Four Important Things to Know about the Resurrection

Four Important Things to Know about the Resurrection

1 Cor. 15

Intro: I had the opportunity to vacation in St. Thomas with my family a couple times back in the 70’s, and I remember the airport on St Thomas had an extremely short runway with the ocean on one end of the runway and a mountain on the other end. We would joke a little nervously as we climbed into the plane and saw that it was pointed at the mountain, that this thing better get off the ground and get some height quickly or it’s going to be a very short trip. But we knew that the plane was designed for more than just taxiing us down 4600 feet of runway to an abrupt and unpleasant end. It was designed to take off and take us to destinations far beyond the length of the runway.

Our lives on this planet could be compared to that runway in St. Thomas: we live this relatively short span of life on earth - whether it be 70 years or 7 – between an abrupt beginning and an abrupt ending, and some people believe that’s all there is. When life ends, it ends, and there’s nothing afterward. 

The Bible tells us that this life isn’t all there is; that God designed us for more than the few years we live on this earth and that in fact this life is meant to be the runway for us to reach greater heights and a better destination.  This hope that life is more than a short runway between an abrupt beginning and an abrupt ending is embodied in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This morning we join with millions of believers around the world to celebrate the good news that the stone has been rolled away, the tomb is empty, and Jesus has risen from the dead!  1 Cor. 15 is a chapter that is entirely devoted to the resurrection and from this chapter I want us to consider four important things to know about the resurrection. So let’s pray and then read the first 8 verses.  

1. The Christian faith stands or falls on the resurrection (vv. 1-8; 12-19)  

Read vv. 1-8

Paul’s life was devoted to proclaiming the gospel (good news) of Jesus and that good news consisted of these inseparable truths: Jesus died on the cross for our sins, was buried in a tomb and on the third day was raised from the dead. These three historical events are crucial to the Christian faith, but for the rest of the chapter Paul will focus in on the resurrection. Apparently there were some in the Corinthian church who began to question whether there really was such a thing as the resurrection. They began to think the runway of our earthly life is all there is, at least as far as our body goes. There was a teaching in those days called Gnosticism and basically it taught that spiritual things are good and material things are bad, so the body – which is a material thing - is bad. So, they asked, why would God want to resurrect something that is bad? So they began to propose that Jesus died for our sins, not so we could be resurrected, but so that we could spend eternity in heaven as disembodied spirits. What they proposed was Christianity without a resurrection. 

Not an option, Paul says. First he reminds the Corinthians of how many people saw the risen Christ – this was no small group of people who wanted so badly to believe Jesus was alive that they experienced a mass hallucination. No, many different people saw Jesus in many different contexts, even at one point 500 people – many who were alive at the time Paul wrote this and could verify what they saw – saw Jesus appear to them. Mass hallucinations don’t happen to 500 people. Finally, Paul says, Jesus appeared to me as I was on my way to kill anyone who believed in him. Paul was hardly someone who wanted to believe, yet the risen Christ appeared to him and forever changed the trajectory of his life. 

Then, in verse 12, he argues that if you take away the resurrection, you have no Christianity. 

Read vv. 12-19

Paul’s objective here isn’t to prove the resurrection, but to argue logically that you can’t have Christianity without the resurrection. Christianity is unlike every other religion and philosophy in the world in that sense. Buddhists know that Buddha is dead and it doesn’t shake their belief system. Muslims know that Mohammed is dead. Communists know that Lenin is dead and in fact have had his body is on display in the Red Square since shortly after his death. But Christianity isn’t built on the teachings of a dead teacher; it’s built on the work of a living Savior. If there is no resurrection from the dead, then Paul says,

1. Christ hasn’t been raised and is still dead – which dismantles everything Jesus said he came to do. He said he would die for our sins and then rise on the third day. If he didn’t rise, then there is no reason to believe his death was different than any other death
2. Preaching the gospel (which was Paul’s supreme purpose in life) is absolutely useless and our faith is useless too
3. Those who preach the resurrection are lying about God by saying that He raised Christ when He didn’t
4. We are still in our sins and will perish eternally in our sins
5. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

If there isn’t a resurrection, then Christians are the biggest losers on the face of the planet and should be pitied more than anyone for believing in such a massive hoax. There is no Christianity without a resurrection. Find Jesus’ body and I’m done preaching – we all go home. If you aren’t sure about this whole resurrection thing, the most important thing you need to grapple with is this: did Jesus really rise from the dead? If he did, you’ve got some serious thinking to do, because no one else in history has ever done that. But what you can’t do is say, I don’t believe in the resurrection but I respect Christianity and I admire Jesus. That’s not a logical option if you understand what Christianity is and what Jesus claimed to be and claimed to do. By the way, if you’re wrestling with this important question, we want to give you a small booklet called The Case for the Resurrection by Lee Strobel. Unfortunately we don’t have it this morning but if you fill out a short form we have on the welcome table we would love to mail it to you this week or you can pick it up next Sunday here at church. 

Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus, and verse 20 declares the good news that it does indeed stand because in fact Jesus has been raised from the dead! Throughout history millions of Christians have found strong comfort and indestructible joy knowing that Jesus is risen and those who believe in him will one day be resurrected too. That’s the second important thing to know about the resurrection:

1. When the resurrected Jesus returns, those who belong to him will be resurrected too (vv. 20-28)

ABC has a new TV show called Resurrection. In the show, people who had died years previously start 

showing up alive and unchanged from when they died. I watched the first show and it opens with a boy who had died, showing up at his parent’s doorstep 32 years later. They are now in their 60’s; he is still 10 years old. The concept of resurrection that is pictured in this show is nothing like the biblical concept of resurrection, in fact, it’s kind of creepy. But as these now-old parents grapple with the return of their son, and it brings up all the pain of 30 plus years lived without him, it does highlight the very real and searing pain, loss and grief that the death of a loved one causes. 

Because death is inevitable and everyone dies, we sometimes talk about death being natural, but the Bible says it not natural. Death wasn’t a part of God’s original creation; it was a product of Adam’s disobedience to God. God created us to live forever. The book of Ecclesiastes says that God has set eternity in the hearts of men – we are wired with a deep desire to live forever and to have our loved ones live forever. That’s why the ripping and tearing of loved ones away from us leave a deep hole in us, an emptiness that doesn’t feel right – even though there’s nothing we can do about it. 

The Bible tells us that Jesus is going to come back to this earth and when he does, those who died believing in him will be raised up from the dead in resurrection bodies too. The grave isn’t the end of the story – the runway isn’t all there is. We were created to take off after this life and live forever in resurrected bodies. And that’s when it gets really good. Look with me at verse 24: Then comes the end…only it’s really not the end at all, it’s the beginning. It’s the end of this fallen, broken world that has rejected the rule of God and because of that lives under the rule of Satan, sin, sickness, and death. The resurrected Jesus comes back as Lord of lords and King of kings and restores this world back to the good rule of God and God’s original design before it was marred by Adam’s disobedience to God. All we’ve ever known is a world that is broken and corrupted. The beauty of God’s original creation is still very evident but there is a shadow of fallenness that falls over everything. Then comes the end…a glorious end of all suffering and sorrow and oppression and murder and all the effects of living out from under God’s rule, and the beginning of an eternity of God’s perfect and loving rule, the kingdom of God. 

It’s interesting to me that the writers at ABC have conceptualized a resurrection that doesn’t fill people with unmitigated joy but introduces a whole backwash of sadness, confusion, and creepy, unanswered questions. The real resurrection will be nothing like that – it will be pure joy and life and an explosion of all that is good and glorious and life because we will be raised to a world where everything wrong is set right and we will live in Jesus’ perfect kingdom and do the work of his kingdom forever. 

1. Our resurrection bodies will be us – only better (vv. 35-37; 42-57)

One of the questions those who were doubting the resurrection raised was, how does this work? What kind of body does a resurrected person come back in? Are they bodies like what we have now? Their reason for asking the question was probably to ridicule the idea, but it’s actually a really good question. 

There is a principle in the agricultural world where for the fullest life to bloom, there has to be a death of the more basic form of life. A seed needs to be buried and then, when the conditions are right the seed dies in the sense that the seed itself doesn’t become a plant but gives itself for sake of the embryo within, and the seed shell is broken open and is discarded as the embryo begins to push downward and upward in new life.

At the resurrection, the shell of these bodies is discarded for a better us. We’re still us, we’ll recognize each other, we’ll have our personalities, we’ll have our memories, we’ll have our relationships, but we’ll rise in a vastly improved body. These bodies are perishable – they are weak, fragile, we get sick, we die. Our resurrection bodies won’t be weak or able to die. Think about that – we won’t be able to die. It won’t be possible to kill us or even hurt us. First thing I’m gonna do is climb Mt. Everest – cause the only thing that stops me is death and danger and cold. Take away all those things and I’m there!

Our resurrected bodies will be like Jesus when he rose from the grave. Recognizable, able to eat, able to be touched. Solid and real, not some ghostly apparition. And yet, he didn’t need to eat, he walked through walls into closed rooms, he was a spiritual body. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t real or solid or material – I think it means that the principle of life and building blocks of his resurrection body was different than the building block of ours which the Bible says was dust. Paul contrasts dishonor with glory, perishable with imperishable, natural with spiritual, dust with heaven, mortality with immortality. 

There’s no way for us to completely imagine what our resurrection bodies will be like because everything we’ve ever known and experienced in this world is this natural and fallen state, but it will be as different as taxiing down a runway is different from soaring in the clouds. The old rules don’t apply – we won’t have the limitations that we have now. My dad used to believe (before he went to be with the Lord) that we will be able to explore the furthest reaches of the universe. Why not? We will live on this earth after Jesus does a total makeover of it, but I am pretty sure we will be able to travel to God’s heaven any time we want to.

We don’t know everything about what that will be like, but we can believe. And find strength and comfort in knowing that after the runway the resurrected life will take off to heights and destinations that we could never, ever dream of. We will be us, but better.

1. The hope of being resurrected then fills our lives with lasting purpose now (vs. 58)

The last verse of this chapter about the resurrection tells us what we should do with the knowledge that Jesus is risen and one day all who belong to him will rise again too. Because we know that, we should be rock solid in the work of the Lord because we know it’s not in vain – it’s not for nothing.

If life were a runway and nothing more, then it’s hard to find much meaning in such a short journey, especially when it comes to a permanent end. The best we can do is try to make the short journey as good as possible. Maybe sit in first class and get a more comfortable seat. Maybe get served an extra bag of peanuts or a quick airplane meal, but ultimately we can’t escape the feeling that it’s pretty meaningless. And that’s exactly what a lot of people wrestle with – where can we find meaning in a runway life that begins and ends so abruptly? If we come from nothing and go to nothing then the reality is, the in between is nothing too, even if we don’t want to admit it.

I would argue that deep inside we know differently. The resurrection fills our lives with a lasting purpose because what we do for the Lord lasts forever. Rather than filling our minds with thoughts of eternity sitting on a cloud playing a harp (not sure where that image of heaven came from but it’s not in the Bible), we should be all the more active helping people who are hurting or suffering or sad or hungry or empty or trapped in sin, because we know they are eternal souls and what we do has eternal meaning. Most importantly, we have the joy of sharing the good news of Jesus with a world that is in desperate 

need of that good news. 

Every Christian here can rejoice in the knowledge that this life isn’t all there is, there’s life after the runway. Resurrection life. And that hope fills our lives with meaning and purpose and should inspire us to work hard and be faithful cause our labor in the Lord is not in meaningless. 

If you’re not a Christian, maybe you have struggled with questions about what it’s all for and maybe at times it seems meaningless and empty. I think the reason you might struggle with that is because God didn’t design you for a short trip down a runway, He designed you to soar in eternity. 

I hope you will consider the claims of Jesus for yourself. The Bible tells us that Jesus came to give his life for sinners so that anyone who believes in him and follows him as a disciple will be forgiven of their sins and given the gift of eternal life. Jesus said that he stands at the door of our lives and knocks and we can open that door and ask him in, but he won’t force himself into our lives. Will you consider asking him to be your Lord and Savior today?

Jesus promises that he will never leave or forsake those who believe in him. He will be with you as you travel down the runway of this life, and He will be with you when you come to the end of the runway. And He will raise you up on that last day when He returns. As we pray, if you feel like God is working in your heart, just talk to God and ask Him to come into your life.