The Perfect Body! Series

SERMON OUTLINE:

(1). The Bodily Resurrection is Familiar and Unique (vs 35-41).

• Analogy 1: Seeds (vs 36-38 & 42-48);

• Analogy 2: Flesh (vs 39);

• Analogy 3: Heavenly Bodies (vs 40-41)

(2). The Bodily Resurrection is New and Improved (vs 42-49)

• Contrast #1: Perishable verses Imperishable (vs 42b)

• Contrast #2: Dishonourable verses Glorious (vs 43a)

• Contrast #3: Weakness verses Power (vs 43b)

• Contrast #4: Natural verses Spiritual (vs 44a)

(3). The Bodily Resurrection Adam and Jesus (vs 44b-49)

• First Adam - Natural

• Second Adam - Spiritual

SERMON BODY:

Ill:

• Everywhere you look these days it seems people are trying to get the perfect body.

• Magazine covers feature tips on how to lose 20 pounds in ten days,

• Cosmetic companies promise creams that erase the lines of time on your face;

• And the media continues to bombard us with the idea;

• That we should all look like musclemen or runway models.

• I like the t-shirt that is available to very large blokes;

• It has the slogan on it; “I have the body of a god”.

• Then under those words is a picture of Buddha!

• Note: According to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons,

• More than 50,000 cosmetic surgery procedures;

• Were performed in the UK last year,

• The cosmetic procedures industry is booming.

• It has undergone an estimated five-fold increase in turnover in a decade.

• Now at any period of time that would be astounding growth;

• But in the teeth of a recession it is all the more astonishing.

And yet:

• Going under the knife to fix bodily woes doesn't always pay off,

• With new research revealing that two thirds (65%) of those who have had surgery,

• Say they wish they hadn't!

• TRANSITION: As Christians, God has promised us;

• That ultimately we will end up with a perfect body.

• That's right, if you're a Christian, one day you'll have the perfect body.

Ill:

• Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States;

• Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster,

• Scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.

• In one of his lighter moments, Benjamin Franklin penned his own epitaph.

• He didn't profess to be a born-again Christian,

• But it seems he must have been influenced by Paul's teaching of the resurrection of the body.

• Here's what he wrote:

The body of B. Franklin, Printer

(Like the Cover of an Old Book

Its Contents torn Out

And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)

Lies Here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be Lost;

For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More

In a New and More Elegant Edition

Revised and Corrected

By the Author.

• TRANSITION: In this chapter (1 Corinthians 15);

• The apostle Paul deals with this subject of the resurrection of a Christians body;

• He does that by answering four basic questions;

• Question 1: Are the dead raised (vs 1-19)

• Question 2: When Are the dead raised (vs 20-28)

• Question 3: Why Are the dead raised (vs 29-34)

• And this morning we have reached the fourth question:

• Question 4: How Are the dead raised (vs 35-48)

(1). The Bodily Resurrection is Familiar and Unique (vs 35-41).

35 “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’ 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 Not all flesh is the same: people have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendour of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendour of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendour, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendour.”

Question: In verse 35 the apostle Paul askes: “How are the dead raised?”

“ But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised?

With what kind of body will they come?””

Answer: I do like his answer in verse 36:

“How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”

• He says you don't need great faith to believe in resurrection,

• You don’t even need to be great theologians to explain it,

• In fact, any amateur gardener could answer their doubts