1 Cor No.36

And here are some of the most majestic words in the whole of the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 15 and from verse 50. I declare to you brothers that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true. Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm.

Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Amen.

Now will you turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians and chapter 15. We've been looking through this epistle for many, many weeks, and one praises God for the contrasting subject matter and the variety of aspects of Christian teaching, which we have been compelled to follow as the discipline of the syllabus, so to speak, has been prescribed by the contents of this letter. And we're still into the 15th chapter.

I understand, though I was not present at the time, in fact, I never actually heard him minister physically, that on one occasion the great preacher in London, Dr. Campbell Morgan, took a poll, so to speak, an opinion poll of his congregation as to what they believed to be the most popular chapter of the Bible in their estimate. And then he collated all the results, and he gave a series of Bible studies, which I believe were subsequently published on the great chapters of the Bible. Well, had I been around in those days, I would have rooted for 1 Corinthians 15.

It seems to me that this is the superlative chapter within the New Testament, because it speaks to us of our Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead. We have it from the apostle himself in the 19th verse of this chapter, that if we had only hope in Jesus Christ as mere mortals during the lifespan that we enjoy or endure here on planet earth, then of all men we would be most miserable. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

But, says the apostle, and you remember it's the seed thought that stimulates the whole of this chapter, Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. We have a man in the glory, the God-man, who lives to make intercession for us. And because he lives, we also live.

And because he returned from the grave on the third day, we have the prospects of his future return in glory to this world. So, if you were able, historically, to disprove the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, then the whole of the Christian dogma would collapse. It would just be like a building that had a very unstable foundation.

Remove the foundation, and the lot drops down. Well, says the apostle, this is the case. But we've no need to engage in such stupid notions as contemplating the Christian faith without the resurrection.

He was raised from the dead. And, in a similar fashion, as he received a glorified body, so you, so I, those of us who trust him as Lord and Savior, shall benefit on his return, as we too shall receive our resurrection body. Now, this is what the apostle draws together at the conclusion of his fantastic, inspired argument from the 50th verse and right through to the end of this chapter.

It seems to me that there are at least three or four pointers that one can just lift out and use as helps for us in understanding what the mighty apostle has to say. First of all, there is his declaration. I declare to you, brothers.

And he's going to make a pronouncement that has been implicit time and time again in this chapter. And then, later on, he is going to, indeed, in the next verse, engage in a piece of revelation. He is going to tell us what God himself has shown him.

Listen, I tell you a mystery. And then, when he divulges the content of this mystery, it's so great, it's so stimulating, that it causes him to rejoice. And so there is the thought that is more than just a mere hint of jubilation.

From the 57th verse, he brings it under that heading, although he's jubilant in the previous two verses, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And then, as a result of what he's had to say from the 50th verse, and indeed from what he's had to say from the whole chapter, he gives a recommendation to the Christian readers of his epistle. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm, and so on and so forth.

He works out, by way of application, all the benefits, all the consequences of what he has been sharing with these Christians at Corinth. Well, that, if you like, is the way we're going to open up this passage of Scripture, this final portion of this 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians this morning. Let's go back then to the 50th verse.

Here, the Apostle, I argue, makes a great declaration. They say in the Vatican that when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, what comes forth is infallible. Well, I got a little truck with that particular viewpoint regarding the present Pope, or any other Pope for that matter, but when the Apostle Paul speaks under the stimulus of the Holy Spirit, and when his speech is recorded in this book we call the New Testament, then it is ex cathedra.

It is official. It is not speculation. This isn't a suggestion that he makes.

He doesn't say, now, here are a few seed thoughts. Go along and work them out yourself. Not at all.

Here is the Apostle, and he is being in the place of a pontiff. He is pontificating. He is presenting something to them that is up for no qualification whatsoever.

I declare to you brothers that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. What is he saying? Well, in effect, he's dipping back on thoughts that he's already brought to the attention of his readers a few verses before. He's contrasting the inadequacy of the body that his readers and you and I have at this present moment to take us through into eternity.

He says our bodies are ones of flesh and blood. There is an inbuilt inadequacy in them. You remember how he expresses this in the 43rd verse, or rather the 42nd verse.

He talks about the body in terms of a seed that's sown, and he says it's perishable, and yet it will be raised imperishable. It's sown in dishonor, yet it's raised in glory. It's sown in weakness, yet it's raised in power.

It's sown a natural man, yet it will be raised a spiritual body. We went into all these terms, and you remember how I took you to the very grave itself and promised that I would bring you back to the grave when we looked at later verses in this chapter, but we saw even then in our initial consideration just how inadequate the body is. The older you get, the more you recognize that your body itself is an inadequate agent to take you through into eternity.

When Paul writes to the Philippians, he talks about this vile body. That's the authorized version's translation. The NIV is weaker and perhaps not as justified.

Our lowly body. Well, our older friends here in particular, and some of us of more tender years, would be very glad to confess with the Apostle Paul that we will be pleased to be rid of the inadequacies within our bodies as they are at the moment. You see, our bodies have inherent within them a sinful principle, and as a result of that, there are effects physically.

You age. The lines come on your face, as someone unkindly reminded me the other day. Your hair tends to lose its attraction to the scalp if you're a man, and ere long, your skin peeps through, and so on and so forth.

You have every indication in the congregation this morning, as well as from the pulpit, of the inadequacy of the body, and that's what the Apostle is referring to. He says this body, we can't carry it through into eternity. It's not made for that because of the inherent sinful principle that there is based in it.

I declare to you brothers that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable, and here he's referring to the corpse in the grave. How can that inherit the imperishable? If there is going to be any possibility of you and me moving into the eternal realm, then something remarkable is going to happen that is perhaps in some way illustrated by our spiritual conversion. We gave our lives to the Lord Jesus.

He poured his spirit in our hearts, and we were saved. Ah yes, says the Apostle, but that's not the end of your salvation. That's just the beginning.

There is a completion. You've had the spiritual, but the physical is yet to be, and you have a body that you can look forward to. What sort of body will it be like? Well, the Apostle almost runs out of language in trying to describe it, but he has in mind that tremendous example of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he tells the Philippians, and the Apostle John follows him in his theology when he says that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, and that for me settles all the problems and all the questions that people sometimes ask.

What's that body going to be like? What sort of knowledge will I have? Will I be able to someone else in the eternal era, and so on and so forth? I will be like him. I will have a body like unto his glorious body. Now I say, those people who are tied into planet Earth in terms of space and time, and don't recognize any spiritual dimension in their lives, these are people for whom we ought to feel extremely sorry, because they've got no concept of what lies beyond.

Here is just the prologue, the very beginning of the book. That's your life. It's mine.

It's a preparation for all that's in store, and what is in store is based on the fact that the third day, Jesus Christ came back from the dead. It's based on the resurrection. So Paul pontificates.

He makes this great declaration. I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. But that triggers him often, his thinking, to disclose something that he has grasped already from the Lord.

He moves into the area of revelation. The concept becomes very clear when you hit on the word mystery. What is a mystery in Scripture? Well, it's something that has not been disclosed before, and could not have been worked out by pure human reasoning.

It is a disclosure of the mind of God, and this is what the apostle has received. I tell you a mystery, and he goes on to identify what this mystery is. We will not all sleep.

We will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. The apostle Paul has spoken of mysteries before. For example, earlier on in the epistle, he's referred to the mystery of the gospel in the second chapter.

He refers to it in terms, verse 7, of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden, and that God destined for our glory before time began. How would God save the world? How would He bring you and me into a fellowship relationship with Him? How would He do it? Well, it seemed absolutely impossible. When you look into Old Testament literature, you may get some seed thoughts there.

When you look into secular literature around the ancient world and the libraries that it had, there's no hint of it at all. It's a bit of a mystery. How is God going to redeem men and women? Well, He does so by the advent of the Lord Jesus, God taking flesh and ultimately dying on the cross for the sins of people like ourselves.

Us, says the apostle, but there's another mystery. I was going to say a greater, whether it's greater or not, I hesitate to use that word, but it is incredible. He says a mystery as to how you and me will be taken on into the eternal purposes of God, and He refers to the fact of the return of Jesus Christ.

We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. He's referring to that cosmic moment to which the whole of the human story is moving along inexorably, that time when Jesus shall return. The Bible, you see, sees the story of man with its beginning, and in one sense, as far as this earth is concerned, with its ending.

It started with the creative word of God. God spoke, and out of nothing came something. He hangs the planet in space, and on planet earth, He causes man and woman to dwell, and He has a paradise, an ideal setting for them to live in.

Ah, says the apostle, but He's going to speak again. The cosmic moment will arrive when the trumpet shall sound, and Jesus Christ shall return. The significance of the trumpet is very interesting in Old Testament history.

On the Feast of Jubilee, one of the great festive occasions of the Hebrews, the trumpet sounded as the people engaged in joyous celebration and praise before the high God. You discover in Isaiah a prophecy that along all the exiled people of Israel shall return to their homeland, and the trumpet shall sound, and this very symbolism is carried through into the New Testament. Jesus, in Matthew's Gospel, what is it? Chapter 26, refers to the end, when He shall come, and that event shall be heralded by someone blowing a blast on the trumpet, and later on in 1 Corinthians, in 1 Thessalonians 4, you get the same idea, and through into the book of Revelation, the trumpet shall sound.

That's why we sang that hymn. Did you think it wasn't theological? This is a little bit too unsophisticated for you. When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more, I tell you that that's very biblical.

It's very theological indeed. Well, the trumpet shall sound, and in a flash, the word there in the original is in an atom, the smallest indivisible unit of time. In the twinkling of an eye, this shall happen.

The Lord Jesus Christ shall return and set up the eternal era, but who shall be ready to move into this eternal era with Him? Who shall inhabit the new heavens and the new earth that the Lord Jesus Christ shall bring into being? Well, no one from this earth with a perishable and a corruptible body, no one who has got any taint of sin within them at all. So you see the dilemma of Christian people. Let's imagine you and I are around at that time.

We're Christians, yes, we've had our sins forgiven, and yet inherent within us, in our physical being, are the consequences of iniquity. Flesh and blood like that cannot enter the kingdom, but in a moment, in a cosmic second, minisecond, you'll be changed, be changed. The butterfly could not get through the air if it remained like a caterpillar, for caterpillars cannot fly, but they can move through a remarkable process of metamorphosis, and there is a correlation between the caterpillar and the butterfly.

The same seed of life is there. There's continuity and discontinuity. There's similarity and dissimilarity.

Now this is exactly what the apostle here is saying about those who have either died or are alive. When the trumpet shall sound, those who are with Christ on death shall be raised with a body like His, and those who are alive, choice people that they be, shall know this transformation in their own nature, their physical nature, because they shall have a body like unto His glorious body. I find this teaching so, so titanic, I've hardly got words to be able to put across the way that it grips my own soul.

Here's the mighty declaration, you see, of the apostle Paul. Flesh and blood, the lifestyle that you and I have at this moment, those who are already decaying in Mother Earth, who lie a-mouldering in the grave, cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, but that doesn't frustrate entry into the kingdom, because the Lord of the kingdom is the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity, the one who spoke eons ago and brought the worlds into existence. He will speak the cosmic word again, and we shall be changed.

And it's all Augustine, that great man of God of centuries back, who says that God has kept that particular moment to Himself, so that we might live every second in the very anticipation of that moment arriving, and be that much more careful in our living as a result. Well, the apostle gets a little excited about this. Thank God that there is such a thing as a biblical excitement.

Religion was not designed to make us miserable. Let's keep remembering that in 1983. C.S. Lewis, in his testimony, writes the volume surprised by joy.

He didn't realize that people who went to church could conceivably be happy. Well, here is Paul, and there's happiness that is filling his heart. Let's drop a few verses to the 57th, and then we'll work backwards from that, and do it Chinese style for a moment.

Thanks be to God. He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. What is it that trips men and women? What is the great enemy that confronts prince or pauper? Well, it's death.

There is a fear of death, a natural fear of Paul in the Roman world has been confronted by death all the time. There was the bloody way in which the Romans dispatched their criminals by crucifixion, by having them gored to death with the wild beasts, and so on. The world of yesteryear is as unpleasant as the world of today, and it's the thought of death and what lies beyond that causes men and women very often to be terrified, and yet when Paul thinks of that gibbet on Calvary's hill, and that empty tomb, he works out the theological significance and realizes that death has had its final blow, rained at it by Jesus Christ, and sin which causes death to be hideous has been crippled in as much as the sting of death which is sin has been extracted.

You've no need to be, I'm not too sure of my natural illustration here, so I better watch it. You've no need to be afraid of a wasp or a bee that's had its sting removed. I believe the bee dies when the sting is removed anyway, but there's no need to be afraid of that creature.

Otherwise, you can be quite terrified. I hate a wasp coming into the car when I'm driving along. I want the thing out as quickly as possible.

Why? Big man that I am scared of a wasp. Well, it might sting me, and I don't like to be stung, but that's the concept, if you like, that Paul has, that ordinary people have when confronted with the idea of death. It's something that's nasty.

It's nasty and unpleasant because sin has given it its forcefulness. When I die, I go to meet the consequences of my sin. That's what terrifies me.

If death was pure annihilation, then logically why be afraid of nonexistence? But it's the thought that I might go through death to meet the consequences of my lifestyle and stand in the presence of a holy God. That frightens me beyond words. And so what does the apostle do? Well, he's got Jesus in mind, the empty tomb.

He's also got in mind the Old Testament prophecy of Hosea and the prediction that one day death would be swallowed up in victory. Actually, that's Isaiah. And then he goes on to Hosea.

And here he starts to laugh at death. I love this concept. Here is the open sepulchre.

Here is the open grave. And here is Paul doing a little war dance and saying, oh death, where is your sting? Oh grave, where is your victory? And the fact of the matter is that for the Christian, there is no sting, there is no terror left in death at all. Why? Because Jesus Christ has died to remove the condemnation that there was between us and a holy God.

Listen to Paul as he puts it far, far more eloquently than ever I could. Therefore, this is Romans 8.2. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. I go not to meet my sin, I go to meet my Savior.

And if it's a question of staying here and going there, then like the apostle Paul, my bias is towards the latter rather than the former. Apart from that sneaking thought that there's more that I should have done for Jesus down here than I had done. So maybe in God's grace, there'll be a little more time to work for Him.

So you see how Paul in the beautiful inspirational logic that always is typical of his reasoning, makes this grand declaration, flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And then he reveals something to us, this revelation, what is going to happen? Well we're going to be changed, we're going to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. And if that is so, then why be afraid of death? And so there's rejoicing, there's jubilation.

And then he concludes by taking what he has previously put to us theologically with some amount of practical teaching, he now makes the practical teaching absolute, and he gives to us a recommendation. Therefore, bringing everything together that he's been arguing not only in these past verses but throughout the chapter, therefore my dear brother, my dear brothers, how am I to live? Well, says the apostle, as a result of all these things stand firm. He doesn't mean be obstinate incidentally, by standing firm he's referring to our grip on Christian truth, the concepts of the glory that is beyond.

Don't let anything in any way shift you from this, let nothing move you, he repeats himself. Be like the rock of Gibraltar, and don't in any way flinch as a result of any pressures that are placed upon you. Always stand firm, you Christians there in Corinth with all the difficulties, with all the wind of doctrine that's blowing through your assembly, with all the tendencies sometimes to move back into paganism.

No, he says, don't be moved by anything, stand firm. And even if it means that you, you face the perils of being thrown to the lions, or a terrible death similar to that, let nothing move you. Then he says the same to Christian people in the 20th century, for God's Word is always up to date.

Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord. There may be an unemployment problem in this country, and we ought to be very sensitive for folks who have not got employment as a result of no folly on their own part. But there's always full employment in the kingdom of God.

I mean that, that's not a trite remark. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord. My dear brother and sister, you say you believe in the resurrection? All right, says the apostle, let's assess the measure of your belief.

What are you doing about it? Are you passing? Mere church attendance is not working for the advance of the Lord. It may be charging your batteries and helping you to work in the advance of the kingdom, but it's more than that, that the apostle is after here. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord.

No half-hearted allegiance. This is not a sort of 50% chip-in. This is 100% fully.

That's a comprehensive term. Why? Well, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. When you work for Jesus, it's recognized on heaven's computers.

You remember how earlier on, it's the ninth verse in this chapter, Paul talked about the grace of God. He spoke of his own inability, his own lack of qualification to have God deal with him in a gracious fashion. But God did, even though he'd been a persecutor of the church.

Answers the apostle, his grace to me was not in vain. There was no waste. Now he says, reversing it, but using incidentally exactly the same word.

If my memory serves me right in the original. The work that I have done for him, likewise, it is not in vain. These people who say that it's a nonsense that a man as educated as I am should spend time running around the Mediterranean world, sometimes bleeding like some bruised rabbit in the, in the snows with my blood marks discernible wherever I go as a result of, of the pressures that I'm up against.

Let them recognize this, that what I do is not in vain. I may have spent time in jail in Ephesus or what have you. There may have been moments when I've just clung to a piece of, of wood, tossed to and fro on a, on a very high sea as a ship has been wrecked.

But all that is not in vain. When I have spent time dealing with the philosophers at Athens, when I have been engaged in debate with the Sadducees and the, and the Pharisees in Jerusalem, this was not in vain. When I spent time with the slaves in Rome endeavoring to win them to the Lord Jesus Christ, when I confronted the Roman soldiers with the essence of the gospel, it was not in vain.

All that I did is recognized by Him, the man on the cross who died for me, the man in the glory who lives for me, making intercession for me. He computes all that I'm doing and that God-man is going to come back. Therefore, my brethren, stand firm and in 1983 be unmovable on the very basics of your Christian faith, but be actively engaged in serving and working for the living Christ.

Amen. Father God, for the grandeur of the victory of the Christ, we give you our humble and our hearty thanks. Help us to live as men and women of Easter Sunday morning, basking in the glories, the consequences of the resurrection of our Savior.

Keep us on one, on the one hand, obstinate inasmuch as we will not give up these great historic truths of Christianity that keep us always movable in terms of working for you. So, Lord, may this little series from 1 Corinthians 15 be a great stimulus to us in this new year. Send us those who have to go at this juncture on their way with your blessing and those of us who have the privilege of remembering the death of our Lord Jesus.

Intensify your presence and make the service meaningful for His sake. Amen.