Sermon Text: 1
Corinthians 15:1-34
Scripture Reading: 1
Corinthians 15:1-34
You are going to die.
Jesus is alive.
You are going to die.
You are going to die soon. Happy Easter! Remember when you were a
child and you just could not wait for Christmas day or for your birthday? Can
you remember anticipating your wedding day or the birth of a child? Can you
remember just waiting to graduate high school or college? Can you remember beginning
that new job or waiting for your house to be completed? Now, in retrospect, can
you remember how quickly it came and went and how far down the road you are
comparatively? Perhaps the two most
important facts any human being can know are the certainty of death and
Christ’s Resurrection.
This morning my aim is
to point out three vital implications of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ:
- The Resurrection of Jesus Christ gives you a reason to live.
- The Resurrection of Jesus Christ gives you power to live today.
- The Resurrection of Jesus Christ gives you promise to live tomorrow.
If Jesus Christ is not
alive, existence is meaningless and everything must be subjective. “And if Christ has not
been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those
also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope
in this life only, we are of all people -most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians
15:17-19). “What do I gain if,
humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised,
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (I Corinthians 15:32).
We are afraid to ask
ourselves the question: What is my whole life about? We are so busy with
working, parenting, and playing that we never stop to ask why we are doing all
of this.1 Examples of Scott and
Allen asking me to lunch: You want justification for that hour, but you can’t
justify your entire existence. I want complete freedom
to live my life as I wish. You want freedom? If you want absolute freedom to
live your life how you want, you must admit the utter meaninglessness of life.
What are the ramifications of this desire?
Modern people generally
believe in no God or a God you cannot really know.1 If that is
true, this life is all there is and everything you do is utterly meaningless.
Keller gives the example of the Titanic: It makes no difference if you go down
mugging or hugging. We are about to die in five minutes and a guy tries to
steal your wallet, what would you do? The truth is, you are going to die in
five minutes (in perspective of billions of years). If there is no God to
submit to, worship, and obey than everything you do, every word you say, every
action you take means absolutely nothing.
If life is meaningless,
I implore you to live that way. Stop wanting to make a difference. Stop
desiring to make an impact. Stop trying to be significant. Stop crying out for
justice. Can you prove rape, murder, and molestation are always wrong? If yes,
on what basis? If there is no Creator, there are no absolutes and all must be
relative. If all is relative, you must be forbidden to forbid. You cannot
insist anything you believe is absolutely true. “The new rebel in our
time is a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything. The fact that he doubts
everything bars his way when he wants to denounce anything. All denunciation
requires a moral doctrine, a standard of objective truth” (GK Chesterton).
Chesterton goes on to
say something like this, “The city cries out because a policeman kills a
peasant, but must admit the peasant should have just killed himself. A
scientist goes to a political meeting where he complains we are treating native
people as beast and then he goes to a scientific meeting to prove we are
beasts. Being an infinite skeptic, which you must be, always engages you in
undermining your own mind. In his book on politics he attacks persons for
trampling on morality and in his book on ethics he criticizes morality for
trampling on people.“
If there is no
Resurrection and there is no God, CS Lewis outlines some of the implications:
When you are in love you must remember it is only a psychopharmacological reaction in your brain that is happening. There is no such thing as love. You may enjoy music, but it is only a biological reaction. Beauty and ugliness, cruelty and compassion, are totally subjective, not real, all in my brain synapsis. You are forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your emotions and the universe in which you really live.
You know human beings
are more valuable than rocks and that evil exists and that love is real. Keller
goes on to say that everything has a designer and a design. You would not sail
your sailboat down Blanding in the name of absolute freedom. You would not
roast hotdogs on a space heater. You designed by the Lord to find absolute
freedom within the confines of His law and will.
The Resurrection of Jesus
Christ gives you the power to live today.
“We were buried
therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too
might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death
like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We
know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin
might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer
be enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:4-6).
“But if the Spirit of
him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ
from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth
in you” (Romans 8:11 KJV). “If the Spirit of him
who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from
the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who
dwells in you. So then (the implication – my parenthesis),
brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For
if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put
to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the
Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:11-14 ESV).
The word “led” if the
Greek verb “ago” meaning the following:
- to lead, take with one
- to lead by laying hold of, and this way to bring to the point of destination: of an animal
- to lead by accompanying to (into) a place
- to lead with one's self, attach to one's self as an attendant
- to conduct, bring
- to lead away, to a court of justice, magistrate, etc.
- to lead
- to lead, guide, direct
- to lead through, conduct to: to something
- to move, impel: of forces and influences on the mind
- to pass a day, keep or celebrate a feast, etc.
- to go, depart
Ago, translated “led” in
Romans 8:14 is often translated “brought or bring” (Luke 4:9; Luke 4:40; Luke
19:30).
The Resurrection of Jesus
Christ gives you the promise to live tomorrow.
“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. 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?’ 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. 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” (I Corinthians 15:50-58).
Heaven is not about where we
go. Heaven is about who is coming. “Then I saw a new heaven
and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and
the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming
down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband” (Revelation 21:1-2). There is a real society with a real King and a
real Kingdom coming down.
“And I heard a loud
voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be
with them as their God’” (Revelation 21:3).
Everything you decide to
do today is predicated on what you believe about tomorrow. If any two of you were asked to screw a knob
into a drawer and unscrew it all day for ten hours a day and one of you per
paid 1 million per day and one of you a dollar a day, you during and in
anticipating your task would be radically different.
“Wake up from your
drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no
knowledge of God. I say this to your shame” (1 Corinthians 15:34).
“The end of the matter;
all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole
duty of man. For God will bring every evil deed into judgment, with every
secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
Sources:
1) Notes from Tim Keller’s message “A Reason to Live” 11/8/2011
1) Notes from Tim Keller’s message “A Reason to Live” 11/8/2011
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