Please turn now in your Bibles to the book of 1 Corinthians as we're moving toward the end of this book we've been studying for quite some time. And we're into chapter 15. And you remember Paul's been addressing a number of issues with this young and enthusiastic but often confused congregation. And so the last item that he's dealing with is some in their midst were saying that there is no resurrection of the dead. And we were saying before, probably because of ideas in their culture, the concept of bodies coming back to life seemed foolish to them, and they were denying that that happened. And so the entirety of chapter 15 is Paul's answer to them and trying to correct them. And in the first part of the chapter, he goes back to the gospel and the resurrection of Jesus as the foundation for our spiritual life. And then we saw last week, sort of argues with them and shows them the foolishness of maintaining that there is no resurrection for if that's true then even Christ isn't raised and therefore their faith is in vain. And so now we come to verses 35 to 49 in the chapter And we'll see Paul now trying to explain in a little more detail how or what is actually going to happen when God's people receive resurrected bodies. So let's give attention now to the word of God. But someone will say, how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come? Foolish one. What you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain, perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he pleases, and to each seed its own body. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another flesh of fish, another of birds, There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies. But the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption. It is raised in incorruption. 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. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth. Made of dust, the second man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust. And as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. And there we'll end the reading of God's word. May God bless his word to us as we consider it together this morning. And there is an outline in the bulletin if you'd like to follow along with the sermon message. Well, sometimes we have to learn to trust and believe something that we do not fully understand. For example, although I doubt that many of you know all the intricacies, the physics, the mathematics of flight, you have allowed yourself to go into a large metal tube that may weigh as much as 400,000 pounds when it's fully loaded with wings that aren't all that long and to let it take off and to fly. And we understand. We don't have to understand everything about flight in order to believe that flight is real and that it can take us safely to our destination. And this is also the case in a number of biblical doctrines. So there are biblical doctrines where it's difficult for us to understand exactly how they work. We could think of divine sovereignty combined with human responsibility. or the free offer of the gospel combined with God's election, or the doctrine of the Trinity, or even the doctrine of Christ's incarnation and how he has these two natures. These are things that the Bible teaches, so we must believe them because God tells us that they are true, but we don't fully understand every detail. And the same is true for the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. It seems that some in the church in Corinth were saying, this is an absurd idea, it's a ridiculous idea, perhaps they said it was an offensive idea. And they were skeptical, in part, about how does this actually work? How does a dead body give rise to life? How can that happen? And so Paul's answer to them is to remind them that God is the one who makes the impossible possible, that God is the one who can do and has done these things in our world already. And so we need to be able to be comfortable embracing, believing, celebrating what God says, even if we don't fully understand it. We couldn't, say, draw a diagram of exactly how this works. And so as we look at the passage, I hope you'll see that Jesus is going to radically remake you if you're one of his people. And he's going to do it into his image and enable you to serve him forever in a renewed creation. And children, if you'd like to draw a picture this morning, Paul talks about a seed. and then a plant that comes from the seed. So maybe you could draw a picture of a seed on one side of your drawing and then a large plant that comes out of it on the other. But listen for what this has to do with us. Well, the first thing we want to notice as we start working through the passage is that you do not need to fully understand something in order to believe that it is true. In verse 35, Paul begins arguing with sort of an imaginary opponent, and he's done this throughout this book, but someone will say he's addressing this opponent. And probably this is the kind of thing that he was hearing that the people in Corinth had actually been saying or arguing or thinking. And there are two questions here. How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come? And it seems to them that this concept of a resurrection doesn't make any sense at all. And so they dispute whether this is something that's going to happen to people. And they start to ask about the mechanics of it. And in a sense, they're mocking Paul. They think it's so ridiculous. Paul, tell us how this actually works, after all. And this will, in some sense, discredit what Paul's saying. I put on the back of the bulletin, as a part of this outline, some cross-references, one from commentators Chiampa and Rosner, so they sort of paraphrase here, dead bodies decompose and become part of the nutrients in the ground, and their molecules find their way into other living things. If those bodies have disintegrated and have been incorporated into other creatures, how can they be used again? The people in Corinth are thinking about what they know, and they've seen dead human bodies. They know that bodies decay, and there's absolutely no way that dead bodies give rise to life. And this is where, again, they're probably saying, why would you want that to happen? In our day and age, zombies are all the rage. zombie video games, zombie movies, zombie TV shows. And I don't know. People tell me there are all these rules and regulations about what's true of zombies and what they do and all that. Well, I don't know that. But it does seem to me the whole point is you have dead people walking. It's very crass. These dead people are out walking around. They're sort of partly living. And it's almost as if the people in Corinth are thinking Paul's arguing for something like this. You've got a dead corpse and then It's gonna get zapped and it's gonna come out and that doesn't make any sense. And Paul's response to this is very strong at the beginning of verse 36. He says foolish one in our translation here, but in some of the other translations it's much stronger. It's you fool. And it's striking because Jesus says we oughtn't to call people fools. And children, you should remember that, right? Jesus says you're in danger of hell if you call people fools, but Paul is using fool here in the biblical sense of the term. We sang about this in Psalm 14, verse one. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. The fool is the person who's taken God out of the equation. And so they're looking at this whole situation with God out of the equation. Commentator Charles Hodge wrote, To doubt the fact of the resurrection because we cannot understand the process is, as the apostle says, proof of folly. So children, this is a very important lesson. that you need to learn in life. There are many people out there who are gonna tell you that if the scientists, the celebrities, the cultural leaders in our society don't believe it, then you shouldn't believe it either. If you can't explain something to the satisfaction of a skeptic, then it's ridiculous. But you need to remind yourself that the people saying that largely take God out of the equation. And you don't have to do that. In fact, God's word tells us what's true. God's word tells us that God is greater than anything we can imagine. And it tells us his ways are beyond our figuring out. And so it's an argument. really against the idea that our minds are the limits of what's knowable or what's true, right? We're not the measure of what's real. God is so greater than us, and we should be thankful that an intelligence that's far greater than ours is actually running the universe. So in the same way, a child can trust his mom or dad to put on a life jacket and jump in the water Not because he knows anything about buoyancy, flotation, displacement, density, or any of those things, but because he or she trusts their parent. And similarly, there are things, this is not arguing against learning, against using our minds, it's against the idea that we have to know everything down to the smallest detail and able to know that it's true. And that's what Paul's telling them. He's going to try to respond to them. What we do know, he's not going to be able to answer all their questions. He's not going to answer all your questions. He hasn't answered all my questions. But he's going to affirm that this is true. God is going to remake the bodies of his people. And you can believe that without understanding every last detail of it. Paul appeals here, certainly you can see that God is able to radically transform living things while maintaining their identity. And we see this in the second half of verse 36 and following. He's answering these mockers not by explaining in every detail how a dead person comes back to life, but instead by making analogies to observable phenomena, things that they have seen, to show them, in fact, that the resurrection is completely plausible when you understand what kind of a God we have and what we can see God actually does around us. And so he begins with this illustration from agriculture. In verse 36, the second half of the verse, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And so what is Paul talking about? He's saying you can take a seed, even a seed from like a rotten piece of fruit, and the seed looks inert, it doesn't look like it can do anything, there's no life there, and yet you put it in the ground in the right conditions, that seed can give life to a plant and can spring up and grow and produce. And so in a manner of speaking, the seed dies and the plant lives. Now Jesus used a similar analogy to describe himself, and I put this in your bulletin as well, John 12. Verse 24, where Jesus said, most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain. Now, Jesus wasn't saying there. Paul's not saying here that the seed literally dies. But the seed appears to die. It's put in the ground lifeless and apparently inert. And then a growing, green, thriving plant comes up from it. In fact, Paul says in verse 37, what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain. And actually, in the original language, it's literally naked grain. You put this thing into the ground. It's not what it will be. Something comes out that's far greater. He goes on to say in verse 38, God gives it a body as he pleases, to each seed its own body. Children, I know some of you are gardeners and some of your families are gardeners. You understand a watermelon seed looks different than a pumpkin seed. It looks different than zinnia seeds or flowers or corn or wheat. And the seed doesn't look like the plant, right? You put the seed in the ground and you're hoping this summer you're going to have plants. And the plants come out and they look different. But you know you don't get pumpkins from watermelon seed. You know that the watermelon seed leads to a watermelon plant. And in a sense, the plant is there in the seed in some form, and it's coming out of the seed as it develops, and there's continuity. It's still a watermelon, or a pumpkin, or a wheat, or a corn. How is this possible? that something can be that radically transformed. Hold a seed in your hand, hold the plant in your hand. Sometimes the plant's too big to hold in your hand, right? And that's a transformation that we've all witnessed. God is the one who does that. Verse 38, God gives it a body. You know that God can do this. He can transform things radically. Now, if you come over and visit our house, At the top of our stairs, we have a baby picture of all of our family members. Actually, we haven't included the married-in kids yet, so I guess we have to work on it. But all of the Holdemans are there. And there is a picture of this cute little girl with a button nose and a beautiful smile and this blonde hair. And today, That little girl has beautiful silver hair and some lines of great wisdom. And I think she's more lovely than ever. And if you look at the picture, you can tell who that woman is. It's the same person. It's the same person. But there's been tremendous change that's happened. And we understand God's the one who does that. God can keep you the same person, and yet he can change you in remarkable, remarkable ways. And so you already know this, Paul's saying. You already understand this concept. Thirdly, you also know that God has created a nearly limitless variety of things, and all of these varieties are perfectly suited to their own environments. Paul begins in verse 39. to talk about all flesh is not the same flesh. And then he lists different kinds of flesh or different kinds of bodies. He talks about human beings, he talks about animals, he talks about fish and birds, all that in verse 39. Then he goes on to talk about heavenly or celestial bodies in verse 40. And then he talks specifically in verse 41 about the sun, the moon, and the stars. Now, if I asked our kids a quiz, where did Paul get that list? Where did he get that list? Anyone have an idea where he got that list? It just came off the top of his head. Where did he get that list? Genesis 1. Thank you for playing along, Mr. Peterson. That's right. It's Genesis 1. And he starts with day 6. humans and animals, and then he goes to day five, birds, fish and birds, and then he goes to day four, all these bodies in the sky. And you could argue he's already talked about day three when he talked about the seeds bearing their fruit. So Paul's just talking to us from Genesis. And his point is really quite simple. There is an amazing variety of life forms that God has made, everything from fish to humans, everything from a seed in the ground to a sunbeam. And each thing is perfectly suited for its environment. It's amazing that in our world, just about every place we look, we find life. There was a man that worked at IU in the 1960s named Thomas Brock, and he recently died in his 90s. He discovered bacteria living in the hot springs out at Yellowstone Park. And the temperature of the water is just a shade below boiling, 198 degrees Fahrenheit. And yet these bacteria thrive in that kind of environment. He came back incidentally and looked in the hot water heaters in Jordan Hall and found that they were thriving there too. You just gotta know where to look for things, right? Who would have believed organisms could live in boiling water? and with very little nutrients, the ones in Jordan Hall, for sure. And every one of their proteins is made a slightly different way so they can withstand high temperature and still function. And the point is, this is who God is. He's made the world in such a way that life breaks out everywhere. And the life is perfectly suited for its environment. This is how God's done it. Just like verse 38 said, God has given it a body. And so God's asking you, you're wondering how God could remake a body for heaven that has died? Open your eyes. This is what God does. God makes bodies. that are particularly suited for their environment. And that's pretty encouraging when you've been promised that your environment is going to be a new heaven and a new earth, a totally restored creation. So that's where Paul's going. God's created a limitless diversity of beings all perfectly suited for their places. Fourthly, he then brings this thinking to bear on our bodies. Likewise, your body will be completely transformed and renewed in Jesus. So in verse 42, Paul applies this line of logic to the resurrection. So also is the resurrection of the dead. He's used two points about this concept. One, that God's the God who does transformation with continuity, and God makes a great diversity, all perfectly fitted for its environment. And so here in verses 42 to 45, he's going back now to emphasize this radical transformation. And he contrasts the body that we have now, the body that will die, the body that will decay in the ground, with the body that will be when we have been made suited for heaven. And so he makes a contrast. He says the body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. Some of your translations might say perishable and imperishable. And what is the idea? The idea is that your mortal body, the body you have now, is in a constant state of decay. It's getting weaker, it gets tired, it gets sick, we lose our capacities, Life is sort of a steady decline after, I don't want to say, our 20s sometimes. It's going down for most of our life. And he's saying that type of body is going to be replaced by an incorruptible body, an imperishable body, a body that is not steadily declining but is always increasing. A body that's growing in strength and health and vitality and capacity. That's what he's saying here. That's what the new body is going to be like. In verse 43, it is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. Again, Paul's thinking here of a dead body laid in the ground. And there's not much that could be more dishonorable in one sense, right? It's lost all its abilities. There's nothing there at all. And as we know, this process of decay begins almost immediately. But he's saying a body that is liable to do that is going to be replaced with one that is going to be, as it says, honor, honorable. Or that word could be translated glorious or radiant even. A body that radiates life and energy and beauty and strength. And in verse 43, it's a body sown in weakness, right? There's nothing weaker than a dead human body. But it's going to be raised in power. When we die, we've lost all ability to do anything, accomplish anything. But this is talking about having bodies that are ever able to accomplish what God wants us to and to do. what God wants us to. In verse 44, he calls these two bodies a natural body and a spiritual body, and that's caused some confusion. Well, what's a spiritual body? It sounds like saying immaterial material, right? Is a spiritual body sort of an ethereal body, a body that you can't quite see? No, I think what he's getting at here is that our bodies are going to become perfect repositories of the Holy Spirit, and we will be indwelt by the Spirit of God in a way that goes beyond anything we can experience in this life. You know, in our natural state, the Bible tells us we are capable of and we often do grieve the Holy Spirit who dwells in us because of our sin. And all that's gonna be healed by God and our bodies are going to be indwelt by the Spirit of God. I put a quotation in your outline from Anthony Thistleton. He said, the raised body is characterized by the uninterrupted transforming power of the Holy Spirit of God. I think that's a good way to describe it. And Paul goes on to say that these two bodies, in a sense, come from the two great representatives of mankind. So he says that, so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last, Adam, became a life-giving spirit. And so he's contrasting Adam who was the first man, and Paul quotes from Genesis 2-7 there in verse 45, Adam was the first man, and we receive our natural body from Adam. He's our representative. Adam's sin has plunged us into sin and into ruin, and this is why our mortal bodies are decaying. We're all connected to Adam by virtue of our birth. In contrast, Jesus is called here the last Adam. And I think this is the only place in the Bible that he's called the last Adam in this way. He comes as the second great representative. And all who have put their faith and hope in Jesus are reborn with this new type of body based on our connection to him. And so Paul here calls him a life-giving spirit. Jesus said in John 5 verse 21, for as the father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the son gives life to whom he will. That this is Jesus' work in giving new life to those who come to faith in him. Well, this winter, Colin and Stephen and I have been playing in an indoor soccer league. And every week after we played, the one question that I had just overwhelming me as I considered what had just happened was, how did I get so slow? And I made the mistake, and I'm speaking for myself, not for these other men, of playing in this league with a bunch of 20-year-olds. All right? It's been a while since I was 20. Let's leave it at that. And every week, I can't, I'm not as flexible as I was. I'm not as quick as I was. My body won't do what my brain is telling it to do. And then afterwards, I'm sore. Like my knees are just aching the next day. I'm like, what is happening to me? Now I'm saying what all of you have experienced, you older folks among us, right? That we start to feel this process as our capacity starts to decline, and we ache, and we hurt, and our energy levels go down. And this is the life that we have in this body. But Jesus here is saying, right, that if we're connected to the heavenly man, if we're connected to the last Adam, Jesus Christ, we will have bodies that don't get achy and tired. where we don't rupture tendons in our legs, where we don't get sick with cancer, we don't have jaw pain, and we don't have all the things that afflict us now. We're not struggling with depression and anxiety and fear and all the kinds of things that we deal with in this life. We will not have to worry about those things. Now, Paul doesn't answer every question we might have about how this works. Will we still need to eat and sleep? Will we still need to hydrate? Will we age? Will we look the same? Will people recognize us? The Bible doesn't answer all these questions. But the Bible says that you will still be you, even though you will be radically transformed in ways that go beyond anything we can imagine. Paul says it here. It's a body that is raised in honor, in strength, and incorruptible. A perfect body, free from all the effects of sin and all the limitations that we have. And whatever that's going to be, it's going to be a wonderful, wonderful blessing. We will be transformed by Jesus. In fact, finally, the text tells us Jesus is going to remake you like himself so that you are perfectly fitted for eternal life in a new renewed creation with him. Verse 46 says, however, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, right? We tend to think we're being told our best life is now. Paul's saying, no, no, no. It's the natural first, the spiritual later. Your best life is after you die. No, it's hard to get our minds around that. Your best life is after you die. Verse 47, the first man was of the earth, made of dust. Again, this refers to Adam in Genesis 2.17, where Adam is formed out of the dust of the ground. The second man, now there's another way he's referring to Jesus, is the second man, that is the second great representative of human beings. The second man is the Lord from heaven. It's not denying Jesus' incarnation, it's reminding us where Jesus came from. Jesus said in John 3.13, No one has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is the son of man who is in heaven. Jesus came from heaven to deliver us. Verse 48, as was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust, as is the heavenly man, so are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. This helps us understand what is going on. The spiritual body, the renewed body, the resurrected body is a body perfectly fitted for life in heaven, life in the new heaven and the new earth. It's a body perfectly fitted to be with Jesus Christ forever. And as Jesus says here, we will bear his image. And the beautiful thing about this is this process has begun. If you have come to faith, the process of renewal has begun. Not in your physical body, but in your spirit. And that process will be completed when Jesus comes again. As Leon Morris says, as God has willed that we should have bodies fitted for our life on earth, so he has willed that we should have bodies fitted for our heavenly existence. And we don't know exactly what the heavenly existence is going to be like, but we know from what the scripture tells us God is going to totally renew this world and to fix everything that's broken with it and to root out everything that's evil or sinful or causes pain. And the scripture tell us unequivocally that when Jesus comes again, we will be like Jesus. 1 John 3 verse 2, beloved, we are now, now we are children of God and has not been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him. We will be like Jesus or Philippians 3, 20 and 21. Our citizenship is in heaven. That's our true home. from which we eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus, who will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to his glorious body, according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things. to himself. We will be conformed to his glorious body. Commentators say, well, you want to know what that looks like? Look at the resurrection appearances of Christ. He's moving around. He's appearing to his disciples. He eats. He shows them his body. But I think, and some of the commentators sort of argue, that when Jesus was still on the earth before he had ascended, His body had not been fully changed as it is now. And if you think about that, Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus. John, the disciple, saw Jesus when he wrote the book of Revelation. And what Jesus looked like in those post-ascension appearances was glorious beyond words. And those men were overwhelmed, fell down like they were dead when they saw Jesus. That's who Jesus is. And this text is telling you, you will bear the image of the man of heaven, not as he was when he was on the earth, but as he is now. Now. Again, we don't know exactly how that will work. but we will be reflecting the glory of God so perfectly and be renewed so thoroughly that as the scripture tells us, we'll live in a universe that doesn't need a sun because the glory of God is in the midst of us. That's what God has promised to do for you if you're a believer this morning. And it's only possible because the Lord Jesus Christ allowed himself to be in the image of the man of the dust. He came in the image of Adam, not with Adam's sin, but he allowed himself to live in that kind of body for a time so that he could redeem people like us from that kind of body. and give us a renewed body of ever-increasing life and strength and power and ability, all used in the service of God. You and I aren't fit for heaven now, but Jesus is going to make you, body and soul, fit for heaven. And so you can trust him. And that's what Paul's saying. Look around. Look at how He transforms living things. Look at how He makes everything perfect for its place. This is what He's going to do in your life. Trust Him. Trust that He's going to radically transform you if you have put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray and we'll ask Him to believe what He tells us. Heavenly Father, we confess that Even as we read these words there are so many questions we still have that remain unanswered. How does it all work? How do you gather people together after they've been in the grave for centuries or millennia? Lord you haven't given us the answer to that so it's obvious we don't need the answer to that. What you have told us clearly is that your power is going to be at work. to give new life to your people and that our bodies are gonna be still us but radically transformed so that we will be perfectly suited to live in the new world. Lord, we pray that you would give us grace and enable us to believe your promise and to trust you in this. And we pray especially as different ones in our midst deal with different struggles that we would be reminded of where we're going and what you're going to do in our lives. Give us patience as we wait for this to happen. Give us hope. Give us love. We pray that if there are any here who don't have a saving relationship with Jesus, that you would draw us to faith in him, that we would know that we can trust him. And we pray, Lord, that you would be pleased to work among us and to enable us to live day by day as people of great hope. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. And now let's sing our praise back to the Lord from Psalm 84b.