I would like to encourage you, if you have God's Word with you this morning, to join me in Paul's letter to the church at Corinth, 1 Corinthians, chapter 15. I want to introduce you to an individual, as it were, and maybe a strange introduction. character that I want to introduce you to this morning. I tend to go through life a little bit half empty, I'll be honest. It's probably shaving a few years off my life that I tend to be a bit on the pessimistic side, maybe a bit of a cynic. And so at this time of year where we celebrate life and at this time of year where we celebrate the resurrection, I want to introduce you this morning to this individual. I'll borrow from a preacher of old. He said, there is a preacher of the old school who speaks as boldly as ever. He's not popular. Though the world is his parish, he travels every part of the globe and speaks every language. He visits the poor. He calls on the rich. He preaches to people of every religion and people of no religion. The subject of his sermon is always exactly the same. He's an eloquent preacher, often stirring feelings which no other preacher could, and bringing tears to eyes that otherwise never weep. His arguments, none are able to refute, nor is there any heart that has remained unmoved by the force of his appeals. He shatters life with his message. Most people hate this preacher. Everyone fears him. His name is death. Every tombstone is his pulpit. Every newspaper prints his text. And one day, every one of us will be the subject of his message. It's a reality at this time of year where we celebrate life, where we come together with the hope of the resurrection that that very thought forces us to confront our own mortality, forces us to think about death. Inevitably, every one of us, regardless of our ethnicity, regardless of our social status, regardless of our educational level, every one of us will succumb to that preacher death. That's how it is for all humanity. There is a certain sense of dread that accompanies death. But for the Christian, things are different. In fact, the apostle Paul, who is the author of the letter that we are open to right now, actually communicated this. He said, I'm in a straight betwixt you. I'm between a rock and a hard place, having a desire to depart. He communicated to a group of believers, I want you to know that I'm between a rock and a hard place. I have a longing, I have a desire to depart from this world. I welcome the idea of death. That's strange. In fact, he says further to his protege Timothy, I am now ready to be offered. The time of my departure is at hand. With an awareness that his death was impending, he communicated to his protege in the faith that he was ready to meet that moment. In just a second, we're going to read three simple verses and we're going to hear him taunt death. As though he were a conquering victor, taunting a defeated foe. How is that? Why is it different for Christians? How can a believer express a longing? How can someone communicate that they are ready for that moment? How can you treat death, which is feared by all, as a conquered foe that you taunt? One word. One name, Jesus Christ. One truth, that is the resurrection. You understand, people were wrestling with this very thought in this church, in this passage. How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? It's hard to believe that. They were asking some challenging questions. How are the dead raised up? Paul is communicating to a group of people just like us. Some are skeptics. Both ancient and modern people fight against the truth of the resurrection. They scoff at the idea that the body, the human body, which disintegrates in the grave or maybe is virtually destroyed in a fire or lost at the bottom of the sea could ever rise from the dead. But according to Scripture, even though it is a challenging truth, it is truth. It is the reality of Easter and it is a message for us. I direct your attention here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 to verse 55. I want you to listen to the confidence that exudes from the Apostle Paul, a believer who was resolute, who was certain and sure of his salvation before God. I want you to hear his words of passion as he communicates with eloquence his victory over death. In verse 55 he says, O death, calling death out, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Let me just establish some simple truths for you this morning, derived directly from scripture. Let me communicate to you as a herald of the voice of the Apostle Paul, directed by the Holy Spirit, proclaiming unto you the message of truth from God. It is this, first and foremost, by man came death. If death is a feared visitor, then we can point a finger of blame at man, at humanity. This passage of scripture back in the 21st verse says so much, for since by man came death, it is a Bible truth that man brought death on himself. We use that term generically, but in the very next verse, it is clarified for us explicitly who's to blame. It says in verse 22, for as in Adam, all die. What was it that Adam did that was so bad that he conferred the sentence of death on everyone? Have you ever misbehaved in your life? I have been known to, on occasion, misbehave. The older that I get, the less that I misbehave. That's just because I lack the energy to do it. The older that I get, the more I misbehave, the more I get away with it because the police that were my parents are no longer around to enforce strict laws and rules of behavior upon me. So I have lost a little sense of bearing as to how well or poorly I behave. But I've never done something so bad that all of the human race paid for my misbehavior. That all of the human race became culpable for the sin that I committed. But according to scripture, man has brought death on himself. And the reality, according to the word of God, is that man was Adam. What did Adam do that was so bad that even you and I who are seated in this room are paying the price? for what he's done. Romans 5, 12 says this, Wherefore, here's the truth, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. I don't know how perfect you are. As I look across you on Easter Sunday morning, I see some resemblance of perfection. Everybody's attending church. Most everybody's in a good mood. Everybody's behaving themselves. They've even maybe dressed up just a tick to make God really happy with how things are this sunny Easter morn. I want you to know something about yourself regardless of how polished up you are at this moment. You and I alike carry a disease. It has been passed on to us from the generations that preceded us all the way back to Adam. sinned according to scripture. And because Adam sinned, sin has passed on to every man that sin nature. And death has been the result, the punishment, the consequence of that sin. You see, Adam was given a free will by a loving God. And he chose to sin. He chose to reject the word and the will of God. If we had time to go all the way back to the creation account, we would see man in complete harmony with God. Everything was as God intended it to be. God looked at creation and He said, it is good. It was right. It was as God intended it, but as humans want to do. We wrecked it in a hurry. In fact, back in Genesis chapter two, God was very clear. The Lord commanded the man, that is Adam, saying, of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat. It sounds good. That's the kind of rules we like. We can do whatever we want, save this one thing. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. And listen to the sentence that God passes, making it very clear what his will and his word are. For the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. That's pretty harsh. I mean, Adam could probably look at God and say, God, what is death? Though I believe he had divine knowledge on him and was aware of what the consequences were. It's incredible to me that God is so loving that he extends free will down to man and says to him, every single tree is yours. There's one you can't have. Are you a little bit like Adam? that the one you can't have seems to be the one that looks the very best. That's exactly what happens. In fact, a chapter later, the serpent, that's the devil, the enemy of God, anti all things Christ, said unto Eve, Adam's wife, yea, hath God said, you can hear the subtlety, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it. No confusion here, lest ye die. She knew it, understood the consequences. The devil says to her, ye shall not surely die, for God knoweth that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired, she ate it, took it to Adam, her husband, and he also did eat it. What did God say? You can have any tree, you can't have this one. What did man with his free will do? Choose to reject the word and the will of God and eat the one thing he couldn't do. God said there's a clear punishment for making that mistake, causing God to punish man. And in that moment, everything changed. And it changed for you and me as well. In that moment, man who had existed in peace and harmony with God was introduced the very first time to shame and fear. Man was in the garden, he was naked with his wife, he was not ashamed, that's what the scripture tells us. But in the moment that his eyes were opened, in the moment that he rejected the word and the will of God, he was introduced to shame and fear. In fact, it says they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. Adam's own testimony is, I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. Can you imagine the first time ever coming in contact with the emotion of fear? That's what sin brought. Shame and fear. Exhausting self-effort. I always laugh a little on the inside when I think of Adam and Eve trying to hide in the garden from the presence of God. I find a little bit of gallows humor when I see that they make an apron of leaves and attempt to cover their nakedness. Do you understand that from the very onset of humanity, man has devised his own schemes to cover up his sins? Self-effort that is exhausting. Shame and fear enter into the equation. A loss of harmony with God where once it existed. Now God walks in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam hides from him. Where once he would have welcomed his company and unfortunately, death. In Genesis 3, 22, the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us. He'll no good and evil take away the tree of life, lest man eat and live forever. Do you realize that because of Adam, we lost eternal life? Because of Adam, we lost harmony with God. Because of Adam, we were introduced to shame and fear. Because of Adam, we know what this exhausting self-effort is. You realize that the natural world had never known death, but God made a coat of skins to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve. And in the natural world, which God created perfectly for the first time, there was blood that was shed, there was death. Do you comprehend that in the human world, Adam's very warning from God, God enacted the punishment of death upon man? By the time we get to Genesis chapter five, five chapters into the account of scripture, man has wrecked what God created in perfection by rejecting his word and his will, exercising his free will to act out against God. By Genesis chapter five, we're introduced to, in effect, an obituary page within scripture. For the first time, we read these words, and he died, eight times in chapter 5. Perhaps most prominently, we read this, and all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. That's it. Adam has passed that sin, Adam has passed that punishment from sin, death, onto the rest of humanity, every single one of us. The writer of Hebrews makes it known when he says, it is appointed unto men once to die. Perhaps you could wouldn't understand that. It's the destiny of everyone to die, and you can't run from it. So you woke up this morning, it was sunny out, you felt good, you did an egg hunt, you ate stuff you shouldn't have eaten, you dressed up, you came into church happy, and I'm telling you, it's over for you, you're checking out, you're dying. And some of you don't have that long. Happy Easter. The reality is none of us know how long we have. Because of Adam and his exercising his free will against the word and will of God, The sentence of death has passed on every one of us. According to the truth of scripture, by man came death. Shame and fear have been introduced to our vocabulary, exhausting self-effort to try to rectify our situation in the presence of a holy God who is judge over every man, hiding our own nakedness. Harmony that we once knew with God, unbreakable. We now understand is broken and according to scripture we are at enmity. We are the enemies of God because of sin. And we who were intended to live and be young and free and happy and all good looking now know what age is like. How many of you feel age? How many of you look in the mirror and have to acknowledge it ain't what it used to be? Uh-huh. Everybody in this room except my wife. I'm smarter than I look, and I know how I look. Age has had its way with me, I get it. By man came death, and in Adam all die. You say, now wait a second, pastor. You've made this really sad, but you told us that the apostle Paul just taunted death like a conquering hero over a defeated foe. You just expressed to us that he had a longing, a desire for that moment to come. You said he was between a rock and a hard place. He wanted to die. Was he just sad? Was he depressed? Was he miserable? No, he was legitimately victorious. I've only told you half of the story for back in verse 21, after it says, by man came death, it says, and by man came also the resurrection of the dead. This is a Bible truth. It is non-negotiable. It cannot be debated. You cannot argue against it. In the very next verse, as we clarified that it was Adam that we all gained death and sin from, so we learn who the man who was victorious over death and brought resurrection is even so in Christ shall all be made alive. By man came death, by man came the resurrection. Are you denigrating Jesus Christ by merely calling him a man? Uh-uh. Don't misread me. In fact, listen to what the Apostle Paul says. I like how he says it better in verse 47. The first man, Adam, is of the earth. And then he adds this adjective on, earthy. Make no mistake, the first man, Adam, who sinned is of the earth, earthy. Why would he say of the earth, earthy? He was literally made of what? The dust of the ground that God breathed the breath of life into. But listen to the last part of verse 47. The second man who brought resurrection, don't think of him merely as another man. He happens to be the Lord from heaven. who visited this tiny speck in the universe and humbled himself and took on the form of humanity and was numbered amongst us as a sinner and a transgressor, humbled himself to the degree that he became a servant unto his own creation and became obedient unto death. And as Philippians tells us, by the way, be shocked and amazed, even the death of the cross, As he hung between heaven and earth and sacrificed his life willingly on our behalf, buried and on the third day he rose again. That's what this day is about. Not pastels and eggs. Not brunches and sunshine. Please don't ever get hung up on, that just sounds too happy, brunches and sunshine. But verse 20 says, now is Christ risen from the dead? You do understand that he bore our sin, he paid our debt of death on the cross. By man came death, by man came also the resurrection. Adam brought it on all, so on Adam all die. Christ brought resurrection, so in Christ all can be made alive. You do comprehend that the sentence of death has been conferred upon you because of your sin nature. But amazingly, graciously, mercifully, astoundingly, incredibly, Jesus Christ, God incarnate, came to this earth and willingly hung on the cross and laid down his life as a sacrifice, and get this, paid a debt you could not pay. died so that you don't have to die, so that he might confer upon you the gift of eternal life. That's what this chapter is about. The church at Corinth was debating the resurrection and Paul says, listen to me, you might wrestle with this truth, you might struggle to grasp this truth, but you must know that it is truth. Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and the rising of Jesus Christ from that garden tomb is inextricably linked to the rising again of the saved. That's what he says in verse 13, if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen? He goes on, he says, if there be no resurrection of Christ, then our preaching is in vain, it's empty, it's futile. Your faith it's empty and futile as well He says in verse 17 if Christ be not raised you are yet in your sins. You are still lost You have no hope whatsoever if in this life, then only we have hope in Christ We are of all men most miserable if there was no Jesus Christ Rising from the dead and conquering death. Why in the world are we all here this morning? We are of all men most miserable who really likes to get dressed up and come listen to me. Literally not one hand went up. Thank you. Not even my wife since she's sitting behind me. My children are in here. No one loves me. Hey, here's what he's saying. Guys, if Jesus didn't conquer death and rise from the grave, stop going to church. It's hopeless, it's futile, it's empty, it's vain. You don't have to go be miserable, but Christ is risen, therefore these things are not miserable. It's the gospel message. He said, I gave you the gospel from the very onset how that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. It's not just Paul who's saying this. This was the testimony of the angels who were there at the tomb that first Easter morn when they said, he's not here. He's not? No, he is risen. And then they tacked this little stinger on as he said, you shouldn't have come this morning. He told you he would rise, but you faithless humans are here to check it out anyways. It was witnessed by many back in verses 5, 6, 7, and 8 of this chapter. You ought to take the time to read it. It's a journal entry of people who saw Jesus conquer death. He says, hey, by the way, Cephas saw him, Peter saw him. James saw him. About 500 brethren, they saw him. The apostles, they saw him. And by the way, I'm an eyewitness too. As one born out of time, I laid eyes on him. They're saying, look, you may struggle to grasp the reality of this truth. I'm telling you it's true. There are eyewitness accounts. Death could not hold him. He swallowed up death in victory. I love it. It's a quotation from the prophet Isaiah. He will swallow up death in victory. He will gobble it up. He will consume it. That which is inedible to us, he will consume and make it no more. We have a reason as humans to fear death. It's unwelcomed. It breaks long loving relationships and severs unions. It removes people that are greatly needed. Unfortunately, it pounces on the blushing baby cheeks and the most deeply wrinkled faces. It snatches people away from us and it hurts. But eternal life is offered to us. Romans 6.23, another says, for the wages of sin is death. Okay, we get it, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. That as sin hath reigned unto death, Romans 5.21, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. The power of death is not merely weakened by Jesus, it's gone. It's not merely tired in the presence of Jesus. It is destroyed so that it can do no further harm. The destruction of death as total as he swallowed it up in victory. All of the short lived and apparent victories of death are undone for God's children. What looks like a victory for death and a defeat for us when our bodies die and decay is utterly reversed and death dies again in the resurrection. Can you imagine the victory that death could trumpet for three days after Jesus cried out, it is finished? Can you imagine the revelry of Satan? Can you imagine the overwhelming defeats when Jesus, God in the flesh, did what no one else could do, and that is he took up life again because he alone had the power to do so. Can you fathom the depth and the breadth of the grace and the mystery and the power of the cross that he now extends that same power to each of us? We are saved. It is the power of the resurrection that quickens us to life who were dead in our trespasses and sins. See, as we read down through, we know, by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. But thanks be to God, by one man's obedience, shall many be made righteous. Because where sin once abounded, grace does much more abound. I'll close with this simple thought. for believers. We arrive at verse 58 and he says, therefore. It's the very last verse and an incredibly lengthy passage of scripture. He gets all the way to the end and he basically says, okay guys, I have laid out my argument. It is non-negotiable. Jesus Christ conquered death. He has risen again. It's non-negotiable that man has been sentenced with death, but he can have victory over death through Jesus and through Jesus alone. And for those of you that are believers, those of you in Corinth that are getting this letter, let me give to you the great therefore. Because Jesus Christ has conquered death and because it is fact. That He has risen again. Here is how you should behave yourselves. Therefore, my beloved brethren, you believers, be steadfast. Because Christ rose, you settle down. Get a hold of your emotions. Be settled. You're going to rise from the dead. He says, be unmovable. Don't be in motion all the time doctrinally. Be settled. Settle down on the rock solid reality of the promise of the resurrection. And then he says, in effect, go to work. Go to work, always abounding in the work of the Lord because the work that you do for the Lord is not empty. It is not vain. It is purposeful. It is eternal. Don't just play at it. Don't just waste this life. You're going to be raised to glory. You're going to be in the presence of God. Don't squander these few years that you and I have. Therefore, because Jesus Christ rose from the grave, I encourage you to exhaust yourself for Jesus Christ. Those who are apathetic and indifferent and numb, I say to you, it's Easter. Come alive. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. I want you to come to grips with two Bible truths. By man came death, and by man came the resurrection. By Adam and his sin, sin's penalty has been conferred on all humanity, for in him all have that death, and in Christ all are made alive. Don't confuse that verbiage. One Adam was of the earth, earthy. The other was the Lord from heaven. No debate, no doubts, non-negotiable. Therefore, beloved Christians, settle down your emotions. Be unmovable, not tossed about by external circumstances, and get to work. Exhaust yourself in the work of Christ. You're going to meet Him someday. Would you please bow your heads and close your eyes just for a moment?