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I Corinthians 15:17-22
 
! Introduction
            Imagine a world in which there is no water.
It is hard to do, especially with high river levels and lots of rain.
At this time, we might be tempted to say that it would be a good thing, but it wouldn’t take very long before we would remember that we can’t live without water.
Crops don’t grow without water, trees die without water and we can’t survive without water.
I remember learning in school that a person can survive as long as 7 days without water, but that is all.
We can’t imagine a world without water because it is so essential to life on earth.
Imagine a world without sunshine.
It is hard to do.
Where there is absolute darkness, nothing grows and nothing lives.
The sun is essential to life on this earth.
It is necessary for light and for heat and to cause growth.
People who live in the north during the winter suffer psychological effects because of sunlight deprivation.
It is essential to life as we know it.
We can’t even imagine a world without sunlight because it is essential to life on earth.
Imagine Christianity without the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Thomas Jefferson, a great man, nevertheless could not accept the miraculous elements in Scripture.
He edited his own special version of the Bible in which all references to the supernatural were deleted.
Jefferson, in editing the Gospels, confined himself solely to the moral teachings of Jesus.
The closing words of Jefferson's Bible are these: "There laid they Jesus and rolled a great stone at the mouth of the sepulchre and departed."
It is hard for us to imagine that someone could be raised from the dead, yet, without the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead what kind of a Christianity do we have?
Just as the world cannot function without water or the sun, so Christianity cannot function without the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The resurrection provides the power behind Christian belief.
This morning, we will examine the truth of the resurrection and be encouraged by the power of the resurrection.
The Scripture passage that we will look at is I Corinthians 15:17-22.
!
I.
If There Is No Resurrection…But There Is!
!! A. No Resurrection?
I read a story about how “every year thousands of people climb a mountain in the Italian Alps, passing the "stations of the cross" to stand at an outdoor crucifix.
One tourist noticed a little trail that led beyond the cross.
He fought through the rough thicket and, to his surprise, came upon another shrine, a shrine that symbolized the empty tomb.
It was neglected.
The brush had grown up around it.
Almost everyone had gone as far as the cross, but there they stopped.”
Many people in history have considered Christianity without the resurrection.
The apostle Paul, raises this possibility in I Corinthians 15 speaking about some who have taught that there is no resurrection.
What would Christianity be without a resurrection?
Paul’s conclusion is that if there is no resurrection, then we have a faith that is empty.
NIV Says, “your faith is futile,” Good News Bible says, “your faith is a delusion” and The Message says, “if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors.”
At Universal Studios in Hollywood, there are numerous beautiful buildings.
If you would see a picture of those buildings, you would probably imagine a solid structure with a well decorated inside and appropriate furniture, but you would be disappointed, because they are merely facades, empty fronts which have nothing to them.
Without the resurrection, Christianity is a façade with nothing to it.
It is filled with promises that it cannot fulfill, it boasts great power and possibilities that are empty.
Gambling is big business these days and sadly, many people become addicted.
It is a pitiful thing to see someone addicted to gambling.
They put their hope in the next big win.
They always think that the next time they make a gamble, they will strike it rich.
Such hope in something that seldom delivers and does not satisfy when it does is pitiful.
It would be even more pitiful if we, as Christians, staked our whole life on the risen Lord Jesus Christ if Jesus was just a man who died.
Paul says that if we have hoped in Christ when all we really have is this life, then we are of all men most to be pitied.
In that case, we have given up much, have changed our life, have subjected ourselves to persecution all for the sake of nothing.
Instead of the hope of a richer, fuller life, all we have is  a special form of hardship.
If this world is all there is, anybody is better off than the Christian.
“If we have believed in the future when there is no future”…we are pitiable.”
!! B. Christ Has Been Raised!
After contemplating life without the resurrection, Paul begins verse 20 with the word, “But…” which changes everything.
It is as if you are going one way and suddenly you turn around completely.
If Christ has not been raised, we have an empty faith and are pitiful creatures, but that is not the case.
Contrary to all human expectations, the most amazing thing has happened.
Christ has been raised from the dead, and there is no doubt in Paul’s mind that this is true!
There are many reasons to believe that Christ actually rose from the dead.
First of all, there is the empty tomb.
The explanation which the chief priests gave for the empty tomb is that the disciples took the body.
But that makes no sense because it would have been too easy to force the disciples to produce the body.
The explanation that Jesus merely swooned and then later came out makes no sense because the evidence of death was too strong in the fact that blood and water flowed from his side.
Furthermore, how could he have pushed the stone away in his weakened state.
Paul himself was convinced of the resurrection because he was among a large group of people who had seen Him alive.
In I Corinthians 15:3-7, he tells about those people.
He tells about Peter and Paul knew Peter and would have checked this out.
He tells about 500 who saw him at one time, many of whom at the time of writing were still alive, and could verify this.
Some have suggested that the appearances were a vision, but that also makes no sense, for 500 people do not all have the same vision.
He knew that Jesus had appeared to James and Paul himself had also seen the risen Christ.
Probably the most powerful evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is the lives that were changed.
Paul is one such person.
George Lyttleton lived between 1709 and 1773.
He was a famous English writer and statesman.
When he was fully persuaded that the Bible was an imposture, he together with a friend determined to expose Christianity as a falsehood.
He chose to study the conversion of Paul.
After much study, he determined that the evidence was just too strong.
The change that occurred in Paul, the persecutor of the church who became a preacher of the gospel could only have come by the power of the resurrection.
The evidence that Jesus Christ died and rose from the grave is strong and assures and encourages us that Jesus rose and that He is alive today.
!
II.
The Power Of The Resurrection
Recently we have heard a lot about power to change.
The reason there is power to change is because Christ rose from the dead.
Because of His resurrection, we discover the power of what Christianity is all about.
What is the power of the resurrection?
!! A. Sins Are Covered
In verse 17, Paul says that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then “you are still in your sins.”
The power of the resurrection is that it makes it possible for sins to be dealt with.
Those of you who use email may at some time have received an email message with the words, “permanent fatal error.”
If you send someone an email and use an address that doesn’t work because you type it in wrong or the person no longer has that address, you get it back a while later with the message “permanent fatal error.”
That sounds awful and I always feel bad when I get it that I have caused such a breakdown of the system.
That it is permanent suggests to me that it can never be fixed.
That it is fatal suggests that it results in some kind of death.
Of course, it isn’t nearly that serious.
All it really means is that the system stopped trying to send the message because it couldn’t find the address and so it returned it with the message that it wasn’t going to try to send it again.
To overcome this, all I have to do is get the right address and send it again.
The same cannot be said about sin.
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