Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 22, 2023 | 1 Corinthians - Resurrection Part 1

Transcript

January 22, 2023 | 1 Corinthians - Resurrection Part 1 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was Dani's birthday this week, so you should wish him a happy birthday if you see him.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really happy that you're with us this morning.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: We um we're almost done with 1 Corinthians, and um as we head into the final two chapters of this series, if it's your first week with us, we've been going through the book of 1 Corinthians.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um but as we begin chapter 15 this week, uh we're we're sort of tailing off here.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've got this message.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've we're gonna break chapter 15 into two parts, and then we'll have chapter 16 to finish out.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited though, because um it seems like every week has brought an unbelievably controversial topic that you know we have to wade through together, and as much uh joy as that normally brings me.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're getting in into something that's I I'm really excited about this morning, and it has to do with uh the resurrection.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I'm excited is because I think that there is a lot for us to gain by understanding the resurrection better than we do.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: See, the way we feels like I would just say our culture feels about the resurrection or things like that.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the idea of zombies, right?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Something coming back from the dead.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You guys might be familiar with the new show on HBO The Last of Us about two people going across a post-pandemic America trying to run from zombies.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Got the third highest um opening ratings of any HB show, HBO show in history.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And before that, there was The Walking Dead for like 25 years.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I mean, we go way back, way back.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've got the night of the living dead and a whole lot of other things.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of have a fascination with zombies uh and the undead, and it makes it a little difficult for us to then sort of move into chapter 15 where we're talking about not only Christ resurrecting, but the fact that all of you who trust in Christ are going to raise from your graves one day.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of hard to separate the two, but we need to, because this isn't some kind of weird, horrific, ghoulish sort of circumstance.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is chapter 15 is going to talk about not only the resurrection, but the glorious nature of it, what it means for us and our bodies, what it means for the future in heaven, and also what it means for the ultimate defeat of Satan.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's a lot wrapped up in this.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we get into it, I just want you to kind of try and move with me beyond this space and understand that we don't have to look to Hollywood to define what it means for the resurrection, because the Bible has done it for us already very well.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you would go ahead and turn, if you have your Bibles with you, we're in chapter 15, verse 1.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we'll begin this morning.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul begins this way He says, Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preach to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand, and by which you are being saved.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you hold the m if you hold to the message I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: For I passed on to you as most important what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem that the Corinthians have, which is basically how everything has come up in this letter, is the Corinthians have a problem.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: The problem that the Corinthians have is that they do not rightly understand the resurrection.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not, critically, because this will be important for us as we move on, it's not that they reject that Jesus rose from the dead.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that they say that that didn't happen.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Their disconnect is that they say, Jesus rose from the dead, okay?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: We believe that, we trust in that, and this is about, you know, 20, 25 years post-Cross, okay, that we're talking about the Corinthians.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, no, we believe that he rose from the dead.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the problem is that they don't understand how to apply that to their lives, and ultimately they don't understand that they will be resurrected in the future because of Christ, and how that applies to their life.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that is really the movement of chapter 15.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is not going to spend a lot of time justifying the resurrection, as he gets to later on here in this passage, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's stating these things as just a simple fact.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, hey, Jesus, he rose from the dead, right?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then he appeared to all these different people, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Cephas is uh Peter, it's the Aramaic name for Peter.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, right, he appeared to Peter, then to the twelve, that'd be the other disciples.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then he appeared to over 500 brothers and sisters at one time, meaning uh other Christians were people who would then believe in Christ.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: The sort of subtext there is you can talk to them if you'd like.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're across the Mediterranean, most of them, but they're around still.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then he appeared to James, which would be Jesus' half-brother, his sort of Mary and Joseph's true child, or one of their children.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then to the apostles, which is sort of an inclusive term.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It would uh count as the disciples, the twelve would be a part of the apostles, but the apostles are anybody really who were a part of Jesus' ministry and saw his resurrection.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, as we keep going, Paul ultimately calls himself the last of the apostles.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: He does that in the next section, which we're skipping over, because he didn't get sort of the uh true blue uh resurrection appearance of Jesus.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: He got sort of a special one-on-one viewing on the road as he was going to persecute Christians.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus appeared to him, said, Why are you hurting my church?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then Saul converted and became Paul.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, the whole point here is simply Paul's not saying, Hey, the resurrection, I've got to prove this to you.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying, we're sort of taking this as a fact, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: It happened, lots of people saw it, we all believe in it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that have to do for us?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the the difficulty here is that the Corinthians, like I said, they don't understand it correctly.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: They have heard the gospel, that's the beginning of this passage, right?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: He proclaims the gospel.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ died for your sins.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can have a relationship with God now because the mistakes and the rebellion that you have made are forgiven entirely because of what Jesus did on the cross for you.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross ultimately resulted in his death and resurrection.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And some people are putting their faith in incorrect things.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: They don't understand the details of the gospel.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And though across the board we do not know everything about the Bible as we should, there are certain things of our faith that we should really have the details like locked in on.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those things is the gospel, which includes the resurrection.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So as we move on here, we see that the Corinthians did not rightly understand the gospel and the resurrection, but moreover, how that applies to their life.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're going to skip ahead to verse 12.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified wrongly about God that he raised up Christ, whom he did not raise up, if in fact the dead are not raised.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless, and you are still in your sins.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those then who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So now we see, right, the disconnect.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Once more, it is not that they reject the resurrection of Christ, but that they sort of reject or don't really consider the fact that they will all be resurrected in the future.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this makes sense, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: When we when we look back at Greek culture, it was extremely popular.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can look at Homer and Plato and other writers, and they would say things like, Hey, when you die, there's this division that we live with during our whole lives between the spirit and the flesh.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when you die, those things are separated, and your spirit, it moves on into this eternal space, wherever it is, and you sort of slough off like a snake.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: The excess skin, your mortal body gets left behind, and what you move forward with is basically this spirit into wherever you go.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this was popular.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is what everybody believed back then.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so for the Greeks to just hear about Jesus and then to not fully understand the implications of it, hey, maybe we can give them a pass, but at the same time, Paul then gives them a very important set of dominoes that start to fall over if they reject the simple truth that they will be resurrected in the future.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not raised.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Our preaching and message is useless, your faith is worthless, we are liars, you still suffer from your sins, there's no hope for the dead Christian, and we should be pitied for this false hope.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of things are pinned to this, right?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we come into this?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe you believe, in sort of a factual way, in the resurrection of the dead and what is coming in the future.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: But for the vast majority of Christians, the only time that we really think about the resurrection is at Easter.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's at Easter that we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead, and perhaps at that time we will talk about being resurrected in the future as well.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But there aren't a whole lot of other times where that comes up.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that the resurrection of our future bodies is something that should affect us on a day-to-day basis because it changes the way that we live.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that we have a future past death changes the way that we live now.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least it should.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so if there is no resurrection of the dead, notice that Paul does not base his entire argument on if Christ didn't raise from the dead.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, he says, I'm looking to the future.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going big picture here.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying, as he will in a moment, Jesus was the first, and there are a whole lot more coming.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if we say that that isn't here, or if that isn't coming in the future, he's like, we have to start working back, and we can deconstruct our faith from that point.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, that's not the case.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, not only did Jesus rise from the dead, and we have plenty of evidence for that as a historical fact, but we will rise from the dead too.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a problem, once more, which is that this still seems to be something where we don't always recognize how it applies to us.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can look to the cross and say, hey, when I think about Jesus Christ dying on the cross, right, I see the fact that it applies to my life.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when we think about Jesus' resurrection, how many times do we go, well, because he rose from the dead, therefore me.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's one other example that Paul's going to bring up, though, that we should be familiar with about how we take the example that somebody set and funnel ourselves through their experience.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: As it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so we go all the way back to Genesis in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, right?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that the eating of the fruit and bringing sin into the world and the fall of mankind in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, that is something that we can apply here, because all of us, every single one of us, without our choosing, has been basically funneled through the sin of Adam.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: It gave us a sin nature, and so that really, without thinking about it, we desire to rebel against God from the very beginning.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: We all funnel through Adam, and because of our sin, because of our rebellion against God, we deserve the just punishment for that, which is death.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we're familiar with this idea of sort of everybody going through the lens of Adam.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: We've all died, but now a new lens is presented.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: This new funnel, if you will, right?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: That now everybody is flowing through Jesus Christ, and it's not just that we have forgiveness in him, but just as death came through Adam, now we have life coming through Christ.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you can say, well, okay, we we talk about that in church, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to have life and have life to the fullest?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then trust in Jesus, know him.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: It gives your life purpose to know him now.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you meaning.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: God has a plan for you.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a whole nother level.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is varsity life, okay?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is talking about the life that Jesus is bringing through his resurrection, is not just, hey, you can have purpose and meaning because you know you're living the life that God intended for you.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is no, after you pass through death, you get round two.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the life that we're talking about.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can see here that there is absolutely a connection that we have with Christ, and perhaps a deeper connection than we normally think about.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in all of these things, right, Paul is trying to draw them towards this future.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it says that Christ is the first fruits.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because maybe you had this question.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I did.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think back to the Bible, and I think of examples where people have risen from the dead.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus wasn't the first to do it in the Bible.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: The most popular example besides him would be Lazarus.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Lazarus rose from the dead.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: That was a sign of the life that we would have in Christ, but Lazarus died again.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Brutal for the family to have that go through that twice.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a sign of the life that we would have in Jesus Christ.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: What is different about Jesus?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: The difference in the resurrection of Christ is that it has not ended and will not end.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: He is alive now in heaven.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: That is different, entirely, on a separate order than any other resurrection that happened in the Bible.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ is the first fruits because he is the first one to have the same kind of resurrection that you and I will have if we trust in him.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is why he is the first fruits.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: He is the one that brings it all about.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a farmer, right, hoping for rain and looking to the sky and feeling for the first time a drop of rain on his face.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is the resurrection of Christ.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: It portends a future where more great things are coming.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul is now going to get into a bit of um in verse 23, I don't know how to say it.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to give some more information.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this information, I want you to zone in with me, okay?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because you might have a tendency to zone out here.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about some big things, some high-level things, but this is the most important passage in chapter 15, or at least the one that we're going through today.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So he just said that Jesus Christ is the first fruits.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's the first of a kind, that we will ultimately follow after him.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: We will be funneled through Jesus because he has resurrected life, we will have resurrected life.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: But each in his own order.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Christ, the first fruits.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Afterward, at his coming, those who belong to Christ.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he abolishes all rule and all authority and power.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: The last enemy to be abolished is death, for God has put everything under his feet.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now when it says everything is put under him, it is obvious that he who puts everything under him is the exception.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: When everything is subject to Christ, then the Son himself will also be subject to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So previously Paul had that section where he said, If there's no resurrection of the dead, dominoes, boom, boom, boom, boom, start falling.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of bad things happen, including that your faith is worthless.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: That was a hypothetical, right?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: There is a resurrection in the future.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ did resurrect from the dead.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have got an entirely better and more holy set of dominoes that we're going to start knocking down.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: The first domino is that has already really been toppled, which is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: That one's already gone, right?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's falling right now.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: It just has not yet hit the second domino.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: What are the dominoes?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Connor, why do you keep saying the word domino?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's an order present here.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is the first fruits, okay?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's one.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Afterward at his coming, those who belong to Christ.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: So afterward at his coming really would be two.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: The second domino is when Jesus Christ returns.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: The third is the resurrection of those who belong in Christ, who've trusted in that phrase you might have seen here, it just means that you've trusted in Jesus as your Savior.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a saving faith in Christ?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: That means that you are included now, and you are now the third domino.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the fourth is the end.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what this is not supposed to be is some step-by-step, detail-oriented plan for what the end times are supposed to look like.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what's happening here.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening here is Paul is showing, right, and connecting, so important, your resurrection, my resurrection to the end times.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is the first, right?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Really, that is when the clock began ticking.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was sort of when the belt, well, literally, right, when he dies, the curtain is torn, it's a new relationship with God that we get to have.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many people remember this in the gospel accounts.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus dies, right, other people rise from the graves.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're just in Jerusalem, okay?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like uncle who has been dead for 15 years, just walks back in the door.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: You might have, maybe that was an uncomfortable image for a lot of you.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, as we're talking about the resurrection, there was a resurrection that happened back when Jesus died.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was sort of a precursor for what's coming.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is resurrected from the dead, and now we say, okay, now what are we waiting for?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: When is it the second domino going to hit?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's when he returns.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's when he returns.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't know if that's five years, that's fifty, that's five thousand years away.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever it is, when he returns, that is when things really start going a lot faster.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus Christ returns, is when all who have died and trusted in Christ will be raised from the dead.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a resurrection of the same kind as Jesus.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you're just, you know, Marionette, you got a little bit of light in your eyes.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, you are better.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get into this when we talk about the end of chapter 15.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of stealing some of it right now, but it will be better than what you have right now.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Your broken, beaten bodies that are experiencing the effects of death and decay, and all the while heading towards mortality, you will have a better body than that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: It will be a pure and divine and heavenly body that you will get when Jesus Christ returns and you raise from the dead.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that is happening here in this passage, which really brings everything home, is Paul is now connecting the resurrection of everybody, not just to sort of, he's not just trying to tell them, like, how neat is it that you get to come back?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's attaching it to the end times.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what, let's look here, right?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: He says that this part four involves putting everything, Jesus defeating all of his enemies, all those who are challenging his throne, everybody who is aiming for the king is going to be destroyed and put under his feet.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the last enemy to be abolished is death.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do we experience right now as an effect of sin, our own sin, as a righteous judgment for what we have done, we experience death.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the way it was supposed to be.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the way it was in the Garden of Eden until sin entered into the world.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: But because of our sin, even if we trust in Christ, we still experience death.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: As is very apparent to every single person here.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: What I am trying to tell you, though, is that that death is ultimately the last enemy.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: That death who brought it into the world?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Satan.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so when the second, when Jesus returns and when he comes back, and when he puts all of his enemies under his feet, the last one to be defeated ultimately is Satan.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, if you are trying Tracking with me, right?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that Satan brought death into the world and death is defeated, that means that your resurrection from the dead is the sign of Satan being defeated.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: You with me?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that puts a whole lot more weight into this problem that the Corinthians had, where they were saying, hey, we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but I don't really think that affects our future.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's like, uh-huh, au contraire, actually, it affects everything about your future because it's not even really about you, even though Jesus Christ in his grace and his love and his mercy wants to have a relationship with you.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Really, it's the defeat of evil.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the big end-of-the-book sort of thing.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, until the prologue and we get to be with God in heaven forever.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's the climax.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's what we're hurtling towards so fast is the fact that Satan is going to be defeated and a byproduct, how neat is that, a byproduct, an off-cut of Satan being destroyed, is that you get to come back.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because that is really the last card in his hand, and he has to play it, and Jesus says, I've got a trump card.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've got it better.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So the last enemy to be abolished is death, for God has put everything under his feet.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we have here a really amazing claim about your resurrection and mine.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul now is going to, he is basically established, he says, the resurrection is real.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Your resurrection is real.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Here are the effects of if it wasn't real, which it's not, but he's like, this is why you should really care.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, here now is the future that's coming, because it is true, but what we haven't really nailed in yet is how does that knowledge of the future affect the way that you live today?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul comments on that in the last passage that we'll look at this morning.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 29, Paul says, otherwise, what will they do who are being baptized for the dead?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: If the dead are not raised at all, then why are people baptized for them?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we in danger every hour?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: I face death every day, as surely as I may boast about you, brothers and sisters, in Christ Jesus our Lord.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: I fought wild beasts in Ephesus as a mere man.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: What good did that do me?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do not be deceived.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Bad company corrupts good morals.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Come to your senses and stop sinning, for some people are ignorant about God.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: I say this to your shame.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So previously, when Paul gave a list of here are all the bad things that happen if the resurrection isn't real, what he had sort of left out of that was the personal connection.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: He just spoke in general terms.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You would still be in your sins, your faith is worthless, right?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: These kinds of things.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now he gives two very, very personal examples.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I want you to think about the people that you are baptizing right now in Corinth, in your churches, the ones that you are telling them, right, that baptism represents the death and resurrection of Christ and the death and resurrection of us.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is what baptism represents.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: There are other things attached to it, but that's really the key message.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's like, if there's nothing coming in the future, if you don't at least believe that, or at the very least, right, that you don't consider it, then he says, then why are you baptizing people?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: It almost harkens back to this previous claim that he had where he says, if you really just hope in Jesus Christ for this life alone, he's like, then we should be pitied above everybody else.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why should we be pitied?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we should be pitied because the part of the message of Christianity is that we suffer.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like the, you know, Lord, the idea that attaching ourselves to God in this life is the key to health and wealth and happiness.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's the prosperity gospel.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's a false gospel.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what the Bible teaches.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: What the Bible does teach is that you should pick up your cross every single day and carry it, that you should sacrifice yourselves for other people, that ultimately we live for something in the future, and that there's a good chance that in this life you're going to experience extremely difficult things, pain and death, and yet in the future you will be redeemed from it.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: You have the resurrection to look forward to.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says we should be pitied if the resurrection isn't here.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Paul gets into his personal example by saying, as an apostle, as one, he calls himself the least of the apostles, but he says, I've been shipwrecked, I've been stoned, I've been thrown in prison for years.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, What?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Please, somebody tell me if I don't need to keep doing this kind of stuff.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Who wants to do that if they're not looking forward to anything?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why should he fight off beasts?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why should he be an itinerant evangelist?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why should he be beaten and mocked and live homeless?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why should he do anything?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why should you do any of the things that God has called you to do if there is no future?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is where it really grips us, is because it moves from the general to the very specific.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, the suffering that you're going through, the pains that you're experiencing, the trials and tribulations, all the things that we ultimately look to and point to the cross and say, Hey, but God lifts up the weak and he humbles the proud.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: We go to the Sermon on the Mount and we say, you know, blessed are the meek and the poor in spirit, that there is comfort in the cross, that there is a pathway forward where we might find joy in this life, even though happiness might be fleeting.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, if there is no future, you might as well live it up.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: You might as well squeeze as much pleasure out of this life as possible if there's nothing coming.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: This past week there was a bit of news.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they have a couple hundred people that go there.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not huge.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the coaches, the teachers, all the students received a very surprise announcement this week when they were simply told that after this summer, nobody was coming back to campus.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're providing ways for the students to transfer out, to finish their degrees, but to the coaches, to the teachers, they were just simply told, hey, sorry, um, this is done.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine that pitch to some athlete who is going to join that team, somebody who is going to come and study at Presentation College in South Dakota, no less, right?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: That, hey, um, you should come here.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: You should uproot yourself, you should change your life, move your family, whatever, spend a lot of money to come and do this, and we're going to be gone in six months.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not a very compelling claim.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: You get what I'm saying here, but the problem is we often live this way.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the problem.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that you and I don't understand intellectually that there is a resurrection.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the case for you, in which case I'm really glad you're here.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that we understand that there's something coming in the future, yet we are living as if it's not coming.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that makes sense because it's critical to understanding what we're talking about today.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: This, what Paul discusses at the very end of uh in verses 32, or excuse me, 33 and 34, when he talks about do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Come to your senses and stop sinning, for some people are ignorant about God.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: I say this to your shame.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're ignorant, not because they have not tried, but because they don't understand what is coming in the future and they have not applied it to themselves.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: They are living without the future in mind.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, Paul kind of you know gives them a wake-up call.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this word here, when he says, come to your senses, literally in the Greek, it means to sober up.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, come out of your drunken state that you're in and realize the stakes that are in play.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Realize what's coming in the future.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some people might say, so the resurrection is coming.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean I just kick back, relax, put a mai tie in my hand, and just say, hey, I've got round two coming.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this life is easy because I know that I get to have a better one with Jesus in the future.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or the other way we can cut it is we say that I don't care about what's coming in the future.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I am going to extract as much out of this life and pleasure as possible without considering the future.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, No, there's a middle ground that we hit.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: We say we recognize that the future is coming, and we also say that we're going to squeeze as much out of this life as possible for Christ.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do it for ourselves, we do it for other people.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we know what's coming, if we apply that to our lives, there are things which we'll talk about when we tackle the second half of chapter 15.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are things that should comfort us about that.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: There are ways that it helps us through trials and travails and the weaknesses of our own body that we get to look forward to it.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: But there is an eminently practical application for your life right now, which says that you are supposed to live it up, but you're supposed to do it because you have got a ticking clock before you are no longer able to tell people about the gospel, before you are no longer able to tell people about Jesus and his resurrection, you have got a short amount of time before your time is up.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I experience the effects of our sin, the last penalty that we must experience, which is death, until we go on.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a hard thing to kind of grasp.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in high school, um I, like many high schoolers, struggled to wake up in the mornings.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it normally fell to one of my two parents, right, to wake me up.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: My mother, let's just say, was much more patient in the way that she woke me up.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's favorite way to wake me up was to pour ice water on me.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: So there were a couple mornings that I did not get up fast enough where I was sputtering because ice water had just been poured in my face.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Can't say I loved it, right?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it woke me up.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's just say it was efficient, maybe?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be a good word.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: There are some times in our Christian faith where we kind of need somebody to just lovingly like grab our the side of our faces and just say, hey, I need you to kind of wake up here.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: I need you to recognize what's going on, and I know that it's more comfortable to not think about it, but we need you here.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: We need you in the game.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think that's what Paul is doing to the Corinthians.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm not criticizing you because you didn't understand necessarily, but he says your lack of understanding has made it so that you're just kind of sitting on the sidelines.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I want you, I think Paul, if he were here with us, I think he would say, I want you to live it up.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to live your life.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: But there are two options that you have.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it for you.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it for you.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can, as Paul, let's just talk about some of the things that Paul said.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can hang around with the wrong people.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can continue sinning as much as you like, right?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Even though that goes against what the cross was ever for, right?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can you can um you know corrupt yourselves because of the things that you're thinking about.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can really just live for now.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: He says, that's living for you.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Even as Christians, some of us have oriented our lives so that it's still all about us.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or, Paul says, right, we can do it for Christ.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: We can do it for him.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is why we live it up, my friends.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: We live with the future in mind, understanding that our time is short, and we should squeeze it like a rag to get everything out of it, but not for ourselves, but for Jesus.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we do it because we know what's coming.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: And all these things, I think it's important, right, that we allow our knowledge to change the way that we act now.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we could go back to the Corinthians, they would say, in all honesty, I had no idea what my resurrection meant.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea that it had to do with God defeating Satan and bringing about the resolution of all things.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: That I am simply a byproduct, a beautiful, loved, and grace-filled byproduct of that, is that I get to live in eternity with God forever.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's the end goal.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus came here to do.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, that's why Paul at the very beginning can say, if we do not resurrect from the dead, then we can call Christ's mission failure.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because what did he do?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: He died on a cross for our sins.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've forgiven, we're forgiven of our sins in the sense that he has paid the penalty.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: But then the one thing which was brought into this world that has affected us more than anything else pain, disease, death, if that still gets to rain, I'd say he didn't do the good job.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well be it for me to say something like that, but God says it.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: God says he came so that you might be resurrected.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: You could have life with him eternally, and that should change the way that you live right now.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not some zombie story, right?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is the glorious resurrection of our bodies.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: The one thing that should die and not raise up like a zombie is the sin in our lives.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: That would be horrific.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, God says, you have the grace to walk forward in these things, to live it up so that you may make the most of your life looking forward to the future.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: God, you are so good to us.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, what is it that we have the chance to follow after you, to live with obedience, to know you personally, and God, because though we have done nothing to deserve it, you died on the cross for our sins, and you will raise us up again.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: God, two things that we could not possibly hope to achieve on our own.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Two things which require the power of God and your love and your mercy.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: But God, we also recognize that the full story also involves you being king over everything.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you putting death, even death, under your feet.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray as we think about these things, that you would help us to just kind of look at our lives and say, I want to live it up, but I want to live it up for you, not for myself, because I know how short my time is.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we we trust all of these things into your care.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: I ask that you would bring us comfort and encouragement because we know that you are sovereign over all and that you do defeat evil.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And God, that you would, by the power of your spirit, show us the ways in our lives where we might walk forward in a greater way, focused on you.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming, everybody.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.