Easter Sunday -- Death As Friend?

Good morning. Happy Easter. We're going to turn our attention to 1 Corinthians 15:20 through 26 and 50 through 58. We've been doing this thing where we've been reading that together. You know why we do that? Because this isn't my word. This isn't your word. It's God's word. We read it together to remind each other of it and to engage with it. So let's read together. Three, two, one.

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ the first fruits, then at his coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and when the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where 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. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. — 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 50-58

Let's pray. Oh Lord Jesus, we come to you on this Easter Sunday, needing to hear again of the glorious hope and victory that we have in your resurrection. Lord, I pray that you would meet with us, that you would impress upon us this beautiful truth that would change our hearts and transform us. And Lord, I just pray as I come to preach. Lord, I'm not up to the task of declaring these truths. They are too great for me. So Lord, would you speak and would you speak powerfully? We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Alright. Well, happy Easter. Jeff gave you the instruction at the beginning of the service on how this goes. So I'm trusting that you know what to do. He is risen. He is risen indeed. That was good. That was good. You guys did great. I was thinking I was going to have to ask you to do it again but you nailed it. That phrase finds its home in this verse. Did you catch that? Verse 20:

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. — 1 Corinthians 15:20

We remind each other of that on Easter with that liturgical exchange because it's true. Because it's true. And we need to be reminded that it's true.

The context of this section of 1 Corinthians comes at the end. The Corinthian church, if you're familiar with the Bible at all, they were kind of the bad boys of the New Testament, right? There was all kinds of things going on in Corinth that Paul is always addressing and in chapter 15, it appears what's going on in Corinth is they're starting to question the validity of the resurrection, right? Here's what happened. Paul shows up. He starts talking about Jesus Christ rising from the dead and the result of that being eternal life. But what the Corinthians are viewing, what they're seeing all around them? Over time, some of them are dying. They're passing away. And that leads them to question, did Christ really rise? Does it really matter for us? And Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 gives us a master class explanation, reaffirming in short what you guys just did. Christ is risen. He's risen indeed. Right? That is true. And not only is it true, but it has implications for us despite all that you see. And he explains why. And we're going to talk about that this morning.

Before we do, I want to sympathize with the Corinthians. It's easy, isn't it? To look around you to just observe what you see and start to ask the question, is this really true? Is this really true? Even though we ring out with such fervor, he has risen indeed, it's easy to start to question that. The world thinks it's a fairy tale. The world thinks that this is all just us getting together to reassure each other of something that makes us feel better. Stephen Hawking, brilliant guy, brilliant. He said this in regards to thinking about life after death:

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

That is the world that presses in on what you just affirmed, that pushes back. It says, "Hey, you're just believing a fairy tale because you're afraid of the dark. If you were a grown up, you'd be able to face it."

I want to speak to that, using 1 Corinthians 15 as a guide. And I want to talk about two things. I want to talk about what 1 Corinthians teaches us about death. And I want to talk about what 1 Corinthians teaches us about resurrection. And I want to talk about how we engage with that. Okay? So, death and resurrection. That's an easy outline to remember on Easter Sunday, right? Death and resurrection.

Death

So first, death. 1 Corinthians starts by talking about death, talks about death coming by a man. Do you see that in verse 21 and specifically identifies that man as Adam. So 1 Corinthians goes all the way back to the beginning of the Bible, Genesis chapter one, okay?

If this is a fairy tale, I want you to understand what the fairy tale is. Here's how it goes.

Once upon a time, there was a Trinity—a three-person, one God. Who was so deeply in love that out of that love, he created an incredible creation, an expression of that love that we call simply creation. It exploded into this magnificent, beautiful, amazing universe. And everything about it was good, except for one thing. One thing was very good. That very good thing was mankind—Adam and Eve.

Why was Adam and Eve so good? Well, it was the crowning achievement of this glorious expression of love of the Trinity. Adam and Eve, mankind was made in God's image. It was an expression of God himself. It was diverse—man, woman—and yet unified, one, right? And not only one with each other but one with God. They dwell together in unity.

And God created them with this glorious purpose, not simply just to exist, but to take essentially his kingdom of love and expand it all throughout the earth. Adam and Eve's charge was to be fruitful and multiply. Do you remember that from Genesis? Right? Be fruitful and multiply, spread all over the earth. God wanted pictures of his love all over creation. Wanted it everywhere. Wanted it to be the display of what was going on in creation. It's beautiful. Adam and Eve essentially were supposed to make earth an outpost of heaven, right? Expanding it, making it endless, this beautiful picture of God's love.

But that's not, of course, the end of the story. There's a tragic turn. And that's what 1 Corinthians is referring to in verses 20 and 21. Man by a man comes death.

So there's this beautiful Trinity, right, that's in love. Well, yeah, I'm gonna borrow from Milton here. John Milton—you ever read Paradise Lost? He does this magnificent job of contrasting essentially the Trinity, right? The God of love. And almost an anti-Trinity, an unholy trinity if you will, of God's enemies, right? The unholy trinity is Satan, sin, and death. And that's who we encounter in Genesis chapter three, right?

Satan comes into this perfect world created by God with this crowning achievement, this glorious creation full of purpose that is made in his image. And Satan comes—what does he come with? He comes armed with something. He comes armed with a fairy tale. He comes armed with a lie. He slithers into the garden and he tells Eve and ultimately Adam, "Hey, you don't need to believe God. All this stuff about love and purpose and glory, all that stuff is just a lie that's meant to keep you down. It's meant to keep you from being like him. And in fact, if you reject him, you can be like God." That's the fairy tale that Satan tells.

And do you know what happens? Adam and Eve believe him. And as a result, right? What happens is, even though Adam and Eve were meant to expand God's kingdom of heaven here on earth—it was meant to be an outpost of heaven—what happens is they crack earth and a little bit of hell seeps in, right?

And instead of Adam and Eve ruling and reigning over creation, guess what happens? Through their sin, because they believe the lie of Satan, who reigns? Death. Death comes in and reigns over creation, right? It's no longer Adam and Eve and their purpose of gloriously expanding God's kingdom of love. It's now death and decay, hatred, division, right? That is what happens to the world when Adam and Eve believe the lie of the devil.

The world is cracked and it lets a little bit of hell seep in. Death now rules. And it impacts all of creation, not just Adam and Eve. It's not just them, but all of their children, all of us, all of the animals, all of God's glorious creation begins to decay because of this. And man's purpose is ruined.

Now there's a couple of things that I want to tease out from this, in terms of what we believe about death. Because I think oftentimes we think that the difference between us and non-Christians is we do believe something different about resurrection. But I want to point out that we believe something different about death too, right?

First Corinthians points out and makes a big deal about the fact that death isn't normal. It wasn't always there. You know, there's a movie, The Usual Suspects, that gets quoted often in sermons, especially about Satan. Kaiser Soze, the movie's main villain, says the greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. Do you remember that quote? That's kind of accurate, right? The devil really does want to operate in shadows, wants to convince us that he doesn't exist.

We know what death's greatest trick was? Convincing the world that he always existed, that he was always here. Abuse victims are often told by their abusers that the kind of behavior they're experiencing is normal. That is what death has done to the world. That is what death is doing to all of us. It's saying all the time, "Hey, I'm always here. This is normal. This is the way it's supposed to be." And brothers and sisters, that's what the world believes, because as they look around, that's what they see.

Paul wanted us to see something else. There was a time when death didn't exist. Death doesn't belong here. And more than that, Paul wants us to see that death—verses twenty-four and twenty-five talk about Jesus coming, delivering the kingdom to God the father after destroying every rule, every authority, and every power. Paul wants us to see that death not only was not always here, but death is sitting in your chair, in my chair, ultimately in Christ's chair. His rule and reign over this earth is a presumptuous rule. He's a pretender who doesn't belong here.

You know, oftentimes, I think as we face life in this world and certainly as we've faced life over the last year, hasn't it felt kind of meaningless and purposeless? When I was a student in high school, my history teacher—I'll never forget this—he asked us to name our grandparents. Well, that was no problem. We all did that. And he said, "Name your great grandparents." Well, a couple of us could do that. And he said, "Name your great-great grandparents." Very few of us could do that.

The world wants to press in on us that all we have is our legacy. We have to be great in this life so that we'll be remembered because once we're gone, that's all we'll have. But the reality is that given enough time, our legacies will fade. There is a sense in which a world that exists with death is a meaningless world. It's a piece of hell right here on earth, and it wasn't meant to be.

Brothers and sisters, we were made for the glorious purpose of ruling and reigning over creation, expanding the beautiful picture of God's Trinitarian love. Don't you feel that in your souls? Don't you feel the amazing power of love which still exists in us? Don't you feel the lingering effects of being made in God's image, this desire for purpose? Yes. Brothers and sisters, the world wants us to say death is normal, it's okay, and I want to say no. It's horrible, it's terrible, and it shouldn't be. That is the difference between how Christians view death and non-Christians view death.

Resurrection

Now, I want to shift very appropriately to resurrection. This is the thing that automatically Christians and non-Christians agree that we disagree on. So here's the understanding of resurrection from the Christian perspective, right? Remember the story? God created out of this glorious expression of love—this amazing, majestic purpose came. Well, now that it's been marred, God's not okay with that. God is not okay with this beautiful expression of his love being tainted. More importantly, the image bearer of his love—he was essentially united within that image—and he loves his image. He cares.

Anderson preached an amazing sermon at sunrise. If you missed it, and you can be forgiven for that because it was really early. He talked about how Jesus, after he rose, just loved being with his people. There is a sense in which the image that was created to show forth God's love is loved. And God loved that image so much, he wasn't okay with it. He came as a human, right? That's a sermon for Christmas, but we talk about it on Easter because it's amazing. Jesus came in the form of a man because he loved us so much. He was not okay with us being destroyed by sin and death.

So he comes, but you know what? When Christ came and even now, the enemies are still here. Remember that unholy trinity of Satan, sin, and death? Well, those enemies stacked up against Christ as our savior. Satan's plan was to tempt Jesus just in the same way that he tempted Adam. Not too long ago, I preached a sermon on that text in Matthew chapter four. But that was Satan's idea. He's like, "I fooled Adam. I can fool Jesus." So he tries that. That doesn't work. Satan's like, "That's okay. I've got my man on the inside—sin. And Jesus is surrounded by people who have been infiltrated by my man's sin."

Satan's plan was to destroy Christ in the worst possible way—through the ones he loved most, his image bearers. He used all of our sin, but most notably the sin of even Jesus' own disciples, to bring him before the authorities and hand him over to death.

Satan had a foolproof plan except it wasn't foolproof. He was the fool.

Christ submits to the Father's plan of suffering and death. Throughout Jesus' story, you can see him being asked to trust his Father—over and over and over again. That's in stark contrast to Adam, who did not trust God and instead trusted Satan. Even in the garden, as Jesus faces trial, suffering, and death, he knows what's coming. God is essentially saying, "This is the way," and Jesus asks, "Is there any way that we could skip this?" But then: "Not my will but yours be done."

Jesus succeeds where Adam failed. He believed God and submitted himself to the plan. And in submitting to suffering and death, he takes all of the hell of this world onto himself and is able to give us all of his heaven. That's the message we proclaim—the propitiation. A glorious thing for us. And in doing so, God displays his love.

God so loved the world... — John 3:16

That's what happened in that moment. And death in vain forbids him rise; Christ opens paradise. That's the message of resurrection.

The Glorious Practical Joke

Here's what I want to tease out of that. A couple of days ago we celebrated April Fools Day. I would submit to you that April Fools Day is a Christian holiday. Maybe the third best—Christmas, Easter, April Fools. Here's why: Do you see the glorious practical joke that's being played in the resurrection? And here's how we know it's funny.

Death swallowed up in victory. Where's your victory, death? Where's your sting? — 1 Corinthians 15

It's a joke. We're mocking death. The Trinitarian enemy of God, the unholy trinity, is totally pumped by the cross.

Satan thinks he's orchestrating Christ's demise. He's hoping to bring death into heaven. But guess what he does? All of his orchestrations of bringing about Christ's demise actually orchestrate our salvation. Whoops. April Fools.

Sin—Satan's man on the inside—the sins of all of us put Christ on the cross, but what we meant for evil, God meant for good. God actually used our sinfulness and the sinfulness of his disciples to undo the power of our sin. Whoops. April Fools.

And what about death? Death thought he could contain Christ, but by killing Christ, death actually killed himself. Whoops. April Fools.

And the joke doesn't stop there. It's the gift that keeps on giving because these enemies of God are now fighting for us. In the Old Testament, there's a story of Jehoshaphat where enemies are stacked up against God and his people, and everybody's worried because these enemies are mighty. But Jehoshaphat prays, and what happens? The enemies fight against each other and destroy themselves. And that is what we are witnessing now in our enemies and their interactions.

Satan is still here. Satan's still tempting, still lying, still trying to trick. But as Billy Graham once said, Satan must be the most frustrated personality in the universe because his army of demons is compelled to evade Jesus. And whatever the devil does to discourage a Christian, God can use for the Christian's benefit. Satan can't hurt us.

Sin—our unworthiness—only serves now to reveal our value. When we come to a worship service and confess our sin, what we're highlighting is how amazing our Father's love is, that despite our sin, despite how unworthy we are, he sent his son to die for us. All of Satan's tricks of luring us into sin were designed to alienate us from God, to get us away from his love. But now, our sin only shows how much we are loved.

And death—the great separator—can now only bring us to God. In fact, the Christian views death almost as a friend.

Because when we die, our bodies may go into the ground but our souls go to be with the Lord until he returns and he resurrects our bodies. This is what Paul explains in verses 50 through 54. Till he resurrects our body and we go to be with him for eternity and guess what? We get our chair back along with Jesus who's already occupying it. The throne is ours. So death, death can only hurry us to where we are going, our glorious future. It's the amazing April Fool's joke that some of you all haven't been celebrating April Fool's as a Christian holiday. I expect you to correct that.

Already and Not Yet

Two things that I want to tease out as we close here. The conclusion of this chapter, 1 Corinthians 15:58, right? He says:

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. — 1 Corinthians 15:58

Remember the context of the Corinthian church where they're reading this? They're starting to see people die. And it is hard, right? It is easy to say, "Well, Christ has risen, why shouldn't we just all start rising?" But Paul makes it very clear that there is an already-not-yet reality to the victory that Christ has. He makes that very clear from the beginning. He calls Christ the first fruits. The first fruits. Not the last fruits, but the first fruits.

We've been doing a business process called Traction in the church as we've been thinking about how we measure success and we're trying to push towards goals and all these things. It's a very alien world to me. I was a humanities major and we started talking about all these business models and things and I just feel lost. But I was talking to somebody and he was talking about metrics being kind of useful in measuring success, in gauging whether you're actually working towards your goals. He said there are two kinds of indicators that you want to look for: leading indicators and lagging indicators.

Leading indicators essentially reveal whether you're on your way, you're making progress towards success. Lagging indicators reveal that you've achieved it. So if you're trying to raise a million dollars in a year, right, if your business model is to make a million dollars, a leading indicator would be in January you've got a hundred thousand. Right? We're on our way. A lagging indicator would be on December 31, you have a million dollars. Right? You've achieved success.

Paul is saying, let's look at the leading indicators of the victory we have in Christ. It's that Christ rose. I would argue that the leading indicator is pretty phenomenal. It's not just that Christ rose by the way. Elsewhere he talks about the gift of the Holy Spirit being a down payment that we have. Right? But perhaps the most convincing leading indicator that we have of the resurrection is that God has told us it's true. The God who created the universe, who controls everything, has said, "You will rise, those of you in Christ, because of the glory of what he's done." It's like having a million dollars in January. Right? Phenomenal leading indicator. But it does feel like a fairy tale sometimes.

The Story of Jairus' Daughter

You know, when I was at St. David's, my last week at St. David's, I got a phone call. I had just been on a missions trip to Ethiopia. It was like a highlight of my career there. I come back and I get this phone call. "James, there's this family, this little girl went down to the water. She fell in. Her mom had had surgery. She couldn't get down in time and she passed away. She had two older siblings. The family's having a funeral. Will you come and speak?"

Like really? My last week? I didn't know what to say. What do you say to a family and to kids who just lost a little sibling who's like two, three years old? I didn't know what to do but I came and I just brought my Jesus Storybook Bible because that's a great tool. And you remember the story of Jairus' daughter? He's the commander whose daughter is sick and he runs to Jesus and he says, "My daughter's sick. Will you come and heal her?" And Jesus says, "Yes," and he's on his way back and then a man comes up and says, "Don't bother the teacher anymore. The little girl's dead."

Jesus says, "Just believe." They keep going. They go back. Jesus says, "She's not dead. She's just asleep." He goes in. He says to her, "Little girl, rise. Eat." And she gets up and she eats.

So I tell that story and the way that the Jesus Storybook Bible puts everything is like Jesus was making all the sad things untrue. That's essentially the fairy tale, right, of the resurrection. And when I told these kids and I looked them straight in the eye, I said, "You're in this story."

You're in this story, but you're not at the end of it. You're in the middle of it. That is our reality as Christians. We are in the story of Christ's resurrection, but we're not at the end of it, we're in the middle. And so when the world looks like it's falling apart, when everything is crumbling around us, Paul can say, stand firm because you're standing upon the resurrection of Christ. Even though it appears like things are falling apart, you're in the middle of the story, not the end. The end is coming. The time when we can absolutely mock our enemies.

So those of you who are Christians, I want to encourage you. I want you to think about the ways in which the world is pressed in upon you. It's falling apart around you that you started to become cynical. Like the Corinthian church, you started to question the validity of all of this. Will you allow this Sunday, this Easter Sunday to infuse some resurrection hope back into your hearts? Will you remember that you're in the middle of the story, not at the end of the story? And will you, unlike Adam, believe the real fairy tale of how God has created you and all of creation?

For Those Who Are Not Yet Christians

And for those of you who are non-Christians, if you're here and you're a non-Christian, thanks for coming on Easter Sunday. I'm so glad you're here. I think that often times I'm told by non-Christians, "Hey, I like Christians. You guys seem like nice people." Some non-Christians say that anyway. But I have trouble believing any of this. I have trouble submitting to Christ. And believing this fantastic tale you guys spend is just more than I can handle.

Well, I want to press in on you like submitting to Christ. It's actually better than submitting to death. There are two fairy tales. The fairy tale of you can be God, which is not true and will only lead to destruction. And the fairy tale that you are loved by God, created for a magnificent purpose. You believe one or the other of those.

And I will confess that it is actually really hard to believe this one. It is really hard. And Stephen Hawking, so brilliant—I think even when he was wrong, was right. He says that this afterlife thing, this resurrection is a fairy tale for children afraid of the dark. Right? People who are not grown up enough to face death.

Well, Jesus said the exact same thing. He said, if you're going to enter my kingdom, you have to be like a child. So Stephen Hawking was right. Will you, non-Christians, rebel against death with us? By becoming like a child, putting your trust in the God who created you, who loved you, who sent His son to die for you. It feels like a fairy tale but it's true.

Listen, Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Let's pray.

Oh Lord Jesus, you rose and we're here. Sometimes we struggle to believe it. Lord, we press it upon our hearts as we go to the supper. Lord, help us to have a vision of not just the middle of the story where we are but the end. Lord, we thank you that you've given us all of it. In Jesus' name, amen.