Since by Man Came Death
--I Corinthians 15:21-22
Writing in The Christian Reader, Laura Conklin shares a family story. “My husband and I home school our two children, Seth and Glenna. One day, the lesson was on opposites.
“Glenna, who was six at the time, was being quizzed. I would say a word and she would give its opposite.
“When I said, ‘good,’ Glenna quickly said, ‘bad.’
“‘Hot?’
“‘Cold!’ she squealed.
“It was time for something a little more difficult. ‘How about dead?’ I asked.
“Expecting the answer to be alive, I was delighted when Glenna, without hesitation, replied, ‘RISEN!’” [SOURCE:--Laura Conklin, Christian Reader, Vol. 36, no. 2.]
My junior year in high school for our Christmas concert our high school choir presented the traditional performance of Handel’s MESSIAH. Although I love every single solo and chorus in this my favorite piece of music, from the first time I heard it I have always appreciated the chorus “Since by Man Came Death” that Shirley and I shared as the offertory a few minutes ago. When Shirely asked me what we could play this Easter Sunday, I told her I wanted to preach from this passage of Scripture and suggested we might incorporate Handel’s chorus into our service as well.
As I Corinthians 13 is the great love chapter of the Bible, so chapter 15 is the supreme resurrection chapter. The Bible is full of testimonies of resurrections from the dead. In the Old Testament Elijah restored life to the Widow of Zarephath’s son. Elisha did the same for the Shunammite woman’s son, and a dead man that was thrown into Elisha’s grave received new life.
It was my privilege as a student at Asbury College to hear the great Methodist missionary to India E. Stanley Jones speak in a chapel service. In his autobiography entitled A SONG OF ASCENTS Dr. Jones tells the story “about a layman, a newspaperman, a mutual friend, who was called upon to conduct a funeral service. Being an exact man, he wanted to do it properly and in the best Christian tradition. So he turned to the New Testament as the original source and example of how Jesus conducted a funeral. And he found that Jesus didn’t conduct funerals at all. All He dealt with were resurrections.” [SOURCE: E. Stanley Jones, A Song of Ascents].
Before His own Resurrection, Jesus resurrected Jarius’ daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, and Lazarus. In Acts 9 we have the story of Peter bringing Dorcus back to life and a similar story of Paul resurrecting Eutychus in Acts. 20. Jesus is all about Resurrection. Not only is He risen indeed; He is The Resurrection. Remember the conversation Jesus had with Martha in John 11 after the death of her brother Lazarus:
“Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give You whatever You ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, ‘I AM the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’” [JOHN 11:21-27] The message of Easter is the eternal celebration that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
The New Testament word for Resurrection comes from two Greek words that mean “again” and “to stand.” Literally resurrection means “to cause to stand up one one’s feet again.” Resurrection is restoration to life, a rising from the dead. We praise God today that “since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.”
Resurrection rhythm excites me and is my divine call to worship to cry out in praise and thanksgiving to my Lord and my God. The rhythm in Hebrew poetry is measured differently than the rhythm of Western music. We measure the metre in our music by the number of beats in each measure of the composition.
The metre of Hebrew poetry is called parallelism. Two lines of poetry repeat an identical thought using similar vocabulary. If the two lines are a contrast, we have antithetic parallelism. We have two examples of this in our text:
Since by man came death,
By man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die,
Even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Resurrection stands in contrast to death. Adam brings us death. Jesus gives us life.
The message of Easter is that Jesus has won the victory over sin and death and His victory can be ours as well. Death was not God’s original plan for humanity. He created us for life, not death; he created us to live forever, but God made it clear to Adam in Genesis 2:16-17, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” The instant Adam disobeyed God, humanity died.
Death means separation. Through Adam’s sin we all are subject to physical, spiritual, and eternal death. Adam immediately died spiritually. Whereas he had enjoyed perfect fellowship and peace with God, that fellowship was broken and that peace was gone, “and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. . . . [Adam] said, “I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” [GENESIS 3:8, 10]. Adam was separated from God. David clearly testifies in Psalm 51:5:
Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
At birth each one of us is born separated from God, out of fellowship with Him. Every one of us enters this world as a spiritual dead human being and remains so until we become a Christian by being born again.
The Bible tells us in Genesis 5:5 that Adam died physically when he was 930 years old. Physical death is the separation of the spirit or the soul from the body. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 12:7, “the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” This is physical death. Adam began to die physically the moment he sinned, and from the moment we are born we begin our personal journey towards physical death.
There is a third death that is the gravest of all—everlasting death, eternal separation from God. Jesus died and rose again so that you and I would not have to die eternally and forever be separated from God. God repeats Himself, and whenever He does so you know His message is URGENT, through His prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 18:4 and 20 and declares, “The person who sins shall die.”
Paul’s message in Romans 6:23 could not be any more explicit and plain: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” All who continue to live a life of sin, turn, their backs on Jesus, and neglect to repent and receive Him as their personal Lord and Saviour to the time of their physical death die eternally; they are forever hopelessly lost and eternally condemned, forever separated from God.
Our Lord Jesus Himself tells us in John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on Him.” The eternal end of all who reject Jesus as their Saviour during this lifetime is clearly stated in Revelation 20:14-15, “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. The Lake of Fire is the Second Death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the Book of Life, He was thrown into the Lake of Fire.”
Our names are written in the book of Life when at an altar of prayer we confess we are lost sinners, repent of our sin, and ask Jesus Christ to forgive us, come into our hearts, and give us eternal life. All those who do not make such a step of faith and commitment of their life to Jesus Christ remain under God’s wrath and will be thrown into the Lake of Fire forever on Judgment Day, endlessly lost, and separated from God without any hope. Don’t let that be your destiny. Receive the Risen Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour today. II Corinthians 6:2 leaves no question or doubt, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the Day of Salvation!”
The message of Easter is our promise and assurance that God offers us the free gift of “eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” He paid the wages of sin so that we would not have to do so. In Adam we all die, but in Christ we all can be made alive. Remember that I Corinthians 15 is the BIBLE’S GREAT RESURRECTION CHAPTER. Besides “Since by Man Came Death,” Handel incorporated six more titles
into THE MESSIAH from I Corinthians 15. The Alto and Tenor Duet “O Death, Where Is Thy Sting” comes from I Corinthians 15:55-57: “Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Who among us hast not feared death at one time or another? The chorus of a Bluegrass Gospel Song recorded by such artists as Loretta Lynn and Decatur, Illinois’, Alison Krauss sums it up so well:
Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Lord I wanna go to Heaven, but I don’t wanna die.
Well, I long for the day when I’ll have new birth,
But I like livin’ here on earth,
Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die.
[SOURCES: http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/krauss-alison/everybody-wants-to-go-to-heaven-16294.html or http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/loretta_lynn/everybody_wants_to_go_to_heaven.html].
Whether our fear is mainly our own physical death, eternal damnation by forever being separated from God, or the combination of the two, “the sting of death is sin.”
As Easter people we praise the Lord and affirm with Paul, “But thanks be to God, who give us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
James S. Hewett, former pastor of Saratoga (California) Presbyterian Church shares this story: “A little boy and his father were driving down a country road on a beautiful spring afternoon. Suddenly out of nowhere a bumblebee flew in the car window. Since the little boy was deathly allergic to bee sings, he became petrified. His father quickly reached out, grabbed the bee, squeezed it in his hand, and then released it. But as soon as he let it go, the young son became frantic once again as it buzzed by the little boy.
“Dad sensed his son’s terror. Once again he reached out his hand, but this time he pointed to this hand. There still stuck in his skin was the stinger of the bee. “You see this?” he asked. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore. I’ve taken the sting for you.”
Hewett summarizes by saying: “And this is the message of Easter. We do not need to be afraid of death anymore. Christ faced death for us. And by His victory, we are saved from sin. Christ has taken the sting! First Corinthians 15:22 triumphantly asks: “Where, oh death, is your sting?” Christ has taken the stinger for us. He has risen! Fear is gone. New life is ours!” [SOURCE: --James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1988), p. 1670.]
The empty tomb is conclusive proof that Jesus has taken the sting for us and offers us abundant and eternal life. You can only experience this new life by trusting Jesus as your personal Saviour and Lord through being born again of the Spirit. If you haven’t made that commitment of your life to Jesus, the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart this very moment and calling you to do so right now! While He loving and gently pleads with you, surrender your life to Him and come to know beyond all doubt that God has truly made you alive and personally given you resurrection victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
