Verse 12. Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ. whom he did not raise, if it's true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 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. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order. Christ, the firstfruits, then at his coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says, all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead, are not raised at all, why are people being baptized on their behalf? Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord. I die every day. 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. Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. 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. read that far in God's word, a complex passage of careful argumentation, you'd have to admit. I can break it down for you very simply. It's two things. It's either true or not true. The resurrection either happened or it didn't happen. And the implications of that are absolutely huge. That's why he takes the time in these verses to carefully argue it out. Let me say it another way. Let's say you're talking to a friend of yours, a relative of yours, a neighbor of yours, a coworker of yours. You're having a more serious type conversation, and it's about spiritual things, and somehow you get on the subject of the resurrection. Whether anybody could ever rise from the dead, and whether Jesus himself rose from the dead, and this person you're talking to expresses some doubts to you. So this sermon could equip you, this passage could equip you how to deal with that moment where you're talking to someone who probably is an unbeliever and expressing doubts to you. So you can run two scenarios. First scenario, if the resurrection were not true, everything would be different because Christianity couldn't be true. You just have the folding of an entire world religion if the resurrection didn't happen. But if the resurrection did happen, and everything that Christianity says is true, you might want to reconsider the claims of Christianity for you. You see that? We build our whole lives on this. Our hope is built on this, and we're the only ones who have hope if Christianity is true. Let me say the whole thing another way. I'm trying to break down this whole passage in two simple Directions, my point one will be one direction, point two will be the other direction, and the third point is kind of applying it. So, a Christian named Nicole Nordman was talking with her friend in the way that I just described, that you might be talking to someone. This person was doubting the resurrection, so she asked her friend to consider both possibilities that I've just been saying, and she actually wrote it up a song, because she's a songwriter, and here go some of the words. What if you're right? What if Jesus takes his place in history with all the prophets and all the kings? He taught us love, he came in peace, then the story ends. What then? Do you sense the weight of how hollow that is? But what if you're wrong? What if there's more? What if there's hope you never dreamed of hoping for? What if the arms that catch you catch you by surprise. What if he's more than enough? What if it's love? Nicole Nordman. The song is called What If. She's expressing our passage. She's expressing what Paul wrote here. He's basically taking two scenarios and rolling them out in our passage. The fact of the resurrection of Christ guarantees our resurrection is our main point. First, we'll look at the one scenario, point number one. The after effect, if Christ had not risen, verses 12 to 19. Put your seatbelt on, it gets real dark real fast. Then we'll go to point two, which is the other scenario, that Christ did rise and what the implications are. And then our third point, verses 29 to 34, the after effect of denying the resurrection, still more of the implications of what we're talking about. So here, let's start verses 12 to 19. What if Christ had not risen? I know, it's strange, the pastor's talking in a pulpit, we've read from the Bible about what would happen if Jesus did not rise from the dead, but this is important and helpful for us to see how important the resurrection is, is the bottom line here was that if Christ had not risen, the believers in Corinth were placing their trust in a dead man who could not save them. So Paul understood that Christianity is publicly verified Meaning that if the body of Jesus were found here on earth somewhere, it would prove all the claims of Christianity false. That's what we mean by publicly verifiable. Everybody in the world knows that the claim of Christianity is that Jesus died and Jesus rose again. So if you find his body proving that he didn't rise again, you lose your public verification. You lose all the underpinnings of Christianity. So Paul found it necessary to write about this because that false teaching was circulating through the church in Corinth, and sure enough, 2,000 years later, that false teaching is still circulating. Believe me, you have somebody in your life, coworker, neighbor, friend, relative, who believes these sorts of things. So you can use this passage to help them. Paul worked through with them their beliefs and how they don't work. Verse 12, he wrote, if Christ is proclaimed, obviously that's what Paul proclaimed, that's what every preacher since Paul proclaimed, true preachers preach that Christ was raised from the dead, right? So that's what's going on in the church in Corinth, Christ is being proclaimed. He asked the question then in verse 12, how can some of you say there's no resurrection of the dead? Nobody anywhere ever rose from the dead. That's our stance, say these people in the church in Corinth. It's Paul's expression of astonishment here. Wait a minute, let me get this straight. We're consistently preaching Christ was risen from the dead, and then you have people who are saying there is no resurrection of anyone anywhere? Seriously? I mean, this is Paul introducing the topic in verse 12. The believers were casting doubt on the concept of Jesus' physical resurrection. Paul had to address it, so here goes. First, Paul addressed it by pointing to the most obvious of consequences that it seems the believers in Corinth were beginning to doubt, verse 13. But if there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. If nobody ever, anywhere, ever gets raised again after they die, that's one thing. But do you realize it impacts Jesus Christ then? Right? So verse 14, if Christ had not been raised, let's follow that train of thought for a minute, right? What would that do to preaching? Because we've been saying that he rose from the dead. But if you're saying nobody raises from the dead and Jesus didn't rise from the dead, we'd have to completely change our preaching, which would make it what? What kind of message are you going to say? It's utterly hollowed out. There's nothing to say. You're gonna die, and you're gonna not exist, so have fun while you're here. It hollows out preaching, right? What does it do to your faith? It would make their faith empty, for they'd be trusting in a supposedly risen Savior who would actually be dead. The truth claim and the historical event of the resurrection of Christ is so central and foundational to Christianity that if this linchpin of the resurrection were removed, A cacophony of other attached logical deductions would fall away. We've got nothing left. That's really important to understand if you say that you're a believer. You need to understand that this is all we have. This is worth fighting for because if we have this, we have everything, and if we don't have this, we have nothing. So verse 15, he continues that the situation would actually become worse. the preachers would be found to be misrepresenting God because Paul had preached that God did raise Christ from the dead. If it had not happened, then Paul's misrepresenting God, you could actually say he's a liar. At least, he's inaccurate, and he's misrepresenting God. Verse 16, he continues, the statement he made in verse 13, he repeats again here in a slightly different manner, in order to highlight the impact of their beliefs. If they had no room for anything supernatural, no miracles, then they have no room for the best miracle, the resurrection of Jesus, and if that's their belief, they were themselves not Christians at all. Verse 17, Paul repeated the point about faith being empty, then added another level of consequence. They would still be in their sins. Remember, the cross of Christ, the only way by which we're cleansed from our sins before the holy, holy, holy God. If you don't have the resurrection of Christ, you don't have the death of Christ cleansing you, and then you still have to stand before the holy, holy, holy God with your sins. You're bringing us back to that point before the gospel, before our conversion, before faith. In other words, the death of Christ by itself alone without the resurrection of Christ would have no atoning effect, no redemptive effect, no liberating effect from the guilt of their sin before God and from the slavery of sin in their lives. Verse 18, another consequence would be that those Christians who had already died who had been expecting to awaken to a new dawn and a new day, instead had utterly perished and would never awaken at all, ever. If Jesus did not rise. That's what he's saying in verse 18. Verse 19, he caps it off. The summary statement for all believers was, if we only have this earthly life, we are to be more pitied than other human beings because this is a giant hoax, we are giant phonies, and the whole thing is a waste of time. That's what he's saying. It's in the Bible. I'm preaching biblically to you. This is the consequence if Jesus did not rise. Why are we to be pitied more than other human beings? Because of all the points he just made, I'll quickly review them. Number one, the gospel would have no substance. Number two, their faith would be ineffective. Number three, the witnesses would be incorrect and inaccurate. In other words, Paul, the apostles, and all the preachers. Number four, their sins would retain a destructive and damaging control over themselves. And number five, their fellow believers who had previously died would be irretrievably lost. All of that would be the case if... Christ had not risen, again, I don't wanna go any farther down that road, you. I've had enough. So let's move to our second option, right? You rolled out the one option. Now let's roll out the other option, point two, the after effect, that Christ did rise, verses 20 to 28. The fact that Christ did rise assured, should assure the Christians in Corinth that they had placed their trust in a living Savior who had saved them because he did rise again. Verse 20, Paul writes, Firstfruits. And it means that Christ represented them with the promise that since he arose, they also will rise from the dead. I'm growing cucumbers this summer. Our first four cucumbers I gave away. It was hard for me. I love cucumbers. It's why I'm growing them. And I gave all four of the first ones away. I had to wait for more to grow. I just finally got to eat one yesterday. the first fruits are attached to the rest. I was able to give them away knowing I'm going to have so many cucumbers in a little while, I don't know what to do with them all. First fruits that Christ rose from the dead mean something for you. You're tied in to his resurrection. Verse 21 and 22, he wrote about the beginning of death and the end of death. We could call it, if you let me say it this way, the birth of death. and the death of death, you know, the lifespan of death, where did death come from, and when do we conquer it all? So that's what he's writing about in verses 21 and 22. This is pretty cool. To do this writing, Paul compares and contrasts Christ with Adam. Adam sinned, that's where death gets introduced, first time, right, in the created order. Death comes through Adam's sin, right? But then Christ, the second Adam, last Adam, the new representative of the human race comes, and he brings to death the death. Death dies with Christ, right? He came to abolish death. How? How does Christ abolish death, class? Only through the resurrection of Christ. It has to happen that way. The end of death only comes when Jesus rises. Because he was, in fact, raised, all believers will be raised on the last day of world history. There are scholars, Bible scholars, who call verses 21 and 22 here the high point of this entire letter of 1 Corinthians. the main thrust of what he wrote, the most important thing of what he wrote, what the rest of it hangs on, and it's because our unity with Adam leads to our death, and our unity with Christ leads to our eternal resurrection. This is a radically new action of God he's writing about here, with retroactive consequences all the way back to the very first human, and with future consequences ahead to those not even born yet, should Jesus tarry. The consequences all the way back in time and all the way ahead to the end of the world order. The resurrection of Christ here announced brings the dawn of a general resurrection to come. First time announced, right? First time understood. Paul's explaining it. The heart of the problem in the church in Corinth was the failure to grasp the central place of Christ's resurrection for all of world history. from Adam to the second coming of the last Adam. All of world history, the resurrection is the thing. Notice this, in verse 21, Paul did not write this, by a man came death and by a man has also come life. No, he didn't write that. I want you to notice what he wrote instead. Look at verse 21, he wrote, by a man came death and by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. That's the end of one condition in the world. Death. The reign of death. The supremacy of death. And the start of a different condition in the world that only certain people have. Not the reign of death. Not the supremacy of death. But instead, what? They get to live in resurrection life. They get to be alive and everlastingly alive. There's people in this world who are alive and everlastingly alive. And there's people in this world who are dead. and have the supremacy of death reigning over them. Now there's two realms. But before Jesus rose from the dead, there's only the one realm. This is super important. Even if you don't like theology and reading heavy theology terms and stuff, you grasp this. This is important. God gave us to this in his word for us to celebrate. The end of that one condition in Adam, and at the same moment, the start of the other condition, experiencing life again, an everlasting life that can never be taken from us, a new condition brought about by Christ, first signified by Christ. Remember, he's the first fruits. The first cucumber followed by all the rest of the harvest. The first living again from the dead one, followed by all the rest of us living again from the dead people. Verse 23. Paul gave the sequence of events that brought to an end the supremacy of death and the inescapability of death. First, Christ rose. Then later, all who belong to Christ would rise. So in verses 23 and 24, he builds on that in saying there's this glimpse, he gives, of the future end when Christ will deliver, like delivering a package, deliver over to God, the kingdom of God, over to his father after having destroyed every enemy. He's borrowing their language from the Roman Empire because he knows his audience. And his audience are people who understood that there's this idea of conquering land and then delivering that land over to the highest ruler. Jesus would conquer all the world and then deliver that over to God the Father. That's the language he's using here. Then in verse 26, in the sequence of Christ's victorious activities, the very last enemy to be destroyed would be death itself. The first one that came and started to destroy, right? Since the eating of the fruit of Adam? Death came in, now the last one. It's like bookends to history. The last enemy to be destroyed would be death itself. Verse 27, he showed God the Father's participation with Christ, that God the Father is the one who put all things under the feet of Christ, all things under the authority of Christ, so that in verse 28, every believer who ever died will be raised to life by the authority of Jesus, who received the authority from God the Father. So you have it, if you look up here, if you have the word, the chronological order, the authority structure, God the Father, God the Son, and death is under them. Because before Jesus rose again, it's God the Father and death and Jesus. But because he rose again, he comes above death, and he now says, who lives. The Father and the Son agree about who will live, all those whom the Father has given to the Son and the Son delivered over to Him. God the Father remains the supreme ruler over all things. Of course He rules over souls. He rules over everything. It brings us to our third point then. We've unrolled how ramifications, implications of the resurrection not being true, and we rolled out ramifications, implications of the resurrection being true, and we have one section left, verses 29 to 34, the after effect of denying the resurrection. He's back to the issue. The issue in the church was people were saying there is no resurrection. Oh yeah, let's treat that. So in these verses, Paul showed the obvious inconsistencies in the teaching and practices of Christians in Corinth who claimed there's no resurrection from the dead. Nobody anywhere gets raised from the dead. There's no supernatural, right? But they seem to want to retain other parts of Christianity. A, why are you worshiping? B, why are you studying the Bible? C, why are you messing with baptism stuff? So he gets into it, verse 29. For example, he addressed a custom in the church in Corinth. When someone died without being baptized, they would baptize a still living person as a substitute or surrogate in the place of that dead person. Now, don't wanna get into all that. The only point that Paul's making here is clear. The church in Corinth was inconsistent with itself. They believe there's no resurrection, right? So that as soon as a person is dead, they no longer exist. End of story. There's no life after death, right? They're dead, dead, dead. No resurrection. Then what gain is it to try to give a dead person any benefit from a substitute baptism? You guys aren't following through with the logic of it, is what he's saying to them. Paul was urging them to think through the logical consequences of their beliefs. So then he turns it back on himself in verse 30. Is Paul consistent? Am I living out the logical consequences of what I believe, because I say Jesus rose from the dead, has implications for all of us believers. Am I logical? Am I consistent? Yes, in verse 30, which is why he asks why he would be in danger. Why would he put himself in danger? Why not just go relax somewhere? Why not find the finest food he can find? Why is he putting himself in danger? Where is he in danger? He's an apostle on journeys, missionary journeys. He's doing missionary work and he's being put in danger. Yes, because of the gospel. Because the central claim of the gospel's true, Jesus rose. And he truly lives, so Paul and his converts would live forever. Verse 31, he's a traveling missionary apostle putting himself in danger every time he enters a new city. And he had to face potential death from angry Jews, from the authorities, and every place that he traveled knew. But Paul boasted with a holy pride, he writes here in verse 31, in what Christ had done in believers, not just in Corinth, but in other cities, right? As a result of his courage. Why? He's willing to lay down his life in order to spread this message. Why would he do that? Because he expected to be resurrected. And he expected anybody else who embraced Jesus Christ by faith would be resurrected. And so he's living consistent with what he believed. I'm consistent, are you guys consistent? Is what he's saying to the church in Corinth. Verse 32 is an example of this. He refers to the danger he faced in the city of Ephesus, where he's writing this letter. It seems likely that Paul was referring to both spiritual beasts and also actual wild beasts. Often in the Roman Empire, they put Christians in arenas with wild animals. They really did that. Over in Acts 19, we read that Paul narrowly escaped death during a riot in the city of Ephesus. Paul's only point here is showing them that Paul is consistent. Why would Paul subject himself to such dangers? What would be the gain? Because the resurrection's true. So Paul could continue to spread the message and even if they killed him, he would still rise again. But if the resurrection were not true, then Paul should not endanger himself. He should relax, avoid danger, eat and drink, and enjoy himself until his life ends. Paul is consistent with living out what he believed. Were they? No, they weren't. So in verses 33 to 34, he ends our section admonishing the believers in Corinth, those who said they were believers, but were doubting even the core belief of the resurrection. It's in question whether they're believers. He's writing to them. Right? In verses 33 and 34. Don't be led astray. Don't be led astray by others that were within the church who were doubting and denying the resurrection. So this is what he has to say to them in verse 33. Do not be deceived. If there's people near you who are not believing the resurrection, they're starting to doubt it and they're outright denying it, be very careful, is what he's saying, because they could impact you Those who doubted and denied the resurrection were an unwholesome group of people with whom to spend time because they threatened the faith of others. Do not be deceived, verse 33, bad company ruins good morals. And what's fascinating about Paul's statement here in verse 33 is who had an influence on whom. Think about it. Really sit and think about, take this with you today. Think about this. Was it those with good morals who had a greater impact on those with bad morals? Every grandma says, I sure hope so. We want to influence our grandchildren. We want to influence our neighbors and our family members, right? Those with good morals want to impact those with bad morals. Sorry, that's not how it works. No, look what he says. This is in scripture too. Bad company ruins good morals. Paul writes, do not be deceived about this. Too often, believers, you know, the kinder, gentler believers, are being deceived about how much influence the world has on believers. The world calls to us to waste our time with eating, drinking, smoking, and chasing every kind of frivolous activity. But the center of the life of a Christian, the ground and full calendar and the way we spend our time and money for a Christian cannot be self-gratification. Verse 34, Paul mentions another group, those who had no knowledge of God. Because there's so much at stake, Paul's advice is clear, and you have to admit it's forceful. He's forcefully saying to the church in Corinth this, you ready? Verse 34, 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. If it weren't in scripture, I could never say that to you. God told us this. God, through his apostle Paul, wants us to read this and say, wait a minute, am I needing to wake up? See, here's the basic, basic, basic thing. If you're missing it all, if you're getting a little confusing, just think of this. Believers must not live as if there's no resurrection. Because there is a resurrection, it has to impact the way we think and talk and live. We so much want to escape pain, don't we? Anybody run toward pain? You run away from pain. We don't like pain, discomfort, hard things. We want to be distracted from hard things. We go very far in the direction of creating distractions for ourselves to ease the pain of hard things, right? We even enter a sort of what you might be able to call a lowered spiritual awareness or maybe even an intoxication with some distraction. in order that we not feel and face the pain. We create our own distractions because we like it that way. We search them out. This distraction isn't distracting enough. I need something that's more distracting because we can't face spiritual truth. Verse 34, Paul, because he loves them, says, wake up. He even says, sober up. Because everything we do in this life matters for eternity. And Jesus is truly alive from the dead. He's building his kingdom right now in the middle of whatever you're facing. And you're punching out. He says, punch back in. The fact that Jesus is alive changes everything for this life and for eternity future. About 1,500 years after Paul wrote this, Pastor Martin Luther read this, he studied this, he preached this, you know, the influencer for the Reformation. He wrote this, that if a person doesn't believe in the resurrection, he must deny in a lump the gospel and everything that is proclaimed of Christ and of God, for all of this is linked together like a chain. Whoever denies this must simultaneously deny far more. In brief, he must deny that God is God. Martin Luther, he's saying the same thing Paul's saying here. In fact, that's how our little denomination got started. We had about 30,000 people in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, about 300 churches around the country. About 400 years after Martin Luther said and wrote those things, that's how the Orthodox Presbyterian Church got founded in 1936. After years of open and public demonstration that many ministers in the old Presbyterian denomination denied the resurrection, Yes, ministers denying the resurrection. We're cooked when that happens. We have got to rise up and do something if that happens. Our founding fathers could not abide. And so it would have been shameful to stay in such a denomination without doing anything about it. The only right thing to do was to address it in the courts of the church, to openly declare that Jesus, the head of the church, used to be truly dead, but now he's truly alive, and that he has made us spiritually alive already, and that we are going to live forevermore in his resurrection life, and so we're committed to following him, our risen Lord, come what may. and scores of people left their churches and left the denomination and banded together and started the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The Christianity itself rests on this. The Reformation rests on this. Your denomination rests on this. Your life rests on this. I don't know how to emphasize it more to you. The resurrection is key. So my conclusion is that. Admit that we base everything on the resurrection. Again, we run those same two possibilities briefly. If Jesus did not rise, enjoy yourself. Try not to get killed because there's nothing following it. But if he did rise, get in the game. He's building his kingdom. He's glorifying himself. He's bringing people from darkness to light. This life is meant to be used and must be used to serve him, to glorify him. Why do believers in the resurrection chase distractions? Because of how we feel at the moment. We feel discouraged, we feel drained, we feel overwhelmed, but we're not supposed to make decisions based on how we feel, are we? We're supposed to make decisions based on truth. We're supposed to live out the truths of Christianity. He rose, and it reorients who we are, All of our lives then are reoriented according to the truth of what Paul and his apostles said happened to Jesus, that it actually happened to Jesus. So he lives, he lives. He's reigning in his church. We have all these beautiful truths, justification, sanctification, we have his Holy Spirit. So with a risen Savior, we face those discouragements. We face being drained and overwhelmed. We face the storms of life. Even times of our own personal doubt, we face them. Lord, help my unbelief. Our relationship to God was secured not by the strength of our faith or not by us feeling better. It was by the power of the cross and the power of the resurrection. That's where we find our comfort. That's where we find our consolation. That's where we find our strength during the trials and burdens of this life. It's the living of Jesus, the dying of Jesus, and the rising again of Jesus for us in our place. So just admit it. We base everything on the resurrection of Jesus. It's the reason why we know ours is coming. Expect to be resurrected. Let's pray. Father, give us an unshakable faith.