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Queen Elizabeth and 1 Corinthians 15 - A Sermon by Glen Scrivener || SLP426 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:10
SPEAKER_00: Hello and thank you for downloading this episode of the Speak Life Podcast.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Whoever you are, wherever you're listening to this in the world, whatever your beliefs, you are most welcome.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: My name is Thomas Thorought.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm the media producer at Speak Life, and you're about to hear a sermon that Glenn Scrivener preached at All Souls Eastbourne on Sunday the 11th of September 2022, celebrating the life of Queen Elizabeth II and the reason for the hope that she had.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: The passage is 1 Corinthians 15, if you'd like to look it up for yourself and follow along.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Our thoughts and prayers are with the royal family and all who are grieving around the world right now.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Over to Glen.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Twenty-one years ago, today, the Twin Towers were attacked.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: A symbol of a nation fell, and the whole world was thrown into turmoil.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: Today we remember a very different national symbol.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: For us, it is a woman of flesh and blood who has embodied her people in the most intensely personal way.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: She too has fallen.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: This is a profoundly significant event.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: In a constitutional monarchy like ours, we have heads of states that embody the people, embody the nation, embody the commonwealth, embody the realm.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: It's fascinating to think that for all that we might believe in democracy, Queen Elizabeth has been for us more of a representative than an elected official ever could be.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: A career politician might play a role within an administration, but administrations and politicians are not really embodiments of the nation in the same way that a king or a queen is.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: I believe in elections and parliaments and representative democracy.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: At least I think that's a decent enough arrangement for this passing age, but a parliament represents its people in one kind of way.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: It's an institution where politicians come and go interchangeably, sporadically, disposably.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: A royal family represents a nation in a very different way.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: The royals are the institution.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: Their births, their marriages, their deaths are a real focal point for the nation.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: With elected politicians, we don't really care about their families, their home life in the last few prime ministers.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: We've had one that doesn't know how many children he has, and another who famously left his at the pub.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: And no one much cares.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Because their families, their lives, their births, their marriages, their deaths are not a center of interest, but royal families, royal births, royal marriages, and royal deaths.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: They are intensely personal.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: We find ourselves swept up into their sorrows and their joys.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Their frailty as a family represents us because we are family.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: And we are frail.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: In some senses, the royals are quite distant from us.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: They are richer than us, they are more privileged than us.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Their day-to-day lives are quite different from our lives, and yet, because they are a family of flesh and blood, they have joys and sorrows.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: One year is an anus mirabolis, another year is an anus horibulus.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: Just like with us.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: Except we don't put it in Latin usually.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: But we understand what they mean.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: They have ups and downs.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: We have ups and downs.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: They have births and marriages and deaths.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: We have births and marriages and deaths.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: They represent us far more personally than any institution could.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: And there is no more personal representative of us than the ruler at the head of the royal family.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: The queen has been an embodiment of the people.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth was our queen, and we were Elizabethans.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: And I can't believe I said that in the past tense.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: Most of us have never known anything but being Elizabethans.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: Most of us don't want to be anything but Elizabethans.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: But here we are at the end of an age.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth has been all most of us have known.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: We've grown up with her face on our coins and on our stamps and on our jam.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: She has been a constant over the last 70 years, advising 15 prime ministers.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: From Churchill to trust.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: There's a sentence, isn't it?
6:08
SPEAKER_01: From Churchill to truss.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: Churchill born 1874.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: Truss born 1975.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: And she has spanned a lot of them.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: She has been the embodiment of a people and the embodiment of an age.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: She is us.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: No wonder we feel the way that we feel.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: No wonder her death affects us the way it affects us.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: There's actually something very biblical about it all.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: At the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, C.S.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: Lewis wrote this in 1953.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: It's a letter to an American friend about the coronation of Elizabeth.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: And Lewis here captures perfectly why her life and her death affects us so keenly.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, over here, people did not get that fairy tale feeling about the coronation.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: What impressed most who saw it was the fact the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it, the symbolic side of it.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: Hence, in the spectators, a feeling of one hardly knows how to describe it: awe, pity, pathos, mystery.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: Humanity called by God to be his vice regent and high priest on earth.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: His vice regent, his deputy.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: His vice-regent, his deputy, his high priest, his go-between on earth.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: Yet feeling so inadequate, as if he said, In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are, glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: One has missed the whole point unless one feels that we have all been crowned.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: And that coronation is somehow, if splendid, a tragic splendor.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: She is us.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: She is a frail person crowned with great responsibility, like humanity itself, like Adam himself.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: In saying this, Lewis is reflecting on verses like the ones that we've had read this morning, verses about Adam, humanity itself, in Adam, and since Adam has been crowned.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: We've been called by God to be his vice regent and high priest, his deputy and go-between.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: So whether you're a monarchist or a Republican or whatever, it doesn't matter.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: Lewis is saying, look at her, and you're seeing us.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: But now we look at her, and her earthly remains are being toured around the kingdom as she lies in state.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: Look at her, and you're looking at us.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: It's a profound moment, this.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: When we look to someone like Queen Elizabeth, with her position, her responsibility, her burdens, we're seeing a picture of humanity, a picture of us.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: We have been placed on this earth to serve, to bear the responsibility of ruling on God's behalf.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: That's why it's amazing to me that 1 Corinthians 15 was set months ago as the passage that we would study this morning.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: It's all about hope in the face of death, and it's all about Adam's story, which C.S.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: Lewis is referencing here.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: We didn't plan for this part of the Bible to be speaking into times of national mourning, but God knows what he's doing.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: So I urge you, whether you're familiar with the Bible or not, come with me and let's hear God's word on this.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: As we study the story of Adam, we will learn why it is we feel like Elizabeth represents us.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: We will understand why we feel swept up in her life and death, and we will learn how we can face grief and an uncertain future with the confidence and trust which Elizabeth herself had.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: So let's have a look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15 from verse 45.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul is writing this letter.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: He says, So it is written, the first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam a living spirit.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man is of heaven.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth, and as is the heavenly man, so also those who are of heaven.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, that's Adam, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man, that's Christ.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Lot of detail in that, you might not get it all, but here's the big picture.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: There are two rulers, two great sovereigns, Adam and Jesus Christ.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: And if Elizabeth has represented a people and an age, how much more this first ruler, Adam?
11:54
SPEAKER_01: The name Adam in Hebrew, it just means humanity.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: So the Bible begins with a story about a person called humanity, a person given great responsibility and great privileges, and yet humanity turns from God.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: Humanity mistrusts its maker.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: Humanity brings catastrophe on itself.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible is constantly saying, what Adam did, humanity does.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: What he did, we always do.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: Adam is our representative.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: We are not merely Elizabethans according to the Bible.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: Far more, we are Adamites.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: Do you recognize that you are an Adamite?
12:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, think about what he did.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: Do you know the story?
12:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, he was suspicious of God.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: Suspicious about whether his maker could be trusted to give him all that he needs in life.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: And then he was selfish, grasping at the forbidden fruit that he was denied.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: And he was self-justifying, hiding, and then putting on those ridiculous clothes of fig leaves, and then blaming everybody else around him.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: Adam is suspicious, selfish, self-justifying.
13:31
SPEAKER_01: Do you recognize yourself in that?
13:33
SPEAKER_01: I certainly do.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: Suspicious.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: I I often doubt whether God has my best interests at heart.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: Can you relate?
13:46
SPEAKER_01: Selfish?
13:47
SPEAKER_01: I often grasp at what I want when I want it, no matter the consequences.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: Can you relate?
13:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm often self-justifying, blaming anything and anyone except myself.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Can you relate?
14:03
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe we're related then.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we're part of Adam's family.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we are suspicious, selfish, and self-justifying.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we are Adamites.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible asks us to imagine a world in which there is a royal figure, like Elizabeth, but this royal figure, Adam, was crowned by God and called to be his deputy and his go-between.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: But instead of serving God and others, he was self-serving.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: In the figure of Adam, we have a royal who through cowardice, mistrust, and selfishness sold us out to our oldest enemy at the first opportunity and brought calamity on the kingdom.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: He invited in the dragon who laid waste our world.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: And now we live in the ruins of his realm, and we live out the selfishness of his ways.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: You might think this is a fairy tale story, but I invite you to consider whether it is not the most realistic appraisal of our world.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: In verses 42 to 44, Paul describes life in the kingdom of Adam with four descriptors.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: We'll have a look at them.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: In these verses, he's speaking of people as seeds that are sown into the ground.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: We're headed for burial in the kingdom of Adam.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: We'll get to that in a minute.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: But just notice the four ways that life is described on the way to our burial.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: Verse 42 The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: Life in Adam is perishing, it's shameful, it's weak, and it is separated.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: First of all, it's it's perishing.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: It's a word that means exactly like what it sounds: like cut flowers, like overripe fruit, like old dairy products, we are perishing.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a saying that women age like fine wine and men age like milk.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: It's a good line, isn't it?
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not true.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: It's not true.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: We're all milk.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, ladies, we're all milk, all of us.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: We're all perishing.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: I I had this sense very intensely recently.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: I I saw a friend in the flesh who I hadn't seen uh almost since school days.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: And as I met him now in middle age, I did that thing where you sort of squint and cock your head, and I I kind of recognized the teenager inside this latex suit that had apparently now melted.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: And and as I looked at him, I kind of there was this moment of recognition.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Ah, I see, I see the old Steve.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: But then I saw him squinting and cocking his head at me, and I thought, how rude.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, my latex suit has melted as well.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: But now I look at everyone, and now I've kind of trained my eyes to be able to see the youngster within, and now I can do it, now I can see.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: So fascinating, we we are all perishing youngsters, aren't we?
17:32
SPEAKER_01: But I've just recognized, you know, middle-aged people, we are all just tired, saggy teenagers.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: That's all we are.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: We're perishing.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: Even the queen herself, what an English rose she was.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: In her prime, what an English rose.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: But even the greatest roses end up perishing.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: As do we all.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: That's the nature of life in the kingdom of Adam.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: We're perishing, but we're also shameful.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: Verse 43, there's that word dishonor.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: It's a word about shame, dishonor, grubbiness.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Paul is saying that there is a moral sense in which we go off, right?
18:20
SPEAKER_01: There is death in ourselves, but there's also death in our souls.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Later on in the passage, verse 56 says that the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Sin and death are twinned in the Bible.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Right back to the time of Adam.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: There was a tree of life, but if you reject what God has offered, you're rejecting God and going for the forbidden fruit.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: So sin is rejecting life, and rejecting life is sin.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: Sin is death, and death is sin.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: And we're not just dying, we're also sinful, and we know it.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: And there's a certain shame that comes along with that, a certain disgrace.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, in the story of Adam and Eve, they go and hide and make these ridiculous coverings of fig leaves because they are naked and ashamed.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Queen Elizabeth knew all about this problem of sin, she said in the Christmas broadcast 2011.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves, from our recklessness or our greed.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: God sent into the world a unique person, neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a savior with the power to forgive.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: We need forgiveness.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: We need a savior because we sin.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: To err is human.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: And it leads, as it did with Adam, to the desperate impulse to hide, to cover up.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: It leads to a certain dishonor, a certain grubbiness, a certain shame.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: It's the downcast gaze.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: It's the wince.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: It's the slumped shoulders.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: It's the head and the hands.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: Can you relate?
20:15
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we're related.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: And in addition to the dishonor, in addition to the shame, we also feel weak.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: This weakness that Paul refers to, it's a word for infirmity and impotence and feebleness.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: Do you feel it?
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Someone in my life just recently was diagnosed with diabetes, and then that meant all sorts of problems for his feet, and then one foot had to go into a plaster cast, and then his second foot had to go into a plaster cast, and then because he was in two different plaster casts, he tripped over his feet in the night.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: He broke seven ribs, he shows up in the hospital and they diagnose him with COVID.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: You think, just what you need: a respiratory illness and seven broken ribs, and it's just one thing after another, after another, after another, and that was just his own health issues.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: What about the other issues in his family?
21:07
SPEAKER_01: And we are just weak, aren't we?
21:10
SPEAKER_01: We're just feeble.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: We're infirm.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Adam's story was about a ruler with the world at his feet, but he ends up cursed, ashamed, slinking out of Eden in disgrace.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: How feeble.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: But also how separated.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: That's the fourth thing in these verses.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm saying separated here because I think that's what Paul is getting at in verse 44 with the natural body.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: For Paul, natural is the opposite of spiritual.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: If you think of heaven and paradise and the transcendent, the word natural describes how we are cut off from that, estranged from that, boxed in, separated.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: We were made for the life of the spirit, but the highest we aim for are creature comforts.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Verse 32 in our passage.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Speaks of the philosophy of Adam.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: And that's the life of Adam.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: That's life in the flesh.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: That's the natural life.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: We're made for heavenly choirs.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: We live like animals.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: We have eternity set in our hearts, says the book of Ecclesiastes.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: But without that eternal hope, we follow our animal instincts.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: So can you relate?
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Can you relate to the suspicion, the selfishness, the self-justification, to the perishing, the shame, the weakness, and the separation?
22:40
SPEAKER_01: Can you relate?
22:41
SPEAKER_01: Then maybe we are related.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we are in this family of Adam.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: What's the answer?
22:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, Elizabeth knew, and she really knows now.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: The answer is the second ruler, the last Adam, the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: Paul wrote about it earlier in the chapter, verse 21.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the eternal Son of God who joined the human race at Christmas, and he came as a second Adam, a second representative ruler, a good king to answer the fallen king.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: He lived the perfect life that we are meant to live.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Where we are suspicious, he trusted his father in all things.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Where we are selfish, he was always self-giving.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Where we are self-justifying, he took the blame on the cross, taking responsibility for all he had come to save.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: It's the most wonderful news.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: We live in the wrecked realm of Adam.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: We live out the ruinous selfishness of Adam.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: We are beset by the enemies that he invited in sin and shame and curse and death.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: This chapter calls death the last enemy.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: It is the dragon that stalks our land and claims whom he wants when he wants, be they queen or commoner.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: That dragon, death, has never lost a battle, and we cannot win.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: We are born into this world, dying from the outset.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: We are helpless as we watch our loved ones perish, and we are next.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: But verse 57.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: We cannot win.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: But God gives us a champion to slay the dragon.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: This night arises among us, not with the pomp and ceremony of an earthly ruler.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: He's a carpenter from Nazareth.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus takes on our humanity, he takes on our burdens, he takes on our sorrows, he takes on our pain, and on the cross, he takes on our sin.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: Because that is what a ruler does.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: A good ruler takes responsibility.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus on that cross took responsibility for it all.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: And in dying, he takes on that last enemy, death.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: And he conquers it, rising again on Easter Sunday to pioneer a new realm, a new kingdom, a whole new world.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: This is the king who Elizabeth served.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: This is the true king of all kings and lord of all lords.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: Without him, death is Lord.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: Death always wins, but Christ has killed death by dying, and he rises to bring resurrection.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: That's what this chapter of the Bible is all about: resurrection.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Jesus did not rot in the grave.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: He did not simply leave behind a spiritual example to copy.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: It's not his memory that gives us solace in the face of death, it's his victory.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: And because of his victory, we can bellow verse 55 in the face of death.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: Where, O death, is your victory?
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Where O death is your sting.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: We can taunt the terrible dragon death, because our Lord is a dragon slayer.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: He has turned our burial into a breakthrough.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: That's what the seed language is all about in this chapter.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Did you notice that we are called seeds?
26:39
SPEAKER_01: You might think it's not nice to be called seeds.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: Seeds are weak.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Seeds get buried.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: And Paul says, exactly.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: Just like you.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: You're weak.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: You'll be buried.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: But think of it as you're planting.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: Seeds do get buried so that they can burst out in strength and glory and life.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: Verse 36.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: What you sow, the seed that you plant in the ground, does not come to life unless it dies.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: But God gives it a body, as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: On in verse 42, so it will be with the resurrection of the dead.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised 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.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: Do you know why life is so perishing and shameful and weak and separated?
27:54
SPEAKER_01: Because you're a seed.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: That's what seeds are.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: Acorns are not oaks.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: You are not yet what you will be.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: You have to get buried in order to grow into the life that God has for you.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Verse 50: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: But Christ has taken our natural life to himself.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: He's taken it down into death, risen up to pioneer imperishable, glorious, powerful, bodily, spiritual life.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: There's a long tradition of church ministers calling the graveyard God's acre.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: God's acre.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: Means God's field.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: Why?
28:41
SPEAKER_01: Because there are a lot of seeds planted in those graveyards.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: And just as in your garden or allotment, you plant the peas and the carrots and the beans, and you put a little token.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Peas, carrots, beans.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: When you see graveyards, what are you seeing?
29:00
SPEAKER_01: You're seeing Auntie Ethel and Great Uncle Desmond and Grandpa Jones.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: And yet they have not yet appeared as Auntie Ethel and Great Uncle Desmond and Grandpa Jones yet.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: They will.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: When they have risen up in glorious resurrection life.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: Christians have an absolutely unique view of life after death.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: Christians do not believe in the afterlife.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: That's a horrible word to our ears.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: The after life.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: We don't believe in some shadowy existence after we die.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: If anything, the shadowy existence is now.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: We are pre-life.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: The real life is to come.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: We are acorns.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: One day we will be oaks.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: In the next ten days, the queen will be lying in state.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: Hundreds of thousands will see her earthly remains.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps some of us will see her earthly remains.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: What are we looking at?
30:23
SPEAKER_01: We're looking at a seed.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: And on the 19th of September, it will not be that the queen is dead and buried, so much as a seed planted to be raised up in glory.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: Jesus rose from the dead bodily.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: And he promises a bodily resurrection of feasting joy.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: And when he returns at the last trumpet blast, he will raise up Eastbourne.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: He will raise up the world on the pattern of his own resurrection.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: It's embodied, it's feasting joy.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: So then, listen, I tell you a mystery.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: Death has been swallowed up in victory.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: Where, O death, is your victory, where, O death, is your sting?
31:37
SPEAKER_01: The sting of death is sin.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: The power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Let nothing move you.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever wondered what empowered Queen Elizabeth's extraordinary service?
32:07
SPEAKER_01: She kept telling us constantly.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: She would say, the bedrock on which she built her life was the Lord Jesus Christ.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: She believed in Jesus.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: She did not believe, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: Because of Jesus, we will eat, drink, and be very merry.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: We'll do that forever.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: We don't need to serve ourselves now.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: We can give our lives fully to the work of the servant King, the Lord Jesus.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Instead of dying later, we can die now in instalments, laying down our lives, laying down our rights, laying down our time and our money in self-giving love because of our resurrected King.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: It's not eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: It's lay down your life now, for tomorrow we will eat, drink, and be eternally merry.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: So rest in peace, Elizabeth.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: And rise in glory.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: The Queen is dead.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: Long live the King.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: Our risen Lord Jesus.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: We praise you and thank you for your victory over sin, death, and hell.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: We thank you for your imperishable future.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: Promised to all who would ask, all who would come.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we come.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: We trust you.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: And with you may we serve now, knowing your risen future is ahead.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: In your name and for your glory we pray.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: Amen.