Sean: The resurrection from the dead is at the very center of who God is. It's front and center of what God tells us his character is like. This is like his hallmark. All the hope and the joy and the peace that you get when you think about being reunited with someone lost or spring coming from the dead of winter or sorrow turning suddenly into joy, those are telltale characteristics of who God himself is. He invented that.
Caleb: The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Sean: Turn in the bibles to first Corinthians chapter 15. Very close to the end of first Corinthians now. Over today, we're just gonna be looking at verses one through 11, though we've been taking first Corinthians more broadly, kind of in bigger chunks. This chapter will have to break into a few pieces because of how Paul approaches the subject matter. But that's all right.
That's good. I want to be preaching the same way we should be reading our Bible, and that is letting the Bible set the pace and set the agenda. Sometimes we have whole chapters dedicated to one teaching like last time, chapter 14. Big chapter, but it was all more or less about intelligibility in worship, being able to understand what is being said and benefit from that. Other chapters like today are broken.
They're kind of more complex. They're broken into a few more pieces, and so we just need to follow along with those a little bit more slowly. So that's what we're gonna do today with verses one through 11. Chapter 15 as a whole is written primarily to teach the Corinthians about our resurrection, about resurrection, what happens to us after we die. Because the Corinthians have rejected the idea of a bodily resurrection.
It's very problematic. Now Paul has actually already dealt with this problem earlier in the book. If you maybe remember this, back in chapter six, the Corinthians were having this misbelief, this wrong idea of the soul being pure, eternal, and good, and the flesh being corruptible and temporal and bad. Not only did that belief lead to not thinking there would be a bodily resurrection, but it also led, believe it or not, to sexual immorality. That's what the problem was in chapter six, coming from the same issue that we see here.
It might seem strange to think that a wrong understanding of the body's relationship to the soul could result in such a thing. But more or less what they were thinking was, Hey, why not just use the body to enjoy pleasure now here on earth? It doesn't affect my spirit. I'll shed my sinful flesh and then be raised a nice pure spirit and go to heaven. So that's kind of how this misunderstanding of body and spirit was plaguing them in chapter six.
Paul corrected this thinking by teaching that the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but in fact the body is meant for the Lord, and the Lord is meant for the body. And just as God raised Jesus up from the dead bodily, so we too will be raised up from the dead bodily. And then he goes on and says, Don't you know that your bodies are members, body parts, of Christ himself. So Paul reminds them in chapter six, the body is not a mistake. It's not temporary.
It's not a temporary living place, but it's eternal. It'll be raised up just like Christ was and is bound together with Christ. So then in chapter six, Paul uses the truth of the bodily resurrection to combat sexual immorality. Now in chapter 15, Paul's going to get to the core of this problem. Because if the Corinthians deny the resurrection of the body, this leads to an even bigger issue than sexual morality.
It means they are denying the gospel itself. See, Paul's going to set them straight here. But he can't address our resurrection, our bodily resurrection on the last day when Christ comes until he establishes this foundation of the gospel. Of course he can't. Because it's Jesus' bodily resurrection that are the first fruits of our resurrection, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
And Christ, he is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead as it has gone with Jesus, so it will go for us. And so in order to make an argument for our resurrection from the dead, Paul begins here with making an argument for Christ's resurrection from the dead. So of course, he starts the gospel. You need to do that. It's like you can't explain two plus two equals four unless someone understands the value of two.
Then you can put those things together. So Paul is starting right now with the fundamentals. Accordingly, then in this chapter that's talking about our resurrection from the dead, Paul begins right with the gospel. And I'll start in verse one, but first, pray for us. Lord, we thank you for this, joyful and gladdening of all things, that you are indeed alive and that we live because of your life.
Thank you for that. Let us enter more deeply into that now. Be encouraged by it, be challenged by it, be strengthened by it. We pray your blessing on this sermon and the reception of it. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.
Verse one. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. Okay. Firstly, as I mentioned, Paul reminds them of the gospel. The goal is to argue them into submission by starting from something they already know and then logically working from that thing from the gospel in such a way that shows them that their position is inconsistent.
Paul says, okay, you affirm the gospel, great, but you don't affirm the resurrection. It's impossible to hold those two beliefs together because the resurrection is the core of the gospel. So what Paul's going be doing is essentially saying, hey, if you believe the gospel, alright. Well, then you have to also believe the resurrection for all of us. So this is how he breaks it down.
He says he preached the gospel to them, and they received it. So that's good news. He says they're standing in it. That's great. That's also good.
And he says, By it, you are being saved. Better yet, all sounds very positive so far. But then he gets to that if. He says, If you hold fast to the word I preached, unless you believed in vain. So these three affirmations, receiving, standing, being saved by the gospel, they are only true if the Corinthians are presently holding fast to that gospel.
It's a very important qualification. And really to thoroughly understand what he's saying there, we're just gonna take a little bit of a closer look into how these verbs are functioning in Greek. Because actually it does make a difference here. So we know they received the gospel. That's just like it sounds like in English.
It was something that happened in the past, and it's done. They received it. But this next one is interesting, the gospel in which you stand. It's a little nuanced, and you've probably heard pastors mention this sort of thing before. I think you hear it a lot.
And that is that they're standing in the gospel. It's a present action, happening now, that was started with and flows from a past event. Something happened in the past. It started this new state, and they have continued in that state even now. They believed in the gospel, started standing, and they're still standing in it now.
You hear authors say this fairly often when the author will say, And from that day so and so, such and such. That's pretty much the same idea. Another way to picture it is if you have a prosthetic leg given to you, that's a moment in the past where you receive that prosthetic leg, but then it affects you all throughout your life as you continue to utilize it and stand upon it. So again, Paul says to them, You received the gospel, and you're still standing on that same truth today. That's good.
But remember, what does the present standing depend on? It depends on the genuine reception of the gospel in the first place. Continuing on then, he says that this same gospel is the one by which you are being saved. Grammar here is important as well. This idea of being saved is maybe a little bit foreign to us.
We don't focus on it as much. But it's the idea of something is happening in you. It's happening to you. You're not doing the saving yourself. The saving is being done in you, and it's being done presently.
So by receiving this gospel in the past, you are right now presently being saved by it. That's not generally the way we think of salvation though, is it? We talk about salvation in present terms too much. We often say, I got saved, or when did you get saved? We're talking about that moment at which right now we don't know the Lord, we believe, and now we are saved.
We think about it in those terms. Know, 15 people got saved this weekend. That's the sort of thing we think when we hear the word saved, and that's not unbiblical. The Bible does talk in those terms. For instance, Titus three five, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.
So the Bible does talk about salvation as something that's happened in the past, but it uses the term salvation a bit more broadly as well. The Bible teaches about being saved, salvation, something that God is doing in us right now throughout the course of our life, something that's not done yet, that's being worked out, and something that in fact we need to cooperate in God with this saving activity. That one makes us a little more uncomfortable because of course we want to stay far away from works based salvation, and for good reason. But we don't need to worry about using biblical terms unbiblically. The Bible very much does say that we are being saved, that we need to be faithful in that, and it's not contradicting itself.
So we can also lean into this present aspect of salvation that the Lord is working in our lives along with scriptures. As Paul is here, and just a few other examples of this, Philippians two thirteen, where Paul says, work out your salvation. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work according to his good pleasure. First Corinthians one eighteen, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved or he says, to us who are being saved is the power of God.
Paul refers to Christians there as ones who are being saved. Second Corinthians two fifteen, for we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved. And then first Timothy four sixteen, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing so, you will save both yourself and your hearers. Notice then that in those couple examples, salvation is something that's going on right now.
God's working it out, and we are working along with him, cooperating with his work fundamentally being done in our lives. And then lastly, the Bible will often talk about salvation as something that's going to happen in the future, we haven't actually experienced yet. Hebrews nine twenty eight says, Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. Notice then that's something we're waiting for to happen, when we're finally united with Christ and made perfect. So all that to say that the Bible is going to use the same word, salvation, in at least three different ways.
There's this initial event, which we believe and we are saved. Then there's this ongoing faithfulness to God by his grace that he's working in us. And then there's this final time in which Christ returns and makes us perfect, we dwell with him forever. I mention those because Paul is talking about salvation in the second sense here. The gospel they received is the same one by which they are being saved.
The present outworking, or we could say outworking and inworking, of their salvation depends upon the genuine reception of their gospel in the first place. But now we come to that very important if that Paul threw in there. This potentially changes everything we've said. This is all happening if you hold fast to the gospel I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. Paul says, if you're not holding fast to the gospel now, then your initial belief was in vain.
And let's follow the implications of that closely. If you're not holding fast now, then you didn't really believe, and so you didn't really receive that gospel. If there was no genuine reception of that gospel, then there can't be a present standing in it. If you're not standing in it presently, you're not really being saved. What Paul is saying here is that if they are not presently holding fast to the gospel, then they are indeed not saved.
They never received it in the first place. Now specifically, for the Corinthians, he is talking about, again, their denial of the resurrection. He says, You guys cannot possibly be holding fast to the gospel if you are denying bodily resurrection. Because without the resurrection, the gospel is not good news, it's terrible news. Without the resurrection, the news of the gospel is that Jesus is dead.
That is not good. That is not what we believe. That is not salvation. It's not Christianity. So their belief is in vain, and they are not being saved if they deny the resurrection.
Because to deny resurrection categorically, again, is to say that Jesus was not saved. So that's what he's saying in context here. But I wanna pause for a moment and just see what this might mean for us, what the principle he's laying out here might mean for us. What are some of the implications? Because I don't think anyone would be denying the resurrection here.
But there may be other aspects of the gospel we are not holding fast to. Maybe other aspects of the gospel we are denying in the way we live our lives or think. So what we really see here is if I'm not holding fast to the gospel now, then it doesn't matter if I received it in the past, if I think I received it in the past, or if I raised my hand at a rally or responded to an altar call or wrote my name down on a card or was raised in church. If I'm not right now holding fast to, clinging to the gospel as my only hope for salvation, then it's very possible that past experience I had was a vain belief. And I bring this up just because I know there's an impulse in believers to want to say, Hey, how do I know I'm saved?
Had that conversation many times, and we want to look around at something around us and say, Okay, that's a good indication that I'm a Christian. And truth be told, there are many things that can be looked at. I think baptism is a good one. That sign by which we are brought down into the grave with Christ and raised up alive, I think that's a good thing to look for when we try to see, Am I saved? But at the same time, I think Christians today too often look backwards for an assurance of salvation.
I think too often Christians today, they're wondering, Am I saved or not? Try to think about, Well, what was the commitment I made as a child? What was the moment that I felt the ward working in the past? I think we're very prone actually to excuse our present faithfulness with an appeal to rather, we're very prone to excuse our present faithlessness with an appeal to a past faith. We might say things like, Well, I'm not doing as well as I should, but I did accept Christ as a child.
Or, I'm a Christian. I believe God. It's just not a big part of my life. That doesn't sound to me like a life that is holding fast to the gospel of salvation right now. And I think if we were boiled to this down to some advice, the Bible would tell us if you want to look somewhere to know if you're saved, look to today.
Look to right now. Are you presently relying on Jesus, even now, for your salvation? Do you see evidence of that salvation being worked out in your life even now? Are you living in ways that make apparent that you are in fact convinced that the gospel is true and you're holding fast to it? Or if you're not living that way, are you at least convicted by some gospel truth you are holding fast to?
Are we clinging daily to Jesus' death and resurrection for hope, for peace, for the renewal of the energy we need in our inner person, motivation? Is the resurrection a practical part of our life even here and now? I think as we consider this teaching with regard to salvation, we'll find Paul is saying something like the assurance of your faith in the past is the endurance of your faithfulness in the present. Again, that's the the assurance of your faith in the past is the endurance of your faithfulness in the present. The gospel, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, these aren't like the facts you learn in third grade to pass a test and move on.
No, they're rather like the food you eat or the water you drink. These are things that we need day by day to sustain and center and focus us and point us and prioritize our lives. We see that all throughout scripture too. The just shall live by faith, or second Corinthians five fifteen, the life that I now live and live not for myself, but for him who for my sake died and was raised again. This is what we're called to in scriptures.
And Christ's resurrection from the dead, either explicitly or implicitly, should come into our lives in the way we make decisions. How do I respond to this right now knowing that Jesus is raised from the dead? So are we holding fast ourselves to the gospel now? That's an encouragement and a warning both for us. Moving on.
Then we've just seen that Paul reminds the Corinthians, if they're not clinging to the gospel now, then they've believed in vain and they are not saved. And now that he's established and locked that into place, he's going to demonstrate to the Corinthians how the resurrection is inseparable from the gospel, such that to deny the resurrection is to deny the gospel. And once again, does this. When he does this, he's got them in checkmate. Because of course, then they either have to affirm the resurrection or admit that they are not saved.
So he really is working them into this. And let's see how he does it in verse three. He's gonna talk about the content of the gospel he gave them, that they received. Three, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, those whom have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. So here's the content of that gospel that he preached and they received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture. Now, on one statement, and this is not an exaggeration to make it sound bigger than it is, it's true. Books and books and books could be written. I could start a sermon series on that one sentence today and really be preaching it every day till the day I die, or every week till the day I die.
It's not exaggeration. There is so much in that statement that Christ died for our sins and was raised according to the scriptures. I wanna work here to some of the big points of that though in just a few minutes. But just realize this really is, we are getting very deep and this is like the elemental core of the gospel. So he starts with the word Christ.
And we know this, but it's important to remember Christ is not Jesus' last name. Christ means anointed one. It means Messiah. Whenever you see Messiah and Christ are the exact same word just in two different languages. It means this anointed one of God.
When any biblical author as you read the New Testament, when a biblical author says the word Christ, they pull on a thread that is woven throughout the entire Old Testament. Anywhere you hear about the Messiah, the coming king, the son of David, the servant of the Lord, the offspring in the Old Testament, whenever you hear those things, the word Christ pulls them all together, summons them all together at once. Jesus is called It's just a quick example. Jesus is called the Christ in Isaiah 60 one:one. In Isaiah eleven:one-two, the Christ is identified as the son of David who's going to be king forever.
And then amazingly, this anointed king who is to rule forever, we find is the suffering servant who's going to die for the transgressions of his people. And you see that in Zechariah three:eight and Isaiah fifty two and fifty three. And then all these things go back to Genesis three fifteen, where there is the promise of the offspring who will crush the head of the serpent, undoing the work of Satan and returning people into fellowship with God. So again, this one word Christ summons together the entire weight of the Old Testament. Why does that matter here?
Well, because it means the entire Old Testament is included in the gospel. It's not separated from it. And sometimes people wonder about the relevance of the Old Testament. Well, you can't even say Jesus Christ is Lord without the Old Testament. Statement doesn't work because that's what shows us what Christ is.
So this is the gospel we reclaim to them. What happened to this Christ? Right? That's what we're gonna hone in on here. He died for our sins.
And that death was according to the scriptures. It wasn't a mistake. It was planned. It's the way God intended to save his people. Saving his people from their sin by taking the condemnation for their sin.
According to scripture, we've got it right here. Isaiah fifty three five. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Psalm twenty-two 16, For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. It's right there in scripture. This was going to happen. Paul says that the gospel declares that Christ died according to the scriptures.
What else is he saying? Says died and was buried. Why mention both death and burial? You see in the early Christian teaching as well, like the apostle creed, it says died and buried. They go together.
Why is that? Well, it's because it is so incredibly important for the early church and for us just as much to affirm that Christ, the Christ, truly, truly died and was dead. As in, just like anyone else, he lost too much blood and went into shock. And his heart stopped beating, and he died like anyone else would have. He was in fact a cadaver, a corpse.
In fact, in one of the most shocking parts of scripture, Mark fifteen forty five, Jesus is simply referred to as the corpse. Doesn't say the body of Jesus. It just calls him the corpse. I'll read it for you here. And when he and this he is is Pilate.
And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. That corpse Mark mentions is Jesus. It is God. God was a corpse, a dead body. That's shocking.
But scripture leans into this, and so do we. Why? Because we're dark and weird? No. It's because the more we contemplate the genuine death and burial of Christ, the more we marvel at his resurrection.
We put our hands over our mouths and we're silent when we realize that really and truly this cold dead body had his heart start beating again after three days. That Jesus took his deep inhale of breath and started that life giving rhythmic breathing again after three days that he sat up and walked out of the tomb. That's not fully miraculous if there's some sort of a little trick involved. If he didn't really die, or if Jesus' spirit kind of left his body while he was still on the cross, didn't really die, was waiting in heaven, and then came back into the body later on. That's not true death.
If that's the case, this is not as wonderful as it could be. No, Jesus really died, and we really need to know how bad that is. Because without that, we cannot know how good the resurrection is. The resurrection really is as good as anything could possibly be. There's nothing better.
Nothing in heaven or on earth is better than the resurrection. It tells us that God lives and has saved. That's amazing. And of course, this too is in accordance with the scripture. It's amazing.
Hosea six:two, After two days, he will revive us. On the third day, he will raise us up that we may live before him. And Psalm sixteen ten, For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. So Jesus did raise. It was according to the scripture.
In fact, a lot of the work that Jesus had to do after he raised was simply convincing everyone that this was always in the scripture the whole time. Luke twenty four forty five through 46, one of the instances where he addresses this, he's talking with some disciples after he's raised from the dead. It says, Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, 'Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day raise from the dead. And for the Corinthians, again, focusing back on them, this is very important because this resurrection of Christ from the dead, he wasn't a ghost floating around. He himself was a body.
He's a body. In fact, he goes to a lot of work to prove his bodiliness to the disciples. It's a little bit humorous. In Luke twenty four thirty seven, Jesus appears to the disciples and they're concerned because they think that maybe he's just a spirit. And this is what it says in scripture.
Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Notice there how Jesus says, I myself, and he's pointing to his body, affirming that the body and him himself are one and the same. There's not this division that the Corinthians are believing in. So Jesus continues, touch me and see.
For a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they were still disbelieving for joy and remarveling, he said, have you anything to eat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he ate it there in front of them. So he ate fish to prove to them, yes, this is a human body, a renewed one, we'll see later on in first Corinthians 15, but still a body of flesh and bone nonetheless.
Jesus' body of the resurrection destroys the Corinthians belief that the flesh is sinful and temporary and the spirit is pure and eternal. Here we see Jesus in his pure and eternal and glorified state as flesh and bone and eating fish. So the Corinthians must then affirm the resurrection of Jesus if they are to affirm the gospel. And if they do that, they have accepted that this is indeed a genuine bodily resurrection, and that has implications for all believers in all of our resurrection. And he gets into that later on in 12 through 58.
But before he does, Paul gives this aside. And it's an intensely personal moment from Paul where he gives his own testimony as the power of Christ's resurrection in his own life, how he himself was moved from death to life as a result of Christ's resurrection. See here in seven. Then to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.
But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And this grace towards me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preached and so you believed. Now we know we just covered it, that Christ's resurrection really is physical.
But we also know that this has spiritual implications for us. As Christ was raised, so we are raised from spiritual deadness as a result. Paul teaches that throughout a lot of the New Testament. One is Romans six:three-four where he says this, We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in the newness of life. So we see that.
Jesus raised from the dead and us spiritually raised from the dead. And so in other letters from Paul, he makes pretty clear that the resurrection is the basis for our resurrection from death to life. And I strongly believe that this personal aside here is his illustrating the effects of the resurrection in his own personal life. And I think that for for two reasons. One, you just look at the overall flow of that last passage, how it works.
Paul moves from persecuting the Christians to an apostle of Jesus Christ, and he does so by the grace of God. He experiences this massive change from death to life, a resurrection, as a result of the resurrected Christ. And he believes he arranges it here purposefully in this way, illustrating his own resurrection. And the other thing is that you see Paul do this more often than you'd think in the New Testament, where he interweaves his own personal stories with his teaching. You see lot in Galatians.
You'll see a lot in second Corinthians. Paul takes his story and makes it part of his teaching. Kind of an interesting little thing he does. But secondly, I'd like to draw your attention to the phrase he uses here, as one untimely born. Now the Greek word for that is actually a lot more tragic here.
This is the word for a a stillborn baby or a miscarried or an aborted baby. That's the word Paul uses to refer to himself before Christ came to him. Now I don't think Paul is using this word just to be disparaging towards himself. I think he's using such a poignant and powerful word to illustrate that he truly was dead, like one born with no life spiritually before Christ came to him. Paul paints himself in this picture as one who is not living when Christ approaches him.
And then what happens? He's raised up. He's raised up by the resurrected Christ, by the same power that rode Jesus from the grave. I believe Paul is saying here, Christ rose from the dead, and he appeared to many. He appeared to all these disciples.
And then he took time and came over to me, dead, and rose me from the grave. It's by the grace of God that I am what I am. Paul is awed by the resurrection, and he's awed that the risen Christ would have come to him and raised him from the dead as well, From a persecutor of Christians to an apostle of Jesus Christ. And that's where I'd like to leave us as well this morning contemplating along with Paul the immense effect of Christ's bodily resurrection, the effect it has on our own lives. Just think about where we were before Christ saved us, where we'd be apart from the resurrection, where we would be, what our priorities and values were, what we sought after, and how those things have changed.
And we've already we will experience the body of the resurrection, but we've already experienced one spiritually in being brought from death, from sin, into life. And that is one that is as a result of Jesus' own resurrection. Yes, the resurrection is a real historical event, and we're separated from that event by a long period of time. But remember, your salvation today is inextricably bound to that event. That when Jesus' heart started to beat again, he unwrapped the burial shroud.
You too were raised from the dead, from the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, rather were now made children of God rather than enemies of God. So let's not think of our salvation here and the resurrection way over here in history. No. These things go together. The resurrection is our hope for salvation.
It is the the core of the gospel by which we are being saved. Right? To which we need to hold fast. And that's because once again, the crucifixion is not gospel. It's not good news if there is no resurrection.
There's no hope for salvation apart from resurrection. And again, that's where Paul is going to lead us next time. What are some takeaways then? What are some things we can leave with and keep keep in our minds, remind ourselves of as a result of what we've seen here in this passage one through 11. I think the first one is we should take to heart Paul's teaching and this warning that the assurance of our faith in the past is the endurance of our faithfulness in the present.
This idea of standing in the gospel and being saved. These are not past events. These are present tense things. Salvation isn't this big splash and we ride the wave of that splash and coast into eternity. That's not the way that works.
Rather, we walk by faith. My righteous one shall live by faith every day. We hold to the gospel as our source of motivation and hope and strength for today. So don't be lulled into apathy by looking at something you may have said or may have believed far in the past. Rather, look to your life today.
Are you holding fast to the gospel now? Is that visible in your life? And we can stir one another up towards this. We can help one another press on towards this to make sure this gospel doesn't become a past belief but remains a present conviction for us, something we're holding to now. Secondly, I just think we need to once again be amazed at the resurrection of Christ according to the scriptures.
Don't shortchange the fact that God died and that he was buried, that he truly was a corpse and that he came back to life. Let yourself be thrilled and raptured and joyful at life, at deliverance, at victory, at glad reunion. All these things are present in the resurrection. One, feel, feel what Mary felt at the tomb where she's weeping for this person she loved and thinks is dead, and then turns around and he's standing there alive right in front of her. What that did in Mary's heart and want it to have done in our hearts knowing that, yes, that resurrection is true.
It's for us. And we will experience that. And then also understand it's not a fairy tale, and it's not like a a good part of an otherwise dark story. This is the center. The resurrection from the dead is at the very center of who God is.
It's front and center of what God tells us his character is like. This is like his hallmark. So all the hope and the joy and the peace that you get when you think about being reunited with someone lost, or spring coming from the dead of winter, or sorrow turning suddenly into joy, those are telltale characteristics of who God himself is. He invented that. He is what makes that true.
So yes, it's cliche, but they lived happily ever after. That is a true category. And that is what God does. God is decidedly one of happy endings. Just let that enrich, enliven, and warm your understanding of and posture towards God.
This is what he is like. And then lastly, before we actually experience this resurrection ourselves, which we will, that'll be very exciting. Looking forward to that. But before we do, let's also thank God for the resurrection we have already experienced spiritually, like Paul did, as we were moved from hopelessness of just self destructive, downward spiraling death and being resurrected into newness of life in which we walk now with Christ. Like Paul, we were dead in our sins, and we've been made alive together with Christ as a result of the resurrection.
So so trust in that. Rejoice in that. Live out of the strength and joy that that supplies and as a result of Christ's resurrection from the dead. Let me pray for us in closing. Lord, thank you for this.
I think of the beginning of Ephesians where Paul prays for the Ephesians that their hearts would be widened, would be strengthened to receive all the love, the height and the depth and the breadth of the love of God that's for us in Christ Jesus. It's like our hearts in their normal state are not actually even able to bear the weight of this truth. We need to have some strengthening done in our hearts before we can even take the weight of how amazing this love, this truth is. So do that for us, Lord. Prepare our hearts.
Widen them, strengthen them so that we can actually have poured into our hearts the joy of the knowledge of your love for us as seen in the resurrection. Let us hold fast to this. Let us live out of this. Teach us more of this. We know you will by your spirit, and we thank you for that.
We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
Caleb: Thank you for listening to this message from King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God and the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.