to be together again. We know some of our church family is not with us. Some are ill, some are out for other reasons. We ask that you grant them your protection provision. For those of us who are here physically, we ask that you do the same. For those who are listening by electronic means, we ask that you guide their thinking. for us, got our thinking, got our discussion now as we open another portion of your scriptures. And we ask this in Christ's name, amen. Well, let me welcome you to Grace Covenant Baptist Church, Monroe, Louisiana. on a cold, by Louisiana standards, Sunday morning, July, I wish, January 14, 2024. And if you don't know, we are in First Corinthians, and we will continue our review that we've been at it now for about three sessions, so. The weather folks tell us we're under a winter storm advisory. So I'm sure all the kiddos are thinking, yay, I get to schools out tomorrow. Maybe some of the adults are also thinking, yay. Some of us are not. At any rate, here we are. So let us begin what we're here for. You remember when you see a therefore, what is therefore for? to see what it's there for. So, what we're about. Like I said, for the last three sessions, we've kind of been reviewing the overall context of what we've been studying in 1 Corinthians. And I want to continue that today. You remember as we studied this book and from other scriptures, a part of what we're learning is that Christ promised all believers an inner transformation. And we were looking last time about transformation. We're going to continue that a little bit. But we saw in the text that there was transformation occurring in the Corinthian church. They were changing. They were becoming new people in spite of some divisions and some difficulties. So this, as we looked at this process, this helps us to understand that growing in Christian maturity is a process. That God does work his transformations in us, but sometimes this transformation takes place over time, and sometimes it takes more time than we would like. So because of that, we need to keep three things in mind. First of all, when transformation occurs, when newness occurs, it will bring tension. There is tension between the old and the new. Anybody remember the eight final words of the dying church? We ain't never done it that way before. So when newness comes, it creates tension. Secondly, to build a climate of love in the body will ease some of these tensions. And then the third thing, the final thing is, in terms of in the transformation frame, there's a day coming when the transformation will be complete. And then that's kind of what we're talking about. It's the day when Christ returns then our transformation process is finished, it's over. So transformation begins in the present, but it's completed in the day of Christ. Christ's resurrection both demonstrates the power of God and the ultimate proof of his ability to provide forgiveness. and Christ's resurrection is so intimately intertwined with ours that to doubt either constitutes a denial of the gospel message. So this is what we've seen in 1 Corinthians, that entire chapter. It's the classic and definitive New Testament explanation of the resurrection. Now before we go on, a couple of things also we need to remember. What was the Corinthian letter written in? What language? What kind of Greek? Koine Greek. Now we also saw that in the Greek thought and particularly in the Greek language, there is no word for resurrection. It does not exist. So Paul's got a problem. He's got no word to talk about what he wants to talk about. So what does he do? Well, the New Testament scriptures use two different words for resurrection because one does not exist, is to rise up, to wake up, and we saw that in some of our Old Testament references, that it used that concept rather than the actual word of resurrection. So in Paul's discussion in 1 Corinthians 15, we see two notable things. First of all, the events that the scriptures talk about actually happened in real time and space. Therefore, it contradicts the concept that they were somehow mystical or mystic. They were real. They actually happened. And then the second thing is, As Paul tells us in, I think it's verse two, verse three of, I mean, I'm sorry, verse 20 or 21, somewhere in there. He says that these events actually happened according to the scriptures. So it validates the fact that we also saw that this concept existed at least 25 or 30 years before Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. So the fact that these two facts, the historical nature and the scriptural root, were always emphasized in apostolic preaching and teaching. It's a foundational concept that we believe and that some in Corinth did and some did not. And again, the gospel is simply not the gospel if the element of resurrection is removed. So chapter 15 and verses 12 through 19, which we've already looked at, Paul links Christ's resurrection to those of a believer. So if we look at verses 14 through 19, we're not going to go there specifically, but if we look at those, We might put that in a different way and say that Paul is presenting a series of what ifs. The kids do that. Kids play the what if game. I'm gonna depersonalize this. Does anybody know somebody who does that as an adult? Okay, let me personalize it. Do any of you play the what-if game? Yeah. And usually, I can't read your mind, but, huh? I'm gonna tell you, here it is. Usually, in a negative connotation, it's called catastrophizing. Yeah, worst case scenario. You're generating a catastrophe in your thinking that may or may not happen. Will Rogers once said, I've had a lot of grief in my life, some of which actually happened. So in these verses, 14 through 19, Paul is setting up a series of what ifs But these are real. He is not catastrophizing. So what if, well, let me back up a little bit. If these things actually happened, well, I'm saying it backwards. If Christ was not resurrected, what would the world be like? What would our lives be like? And it's in these verses where he begins to tell us pretty specifically what the world would be like. So if the women showed up at the tomb and nothing happened, nothing had changed. If there was no relief, so to speak, from what they had observed. If there was no relief from their grief, from their dismay, from their memory of Christ as they took him down off of the cross, then what would it be like? What would it be like today? You ever thought about that? Probably not. Well, yeah, kind of, sort of. You know, what would life be like? We typically don't, believers, we typically don't think about those kinds of negatives. But a lot of folks do. So there's six things in this account. There's six history-changing facts that Paul said would follow if Christ had not been raised. Now we're going to go through these, actually seven, and they're not sequential with the scriptures. So when you start looking for them in order, they're not there. So first of all, I love this one. Without resurrection, all preaching would be a waste of time. Now I'm going to meddle a little bit. You ever sat under a sermon and thought, this is a waste of my time. You know, I didn't look at you now. I'm not picking. We've been there, I bet you. I'd almost be willing to bet at some point, part of it is our own doing, that I'd rather be somewhere else. And part of it is presentation, and I won't go any further with that. But without Christ and the Resurrection in the preaching, it's a waste of time anyway. Well, yeah, I mean if they're not teaching all of Scripture. So all the messages we've ever heard, the good ones, the bad ones, the indifferent ones, would be a waste of time. All the Christian books we've ever read would be a waste of time. all the videotapes we've watched, all the television broadcasts of the gospel, all the podcasts we've ever listened to, would be a total waste of time. Okay, secondly, and this one kind of hits home, all Christian faith would be useless Now chew on that one for a minute. So what's the point of getting up and coming to Bible study? Why get up on a cold Sunday morning when it's 28 degrees outside and come down here to do what we call Bible study? What's the use of going to any other Bible studies? What's the use of coming here on Monday night after you've worked all day, you got nine other things to do, Would you come down here for two hours for Bible study? What's the use? What's the use of even studying scripture, reading scripture at all? What's the point? What's the point in trying to believe that there is a God, first of all, and if there is, that he is here in some sense to help us? Again, what's the point? So it would all be, without Christ's resurrection, it would all be useless. It would, in essence, be a kind of religious game. And without the resurrection, life would be reduced to a grim, stark reality with no hope for now or for the future. Okay, third fact. Paul says if the resurrection is untrue, the apostles were the world's greatest liars. We typically don't think about the apostles being liars. Because if the resurrection is not true, the apostles were misrepresenting God. And there's a because. Why is that? Just confine your thinking to this particular set of scripture. Why would the apostles be liars if Christ is not resurrected? Because they said he was. They testified that God raised Christ, and if he did not rise, if it is true that the dead are not risen, if there's no resurrection, the apostles were hypocrites. And worse than that, they were deceivers who led others to gross darkness and gross error. Now remember the frame we're in. When I talk about frames, sometimes I have to explain this. When I talk about frames, we're used to the term frame of reference. So that's what I'm talking about. It's the context in which we're talking about this. And we are talking about what happens if there is no resurrection. OK, fourth. This one is tough. If Christ is not risen, then all of our sins of the past are still with us. Yeah. This means that granting even that there is a God, and there's a caveat to that, there's some that believe there's not, but even granting that there is, at some point, we're gonna have to stand before him and give an account. Now that's scary enough in and of itself. But without Christ's resurrection, there's no escape from the justice that's going to be imposed, I guess is a good word. There's no justice that's going to be meted out to us for what we've done, for what we've thought. There's no place to hide. There's no hope for mercy. There's no loving Christ who said, I paid the penalty on your behalf, I've taken your place, I've loved you and given myself for you. So if he's not raised, if he's not resurrected, he's not there. So we are absolutely on our own. And what we know about us fundamentally is not a pleasant thought. So when we stand before God without Christ, everything we deserve for every and every, all, all means all, evil thought and our deed, we're accountable for and we'll receive the justice that we deserve for those acts and our thoughts. Not a pleasant thought. Okay, fifth. Paul says that Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. And we're not going to exposiate all that that means, but. So, what it does mean is that all of our loved ones, all of our kids, family, parents, wives, husbands, spouses, that we thought when they died, had gone to be with the Lord. Those that we had hoped to meet again, we'll never see. Paul says they perished. So our children, parents, friends, those whom we bid a sorrowful farewell with the hope that one day we would meet them again in glory, we'll never see. They're gone. Another not real pleasant thought. And then finally, or the sixth fact, that if for this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all, it says men, but people, most pitied. So we've kind of looked at how the future will change, but think about this. The present is also changed. Did I miss something? Okay. When we give up this concept of all the things that he does for us, I mean, we can frame it as a dream, but not really a dream. It's an expectation. Then we go back to an environment of coldness, selfishness, drabness, grimness, darkness. And it's made worse because we thought we had something marvelous. We had something beautiful. We had, in a word, hope. We thought he gave us joy, peace, glory, blessings, all the positive things that we think about. But if there is no resurrection, then all of that just crumbles. It's not there, it's taken away. And to think about this, our darkness, our despair is worse because we thought we had something else. So if Christ is not resurrected, all of that does not happen. So again, Paul says, if we merely hope in Christ, and that only in this life, we are of all people most miserable. Literally, we are more pitiful than all. And we have to do a little caveat here because this phrase, this remark, in the near context was only true at the time when people were actually being persecuted, and some were in Paul's day. We see that in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 5, and in 2 Timothy 3, verse 12. But by extension, if we think about that to some extent, we all, Even as believers, we all have what's been phrased as our crosses to bear. We have difficulties, we have things that are involved in that. So in one sense, without the resurrection, we would deserve most pity because of the suffering of the things we sacrificed If Christ is not resurrected, then we have been conspicuously fooled. Again, not a pleasant thought. So we might summarize this by this list, that our preaching is in vain, and I would add all of our preaching is in vain. Our faith is empty. Our sin is still unatoned for. Death has triumphed over our loved ones. And life itself is made utterly miserable. And we sometimes generate enough misery for ourselves as is. I see some smiles and some nods and maybe perhaps some agreement in that. But just think about if we don't have that era, can't get my words right, this sense of hope, what's that like? One of the greatest therapeutic values, and we'll be clinical here for a minute, one of the greatest therapeutic values is hope. Whatever this is, at some point, it's going to end. So, against that kind of dark background, against that, and he lays out a pretty bleak, pretty dark picture. So the question then becomes, applicationally, who would like to live that way? Who wants to live that way? But many today do. And many did in the past. So everybody, everyone who does not know the reality of a risen Lord has to live every day in his or her life on the basis that we've just talked about, that if Christ is not raised. So that's why a lot of folks, many folks, seek desperately to try to find some anesthesia that will dull the pain of empty aching hearts. That's why people keep trying to get caught up in a continual round of noise and action that will not let them think about life because they cannot stand to live it on this basis. And that involves a lot of things. including, I'm going to meddle again here a little bit, including works-based salvation. So thinking that way, living like that way, existing that way, is great pessimism. We live in a pretty pessimistic society as is. But if you begin to investigate that, you begin to think about that, you begin to think about the basis for that, then that's part of it. It's despair. We see a lot of that, particularly in our young people, young adults. It's dark. We see a lot of darkness in a lot of different forms. So then what we're left with is all of this pessimism, all of this darkness, all this bad stuff when Christ's resurrection is taken away. So in chapter 15, we've seen Paul has given us the bluntest way possible to talk about the doctrine of resurrection the resurrection of Christ and the believer, which is, as we've said earlier, essential to Christian faith. Robbed of the resurrection, Christian faith would be an empty and futile thing. Again, we don't typically think that way. Okay, so we've spent about three sessions now doing review and summary. Let's get to our next pericope. Finally, all of a sudden, finally, we're gonna get there. Okay, we're gonna get there. This is verse 20 through 34. And we're gonna get maybe to one verse this morning. So beginning in verse 20, We come to a section where Paul's thoughts look forward across time to declare the ultimate effects in history of the resurrection of Christ. And we're going to detail a lot of this, but summarily we find three things. First, he says that it is guaranteed that the physical resurrection of the bodies of all who believe in Christ will occur. So therefore, our resurrection is tied to his. And we see that in verse 20 or 21, I'll get to it in a minute. He uses the phrase firstfruits twice in three verses. And we'll come back to that later on. Second, he argues or asserts that it's absolutely certain that this will happen. No maybes in this one. He asserts it will happen. And then of equal importance, he asserts that our resurrection is not up to us. And again, it will happen. So if we put it in the vernacular, what do we say two things that are absolutely certain? Death and taxes. Yeah. We're coming up on tax season, so that bears some reality. So against this kind of backdrop, he seems to be saying for believers that resurrection is as certain as death. Okay, so let's do a little more summarizing, summarization. And this should be a gimme. You write your name on top of the paper and you get credit. What's the overall theme of chapter 15, first Corinthians? Resurrection. Yeah. Okay. Subset. Bonus question. What kind of resurrection? What kind of resurrection? Or, is that an and-or? Okay. So, hmm, how can I phrase this without sounding sarcastic? So when we're resurrected, we die, we go into the ground, at some point when Christ returns, we're resurrected. Maybe. Maybe? Well, yeah, that's the other component. So our spirits get resurrected. Hang on, that's where we're going. Spirit is already there. So this has to be a bodily resurrection. Okay. Now we know what, we know, and if you've ever studied inductively with us, you know, that things repeated in scripture are important. Right? We can pretty much all agree with that. And we know from our previous discussion, we know that bodily resurrection is taught in many places in scripture, right? We'd agree. So, what is the importance of this concept? And we'll take this in two parts. What's the importance of Christ's resurrection? It's a thought question. This is another bonus question. Yeah, that's true. Now, I'm sorry. Okay, is that Christ or believer? Okay. Okay, so follow that thought to its logical conclusion. Exactly. It validates its irrefutable evidence that Christ is who he says he is, or was, is. Got to get my verbs right. It validates his claim to be who he was or who he is. And that is, what is he in the most general sense? And we got a lot of descriptors, but. Exactly. What part? Well, I'm going to say it that way. Second person of the Godhead. He is without refutation, the son of God. Okay, that's the first thing. Can you think of any other reason, any other importance of this concept? Okay, which is? Where do we find those decrees? That's not rocket science. What do we spend all of our time doing? Studying, studying what? Scripture. So it not only validates the supreme validation of his deity, it also validates the scriptures. And in the scriptures, we know it foretold his coming, it foretells his resurrection. And moreover, it authenticates Christ's claim that he would be raised on the third day. So again, it validates scripture. So if Christ's body, his bodily resurrection, we have no hope that ours will be. We'll see that in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 3 and verse 16. So apart from Christ's bodily resurrection, we have no savior, we have no salvation, and we have no hope. Okay, so that's Christ. What's the importance of the concept of our bodily resurrection? This one's a little harder. First one's a gimme. Okay, I'll give it to you. I see some thinking going on. Okay, it's important because scripture teaches it. That's a bonus, that's a gimme. What else can you think of? Why is it important? Yep. So the bodily resurrection of the believer is a prototype for the entire creation. Can we say it that way? Rudy's tracking, I don't know. Yeah. Bodily. Yeah. See, this is kind of a mind bender when you begin to separate spiritual from physical, and I don't completely know how to process all of that. Yeah, in a more general sense, we've already addressed this a little bit, but in a more general sense, it provides hope. Now there's a whole discussion, which I'm going to skip over, that has to do with the bodily pleasure, if you want to speak. so to speak, that we experience currently. Does that get carried over when we are bodily resurrected? Do we enjoy a good meal? Push pause. What is the only place in scripture that talks about eating in the last day or after the resurrection? There's one place, one place only. marriage feast of the lamb. So if we extend that, then that could teach that there is enjoying a meal. Yeah. Going back to what we talked about last Sunday with God's goodness, God giving us the ability to enjoy and that kind of being an attribute of God, why would that cease to exist in the eternal state? Good question. Probably doesn't in my humble but accurate opinion. Isn't there a scripture that says that a man eats grapes from his own vine? He sits under his own vine. I don't know. I'd have to look that up. We do see things that on Earth are designed as a picture. Picture. Yeah, I wasn't going to go there, but okay. Yeah. Well, there is a picture of us having to eat and drink for sustainment and nourishment here as a picture of the bread of life that we need. And so when the reality of being fully sustained by the bread of life, and the same reason we have a sun to heat and warm up the earth as a picture of being Christ, but in eternity, you have the light of Christ, you no longer need the sun as a picture. So there's a sense maybe that picture will be gone away. Yeah, well think about it practically. Most of us eat meat, some may not. Think about the best ribeye you have ever had in your life, cooked to perfection. with the baked potato and all the stuff that goes on. Now something else we know, I'm getting way off topic here, but something else we know that when we're resurrected, we established last week that we are resurrected to a higher level of existence. So think about that ribeye enhanced by 10. That's what I was thinking when you asked the question earlier about the hope, the spiritual maturing that does slash should come with longer life. The more you become like Christ over time, that's an inverse relationship to your physical body is in decline as your spiritual life is increasing. And so you have this heightened sense of God's goodness at the same time being trapped in a body with the pain that makes it harder to live out that goodness. And then when you think of the hope of all of a sudden a resurrection to an eternal body, well now as you reach that glorified state, now you finally have a physical body that can match all of the goodness that you're experiencing. And so I think to your point of whether it's eating a steak or whatever it is, Imagine not being weighed down by the decay and destruction of the fall of our physical bodies and having that glorified spiritual mindedness with a body that can match it. Everything doesn't hurt anymore. I haven't thought about a lot of that stuff. But I have thought about this, that our original humanity was a creation of God that failed because of its sin. And at the time of the new heavens and new earth, there will be a manner in which our humanity will emerge. It will only be perfected, as you said, on a higher plane. So somewhere or another, all these things that God gave us, that we would enjoy the earth. The aromas of a big kitchen that's in business. I mean, back there, just walking outside, looking at the trees. We had an elder in the church one time, he did the aromas spring quick, because he thanked God for the leaves that dropped on the ground, and birds, and singing, Yeah, and in that vein, just think about all our physical senses that we, I say use, that are kind of innate. to enjoy stuff in our physical realm. You know, steak tastes good, roses smell good, a sunrise looks good. Relationships, we have human relationships in all of its facets that are good, they're pleasurable, they're fun. And again, just think about that being elevated. How much sweeter will relationships be as good as they are now. Yeah. One caveat to that, and I completely agree with you. One caveat. Think about the unimpeded relationship with Christ himself. And growing out of that, the relationships with other, I'll use people generally, other believers. Okay, something to think about. We'll actually get to our pericope next time. So we are about out of time for today. Thoughts, questions, comments, inundations? I have not seen nor heard of a bartending man. It's gonna be good. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that or we could have closed with that. Anything else?