1 Corinthians 15 - Death & Resurrection Part 2
Tom Shrader examines Paul's autobiographical comments in 1 Corinthians 15, where the apostle calls himself the 'least of the apostles' and 'chief among sinners.' He emphasizes that true conversion requires recognizing one's sinfulness before God, not comparing oneself to others. Shrader then explores Paul's argument that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, Christian faith is worthless and believers remain in their sins.
“Unless you've been converted like the Apostle Paul, you have not been converted at all.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Death & Resurrection
Recorded: April 02, 2002
Duration: 43 min
Themes: humility, sin, conversion, resurrection, death, faith, grace, repentance, struggling with unworthiness, new believer, doubting faith, facing mortality, pastor, questioning salvation, spiritual mentor, grieving loss
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Timothy 1:15, Isaiah 6, Revelation 1:17, Matthew 5-7
Theological Themes: apostolic authority, justification, salvation by grace, bodily resurrection, total depravity, christian conversion, regeneration, atonement
Full Transcript
We're taking a little parenthesis in our study in the Sermon on the Mount and we're looking at 1 Corinthians 15. I am still teaching through that as a matter of fact at church. If you go on to the church website, you'll find there are five, six, seven lessons there. We're just highlighting some of it in these two weeks. The church website is EVBC.org—that's E as in Edward, V as in Victor, B as in Boise, C as in Charlie. Although that First Corinthians material is there, the reason we chose this is obviously it ties into this time of the year. First Corinthians 15 is the resurrection chapter.
Paul is really dealing with what he says in verse 12: "If Christ is preached that He's been raised from the dead, how do some among you say there's no resurrection of the dead?" The Church of Corinth was confused on this. Here was their confusion: What happens to us when we die? A very big question. When we die, what happens? That is really man's battle.
Death seems to bring us face-to-face with that. If you've ever—when I was a senior in high school, I had a friend who one Saturday was electrocuted. Boom. I remember sitting at 29th Street and Brady in a parking lot of a Schlegel's drugstore wondering, "What's life all about? What is this? It's not fair." I didn't know how to respond. I was with a buddy and we just sat in his car and looked at each other. I didn't know what to say. If you've ever been around a school even now where a kid is killed in a car accident or something, it has a profound effect. What happens when you die?
The World's Answers to Death
The world has answers. Let me run down some of them. One of them is extinction: you just die and that's it. This is all there is. Boom. It's over.
Another one is kind of, to use a golf illustration, you get a mulligan—you just do it over again. Reincarnation is what that's called. Thirty-three percent of the American public say they believe in reincarnation. That's a staggering number. Thirty-three percent say they believe in reincarnation. Reincarnation is the idea that you live this life over again. Larry Wright used to describe it this way: if at first you don't succeed, die, die again. That was how we looked at it.
So the principle is this: you live your life, and at the end there's a judge. If you lived the better life, a good life, you come back as a better life form. If you lived a bad life, you come back as a lower life form—a Democrat or something. I don't know. Just kidding. Never, ever, ever, and I mean that—we can't make politics a dividing issue.
Interesting enough, staying on this reincarnation, I saw a poll the other day. Listen to this—you have to listen closely or you'll miss the irony of this: Seventy-nine percent of the American public think they're going to heaven. Seventy-nine percent of the American public think they're going to heaven. Seventy-three percent believe there's life after death. I don't know, and their vote counts as much as yours. That's what kills me.
There's another view, and Paul really is dealing with that in this chapter. It's the Greek philosophical view that permeates a lot of Greek thought, and it's this: that the body is bad and everything material is bad, that the spirit is good. The worst thing a Greek could imagine would be to get to the end of your life, die, have your soul released from this body, and then be put back into it. They can't imagine anything worse than that.
So what happens to us when we die? What happens to our body, really, is the question that he's asking. That's what he's dealing with.
Paul's Answer: The Gospel Foundation
We saw last time that before Paul begins to answer that question, he talks about the gospel. Here's what he's going to say—I'll give you the punchline—that we as Christians, those of us who've placed our faith and trust in Christ, we're going to rise from the dead. Our body's going to be changed. We'll be moved into a glorified body and we'll live eternally in that. It appears that there'll be no marriage. Really, even the family probably in heaven won't necessarily exist. There'll be no sex. Some of you are having heaven right here on earth. There'll be no sex. There will be a glorified body, and he's going to deal with that.
Before he can talk about that, he has to talk about the gospel. Here's the gospel: that Jesus died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again. As Paul talks about Christ in this chapter, not one time does he talk about Jesus' life. The life of Jesus Christ isn't going to save you. In fact, you can get distracted—cut me slack here now—on the teachings of Christ and following the teachings of Christ to the exclusion of dealing with the sin issue in your life. Many great moral leaders have been followers of Christ's teaching. But Jesus died for our sin. You can't separate that. Why did He die? He died for our sin. He was buried and He rose again.
Then here's what he said, if you're following along, verse 5: "And then Jesus appeared to Peter, and then to the twelve, and then to five hundred at one time, many of those," Paul says, "are still alive." Understand he's writing this about twenty to twenty-three years after the resurrection. So he's saying this: listen, if you doubt what I'm saying, you want to know that Christ rose from the dead, there are eyewitnesses.
Paul's Personal Testimony
Then he writes this, and I want to spend—I want to try to budget my time wisely today—I want to spend about fifteen or twenty minutes on this and then the last fifteen or twenty minutes on the next section. I want to look at Paul's life, Paul's view of himself, and how it relates to you.
He says, "And last of all, as it were to one untimely born, He appeared to me." "Last of all" has the idea that that was the end of those appearances in the sequence. But Paul's also saying Christ's appearance to him is just as valid as His appearance to Peter and to the five hundred and to the others.
Paul gets autobiographical here. Here's what he says: "For I am the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church." Paul says, "I'm the least of the apostles." Paul, in my mind, has
Paul's Self-Assessment
Paul had a very accurate view of himself. Here's what he says in 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 15. Listen closely. This is Paul speaking autobiographically: "It's a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am the foremost of all." Paul says listen, when you want to line up the sinners, you want to see the chief among sinners, it's me.
Now I'll probably take this to an extreme, but I hope I make my point here. If a guy came into our church today and said "I'm the chief among sinners," you'd all crowd around him and say, "Listen, don't you feel badly about yourself like that? You got low self-esteem. You shouldn't have that view at all. Are you?" Partly that's what's wrong with the church today—we're trying to fix everybody way too fast. If somebody's suffering, the first thing we try to do is alleviate the pain. Suffering has a purpose and suffering has a reason.
In fact, if Paul didn't have this view about himself, he would never have become a Christian at all. I want to really make this point. I have basically—I speak in a church setting, I speak here, and then I travel and speak. I do really well in the first two settings. When I travel, it's a little harder. I've discovered that I'm kind of an acquired taste. You gotta know me and you gotta appreciate me. So if you're here for the first time and you're not quite figured it out yet, I'm really a good guy. It just takes a little while for you to draw that conclusion.
The Necessity of Paul-like Conversion
Well, when I'm out, one of the things and points that I'll make regularly is this: unless you've been converted like the Apostle Paul, you have not been converted. Like the Apostle Paul, you have not been converted at all. Boy, you can see people going... Here's what we're talking about—not circumstances. We got Christians all through this room, but none of them were converted on the road to Damascus.
What I'm talking about is this same recognition that the Apostle had. If you don't have this same recognition that the Apostle had—that you are a sinful person—and don't you gloss over that, don't you go "Oh, I'm a sinful person, but we're all sinners." Well, we're not talking about everybody else. We're talking about you. You're a sinful person. "Nobody's perfect"—that means everybody's flawed, and that flaw is sin.
Sin is when I digress from the holy, righteous, perfect will of God. You and I live at a time that says "all boys will be boys, I know it's tough out there, everybody makes mistakes." That's not it. When I sin, I've sinned against the Holy God. Paul says, "I'm chief among sinners." He looks at his own life. You need to do that.
Isaiah's Vision of God's Holiness
That's what happened to Isaiah the prophet in Isaiah chapter 6. Do you remember the story? In the year that King Uzziah died—it was 739 BC—Isaiah had a view, and it was a vision of God. He sees Him seated on the throne, high and lifted up, and His train of the robe fills the temple.
I'm into trains right now—trains of robes. My daughter called not long ago, Haley, and said, "Dad, what are you doing Tuesday night?" I said, "What time?" She said, "Five." I said, "Honey, I got a meeting that starts at 2 that's going to go to 6. What do you need?" And she said, "Well, at 5 I'm being fitted for my wedding dress. Will you come? Will you be there?" I said, "You bet, I'll just move this other stuff around."
I walked out and I'm there, and she's in this fitting room and I'm kind of out there, and I'm ready for it, I think. She comes out and she looks... she looks so beautiful. It's a corset type—I'll tell you all about it because none of you are invited to the wedding, none of you are going to see it. It's this corset wedding dress and then she looks about this big around and so fragile. She just looks like a porcelain doll.
She comes out, and Sarah's behind her, and she's moving this train. They put her up like this to get fitted for the dress. All of her life we were at a wedding—oh, the kids weren't very old—and the bride tripped. At that point, Haley made a determination she would be married barefooted. So she's there barefooted as they're fitting this thing. I said, "Honey, are you sure you don't want some ballet slippers or something?" She said, "All I want is you next to me going down the aisle." Okay, I can do that. I'm sucking gas here, babe. I don't know if this is going to work. Well, I'm into trains, but that train of that beautiful wedding dress doesn't compare to the vision Isaiah had.
The Holiness of God Revealed
He sees Him high and lifted up. He sees something called seraphim. It's the only time we hear of them in Scripture. They had six wings: two to cover their face and two to cover their feet and two to fly. The idea there is that they were available to service. Their whole life was servicing God.
That's the vision he has. It's in the year that King Uzziah died. Uzziah had reigned for 52 years. One author suggests that outside of David, he was probably the best king that Israel ever had. He had got a little carried away with how good he was and became proud and assumed the role of priest that was set aside for a special group of men. He wasn't one of them, so God struck him with leprosy. But he reigned for 52 years, and now he's dead.
There's a great contrast here. The king—your king Uzziah dies. I see the Lord, mighty, exalted, lifted up. Look at the contrast. Here's this earthly king with leprosy who's faded from the scene. He's the eternal God forever.
He has this view, and all of a sudden he hears this voice. It's the voice of these seraphim calling to one another saying, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is filled with His glory." And the foundations of the threshold shake and tremble at this moment, and the temple fills with smoke. John MacArthur writes this: "The shaking and the smoke symbolized God's holiness as it relates to His wrath and His judgment."
I get all that to get Isaiah 6:5. It says this: "Then..."
Very important word that means we're in sequence here. After Isaiah had seen the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, the mightiness of God, the purity of God, the judgment of God, the wrath of God, then Isaiah said, "Woe to me, for I am ruined." The King James says, "Woe to me, for I'm undone."
One author writes this: "So far as we know, Isaiah was a young man of excellent character. No doubt he had the confidence and respect of all who knew him. The probabilities are his life was above reproach. But when he got a glimpse of the infinite holiness of God, he cried out, 'Woe to me, for I'm undone.'" My point is, unless you've come to that point, you haven't been converted at all.
The Problem with Today's Churches
Somebody gave me a book the other day and they said, "Would you read it?" I told them what I tell everybody: "I doubt it. Do you need it back? Because if the answer is yes, I'll give it to you right now. If it's no, I'll keep it. But if it's a book that you need back, just don't give it to me." So that cuts down on books. This guy said no, you can keep it.
The whole premise of the book is real basic. It's that the churches today are ineffective and all screwed up, and then he's trying to understand why. What's wrong with the church? Here you go. Let me help you out here. This is real easy. You don't need 500 pages on this. You don't even need one paragraph, one sentence: The church is filled with unconverted people.
You weren't sitting there Sunday looking around going, "Man, look at all these Christians," were you? I wasn't. I had to look at them seven times. I never stopped and said, "Gee, look at all the Christians." Why is the church ineffective? Because you're not converted.
The Problem with Modern Evangelism
You live in a system that's very interesting because you'll get invited to a luncheon, a nice luncheon at the country club or something out at Mountain Shadows or Tapatio. Some guy will get up and speak, and he's successful in business, and he'll talk about how he was struggling and now he's successful and how he found peace. "I found peace."
That's not it, my friend. Peace isn't your problem. Your problem is your sin has separated you from God. Your problem is you need a Savior, not peace. Now we have peace, sure. Do you see that distinction?
So you have millions of Americans running around thinking they're Christians when they aren't at all. They came to some God that they said would give them peace, and now there's no peace, and now they're angry at God and frustrated with this and frustrated over there and now trying to find a church.
I got a thing the other day from somebody, and I shouldn't laugh at this, but it's funny. They're starting a church, and I admire that work, but they're saying, "Come and join us on Easter Sunday." Now here's why: not because Jesus is risen, but because they have Starbucks and Krispy Kreme. So I told all our people, "Go over there and eat after this because we don't have any of that stuff."
If I come for Starbucks and Krispy Kreme, all I got is a bunch of people with sugar highs and caffeine highs. I need somebody that's got a Jesus high because they've truly been converted. Do you see that? "Woe to me, for I'm undone."
The Danger of Self-Righteousness
Inevitably we have people in this room who think, for example, that they're okay. "I'm basically a good person," and the way that they arrive at that conclusion is they look at everybody else and they say, "I'm better than they are."
I remember one time in my life I was at a particularly low time. It was during my time when I was doing a lot of drinking, and I'm one night with a buddy at a bar, and I'm lamenting what a derelict I am. He's trying to cheer me up. He says, "Trades, I think you're too hard on yourself." I said, "Really?" He said, "You got value, my friend." I said, "You're kidding." He said, "You got value." I said, "What is it?" He said, "You can always be used as a bad example."
That was the nicest thing he could think to say about me, but in reality it was true. I thought, "Well, I must have some purpose in life. At least people can learn from my mistakes."
I've been in the prisons. Maybe you have too. It's a funny system in there because here you got a guy who has done armed robbery, pistol-whipped people, he's in there for 20 years, and he's pointing across the room and saying, "That guy over there is really bad. That guy over there is really bad. Well, that's a pedophile. That's the worst. That guy's the worst." It's funny. "I'm okay."
I was at Florence one time and met 25 guys. Not one of them committed the crime they were accused of. Very interesting phenomenon to me—incarcerating a lot of innocent people. That's how they do it.
How We Compare Ourselves
It happens in here. I have had this happen on so many occasions. Somebody will walk in and they'll go, "Look at that guy. That's Bob. Does Bob come here often?" "Yeah, he's here all the time." He goes, "I'm telling you, that guy is a wild man." He'll walk away, and Bob will come up and he'll point at the guy that was pointing at him and say, "Does he come here all the time?" I'll say, "Yeah." He goes, "Oh, you got to be kidding me. There's no way."
See, as long as we can do that, we're all right. Here's what God does: He strips away all that comparison, and He says, "You compare your life to me. You don't look around and go, 'I'm okay. Look at them.' You look at me."
Isaiah, who is a pretty good guy—the scholars are split by the way on this. Some believe Isaiah was already a prophet at this point in time. Others believe this is the inaugural event of his career as a prophet. In either case, he was a man of high esteem, a man that you would look at and say, "That guy's got it all together." There wasn't some deep dark sin that came out of the closet. What there was was just sin, because...
All sin is deep and dark and it's a rebellion against God. He says, "Woe to me for I'm undone! I'm a man of unclean lips."
Let me tell you how you know if you're on the right track in self-examination. Number one: when you look at yourself, you see your weaknesses and your sins. Here's what I do, and I'm honest about it. When I look at you, I see your weaknesses and sins. When I look at me, I tend to see my strengths. When I'm humble before the Lord, that flips. I see your strengths and my sins and my weaknesses.
Here's the second thing: all of a sudden, if I really have an anchored view of myself, I'm compelled to spend time in prayer. It's the most natural thing in the world. If I'm a physical beggar, if I need to beg down on the street corner to get my food for the day, then I'm out there begging. If I'm a spiritual beggar, then the most natural thing in the world should be for me to come to my Father broken every day.
Here's the third thing: my prayer life is filled with praise and thanksgiving. I'm praising Him for who He is. Right after Paul says, "I'm the least of these, I don't deserve to be an apostle," he says this: "But by the grace of God I am what I am." Do you understand that's your prayer too? If you're a Christian today, it's by God's grace.
The Fruit of True Humility
Here's another thing: if I'm humble before Him, I take my eyes off of myself and I place them on Him. There's the last thing: no matter how bad my circumstances are, I quit complaining because I know they could be worse.
I'm Tom, and yesterday I watched Oprah. Let's get it out of the way - I do it for you. You know that actually it was totally accidental. I turned on the TV, I sat down, and I literally fell asleep. When I woke up, Michael J. Fox was on talking about Parkinson's disease. There's a guy in there by the name of Morton Kondracke. Do you know that name? Some of you - he's a columnist, TV commentator, used to be on the McLaughlin Group. I never really liked the guy a whole lot. I don't know him, but I've made it a policy to never let that stand in the way of making these judgments.
Kondracke was on there because his wife has Parkinson's disease. They did a great story - in fact, and this is just me, they should have blown off Michael J. Fox because Kondracke was the story, I thought. They showed him pictures of him meeting his wife in 1967. They were describing her as this vivacious - you could just see it in the pictures. There was no sound, she's smiling, she's a little pistol, you could see that little twinkle. They get married and they start to have these issues in life. He's an alcoholic, which I never knew about him.
All of a sudden one day, she's got a little twitch in her finger, and that becomes Parkinson's. She's in right now full-blown Parkinson's. You should see her - she looks so frail. Her skin is just all really tight and she's hollowed out, and her hair is just snow white. Then they show him just having to help her move. Kondracke's talking and he said, "There's nobody I'd rather spend a moment with than her," and he gives her a little kiss. I'm telling you, it was an extraordinary moment. He talks about his love, he talks about his faith - I have no idea what his faith is in - but he talks about how this has deepened his faith and he sees that in his life. He understands that even then, things could be a lot worse. He said, "I'm so grateful she can't speak any longer" - and that used to be her deal - and he said, "No matter how bad it is, this is great."
God's Call and Our Response
Well, all of a sudden God gives provision to Isaiah. He gives him forgiveness, and then Isaiah 6:8, "The Lord says, 'Who should I send?' and Isaiah says, 'Here I am, send me.'"
If you're frustrated in your life, in your Christian life, is it possible that you're saying, "Here I am, send me," but you've never gone through the steps of conversion? I want to go back to what I said before. Church is filled - I don't know North Phoenix Baptist Church from a post, I don't know anything that goes on here, I've got no view other than we send people here and they have been so gracious to us beyond anything we could imagine - but I'll guarantee you they have people working in their children's nursery that aren't Christians, and they're junior high, in their high school. I'll guarantee you that there's people that are here that are frustrated because there are at every church. The reason is they're trying to do a bunch of God stuff, but their heart's never been converted. Has your heart been converted?
See, that's what happens - and I understand there's a little bit of a side trip - but that's what happens here in Paul's life. "I am the least of all, worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church, but I am..."
The Core of the Gospel Message
Look at verse 11: "Whether then it was I or they, so we preached and so you believed." The New Living Translation is helpful here. It says this: "So it makes no difference whether I preach or they preach. The important thing is that you believed what we preached."
Now here's the issue. We got about 17 minutes left, and we'll spend the rest of the time on this. Verse 12: "If Christ is preached that He's been raised from the dead, how do some among you say there's no resurrection of the dead?"
Paul does a marvelous job - as he's writing in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so you would expect it to be pretty good. Paul does a marvelous teaching technique here. He starts to ask questions. He knows the Gospel's true, he knows that Christ has been raised from the dead, but he does this game for a minute: "What if?"
Have you been in the bookstore to see those books? There's two or three or four volumes of them now that say "What if?" What if Pearl Harbor never happened? What if John Wilkes Booth never shot Lincoln? Paul does a little version of this: "What if Jesus Christ never was raised from the dead?"
Paul's Hypothetical Challenge
So he plays the game. Begins in verse 13: "If there's no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not been raised from the dead." Remember the context now. Their question is this: "What happens? We don't rise from the dead, do we?" And Paul says...
Well, if we don't rise from the dead and if there's no resurrection of the dead, then Christ hasn't been raised. John has a vision of Christ that he records in Revelation 1:17, and he says this: "When I saw Jesus, I fell at His feet as a dead man, and He laid His right hand on me and said, 'Don't be afraid. I'm the first and the last. I'm the living one. I was dead, but now I am alive.'" So we know He's alive. Paul is not for a second suggesting that Jesus didn't rise from the dead.
When he said, "What if He didn't rise from the dead?" Verse 14: "If Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, then our preaching is in vain." The word here means useless, fruitless, of no purpose. The way I describe it: we have out in back of our house an ornamental tangerine tree. I don't get it, and it has literally—I'm not exaggerating—thousands of tangerines. You will watch the branches bend with this fruit. It's ornamental by definition. It's useless other than to look at periodically. The gardener won't keep up her duties—that'd be Susan—and what happens is those tangerines get ripe and they sit down in the rocks at the bottom. The leaves will come off, and you'll go out with your rake. Have you ever had this? You can smell that pungent smell of those overripe tangerines. You reach down in the leaves and pick it up, and it starts to just drip down your arm. Ever had that happen? Think of that as the word "vain"—useless.
The Consequences of No Resurrection
He said if Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, then our preaching is in vain. The Gospel's a bad joke. I'm not helping you; I'm hurting you. And your faith is in vain. In other words, you're believing in a dead Savior. What's He going to do you any good? If last Sunday's celebration wasn't a factual, real event, then our whole faith is a waste of time.
If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, then Christianity is a bad, bad joke. That's why it's so harmful when you're in a church or you've got a pastor—I was listening to one of those guys on the radio the other day, and they were saying, "Listen, Jesus Christ never rose from the dead." If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, then this whole thing is a waste of time. Christian living is a waste of time. Your faith is a waste of time. Your service in the church is a waste of time. You making decisions in your life based on what God has to say is a waste of time. That's the point that he makes.
If Christ isn't raised from the dead, our preaching is in vain, your faith is in vain. Verse 15: "Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses of God." In other words, we're lying to you. I'm lying. Peter's lying. James is lying. The 500 are lying.
It's even deeper than that. Jesus Christ is lying, because He said He would rise from the dead. If He didn't rise from the dead, He's a liar. This whole thing is a lie.
Verse 16: "If Christ isn't raised from the dead, not even Christ has been raised from the dead." He reiterates the point. He said if Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, your faith is worthless. Verse 17: "And you're still in your sins."
The Missing Piece in Our Lives
Here was the point that I was trying to make Easter Sunday: there's something in your life, and there's something missing, and you think the answer is a material thing, a person, a place, an object. That's why you're empty. That's why you're frustrated.
I watched the other day, and these Diamondbacks got their big old honking World Series ring. That's a cool deal. That'd be really neat. I'd love to have one. But then they lose last night—I don't know, I didn't stay awake long enough—they lost. I mean, I lost last night. They must be losers. Isn't that what happens when you lose?
Then all of a sudden, you don't necessarily win the pennant this year. Are you a loser? Or worse yet, you do win it this year because then you got a three-peat, and then four-peat, and then five-peat, and then six-peat, and then seven-peat. Somewhere you're going to Peter out on this deal, and you're out of Petes. When you do, you're a loser. That's what happens.
I'm talking to a kid the other day. I said, "How old are you?" "Ten." I said, "How old would you like to be? If you could be any age?" "Thirteen." I remember when I was 13. That's what made me laugh. I used to sit in the car in the garage with the garage door down and no keys, pretending I was driving. I couldn't wait to drive. The day I turned 16, I was out there. I got my driver's license. I came home that night. I said, "I got a driver's license. Give me those keys, baby!" And boom, off I go.
I never went to the library my whole life till I got a driver's license. Boom, then I'm in the library every night. Never always made it exactly to the library, but boom, I was down there every night. You know what happens now when it's time to go somewhere? I take the keys, throw them in there, and say, "Okay, whoever catches them drives," because I don't ever want to drive again in my life.
The Endless Cycle of Wanting More
When I'm 16, I want to get out of high school. When I'm out of high school, I want to get into college. I don't want to get into college; I want to get into that college. I want to get into that program. I want to get out. I want to get that job. I want to be a manager in that place. I want to succeed there. If I can get her to go out with me, I'll be happy. If I can get her to go steady with me, I'll be happy. If I can get her to marry me, I'll be happy. If I can get her to divorce me, I'll be even happier!
There's just no end to this thing, and it just goes on and on. Have you had that in your life, maybe at a different place? If I can just get a different house. If I can just get new clothes. If I can get that car.
Here's what you're trying to do: you're acknowledging there's something missing. Everybody realizes there's something missing, but you've misdiagnosed the cure. What you have is not a material need. What you have is a spiritual need, and you cannot satisfy spiritual needs with material things. You can for a moment, but only a moment.
This will sound like an odd statement. I like to try...
I love to watch television during Holy Week because I know I'm going to get great illustrations. I had to be patient because CNN didn't run the story until Saturday, but they had these guys in the Philippines who were walking three miles on crushed glass barefoot as they were doing it. They were whipping themselves, and at the end their feet were just bloody, just shredded by the glass. Their backs were just a mass of blood. The CNN commentator said, "They're doing this for the forgiveness of their sins."
Everybody senses something's missing. Sally Field says, "Since I was a little girl, there's been something in my life—I'll call it a yearning." Everybody senses it.
The Universal Problem of Guilt
What's missing is: where do I go with this guilt? How do I find meaning and purpose? See, if Jesus Christ isn't raised from the dead, Paul says you're still in your sins—all those sins from the past, still got to pay for them; all those sins today; all those sins in the future. There's no hope.
See, that's hopeless right there. You know what? That's what hell is. Hell is me stuck there with no hope, paying every moment of eternity for my sin. If Christ didn't rise from the dead, that's where I am.
Good verse 18. This is interesting: "And those who have fallen asleep"—in other words, those who've died—"they've perished." They have no hope. There's kind of—and I didn't read this anywhere else, so it's just me—even if it's hopeless now, at least I'm still alive. Maybe they'll find a cure for sin in my lifetime.
You have guys that freeze their bodies. I think there are 465 of them right now who have their bodies frozen. Basically, they have terminal disease, the body's frozen, hoping they find a cure. If I'm alive, at least maybe there's some hope that somehow something would happen. But what about those who have died? Those who have died are dead with no hope.
The Ultimate Hopelessness Without Christ's Resurrection
So He says this in verse 19: "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we of all men are to be most pitied." In other words, if Christ is still dead, not only can He not help us with regard to payment of sin, not only can He not help us with regard to eternity, He can't help us in this life now.
I guarantee you when I sit with this family in about 50 minutes, they're going to say, "I couldn't get through this without Jesus." This man's mother is 83; she's still alive. This is the second son she's had die of cancer. The other day she's just been doing so great, and just the other day when we were picking songs for the service today, she just started to cry as she talked about her sons and her daughter.
And yet there's a peace there. What's the peace? Is she conning herself into something? No, she understands that if I know Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, my eternal destiny is secure, and ultimately all of the pain is gone and all of the suffering is gone and all of the tears are gone.
The Only Solution
Not based on one thing that I can do. If I could do anything today, it's to speak to those of you who are non-Christians and try to convince you—and I guess better stated, have the Holy Spirit convince you—that your sin must be paid for and there's nothing you can do to pay for it. You can't be good enough. Haven't you tried? Aren't you pooped yourself out trying to be good enough?
There's no church that you can join. There's no function you can perform. There's one cure, and that's Jesus Christ in Him alone.
Christ Has Been Raised from the Dead
Now after this little excursion of just a few verses where Paul says if Christ hasn't been raised from the dead our preaching is a waste, your faith is a waste, we're liars, you're still guilty, those who've died are still there, and our future is hopeless—after that, Paul can't hang on very long. He says this: "But now Christ has been raised from the dead"—Christ has been raised from the dead—"the firstfruits of those who are asleep."
That term "firstfruits" doesn't mean much to us, but you understood it under ceremonial and sacrificial law. You understood that you brought at the beginning of a harvest firstfruits to the priest. It was a symbol of those things that were to come. It was a promise of those things that were to be harvested. Christ rises first—a promise of those who are in Him who one day rise.
The Personal Question
Do you know Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior? Have you come to Him in repentance and faith? Have you confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead?
We meet so many people from so many diverse religious backgrounds—from very formal backgrounds: Episcopalian, Catholic, very ritualistic, formal backgrounds that say go through this and do through this; Lutheran; we see some that are kind of more utilitarian. We see all sorts of different backgrounds. We see some that—we're seeing a growing number of students who have no background at all.
I don't know what your background is. I don't know what you've been taught. I don't know what you believe, but I do know what the Bible teaches, and the Bible teaches that unless you know Jesus Christ in a personal way, number one, you spend eternity separated from Him in a place called hell. Number two, this life right now has no meaning and no purpose. It's just to go from one struggle to the next to the next to the next—momentary highs, momentary relief, and then back to the struggle, no satisfaction.
Two Perspectives on Life
I love this thought: if I'm not a Christian, this is as close to heaven as I'm ever going to get. If I'm a Christian, this is as close to hell as I'll ever get.
We are currently studying the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. Next week we return to that study. What Jesus is doing there is really just expanding what Paul's talked about. He's talking to us about what the Christian life begins to look like. Here's the point that we've made so far, and it becomes really the point all through that Sermon on the Mount: what's at issue is not our action as much as our heart. God looks at the
inside. That's why we fool each other. That's why we're so good at it. But God looks at the heart. Where's your heart? Compliant, but rebellious?
We see that a lot with students. Let me tell you, if you're a parent of teenagers and even younger kids, don't confuse compliance with conversion. Just because a kid says, "yes sir, yes ma'am, you bet sir," don't you for a second think they're converted. You got a little spiritual Eddie Haskell going there is what you got going. Where's their heart? Now that ultimately is going to be visible in what they do.
We'll pick up there next week. We'll have that special tape just talking about the resurrection and how it applies to you. That'll be ready next week.
Prayer
Father, help us see this truth and let it affect our lives. God, thank You that we can have a deep personal conviction of our sin. And that doesn't move us to despair. That moves us to You. God, we need You. Our sin is so horrific, so awful, beyond really anything we can begin to comprehend. It separates us from You. It separates us from life as it was meant to be. It makes relationships hard.
God, we pray for Your Spirit to touch the people in this room. To those who are Christians, God, I pray that You just give us comfort to continue to live a life that brings honor and glory to You. To take advantage of the opportunity we have to speak the truth and live the truth.
God, to those that are not Christians, I pray today that You touch their heart. In a sense, I pray that You'd make them absolutely miserable. So uncomfortable, so burdened with this idea of forgiveness and how they can't find it. And they've tried everywhere, God. They've tried stuff. They've tried material things. They've tried a little bit of booze, a little bit of dope, sex. They've tried everything. And there's nothing ultimately that fulfills. They've tried retirement. They've tried another job. They've tried to start a... They've tried everything.
And yet, as they sit here today, they're empty inside. Help them see that that's a spiritual void. God, would You give them the courage to talk to the person that invited them today to ask them, what does it mean to be a Christian? How can I find that forgiveness for my sin? God, that's a work of Your Spirit. And we thank You that You send Your Spirit to do that work. God, we pray to You in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.