Before we get started in our study of the Word this morning, let's bow our heads together and go to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we're so grateful for all that You have done for us, all that You have provided for us in our Savior's death. For therein, in His death, He paid the penalty for our sins. Scripture says, He who knew no sin was made sin for us. He wasn't made a sinner, but He was imputed our sins so that he could pay for them during those three horrible hours on the cross when there was darkness on the face of the earth and you judged him in our place, that we in turn might be able to have eternal salvation by simply and only trusting in him. So Father, we thank you for the fact that this is validated in the resurrection. And much more is accomplished or was accomplished by his resurrection. And now he is as the head of the church seated at the right hand of the father, awaiting the distribution of the kingdom that he might come and reclaim this earth. So father, we pray for us today as we study about the resurrection to give us insight into how this applies into our own lives. And I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. This morning I want to do something a little different at the beginning instead of reciting some verses that we are familiar with and that we should be encouraged by. I want to read the scripture account of the resurrection, the discovery of the resurrection. And what I have done is I have taken the four accounts in the four gospels and I have created a harmony so that we can get the whole story in one reading. So you can't follow along with me in your Bible because we've got verses from each of the Gospels put together so we can get the whole story. I'm beginning towards the end of the crucifixion to secure and point out the death of Christ. Because it was the preparation day that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for the Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true. And he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may believe. Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. He had not consented to their decision, indeed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. After this, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave him permission. So he came and he took the body of Jesus. And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. Then they took the body of Jesus and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the customs of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden. and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews' preparation day. And the Sabbath drew near, for the tomb was nearby. And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus, who had come with him from Galilee, followed after. And they observed the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils, and they rested on the Sabbath according to his commandment. Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning at sunrise, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, Joanna, Salome, came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared so that they might go and anoint him. And they said among themselves, who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us? And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it. But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, for it was very large. The angel who sat on it had a countenance that was like lightning. and his clothing as white as snow. But the angel answered and said to the woman, do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen. As he said, come, see the place where the Lord lay. Then when they entered the tomb, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. But they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side, And they were alarmed. And it happened as they were greatly perplexed about this, that behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. Then as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, why do you seek the living among the dead? But one of them said to them, do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words. Then the first angel said, Go quickly. and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead. And indeed, he is going before you into Galilee. There you will see him. Behold, I have told you.' So they went out quickly and fled from the tomb. For they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Mary Magdalene went and told those who had been with him as they mourned and wept. And when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe. Then Mary Magdalene ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved and said to them, they have taken away the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him. Peter therefore went out and the other disciple and were going to the tomb. So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there, yet he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb, and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again to their own homes." As we come together in our nation and world, to celebrate Easter. It is often, the meaning of Easter has often lost in the midst of all of the children's activities, the Easter bunny, the colored eggs, the egg hunts, and all of the trappings, getting all dressed up in your spring finery and then going out for a family meal. But the focus of the day is on the fact that Death has been conquered, that that victory has been won. And it's amazing that somehow we lose sight of that. The physical bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the crowning proof of Christianity. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate proof of Jesus' claims to be the Messiah, the promised and prophesied deliverer given in the Old Testament. who would be fully God and also fully human, and that he would be the savior of mankind, the founder and head of the church, and the truth of Christianity. Christianity stands or falls on the historicity and the factuality of the resurrection. So today what I want to look at is the significance of the resurrection today. the significance of the resurrection for our lives, our Christian lives today. For there is much more to the resurrection than simply that death was defeated, not minimizing that, but we forget the significance of the resurrection for our day-to-day Christian lives. Before our Lord ascended to heaven, He appeared to his disciples on numerous occasions. The writer of Acts, who is also the writer of the Gospel of Luke, Luke the physician, opens the book of Acts with these verses. He says, the former account I made, that is the Gospel of Luke, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up. after he through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen. And then the important statement for our purposes, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by what? What's that next two words? By many infallible proofs. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ took the time to demonstrate, to prove, to their senses that he was alive. Physically, they could touch him. We are reminded of the story of the disciple Thomas, who is often called Doubtful Thomas because of this, who after he had appeared to the other ten and they had believed and they were telling Thomas, he said, I don't believe it. I'm not going to believe it until I can put my fingers into the nail prints in his hands and in his side. And then the Lord appeared to him, and before he could physically, empirically fulfill his claims, he knelt down and said, my Lord and my God. It was clear to them, this band of scared, frightened unbelievers, they had been told on numerous occasions by the Lord Jesus Christ as they came toward Jerusalem that he was going to have to he was going to be arrested, he was going to be beaten, he was going to be crucified, he would die, and yet he would rise on the third day. And they couldn't grasp what that meant. You'd think just basic Greek or Aramaic, the words would indicate something, but, and even though he had brought back several to life who had died, including the most dramatic, which was Lazarus, who'd been in the grave for four days, they couldn't grasp what he was saying, that he would arise from the dead. And so he had to demonstrate with evidence. And this is what Paul refers to at the beginning of 1 Corinthians chapter 15, that he appeared to Peter, and he appeared to John, and he appeared to the other of the 11 disciples, and he appeared to 500 and to many others on numerous other occasions. And so it was not without eyewitnesses. According to Jewish law, you only need two witnesses to confirm something, according to, and that's the foundation for what's in our law, that we need to have two witnesses to confirm something. Jesus had well over 500 witnesses of his resurrection, so that those who would come later who would doubt it would have these eyewitness accounts of his resurrection. And we know from what scripture says that without the historical, physical, bodily resurrection of Christ from the grave, there is no Christianity. And so there have been those over the years who have set out to disprove the Bible, disprove the resurrection, disprove Christianity. You can think of agnostic skeptics like C.S. Lewis, who was a professor of medieval literature at Oxford. You can think of people like General Lew Wallace, a decorated Union general in the war between the states. who set out to disprove the truthfulness of Scripture and the death of Christ and resurrection, and he ended up becoming a believer. You can think of Josh McDowell, a great, widely known defender of the faith today, who set out on the same mission when he was young, and yet he came to recognize that the evidence for the truth of Scripture and the truth of the resurrection are overwhelming. And he has written numerous books validating that, and there have been numerous others who have set out to disprove Christianity only to come to realize that it is the absolute, absolute truth. So we recognize a resurrection is not some secondary or tertiary doctrine, but that it is at the very core of the veracity of Christianity. One of the problems in the church at Corinth and probably other churches in Greece, was that they were still affected by the worldview of the Greek philosophers who rejected the whole concept of resurrection from the dead. And so they denied it. And we see that same kind of thinking today in numerous places where, as a result of the development of the rationalism from the Enlightenment, We have developed something called modernism and now postmodernism, which completely rejects the validity of physical bodily resurrection. But the Apostle Paul had to correct this in the Corinthians, and he wrote, but if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. I want you to pay attention to the rigorous logic of these statements. Of course, if you're postmodern, you reject logic, so you're kind of left twisting in the wind. But he says, number one, if there's no such thing as resurrection of the dead, then Christ cannot be risen. And if that's true, that Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty, it's vain, it's meaningless. And your faith is also empty and vain and meaningless. He goes on to say, yes, and we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that He raised up Jesus, raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up, if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins. Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. In other words, if Christ was not physically bodily raised from the dead, there is no hope. There's no meaning in life. All is just random darkness. So we're looking at what the Bible teaches about the significance of the resurrection for today. And so I'm going to run through, not literally, but almost, nine points for us. First of all, the resurrection is at the center of the reality and the veracity of the gospel. You can't just dismiss it. It has to be there. Without it, there's no confirmation, there's no validation. Paul states this in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, that it's at the core of the gospel. He says, for I deliver to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. So it's grounded in the Scriptures, which Jesus said is truth. The second thing that we see is that human physical death has been defeated. We all know a time will come for some of us. We don't know when it will be, but for some of us it will be sooner, and for others of us it will be much later. But we all come to a time when we will die physically. Many are afraid of that. That is partially a fear of the unknown, an apprehension about physical pain and suffering that may accompany our physical death. and as well as mental anguish as we look at that time to come. I think that deeply seated within the soul of every one of us is a fear of death. We fear death for a number of reasons. I think one reason we fear death is that it's not normal. Now, a lot of people look around and they go, what do you mean it's not normal? When God created mankind, they were intended to live without death, without pain, without suffering. But when Adam sinned, all of that changed. What God created in the initial creation and in the Garden of Eden was what He intended as normal. What we live in is an abnormal world. It's very abnormal. And therefore, when we look around us, there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, there's just something really wrong here. We don't see justice. Of course you don't. It's a fallen world. There's never been much real justice in a lot of places because we live in a fallen world. And you can't say, well, we need to make it perfect. No, you can't make it perfect. That's impossible because we're all fallen. We have this realization that we live in a fallen world, and death is part of that, and it's abnormal. And if any of us have had someone very close to us die, we have said in our souls, if not on our lips, this isn't right. There's something about this that's wrong. This should not happen. People should not die. There's something deep in our soul where we know that this is that this is abnormal. And so we have a fear, we have an anxiety over that death and that experience. And we know from history and we know from our own experience that no one survives life. We all die. No one gets out of this without going through physical death. It's inevitable. No one in history has been able to outwit death or to purchase a longer life or freedom from death Some have spent inordinate amounts of money in order to be cryogenically frozen so that in some future time there will be the technology to bring them back so that they do not have to go through that time of death. Because for them it means that they just have a meaningless separation from life and they go into nothingness. But death comes to all of us, and in the end, death always wins the victory. And we all return to dust. All around us, we see the evidence of physical death, and we see the evidence of corruption. This is what Paul refers to in Ephesians, or excuse me, in Romans 8.21 as the bondage of corruption. But Jesus conquered death. This is our promise in Scripture. 1 Corinthians 15, 54 through 57. Actually, if you take the time to go back and begin in 51, it would be good, but for sake of time, I'll just hit these last few verses. So, when this corruptible, that is, our mortal body, when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." We have that victory over death because of Christ's resurrection. A third result of the resurrection is the basis of our hope It's the basis for our hope of a future resurrection. Because Christ conquered death and had victory over death, we know that we, too, will have victory over death. Because He died on the cross for our sins, because He was buried and rose from the grave on the third day, we have hope. Now, this isn't the kind of wishy-washy hope that we talk about every day where we say, It's rained for three days. I sure hope it doesn't rain tomorrow. It's just wishful optimism. And who knows what the weather guessers will say. But we have confidence in Scripture. That's our hope. It's a confident expectation. It is a certainty that because of what Scripture says, we know that that is what is true and that is what will happen. In 1 Peter 1.3, Peter, in his salutation, says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a what? To a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our being born again by trusting in Christ as Savior is not an end in itself, but it is the beginning of a new life that will experience that resurrection from the dead. In Romans 8-11, Paul writes, But if the Spirit of him, that's the Holy Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. We have life right now. If you trust in Christ as Savior and you are saved and you are regenerated, born from above, born again, then you know that you have this new life. And it is eternal life. And we may go through the experience of physical death, but we will not die. We will go on to live for eternity. Then later in that same chapter, we read, for the creation was subject to futility. That's because of sin. All of creation has been corrupted because of sin. The creation was subject to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. That is, God has a future plan that will solve the problem. Environmentalism will not do it. All of the green laws they pass will only enslave human beings more. The only thing that will relieve us of the corruption that is in God's creation is when the Lord returns and delivers it. What we read in verse 21 is because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. It's never going to be free of corruption until. Not only that, he goes on to say, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body, that is in the future when we receive our resurrection body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees? we have this future hope. 1 Corinthians 6, 14 says, and God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. We have a confident expectation that the world will be released from the bondage of corruption, and we will as well when we receive our resurrection bodies. The fourth result, present result of the resurrection, is that it provides us with assurance that there will be a future resurrection and a future judgment evaluation by God. This is seen in Acts 1731, when the Apostle Paul was addressing the skeptics in Athens. He said, because God, because he, he refers to God, God has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained. That's referring to the Lord Jesus Christ. He will be our judge. He is our judge because he has been tested in every point as we have yet without sin. As the God man, we will be judged by a man who was tested in all points as we are yet without sin. And so he can I sympathize with our weaknesses. So this statement in Acts 1731 is a quote from the Old Testament. This was predicted in the Old Testament. He shall judge the world in righteousness. So it will be a righteous judgment. And that's something we can rely on. We look around us and we say, how in the world can God allow all this evil and all these horrible people to do what they're doing? Well, as As one famous preacher said one time in his sermon, he entitled it, Payday Someday. It's certain. There will be this judgment. And he shall judge the world in righteousness, and he shall administer judgment for the peoples in uprightness. That Hebrew word really means in integrity. It's on the basis of his integrity. 96.13 says, For he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth. And in Psalm 98.9, For he is coming to judge the earth. With righteousness he shall judge the world and the peoples with integrity. Equity is not a good translation at all. Equity has another concept today, and that is not what the word means. It's the same word we saw just a minute ago in Psalm 9, 8. He comes to judge with integrity, his integrity. And this judgment has been given to the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 5, 22 and following, Jesus said, For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son. Why? Because the Son is not only undiminished deity, but He is true humanity. He has committed all judgment to the Son, for as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the what? The Son of Man. Now, we've studied that many times, that this is a Hebrew idiom, and when you have a term like son of a murderer, it doesn't mean his daddy was a murderer. It means that he's a murderer. He represents that quality, that characteristic. If he is the son of Belial, a son of destruction, he is a destructive fool. If he is a son of wisdom, then that would be a wise person. If you call somebody the son of God, then that means that they are fully God. If you call him son of man, then that means that he is fully human. So he is given authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man. And in verse 28, do not marvel at this for the hour is coming. which all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come forth. Those who have done the good." Now, it doesn't say that in your poor English translation, but the article is there in the Greek. The good. What is doing the good? Doing the good is believing, accepting Jesus Christ as Savior. This is from the Gospel of John. And at the end of the Gospel of John, he tells us his purpose for writing it, that these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. You don't have life because you do good things. You have life because Christ did the good and paying the penalty for our sins. And you have trusted, trusted in that. So there will come a time of judgment. Our fifth point is that the resurrection of Christ validates his claim to be the Son of God so that we can trust him fully. Jesus is who he claimed to be. He is God incarnate, God with us. We know this from Isaiah 7, 14 in the prophecy that a sign would be given. Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign, Isaiah wrote. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. El, the last syllable, is the Hebrew word for God, for deity. Im, at the beginning, is the Hebrew preposition that means with. And the M or the A-N-U is the Hebrew suffix that indicates Third person, or excuse me, first person plural. Literally it means God with us. This is what we see also in Matthew 1.23 when Gabriel announces the fact that Mary is going to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. He says to Joseph, behold, the virgin shall be with child, or excuse me, Matthew just quotes this at the time of the birth. that this is the fulfillment. Behold the virgin shall be with child and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel which is translated God with us. Six, the resurrection of Christ is the basis for our unique spiritual life in this church age. It's the foundation for it and this is the implication for us that if we fully understand the resurrection, it ought to transform our thinking and transform our priorities and our goals. In Romans 6, 4, and 5, the Apostle Paul says, therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death. Baptism has the idea of identification. In the baptism by the Holy Spirit, we are identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. We were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." See, his whole point there is that because we have been identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, at that instant that we believed in Christ, that happened. We were identified with his death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, therefore, we are to look forward and live a new life, a new kind of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is the basis of our spiritual productivity, our spiritual fruitfulness, Paul says in Romans 7.4. Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another, to him who was raised from the dead. That's the one to whom we are married. See, in the Old Testament, they were married to the law. It wasn't a way of salvation, but it was the way of life. But now we are married to Christ, to him who was raised from the dead for what purpose? that we should bear fruit to God, that we should live for God, that we should serve God, that we should grow and mature so that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is produced in our lives. Our seventh point is that we are to learn and pray that we might come to know the power of that resurrection in this current spiritual life. In Philippians 3, chapter 10, I don't have time to go through all of that and don't intend to, but in this point, we're focusing on 10 and 11, where Paul is expressing his desire and goal for this life, something he prays for, that I may know him, not just know about Jesus, but deepen and enrich that relationship with him, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. What's the power of His resurrection? That was through the Holy Spirit, that relationship with God, the Holy Spirit, who worked under the authority of God the Father in His resurrection. That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. That means to suffer for Christ, as Paul says in Romans chapter 8, that we are to, those who suffer with Christ are going to be joint heirs with Christ. The fellowship of his suffering being conformed to his death, if by any means, and by this he is speaking in an idiom that means with certainty, that I will attain to the resurrection from the dead. And then the eighth point follows in the next two verses. For that reason, our goal now is spiritual maturity. and to realize in our lives the purpose for which God saved us. In Ephesians 3.12 he goes on to say, and this is the Apostle Paul, it's not towards the end of his life, but he's come a long way, and he is a prisoner in Rome, and he's probably about five or six years away from his martyrdom. He says, not that I have already attained, that is, already reached spiritual maturity, or I'm already perfected, that word means matured, but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Why did Christ Jesus lay hold of you? What does that mean? That means that at the moment that you trusted Christ as Savior, the moment that I trusted Christ as Savior, we became His. He laid hold of us for a purpose. He has a plan and purpose for our lives. And that plan or purpose may or may not gel with some of the ideas we have about how we should live our lives. And that what we are to do is to press on that we may lay hold of what Christ Jesus laid hold of us for. That's our goal. We are to live our lives so that we come to realize his purpose in our life. He goes on to say in verse 13, brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. In other words, he's saying, I don't count myself to have arrived. But one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind. We all have mistakes we've made. We've all had failures. We've all had sins. And we can't dwell on the past. We can't think about it. You think about an athlete. You take someone who plays in the Super Bowl, like Jalen Hurts in the last Super Bowl playing for Philadelphia. He made a couple of significant, tragic errors. But he didn't dwell on them. He got right up and went into the next round of downs focusing on winning the game and not looking back and regretting the mistakes that he made. That's what a good athlete does. You forget what's behind and whatever your failures were, and you reach forward to the things which are ahead. What's that? That is attaining to that which Christ laid hold of us for. And so Paul concludes by saying, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We are to live for him and not for ourselves. That brings us to the ninth point, our ninth and final point. The resurrection of Christ is the basis for our being positionally raised and seated together with Christ. which, when we realize the significance of that, should transform the priorities in our life. Now, what do I mean by positionally raised? When we look at Ephesians 2.6, it tells us that at the instant that we trusted Christ, He raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now, that's our legal position. That's who we are in Christ. That's not who we are on earth, but that is our position, our ultimate identity. What Paul is saying here is that the instant we're saved and that we are regenerate, we need to go through a complete change of thinking. We need to go through a complete change of mind, the way in which we think about life and the way we respond to things. So we have to go through a paradigm shift in our thinking, that we are no longer living for ourselves. We have been bought with a price. We are now owned by the Lord Jesus Christ. He has laid hold of us for a purpose, and that needs to be a purpose for our lives. So we have been put in this new position, a new family, a new identity. We've been raised together and seated together with Christ. Colossians 2.12 and 3.1 puts it this way. At salvation we were buried with him in baptism, that is positionally in the baptism by the Spirit. We were buried with him in baptism in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. If then you were, and he uses a first-class condition, and you were, we could translate it, since you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above. where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Don't seek the things that you wanted to do before you were saved. You have new goals, new priorities, a new purpose in life. And so we are to seek those things which are above. In Matthew 6.33, Jesus said, Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. And he says, don't worry about your food. Don't worry about your raiment. Don't worry about where the next meal's going to come from. Focus on your future destiny. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousnesses, and all this will be added to you. So what is our conclusion? Our conclusion comes at the end of that great resurrection chapter in 1 Corinthians 15. After he lays out the defense of the resurrection, the evidence for the resurrection, and the future resurrection guaranteed to us. He says, therefore, conclusion, therefore, my beloved brethren, therefore, because of everything that I have said to you this morning, going through all of the previous eight points or nine points, the conclusion is, therefore, be steadfast. You know, don't falter. Don't fall by the wayside. Don't stumble. Be steadfast, immovable. That has the idea of firmly persistent, sticking with it, not giving up. The Christian life isn't hard. It's impossible. You've got to live it on the basis of God's power, walking by the Spirit. You've got to do the basic things Scripture says to do. Not because of a legalistic thing, but because to grow, we have to learn about Jesus Christ. We have to learn what we have been taught. We grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Most Christians are painfully ignorant of anything in the Bible. But we ought not be. We have to persist. always abounding in the work of the Lord, serving Him as a result of our spiritual growth. Serving Him is not spiritual growth. Serving Him is the result of spiritual growth because we know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord. He is coming back and we will be raptured to be with Him with our heads bowed and our eyes closed. Father, we thank you for this opportunity. to study these things, to be reminded of all that was done for us in Christ's death, as He paid for all of our sin, guaranteed us forgiveness and everlasting life. And all we are to do is to believe in Him, to trust in Him, to accept Him as who He is, the Messiah, the Son of God, who gave His life for us. Father, we pray that if there's anyone here today that has never trusted in Christ, that they would do so. Right now, right where you sit. you have the opportunity to make that important decision, to trust in Christ. And if you believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that He died on the cross for your sins, was buried, rose again on the third day, and that by believing in Him and Him alone you have everlasting life, then God in His omniscience knows what you're trusting. You don't have to pray a prayer, raise your hand, walk an aisle. God knows what you're trusting in for your eternal salvation. So that when you are asked, If when you die, why should I be let into heaven? You know the answer, because Jesus died for my sins. So Father, we pray for all of us who have trusted Christ that we might be encouraged to press on to fulfill that purpose for which you have laid hold of us, that you might be glorified. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.