If you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15 verses 50 through 58 this evening. It's the last of our six-part study in the great resurrection chapter of the Bible, looking at the hope that we have through the triumph of Christ over death. We all must face death. We want to ignore it, but it will not be ignored.
The resurrection gives us hope and courage as we face it. In our study so far, we've seen four major things, certainly. We've seen the proof of the resurrection in chapter 15 verses 1 through 11, as Paul tells you that the scriptures predicted Jesus would die and rise on the third day, and then all the witnesses saw that in fact he did the proof of the resurrection. We've seen the priority of the resurrection.
It's foundational, fundamental to the gospel and to the preaching of the gospel. If there is no resurrection from the dead, Paul says, then Christianity is pointless and it's truthless and it's worthless. It's fruitless. It's opalism.
There's no meaning in it. You have believed and we preach in vain to know end. So we've seen the priority of the resurrection. We've seen the promise of the resurrection in verses 23 through 24.
Jesus lives the Bible says, and so shall I. We all who believe in him, the Bible says, he's the first fruits of a whole harvest of believers. Last week we saw the plan of the resurrection in chapter 15 verses 35 through 49. We get new bodies.
Bodies like the glorified body of Christ. Tonight we consider the power of the resurrection from chapter 15 verses 50 through 58. We see the power of the resurrection for hope over death. And we see the power of the resurrection for service in life.
Let me invite you to consider these things tonight from God's infallible and authoritative and inspired word. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the same that is written.
Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin.
The power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brother, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the word of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. Amen.
This is God's word. Now he write it on our hearts. Let's look to him in prayer. Our Father, we pray that you would help us tonight and lighten the eyes of our minds that we would know the hope of our calling.
What are the riches of your glorious inheritance in the saints and what is your immeasurably great power for us to believe? We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. So minister in the 1600s named Hugh McHale, he faced death for his faith in Christ.
He was a Scottish covenanter and that means he was a Christian. He was a reformed Presbyterian kind of Christian. He believed that Jesus was king and head of the church and not the civil governing authority. Well, that put him at odds.
He and many others at odds with the civil government of his day. He sided with over 300 ministers who were persecuted by the government and thrown out of their churches. He preached his last public sermon at the age of 21. The next four years he ministered privately and then at age of 25 he came back out publicly but was found, tortured, imprisoned and sentenced to death by hanging.
Going up the ladder to the rope, he said, I care no more to go up this ladder and owe it than if I were going home to my father's house. Every step is a degree, nearer heaven. Farewell, father and mother. Farewell, friends and relations.
Farewell, the world and all the lights. Welcome, God and father. Welcome, sweet Lord Jesus. Welcome, blessed spirit of grace.
God of all consolation. Welcome, glory. Welcome, eternal life. Welcome, death.
How do you face death with such courage and hope and how can we by embracing the hope of the resurrection for us? It sustains us and strengthens us. We want to consider tonight what Paul says about the hope that we have and then the way that it shapes life. So let me invite you to consider three things about the power of the resurrection for hope over death and then one main thing about the power of the resurrection for service in life from verse 58.
So back at verse 50, the power of the resurrection for hope over death. Number one, death doesn't get the final word. It doesn't get the final word. Notice verses 50 to 53.
I tell you this brother's flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Notice the perishable and the imperishable. Behold, I tell you in history, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Now what's Paul doing here?
What is using an illustration that of sleep? The Bible uses the language of sleep here for those who have died. The soul doesn't sleep. It doesn't immediately be with Jesus.
Today he will be with the imperidized Jesus and said, but the body rests in its grave until the resurrection. It appears to be in some sense sleeping. That's the picture he uses until it is renewed and raised and stands up. Others with God must sleep until they are awakened by the last trumpet, the trumpet call of God.
And so in the metaphor which is full of meaning, it's also full of hope. Think of it. What is significant about sleep? It's that sooner or later, you wake up.
That's the idea. We're going to wake up, he says, and we're going to be part of the kingdom of God in glory. But the question might be asked, well what if Christ comes back before I die? I mean Paul's got great plans for bodies being raised imperishable from the dead, but what if I'm still in my flesh and blood and he has just said flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.
How can I be raised in a heavenly body and thereby inherit the kingdom? Paul says fear not. We will not also. Some of us he says will be alive at the coming of the Lord, but we will all be changed.
We've got to be changed. He says we've got to be made fit for the kingdom of glory that is coming without a change. You and I would be like a child putting on a knight's armor. We simply couldn't bear the weight of the glory that is to come.
We've got to be made fit for heaven. So he uses another kind of illustration to speak of the resurrection, not just that the dead sleep, but here the resurrection is like the putting on of a new garment. You think of the person who takes off one side of clothes and puts on another. You take off an old suit and you put on a new tuxedo.
That's what it's like. He says we get rid of this mortal perishable, corruptible, weak, dishonorable body that's buried and we are raised in power, raised in glory, raised in strength, raised in corruptible. These are all illustrations friends. The human body is not really a seed.
Whatever does the body sleep in the biological sense, nor does it change its clothes. But each of the metaphors helps us to see that at the resurrection it will be our very own body that will rise to life. It will not rise the same body as before but transformed. But it's us who rise.
And it's us if we're around when Jesus comes back who are changed. So don't forget that you're going to miss this. It will happen so fast. You never saw it coming.
How fast will in the twinkling of an eye? He says it will happen like in a nano second. Faster than you can simply blink and you will be changed. And it will all be over.
This perishable body will put on the imperishable. So it's not going to be so long drawn out of fear and you need not fear your experience of it. But look forward to it. Look forward to the day as Jesus says in Matthew 24 that they will see the coming, the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and glory.
And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four wings from one end of heaven to the other. We will be raised. Death does not get the last word. That's the first thing.
The second is this in verses 54 and 55. Death will be vanquished. Notice his language. When the perishable puts on the imperishable verse 54 and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written.
Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death. Where is your victory? Death, he says, is like a schoolyard bully making everybody cower until the stronger one comes along and puts them down.
And that is what will happen here. Death will lie at the feet of Jesus dead forever. In fact, John in the book of Revelation in chapter 21 says there is a coming day when even death itself will be thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death, eternal and everlasting death. Now how do you throw death into a lake?
I do not know, but you are to be assured it will be gone. It will not be in heaven. God will wipe every tear from our eyes. Death shall be no more.
Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things shall have passed away. Says John. Now that has not yet come, but it most certainly will. The war is not over, but the decisive battle that has won the war has been fought and it has been won by Jesus.
He defeated death at his rising from the dead. That victory yet waits to be applied in every way in all of us. But we could even now sing as Paul does. Sing in triumph.
We will in fact be able to dance on the grave of death because Jesus has vanquished it. And that is coming, he says. That's the second thing. First thing to the last word, it will be vanquished.
Number three, verses 55 and 57, death has already been defanged. Oh death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. What is he getting out there?
What does he mean? Well death would have no power to hurt any of us if it were not for sin. Well, the one hand because of course there would be no death if there wasn't sin. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death.
It's the payment for sin. But the second reason is this sin gives death its terror. It is sin that makes death frightening unless we are forgiven. We have a friend, a J.D.U.
graduate who serves Jesus in Egypt. Interesting that we pray for Egypt tonight. In her recent newsletter she asked why do Muslims fast at Ramadan? She's been living among the Muslim.
Ramadan is the month long fast in which they don't eat or drink during the daylight hours of the day. Well, she asked her Muslim friends. Admittedly, this is not ideology. This is the anecdotal response of her Muslim friends.
Why do they fast? She received a variety of answers such as one said God rewards double for good works during this time and he will erase the bad. So that's what we pray for. Another said, well, you just have to.
And they laughed at her for even asking the question why. Another said, well, we focus more on God during this month. And another said, to be forgiven for sins for the year. Well, my missionary friend does not say that when she asked if they know they will be forgiven, she says my friends all eventually answered, I don't know.
I can't know. No one can know for sure. Well, sometimes Christians think that way too. Sometimes Christians struggle with believing that their sins are forgiven and can be forgiven.
And that makes the thought of meeting God seem terrifying, not thrilling if you know yourself. Because it makes you want to hide from him, not run to him because you recognize he is your judge as well as your father. And no one wants to be here before a judge unforgiven. No one wants to come to the brothers of their father when there's something wrong between them and it hasn't been taken care of.
But God so wants you to know that he is willing to forgive all your sins in Jesus, that he has taken away the sting of death in Jesus. He's taken it away. How has he done that? Let me know straight to this way.
Young boy and his dad went camping. The boy went into the tent. He began to scream in fear. His father rushed in to discover that his son was huddled in a corner while a bee buzzed about.
The son was deathly afraid of and deathly allergic to bee stings. So what did the father do? He caught the bee in his cupped hands and he let the bee sting him. And the venom was drained away and the bee died and the boy was safe.
Jesus, Paul says, has taken the sting. It has no power to hurt any Christian ever again. Do you have any who believe in him? How did he take the sting?
Well the power soon is the law. What gives the sting its power? It's the law. Now Paul here doesn't mean the law is bad.
Everywhere the Bible says well the law is itself good. It's a good thing. It's right. It's true.
It's just the law commands obedience. Obedience and it forbids disobedience. The law commands love and it forbidses unjust hate. The law is good.
But that's just the trouble for me. I haven't kept the law. The law condemns me. It exposes my failure.
It makes me liable to judgment. Therefore the sting of death is power to kill me. But the good news is that Christ satisfied the requirements of the law for us. He did what it commands.
And he suffered the penalty due to us for a broken law. In our place he bore its judgment. So he drained the venom. The law is no power over Christians.
We are under grace and not under law. We are hidden in Christ. And we are safe is Paul's point. So we can say with Paul, thanks me to God.
He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Donald Barnhouse tells the story of driving with his own children to his own wife's funeral. He says, we came into one small town there in front of us. Truck came to a stop in front of a red light.
It was the biggest truck I ever saw in my life. And the sun was shining on it in just the right angle that it took its shadow and spread it across the snow and the field beside it. And as the shadow covered that field, I said children, look at that truck and look at its shadow. If you had to be run over, which would you rather be thrown over by?
Would you rather be run over by the truck or by the shadow? My youngest child says the shadow couldn't hurt anybody. That's right, I continued, says Barnhouse. And death is a truck, but the shadow is all that ever touches the Christian because Jesus was run over as it were by the truck.
Only the shadow, he says, has gone over mother. Death has lost its sting. It will not last. It will not win.
Victory is already ours in Jesus. This is Paul's point. If you find that too fantastic to believe, I understand. But wouldn't you at least want it to be true?
Wouldn't we all look what? That to be true. Why not? Well, it is true.
Jesus said it this way. I am the resurrection and the life who ever believes in me, though he died, yet shall he live. And that's because death will not have the last word because he has risen. Death will be vanquished because he has risen.
Death has lost its sting. It has been defanged because Jesus has gone through it and sucked out of it. It's venom to spare us. So then there is power in the resurrection for hope over death.
But there is finally in verse 58 there is power in the resurrection for service in this life. Notice his language as he closes the whole chapter here. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. What's he getting at?
He's saying, don't let the thought of death or fear of death keep you from serving Jesus, but be abundant in your service because it lasts because it matters because it's not in vain. William Barkley says, the man or person who believes this is the only world will inevitably live as if the things of this world are all that matter. Described as one kind of person. This is all there is.
Things of this world are all that matter. The second kind of person looks at squarely in the face and drops into despair. Leo Tolstoy wrote, my question, that which at the age of 50 brought me to the verge of suicide was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man, a question without an answer to which one cannot live. It was, what will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow?
What will come of my whole life? Why should I live? Why wish for anything or do anything? It can also be expressed thus.
Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? Many have said there is no meaning and it has led them to despair, but Paul says there is meaning even in the face of temporary death. Therefore, my beloved brothers, we steadfastly moveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. There is meaning in everything.
Live then for what lasts? In 1958, John G. Patton was a Scottish missionary and he went to the South Pacific Islands. In those days, cannibals lived in the islands.
Amongst many who sought to deter me from being a missionary, he says, was one dear old Christian gentleman whose crowning argument always was, the cannibals! You will be eaten by cannibals! Don't go! But he went.
He went anyway. Three months after he and his wife Mary arrived in the Pacific, a son Peter was born. Just 19 days later, Mary died from tropical fever and her infant son Peter died just 17 days after that. So John went home, found another wife raised up more missionaries to go back with him and return to the South Pacific Islands.
Six more children were born to he and Maggie in the islands, four died in childhood or infancy. Yet they persevered. He learned the language and he reduced it to writing and then he put the scriptures in the writing of the people. His wife taught a class of about 50 women and girls who became experts in sewing and singing and plating hats and reading.
They became well educated. They trained teachers, translated and printed and expounded the scriptures. They administered to the sick and the dying. They dispensed medicines.
They taught the people the use of tools. They held worship services every Lord's Day and they sent native teachers to all the villages to preach the gospel. They endured many years of deprivation. 41 years later, having faced danger from natives and disease.
41 years later, in 1899, he saw his new testament printed and placed in the hands of the people and he saw established missionaries on 25 out of 30 islands. What's sustained them? Well, this is what's sustained them. As he told that older gentleman so concerned about the cannibals, quote, Mr.
Dixon, you are advanced in years now and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms. And in the great day, my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer. The promise of the resurrection gives hope and it moves us to courage, to serve with energy.
The figure, Paul says, be abundant in serving the Lord out. For your labor dear friend, it is not in vain. It lasts and it matters into eternity. Let's pray.
Father, we pray that you would raise up from among us many who would serve you in far away places for the sake of the gospel. We pray that you would strengthen us who live here to remain and to be steadfast and immovable in our trust in Jesus and are looking to Him, in our hope in Him and in our service to Him in loving one another and serving this community and our families. Help us, we pray, in Jesus name, amen. Let's stand again.