Another World to Sing In
“It’s not that I am afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Woody Allen
Feeling Fine: Farmer Joe decided his injuries from the accident were serious enough to take the trucking company (responsible for the accident) to court. In court, the trucking company’s fancy lawyer was questioning farmer Joe. "Didn’t you say, at the scene of the accident, ’I’m fine’?," questioned the lawyer.
Farmer Joe responded, "Well I’ll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule Bessie into the..."
"I didn’t ask for any details," the lawyer interrupted, "just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, ’I’m fine’!"
Farmer Joe said, "Well I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road..."
The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."
By this time the Judge was fairly interested in Farmer Joe’s answer and said to the lawyer, "I’d like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule Bessie."
Joe thanked the Judge and proceeded, "Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side. I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other.
I was hurting real bad and didn’t want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans. Shortly after the accident a Highway Patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he went over to her. After he looked at her he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the Patrolman came across the road with his gun in his hand and looked at me. He said, "Your mule was in such bad shape I had to shoot her. How are you feeling?"
It was then that I said, "I’m fine."
Death comes to all Death is not comfortable, brings little comfort, it jars us, it wakes us up to what’s real because death happens to everyone 100% of the time.
Another World to Sing In
“If the worst were to happen…”
Life Insurance Salesman
Two errors
It’s not If…
It’s not the worst that will happen. In fact, it is the best because we will receive a new resurrection body.
Question One: “How are the dead raised?”
1 Corinthians 15:35
35 But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have?”
36 Foolish person! When you sow a seed, it must die in the ground before it can live and grow.
Death always precedes new life. (36)
Paul’s response is essentially this:
Our present bodies are like "seed" for our resurrection bodies. (37,38)
Death and decay, far from being a hindrance to resurrection, are a necessary prerequisite to it. An analogy from nature helps to press home the point: "What you sow does not come to life unless it dies." You can have a whole sack of grass seed, but as long as you keep it dry and on the shelf in the garage it will never sprout. However, if you take it out and plant it in the dark, damp soil so that the seed begins to decay, then it will sprout. If this is true in the realm of gardening, why is it so hard to believe in regard to the body?
Jesus was the First of a New Harvest
John 12:24
23 Jesus said to them, “The time has come for the Son of Man to receive his glory. 24 I tell you the truth, a grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die to make many seeds. But if it never dies, it remains only a single seed.
Interestingly, Jesus used the same kind of argument about the necessity of death before resurrection when speaking of His own resurrection in John 12:24: "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." Before Christ could bear the fruit of salvation for all of us, He had to die; His death then produced a great harvest of souls. Likewise, before we can enjoy resurrection life, we too must die. There has to be an end to the old before there can be a beginning of the new.
Question Two: "What kind of body will they have?"
1 Corinthians 15:35
35 But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have?”
In responding to this second question, Paul’s principal concern seems to be maintaining a balance between continuity and discontinuity:
Our resurrection bodies will be similar to our present bodies. (37,38)
Our resurrection bodies will be different from our present bodies. (37, 42-44)
The seed analogy serves well here too. Verse 37: "When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else." When a farmer plants corn, he doesn’t plant the luscious ears of corn, all yellow and juicy, that he hopes to harvest. No, he plants bare corn seeds. So also when a dead body is planted in the ground, it is just a bare seed in comparison to the resurrection body which will take its place.
But just because what is planted and what sprouts are not identical does not mean that there is no similarity between them. As a matter of fact there is always an organic relation between them. Verse 38 expresses it this way: "But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body (i.e. a body which corresponds to the seed planted)." If you plant a corn seed, you’re going to get a corn plant, not wheat or cucumbers or an oak tree.
So also our resurrection bodies will have an organic connection or continuity with our present bodies. If a human body is buried, a human body will be resurrected. God is going to fashion our resurrection bodies out of these present bodies. Your body will be different, but it will still be you. That is why when Jesus rose from the dead, His earthly body was missing from the grave. It had to be missing because His new body was the old body–resurrected and transformed.
Characteristics of The Resurrection Body Similar to the Natural Body
1 Corinthians 15:38
38 But God gives it a body that he has planned for it, and God gives each kind of seed its own body.
39 All things made of flesh are not the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds have another, and fish have another.
Characteristics of The Resurrection Body Similar to the Natural Body
Diversity
Different Kinds of Flesh (15:38)
Characteristics of The Resurrection Body Similar to the Natural Body
1 Corinthians 15:40-41
40 Also there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. But the beauty of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the beauty of the earthly bodies is another.
41 The sun has one kind of beauty, the moon has another beauty, and the stars have another. And each star is different in its beauty.
Characteristics of The Resurrection Body Similar to the Natural Body
Diversity
Many Different Kinds of Flesh (15:38)
Potential
Many Different Kinds of Splendor (40-41)
Characteristics of The Resurrection Body Different than the Natural Body
1 Corinthians 15:42-43
42 It is the same with the dead who are raised to life. The body that is “planted” will ruin and decay, but it is raised to a life that cannot be destroyed. 43 When the body is “planted,” it is without honor, but it is raised in glory. When the body is “planted,” it is weak, but when it is raised, it is powerful.
Characteristics of The Resurrection Body Different than the Natural Body
Imperishable
A Different Kind of Strength (42-43)
Flesh and bone triumphed in the first ever man-versus-machine battle of brawn - an arm wrestling contest between robots and humans in California on Monday.
The champion, beating all three robotic arms each in matter of seconds, was a 17-year-old girl called Panna Felsen, a high school student from San Diego, US.
The contest was set up by Yoseph Bar-Cohen at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California, US, in an attempt to encourage the development of polymer-based artificial muscles. The aim, he says, is to improve on existing actuators - or muscles - currently used in prosthetics and robots.
"It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power." The human body is a truly amazing instrument. Man has never been able, and likely never will be able, to build a camera to match the human eye, or a tool to do what the human hand can do, or a computer capable of the intricate thought patterns of the human brain. When we contemplate such features of the body we are inclined to think of our physical bodies as very powerful. But actually there is much more evidence of weakness than power in our bodies, especially as we get older.
The body sags, it groans, it aches, sometimes even smells. Even a healthy person can be felled by a draft of cold air or a microscopic virus.
Our physical bodies are perishable; our resurrection bodies will be imperishable. The word "perishable" means "subject to deterioration and decay." Medical science indicates that the process of aging and deterioration begins in infancy, but, of course, the older we get, the more we notice it. And death rapidly accelerates the rate of decay. One of the reasons bodies are embalmed is to retard the deterioration, but nothing, not even mummification, will prevent it.
Frankly, I believe we have carried the effort to preserve dead bodies to a ridiculous length today–far surpassing the ancient Egyptians. There is a movement in the United States called cryonics. It is the science of preserving corpses in liquid nitrogen at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars a year, with the hope that eventually a cure will be discovered for the disease from which the person died, and then the person who died can supposedly be treated and resuscitated.
What a tragedy for the living to spend that kind of money on the dead, when there is a foolproof way to preserve one’s body which doesn’t cost a thing–it pays. The Apostle Peter put it this way: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you . . ." (1 Peter 1:3,4).
Our new bodies will know no sickness, decay, deterioration or death. They will be permanent.
Characteristics of The Resurrection Body Different than the Natural Body
1 Corinthians 15:44
44 The body that is “planted” is a physical body. When it is raised, it is a spiritual body.
Characteristics of The Resurrection Body Different than the Natural Body
Imperishable
A Different Kind of Strength (42-43)
SuperNatural
A Different Kind of Life (44)
"It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." It is very important that we not interpret this contrast wrongly. Paul is not saying that our present bodies are material whereas our resurrection bodies will be immaterial. Rather I think his point is that our present bodies are natural and our resurrection bodies will be supernatural. Our present bodies are a kind of "earth suit" designed for time but not for eternity.
In the NT the term "natural" almost always denotes that which is controlled by natural impulses. In contrast, the term "spiritual" denotes that which is controlled by God’s Spirit. In this life we are imperfect instruments for the Spirit; but in the life to come our bodies will be such that the Spirit can fill us and use us to a degree that is not possible now. Prof. J.A. Schep, who wrote one of the classic books on resurrection defines a "spiritual body" as follows: "a body of flesh completely dominated by the Spirit’s powers, living in space and time and yet not enslaved to present laws of space and time."
Another World to Sing In
Revelations 14
13 Then I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Happy are the dead who die from now on in the Lord.”
The Spirit says, “Yes, they will rest from their hard work, and the reward of all they have done stays with them.”
I heard a story about a man who made a very special friend while just a boy. When quite young, Paul’s father had one of the first telephones in their St Louis neighborhood. Paul was too little to reach the phone, but he would listen with fascination when his parents talked into it.
Then Paul discovered that somewhere inside this wonderful device there lived an amazing person; her name was "Information, Please" and there was nothing she did not know. "Information, Please" could supply anybody’s number and the correct time. Paul’s first encounter with this genie-in-a-bottle came one day while his mother was visiting a neighbor. Playing at his father’s tool bench in the basement, Paul banged his finger with a hammer. The pain was awful, but there was no use in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy. He walked around the house sucking his throbbing finger, when he thought of the telephone! Paul ran for the footstool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, he lifted the receiver and held it to his ear. "Information, Please," he said into the mouthpiece. Then a small clear voice spoke into Paul’s ear: “Information."
"I hurt my finger," Paul wailed into the phone. "Isn’t your mother home?" the operator asked. "Nobody’s home but me" Paul blubbered. "Are you bleeding?" the voice asked. "No," he replied. "I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts." "Can you open your icebox?" she asked. He said he could. "Then take a little piece of ice and hold it to your finger," said the voice.
After that, Paul called "Information, Please" for everything! He asked her for help with his geography and math homework. Then came the time when Paul’s parakeet died. Paul called and told her the sad story. She listened, and said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child, but Paul was inconsolable. He asked her, "Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to families, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?" She sensed his grief, and said quietly, "Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in." Somehow he felt better.
When Paul was nine years old, his family moved from St Louis to Boston. Paul missed his telephone friend very much. "Information, Please" belonged in that old wooden box back home, and he somehow never thought of trying the shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall. As he grew into his teens, he appreciated the memory of how patient, understanding, and kind the information lady was to have spent her time on a little boy.
A few years later, on his way west to college, Paul’s plane landed in St Louis. He had about an hour between flights. He spent 15 minutes on the phone with his sister, who lived there now. Then without thinking about what he was doing, Paul dialed his hometown operator and said, "Information, Please." Amazingly, he heard the small, clear voice he knew so well: "Information." He hadn’t planned this, but he heard himself asking, “Could you please tell me how to spell predicament?" There was a pause, then came the soft spoken answer, "I guess your finger must have healed by now." Paul laughed. "So it’s really still you," he said. "I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during my childhood." "I wonder," she said, "if you know how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls." Paul told her how often he had thought of her over the years and asked if he could call her again when he came back to visit his sister. "Please do," she said. "Just ask for Sally."
Three months later Paul was back in St Louis, on his way home for Christmas Break. A different voice answered, "Information." He asked for Sally. "Are you a friend?" She asked. "Yes, a very old friend," Paul answered. "I’m sorry to have to tell you this," she said. "Sally has been working part-time the past few years because she was ill. She died five weeks ago." Before he could hang up she said, "Wait a minute. Is this Paul?" "Yes," Paul replied. "Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you." The note said: "Tell Paul I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He’ll know what I mean."
What are the conclusions we should draw this morning from a passage on the mechanics of the resurrection?
Fact 1: We’re not getting any younger.
That’s easier for some of us to face than for others. Children are generally oblivious to time. Teens seem to feel they are indestructible. Twenty-somethings and Thirty-somethings have most of their lives ahead of them and their thoughts are rarely on the end of life. But somewhere during the 40’s, or certainly during the 50’s, most of us come face to face with the fact that life is short and getting shorter. I encourage all of us to realize this morning that in respect to eternity our lives are but a vapor–here today and gone tomorrow.
Fact 2: Eternity is coming.
There is life after death. Not only is that the almost universal view of human beings, no matter what philosophy or religion they hold, but nothing could be clearer in the Word of God. Eternity is coming. It won’t be the same for everyone, for the Bible makes it clear that for some it will be a time of incredible joy and blessing; for others it will be a time of shame and loss and suffering. But it is coming.
Third, . . .
3. Face the fact that now is the time to prepare for eternity.
