Introductory Considerations
1. People today are pre-occupied with their bodies. While some of us could take better care of ours, major industries have sprung up to help meet the concerns that people have with their bodies. Many spend hours in fitness centres making sure that their abs are tight and that there is not an ounce of fat to be seen.
2. Beauty products abound - each promising to make us look like movie stars or athlete. Wrinkles must be removed, hair must be tinted to hide the gray and blemishes must made to disappear. Many spend hours in front of the mirror.
3. We are looking for te perfect or ideal body, sometimes using extreme measures, lipro-suction, implants, face lifts and plastic surgery. We want our bodies to be perfect and to last a long time.
4. Yet our bodies were only made to last a short period of time before they die and are gone. We see it in the aging process, even though we try to hide or prevent it.
5. I agree that we should be concerned about our bodies and take care of them, but the body we should be more concerned about is the body that we will have not just for a few decades but the body we will have for eternity.
6. Today we consider the fact that we will, as believers, have a resurrected body and we will consider what it will be like.
7. And while we may learn a few things, we may even end up with more questions than we started with. There are many things we do not understand about our eternal bodies and many things God has chosen not to reveal.
8. Even passage in 1Cor 15 is hard to understand - could go thru all kinds of technical explanations, but instead we will glean what we can from passage so we can better know what it is when we say "I believe in the resurrection of the body!"
9. The people in Corinth found it hard to accept the idea of the resurrection. One reason was they though of body as evil, something to be discarded. Another is that they could not understand how it could be done.
10. How can God take bodies which have deteriorated, burned, or been destroyed in different ways and reconstruct them again? What if a cannibal ate a person? There are all kinds of things that are hard to understand.
Teaching
1. While we get some insight on how the how is not what is most important. The fact of the resurrection is more important. That is what Paul has done in first part of chapter. He testifies to the reality of the resurrection in relation to the reality, the fact of the risen Lord and that we looked at a number of weeks ago.
2. He is not trying to prove the resurrection as a scientist might prove something through arguments or an experiment
3. And so Paul says to those who ask how? "Foolish man". To the Christians that was a strong rebuke. Does not mean one who has taken leave of their senses, but used in the OT sense - as a person who has failed to take God into account.
4. Do we understand really how God created man in first place? how He gives new life to a heart that was dead to sin? No we don’t but we can see examples of how God works and through those examples we get some idea of how God gives us a resurrected body.
5. Begins with example of seed. Take this seed or grain and look at it. Seems dead, to have no life, no indication of life in it at all. How can a new plant come forth from this dead seed? Today we may explain it but it is still a miracle created by God.
a. If God can bring this dead seed to life, he can do the same with a dead body, regardless of its state.
6. Then Paul explains that there are different kinds of bodies - within animal life and within the heavens. All have their own kind of splendour, all are different. So we must remember that we do not just think of our present bodies as to what our bodies will be like.
7. As God made different kinds of bodies - so He can and will make our resurrected bodies different as well.
8.Paul explains how our bodies will be different from present. Will be better than any body that any workout will attain.
a. Our present body, that which is sown is perishable, subject to decay, but it is raised imperishable. (Luke 20:36)
b. Sown in dishonour but raised in glory. (Phil 3:21) Like Christ’s resurrection body. Not radiance but future state of righteousness, opposite of dishonour , humiliated . It will no longer have its present "lowly state". No desires (Mat 22:30), no wants such as food, drink and sleep (1Cor 6:13), and fitted to behold the glory of God (1John 3:2). Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made.
c. Sown in weakness raised in power. No limitations. We saw how Christ with His resurrection body appeared through closed doors.
9. And instead of a natural body we will have a spiritual body. Now we have a body made out of dust, a body that we received from the first Adam.
a. But we are not just of the earth. We are of Christ and so we will have His spiritual body. We will have the glorified spiritual body that Christ had after he rose.
b. Spiritual here does not mean the opposite of physical. We talk of physical and the spiritual realms. Rather it means supernatural. Adam was a living being but Christ a life-giving spirit. He give that life to us.
10. What this shows is that there is a continuity here. If Christ had simply not received a resurrected body we could have said he was spirit alone. But the disciples recognized Him, His nail marks, they touched Him and He ate with them.
a. Shows that God will not give us new bodies but rather He raises our old bodies and into a new way so they still resemble old.
b. That is exciting for me. Shows that God is in business of recycling before we even thought of recycling.
c. Our bodies not evil flesh to be discarded but is to be redeemed into something much greater - greater than I can imagine.
d. As Thielman says this shows that the body in its material particles is yet at hand, will remain in new body and that no foreign body is substituted in the resurrection.
e. Perhaps we should be moved to even take better care of our bodies when we realize they will be with us for eternity.
11. This is what we know about our resurrected bodies. To know more we will have to wait.
12. But when will our bodies be raised? 1Cor 15:51-52. (1Thess 4:16-17) When Christ returns those who are dead will first rise and then those still alive will be changed in the twinkling of the eye.
13. All will be resurrected (Dan 12:2)(John 5:28-29) Those who are resurrected to hell and those who are resurrected to heaven.
14. When this happens, we can celebrate the victory over death. For we were created with a body and a soul. When we die our souls go up to heaven to be in god’s presence, but we are incomplete.
a. Our bodies allow us to express that which is within us - to express our innermost parts.
b. Death is the separation of our body and soul. When they are reunited then death has been defeated.
15. Then we will be able to fully be present in heaven. What a joy that will be. Life is not always easy - we struggle and we fail and fall. W get tired, old and sick. Our labours may seem in vain.
16. We bring nothing into this world and we take nothing out of it when we leave. But we do not need to be moved to despair.
17. As we serve the Lord and as we reveal in our lives that we belong to Christ, we can look in full assurance to the hope that stands before us.
18. I thank God for blessing of this life but I thank Him even more for the life ahead and who I will be in that life. Praise be to God!
