1 Corinthians Week 11 • 1 Corinthians 15

Show Notes

Sunday, April 3rd • Beau Bradberry

"But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." — 1 Corinthians 15:57

–
Podcast: https://pod.link/willowridgechurch
Website: https://willowridgechurch.org
Instagram: https://instagram.com/willowridgechurch
Facebook: https://facebook.com/willowridgechurch
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@willowridgechurch

Creators and Guests

Host

Beau Bradberry

Senior Pastor

What is Willow Ridge Sermons?

Sermon audio from Sunday services at Willow Ridge Church.

Hi, and welcome to the Willow Ridge Church weekly podcast.

This is where you can find audio for our current and past sermons.

We hope that you enjoy this week's installment, and be sure to check back next week to hear

the latest message. Thanks for listening.

Good morning. There we go. Glad you guys are here with us. If you've got your Bibles, go

and open up to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is where we're going to be today. I want to reiterate

what you heard in the announcement video about our Easter service. We're excited

about it. We're excited to see what the Lord's going to do that day. We're excited to celebrate

the resurrection as a church family. We're excited to do a couple of things differently.

And so we will have an 8 o'clock, a 10 o'clock service. They'll, for the most part, be identical

in message and in taking the Lord's Supper together. We got to modify the worship set because

the 8 o'clock will be outside. The plan will be like we did last year to be in the lower

level of the parking lot. And so we would love for you, if you want that experience, to come

and join us for that 8 o'clock service. And then in between the 8 o'clock service and

the 10 o'clock service at 9, we're going to have a hot breakfast together as a church

family. It'll be set up during that service. So come early. If you're coming to the 10,

stay a little bit later, if possible, if you're coming to the 8, so that we can have that time

together. Now, hopefully also we're going to be taking the Lord's Supper here together.

Now we're going to do this a little bit differently, right? As the Lord convicts and continues to

open our eyes based off of our Lord's Supper message that we had not too long ago. And so

instead of me ending the message and then taking that, I want to, for those of you, like we've

gotten in a routine, I feel we're doing this, all right? So what we're going to do now is at the

very end of the service, so I'll preach, I'll pray, the team will come in place, the worship team

lead us in worship. And then that'll give us an opportunity to respond as the Lord leads to that.

And then the very last thing we'll do as a church family is take the Lord's Supper together at the

very end of the service. So you have between now, it's 10.15, I'm going long today. So you've got

between now and like 11.50 to go ahead and get this and get it taken care of, all right? Sorry,

kids, ministry. All right, so here we go. In 1 Corinthians, what we're going to look at this

morning is Paul's drive in a lot of this letter, all right? If I can take it and like put it in a

little bit of both terms, is this, like because you are saved, you are different. And because you are

different, you should see things differently, you should act differently, you should respond

differently. And even at the core of who we are and our feelings, that we should be able to feel

differently, that the gospel transforms us. And so we begin to look at things, not in the ways of the

world, but we look at things as those who are followers of Jesus Christ, right? And so some of

these, not all of them, we don't have time this morning to get to them, but because of this, what

we've looked at is Paul says, like, think of these things differently because of the gospel. So because

of the gospel, like when you've been wronged by a brother in Christ, when you've been wronged, like the

return is not lawsuits, right? Even if you've been wronged, Paul says, it would be better for you to

be wronged than to do this, right? And so there's the difference of what's there, but because of the

gospel, even like you approach food differently. In two different sections, Paul talks about meat

sacrifice to idols and the freedom that we have. Paul says, if it's going to cause another brother

to stumble, it's better off if we don't eat meat at all, right? Because of the gospel, we're, we're

different. And Paul continues on and on and on about, here's how we approach things and we approach

them differently, all right? And so what you and I can do is we can take and we can look at the pieces

in, in first Corinthians that it draws from this. But let's be honest, there's so many things in our

life that we approach this way, right? From our finances to who we marry, from how we handle

conflict with one another to how we handle conflict outside, right? How we approach things, how we view

things, how we manage things is different and the filter that we're running it through of what we're

seeking for is the gospel. And so this morning, as we look at chapter 15, and I'll give some, some context

here in just a second, the topic that I want us to look at this morning is death. And as believers, the, the,

the colliding that happens with, with death and the gospel. So let's start reading in, in verse 1, 1st

Corinthians 15. Paul says, 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. For I delivered to you as a first importance what I also

received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he

was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to

the 12, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom who were still alive, though

some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one

ultimately 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 his grace toward 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, if Christ

is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? But if

there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. But if Christ has not been

raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. And we are even found to be

misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is

true, that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

And we'll pause here for now. Here's a little sneak peek. This is the passage that we're going to look at

at Easter morning. And as we look at this at Easter morning, what Paul wants the Corinthian church to

have a proper understanding and application of the resurrection of Jesus, right? That Christ died,

Christ buried, and he was resurrected. And the truth of that, of where we find our hope, but where we live

in hope on a daily basis for the resurrection, because of the resurrection of Christ. Now, this week,

as I was reading through this, there was something that just kept sticking out to me. There's a piece

that's like, well, we can lock in on resurrection, but we're going to do that. And resurrection proclaimed

every Sunday is sufficient and good. But there's this piece that's there that continued to draw

out. And so as I read through all of chapter 15, in the 49 verses that are there, as I begin to

highlight on my paper, the scripture, what I found was 29 different times the word or the concept of death

is mentioned. Now, a little Bible study tool was taught this years ago, walked through this with

the Colossians class that I led last semester. And I say this, like, when you're reading scripture

and you see a word or a phrase continually repeated, pause and ask yourself why. This is an important

piece for Paul. And Paul is using death in reference to the resurrection. But what I want to do this

morning is pause and have the emphasis be on death. I read this this week and I thought it was painfully

true. An author said this, death is something no one wants to talk about, but everyone thinks about

and everyone has experienced.

As a pastor, there's no greater question or moment of vulnerability than when someone is walking

through, has walked through, or in living in the reality of death in their own life or in the life of

someone close to them. I've performed the service of small children up to senior adults.

I've walked through a family where they knew that death was coming and they still felt the shocks of pain as it

approached. I walked with families who woke up one morning thinking everything would be fine just like every other

day. And then a moment of unexpected tragedy hit and they were left to pick up the pieces because death

invaded their home. But the beauty of the hope that we have in Christ is the gospel

the gospel causes me to view death through the lens of the gospel.

And so we could talk for hours, days, and weeks about death.

But as I've sat down with families, and as I've even wrestled within my own life, the reality of death,

I believe that we can draw some truths from scripture that will bring both reality through the gospel,

but also remind us of the hope that we have in the gospel.

So this morning I just want to take through, I'm going to tell you this, we're going to be literally

all over the place, all right? So don't try to keep up turning in your Bible, just jump on the screen.

You can write down references and we'll go from there. The first thing that I want us to see,

and this is probably the duh moment, but for us to begin to wrap our minds around is this:

death is promised. All right, death is promised. Hebrews 9:27, "And just as it appointed for man

to die once, and after that comes judgment." 1 Corinthians 15:22, a little bit later on in the

chapter here it says, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive again."

Paul also writes in Romans 5:12, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,

and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned." And so what we see

continually throughout scripture is the promise, is the reminder that in short of Jesus coming back,

at some point in time and in your life and in the life of those around you, death is going to strike.

Death is going to be a physical reality for us. Whether it's an outdoor celebration service or

traditional service in a funeral home chapel or in a church, death is all too of a reality. But

balanced within scripture, what we walk through is this dynamic of not just the physical death that we

face, but the spiritual death that plagues humanity and of what we see. And we see this in 1

Corinthians 15, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall be made alive." Romans 5:12 again,

"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to

all men because of sin." And so what we see is this spiritual death that's due to sin that we're born

into, and it's why we're born and our sin and our trespasses, and we're dead, and then we are what? Made alive in Christ. It's what we

celebrate in baptism. The picture and imagery of a person who was dead because of their sin and is

dying to their sin and is raised in the newness of life in Christ to walk in the newness of life, to walk in

this spiritual life that's promised in him. The experience of life in Christ now. The spiritual

death that separates us from God and because of the work of Christ, the life that we find in him.

But because of this, this spiritual life in Christ does not free us from the earthly physical death

that we face. So that would spark within us the need of Christ and the urgency to share.

Excuse me, my grandmother passed away. My brain's all mixed up because of the times, but about a year,

a little over a year ago, and we were able to watch death take over her body.

We were able to watch her walk through it as a believer. We were able to see that and experience

that, right? And to see what the Lord was doing. We were able to see the passing of the lady who I

would say to any of you had the strongest faith of anyone that I've ever had the privilege of being

around, but yet she could not avoid death even as we see it coming, but also those who do not.

I want to share this story in sensitivity because this is what I feel like those of us we hear about,

but we don't realize. Nine years ago when Aaron and I moved up here, and the kids moved with us too,

when we moved up here, we still owned our house in Aiken and we had a hard time selling it, and so

we put our house up for rent. And the Lord worked out something pretty cool. There was a pastor from Aiken,

me moving up to the Columbia area to minister at a church, and there was a pastor in Columbia that was

moving to Aiken to minister at a church, and so somehow I didn't know him, but he had heard about

me coming up here from someone else, a mutual friend, and so he reached out to me and was like,

hey, my wife and I, as we kind of get our feet set and get settled here in Aiken with our young

family, we'd like to rent your house. And I was like, hey man, that would be fantastic. You want to set an

appointment to come by and look at it and see? He's like, no, we're good. We'll just take it.

What do you want for it? And I was like, man, this is fantastic. And I way undershot what we should

have done, right? But that's what we felt like the Lord was calling us to do. And so they moved into

our house and then we moved up here. And then I met him. I met him. And like, you ever meet somebody

and instantly you know, like, you beat me in a race or a fight, right? Like, there's just that level

of physical fitness within them that you can look at and that you can tell this. And so I met Chris and

it was, it was just that. It was like, yep, yep, this is who you are, man. Nice to meet you. We hung

out a few times and, and they were in our house and we were up here and, and, and, and life was going

well for them and life was going well for us. And, and we're walking through that. And then I get a phone

call one day and I get a phone call from, from a fellow pastor friend and he said, I just needed

to, to let you know that Chris died this morning. And I said, do what? I mean, younger than me at the

time, right? Better physical condition than me at the time. And so immediately I went like, was it a car

wreck? Like what in the world happened? And he said, Bo is the craziest thing. He said, we were out

playing ultimate Frisbee and he got the Frisbee to throw it. And as he threw and released, he was trying

to throw it as hard as he can. He strained, right? And an artery in his heart ruptured.

And before he hit the ground, he was dead, right? Godly man leading his family,

loving the Lord, right? Loving the Lord, leading the church, and he couldn't escape death, the physical

death, right? I hope we all live to the ripe old age, right? But the truth is we're not promised

that. We're not promised. We say we're not promised tomorrow, but the reality is we're not promised the

next moment. And as believers, right, that should drive our hearts with urgency for the gospel

because it's Christ and Christ alone. Also through the gospel, what I want us to see how the gospel

causes us to view death is that we view it through and understand God's compassion.

We've heard the story in John chapter 11 of time and time again of Jesus and the death of his friend

Lazarus. It's a story that I've read so many times and heard so many times that I'll be honest with

you. When I went back and read it this week, I couldn't remember the last time I'd read it because

of so many times of remembering it. But I went back and there was a couple of verses that stuck out to me.

John 11 started in verse 33. It says this, that when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come

also, come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said,

where have you laid him? And they said to him, Lord, come and see. And then those two words,

Jesus wept. And the beauty that is in this passage of what we see in the divinity of God

Jesus wept. And the truth is in the divinity of God. And the truth is in this passage of what it is in the

And in that moment of the king of kings and the king of kings and the Lord of lords, what began to happen in the news and the

reality of this friend Lazarus is that Jesus wept. There's a grieving that began to move and take place. But not only that,

not only that, not only that, what I just love from this and read and thought about this so much this week was

It was Jesus' compassion to Lazarus' sister Mary. When Jesus saw her weeping.

He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

One of the things we've been talking about in here, it feels like for years, is the understanding of what scripture has from us, to take on the burdens

Of one another, to weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice. And what we see is in the heart of our Savior,

When she began to weep, when she began to weep, the spirit of who he was began to be moved in compassion that's filled.

What I love about that is the reminder as we walk through the process of death in our life, and in those around us, we do not have a God that is so set apart from us that he doesn't understand what we're going through.

That he has a heart that understands that he doesn't understand what we're going through.

That he has a heart that understands feeling loss, and that he has a heart that understands compassion.

And then in Revelation, continuing to see the compassion of God, Revelation 21:4, says he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

I wrote these words, simple words, but in eternity he solves it. He solves it. In the removal of sin, the removal of death.

And it shall be no more.

Canceled, done away with.

No more thought through that, no more grieving through that, no more crying, no more pain, for the former things has passed away.

As he talks about the new eternity, the new heaven, the new earth, and what is waiting for us, and what is there.

He says, look, look, this that's there that you've faced, this that's there that you've endured, this that's there that you've battled through with this, it's gone.

It's gone.

And in eternity he solves it.

In eternity he solves it.

God says, I'll remove this from you, right?

Well, in this passage of scripture that we see, in light of what we're even talking about coming up in a couple of weeks here with Easter.

And in this passage, a lot of the conversation around the resurrection is because Jesus died and you believe that he was raised again.

And so what I want us to look at this morning is just simply why Jesus died.

Why Jesus died.

That in death, the beauty of what God's doing.

And the beauty of what we see as a tragedy.

What is the reminder of the hope?

Why is this essential?

Why can this not be removed from the story?

Why couldn't Jesus just show up, say, you're good, you're good, you're good, I'm out, right?

Like, that's not what happened.

He came, he lived, he died, he was buried, he rose again, he walked around, interacted some more, and then he ascended.

That's the story shrunk down in Christ right there in this moment, right?

But why did Jesus have to die?

Now this isn't a full explanation, but when we're sitting here and we're working through,

these are the things that redirects my brain of understanding the impact in the life of Christ.

Number one, why Jesus died is because sin demands a punishment, and sin demands God's wrath.

Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So when sin entered into the world, what it brought with it was death.

That's the reward of sin, the punishment of sin.

And God in His holiness cannot look at sin and say, "No, that's not a big deal."

God in His holiness can't look at sin and go, "No, we'll just sweep it away."

Because God in His perfected holiness, God in His justice says, "No, there's been an offense."

And the offense that's there, it deserves a punishment.

The offense that's there deserves my wrath, and it will happen, is what He promises us.

And so in death, Jesus comes to die because sin demands a punishment and wrath, and so what God does is God promises a Savior.

All the way back to when sin entered in, in Genesis 3, and spoken all through the Old Testament.

All through what John the Baptist proclaims about Christ, and the coming of the Savior.

All pointing to who Jesus is.

Because for all of us in Christ, our punishment was taken on by Christ.

And the wrath of God not poured onto us, but poured out onto Jesus.

And one of the best passages of Scripture in this is Isaiah 53.

The reminder that Christ would come, and that Christ would die.

But also what God does, is He tells us in His faithfulness what this would be like.

He tells us that Christ would be rejected.

And leading up to Easter, I hope you've got a plan, and you're reading through that week of seeing.

But what you'll see, and what you'll notice, and hopefully what you've noticed, was that continually those who should be waiting for the Messiah,

those who should be expecting the Messiah, reject the Messiah.

And He'd be rejected.

Isaiah 53:3 says, "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And as of one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not."

It says not only is the Savior coming, but then here's what He will even face.

God tells us in His Word about this Savior that He will be a substitutionary sacrifice.

That He will be innocent, but yet He will stand in our place.

That He will be the one to receive the sacrifice.

In Isaiah 53:5-8, "But He was pierced for what? Our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

And with His wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to His own way.

And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted.

He opened not His mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before it shears is silent.

So He opened not His mouth.

By oppression and judgment He was taken away.

And as for His generation who considered that He was cut out of the land of the living,

stricken for the transgression of my people."

He came not to pay the punishment of His,

but in death He paid the punishment for ours.

It's why we as believers will acknowledge and take this in a little while after service.

It's why we'll be reminded of the price that was paid,

of what we deserved, but of what He took in our place.

Scripture also tells us that in His death He will be silent.

Look back at verse 7.

"He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth."

As innocence stood, He chose to take on the will of the Father in place for us.

And then I love this little detail.

Because this is all throughout Scripture, multiple times that you see this.

Where God gives us, in the Old Testament, these snippets and pieces about who Christ is,

that point to who He tells us about is truly Jesus.

And if we come at this with an intellect, with facing this, that we can't deny this.

In verse 9 of Isaiah 53.

This one tells us that He was buried with the rich.

"And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death,

although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth."

Well, in Matthew 27, starting in verse 57, it tells us that there was a man named Joseph of Arimathea who was wealthy.

And following the death of Jesus, he went to Pilate, asked for the body of Jesus, prepared it, wrapped it,

put it in the tomb, in His tomb, in a new tomb.

And so what we see are these instances where it could be insignificant to some,

but it's God saying, "Watch this.

You can't line this up, but watch how the holiness of God takes care of all of this."

Of what we see.

And so Christ came to die.

But Christ also came to die to show God's love for us.

Romans 5:8, "God shows His love for us in this,

that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

This may be one of my favorite verses in Scripture,

because it says, "While we were still sinners."

God knew everything you and I would do before coming to Christ.

He knew every sin, every mess-up, every failure.

He knew every poor decision.

He knew every piece of hurt.

He knew it all.

And He still sent Jesus.

And then in the fullness of it, not only did He know everything we would do before, but guess what?

He knew everything we would do after.

And I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure all of us in here can say amen to the reality that we had sin,

and we got saved, and we still got our struggles today, right?

And He knew every single one.

And still in His grace and His compassion, He chose to send Christ to die for you and for me.

You see, the truth of the gospel is, it's not that we weren't just not deserving before Christ.

It's that we're still not deserving now.

Done nothing to deserve it.

But yet, He still sent Christ.

God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So based off of all of this, death is promised.

Based off of all this, that God sent Christ to die for us, of what His death does and what His death brings,

how do we as believers face death?

How do we as believers face death?

I just want to reiterate really quickly one of the things that I just previously said.

We grieve, all right?

This is not some message where you are supposed to respond to death in that it's no big deal.

That we just wipe it away and we move on from it.

That's not what we see.

That's not what we experience.

That's not what we do.

We weep.

We mourn.

We grieve.

But there'll be a difference in us because of the hope that we have in the gospel.

And number one is this.

We face death with hope.

We face death with hope.

Now, I don't care if it's your death or your grandma's death.

We face death with hope.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 says,

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep,

that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

Paul's saying here, it's not that we don't grieve.

We do.

But we grieve differently.

You may sit in a room and see the same thing.

You may see the tears that are there.

Both of us may need grief counseling.

Both of us may need to walk through a process.

Both of us are going to have good days and bad days.

But the difference is that we grieve under the umbrella of hope that we have life beyond this world.

That we have life beyond this.

That we have life in Christ.

And so we face death with hope and the reminder of who Jesus is and a life that's found in him.

But we also look for even more with the reality of what this hope will bring.

Jesus on the cross, remember, hung in between two thieves.

One thief who mocks and one thief who comes to Christ.

And the thief that comes to Christ says, "Jesus, don't forget me."

And Jesus says to him, "Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise."

Paradise.

I don't know about you, but I've been to some nice places.

I've never experienced paradise.

Right?

Where we typically think about places with paradise, somehow I still end up with a really bad sunburn.

You know what I mean?

Places that are there.

But Jesus, through what we see, describes a place that's different.

To the man that's hanging beside him.

The reality of whatever brought him to the choices he made in life are gone.

What he's experienced in the pain of that moment will be removed from him.

And what he has is the hope that's in Jesus and in him alone.

Another way that we face death through the gospel is we understand this.

God uses death.

All right?

God uses death.

And God is going to use death in many, many ways.

Really importantly, God uses death to grow our faith.

All right?

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1,

"For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we have experienced in Asia.

For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.

But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead."

Right?

So Paul says like, "We've gone through what we've experienced."

It is a burden beyond what our strength can get through.

To realize that we've experienced the sentence of death is more than what we can fathom.

But in this, God was doing something in this.

That God, when this was pronounced on us, when this is the reality that we would face,

what God does and what God's doing in that is to say,

"No, no, no, no. You're going to press more and more into me."

Because in your circumstances, there is no hope.

In your circumstances, here's what the outcome will be.

But death causes us to lean in, rely on God more.

Here's the tension. Here's the danger for us in this.

It's for some of us, when bitterness begins to creep into our heart,

because death isn't something we want to talk about.

Death isn't something we want to face.

Is that when we do face it, the tendency is to push away from God.

The tendency is to run away from God.

And God says, "No, no, no, no, no.

When you get that news about your kid, when you get that news about your wife,

when you get that news about your grandma, about your best friend,

what you do is you press in, rely on me more.

And in that, as you grieve and as you go,

I will bring you into a deeper sense of faith than you've experienced before."

And that's the beauty of the gospel.

That's what God works in.

That's what God does.

But God also uses death for the gain of glory.

2 Thessalonians 1:10.

When he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints,

and to be marveled among all who have believed,

because of our testimony to you was believed.

In death, we will experience a special kind of glory that we haven't experienced before.

In full circle.

Not to those who are not in Christ, is what the verse before it tells us.

But only those who are in Christ.

It's what we get to experience.

It's what we see.

Right?

1 Peter 3:18.

We're going to see that God uses death so we can have eternal fellowship.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,

that he might bring us to God, being put to death in flesh, made alive in the Spirit.

It's only possible through Christ and Christ alone.

This isn't a world of realistic hope that can be found in things like universalism.

It isn't believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and God honors both.

That's not what the gospel tells us.

The gospel doesn't tell us, "Go and fight, go and earn, go and become, go and do,

because in this you'll have earned your way."

That's not at all what the gospel tells us.

The gospel tells us, "For Christ also suffered once for sins,

the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God."

Are you Jesus? Am I Jesus? No.

And neither is Muhammad,

and neither is any other God,

and neither is any other prophet,

and neither is any other teacher.

It's through Christ and through Christ alone,

and that in his death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit.

It's only possible through Christ and Christ alone.

And then the beauty in the parable in which Jesus is teaching in Matthew 25.

There will be those on the left that he'll dismiss into eternal punishment.

Verse 34 says, "Then the king will say to those on his right,

come, you who are blessed by my Father,

inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

That's something that causes us to think about inheritance, right?

They die, we inherit.

Mostly in this world we hope for they die and we inherit money.

But thanks a lot to a lot of tax systems,

oftentimes they die and we inherit payments, right?

And that's what we get.

And that's the reality that's there.

And so the cost that's there, but in Christ,

he says there's an inheritance.

There's a kingdom that's prepared for you, that's found in Christ from the foundation of the world.

And so there's this reward, this eternal reward that's waiting.

That's there.

A reminder of hope.

And then lastly, this is our last couple of verses.

2 Corinthians 5.

Paul writes, "And so we are always of good courage.

We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord.

For we walk by faith, not sight.

Yes, we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord."

Two things in closing.

Are you walking by faith?

Are you walking by faith?

Are we walking in our logic?

Are we walking in our understanding?

Are we walking in what we deem right?

Or do we say, "Lord, I know what you expect from me.

I know what you desire from me.

And so, Lord, even though I don't understand it,

though death may come,

even though persecution may await me,

even though there may be strife and conflict,

Lord, even though this life here may hurt,

I'm going to take every step in walking by faith

to please and honor you in my life."

And then number two,

do you long for something more?

When it comes to your neighbors,

the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

Right?

And when it comes to Jesus, it is.

And I want to challenge you this morning.