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Our Greatest Victory
 
1 Corinthians 15:3 - 22
April 19, 2009
 
Last Sunday I preached a Good Friday sermon, and I told you this Sunday we’d celebrate the resurrection.
I call this message “Our Greatest Victory” because that is what the resurrection is; it’s our victory over sin because of what Christ did for us.
Let’s begin again with some words of wisdom by Henry Blackaby.
He quotes Revelation 1:14-15 where God’s Word tells us, “/The hairs of his head were white like wool, as white as snow.
His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.
/
Then Blackaby comments: At times it is tempting to conclude: “If only I could have walked with Jesus, as the twelve disciples did, it would be so much easier to live the Christian life!”
This thought reveals that we do not comprehend the greatness of the risen Christ we serve today.
The Jesus of the Gospels is often portrayed as One who walked along the seashore, loving children and gently forgiving sinners.
Yet the image of Jesus that we see at the close of the New Testament is far more dramatic!
He stands in awesome power as He rules all creation.
His appearance is so magnificent that when John, His beloved disciple, sees Him, he falls to the ground as though he were dead (Rev.
1:17).
We grossly underestimate the God we serve!
To ignore God's word or to disobey a direct command from Him is to ignore the magnificent nature of Christ.
Our fear of other people proves that we do not understand the awesome Lord who walks with us.
The Christ we serve today is the Lord of all creation.
He is vastly more awesome and powerful than the gentle rabbi we often imagine.
If you struggle with your obedience to Christ, take a closer look at how He is portrayed in the Book of Revelation.
If you are succumbing to temptation, call upon the powerful One who dwells in you.
If you have forgotten how great and mighty the Lord is, meet Him through the vision of the beloved disciple.
The encounter will dramatically affect the way you live!
We live in victory!
It’s an exciting thing to be loved by God.
And 1 Corinthians 15 is an exciting part of God’s Word because it tells how God loves us and how that love works through our lives and gives us our greatest victory.
Let’s read it together now; please turn to 1 Corinthians 15 and we’ll read verses 3 through 22. /For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, \\ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, \\ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
\\ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
\\ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
\\ Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
\\ For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
\\ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.
On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
\\ Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
\\ Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
\\ But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
\\ And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
\\ We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
\\ For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
\\ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
\\ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
\\ If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
\\ But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
\\ For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
\\ For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
/
 
The apostle begins by telling these people of Corinth, whom he hadn’t seen in five years, “I want to remind you of something.”
It’s important that you and I remember some things that are vital.
All of our lives we’ve heard stories about people who don’t remember well, who are absent-minded.
We hear about absent-minded professors.
A professor was having breakfast with his family.
His wife said to him, “Now, remember.
This is the day we move.
When you come home, go to the new house and not this one.”
All day he knew there was something he was supposed to remember, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
He went home after class, and the house was empty.
“Oh yes, we moved.
I wonder where we moved to.”
He saw some children playing in the yard.
He said to a little boy, “Do you know the people who used to live here?”
The boy said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “Do you know where they moved?”
The little boy replied, “Mother said you would forget.”
I’ve never met such an absent-minded professor.
There have been plenty of times in class when /my /mind was absent, but never the professor’s.
But like that professor, we have things we need to remember.
* *
Easter is a time to vividly remember some important things.
Does the resurrection remind us of the power of God? Indeed, our God is a wonderfully powerful Lord, and he demonstrates that at Easter.
How many of you when you think of the power of God, think of his power in creation?
The same power that created life with a breath, said/ I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live/.
Do you believe that?
You should!
Several years ago a scientist wrote an article titled “Seven Reasons Why I Believe in God.”
He said, “Consider the rotation of the earth.
Our globe spins on its axis at the rate of one thousand miles an hour.
If it were just a hundred miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long.
The vegetation would freeze in the long night or it would burn in the long day; and there could be no life.”
He said, “Consider the heat of the sun.
Twelve thousand degrees at surface temperature, and we’re just far enough away to be blessed by that terrific heat.
If the sun gave off half its radiation, we would freeze to death.
If it gave off one half more, we would all be crispy critters.”
He said, “Consider the slant of the earth.”
I think he said 23 degrees.
“If it were different than that, the vapors from the oceans would ice over the continents.
There could be no life.”
He said, “Consider the moon.
If the moon were fifty thousand miles away rather than its present distance, twice each day giant tides would inundate every bit of land mass on this earth.”
He said, “Think of the crust of the earth.
Just a little bit thicker and there could be no life because there would be no oxygen.
Or the thinness of the atmosphere.
If our atmosphere was just a little thinner, the millions of meteors now burning themselves out in space would plummet this earth into oblivion.
These are reasons,” he said, “why I believe in God.”
Several years before the Hubble telescope, I heard Dr. George Schweitzer of the University of Tennessee say that with telescopes we could see one-sextillion miles.
That’s one followed by 21 zeros.
He said the distance across our galaxy is five hundred quadrillion miles.
That’s five followed by seventeen zeros.
He said the number of stars in our galaxy is over a million; and the number of galaxies is over a million; and the number of stars that at that time they had identified was over one hundred sextillion stars.
That’s one followed by 23 zeros.
I don’t understand numbers like that.
When I hear those figures, I’m like the fellow who saw an atomic explosion and said, “Wow, that atom bomb is dynamite.”
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