This is the third week of Easter. Did y'all know that Easter had three weeks? It's funny, Christmas, you know, we celebrate basically from Halloween until Christmas, two full months. But Easter, we give a good solid 24 hours to, and we're kind of done with it. Historically, however, the church has celebrated Christmas for four weeks, and we should. We really should. It's that big of a deal. It's important. And we've been looking at Easter. And one of the reasons why we're looking at Easter, carefully is if you don't understand something, then you don't really understand. And if you don't understand what it means, then you don't know what you should do. For instance, remember 2001 right after 9 11, they created the created the Department of Homeland Security and they came out with this complex kind of threat level plan. And so it would be in the news, you know, security threat level orange. And we would all kind of look at each other like, the threat level's orange. And my mom would call me, the threat level is orange. What should we do? And I'd say, Mom, I don't know what we should do. I have no idea what that means. And I certainly don't know what I should do. And that's frustrating, right? If you don't know what something means, you don't know what you should do. One comedian said it like this. He said, I wish they would just make it two levels, buy a helmet, and put on your helmet. And that way we would know, like, well, what's the threat level today? Threat level is put on your helmet. Mom, I know what we should do. We should put on our helmets and we would all feel better. In the same way, the news of Jesus' resurrection is a big deal. It matters. But if we don't take the time to understand it, we have no idea what it means that we should do. And I want you to understand what it means. It means that you are free. You are no longer slaves to death or to sin or to the law. You are free to be what you were created to be. You are free to be a loving daughter, a loving son under the gracious, tender fatherhood of God. You are free to be what you were created to be, loving family members of God. The proclamation of Easter is that Christ has defeated death and is reigning until he puts all his enemies under his feet. And you, who have submitted to his authority, are part of the process of bringing all of his enemies under his feet. That's the message of what Jesus has done. Please stand as we continue reading this great text in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We're gonna start with verse 20, but I wanna remind you of what verse 19 says. In verse 19, the Apostle Paul says, if Christ is not raised, then we are of all people the most to be pitied. And he picks up here with one of the grandest buts of the Bible. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep For as by a man came death, so by a man has come the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order. Christ is the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom of God to God the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and every power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet and 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. As far as the reading of God's word, all men are like grass and all of our glories are like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall. But not God's word. God's word stands forever. So please be seated. Christ has defeated death and he is currently reigning until he brings all things under his authority. That's well, the first thing I want you to see what Christ has done. He has defeated death He has overturned the work of Adam Paul says he says by as by a man came death in verse 21 by a man has also come the resurrection of the dead for as in Adam all die so also in Christ shall all be made alive and What's he saying? He's saying that God works through representatives. That's how he functions. It is in the very fabric of our universe, and you can say that you don't like it, but it doesn't matter. It's the way we function. It's the reason why when your favorite sports team wins, you stand up and say, we won, even though you had nothing to do with it. It is the reason why when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, he said, this is a small step for a man, but it's a giant leap for me. No, that's not what he said. He said it's a giant leap for all mankind. And Sinclair Ferguson, who I listened to a lot, was a young boy in Scotland and he went to his dad. He remembers watching it on the black and white flickering television in 1969 and he ran to his dad and he said, Daddy, Daddy, we walked on the moon. We walked on the moon. All mankind. It's just in the fabric of who you are. And the reason why it's in the fabric of who you are is that's the way God has created us. And God created us first in Adam. And he gave Adam one rule. He gave Adam the world, literally gave him the world to experience all of his goodness and all of his grace. And he gave Adam one rule. He said, that tree in the middle of the garden, don't eat from it. Not because it was a magic food. It wasn't like a cursed apple. But it was a symbol that Adam, you are in subjection to me. You are under my authority. And whenever you see that tree, you have to remember you're under my authority. And Adam didn't like that. He didn't like it. And so he went to that tree and he saw that it was good. And he watched Eve eat it and nothing happened to her. And it was good to his eyes, and it was desirable, because he wanted to be like God, and so he ate from it. And at that point, death entered the world, because God's rule had been turned on its head, and God is life itself. So now that God's rule has been turned on its head, death reigned. And death took the world into slavery from that time until the time of Jesus. And when Jesus came, he recapitulated, he overturned everything that Adam had done. What do I mean? It's really, it's a beautiful way to just to read the Bible and understand it, to see, go back and read in detail Genesis three, all the things that happened when Adam sinned and all the curses that came upon him, and then apply those to the gospel story. And you'll see things like this. Adam refused to keep the only rule he had. He basically was said, not God's will, but my will be done. And Jesus throughout his life said, I have not come to do my will, but the will of my father who is in heaven. And even when confronted with going to the cross said, I don't want to do it, but not my will, your will be done. Adam broke God's law by taking for himself. There was something he saw that he wanted and he took and ate. Jesus overturned Adam's sin by giving himself. And that's why it's so beautiful that he says, this is my body. Take and eat. I'm given for you. I'm not taking for myself. I'm being given for you. Adam broke God's law by refusing to avoid the tree. Jesus followed God, overturned Adam's sin by obeying him and going to the cross and hanging on the tree. And as you delve into the details of the cross, it's fascinating, it's beautiful. You begin to see every part of the curse put upon Jesus. What were the curse? God told Adam, by the sweat of your brow, you'll eat. We're told that Jesus had sweat falling to the ground like great drops of blood. Adam was told that you will struggle for your bread and you'll struggle against the ground and the ground will bring forth thorns. And Jesus had a crown of thorns put upon his head. Eve was told you will give birth in great pain and travail. We're told that Jesus groaned and in great pain gave birth to the church. He experienced the fullness of the curse and ultimately Adam was told, from the ground you were taken and to the ground you will return. And Jesus was buried on our behalf and returned to the ground for us. And death overtook him. And it was a great victory for sin. It was a great victory for Satan. It was a great victory for death, that death had Jesus in his hold. Jesus had the power of life and having never sinned death had no handle on him so Jesus so death could not hold him my seminary professor gosh I'll never forget this was in 1994 I'm sorry 1992 when I heard this he said Death trying to hold Jesus is like a light bulb trying to hold a million megawatts. He exploded it from the inside. It just wasn't big enough to hold him. And he's changed it forever. He has changed everything about life and death forever. And now death has no sting and death does not have the power to hold us. And it wasn't just that he was raised from the dead. Jesus then ascended to the throne of God. And this is what Paul is telling us. He's done two things. The first thing he's done is he has brought life. He has freed us from death. Just like David freed Israel by defeating Goliath. Jesus has freed us by defeating death. Now and then he ascended to the throne just like David went to the throne Jesus has ascended to the throne of God And we're told that from there. He will reign verse 25 such a powerful verse He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. I Now, that's a great image, but it's kind of hard for us to get, right? Under his feet, what does that mean? We kind of think of a throne that's real high, I guess, and so his feet are higher than our heads? Maybe the case, I don't think so. Actually, obviously it's a symbolic term, right? That he is over us. But in the days, even before Jesus, in the days of the ancient kings, when they would take over another nation, As to symbolically show that we were under the new king's feet, this is what they would do. They would conquer the king and they'd put him in a cave or whatever. You see this actually in Joshua and they would bind them. And then the new king, the conquering king would come and they would take this old king who's been conquered and throw him down on the ground. And the new king would put his foot right up on his face like that. And you had one chance. You could kiss that foot. That's where the phrase, kiss my foot, comes from. I don't know if you've ever heard that. My mom used to say it all the time. In Psalm 2, actually, it says this. It says, kiss the son lest he be angry. If you refuse to kiss that foot, he would bring his heel down on your throat and kill you. And we're being told that Jesus will reign until all of his enemies are brought under his feet. That's what he's doing. He could do that faster. There's a part of our hearts when we see the pain and the injustice and the evil in the world, there's a part of our hearts that goes, why don't you hurry up? Problem is this, right? If you'd hurried up and eradicated all evil from the world a hundred years ago, none of us would have been here. Because that part of that evil is in us and he's had to get it out. And so he's going the slow way and he is giving us a chance. He is giving us a chance to come willingly. He is giving us a chance to come intentionally on our own behalf and submit to his authority and to feel that power for us and to feel him healing us. And the first question I have to ask this text Demands that I ask it and I wouldn't have asked it because I don't like these kind of things But I was eating lunch with a friend of mine named Anthony this week And Anthony was converted late in life and he'd done some really bad things and he had always believed in God and his his aunt would take him to church and his grandmother would take him to church and But they knew that he wasn't a Christian and then he was finally converted and he began reading the Bible and he got really mad And he went to his aunt and he said, why did you never tell me I was God's enemy? You knew I believed in him. And they said, well, we took you to church. No, you never told me I was his enemy. And so it's my job, that's the reason you'll pay me. I gotta ask you, are you God's enemy? Have you kissed his foot? Have you submitted to him yet? Have you just submitted yourself to his authority? Have you brought yourself up under him? If you have, and most of you have, you have found that he is sweet. He is not a slave master. He is a dear father. And you bring him great joy and his greatest concern is not what you can do for him, but his greatest concern is to love you and to take delight and pleasure in you. But if you haven't, if you haven't submitted to him, then all you see him as a harsh slave master, a tyrant, And if that's how you see God, then I know you don't know Him. You just don't know Him. And you're still living in rebellion. And your rebellion may take all kinds of different forms. There's intellectual rebellion. I'm just not going to submit to God until all my questions are answered. And you know what? They never will be. I had a guy last week when I was talking about the resurrection, and he came up after the service, and he said, you know, I'm a scientist. He was a geologist by trade, and he said, you know, I just, I believed in God, but the whole resurrection thing, I just, I couldn't believe it. I had too many questions. I'm a geologist for heaven's sakes. I understand science. Dead people don't get up. That's not how it works. And I just, finally it dawned on me, God, isn't under my authority. He doesn't have to answer all my questions. He had to submit his mind to God. Others of us have to submit our pride, right? This is funny. I shouldn't make fun of people, but I'm about to. Now, I learned about a different, a new group, a new oppressed group in our midst. I didn't know if you knew about this oppressed group. They're called the hidden rich. And these are the really rich, like nobody you know, but people like, you know, Garth Brooks or Jerry Joneses of the world that everybody knows who they are. And the reason why they're oppressed is they can't go to church because, you know, churches are always asking them for things. And they just kind of change every room when they walk into it. And I honestly, I do kind of get that. That would be a drag. Right, to change every room when you walk in and everybody kind of stare at you and kind of wonder if you were going to solve all their problems. I get that that would be a drag. They still got to submit. They still do. You know, some of us have to submit as just, it's just a matter of pride. I mean, we just don't like being told what to do. When people don't do things the way we tell them to do it, we get mad. We go somewhere else. It's a submission to authority. And it takes all kinds of forms. Some of us won't submit our pride. Some won't submit their intellect. Some won't submit their morality. Right? We just live our life with our fist in the air saying, I'm going to do what I want to do. Now, and most of the people who live that way are not in this room, they're hungover. But some of you are in this room secretly wishing you could just do whatever you want to do. And you're plotting it, you're daydreaming about it. And you're gonna do it one day. And you'll probably end up in my office or somebody like me. And you'll probably be crying. And it's not very nice of me, but I think it's necessary for me that I'm gonna look at you and say, well, is this the feeling you always dreamed of? You finally did it. Are you glad? Is this what you were hoping for? You thought you could find life by throwing off God's oppressive law? And I need you to know that even his servants have it sweeter than anybody else. But he doesn't want you to be a servant. He wants you to be his daughter. He wants you to know his joy. Maybe your rebellion looks like morality. Maybe you're just doing everything right. And the reason why you're doing everything right is because you want to keep God off your back. You are afraid of him and so you would never do anything wrong. And more and more as you've gotten older, you're slowly finding that fear turning to anger. Because you've done everything right and yet he still refuses to give you everything you think you deserve. You kind of think you're entitled to something by now. You know, and it doesn't matter what it is, whether it be healthy children or a healthy back or, you know, for me, it's like weather, like when the winter drags on forever. Isn't there a part of you, let me rephrase that, there's a part of me that just goes, God, I deserve a little bit warmer day. I think I deserve it. Why? Because I've served, I freaking worked for you. You feel that, don't you? Well, you know what? God is a dear and loving Father, but He is not my slave. And He will not be controlled by my actions, and sometimes He sends me really cold days just to remind me of that. Some of us, you know, there's all kinds of reasons. We won't submit our morality, we won't submit our minds, we won't submit our pride, but you gotta know this. Jesus will reign until he has put everyone under his feet and everything under his feet. And that starts with you. It starts with you. And when you come, you'll find him sweet, but until you come, then you need to know that he is your king. He has defeated death and he is reigning until he brings all things under his authority. And that changes us, but it also changes our view of death. Secondly, it changes our view of death. What do I mean? Paul says that death has no sting. He says, oh, death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting? He's saying that death is a honeybee, it's not a wasp. When I was a kid, grew up in the country, you know that. Ran around barefoot. All those things you think it probably looked like, it did. And one of the things that would happen just about every summer and spring, when the bees were out on the dandelions, I would step on one. And I'd come screaming into mom. She'd pick me up, put me on the bathroom sink, and put my foot up. Why don't you pull my foot up? She had to take the stinger out. And then once the stinger was out, the pain eventually subsided. But not for the bee. The bee was dead. Once the bee has lost its stinger, it's got nothing. And they die. See, death is like a bee, Paul says. It's not like a wasp. Once you get into that wasp nest, you never forget it. Those of you who've been in it, because a wasp can sting you as many times as he wants to until he feels like that threat's over. I remember getting into the wasp nest. That was no good. Death, death is a bee and he has put that stinger in Jesus. And what does that mean for us? It means We don't have to experience all of it. We don't have to live in terror of it. It's not our final destination. It's not the great unknown. We know someone who's been there and made it back to tell us about it. It's not the place of great terror. Like the Cape of South Africa used to be known as the Cape of Storms until a Portuguese explorer finally found out how to get around it and he changed the name. It's no longer the Cape of Storms. It was now the Cape of Good Hope. Death is no longer the place of disaster. It's no longer our ultimate terror. It's been changed forever. Donald Barnhouse is a pastor in Philadelphia in the early part of the 20th century. And his wife died while his children were still young. And being a pastor, he's just kind of always thinking for illustrations, you know. And he's trying to figure out, how am I going to explain this to them? And literally on the way to the funeral in the hearse, They're driving, and a truck came the other way. And the son went behind the truck for a moment, and so the shadow of the truck came over the car. And he looked at his daughter, and he said, did you see that truck? And she said, yeah, Dad. He said, did you see the shadow? And he said, yeah, of course, she said, Dad. And he said this, he said, would you rather be hit by the truck or by the shadow? You know, preacher's girl, bless her heart. She's always learning these lessons, right? I guess by the shadow, dad. Well, you need to know that Jesus was hit by the truck. He was hit by the truck of death. So we only have to pass through the shadow. And your mom has passed into the shadows. But it will end and she will come back out. Death has been transformed, so we only have to pass through the shadows. And that, honestly, as Christians, we need to let that change the way we think about death. This is a long conversation that I'm just going to bring up, say, and tell you to go and have it. But we need to be willing to talk about death in a hopeful way and in a realistic way, because we live in a strange time when medicine's kind of made it possible for us to survive for a really long time, but not really live. And we need to have those conversations about not being afraid of death and how we can prepare for it and what that looks like. Death is not this final destination. It's not this disaster. And finally, death is not our hope either. There's some types of Christianity that have gone too far the other way, and they almost look forward to death. There are some songs, even some songs that we sing, that kind of look forward to death, to that great going into the by and by when we finally get to go to heaven, and that's not the Christian hope. The Christian hope is not our death, but our resurrection. It's a teaser. If you come back next week, we'll talk about that. We really will. But it is not our final resting place. It is not our hope. It is the place that we will go and be with Jesus and He will comfort us, but we'll still be crying there, actually. We're still going to be praying. We're still going to be experiencing pain because our loved ones will be experiencing pain. Death is not our hope, but the resurrection is. Jesus has defeated death. Jesus is currently reigning until he puts all things under our authority. That means that we need to be under his authority. That means that we need to change the way we view death. And finally, that means we need to change the way we view life. Jesus is not still in the grave He's on the throne on the throne of the world and that that kind of helps us understand what's going on Paul says it like this. This is from the New Living Translation. I like it It's a little smoother and he says Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet and the last enemy to be destroyed is death and The scriptures say God has put all things under his authority and when all things are under his authority the son will put himself under God's authority So that God who gave his son authority over all things will be utterly supreme over everything everywhere Jesus is reigning until he humbles all his enemies. So how do we live as the church and as Christ's body on the earth, we live in such a way that we are bringing all of his enemies under his authority. What does that mean? We know who his enemies are. Death, oppression, it's called the beast in Revelation 12, power, sin, Revelation calls it the prostitute, false ideologies the false prophet and We fight against those things as a church Okay, I want to use the first one because we've all kind of gotten behind that one to explain the others What's the first enemy that we are fighting against that literally we're fighting against death as a church. Did you know that and Literally, we're kind of pushing it back And if you read Old Testament prophecies, they should interest you. There's a great prophecy in Isaiah 65 that says if a man dies at 100, we'll think that his life was accursed. You know what the interesting thing about that is? We all assume that's talking about what? Heaven, right? After the resurrection. But why would somebody die after the resurrection? It's actually talking about life before it, I think. It's the only way I can make sense out of it. And it means that we're gonna push the average lifespan that far. I believe that's true. We're actually seeing that happen. A hundred years ago, the average lifespan was 40. We've incredibly changed that. And the church has been part of it. You need to know that. If you wanted to go to the hospital right now, if you fell down and we had to take you to the hospital, where would we take you? St. Francis probably, right? It's the closest one. Why is it called St. Francis? Why is it run by the Catholic Church? Why is it that in almost every city, the biggest hospitals are owned by the Catholic Church or they have names like Baptist or Presbyterian? Because Christians invented the hospital. It's our invention. In ancient Greece, you didn't take care of the sick. You got rid of them. They literally would throw sick bodies into the street. It's a Christian thing to fight against death. Now, we all know that we're not gonna win, right? I mean, the resurrection is our only hope. The gospel is our only hope. We shouldn't be wasting time taking care of the sick. We should just preach the gospel to them so they'll go to heaven and then let them die, right? Of course not. But we believe that about everything else. All the other enemies, that's what we believe. Can we have a little family conversation? Whether you like it or not, no matter how embarrassed this next statement makes you, it's true of you if you're in this room. We are by birth American Southern evangelicals. And our faith was formed by Southern evangelicalism, which was corrupted in the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries because you had the church exploding right next to slavery. And in order for the church to survive, it had to not criticize this enormous institution. And so we invented this thing called spirituality. And we started saying things like, well, those problems will only get fixed in heaven. And we just need to preach the gospel. And that didn't die with slavery. I was taught that by my campus minister. Whenever it was like MLK week, or we talk about racism, he'd say, oh, you know, we just got to talk about the gospel. And then racism will never be dealt with until everybody's converted. I was taught that in seminary. My seminary held that belief very strongly. It didn't say racism was okay. Don't get the wrong idea. But it was saying the only thing we could really do was preach the gospel. We don't view that when we think about death, do we? And honestly, other traditions have not thought that way. But it's ours and it's changing. I'm very thankful for that. The president of my seminary stood up just last week and he said, you know, the problem is we just did not love our neighbor. We just haven't loved our neighbor. We're getting it. We're changing. Things are changing for the better. And we have to be part of that. We have to understand that it's our job as a church to fight oppression wherever we see it, whether it be racial oppression or economic oppression. You know, economic oppression still exists. You know that, right? A good friend of mine told me last night he's got to take another job. And the reason why he has to take another job is because his ex-wife keeps suing him for more child support, even though she makes way more money than he does. But you know what? Making way more money than he does means that she can afford lawyers and he can't. And his lawyer told him, you'll be better off just paying this child support. You'll get out cheaper than trying to pay me. That'll make you mad. It better make you mad. It's just wrong. There's all kinds of economic oppression. You have immigrants who don't know better and they're coming into this country under smugglers and then being told they have to sell themselves in prostitution to pay back the cost of their immigration. And we need to fight against that. We should rejoice that one of the few bipartisan things that's happened, actually, in recent memory, is a great bill that was passed last week to fight against sex trafficking. We should rejoice in that. That's the kind of thing the church should be about. This church, the church, it should be about seeing Jesus reign until every inch of this world belongs to Him. Because He will reign. It all belongs to Him. Every inch of this world, every person, every institution, and every thought will be brought captive to His authority. And only then will we know that sweetness, that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Jesus has defeated death, and that explains what our life is to be about, bringing all things under His authority. Please pray with me. Father in heaven, I pray that you would give us the grace to come under your authority. It's hard. Father, I have to acknowledge that like two-thirds of myself doesn't feel like it's under your authority. It's hard for me to bring my thoughts, my desires, my eyes, my words, my emotions under your sweet authority. Would you enable me to do that? Would you grant me your Holy Spirit to do that? Would you grant us all your spirit to do just that? And Father, would you show us where we can help? Show us where we can pull, show us where we can join together to fight against the enemies of Jesus and bring them under his authority. We pray in his precious name, amen.