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Father, we thank you for this day that you have given us. And thank you for your goodness and your mercy and your grace. Father, we thank you that we can be here together today. We thank you, Lord, that no matter what goes on in life, that you provide and that you allow us to worship you, and you allow us to come and hear of your holy word. And I pray today, Father, as we go through your word, that you will conform us to Your image.
I pray, Father, that you will empower us through your spirit. And I pray that we will grow from what we hear today. Father, I pray that you will be glorified in Jesus name. Amen.
All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome back to our church. Today we're going to finish, or hopefully finish our study in the book of First Corinthians, just kind of a reminder of where we are. Shawnee, I don't know if you have it, but you can bring that graphic up the outline.
So in First Corinthians 15, where we currently are, we're going to continue talking about the resurrection. We started about that last week where Paul will. Where he addresses misconceptions with the resurrection and in particular that the church in Corinth did not believe in a resurrection. Then chapter 16, which we will also get through today, is Paul's conclusion. We won't spend a lot of time on chapter 16 because 90% of the chapter, Paul says, say hi to this person and this person and this person for me.
So it'll be a really quick chapter, and I intend to get through that. As a reminder, two weeks ago, when we first started chapter 15, Paul laid the foundation for the gospel in verses one through four. I just wanted to remind you what he told us in verses three and four about the gospel, the importance of it. He says this. He says, I passed on to you as most important what I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to Scriptures.
So this is the foundation for Christianity. This is. If this is not true, then Christianity is not true. Right. And then Paul spent a little bit of time in this chapter discussing that.
He said, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then our faith is in vain and we are most pitied. And then he also spends time discussing the evidence. We saw that he appeared to Peter, he appeared to James, to the 12, he appeared to Paul, and then 500 people at one time saw Jesus alive. Right. That's great evidence.
We've discussed in the past the fact that nobody presented the body of him. No one presented evidence to the contrary that he did not rise. So the resurrection is not only believed and taught in Christianity, but is the cornerstone of Christianity. No resurrection means no Christianity, and that was the importance of it. So we're going to pick up today where we left off, which will be in verse 35.
We'll go ahead and we're going to read. It's going to be a long section. We're going to go through verse 49. Paul says, but someone will ask, how are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have when they come?
You fool, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, are you not sowing the body that will be? Sir, you are not sowing the body that will be, but only a seed. Seed? Perhaps a wheat or another grain, but God gives it a body as he wants, and to each of the seeds its own body.
Not all flesh is the same flesh. There is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is different from that of the earthly ones. There is the splendor of the sun, another of the moon, and another of the stars. In fact, one star differs from another in splendor.
So it is at the resurrection of the dead. Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption, sown in dishonor, raised in glory, sown in weakness, raised in power, sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is a spiritual body. So it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life giving spirit.
However, the spirit is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven, like the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust. Like the man of heaven, so are those who are of the heaven. And just as we have been born in the image of the man of dust, we also bear the image of the man of heaven.
So like I said, a little bit of a long passage. Before I break this passage down, I want to discuss the relevance of this passage to anybody living in the state of Utah in particular. But really, anyone who encounters a Mormon in anywhere in Mormon theology, you will have heard of multiple levels of kingdom, right? They had the celestial, telestral and terrestrial kingdoms, right? And they, they do teach that in the resurrection everybody will go to one of those degrees of heaven, and they base that on this passage.
So before we break it down, I want to warn of misreading what this passage is talking about. This passage is not discussing different levels of heaven, it's not discussing different kingdoms, but rather it's discussing the greatness of our God and His intelligence. And if he can do what he has already done, his ability to raise us. And it's founded in verse 35 on this question. He says that someone will Ask, how are the dead raised?
Right now, this is a valid question. Not many of us have seen someone from the dead come back to life.
Apparently 500 people have they saw Christ come back to life. But the average human in our existence, death seems to be far. When you die, we cremate you, or we embalm you and we put you in a grave and you turn to dust. So how are the dead raised? This is the objection.
The second objection that Paul says somebody might ask is, well, what kind of body will you have if you raise from the dead? Will you raise in the same body? Will you raise in the body that's been decayed, right? That that has physical disabilities, that has illnesses, that you know, if you lost your leg, were you raising a body, missing a leg? And these are some of the objections, not only that those in Corinth of us, but even throughout history, people have asked and even wondered and considered about.
So as Paul addresses this, he begins. He says, you are a fool. He says, to ask these questions is foolish.
They seem logical. To me, they seem like logical questions. But to Paul, they seem foolish. And here is why. Look at what he says here.
In verse 36, he says, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. Now remember when we talked in the Book of John, we were going through the book of John. Christ told us that unless a grain fell to the ground, it could not come to life. You must pass from death into life. Humanity teaches that we go from life to death, and that's the end.
And Christianity teaches that death is actually the beginning. Death is actually the gateway into life. Life. And Paul brings this analogy in. He says, what you sow does not come to life, but that it dies.
I have a quote that I. I found from another pastor. This is Pastor V. Gone. And I liked what he said enough that I wanted to share it.
He says that Paul illustrates in verses 36 and 38 the possibility of a resurrected body. But he says the mystery of resurrection should raise no question of the possibility of the resurrection, for the same mystery is wrapped up in every germinating seed. A person totally ignorant of farming, watching the farmer plant seed in the spring, might ask, what sort of body can come from a dry grain that you drop into the earth to rot? But the sower, having witnessed the process of quickening so frequently, would dismiss the questioner as a fool. Paul is arguing that the actuality of this lower type of resurrection vindicates the conceivability of the higher.
That ends my quote.
In reality, we actually witness Resurrection year after year after year, right? Every farmer witnesses a resurrection as a seed, right? The seed comes from a dead plant. The seed in and of itself has no life. If you leave the seed and set it on a table, it will never do anything.
It has no power within itself. And yet you put it into the ground, as Pastor Vagon said, to rot, and it comes to life, right? So it is arguable that if we can see resurrection in our everyday life with plants, we see dead things, seemingly dead things come to life, then it's conceivable to say that as a human dies, that God can give life back to that human. Alright, so now moving on to the type of the body, right? So that's how Paul addresses first the.
The mystery of the resurrection. Some. Some would ask, how are you raised? And Paul says that we see it all the time. Now about the body, he addresses it like this.
God gives the body that he wants and to each of the seeds its own body. Paul sticks with the. To begin with the analogy of plants, right? Corn has its own body. So does wheat, so does barley, so does sugar cane, so do trees, the different grasses, right?
God has designed different bodies for different seeds, right? Even with the flesh, not all flesh is the same flesh. If you look and Paul argues the flesh for humans is different than the flesh for animals, the birds, the fish, the dogs, cattle. The flesh of all of these animals are different.
Paul's argument here is an argument that God designed these bodies to begin with. So in the resurrection, God can design a body. Is it too much for a God who spoke into existence? The creation of heaven and earth, the stars, the moon, the mountains that we see, the Milky Way galaxy we can look up. The human life in and of itself is inconceivable that the God who spoke that into existence can also give to our spirits after death a new body.
He continues, he says that there are even heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, and the splendor of them are different. The sun and the moon and the stars, they differ from each other in glory. And Paul tells us this for two reasons. One, he tells us this again to describe the power of the Creator God, the fact that the Creator God has the bodies that we have and that the stars have and the earth have, and the fish, they are not accidental, but they are intentional. He does not tell us this to tell us that when we resurrect, we will resurrect into kingdoms, whether earthly or lunar or like solar.
But there is speculation that he even he does address our bodies will be Different. There are bodies suited for earthly bodies, right? Our bodies are very well suited for earthly bodies. And there are bodies that are suited for. For heavenly bodies, right?
In the resurrection, our bodies will be suited for heavenly bodies. Remember the new heavens and the new earth we talked about in the book of Revelation about a year ago as we went through that study? Though the new heavens and the new earth, it'll be a physical earth, it'll be different than this earth. It'll be an earth without sin, without corruption, without groaning. It'll be a heavenly earth.
So our bodies will be different. He says it in verse 42. He says, so it is at the resurrection of the dead. We are sown in corruption. Every one of us from birth are corrupted.
We are born into sin, right? Don't believe me? Have you ever seen 2 year olds, 5 year, and 1 gets mad at the other and smacks them in the head with their toy? They weren't taught to do that. It's natural.
We are predisposed to sin. We are predisposed to evil. So we are sown in incorruption. But he says we will be raised in incorruption. So though we are corrupted now, the body, right?
To those who say, what kind of body will we have in the resurrection? We will have an incorruptible body. We will have a body that is no longer predisposed to sin, predisposed to evil and wickedness. It says we're sown in dishonor, right? Humans are dishonorable.
Look at humanity. There's nothing honorable about us. But we will be raised in glory. We will share in the glory of Christ. Although the glory of Christ is His alone, he is gracious and will share with us.
We will bask in the glory of God and we will have bodies of glory. We are sown in weakness. The human body is weak. We. Our bones break.
We get sick, we age, we die, we get cancer. Our bodies are weak not just physically, but our bodies are also weak mentally. We have breaking points. We have ptsd. We have all sorts of mental disorders.
We are weak to sin and to our natural tendency. But we will be raised in power, right? There will be no human weakness in the resurrected body. It says we are sown a natural body, right? The body that we have, that we are born into is a natural body.
But we will be raised a spiritual body. I find this interesting because we know that the bodies we have in the resurrection will be physically. And how do we know that? We know that because Jesus has a physical body. When he resurrected, he was seen, he was touched, he ate food, he walked.
He was in a physical body. And while it was physical, it was spiritual. And I'm not sure, and I don't know that I or anyone will ever be sure how to explain that until we experience it. But the natural body will give way to the spiritual body. And then Paul says this.
If there's a natural body, there's a spiritual body. Our bodies, what causes them to die?
This is an interesting question. In my line of work as a first responder, I see people dying, die. And it's a weird process. And the reason it's weird is we can keep your heart going, whether through CPR or a pacemaker or a machine, we can keep your heart going. Even if your liver or kidneys fail, we can take your blood out of your body and run it through a filter and pump it back in and cycle.
Even if your lungs fail, we have machines that can breathe for you. And yet our bodies die. And there's something that no matter what we do to keep the physical body going, and medical advances have allowed us to do that, we still have people dying. They call it brain dead when there's zero. Why?
To me, one of the greatest evidences of a God and one of the greatest evidences of the fact that we were created, right? Not no evolution, no big bang, but a creator God who created us. Is the human conscious. That can't be explained scientifically. Life does not give non life, right?
It comes from life, it comes from God. Non conscious things do not give way to consciousness. In fact, for those who would argue, and an atheist would argue, that it's inconceivable to believe that an immaterial thing can influence the material. And they say, can you ever, can you give any example? And the answer is yes, human consciousness, because it's immaterial.
The consciousness is not the brain. So Paul says if there is a natural body, there's also a spiritual. And our life is in and of itself spiritual. We are born spiritually dead, and by the breath of God, we walk as dead men. But it is a spiritual body that keeps us alive.
And when that spiritual body leaves the natural body, it dies. So Paul says if there is a natural body, there is a spiritual. But he also says this.
He says the natural comes first and then the spirit. Now this is not referring to order in terms of spirit versus physical, spiritual comes first. God is a spirit, right? And it was the breath of God, the spirit of God, that gave way to life. But Paul is talking in Regard, we need to contextualize of the resurrection, right?
First comes the physical body, the ones that we are born into, and then comes the spiritual body. Look at this. It says the first Adam became a living being, right? So the first Adam, we're talking about Adam and Eve. The first man became a living being.
He man did not always exist, man did not always live, but man became. And in the creation account, it's recorded that God formed man from the dust of the earth and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became living. So the first man became living and we descend from it. It says, however, the last Adam became life giving. And there's a difference.
While Adam became living and started. And through Adam in God's creation, the process of procreation came. The first Adam brought with life death. The last Adam being Christ, he came and rather than bring in with life death, he brought with death life. And he is a life giving spirit.
And so it says, as we inherit death from the first man, and like the first man of dust, so we are men of dust. It also says that we who have borne the image of Christ will also take the image of Christ. So this is the hope of the resurrection. We will be raised in incorruptible bodies. We will be raised in bodies of glory.
We will be raised in bodies that God will intentionally design, just as he has our current body, the bodies of fish, of birds, of the earth and the moon and the sun. He will design intentionally our bodies for the condition of heaven and where we will be. And he will give to us the image of Christ that we will bear. The rest of this chapter here we're going to read is going to talk about the victory of the and a lot of what we just talked about deals with those who are dead, right? In fact, all of this, the objection is how will those who are dead resurrect?
What about those who are alive? Let's look. Verse 50.
What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption. Listen, I am telling you a mystery. We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed.
We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be changed.
For this corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility. And this mortal body must be clothed with immortality. When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptible guys.
Gonna end service tonight. I'm sorry.
I am beginning to struggle too much here.
That's is it. It's still recording. Let's stop the recording.