According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): Next, on According to the Scriptures.

Damian Kyle: In the light of our own resources, then he will naturally conclude that resurrection is impossible. But the apostle Paul is making the point here to Christians in Corinth that that isn't what Christianity asks us to believe. What is impossible for us, Paul says, isn't even difficult at all for God.

Guest (Male): Do a little channel surfing on TV, and it becomes clear that makeovers are quite the thing these days. Whether it's a home, a person, or a car, everyone loves a good makeover. Here on According to the Scriptures, we'll take a look at 1 Corinthians 15 and catch a glimpse of our future heavenly bodies, the ultimate makeover. Here's Pastor Damian with today's program.

Damian Kyle: First Corinthians chapter 15. We remember that the book of First Corinthians is a highly corrective epistle. The apostle Paul has spent the first 14 chapters of this letter addressing all kinds of error that was being practiced within the church there. And when he comes to chapter 15, he puts his attention upon a doctrinal error that had infiltrated the church at Corinth.

So he spends chapter 15 addressing this new doctrinal problem having to do with the resurrection and specifically the implications of the resurrection and the denial of the resurrection on the resurrection of Jesus. Apparently, there were some in the church at Corinth who were asserting that there is no resurrection of the dead. Corinth was a very prominent, maybe the most prominent city in Greece at that time under the Roman Empire.

The Greeks did not believe in a resurrection where somebody would be resurrected and after their death they would then continue on and receive a body and have an eternal existence in that way. So apparently, this doctrine of the culture has infiltrated into the church, and some were teaching there is no resurrection from the dead. And you notice that in verse 12 of the chapter if you look at it.

Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? And so Paul began his correction of this heresy by reminding the church in Corinth and reminding us that God's offer of salvation is founded not only upon Jesus's death upon the cross and His burial, but also upon His resurrection.

And he spends the first 11 verses of this chapter laying out the fact that the gospel—and there would be no gospel without all three things—Jesus's death, His burial, and His resurrection from the dead. And then in the remainder of this chapter from verse 11 on, the apostle Paul continues to instruct us about the importance of resurrection and Jesus's resurrection from every conceivable direction.

And as we studied previously in verses 12 through 19, he addressed the seven catastrophic consequences of rejecting the truth of the gospel. And then in verses 20 to 23, Paul's reassurance that our resurrection one day as Christians is as sure as Jesus's resurrection from the dead. And then in verses 24 to 28, Paul's instruction concerning the future of this enemy of ours called death.

The belief is further that have consequences in life for good or for bad and that all of the consequences in a Christian's life certainly, but in anybody related to Jesus, all of the consequences of being unbelieving concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ are all bad. And a failure to believe in His resurrection makes a casualty of logic, it makes a casualty of Christian service, and it makes a casualty of holy living.

And so next this evening, now in finishing Paul's elaboration on the resurrection, Paul answers in verse 35 two questions concerning the how and the what regarding a Christian's bodily resurrection after this life. And so Paul gives voice to the objections that he anticipated or was maybe very well aware of, of the opponents of resurrection, what they were using in order to defend their denial and rejection of resurrection and the idea of a bodily resurrection after death.

Their rejection of that and their rejection of a physical existence after this life. And so the two questions that he addresses, number one is: how are the dead raised? And then question number two is: with what body do they come? And the two questions that he poses here, they're not honest questions on the part of the detractors concerning resurrection and the false teachers within the church at Corinth.

They're dismissive in their tone. And so they were asking in terms of resurrection, "Well, how are the dead raised?" or "With what body do they come?" And they were dismissive of the idea of resurrection. And one of the most powerful ways to get anybody to move off from even a closely held truth in their life is to scorn that truth. Scorn is a powerful weapon in the hands of the devil, and they were using it.

And so they were dismissive in their tone, and they asked those questions not with the idea of receiving an answer, but to scorn the idea of bodily resurrection after death. And they are the questions of those who've already made up their minds on the subject, and now their minds are closed to the subject. And so they were dismissive questions of those who thought they were too smart or too intellectual or too scientific to believe in the resurrection.

And so now they've come to a place where they just merely sniff at the idea of the subject of resurrection. And such people exist yet today. Now no question about God that a person holds who then fails to take that question to God possesses then an honest question.

God is not afraid of a single question that any of us might ever formulate in our minds and ever pose to Him. What He does like is for the questions to be honest. But God is not afraid or intimidated by questions. If they had simply taken those questions to God and to someone who could have answered their questions, they would have been readily answered.

Paul is going to readily answer those two questions. And so if a person claims to have questions concerning God, fails to take those questions to God, it reveals that they're not interested in answers. They're only interested in protecting their unbelief. And Paul recognizes this.

Well, since those who objected to the idea of the possibility of bodily resurrection after death refuse to honestly and openly bring their questions to God for an answer, Paul answers the objections for them. And he voices the objections and then now he answers them. And you notice in answer to their first question, "How are the dead raised up?" in verses 36 to 40, then in a nutshell, verse 38, Paul's answer is: God does it.

And in doing so, he speaks of God's ability to do so from three witnesses each of us are very, very familiar with in our life. First he speaks in verses 36 to 38 from the realm of plant life. And so the seed speaks of God's ability to accomplish resurrection for the simple reason that God has built resurrection into every seed. So you put this seed, this lowly body that is a seed in your hand, you put it in the ground, you bury it, and then behold, a new body comes out of it.

Is birthed out of it and then rises up out of the soil. He says concerning wheat, a wheat seed is put in the ground, and if you didn't know any better, it would appear that you have put it to death. That it is dead. That you have made an absolute end of it. But then a resurrection of sorts occurs in that wheat, and a new life springs forth in the form of a stalk of wheat from the lowly seed.

And that stalk is a dramatic improvement over the seed. And so you take a daffodil bulb, you take a tulip bulb, you take any bulb that you purchase from a nursery in the fall to put it in the ground for the blooms to occur this time of year in the spring. You take that ugly old bulb. It's an ugly old thing on that rack in the nursery. There's nothing that you'd say, "Yeah, I want a bunch of these to sprout up in my yard that look just like this bulb."

But you plant it, you bury it, and then the beauty that comes forth from that ugly old bulb is stunning. And in other words, the God, Paul says, who is able to design resurrection into every seed and bring life out of its death is equally able to do the same with a human body. And so belief in bodily resurrection should be, he says, as easy as believing in seedtime and harvest.

And in the Central Valley, we believe in seedtime and harvest. The second illustration that he gives here of a witness for God to accomplish resurrection moves from agriculture, points us to the diversity of life that God has created within the realm of flesh and blood, verse 39. And so he gives examples of the fact that God created man. He created every kind of animal, and all of their diversity, just amazing.

He created every kind of fish from trout to whales to squid. He created every kind of bird. And the point that Paul's making here is that God has given all flesh and blood the body it needs for the environment that it is going to operate in. He didn't give fish a body for dry land. He didn't give birds a body for living in the sea. And thus, He will give us a body that is appropriate for heaven and for eternity when the time comes.

And his point is that isn't the God who created all of these wildly diverse bodies represented in the realm of flesh and blood, the animal kingdom all around us, also able to provide man with a new resurrection body made for heaven and eternity as well? And of course the answer is: of course He is.

And you go back to the old saying, and it's an old saying, and it sticks around because it's a good saying. And it is that if Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 is true—in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth—then everything else that God does is a snap by comparison.

You might remember when Paul spoke to King Agrippa during his trial in Caesarea as is recorded in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 26 verse 8. He said to King Agrippa, "Why should it be thought incredible by you that God raises the dead?" And it's like, "Come on, Agrippa, we're talking about God here. We're not talking about you or me or the limitations of mankind. We're talking about God."

And then third in verse 40, Paul invites us to consider the heavenly bodies that God has created as well. And so he talks about the celestial bodies: the sun, the moon, the stars, the galaxies. And God created all of them in all of their beauty, all of their diversity, and all of their glory. And each one of them, I'm convinced when we look and concerned, and I'm not saying it's an illegitimate concern about the fact that China has kind of cornered the rare earth minerals that exist in the world for a modern technological world and all.

But one day I'm convinced that as we explore the galaxies ourselves in a new heaven and a new earth, even ruling and reigning with Christ during the Kingdom Age, that there'll be planets that are solid gold or solid whatever we think is valuable in this life. And so marvel what it is that we see with the naked eye and not only the microscope but the telescope.

And he talks about the terrestrial again, speaking of all the forms of life on this earth. And the point that Paul's making is that when man thinks of his own resurrection independent of God, if man thinks of resurrection in the light of our own resources, then he will naturally conclude that resurrection is impossible.

But the apostle Paul is making the point here to Christians in Corinth that that isn't what Christianity asks us to believe. What is impossible for us, Paul says, isn't even difficult at all for God. And all of this is testified to, he says, by creation. The God who created all of this can certainly create new resurrected human bodies out of our old bodies.

So then he comes to a second question: "with what body do they come?" Now allow me to address a preliminary question. Why do we need a new body after death? Before we get to that one, why do we need a new body after death? Why is this resurrection so important to God and so should be so important to us?

He tells us in verse 50 because a flesh and blood body cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption. These bodies are not fit for the glory of heaven. They're not fit or qualified for eternity. And so this physical body that we have from Adam, it's from the earth. You remember He created Adam from the very soil, from the very earth. And so it was created from the earth, it's made for this earth. It's not made for heaven and it's not made for eternity.

And so when we die, we don't need a resurrection body, Paul says, of our own old natural body. We need a resurrection that further clothes us with a spiritual body. In other words, a body that is physical but is also made for heaven and made for eternity. That's the body that we will need after this life.

And this is why he writes in verse 44: "there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." In other words, he's telling those who think that this same natural body will be our body in eternity. And Paul says that in eternity our body won't be this body exactly, but that we will be further clothed with a physical but spiritual body for eternity. A change is going to occur.

And then Paul addresses what happens when we die as Christians in verse 42 to 44. And again, Paul likens our old body being buried at the time of our death as a seed, and he says in terms of our bodies when they are buried, these physical tents that we have, he says it's sown in corruption, but it's raised in incorruption.

The new body that God has for us in our resurrection will never age. It will never be subject to decay or disease. It will never experience death. He says in verse 43: "it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory." But it is raised in glory and that all it will ever know henceforth is glory. The new body that we will receive when we are resurrected—and we come to that in just a moment or two—but in the resurrection body that God will give us for eternity, all that body will ever know is glory.

And you stop and think about what we do with the body of even a loved one after death. We can love this person like we could never put into words, like nobody's been loved in all of human history. And what do we do with them? What do we do with their body? We put it in the ground. Think about that. What else are we going to do with it? But think about that.

We take that body and we put it down into the ground, and it is always for all of us, no matter how we love our loved one, it is sown in dishonor. He says further in verse 43: "it is sown in weakness, and it is raised in power." In other words, this new body will never know any weakness of any sort, and we will come to experience a power in our lives that we have never known before.

Certainly not in this life. And there isn't anything weaker in all the world than a dead body. But this new body is going to be one where it is going to be marked by a great, great power that we've never experienced.

Guest (Male): Well thank the Lord we are going to get a new body. Pastor Damian Kyle is going through First Corinthians here on According to the Scriptures, and he'll be right back with more.

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You know, it never grows old hearing from you our listeners, and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what He's doing on the radio. You can email us at ATTS@CCModesto.com and include your prayer requests as well. That's ATTS@CCModesto.com. Well, let's return to First Corinthians chapter 15.

Damian Kyle: He says further in verse 44: "it is sown a natural body, and it is raised a spiritual body." And so just because it's called a spiritual body by Paul here, the body that we will receive and God has prepared for us for the environment of heaven, just because Paul calls it a spiritual body, Paul wants to make sure that we don't take that to mean that it won't also be a material body.

And remember Jesus on the evening of His resurrection when He appeared to the disciples up in that upper room and He showed them the wounds in His hands and in His feet. He invited to touch them to touch Him, to touch the wounds, to touch His hands. He then asked for something to eat, whether something was there to eat. They gave Him some fish and they gave Him a little bit of honey and He took it and He ate in their presence.

And so as a result of this, we will receive, as we'll see in a moment, our new body will be like Jesus's body. We won't be divine, but it will be like His body after His resurrection. And as a result of this new spiritual body that we're going to have that has a physical element to it as well, the supreme concern of our new body will be for spiritual things. And so our eternal body will know nothing of the pull towards sin.

Our lone desire in this body that God has planned for us will be for the spiritual. And at that point, we'll finally have a body that's consistent with our new man and our new nature and consistent with the new desires that God has put within our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That inner conflict between the flesh and the old man, the carnal nature and the spirit within our lives, will be completely gone at the end of this life and as we're further clothed in this new body.

And so the conclusion he gives us in verse 44 is that there is a natural body and there is a spiritual. And so they were thinking this same body, when they were thinking about a resurrection body, thinking about that in terms of the resurrection. They're thinking of it solely within how they could consider it within their own minds. And so they're thinking this same body will be our eternal body. But it won't be exactly this body. Paul says we'll be further clothed with a body that's made for eternity.

Guest (Male): And don't you look forward to that new body? It's going to be great. We'll talk more about it tomorrow on According to the Scriptures as Pastor Damian Kyle returns to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. This program is listener supported and brought to you by Calvary Chapel Modesto.