed from connection with the Creator and source of life.
And we were born in the image of Adam, dust.
So what is this spiritual body? A body ruled by the “spirit”. And what is the “spirit”?
The spirit is the part of man that connects and communicates with God.
Our radio receiver. Our cell phone.
Right now we are in-between, ruled by two natures. By faith in Jesus, he has made us a new creation, brought our spirit to life and connected us, filled us, with his Holy Spirit.
We are connected and we have a new nature.
But we still have the old nature. And so we have this war within us.
My new nature wants to worship… and my old nature really wants a sandwich.
My new nature wants to please God… and my old nature wants to please the ladies. (That one’s for Logan).
Humans who aren’t saved only have their dust-nature, their flesh-nature, broken and tainted by sin.
Christians, saved and redeemed by the blood of Jesus, have two natures: broken sinful dust and flesh… and spirit to Spirit.
But in the resurrection… it is new bodies made perfect, made whole, driven wholly and purely by spirit to Spirit. Our spirit in love and harmony with His Holy Spirit.
Are you looking forward to that?
So… when’s it going to happen and what will it be like???
Timing
Timing
When will it happen? What will we experience? What will those who are dead experience? Those who are living?
Changed in a twinkle.
"The time required for a wink”. *WINK*
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot 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.
IMMORTALS!!! Huh.
So… is resurrection possible? Yes… God doesn’t need the leftover physical substance of our bodies to do it. There were periods of history where Christians were confused, they refused to be cremated, they protected the bodies, they buried them facing East because Jesus would come from the East.
God isn’t running out of material to make our bodies. But we will indeed have physical bodies, wholly driven by, ruled by our spirit… in submission and in love with His Spirit.
Therefore, and this is the big conclusion, we get two amazing things. We get comfort… and we get victory.
Comfort and Victory
Comfort and Victory
He quotes from Isaiah and Hosea here, see the people of God have longed for this comfort and victory, not just since Jesus, since the Fall. Since sin and death entered the world.
Isaiah saw a day where death and suffering ended:
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.
Hosea saw it coming, the promise of God, where death no longer had power:
I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol; I shall redeem them from Death. O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.
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.”
“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
That day is coming.
It isn’t yet, is it? We read this at funerals in anticipation… but we know the sting of death. The sting of sin. The ongoing suffering.
The sting of Sin and Death goes well beyond grief and mourning at the loss of our loved ones. It colors everything. It is despair and darkness, it is brokenness in our heads and hearts, it is the death of hope, the death of relationships, the death of grace and love for ourselves and others.
The sting of death...
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.
WOOOOO! Victory!!!
That’s what we want! That’s what we long for. We want to live in that. Give thanks! That’s a joyful call, a call to celebrate, a call to worship.
and then just to sit in that and feel good? No, there’s more. A call to Action!
Therefore, let us be faithful, knowing that our labor is fruitful.
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.
Steadfast.
That means you don’t quit, you don’t move, you don’t give up… even when giving up would make sense. Why would you give up your life for the name of Jesus?
Because I’m not playing for this life. I know something you do not know. I am immortal. Steadfast!
Immovable. You can’t shake me, you can’t break me, you can’t move me, because I am standing on the rock of Jesus Christ.
My work is “abounding.” That means there is plenty of it and more. I got “work” for Jesus and more. It’s not about fulfilling the quota, it’s about life more abundant: Living a life that only makes sense in the light of Jesus’ resurrection… and in the light of my own coming glorious resurrection.
If it’s not “in vain” it is “fruitful!”
Not Today
Not Today
The enemy doesn’t like this message or this story. The lies of the enemy, the story of sin and death will lie about every piece of this.
Be steadfast? No… you’ve stood enough.
Immovable? No, you better move. You better duck, you better hide, you better protect your time, your pleasure, your stuff, your money. You got to go with the flow. Immovable objects get moved.
Abounding? No… you went to church this week, you’re good. You’re done. You did devotions too? What? That’s like way more than enough “Jesus stuff” for this week!
and, you know that most of your labor is in vain. You don’t see the fruit. That friend you’ve been witnessing too… nothing happened. That broken guy you’ve been loving on… he’s still broken isn’t he?
That’s a lie from the enemy.
This we know, straight from God, into your life. Hear, not my words, but His.
In Jesus, your labor in the name and cause of Jesus is never in vain. Never. You may not see it yet, but God’s word does not go out void.
You already have in you the strength, the courage, the ability to stand where He told you to stand. Immovable and unshakeable, abounding in the work of the Lord.
With resurrection going for us…
With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.