Alamo Drive Church of Christ Vacaville

Series: The Harvest of Hope

An expository of 1 Corinthians 15

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HARVEST OF HOPE: The Resurrection

Part I: The Resurrection of Jesus

I Corinthians 15:1-11

The Gospel is of first importance in the life of the Christian. (v. 1-2)
- We need reminders of the Gospel (1A)The Corinthians were having problems with forgetting the fundamentals of the Gospel.
  - The danger is the same for us.
  - The world seems to think the Gospel is old fashioned, that we’ve outgrown it.
  - But we need reminders because the Gospel is what we stand in.
- We stand in the Gospel (1B)
  - The Gospel isn’t something we accept once and we’re done.
  - This is an ongoing relationship we have with the person and the teachings of Jesus.
- Our salvation in the Gospel is ongoing (2A)
  - In which you are being saved. Our salvation is a continuing process.
  - Again this is an active walk.
- But our belief can also be in vain (2B)
  - In no uncertain terms, our belief can be in vain.
  - We can believe for the wrong reasons and our belief becomes malformed.
  - We can believe for the right reasons but get wrong information and our sincerity can be a barrier to the truth.
  - But here Paul wants t assure them that this specific teaching they have received from him is true and of apostolic authority
The Resurrection of Jesus is of first importance to the Gospel. (v. 3-5)
- Paul not the author, Paul received it (3A)
  - Sometimes people want to act as though Paul made up Christianity himself and that he really did Christ a favor with his brilliance
  - But Paul says here he received this gospel. He didn’t come up with it himself.
  - We receive that which was received by Paul. And it is authoritative not because Paul gave it to the church but because Christ gave the church as the means of proclaiming to the world the gospel.
  - So Paul says if we mess up this part of the Gospel we’ve missed it all
- Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures (3B)
  - Isaiah 53
  - It was prophesied that he would take our sins on himself and he did.
- Christ was raised according to the Scriptures (4)
  - It was also prophesied that he would be accepted and justified by his being raised
  - Psalm 16:10
- Christ appeared in bodily form to the apostles (5)
  - Leaving no doubt about the nature of this resurrection, Jesus appeared to apostles in his recognizable bodily form.
  - Part of what makes an apostle is not just being around for his ministry but seeing him in his resurrected form.
  - Have we seen his resurrected form? Is that real to us?
  - Because one of the things that we learn is that even though he has ascended and is reigning, he is also with us. His presence is with us still!
The Pervasive Presence of Jesus is of first importance to the Resurrection (v. 6-8)
- Christ appeared to common people in his resurrection, not just his apostles (6)
- Christ appeared to his brother James and “all the apostles” (not just the 12) (7)
- Christ appeared to Paul as one untimely born (8)
The Knowledge of the Grace of God is the consequence of seeing his continuing presence (v. 9-11)
- Paul knew what it meant to be saved by the grace of God (9)
- God’s grace is the reason for our whole existence (10A)
- And God’s grace toward us is not in vain (10B)
- Everything for the glory of God (10C)
- The resurrection of Christ’s place in the Gospel was primary teaching of the arly church because our Christian hope rests on it. (11)

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Part 2

HARVEST OF HOPE: The Resurrection

PART II: The Resurrection of the Dead

I Corinthians 15:12-34

The Faith Rests on the Hope of Resurrection (v. 12-19)

Some where saying there is no resurrection; some say there is no resurrection today. (v. 12)
- If the dead are not raised this life is all there is. Paul will utterly reject that. Our existence here does not have an objective purpose if it is not to become something else. Hope does not put us to shame.
- This is how we face death without horror or despair but rather with hope. That which was our greatest fear in Christ is turned into our greatest hope!
- First of all, what do we mean when we say the final resurrection? We mean all the faithful dead and living at the return of Christ being raised to new being and new bodies to be gathered to him in eternity.
- Paul inextricably links Christ’s resurrection with our resurrection (v. 13)
  - Our faith that he did raise is linked with our hope that we will raise, which is linked with our love for God and others, because we love him who gave us this hope and we want others to have the hope we have.
  - We cannot separate his resurrection from ours and any understanding of our resurrection begins with an understanding of his resurrection.
- Christ is not raised, Paul said, everything is pointless (v. 14)
  - If Christ is not raised, what is your faith worth? What separates our faith from anyone else’s?
  - Where else can you go to gain the promise of eternal life as a gift of grace? Where else will we go? You have the words of life?
- And if the dead are not raised Paul has been lying about God, which is a very bad thing (v. 15)
- Paul again connects the end time resurrection with Christ’s resurrection, implying they are a part of the same phenomenon of resurrection. (v. 16)
- Christ’s resurrection is his approval.
  - What is being approved? His sacrifice. What is the sacrifice for? Your sins. If Christ is not raised there is no forgiveness of sins, in which case we have no hope in death. (v. 17)
  - It’s by Christ’s resurrection that we know we are redeemed from our sins. The sacrifice was worthy.
- The sacrifices of those who have died for Christ’s name are useless is Christ is not raised as our hope (v. 18
  - The hope we have in Christ entails a remade life here and now, but that is in no way the end point of our hope. (v. 19)
Christ as the First fruits, and the Harvester (v. 20-28)
- This is a very important idea: Christ’s resurrection is a first fruit of the final resurrection. (v. 20
  - What does it mean that Christ is the first fruit? It’s the first sample of an agricultural crop and it’s an indication of what the rest of the later harvest will be like.
- Here, an idea we’ve talked about in Romans class recently: How sin came to dominate the world, the sin of the first man who sinned, Adam. But Christ remedies this problem that man had (v. 21)
  - In Adam’s world, we’re dead. In Christ’s world we’re alive. We won’t belabor that.
- In the same way that we chose sin in our lives in the world, so now Christ is the fountain which is open for all, as an example of the glory that is to come (v. 22)
  - Of course not all will be saved because we are told elsewhere that he will not know those who have not known him.
  - Firstly, the opportunity and choice is laid before all to accept of reject. And where the message has not gone it is our job to take it.
  - Secondly, those who do enter into him and his covenant, are made to abound and are strengthened by his power to do his tasks in this life, and that power through the scriptures and the work of the holy spirit is equally open to all of us.
  - Our God gives his wisdom freely to all who seek and this message remains constant.
  - It is for all. All are without excuse. And all those unconverted souls in the world are potential fruit for our master which we could play a part in gathering to him. Think about that. That is our place in the kingdom.
  - So first is Christ as a first fruit, and then when he returns those who belong to him will be raised in the same manner (v. 23) Christ first, then us, this is the proper order.
  - It requires waiting, and by extension, faith on our parts.
- Christ hands the kingdom to God the father after destroying every rule and authority and power. (v. 24)
  - Everything originates with God and there is no conflict with God but he is in perfect union with himself and everything he creates.
  - We have separated ourselves from him and the glory of his creation with our choices but the day is coming when we will return to the original state, the place our hearts long to be.
  - We should welcome his coming until all power is under his control, and the glory of the design of God is realized in it’s completeness, as I already is.
  - Because the end of this certain. A victory has never been more certain.
  - Why? Christ reigns in his kingdom until every enemy is defeated (v. 25)
  - Nothing escapes, nothing is exempt.
- Death is the last enemy (v. 26)
  - There is something so true about this because death is the last enemy we face in the course of our lives and it is the greatest enemy, if you just look at statistically what people fear the most. It is death.
- This all begins and ends with God’s design (v. 27)
  - God by his design gave us Christ and has put everything in subjection to him.
  - When the kingdom is realized in it’s perfection and all is made perfect, then the plan of God will have accomplished everything and there will be no plan, all will exist within God.
  - This all originated with the sovereign design of God, and that is where this all ends, is his sovereign plan and judgment.
- When the resurrection is accomplished the work of the Kingdom will be accomplished and there will no longer be division between the work of the Son, the work of the Father, the spirit, or our work, for we will all dwell together in the presence, likeness, and knowledge of God (v. 28)
The lives Christ calls us to live speaks to the world the hope of the Resurrection. (v. 29-34)
- Why clean a body that will in the end die. Unless it’s death is not it’s end.
- Persecution stems from a belief in a resurrection (v. 30)
  - I think Paul means that he prepares himself to die and possibly even anticipates the inevitable as his entryway into the knowledge and glory that is to come, while letting go of attachments and cares here (v. 31)
  - Because as Christians we are people who should be very aware that this life is very temporary.
  - It doesn’t mean that we are gloomy or depressed or obsessed, but rather that we have no illusions about the permanence of this life. We are looking for a life and an existence to satisfy our every longing.
- Why fight if there is no resurrection? Why be courageous? Why not get every ounce of carnal pleasure we can from this life at the expense of everything else? The resurrection is key (v. 32)
  - Our reason for everything we do as Christians rests on this hope.
  - Otherwise why bear suffering? Why did Christ bear suffering? For the joy set before him.
  - So when we suffer pain and setbacks here, we can see the joy that is coming through the pain. We can count our affliction light in comparison to what we are going to inherit.
  - In other worlds we are living with our eyes on eternity and we are letting nothing in this temporary world distract us from our permanent home.
- Paul is saying, if you let in people who don’t believe in the resurrection, this is the end of that teaching: “Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die.” (v. 33)
  - The problem with not believing in the resurrection of the dead is that what you come to is that this life is all there is.
  - And while you might think that living this life like it is all there is would lead to you enjoying it, that is where human wisdom is flawed. Because it doesn’t.
  - The harder you grasp onto this life and the pleasures and comforts and false assurances of this life, the more you destroy your true life. If we give up the resurrection we’ve given up everything. It is not dispensable. It is the end of this grand design of God.
- This hope is key to our knowledge of God and it is worth living our lives distracted from that hope. (v. 34)
  - living our lives with this hope in mind is the beginning of the knowledge of God.
  - this is a hope so great it is worth living single mindedly for that hope, undistracted by the cares and distractions of the world.

Today, we’re focused on the resurrection, but what will the resurrection be like for us? Well that’s what we’ll discuss next week.

Harvest of Hope Part 3
1 Corinthians 15: 35-49

I. The question and answer (v. 35-36)

A. Question: What will the resurrection be like?

B. Answer: What WON’T the resurrection be like?

II. The seed does not know what form it will take, but God gives it a form in correspondence to the seed’s nature (v. 37-38)

A. This body that you have is not your real body, but a shadow of the body to come, like the relation a seed has to the fruit it will become.

B. Wheat or grain often becomes bread and can thereby feed more people (multiplier effect)

C. God gives the seed a body, the seed has no control over that it becomes or even what it looks like. This is determined by God.

III. No limitations/degrees of reward (v. 39-42)

A. Sometimes people struggle with wanting to go to heaven, not because they don’t love God but because literally they can’t conceive of it. I’m one of those people. I came to a point in my life where I consciously tried to get all the popular visual notions of heaven out of my head because they seemed so unappealing.

B. But then I realized that the heaven of the bible is not the heaven of popular culture is not the biblical picture of heaven.

C. Popular conceptions of heaven are basically a lame party where everything is white.

D. The biblical depiction is an incomprehensibly tall and wide city made of dazzling gemstones.

E. And what Paul describes here in these verses leaves open nearly limitless possibilities for what heaven could be like.

IV. The spiritual body is antithetical (but still related in process) to this flesh (v. 43-44)

A. Our spiritual bodies are clearly not disconnected from our material bodies just as the seed is not disconnected from the stalk of the plant or the fruit.

B. An apple seed cannot become corn. So we can’t gain our spiritual bodies without being in Christ, he is the one who remedies our condition of being dead seeds, dead in sin.

C. But the spiritual body is also antithetical to the material body, which is why I began this lesson with the question “What will the resurrection NOT be like?”

D. Because Paul says the limitations of this life, MUST find their completion in he life to come.

E. We hate and fear our perishability and long for immortality. We regret and are disgusted by our weakness and long for infinite power, even power beyond the physical. We are embarrassed by our dishonor and long for perfect glory.

V. Death is the culmination of the spiritual process that began when we put on Christ (v. 45-49)

A. So Paul explains that instead of being our greatest fear, for the Christian, death becomes a doorway through which we enter in order to fully realize that new creature we have been putting on since the day we put on Christ.

B. Adam had life breathed into and made him a “living being.” Christ was that life-giving breath and he is the life-giving spirit for us.

C. Natural first, then spiritual. Of course, in the very beginning, it was all spiritual, before man separated himself from God. And so it is with us. When we come into this world as babies, we don’t think of ourselves as relating to this world. We experience a kind of pure sensory input as babies, and “growing up” is the process of learning how to relate to the world.

Part 3

Part 4

HARVEST OF HOPE: Part 4
I Corinthians 15: 50-58

I. Become a spiritual being now, not then (v. 50)

A. So as I said this morning, just because Paul said you will be a spiritual being in the resurrection, doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t get started being one now.
B. And we are tempted to say, How can I become a spiritual being and still live in this world?
C. For the answer there, as always, we look to Christ. How was Christ a spiritual being while living in this world? This is why Jesus said, “I am the way.”
D. Either we follow him, or we have lost our way. And every one of us remembers what that feels like. To be lost without him.
E. So we want to move as far away from that sinking feeling of being lost as we possibly can.
How do we do that? Imitate Christ.
F. Become like Christ in every possible way you can manage to here. Because as we discussed this morning, that is what we will be doing in heaven—being with and like Christ.
G. So get started now. Be with him in your spirit and know that he is with you always. Commune with him in prayer. Be like him in your conduct. This is the name of the game, the game being the Christian life. We’re doing all the same things here in our Christian walk
that we’ll be doing then, only then our worship of him, our communion with him, and our experience of him will be unlimited, unbounded, perfected.

II. Our victory in Christ is certain (v. 51-53)

It has always struck me the strength of the language Paul uses here.
Paul doesn’t say I’m crossing my fingers we’ll be changed. He doesn’t say maybe if we’re lucky we might possibly be changed. No, he says we SHALL be changed. And he says it TWICE.
Christian Hope does not mean “I hope so.” Christian hope means, “God promised so.” If we doubt what God has promised us, the fault is with us and not God. We’ve been assured. We will be with him face to face and see him as he is.
It also always struck me strange that Paul would use the term “mystery” here because if we believe in a second coming then it seems pretty straightforward that there will be human beings living on the earth at that time that will not die but will go directly to God as Elijah did, and as Genesis implies Enoch did.
Genesis says Enoch “was no more” because he walked with God. Friends, that’s a rapture I can believe in. Not people being miraculously pulled from cars on highways or whatever the Left Behind book say. I mean walking with God, immersing yourself so fully in God that YOU as a physical ,material being, cease to exist. I don’t mean that if you follow God closely enough you can be caught into heaven before the judgement like Enoch or Elijah.
What I mean is that this walk and this victory that God has worked over death is not about me. It is about the glory of God. If I want to die to myself and live unto Christ, fully. I won’t realize it fully until I get there. Even the Apostle Paul did not dare to say he had fully grasped the knowledge of God. But what Paul says in this passage is that everything we experience here is for the purpose of leading us there.
We will be changed. We will be transformed. There is no doubt about that in Christ. Christ too had to feel the pain and anguish that comes with death and with knowing that death is coming. He experienced it fully, just like we do. And when they laid him in the ground he could not be held there. And in the same way, I will not be held in the ground by the power of death. Sorry, Satan. You can’t convince me that I am a broken seed destined never to spout. The hope that I have in my Christ is bigger than that.
He has done for us and is able to do for us so much more than we ask or expect. It’s not because I’m so great. I’m not. I count myself, like the apostle Paul did, to be the most egregious and despicable sinner I’ve ever met. I know better than anyone my imperfection and weakness. I don’t have confidence in myself at all to stand before God. I will certainly require an abundant helping of mercy in the judgement. It is a good thing then that is exactly what God has promised us in the end. Our sins and iniquities to be remembered no more.

III. Christ is the answer to death and every other problem of this material existence (v.54-56)

Turn to Isaiah 25:6-9
- God promised to swallow up and end forever the power of death and he accomplished that through Christ. Death’s power will finally be fully defeated at the return of Christ.
Turn to Hosea 13:14
- This is a very strange passage because the context around it is a pronouncement of judgement on Israel’s sins. Even in this verse he says compassion will be hidden from his eyes in judging them.
So why this weird note that Hosea hits about “Where is the sting of death?” and God redeeming them from Sheol, the land of the dead. What is that doing in a passage about impending judgement?
Just as the captivity in which Israel was destroyed was temporary, so is our defeat and judgement in death temporary. Because Israel achieved full victory at Calvary and at Pentecost. Mission accomplished. And so we achieve our full victory in the same way. At the cross, and by clinging to that same cross.
Cling to your life and you will die. Cling to the cross, that symbol of shame and death and criminality, and you will be raised glorified, immortal, and acquitted.
And when the world asks you how you can live your life with such abandon and such joy and such hope, tell them the truth—I believe in the resurrection, and this is my power. This is my strength. None of me and all of Christ.

IV. Our response: thankfulness and rededication (v. 57-59)

We’ve deemphasized gratitude to God in everything to our detriment.
This hope should make us impossible to move.
And we should always be abounding…
- Because God doesn’t have you working for nothing.
God doesn’t do slave labor. If you’re doing the work here and abiding in him, you will be generously compensated beyond your wildest hopes and dreams.
Esther—claim what’s yours, in Christ.