Sermon Tone Analysis

April 4, 2010

Pastor Ricky Powell

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Scripture Introduction:

The town of Le Lavandou on the French Riviera recently passed a law barring any more burials in the town cemetery.

It's full.

The law says, “It is forbidden without a cemetery plot to die on the territory of the commune.”

The law hasn't stopped people from dying.

Nineteen people have died without a plot and are temporarily housed in friends’ vaults.

There is only one law against dying that really works—the law of the Resurrection (Lee Eclov, Lake Forest, Illinois; from Chicago Tribune [9-22-00]).

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us the Ultimate Victory over death and the grave.

Without Christ’s resurrection death would be the ultimate defeat.

But thanks be to God who gives us the ultimate victory even over death!

That is what I want to talk to you about on this Resurrection Sunday; The Ultimate Victory.

Open your Bible please to 1 Corinthians 15:50-58.

READ PASSAGE

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Sermon Introduction:

Death so often seems like the ultimate defeat.

When a loved one dies we may even tell our friends, “She lost her battle with cancer.”

Or we say, “He fought diabetes most of his life but in the end it got the better of him.”

Or we say, “His body just couldn’t fight off the infection.

It was too much for him to overcome.”

We fear our own death and we fear the death of our loved ones because death seems like defeat.

I am sure that is how Jesus’ disciples felt on that Friday when their Lord was crucified on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem.

After their Lord died on the cross the disciples hurriedly retrieved His body from the Romans.

They carried the corpse to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea where they quickly embalmed it with linen cloths and spices.

The tomb was sealed shut, and in the failing light they made their way back to the upper room.

Once there they locked themselves inside for fear that what had happened to Jesus might also happen to them.

One can only imagine the gloom of defeat that enveloped them over the weekend.

All their hopes and dreams of a better day, of Jesus reigning victorious as the Messiah of Israel, and of freedom from Roman oppression were crucified and defeated on the cross with Jesus.

Death so often seems like the ultimate defeat.

It sure looked that way to the disciples after the Lord died on the cross.

But looks can be deceiving.

Jesus truly did die on the cross.

His lifeless body was placed in the tomb.

But it is equally true that Jesus came out of the tomb alive on that Sunday morning!

In this same chapter Paul told the Corinthians believers, “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4 [NKJV]).

Jesus who died rose from the dead in a bodily resurrection!

That is what Easter is all about.

The tomb is empty.

Death has been defeated!

But friend, the good news of Easter does not end with the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

His resurrection guarantees that death will not ultimately defeat us!

Death will be defeated when our earthly bodies are changed and made fit for our heavenly home!

Believers will experience the ultimate victory over death and the grave when Jesus changes our bodies to be like His glorious resurrection body.

One day we will have bodies that will never grow old, will never get sick, and will never die!

Does this sound too fanciful to be true?

Perhaps you are thinking, “I can believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but I have a hard time believing that my body will escape the grave.”

The Corinthians also had trouble believing in a bodily resurrection.

That is why Paul wrote this part of his letter to them.

Chapter fifteen begins with a declaration of Christ’s resurrection.

It continues with the assurance of our resurrection based on Jesus’ resurrection.

The chapter concludes with the verses that comprise our text today which celebrates the abolition of death because death has been swallowed up in victory.

Paul presents four stages in his logic as he argues for our ultimate victory over death.

First, he speaks of…

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I.

The Great Impossibility (15:50).

“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50a [NKJV]).

What does Paul mean when he speaks of “flesh and blood.”

The best way to understand this phrase is to look at how it has been used elsewhere in Scripture.

For example, when Peter made his great confession that Jesus was the Christ Jesus responded by saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17 [NKJV]).

Or consider the words of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:12 when he wrote, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12 [NKJV]).

So flesh and blood is a way of describing human life as it is here and now (Tyndale, p. 226).

It describes human beings in all our mortal frailty and weakness.

In fact, Paul elaborates on the phrase “flesh and blood” in the latter part of verse 50.

“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:50 [NKJV]).

Paul tells us that there in an incompatibility between our human life as it is now and the Kingdom of God as it will be in the last day.

Our bodies exist now in frailty, weakness, and corruption.

The Kingdom of God on the other hand is eternal and incorruptible.

We cannot inherit the Kingdom of God in these bodies as they now exist.

Please do not misunderstand what Paul is saying.

He is not questioning your present salvation.

If you have believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior then there is a sense in which you are already in the Kingdom of God.

God’s Kingdom broke into human history with the coming of Jesus Christ.

He rules and reigns in your life.

You have entered the Kingdom by faith in Christ.

But we have not yet experienced the fullness of God’s Kingdom.

We still wait for the day in which the Kingdom will fully come.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Father, Thy Kingdom come…” So we live in between two great moments in God’s redemptive history.

We live between the inauguration of the Kingdom which has already occurred at Jesus’ first coming and the consummation of the Kingdom which will occur at His second coming.

If we are to inherit the Kingdom of God in all its fullness, glory, perfection, and power then something radical has to happen to us.

We cannot enter the Kingdom with these bodies of flesh and blood.

We need to be changed.

Our bodies need to be made fit for our heavenly home.

Until our bodies are transformed there is a sense in which we are only half saved.

Our souls have been saved from the moment we trusted Christ but our bodies have not been saved.

Not yet.

Listen to some Bible verses that illustrate the “already---not yet” status of believers.

Paul declared in Ephesians 1:7, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins…” (Ephesians 1:7a [NKJV]).

Already we possess redemption and forgiveness through the blood of Christ!

But, Romans 8:23 says, “…we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23 [NKJV]).

So we are only half redeemed.

Our souls are saved.

But our bodies await the Second Coming of Christ for complete redemption where we will receive transformed bodies fit for the Kingdom of God.

Until then flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.

That is why the Bible says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Your spirit goes to God at death, but your body cannot.

It is the great impossibility.

Why is it the great impossibility?

Because, “corruption cannot inherit incorruption.”

The word Paul uses for corruption means that our bodies are subject to deterioration and decay.