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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > Christ's resurrection necessitates and guarantees ours | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Hymn 32 Hymn 11:9 (after the Law of God) Psalm 16:1,4,5 Hymn 33 Hymn 34 Scripture readings: Mark 16:1-8, 1 Corinthians 15 Text: 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
I’m sure many of you have seen one of those old-style mousetraps. You know the ones with a small wooden platform, and a spring loaded bar to trap the mouse. Did you know that a mousetrap like that only works if all the pieces are in place? You can’t have a working mousetrap without the spring. You can’t have a working mousetrap without the bar or the small wooden platform or any of its parts. Everything has to be there or it doesn’t work as a mousetrap. There’s a name for this: irreducible complexity. It’s found in the human body too – like with your eye. You need all of the parts of your eye for it to work as an eye. Your eye is irreducibly complex.
We also see irreducible complexity in the Christian faith. If you take out certain key doctrines, the Christian faith falls apart. The important things are interconnected. One of the key Bible teachings where we see this is the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.
Amongst the Corinthian Christians there were those who denied this teaching. They weren’t denying that Christ had been raised from the dead. But they were denying that other human beings would be raised from the dead. And when they did this they were going to take the whole thing down. And that’s why Paul writes this long chapter in 1 Corinthians addressing this teaching. The Christian faith is an interconnected body of teaching and if you take out something like the resurrection of the dead, the whole thing is going to fall apart. It’s that serious.
Now we might not be tempted to deny the resurrection of the dead. But what was a warning for the Corinthian Christians was also an encouragement to them. We might not need the warning, but we could always use the encouragement. So I preach to you God’s Word on this Easter Sunday and I’ve summarized the sermon with this encouraging theme: Christ’s resurrection necessitates and guarantees ours.
We’ll look at:
- Resurrection facts
- Resurrection logic
- Resurrection timing
Our passage states it clearly, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead…” Earlier in the chapter, Paul wrote that this was a fact of history. Hundreds of people met the risen Christ and their eyewitness testimony can’t be discounted. On that first Easter Sunday morning, the tomb was empty. The Lord had been raised to life. For the first time in history, a human being came back to life never to die again.
In the background of this amazing fact is the fact of death. Death is a reality most people would rather not talk about. But it’s a fact that 100% of us sitting here this morning will die. Unless Christ comes back first, we’re all going to die at some point. For some it may be sooner, for others it may be later. But no one escapes from the cold, hard reality of the grave.
How did death come into the world? The common answer today is that death is natural -- it’s just the way things have always been. Things come to life and then they die. But the Bible tells a different story. The Bible tells us of a world that was created by God. At the beginning, after God first created it, there was no death. After God created human beings, he warned them that if they disobeyed and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die. When Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3, they brought death into the world. Verse 21 says, “For as by a man came death…” The man being referred to there is Adam, who was the covenant head of the human race. As the covenant head of humanity, the sinful choice he made had deadly consequences for all his descendants. Death came into the world because of one man’s sin.
But there is a Second Adam in the Bible. His name is Jesus Christ. Jesus was and remains true God. But he took on a human nature. He became one of us so he could die for us on the cross. If he had remained God alone without a human nature, he would never have died. God can’t die. But with a human nature, he could and he did die. As a human being he experienced what we’re all going to experience. After he said “It is finished” and he took his last breath, his soul departed to go to heaven and then shortly afterwards his body was placed in the tomb. He experienced the disjointed separation of body and soul that all human beings experience with death. But as a human being, he was also raised from the dead. His soul and body were reunited. He emerged from the tomb as a complete human being.
Now it says in verse 21, “by a man has also come the resurrection of the dead.” By that, Paul draws a parallel between the two Adams. By each one, something came. But there’s also a contrast. By the First Adam came death, by the Second Adam came life, came resurrection, came victory over death. Those are the facts. When we look at the logic connecting all those facts, that’s where we find great encouragement.
We have to start here by going back to verse 20 for a moment. It says that the risen Christ is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” What does it mean to “have fallen asleep” here? That’s simply a way of speaking about death. It’s a common way of speaking in the Bible. The reason for it is that a person who dies looks like they’re asleep. But the image is also appropriate because if someone is sleeping, then at some point they’re going to wake up. Sleep is a temporary state. And it’s the same with death. When our bodies die, they are not going to stay dead forever and ever into eternity. This is why theologians call what happens to us after we die the intermediate state. It’s the in-between state. It’s in between death and resurrection.
Now who are those “who have fallen asleep”? Elsewhere the Bible teaches that the resurrection of the dead is something that happens to all human beings, whether they were Christians during their lives or not. In John 5:29, Christ speaks about a resurrection of life and a resurrection of judgment. Believers enjoy the resurrection of life and unbelievers will face the resurrection of judgment.
But here in 1 Corinthians 15, the focus is on what happens with believers. I can say that because that’s what verse 23 clearly says. Verse 23 refers to “those who belong to Christ.” So in verse 20, when it says “those who have fallen asleep,” we could mentally add, “in the Lord.” Those who have fallen asleep in the Lord – Christians who have died.
Christ is the firstfruits for those people. The idea of firstfruits is important here. In agriculture and horticulture, there’s often a part of the crop that ripens first. These are the firstfruits. It’s a foretaste of what’s to come. In the Old Testament, these firstfruits were offered up to God. They were offered as a pledge that more offerings would come in the future with the rest of the crop. So “firstfruits” is used here to not only give us the picture of a great harvest that’s coming, but also the logical necessity of that harvest. If the firstfruits is Christ, then all those who are in Christ and of Christ are going to surely follow.
To use another analogy, you could think of it like your favourite sports team. You might believe that your club is going to win the championship this year. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But you would never say, “This year my club’s star player is going to win the championship.” You understand that the championship is a team deal. If you’re on the team and your team wins, you win. It’s the same with the resurrection. If you’re on Christ’s team, you win, you get to enjoy resurrection through him. The way you end up on Christ’s team, so to speak, is by faith, by placing your trust in him.
Verse 22 builds on this line of reasoning. Everyone in Adam is going to die. Everyone with the First Adam as their covenant head faces the grave because of his sin. But everyone in the Second Adam is going to be made alive. Everyone who has Christ as their covenant head is going to enjoy a glorious resurrection like his. It says, “so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” We shouldn’t understand that “all” to be referring to everyone, as if the whole human race will have a glorious resurrection in Christ. We already saw that Christ himself said otherwise in John 5. We should understand this to be saying, “so also everyone who is in Christ shall be made alive” or “all those who belong to Christ shall be made alive.” It’s referring to the resurrection of Christians.
Now, as I said, the problem in Corinth wasn’t with the resurrection of Christ as such. It was with the resurrection of the dead, with the resurrection of believers. They said there’s no such resurrection. But what they failed to realize was that by making a statement like that, if they were consistent, they’d also end up denying Christ’s resurrection. It works like this: if you say that no human beings can or will be raised from the dead, and if Jesus was a true human being, then Jesus can’t have been raised from the dead. His resurrection and ours are tightly linked by our shared humanity. You can’t deny one without denying the other.
While that warned the Corinthians about their doctrinal problem, it also serves today to encourage us. Christ has been raised and therefore we can be confident if we’re in him by faith that we too shall be raised. And that is going to be glorious. In this world our bodies are affected by the fall into sin. We fall, we get hurt, we break bones, we dislocate joints, we get hernias, we get colds and flus and COVID, we get cancer, we suffer. We get depression, debilitating anxiety, PTSD, bipolar and so many other mental health struggles. In the face of all that, “so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Alive, gloriously alive with none of those things that burden us here. Because we are in Christ, we must rise from the dead and we will rise from the dead. We will live in perfect glory in communion with our Saviour. Loved ones, God promises us these things in the gospel of Christ’s resurrection. Trust his Word and in it you’ll find the hope and encouragement you need to keep travelling through this earthly pilgrimage.
Verse 23 tells us that God has a timing for the resurrection. It says it happens “each in his own order.” Note how there is an order. That tells us God has it wisely and perfectly planned. As our covenant head, Christ goes first. God raised him from the dead as the firstfruits or foretaste of something bigger coming later. By bigger I mean that it involves more human beings. Christ’s resurrection only involved one human being coming back to life. The coming resurrection is going to involve millions. It’s going to be huge.
It’s going to involve all “those who belong to Christ.” Belonging to Christ is obviously a desirable thing, a good thing. So how does one “belong to Christ”? It happens through faith. To belong to Christ, we’re called to embrace him with our hearts. Visualize yourself reaching out and taking hold of Christ, holding on to him for dear life so you can be rescued from what you deserve. You can only belong to Christ and be included in the glorious resurrection by personally trusting in him.
Our glorious resurrection happens at his coming. When we die, if we’re believers, our souls go to be with the Lord in heaven. Our bodies remain here and they decompose in the grave. But when Christ returns, he will miraculously reverse all that decomposition. He will reconstitute our bodies, put them back together again. Our bodies will come back to life, restored and glorified to something even better than what they were. These bodies will never again be affected by the brokenness of sin and we will live with these bodies eternally. And our souls and bodies will be reunited. They’ll come back together and we’ll live in the new creation as complete human beings.
All that happens at Christ’s coming. There are a couple of points to make in connection with that. Both of these points have to do with false teachings. The Corinthians had false teachings in their context and today we do too. They’re just different false teachings.
The first has to do with the rapture. Some Christians believe that Christ is going to return and establish his 1000 year kingdom here on earth. But before that happens, there is something called the Rapture. Gentile believers will suddenly be taken up into heaven body and soul from the earth. In the United States, you sometimes see cars driving on the Interstate highways that’ll have a bumper sticker, “In case of rapture, this car will be driverless.” You can actually sign up for “After the Rapture Pet Care” so that someone will take care of your dog or cat after you’ve been raptured. They base this on what Scripture says in 1 Thessalonians 4. But 1 Thessalonians 4 is referring to the same thing as what we have here in 1 Corinthians 15. What they call the “rapture” happens at the same time as the resurrection of the dead – and this happens at the return of Christ. There’s no rapture that happens separately from the resurrection. Christ returns once, publicly, and then if we died before that, we’re raised. If we’re alive when Christ returns, then we’re glorified apart from the resurrection.
The other false teaching has to do with all these predictions about the timing of Christ’s return. There are numerous people who have said that Christ would return on this date or that date. Obviously all of them have been wrong. The fact of the matter is that no one knows when Christ will return and bring about the resurrection of the dead. Anyone who tells you they know is either self-deceived or lying. Loved ones, don’t ever trust anyone who tells you that they know the end is near or that they know the date of Christ’s return. Christ himself warned us in Matthew 24 to never do that.
One thing we do know for sure is that he will come. And the word for his “coming” here in verse 23 tells us something about what that coming will be like. It was a word often used outside of the Bible to describe the arrival of royalty. When he appears he’ll appear majestically, gloriously. After we’re raised from the dead, we’ll see him in his state of transcendent exaltation. We will be in awe and we’ll fall to our knees in worship. We’ll have so much joy. What a day, what a glorious day that’ll be! It’s a day that we’ll share with all who belong to Christ. All your loved ones who died as believers will be there. Abraham will be there, and so will Moses, David, and Peter and Paul, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and every other Christian from throughout history. We’ll all be there with our glorified and raised bodies to worship our glorious King Jesus.
Loved ones, today we joyfully remember the great day our Saviour was raised. It’s good to give some special attention to it today, because the news about the resurrection is so good, so encouraging. But let’s not forget that every Sunday is actually meant to be a day of remembering this wonderful event. The joy we have today should be spread over the other 51 Sundays of the year too. Each Lord’s Day we ought to remind ourselves that our Lord lives and because he lives, we shall too. AMEN.
PRAYER
Our heavenly Father,
We rejoice at the fact of Christ’s resurrection. We adore you for raising him on the third day. The empty tomb gladdens our hearts. We thank you that Christ’s resurrection is the firstfruits of ours. You’ve encouraged us today to know that because Christ has been raised from the dead, so shall we. We look forward to that glorious day when he returns. We pray for it to come quickly. In the meantime, with your Spirit please continue to fill our hearts with joy, put praises on our lips, and let service be offered with our lives in response to these great and encouraging gospel truths. Thank you Father, for giving us life in Jesus Christ, and life in such great abundance. You are a good God who loves us dearly and we love you too.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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