The Creed 20: We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Notes
Transcript
So this morning we’re completing our sermon series on the Creed. We’ve been on a journey throughout the Nicene Creed, exploring the basics of Christian theology. We’ve explored how the Creed gives the parameters of our faith. That everything within the parameters is up for discussion, but there are some things which are not.
We’ve just listened to Hillsong’s shorter version of the same creed and today we’re concluding with
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come
Pastoral intro
So we’re talking about death, resurrection, heaven and God’s kingdom today
Please be aware of your emotions this morning. We’ve lost many loved ones over the past year and are currently mourning the loss of a number of loved members of our Church family. So as we enter into this, I want you to know that we’re here to support each other.
If you need prayer support, please reach out to us over the text service or speak to a Christian friend. You’re welcome to text us with a request for a member of the prayer team to give you a phone call you in the next few days if that would be helpful.
Hook
And as I was preparing for this sermon a number of films came to mind. And then I googled some more.
Have you watched any TV shows or films with a theme or scenes about heaven?
Our kids are hooked on Boss Baby, where babies who don’t laugh are sent to management while the rest are sent to families. And one day one of the management babies ends up being assigned to a family on earth, and the boss baby takes charge of a seven year old’s life.
The other TV show we watched about a year ago was the good place, which has a theme of selfish people finding themselves surprised that they made it into the good place, AKA heaven, or so they think. It goes on for 4 ever more ridiculous series, with angels and demons, but with no show from the creator. The sad thing about that show is that in the end, there is no point to life and they just wish not to exist anymore.
Our understanding of earth and heaven, of life and death, of God and the Devil have a huge impact on our understanding of life after death and on how we live our lives here on earth.
A couple of week’s back we explored the difficult but core Jesus teaching of judgement and hell. Where those who reject Jesus live their eternity away from Him.
I concluded that sermon by not letting us forget that the judge who makes that decision of who’s in and who’s out, is the same Jesus who was judged in our place. He’s the one who taught us radical love. And He is the only one who can be trusted to make that decision.
The latest survey I could find on current beliefs around the after-life led me to a survey conducted in February 2017
Where 46% of individuals believed in life after death and exactly the same did not believe while 8% admitted they didn’t know.
Of those who answered that they believed in an after life, 65% believed in another life after this one where your soul lives on and 32% believed in some form of reincarnation, which is becoming a new creature or person with the same soul.
In my late teens I started studying Philosophy and that’s when I heard the word ‘dualism’ for the first time. Dualism is quite an ancient idea. Plato, the Greek Philosopher, is probably the guy who wrote and taught most clearly on the idea.
It’s the idea that we are made up of two things, a body and a soul. The body is mortal, while the soul is immortal.
Plato had a negative view of the body, arguing that the body distracts the soul from reaching it’s true purpose.
“the body is the source of endless trouble to us”
Illustration
And in my teens, I just felt Plato was putting words to my understanding of the world. I read Paul’s words in Galatians 5 about the desires of the flesh and the sinful nature, fitting this view of the world. I trusted that God had a plan for me on this earth, but longed to be in heaven where my soul would be free from this sinful husk that made me bad, and led me into trouble.
I captured this in a song which I wrote at age 16, which was so terribly produced that I can’t possibly play it to you. But I expressed my desire in the chorus “One day in the future, that’s where I want to be, One day in the future to be with you for all eternity. And on that day, I’ll be free.” It was a song longing for judgement day when Jesus would come to wipe away this corrupt world and bring on heaven.
This view of God’s creation led me to a lack of care for the environment, I believed it would all end soon anyway so what was the point. Surely the point of this life was to grin and bear it, do the most good I could so I could receive my reward of eternity in heaven. I’d missed the point.
Dualism is not compatible with the biblical account for our creation. Our western civilisation has built it’s understanding of heaven and hell on dualism and created bad theology based on a Greek philosopher who was not a follower of Jesus.
In Christian theology, this is called Gnosticism and I’ll be clear with you, it’s a heresy. That we must escape this bodily existence for a disembodied existence. It distracts us from the bible’s teaching of the importance of the body and the resurrection of the dead. You can find it in Mormon teaching, in new age teaching sadly in many kids books about death. It’s behind the Hindu belief of reincarnation, which is not a Christian belief and is incompatible with the teaching of Jesus. Hindu’s believe that the karmic energy found in your life will determine what body you are reincarnated into. And in the end they hope to escape the cycle of reincarnation, escaping bodily form altogether, so that they can end up in a higher form of existence, existing as pure energy.
And that’s where we get new age teachings of becoming star dust.
It is not a Christian understanding of life after death.
Let’s watch now a video from the Bible project, to lay out the biblical backdrop as turn to Paul’s teaching.
So
Let’s revisit this passage which challenges some of our understandings which have come from a misreading of God’s word, from the media we consume, from folk religion and incorrect historic Roman Catholic teachings.
Let’s directly address Paul’s use of earthly and spiritual bodies.
because without doing so, you can read it and think, well isn’t this what Plato was talking about?
No! Paul’s talking about the body which is for our space and the body which is for God’s space. The earthly body and the spiritual body. Notice both of them are talking about bodies. Not body and Spirit, but an earthly body and a spiritual body.
Paul explains that the earthly body has to die for the spiritual body to be created, and he uses the image of a seed being buried and then being transformed into something else.
What will it look like? Well, there is one resurrected body recorded in detail in the Bible and that is Jesus’ body.
Jesus wasn’t immediately recognised. Think of Mary at the tomb, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the disciples on the beach just to name a few. But once Jesus called them by name or broke bread with them, he was instantly recognisable.
We know that Jesus’ resurrected body could walk through walls, could appear and disappear and bore the marks of the crucifixion. Now Jesus is God, and so we can’t be certain that everything about the resurrected body of Jesus will be the same for us. But, we can be sure that our bodies are important on earth. It is the matter of our bodies which will be transformed to create our resurrected body. After all, Jesus’ body was not there on Easter Sunday. He had risen. But he wasn’t resuscitated, his body had been completely dead, his life had left his body, and then he experienced resurrection. His body was transformed and Jesus, God on earth, the truest human who ever lived, received his spiritual body, the body meant for God’ space, for the dimension of heaven.
20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.
22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.
Jesus Christ has gone ahead of us. He has experienced death and has broken the sting of death, sin which leads to eternal separation from God.
No longer are we slaves to sin, no longer do we fear death.
Paul recites a verse from the prophet Hosea
55 ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’
So, the resurrection of the dead will come after the day of judgement. The day of the Lord, when everyone living and dead will be judged, and as we looked at 2 weeks back, we aren’t judged on whether we’ve done good, but whether we are following Jesus. Not just saying we love him, but actually putting our love into practice.
But before judgement day, what happens to us?
Throughout this passage, Paul speaks of those who have died as having fallen asleep in Christ. (v18)
He is intentional about this phrasing, because it shows that expects all believers to wake again and receive their new spiritual bodies in the resurrection of the dead.
There are many theories, but scripture doesn’t reveal the mysteries of the next life. After all, we are called to trust God, that he has got us, that his judgement is fair and that if he says he’s got us, then he’s got us and we aren’t to worry about the mechanics of how it all works out.
But two different Christian theories are this.
That as soon as we die we are taken to a place called heaven where we live peacefully with God until the resurrection of the dead in the newly created heaven and earth. Jesus does say to the thief on the cross ‘today you will be with me in paradise’.
The second is that we take Paul’s language of sleep a bit more literally, and it’s the theory that there is a sleep state that we go into, or as a sci-fi buff, we’re taken through time to judgement day as soon as we die.
In both theories the key thing is that we are held in Christ, that he’s got us. Personally I see more evidence throughout scripture of Jesus speaking about God’s space and our space coming together and that is the fulfilment of the kingdom of God which we inherit after death, but who am I to take away that image of our loved ones having fun with Jesus right now.
Wherever you fall on that last point, the clear point from 1 Corinthians 15 is that reincarnation, us becoming angels or star dust or ghosts, or other kinds of creatures is not true and not part of Christian teaching.
If you want to delve into any of this more, then I can’t recommend this book enough. Surprised by Hope by Tom Wright.
What is true, is that when you and I die, we will be held in the arms and the mind of Christ. That our bodies are important, and that our time on this earth is so important to revealing the hope of heaven here on earth, because we are to be like Jesus, citizens of heaven, seeing the things of heaven breaking through onto this earth.
Let’s a few minutues responding, inviting the Holy Spirit to be close, while we listen to some of the song ‘I can Only imagine’