The New You Series

Several years ago (2013), The Week magazine quoted TV chef Anthony Bourdain, who advised, “Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” Then they posed the question: “What would be a good name for a theme park ride based on the typical American's body?”

Here were some of the best answers:

• Sedentary Mountain

• Cholester-Roll

• Plumper Cars

• Tunnel of Love Handles

• The Tragic Kingdom

• The Expanding Universe

• SORRY—ride closed due to poor maintenance (“The Week contest—Theme Park rides,” The Week, 6-27-13; www. PreachingToday.com).

To be sure, no matter what shape you’re in, your body is in a state of decay. The hardest thing for me recently has been to watch my dear wife’s body grow weaker and weaker over the last few months.

Even so, I find hope in the fact that her decaying body is but a transition into a beautiful, glorified body when God raises her from the dead. As our bodies decay, every believer can look forward to that day when God transforms this perishable, embarrassing body into an imperishable, glorious one. So, if you are a believer in Christ, don’t let the sufferings of this life keep you down. Instead, look forward to what’s ahead.

If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Corinthians 15, where we see what’s ahead for every believer.

1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” (ESV)

Now, these are not the questions of a sincere seeker. These are the questions of someone who laughs at the concept of the resurrection. The Greeks in the First Century saw the body as an evil, tortuous, prison, so they could only image horrible things when they thought about a resurrected body. Maybe, they picture zombies stumbling around in misery. To which Paul says, “That’s really stupid!”

1 Corinthians 15:36-37 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain (ESV).

The Bible says the believer’s death and resurrection is like planting a seed in the ground. There is continuity between the seed that dies and the plant that arises from it, but the plant is very different than the seed. In the same way, the body that is planted in the grave is the same body that will arise, but it will be very different.

I like the way Lee Eclov put it in his sermon When the Seeds Come Up. He said:

Let's start with a tulip bulb. Is it a tulip? Not exactly. But one day it will be a tulip, because tulips come from bulbs. A bulb is planted—buried in the ground—and then the flower grows from it…

These mortal bodies carry our essence—our souls, our lives—and when these mortal bodies are buried, God draws that essential part of us up into the new bodies he will give us, the way DNA and life flow from the bulb to the flower. You will still be you when God gives you a new body, because he draws the "you" from this mortal seed of your body into the "you" of the immortal flower of your resurrection body (Lee Eclov, from his sermon When the Seeds Come Up; www.PreachingToday.com).

In other words, the “you” becomes fully realized when God raises your body from the dead. You will not be a zombie, stumbling around in a half-dead body. You will be more alive than you have ever been, because you will have shed the old, dry husk of the seed you were to become a radiant flower in full bloom to the glory of God.

D. L. Moody once said: “As I go into a cemetery I like to think of the time when the dead shall rise from their graves… Thank God, our friends are not buried; they are only sown!” (D.L. Moody, Christian History, no. 25; www.PreachingToday.com).

So, dear believer, to get through your suffering today…

LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR COMPLETED BODY.

Anticipate becoming all that God created you to be. Await the full realization of your potential in Christ.

Malcolm Muggeridge put it this way: “Quite often, waking up in the night as the old do, I feel myself to be half out of my body, hovering between life and death, with eternity rising in the distance. I see my ancient carcass, prone between the sheets, stained and worn like a scrap of paper dropped in the gutter and, hovering over it, myself, like a butterfly released from its chrysalis stage and ready to fly away. Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth-crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely painted wings? If told, do they believe it? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads—no, it can't be; it's a fantasy. Yet in the limbo between living and dying, as the night clocks tick remorselessly on… I hear [Jesus’] words: “I am the resurrection, and the life,” and feel myself to be carried along on a great tide of joy and peace (Malcom Muggeridge, Seeing Through the Eye, Ignatius Press, 2005, p. 5; www.PreachingToday.com).