Forgive the delays. In the 1950s, in Communist Russia, the state arranged a debate between an academic speaker and an old Russian Orthodox priest. The village was gathered together for the event. The academic speaker gave his eloquent and rational arguments against the resurrection. When it was done, he said to the priest, now prove the resurrection, if you can. The old priest stood up and said, Christ is risen. In unison, the villagers responded with a magnificent Orthodox response, He is risen indeed. There will always be those that deny the resurrection. The disciples had difficulty believing that He had been raised from the dead themselves. We read about this in two Gospels. In Matthew chapter 28, verses 16 and 17, we read, Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him. But some doubted. Mark chapter 16, verses 9 through 11, we read, Now after he had risen early on the first day of the week, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and reported to those who had been with him while they were mourning and weeping. And when they heard that he was alive and he had been seen by her, they refused to believe it. Therefore, it should not surprise us that in our day people do not believe in the resurrection of Christ either. Today there are three basic views of the resurrection of Christ. First, it didn't happen. Second, it's a myth. And third, it literally took place. That's the view that we hold, that it's literal, bodily. We find that in Paul's day, there were people in the Corinthian church that denied the resurrection in general. In other words, because they denied bodily resurrection generally, they necessarily denied the resurrection of Christ particularly. Now, when the Bible talks about Christ's resurrection, the Lord means His physical bodily resurrection. He was in a glorified body, but it was the body which was placed in the tomb, albeit transformed. In Luke's Gospel we read, And he said to them, Why are you troubled, and why do you doubt the values in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still could not believe it for joy and were marveling, he said to them, have you anything here to eat? And they gave him a piece of boiled fish, and he took it and ate it before them. Interesting, isn't it? He asked for a piece of fish or he asked for something to eat. Why would he do that? Well, because spirits don't normally eat, at least that we know of. Look with me again at John chapter, look with me also at John chapter 20 verse 24 through 29. was Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples, therefore, were saying to him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I see his hands, and the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight days, again, his disciples were inside, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst, and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Reach here your finger, and see my hands, and reach here your hand, and put it into my side. Be not unbelieving, but believing. Thomas answered and said to Him, My Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, Because you have seen me, you have believed. Lesser are those who did not see and yet believed. It would be kind of hard for Thomas to put his fingers in the nail holes and inside of Jesus if he wasn't physical. If that wasn't the body that Christ had been buried in, it seems odd that God would send a spiritual body to look just like it or something. Jesus was raised physically from the dead. The point is this. Deny the bodily resurrection, and you deny the Gospel. Deny the Gospel, then you deny the Church, which flows from and stands upon the Gospel. Is this not what Paul means when he writes in 1 Corinthians 15, 1 and 2, Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, and which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word that I preached to you, unless you believe in vain. Pay careful attention to the words. That the gospel was preached. That the gospel was received. That the Christians stand upon the gospel. that the gospel is that by which the Christians are saved. Note, too, the details of this gospel, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. The point to note here is that the Gospel, which includes the Resurrection, is according to the Scriptures. Scripture is God-breathed. That is, the Scripture is God's Word. So then, God's reputation is at stake here. Because the stakes are so high, because God's character is called into question, Paul responds to the lie in the Corinthian church that there is no resurrection. Before we look at some of the details, let's bow in prayer. Our gracious God, we do give you thanks for your love and your goodness to us. We pray that you would give us wisdom and insight into the knowledge of your will. We also ask, our God, that Christ would live in our hearts by faith. that we too would understand that we have been raised in Him, and we will be raised one day to be with Him, and our faith will become sight. Help us to remember that You, O Lord our God, are always with us, that as we go through our lives, Your providence is not something that works independently of you, but it's you who are working. That's why Paul says you work in us. He tells us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is in us, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure. Help us to live in light of this. Help us to live because of this. Help us to embrace this and live each day with our hope fixed on our Lord Jesus Christ. Open our eyes, we pray this morning. In Christ's name, Amen. Notice first that the denial is not particular to Jesus. The denial is a general denial. Pay attention to the way Paul states it. Now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? That's a categorical negative statement. There is no resurrection. No one's ever raised from the dead. So his argument follows a form like this. No one is raised from the dead. Christ is preached as raised from the dead. Therefore, Christ has not been raised from the dead. He could not have been raised from the dead because there are nobody. Nobody has been raised from the dead. Paul assumes the conclusion and then points out several implications that follow. But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then what? Well, first of all, then our preaching is in vain. Why bother preaching? Why bother preaching a risen Christ if he hasn't been raised from the dead? You might as well preach about unicorns. You might as well preach about anything else. Second, he says your faith is in vain. Yeah, why would you believe in a resurrected Christ who hasn't been raised from the dead? You might as well believe in Buddha. Then he says, Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God. Why is that? Well, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. Yeah, well, if the dead are not raised, Christ has been raised, and we're preaching Christ is raised, then we're making God a liar. Or we're saying that he's saying something that he didn't say. Fourth, for if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ is raised. Well, that follows from what he's been saying before, right? He's repeating himself here. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. He already said that before, too. You are still in your sins. That's something he hasn't said before. your faith is in vain, then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. In other words, those loved ones of yours that have died, that were in Christ, they were in nobody. Your hope for them, your hope for anybody that's in Christ, is just a waste of time. You might as well be an evolutionist, if that's what you believe. That's what Paul's saying. He's not saying those words, but that's what he's saying. You might as well believe in nothing. You might as well not trust in anything. All the dead, they're dead. They're just gone. That's all. It's part of life. That's what some people say. You know, death is just part of evolution. It's the way that it goes, you know. Don't worry about it. Just die. Of course, there's always that gnaw in our insides, because as the Bible says, God has placed eternity in our hearts. So it's kind of hard for us to, you know, shirk that feeling that our loved ones are dead and gone, and that's it. But I want you to notice something, because people don't like to talk about chiasms. All of you are familiar with chiasms, so it's not anything new to you. I'm a hungry shaman I'm serving. But if you'll notice, you see the preaching is in vain. The faith is in vain. If the dead are not raised, and Christ is not raised, your faith is worthless. You're still in your sins. Preaching, faith. idea about God, Christ not raised, faith is in vain, it's worthless, you're still in your sins. Preaching is talking about the forgiveness of sins, does it not? Is that not what it's saying? Well I want you to notice that kind of in the center of that chiasm is this, that they are found false witnesses of God. Because they testified, we testify, that God has raised Christ when in fact He hasn't raised Him. Because there's no resurrection from the dead. Right? There's no resurrection from the dead. God hasn't raised Him from the dead. So we've said God raised Him from the dead, but then God didn't raise Him from the dead, so we make God what? What are we making God? We're giving false testimony of God. That's what Paul's saying. I want you to notice the emphasis in Paul's argument, it seems to be on the reputation of God. If Christ has not been raised, then preaching the Gospel is a false witness of God, because the Gospel declares that God did raise Jesus from the dead. To preach that Jesus has been raised from the dead is therefore a testimony against God, who did not raise Him. The reputation of God is on the line in the preaching of the Gospel. If we believe the gospel and it's not true, then we offend God, if there is a God. And Paul then, therefore, draws this conclusion. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are most men, most to be pity of all men, the most to be pitied. No resurrection, then no gospel. No gospel, then no hope. Though the day may not be important, the Pascha season, the Easter season as it's called today, it is important because it celebrates the resurrection of Christ. Don't you see that God promises us eternal life? And He promises that life in His Son. If this is not true, then there is no eternal life. And there is therefore no hope. We are of all men to be most pitied. People should actually cry for us that we believe the gospel if the resurrection isn't true. That's why the Heidelberg Catechism states that the work of the resurrected Christ is our only comfort in life and in death. There is no other hope, friends. Beloved, Paul makes a heart-searching comment in this passage we've just looked at. He says, The gospel is that by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preach to you, unless you believe in vain. I have witnessed many people claim to believe the gospel, and I have seen many fall away from the faith they professed. Some are my own children. Believing in vain means that a person's faith was empty, void of reality. If you celebrate this Easter holiday, make sure that your faith is not void of reality. Your eternal life rests upon it. The second detail I want to bring to your attention. We're not going through the whole passage. It would take more than one sermon to do that. So we're just looking at a couple of details. The second detail to notice is that Paul argues theologically against the view that there is no resurrection. And this is how he does it. He states, but now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. In these verses Paul relies on the doctrine of creation. We don't often think of that, but think of it. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, all that they contain, and man in his image and likeness. The first man, Adam, sinned and God cursed mankind. These truths here are assumed by Paul. If they are not true, then Paul's argument is meaningless. Therefore, because Paul assumes and proclaims the scriptural truth of creation, and Adam, and the fall of man into sin, and that God cursed Adam and all of his posterity, if he assumes that. And then he says, for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. This theological base in creation and resurrection gives us hope because Christ had been raised from the dead. We too live in hope of a transformed body, a resurrected body. Paul writes in this same passage, but each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits, and after those who are Christ at his coming, then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, and he has established all rule and authority and power. When Paul says that Christ is the firstfruits, he means that as Christ was raised from the dead, so too will those who are in Christ be raised from the dead. In other words, His resurrection is the firstfruits, like the firstfruits of the field. They represent what the field is. They represent what the field will produce. And so Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection. And as He was raised from the dead, you see, so too will we. That's what we look forward to. We don't look forward to being disembodied spirits. I'm not saying that our soul doesn't live on. Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I'm not saying that. But we don't look forward to that. Our blessed hope is the return of Christ and the resurrection of the body. That's why we say in our confession of faith when we use the Apostles' Creed, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. But Paul asks, or Paul points out, he doesn't tell us when this is going to take place. I guess the only answer to that is when God purposes it to take place. We don't have anything to say over when, or how, or anything. We don't have anything to say over that. That's God's purposes. But Paul does give us a glimpse of what will happen. He writes this, he says, Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And I want to stop right there for a minute. Because we often think that flesh and blood means our physical body. When Paul uses those terms, first of all, flesh is consistently used by Paul to refer to sinful flesh. And blood refers to the life, the blood is what gives us life. It gives the body life, right? That's in this world. The life of the flesh is in the blood, is what the law of God says. And Paul later on says in 1 Corinthians that we will have a spiritual body. In other words, a body that's dominated by by the Spirit. So what will give us life then? What will give our body life at that time? Well, the Spirit will give our body life at that time. I don't know if we'll be bloodless or anything like that, I don't mean that, but the idea is that we will be deriving our physical life from the Spirit. And so we will have a spirit vivified body. And I think that's what Christ has, it's a glorified body. I can't tell you what it all looks like, I don't really know, but that's what I believe Paul is saying in the passage. So, flesh and blood. Well, flesh is usually used by Paul for sinful flesh. And blood is what gives life to the body. And in the resurrection, the sinful flesh will be done away with. We will be transformed and we will be given, our bodies will be transformed into the likeness of Christ. We'll be glorified. And so, but we'll still have our bodies. I hope I have hair, but hey, that's okay. Then he goes on to say, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep. In other words, we won't all die. But we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will be raised imperishable. And we will be changed, for this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. That's what we're looking forward to. Paul also talks about this in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 14-18, where he says, For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, he died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not precede those who have fallen asleep, those who have died. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words." Now when he says, thus shall we always be with the Lord, he doesn't mean that we're always going to be in the air with the Lord. We're only going up there, we're going to meet Him in the air, but we're always going to be with Him. Because I believe that the Kingdom of God is going to be here on this earth. That's what Revelation says anyway. We'll be in a new heaven and a new earth. It will all be different. Beloved, what this tells us is that this world is not our home. Throughout scripture the people of God are called sojourners. This life is to be lived to the praise of God's glory. We are to enjoy the moments of life always relating them to God. I saw an edifying movie Friday night. It was about a Christian man who had lost his wife. His youngest daughter wanted to hook him up with her dance instructor, her dance teacher. She went to her Orthodox priest and asked him to pray that God would bring them together. Well, they did get together. They dated. When they went to dinner, they prayed together. Now, she wasn't used to this. She wasn't too sure about this praying stuff, because she wasn't necessarily religious. She was, however, interested. And they had a Bible study at their church. Every week they had a Bible study. And so she started going to the Bible study with this man. And in the end, well, she was baptized, and they were married, and it was just pleasant. It was a great movie. It was just a wholesome movie. But what really struck me, what I really, really appreciated hearing, was that when this woman prayed toward the end, she prayed. When she finished, she said, in Jesus' name. You don't hear that on TV programs very often, so when you do, you really give God thanks for that. It's a reflection of His common grace, I believe. I think what the movie depicted for me, more than anything, was this. God wants us to enjoy life. I think when I say we are to live to the praise of God's glorious grace, we begin to think, oh no, I've got to walk around with the holy veil on my head, and oh no, I've got to open my Bible all the time, and I've got to pray every two seconds, and I've got to say the Our Father all day long. No, please, that's not what's intended. God wants us to enjoy His benefits and His blessings, but He wants us to enjoy them with Him. You see, He is with us all the time. Yes, we should read our Bibles and pray. I don't mean for certain we need to do that, but that's not all we should do. When we work, we should share our joys and struggles with Him. We don't have to, you know, blurt it out to everybody or anything. We just gotta, even in our own hearts and minds, just gotta say, thank you, Lord. This is a great, I had a great day today. You know, I figured this out and this out. You helped me do that. That's sharing your life with your Lord. That's what it means, I believe, to enjoy God. And He's right there with you. When we work, we should share our joys and our struggles with Him. We should do the same with our children. They should see our faith lived out daily. Sometimes I think we treat God as an idol when we relegate Him to our devotional times and worship on the Lord's Day. We forget that He's present with us all the time. Paul says we live and move and have our being in Him. If that's true, then every second, every breath I take comes from Him. Why not say, you know, thanks for that breath? But our hope is not in this world and our current state of affairs. Our hope is glory. Our hope is to be in the presence of the Lord when our faith will become sight. The resurrection provides that hope. Well, that brings me finally then to Paul's conclusion. He says, Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. Beloved, because Christ has been raised and we live not for the moment, but for the hope set before us, let us be steadfast. that is to be firmly established in our beliefs. You do that by the regular means God has given, the Word, the sacraments, and prayer. Without these you will not stand, you will not be steadfast. Yet Paul offers other means to being steadfast. First, he says, you may be steadfast by being immovable. Well, those are kind of overlapping concepts, aren't they? Steadfast and immovable? Yeah, they are. To be immovable means to not be readily shaken in your beliefs. It's related to steadfastness. But it adds that idea of not being readily shaken in your beliefs. Don't be shaken when people try to tell you things about that Christianity is not true or anything like that. Don't be shaken by the scientism of this world. The world around you will contradict everything you have been taught regarding the scripture. Even other churches will try to deceive you into believing things are contrary to the scripture. But you must stand firm. They will attempt by every argument imaginable, be it science, falsely so-called, philosophy, falsely so-called, intimidation, and many other ways. To be steadfast, one must have courage, the courage to be a Reformed Protestant, the courage to affirm the defined authority of the Scripture. The challenge will increase as time goes on. The desire of the current environment is to change the Scripture and its plain teaching. Whether we stand will demonstrate our faith. So will we stand? Second, Paul says that we remain steadfast by always abounding in the work of the Lord. Now this idea is broad. It includes using the gifts God has given you, practicing hospitality, taking care of the poor, reaching out to your neighbors, praying without ceasing, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, speaking the truth of love, in short, doing all things whatsoever you have been commanded to do. Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my word. Abounding in the work of the Lord covers what it means to be a Christian in practical terms. This is why it is so important. 3. You must remain steadfast by knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Your labor is not without meaning. It is not useless. There are times we wonder, do we not, whether what we do has any significance at all? We labor and toil only to die with what we came into the world with, nothing. We labor hard to teach our children the faith and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord only to wake up one day and hear them deny the faith once delivered to all the saints. We think we are white when we are wrong. We think we are loving, but find out that we haven't been. As Charles Swindoll titled one of his books, we take one step forward and two steps back. Well, that's the truth. It's true for all of us. This is why it is so important to do all that we do believing that God is here with us. We can pray to Him like the psalmist. We can ask Him questions. We need to live our lives believing that God's providence is our living and having our existence in Him. It's our living each moment with Him, near to us and we to Him. When we live with God as our atmosphere, we realize that we can do nothing in vain that is done in His name and according to His will. We all claim that God is omnipresent, that is, He is everywhere present. However, we often live as though He is not. Beloved, let this Pascha, or Easter season, encourage you to know that you and I live because He lives. Embrace the creed we confess, and live each day in light of its truth. Let's pray. Blessed Lord our God, we thank you for your love and your goodness. We thank you for this time of remembering the Lord's resurrection. We remember it every Sunday as we partake of the Lord's Supper, and yet we do have this date set aside throughout church history. It's been around a long time, and it's set aside for a reason, because we want to specifically notice or specifically note that Christ has been raised from the dead. It's a public, it's more of a public declaration than any other Lord's Day of the year. Because it's the one day people all over, even liberal Christians talk about the resurrection. And so, it's the one day that Christ's name can be that Christ's resurrection can be held before the world in a more public way than normal. We thank you for it. We thank you for the technology that has allowed us to do what we're doing right now. And we pray, our God, that you would use it to the praise of your glory. And we ask it in Christ's name. Amen.