1 Corinthians chapter 15, as we continue this glorious chapter on the resurrection. Paul's gonna be turning our attention again this morning back to what the consequences would be if there were no resurrection from the dead. So just to reorient you to where we are a little bit, verses 12 through 19. was Paul's unfolding of, if there is no resurrection from the dead, what would the consequences be if Christ has not been raised and the dead are not raised? And then from there he, last week we saw the glorious good news, but in fact, or but now, Christ has been raised from the dead, and we saw the glory of all that that secures for us in future hope and in the resurrection and in eternal glory, where God will be all in all after the last enemy to be destroyed is destroyed, which is death. Well, now he comes back with this word otherwise, and he's again contemplating what it would mean if the dead are not raised. We have that phrase twice in today's passage, if the dead are not raised. So I've titled this, If the Dead Are Not Raised, Part Two. In other words, further consequences of denying the resurrection. And in that, we'll see, by implication, the great hope that we have because of the resurrection. So here's God's word, 1 Corinthians 15, verses 29 to 34. Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, my brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord. I die daily. What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning, for some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the glorious truth of the resurrection of Jesus. And we are reminded of its glorious truth by considering what would be lost if Christ remained in that grave and was not raised from the dead. All hope would be lost. And so, Father, we thank you that we have a living Savior, gloriously resurrected, and that we can proclaim that Savior to the nations. Father, I do want to take a moment and pray for our missionaries who are proclaiming the risen Savior to the nations that you would strengthen and encourage and bless their ministry. For Jacob and Carol Lee in Uganda, for Jacob Jason at RUF Hopkins, for Pastor Osei and Jackie and the rest of the staff with Reformation Hope and Souls Winning Ministries in Haiti, we just pray that the risen Christ would be the center and power and proclamation and joy of their ministry and that you would bring fruit from their ministry to the saving of the nations and to the glory of your name. And now bless us as we hear your word. unfolded for us. May we all be attentive to hear what your spirit says through your word. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. Partial information or inaccurate information can be very dangerous. There's a lot of movies that kind of build on this whole idea. They use it as a plot device. You've seen them. There's a movie set up where the husband or the wife thinks they see their spouse cheating on them. They think they see them in some sort of compromising situation and they're convinced based upon this partial, incomplete, inaccurate information. They're just convinced that their spouse is being unfaithful and so they get very angry and they take decisive action. And it's a disaster, right? Or you have a group of friends who are part of, you know, an alliance or part of a team, and they see one of their teammates, one of their friends who looks like he's betraying the rest of them, and they go off and take action. You know, that's used in movies all the time, and it's because it's so easy for us to act on incomplete, impartial, inaccurate information, and whenever we do so, it leads to disastrous consequences. It doesn't just lead to a good movie plot. In real life, it can lead to a disaster. Bible difficulties can sometimes be mishandled in this way. People can get a hold of something in one part of a verse or in a verse or in a passage and they don't understand it fully and it's not taken within the context and they can distort it and run off in a direction that's not intended at all by scripture. And the reason why I bring that up is that we have such a case in front of us with verse 29 of 1 Corinthians 15. It's a puzzling verse. Paul says, otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? And I want to answer, that's a good question. If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? Why are they, right? And there are some people, most famously Mormons among them, who've taken this one part of one verse and who have said, well obviously the early church practiced baptism by proxy for the dead. And so we should practice baptism by proxy for the dead. They take part of a verse, which is unclear at best, and they sort of run and they end up creating a whole thing that's not anywhere else in the Bible, that's not anywhere else in the positive record of church history, and they come up with this, oh, if someone's dead and they weren't a believer, they weren't part of the church, in the Mormon case, what they do is if someone has died and they weren't a Mormon, they weren't part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, someone will volunteer to be baptized on their behalf, and they believe that when they get baptized on someone else's behalf, that other person then gets a chance to become a Mormon after death. That's a strange interpretation of this passage. As I said, nowhere else does the Bible teach us that someone can be baptized in someone else's place, living or dead. There's no such thing in the Bible as baptism by proxy, by substitution. It's not how it works. And nowhere in the New Testament or the early church fathers, do we have any sort of practice of a ceremony of baptism on behalf of the dead ever taught, except that there have been a couple of different heretical groups who have done the same thing the Mormons have done in running away with this verse and doing this thing. And we do have some church fathers like Tertullian, who was in the early 200s, and John Chrysostom, who was in the late 300s, early 400s, who speak explicitly against that practice. I thought it was a little bit amusing, a little bit amusing, when I got curious about this practice of baptism for the dead. So I went poking around on some Mormon websites, and this one website says, oh yes, baptism for the dead is described from the earliest days of the church. You can find it described in the writings of Tertullian. Yes, but Tertullian's condemning it as the practice of a group of heretics within the church. So they want to appeal to the authority of the church fathers, but they conveniently leave out the fact that if you were to look that up, you would find that Tertullian was decidedly against the practice, and it was only being practiced by a fringe group called the Marcionites, who were a heretical group. So what does Paul mean by this passage, this verse? Coming into First Corinthians, even before I started on the sermon series, I knew there were gonna be two spots that were gonna be really, really tricky, because I had no idea what they meant going into a book. Now, I don't know if you can sympathize with that, but as a preacher, there's a bit of fear and trepidation when you say, I'm gonna preach verse by verse through First Corinthians, and you know in the back of your head, I have no idea what these two things in First Corinthians mean. I guess I'm gonna learn. And it's not like I haven't studied them before. One of them came up in chapter 11, and it was this idea that a woman should have a sign of authority on her head because of the angels. And I've always thought, well, what does that mean because of the angels? And so we discussed that back on November 15th. I'm not gonna get back into that, but if you wanna look that up, you can look up the sermon from November 15th, and we dealt with that. So today, we're gonna do our best to deal with baptized on behalf of the dead. But if because of the angels is tricky, baptism on behalf of the dead is even trickier. In fact, this might be the single most confusing verse in the whole of the New Testament. Believe it or not, there are some 40 different interpretations or variations on the interpretations of what this verse might mean. And so we're not going to go over all 40, but we can group them into three major categories and kind of look at them that way. The first group is some people who say, Paul is not actually referring to water baptism at all. Some within this group say what he's actually referring to is the washing of dead bodies to prepare them for burial, because the verb baptizo is most often translated as baptism, but it just means washing. or dipping or immersing or sprinkling, it has a wide variety of meanings associated with basically washing with water. And so they said, well, what if Paul's just talking about the fact that when a person dies, we wash their body with water and prepare them very carefully for burial, what would the purpose of that be if the dead are not gonna rise? It's interesting. Another one within this group, saying that Paul's not referring to water baptism, say that he's actually referring to extreme suffering by the word baptism, even maybe to martyrdom. And the basis for this is something that Jesus said to his disciples in Mark chapter 10. Verse 38, when he said, you do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? And by that, he means the suffering and death of the cross. And Jesus, in another place, refers to, I have a baptism to be baptized with. So maybe that, well. This whole group of explanations seems unlikely because Paul doesn't use the word baptism in those ways in his letters. There's one place where he has a symbolic use of it, and it's in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 2, where he talks about the Israelites and he says, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. That's the only metaphorical use of this word baptism from Paul, and it really, even though it's not talking about literal water baptism, it's talking about the same thing that baptism is to Paul, which is an expression of union, of corporate union. So Israel was united under Moses' headship, just as the church identifies and is united under Jesus' headship. So I don't think that first category, all of those that would say it's not water baptism, it's something else, I don't think that they're, likely. Second group of explanations sees Paul referring to a special sacramental ceremony that was practiced in Corinth of being baptized by proxy on behalf of the dead. And they're saying that Paul is aware of this practice and refers to it, but he doesn't take time to object to it or correct it because his greater concern is to talk about resurrection. And so they're saying there probably was this group in Corinth practicing proxy baptism on behalf of the dead. And Paul says, why would you do that unless the dead are raised? And he's not endorsing the practice, but he's also not directly confronting the practice. Well, I have a hard time. If you read 1 Corinthians, Paul is not afraid to bring up issues and confront them and correct them. He's not shy about that. Right? And so I can't imagine that the Corinthian church was carrying out a practice where someone would be baptized on behalf of an unbeliever who died to try to give them salvation after death. It runs contrary to the whole gospel. It runs contrary to the whole notion of the church. And so I can't believe that Paul would just let that stand. Now there is a subgroup within this explanation that seems more maybe possible. And that is a subgroup that says, well, Paul has a specific group in mind. In Corinthians, they must have been, maybe they were just practicing baptism on behalf of those who died, having believed in Christ, but having not yet been baptized themselves. And there was a group of people in the early church called catechumens. And the catechumens were people who had already come to believe in Jesus. They had said, yes, I believe Jesus is the Son of God. He's the Messiah. He's the Savior. But they were going through catechism training. That's why they were called catechumens. They were going through catechetical training to make sure that they were ready to truly profess Christ and to truly enter into the church with knowledge and understanding of what they believe and why they believe it. And in fact, the Apostles' Creed, which we just recited together, comes from the early days of the church, and it was probably something that was used For catechumens, they were taught the Apostles' Creed, they would memorize the Apostles' Creed, and when they got baptized, they would recite the Apostles' Creed. So it's possible that there's this group of catechumens that if you died, like, let's say family members of the Roman government found out that you were now following Jesus, you might be persecuted, you might be put to death before you had a chance to get baptized, but you are a believer. And so maybe someone will be baptized on your behalf. Maybe. I don't think that's right either. The third explanation is that Paul is referring to normal Christian baptism, but he's using unusual language. And this is what I think is most likely. Tertullian, I referenced him before. He's the church father from the early 200s. Most famous quote from Tertullian, by the way, that you've probably heard, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, that's from Tertullian. He was a great church father, and this is what he said. He said, we have the apostle in another passage defining but one baptism. To be baptized for the dead, therefore, means, in fact, to be baptized for the body, for as we have shown, it is the body which becomes dead. What then shall they do who are baptized for the body if the body does not rise again? So, Tertullian's arguing this. Paul's made it very clear in Ephesians that there's only one baptism. He wouldn't now be allowing for a second baptism of some sort without correcting it. So it must refer to the one baptism. Well, then what does it mean on behalf of the dead? Well, he's saying it's referring to our bodies that are going to die. It's our bodies that are baptized. It's our bodies that are going to die. And if there is no resurrection, then our bodies are going to stay dead. And what is the point of being baptized on behalf of a body that is going to stay dead because it's not going to be raised? Now, it's unusual for Paul to put that language that way, but that understanding does fit what Paul teaches about baptism. Romans 6, verse 4, Paul teaches this. We were therefore buried with him by baptism into death, In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Or Colossians 2.12, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. Now, Baptists in particular love these verses. because in their mind it clearly pictures someone being immersed into the water and then brought back up out of the water. But I don't think Paul is referring really to the mode of baptism here, he's referring to the meaning of baptism. And the meaning of baptism is that our bodies are united to Christ's body. We are body and soul in union with Christ, body and soul, in his death and in his resurrection. So if we look at these verses, imagine, we were buried, therefore, by baptism into death, in order that, because Christ didn't rise from the dead, and we're not gonna rise from the dead, we'll just stay dead. Well, no, that sort of sucks the whole life out of it, right? Or in Colossians, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you will also stay dead because there is no powerful working of God to raise the dead. And I think that's what Paul's getting at. He's getting at this idea that if you're baptized and there's no resurrection, then your bodies are just being baptized on behalf of the dead, meaning they're just going to die and remain dead because they're being joined to a guy who died and remained dead. Again, if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ was raised. That's Paul's logic. And so you're baptized on behalf of someone who died for your bodies, which are going to die. End of story. So I think, and I can't be dogmatic about this because it's such a strange way to talk about baptism, that it's possible, I wanna say it's possible that there was some group performing proxy baptisms for the dead and maybe Paul's not dealing with that. I just don't think that's likely. I think what's much more likely is that Paul, who has been rejoicing in the glorious truth of the resurrection in verses 20 to 28, who's been focusing on all that it means for us that Christ rose from the dead, He said, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man also came resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order. Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. And as he's thinking about this, his mind is going toward baptism, which is how we picture that. We proclaim the meaning of that by the Spirit's work that's pictured in baptism. And so Paul says, well, what would be the point? of your baptism. So I think that interpretation best fits the context. Denying the resurrection is so serious and so consequential that it doesn't just render some strange, irregular, and obscure practice of proxy baptism meaningless, it would actually render all Christian baptism meaningless, because we would be picturing our union with a dead person, and we would be proclaiming that our baptized bodies will never rise again. and that is contrary to the entirety of the gospel. That is a baptism on behalf of the dead, and that is not what Christian baptism is. So, what is clearer is when we get past verse 29 into verse 30 and 31 and 32, Paul is saying not only does a denial of the resurrection empty our baptism of its meaning and hope, it also makes all suffering for Christ in this life pointless. He says, why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord. I die every day. What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. For Paul, the Christian life was not a life of health, wealth, and prosperity. It was not a life of abundant and overflowing good times. Paul says, part of my calling as an apostle, part of my calling to be a follower of Christ, Jesus Christ himself said, if anyone would come after me, let him do what? Deny himself. take up his cross daily, and follow me. And Paul is echoing that by saying, I protest. I die daily. Paul says, every morning I wake up in the morning, and the first thing I need to do is die. Whatever I want, whatever I think is important, whatever matters to me, goes into the grave, and Christ in me. Paul said in Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ, and therefore it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. I die daily. And for Paul, part of what that meant was, not his best life now, but part of what that meant for Paul was suffering, real, actual suffering. Paul left behind a very promising, upwardly mobile religious career in Pharisaical Judaism where he was one of the rising stars, and he was celebrated among the shining star students of the most famous rabbi, Gamaliel, in Jerusalem. He left all that behind, and in exchange for that, he got exhaustion, Persecution. He literally walked into every town, if you just read in Acts of his missionary journeys, he walks into every town knowing that it's very likely that within just a few days, he's going to be leaving that town having been beaten, or having been threatened with death, or in one case, in Lystra, having been stoned and left for dead outside the city. It was a life of tireless ministry, of suffering, of intense persecution for the sake of the gospel. He describes it in 2 Corinthians 1, 8 and 9, he says, for we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, that is in Turkey, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. For the Apostle Paul, the resurrection was so important because it was his only hope, and his only strength, and his only reason for persevering in the face of the extreme suffering that he received as an apostle of Christ. So often, being a Christian in this world, especially if you're going to follow Christ faithfully, it will make life in this world harder, not easier. What's the point? You see, there seem to be two different kinds of people who distort this truth. There's the health and wealth and prosperity crowd who basically say, oh, no, no, no, you become a Christian, you're a child of the king. You're gonna live a king's life, you're a king's kid. You can just call down blessings from heaven. You want a bigger house? Call it down from heaven. You want a nicer car? Call it down from heaven. You want that cancer gone? You just speak in Jesus' name and you rebuke that cancer and it'll be gone. No, that's not in the Bible. That wasn't the experience of the Apostle Paul or any of the apostles. So there's that group, but then there's another group that says, you know what? keep a stiff upper lip, and just endure hardship, because that's what God calls you to, the end. As if we're just stoics who sort of endure suffering for suffering's sake, because it makes you a better person. Yeah, you should just endure suffering for suffering's sake, because, you know, it shapes your character and makes you a better person. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? That's not true either. There are things in this life that don't kill you, and they don't make you stronger either. They're just plain hard. And they're ugly. And they seem pointless. And you have to go through them, but you aren't called to just go through them and, you know, keep a stiff upper lip and grin and bear it and get through it like some sort of stoic. You're called to go through it with hope. with hope in the one who raises the dead. Paul says the point of them being so utterly burdened beyond their strength that they despaired of life itself was one reason. It was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He knew that at the resurrection, he would receive the crown of life. He would receive his reward. He would be welcomed into eternal glory. He would hear his Savior say, well done, my good and faithful servant. He wasn't just going through hardship because it was making him a better man. He was going through hardship for the sake of Christ, waiting for the reward. And when he comes to the end of his life, In 2 Timothy, Paul is at the end of his life. He's actually under the sentence of death. I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing." It's very clear that Paul is running for a prize. It's the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day. And not only me, but all those who have loved us. He's saying this isn't just something for apostles. This is something for all believers. You have to be crazy to give 10% of your income right off the top to the church. Do you know what you could do with that money? You could have such a nicer car. You could live in a better house? Oh, and you give on top of that to missions? You go and serve? You're collecting money for a baby bottle to help women who are pregnant? Why don't you keep that money for yourself? I mean, treat yourself. You could go out for a nice dinner. Oh, you know, if you let people know that you're a Christian, they're probably gonna think you're a little bit stupid. You ever had that interaction with someone? You're talking to someone, and they're treating you with respect as a decent human being, and then it comes out that you're a Christian, and all of a sudden, the patronizing condescension comes. Oh, you weak-minded little man. I'm glad that's good for you. I'm glad that brings you comfort and hope. As if you just told them, you know, that you believe in leprechauns at the end of rainbows and you're chasing for your pot of gold. Oh, I'm glad that gives you something to live for. Who would put up with that? And there's worse. Listen, our brothers and sisters in North Korea and in Saudi Arabia are suffering so much worse than we could ever imagine. It's not pointless. But Paul says if there is no day of resurrection, If there is no day of Jesus' glorious return, when the dead will be raised and will stand before him and will receive the crown of righteousness, then it would all be for nothing. It would be pointless. In fact, not only would suffering for Christ be pointless without the resurrection, but even moral self-control would be foolish. After all, why would you want to deny yourself if this life is really all you get? So Paul says, if the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Well, that's a rallying cry of our culture, isn't it? Our culture has fully embraced the life plan of the bucket list and YOLO, right? You only live once, so make sure you do all the things that you ever wanted to do before you kick the bucket. That is a hedonistic and short-sighted approach to life that makes perfect sense if the dead are not raised. You know what, if the dead are not raised, make your bucket list, and do whatever you have to do to make sure you get it all checked off, because this life is all you get, and you only live once, and once you kick the bucket, you're just worm food, so go for it. Squeeze every bit of joy, and every bit of pleasure, and every bit of experience you can out of life, if there's no resurrection. But for Paul, that wasn't his life calling. When Paul traveled through Asia Minor, visiting great cities like Ephesus and Lystra, when he went to the cultural capital of Athens or the commercial capital of Corinth, he wasn't focused on making sure his Instagram account looked good. He went to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. And preaching the gospel often got him rejected, despised, and even beaten with rods or stoned and left for dead. But he wasn't worried about any of that. He didn't even take advantage of his rights as an apostle to make a living from the gospel. His focus and his passion was very clear. He said to the Corinthians earlier in chapter 9, I've made no use of any of these rights, that is the right to be supported by the church, nor am I writing these things to secure such provision. I'm not asking for money from you. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. For if I preach the gospel that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessity is laid upon me, woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward. But if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel. Did you catch why Paul's doing this? Why would Paul go to Corinth and work tirelessly as a tent maker? working and then preaching and then preaching and then working because he's looking forward to the reward. And he wants even more reward, even more of a well-done, good and faithful servant from selflessly preaching the gospel free of charge and not making full use of his right in the gospel. So Paul deprived himself of pleasures, of comforts, of conveniences, of indulgences, even of basic financial support from churches because he was looking ahead to his reward in the day of resurrection. He knew what was coming, and what was coming was far greater than any passing pleasure the world could offer. We find the same mentality that guided Moses according to Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 tells us, by faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. It wasn't because he was just trying to become a better man and keeping a stiff upper lip. He was looking to the reward. So he saw before him treasures of Egypt. I mean, you're the son of Pharaoh's daughter. You're in the royal palace. The reproach of Christ. Go join the slaves making bricks out of the mud. And he said, this over here is better treasure. It is a greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. Why? How in the world could being a brick-making slave under a taskmaster, how could that be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt? One reason and one reason only, the treasures of Egypt are dead and gone and buried. They're dust. or they're in some museum. The people who had them never got to enjoy them for very long, but the treasure that Moses will enjoy in eternity, that we will enjoy in eternity, will be forever, and without regret, and without shame, and with eternal pleasure in the presence of God. It really is greater treasure. But, If that's just a myth, because there is no resurrection, then let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. People who are desperate to squeeze every drop of pleasure and excitement out of this life show by their actions that they have no eternal hope of reward to live for, and such a lifestyle should never characterize a resurrection-believing follower of Jesus. And so when Paul reaches this point in the unfolding of the consequences of denying the resurrection, He stops reasoning with the Corinthians about the logical consequences of denying the resurrection, and he gets rather bold and rather straightforward. He says, basically, stop it. Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some people have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame." Now, some people think we should never use shame. We should never shame anyone. Now I would agree that shame certainly should not be the primary language of Christian discipleship, but the fact is that there are some beliefs and some behavior that are indeed shameful for the Christian. The TV preacher who's boasting of the wealth that God has given him, his houses, his boats, his treasure in this world, he should be ashamed of himself. and he should stop it. And that's exactly what the Apostle Paul would say to him, stop sinning. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. And that's true of any of us if we live as though this life is all we have. If we live as though this world was our permanent home, as if what's in our bank account and what's in our retirement account is the full extent of our wealth, if that's the way we live, Paul says, stop it. That's shameful. You have so much better than that. He says bad company corrupts good morals. What he's really confronting there with the bad company corrupts good morals and don't go on sinning is the fact that it wasn't necessarily everyone within the church at Corinth who was doing all the bad things that are listed in this letter, but they were tolerating it. They were letting these people be among their membership and among their fellowship who were doing things like Remember the man in chapter five who was sleeping with his stepmother? Sexual immorality that was so shameful it wasn't even named among the pagans, and the rest of them were boasting at their tolerance? Or you had people taking other people to court to sue them, to make a public display of how right they are and how wrong the other person is? You had people at the Lord's Supper who were showing up early so that they could eat all the food until they were stuffed, and they could drink all the wine until they were drunk, and other people who had to work, or who couldn't come on time, or who didn't have very much, they came and they just were out. Those kind of people were tolerated within the Church at Corinth. They were even celebrated within the Church at Corinth. And Paul's saying, that bad company ruins your good morals. It's making you, as a church, sleepy like a drunken person. There are some among you who have no knowledge of God. People who live like that have no knowledge of God. You see, what we believe matters. For it not only shapes our thought process, but it shapes the conduct and the trajectory of our lives. And what I mean is what we really believe, not what we say we believe. It's so easy to say the right things, isn't it? Jesus is my Lord and Savior. Oh yes, I know I'm going to heaven when I die. Oh yes, I know. I believe the Bible is true. But all that just remains things that we say. to each other on Sunday morning, or to each other in a Bible study group. What we really believe, what really grips our hearts, is sometimes something very different. It's something that causes us to live no different from the rest of the world. I would say this, if professing Christian people actually live lives that are no different from the rest of the world, then their profession of faith has not taken possession of their heart. Because if Jesus Christ is Lord, and if the resurrection is real, then it ought to change everything about how we live. If tomorrow you were adopted by Jeff Bezos, and he wrote you into his will that in five years' time, you were going to receive half of all of his wealth. If you really believed that, if it was legitimate, it would change the way you live, wouldn't it? We have something so much better. Because all of Jeff Bezos' wealth, he's gonna lose it when he perishes if he doesn't repent and believe in Christ. It's all temporary, it's all fleeting. It's all a breath, here and gone. We've been given something better. We've been told that we will sit with Christ and judge the nations We will reign with Christ forever in the new heavens and the new earth. We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ who have been given an eternal inheritance that is kept in heaven that can neither spoil nor fade. And the heart of that inheritance is the smile of Christ for all of eternity upon our lives as the one who is well pleased with us. and who welcomes us into his heart and into his home forever. If you got invited to supper with the queen, you would probably walk around with your head a little bit higher. You would probably dress nicely for the occasion. You would probably be a little bit more filled with joy. and gratitude because you were so blessed as to be invited to have supper with the queen. You're about to be invited to have supper with the king. The king of kings and lord of lords who is going to feed you with himself because you are his dearly loved. brother or sister, you are a member of his body. And one day we are invited to the great feast to sit around the king's table at the wedding supper of the lamb. That should change the way we live. Our sins are forgiven. We've been clothed in perfect righteousness. We are sent out into the world as ambassadors for Christ, and we have an eternal inheritance that can never spoil nor fade. The Holy Spirit lives within us. We are adopted as children of God. Do we live? Do we believe? Do we effuse the life-changing grace of God? Or is it just something we sing and speak about on Sunday mornings? Let your prayer as we approach the Lord's table be, oh Lord, feed me with yourself in such a way that I truly believe it and that I go out of here different because of it. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the gift of your son, Jesus, and for the resurrection. But too often, Lord, if we're honest, we live our lives as if we are in some sort of drunken stupor. We live our lives as if this world is all we have, as if we better hold tight and we better squeeze every bit we can out of it because it's all gonna go away soon. That's a lie. That's not who we are. That's not what we've been given. That's not what we have to live for. Oh, Lord, help us to walk in joy. and gratitude, and obedience, and love, and grace, and kindness, because you've been treating us with all of this every day of our lives. We thank you for Jesus, our Savior, who gave everything for us and for our salvation.