The Gaze of the Saints, Part 2

to 2nd Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians,
and we find ourselves once again in chapter 4-5. I told you I
didn’t like the chapter break last week. I like it even less
this week because the passage is certainly in the midst of
a flow, as I told you last week. Paul is entering into a new section
here, a new subject, but the break probably would be better
at chapter four, verse 16 than it is at chapter five, verse
one. Nevertheless, as I introduced last week, I suggested that what
Paul was doing is tacking a new thought on to what he had already
been discussing. But it’s a there is continuity
there. Paul had been talking about physically
dying. Paul had been talking about all
the difficulties that he experienced as an apostle, as one who was
proclaiming Christ. In chapter 4, verse 7, if you
look back there, he said, we have this treasure in earthen
vessels, clay pots, so that the surpassing greatness of the power
will be of God and not from ourselves. Paul wanted God to get all the
glory, and he said that in these earthen vessels, in these clay
pots, these bodies that we have, we are afflicted and perplexed
and persecuted. We are struck down. And he even
characterizes that in verse 10 as dying. Always caring about
in the body, that is in his physical body, the dying of Jesus. And he even summarizes that in
verse 12, if you’re looking, when he says, so death works
in us, but life in you. We who preach the gospel are
going to be constantly in a state of dying. And that’s true of
every person that’s ever been born. But it’s especially true
in a particular way of those in the gospel ministry. They
are constantly fraught. Their life is fraught with difficulty
and heartache and stress and trials, as we have seen. And
so Paul Paul’s not wanting to hide from that Paul seizes upon
that thought that dying in the body and he turns it in this
passage to a different perspective. This great section, chapter four,
Verse 16 through chapter 5, verse 10, I would entitle the ultimate
fitness program. We’re all concerned about, well,
some of us are concerned about fitness. Paul says, look, I want
to lay before you the ultimate fitness program. What is fitness
for heaven look like? And that’s what Paul will touch
upon in these next many, many verses. But the first, I guess
the way I would characterize it is spiritual vigor in a physical
frame, spiritual life in a physical body. Because Paul says, look,
I know I’m dying and yet. I’m being renewed day by day. And that’s where we began last
week. looking back, if you would, at verse 16, where Paul wants
to address this spiritual restoration. And he says, therefore, we do
not lose heart. We do not quit. We’re not ready
to cash in our ministry. Life is difficult. We’re under
constant persecution. Our hearts are broken many times
over. We face difficulty and and distractions. We face heartache every day,
and yet we will not quit. Verse 16, because even though
our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed
day by day. And we looked at that outer man.
We looked at that Paul is merely referring to the earthen vessels
that he talked about in chapter four, verse seven, the mortal
flesh that he alludes to in four eleven. It is the physical body,
the perishing part of man that from birth to death is literally
dying. We looked at several anecdotes
and we agreed that we probably don’t need many to know that
our bodies are in a constant state of demise. Our eyes, our
minds, our knees, our joints, our backs. And yet, Paul says,
though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed
day by day. Every day we face a refreshing,
we enjoy an invigoration from the Lord, spiritually speaking.
There’s no stopping the process. It is as when Paul says day by
day, we are growing more and more Christlike by God’s grace
every day. And yet, as we saw, that doesn’t
happen by accident, it doesn’t happen just by your initial prayer
of faith, your initial act of repentance before the Lord doesn’t
necessarily propel you onto a inevitable course of Christlikeness, constant
renewal. It comes by the sanctifying grace
of God as we direct all of our faculties to that great spiritual
goal of Christlikeness. As believers, we begin to focus
on heavenly things. We begin to set our sights on
eternal things because all of our interests are now changed. Our desires are changed. Our
perspectives are changed. We take our eyes off of the mundane
and place them on the spiritually, unspeakably glorious things of
heaven. Paul says our inner man is being
renewed day by day. And yet, I told you, as I shared
with you last Lord’s Day, that essentially within this great
section, chapter 4, 16 through chapter 5, verse 10, which is
a series in itself, there is a little sub message there beginning
also in verse 17. And for this, we looked at what
we call the gaze of the soul. What does the Christian look
at? Paul indicates that we are being Renewed day by day, but
it’s it is so because we have this focus. We have a spiritual
perspective. We called it the gaze of the
saints. Focal points of the heavenward, what are those things that the
heavenward that Christians look at? The first thing that we saw
as we began last week, the Christians eyes look, first of all, to a
wealth of glory. We look to glory. Look at verse
17. Momentary light affliction is
producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. And that occurs, as we saw, in
the midst of affliction, in the midst of oppression and tribulation
and trial and all those things. That affliction is producing
something and it’s producing something good. And no wonder
Paul calls it momentary and light. It’s not to say that everything
that Paul experienced and all of those difficulties or all
of the difficulties that any believer ever faces is literally
momentary and literally light. We read the list of all of the
grave difficulties that Paul had experienced. Paul wasn’t
saying they were nothing at all. What Paul was saying is compared
to heaven and compared to this eternal weight of glory that
one day I will receive, that you will receive, These trials,
these difficulties, regardless of how great they are, they are
momentary. They are light. They are but
trifles. Compared to the glory that is
to be revealed. Paul said, first of all, this
glory is eternal. And it just speaks, that word
is so rich and so defined. It speaks of an indefinite period
of time. It just is absolutely open ended. It’s absolutely immeasurable. This glory that we will come
to possess will know no end. In fact, it will know constant
increase in our lives. It will just be glory upon glory
upon glory. Paul uses words and uses them
in such a way that it’s as if he is admitting he is grasping
at words to describe the unspeakable nature of this glory. And all
the difficulties, all the trials, all the wear and tear, all the
frustrations, all the pain, All the sickness and suffering will
be as nothing when we come face to face with
the glory that is to be revealed. Paul said it was only by bringing
these afflictions that he was experiencing into comparison
with the eternal glory and placing one on the opposite end of the
scale from the other that they faded. in their significance. Only when it was compared to
eternity do these struggles and trials take on the perspective
of being only for the moment. Look at verse 18. This is what
gives Paul this great confidence. It was his perspective. This
affliction was producing for them an eternal weight of glory
far beyond all comparison. Why? We look not at the things
which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things
which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not
seen are eternal. Paul had a heavenly perspective.
Paul had an eternal perspective. And the Christian is called in
this world to begin to view everything that comes before him from a
new perspective, from the standpoint of being able to view, being
able to take in that view of the invisible world, because
it’s only revealed to those that have the Spirit. That contrast that Paul sets
up Between what we experience in the world and what we sense
about the hopes of the coming kingdom of God, Paul lays this
kingdom before us as an invisible spiritual world without limits
of time or space. And he speaks about it as if
he has seen it. And so does the Christian. As
one said, these eternal realities, which are no less real because
they are unseen. Despite afflictions, perplexities,
catastrophes, the Christian’s gaze is concentrated on glory
within and beyond. His treasure is not on earth,
but in heaven. And there his heart is also. That’s faith. It’s the life of
faith. It’s seeing the things that are unseen, seeing with
a new perspective. Paul knew well, he told the Corinthians,
the world is passing away. 1st John 2.17 as well. He said
the world is passing away. And Paul saw it literally. Paul
saw not only the world passing away, but he knew his flesh was
as well. And yet he had this body. He
had this thing that was constantly being renewed day by day. When Paul says, There in verse
18, he focuses on the things that are not seen. It doesn’t
mean that they cannot be seen. But there are merely things that
we cannot see, and that’s where faith comes. It’s another in
a long line of those seeming paradoxes in this great passage.
Paul had already written about these kinds of things to the
Corinthians. In 1st Corinthians 2 9 through
13, he says this. Listen. He speaks of things which
the eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which have
not entered into the heart of man. We can’t even conceive of
what eternal glory is like, what heaven is like. For to us, God
revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things,
even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts
of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even
so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
And because we possess the Spirit, Paul says, we know the things
of God, the secret things.” It’s the eye of faith. It’s an indicator
of faith. He goes on to say that the things
which are seen are temporal. They are intended only to last
a brief season. And we look about us and we see
so much that is temporal and we forget that it’s fleeting.
We forget that it won’t always be here. It’s an interesting, interesting
place where these several words occur, occur in a parable that
Jesus told about soil. Essentially, Jesus said there
were four types of soil. And there was one soil about
which Jesus speak with the seed fell into that ground and weeds
grew up around it. And it choked out that seed.
It’s fascinating, because when Jesus goes to explain that, he
talks about trials choking out that seed. And that seed which
began to grow is found to be only temporary. There are many
who are only temporary. There are many, much in this
world that is only temporary. But we as Christians are called
to look beyond the temporary. We’re called to look beyond the
temporal, beyond the things that are just here. We’re called to
look with eyes of faith. Paul says, but the things which
are not seen, those things which are not seen are eternal. And
that was the secret of Paul’s great confidence. That’s why
Paul was so absolutely certain of his perspective of what God
was doing because of the invisible things that he was absolutely
convinced of, rather, that essentially laid the foundation for his perspective
of the resurrection of Christ. The moral strength that he felt
inside of himself, And that he was even enabled to impart to
other people. It wasn’t uncertain for Paul,
he was absolutely confident of it, as we will see in a moment. What are these unseen things?
Is he calling us to look and to view and to see somehow angels
and to zero in on that? I don’t think so. I think what
Paul has in view here when he speaks of the things which are
not seen that are eternal. He’s talking about God. He’s
talking about Almighty God and the focus that we have on Him.
We see Him as though He is visibly seen. And I’m not talking about
a vision. I’m not talking about literal
sight. But we take it in faith that He is what He is. We see
Him. We look at the things which are
not seen. The other things that are not seen are souls, the souls
of men, the souls of men and women, the souls all around us
that are eternal and that stand here in a kind of a crossroads
that so desperately need a Savior and so desperately need us to
tell them of that Savior. Paul said, we look not at the
things which are temporal. We look at the things which are
eternal. We look at God. We consider God and we consider
souls. And now, if you would look at
verse one. We are looking at the gaze of
the saints. What do the saints look at? What are the focal points
of the heavenward? First of all, the Christians’
eyes look to a wealth of glory, but secondly, a glorified body. A glorified body. Look at the
confidence of the Apostle Paul when he starts this sentence,
for we know, we know And that whole statement is predicated
upon what he had already said. Momentary light affliction is
producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. For we know. There’s no doubt
in the apostles minds. This word speaks of things that
are known by experience and which any Christian can come to know
with all confidence. Paul wasn’t wishy-washy. Paul
wasn’t doubting. Paul, like you and I are called
to be, was a man of great faith. He saw the unseen things. And what he sees here is somehow
some body that God is preparing for him. Some dwelling for his
soul. He says, we know it. Paul spoke
with that great confidence on frequent basis. But always this
spiritually imparted knowledge, not just something that he could
learn in a classroom, not simply by reading a set of facts, but
a knowledge of faith. First Corinthians 8.1, listen,
concerning things sacrificed to idols. We know that we have
all knowledge. God has told us what idols are
about. God has told us who He is. We know who is deity and
who is not. We know. 1 Corinthians 8.4, therefore,
concerning the things sacrificed to idols, we know that there
is no such thing as an idol. Romans 2.2, we know that the
judgment of God rightly falls upon all those who practice such
things. It is that absolutely settled
knowledge. It is absent of any doubt, wishful
thinking, remote possibility, It is absolute confidence. Romans
3 19. We know that whatever the law
says, it speaks to those who are under the law. Romans 8 28. We love this one. We know that
God causes all things to work together for good to those who
love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. You and I. are comforted. We are comforted as Christians
in the present difficulties that we experience, the afflictions,
the trials, because we are undergirded in our hope of future glory. We know that God is there. We know that God is going to
grant us what He has promised. We have a conviction. that what
is currently visible will soon be replaced by what is eternal
and currently invisible because of this knowledge that we have
spiritually acquired, that God has prepared a body, a space,
a replacement for this frail thing, this temporary habitation
for our soul that we currently carry around. Look at verse one
again. We know with absolute confidence
that if the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we
have a building from God. You see, there was this theory,
this idea that all of life was evil and when it died, it went
away. But the soul would live and you
would just kind of live as some kind of ghost. somewhere, even
if it was heaven, even some that believed in heaven and eternal
things, they believed in a resurrection, but they believe that you went
on through all eternity as a spirit. Paul says that’s not the case. And we don’t have every little
last word on exactly what these bodies are going to look like
or how they’re going to function. But we do know that there is
going to be a repository for the soul. We know that there
is going to be a place for the soul to reside in heaven forever. We know. We absolutely know that
if the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have
a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens. And Paul says, it’s as if I see
it. We see it. We know it. That’s the gaze of the Christian.
The gaze of the Christian doesn’t look just kind of in some ethereal
fashion to some glory undefined because Paul here defines it. Let’s talk about the earthly
tent, he says, even if this earthly tent, it’s interesting language,
isn’t it? Especially for one who had just been speaking about
the tabernacle, that temporary tent that they erected in order
to keep God’s glory, give God’s glory a place. An interesting
language from one who was a tent maker by trade. Between the two, the Old Testament
imagery. of the tabernacle, which Paul
had already used extensively in this very section and his
own personal experience as a tent maker. It is a perfect illustration. It’s a perfect illustration of
the human body. It says essentially one day you’re going to die and
your body, you’re going to break camp. That’s the bottom line.
That tent’s going to be folded up, packed away forever. It defines
this little house that we’re in as temporary. The basic meaning there is that
life is just a camping trip, right? The life in these current
bodies is a camping trip. We are just passing through. It’s a very short-lived little
journey that we’re on. We’ve got these temporary little
tents that we’re in. And he calls it further, an earthly
tent. Not a heavenly tent. It’s not
going to make the trip. We don’t need to pack it in order
to go to heaven. In fact, as we currently understand
it, this tent is falling apart by degrees, some faster than
others, some a little more ragged, some a little more tattered. But it’s an earthly tent. Look
further at this passage. Paul says, we know that if this
earthly tent, which is our house, this is where our souls reside
currently. It’s our earthly house. We know that if the earthly tent,
which is our house, is torn down and we know it will be, it’s
not that Paul’s expressing doubt or maybe wishful thinking that,
oh, gosh, if I could only keep my body, if I could only keep
this earthly tent, it means so much to me. That’s not what he’s
saying at all. Not expressing doubt. He says,
we know that if or when eventually when this tent is, which is our
house is torn down, it’s utterly destroyed. It comes apart completely. All even the atoms come completely
apart and we return completely to dust. It’s an interesting
word that Jesus even used when Jesus was talking about the destruction
of the temple. He said, Do you not see all these
things? Truly, I say to you, not one stone upon the other
will be left upon the other, which will not be torn down,
utterly destroyed, utterly destroyed. If there’s any hopes, if you
have any hopes of taking your precious bodies with you to heaven,
give it up, give it up. We know that if this earthly
tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building
from God. A house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens. This is interesting language.
A building from God, made by God, ultimately for God, for
God’s glory. We have a new building. And amazingly,
There were some who confused this building with the mansion,
with the place that Jesus said he was going to prepare, and
they’re not to be equated. When Paul mentions the building
from God, he’s not talking about the place that Jesus said he
was going to prepare. He was going away to prepare
a place for us. It’s not talking here about some
celestial mansion as if we’re all going to go up there in our
spirits and hover around like a bunch of ghosts in this beautiful
castle. It’s a silly image. What Paul
is talking about here is the dwelling place for our souls.
Whereas now they’re housed in temporary tents, are decaying
outer man, as Paul has been talking about. Paul refers to it in the
next verse as this house, as we saw, that is this current
house. And what Paul implies there is
that there is another house coming. We’re temporary in these quarters,
but there’s another house that’s coming. And what Paul alludes
to in this new house is stated in a number of ways
here As well. In verse 17, he leaves this house
completely undefined, didn’t he? He simply referred to it
as an eternal weight of glory, and part of that eternal weight
of glory is going to be a repository for our souls, a place for our
souls to dwell. He doesn’t talk about it. He
doesn’t define it at all. But here in verse one, he calls
it a building from God, the work of God. And in the very next
verse, verse two, he calls it our dwelling from heaven. The spiritual body for Paul is
absolutely so certain to take place of the the material frame
that when it’s destroyed, that we are said to already have it.
We have a building from heaven. I don’t know how they’re housed
up there. I don’t know if it’s a warehouse, but your body, your
spiritual body, your replacement body is already ready. We have
it. We just don’t have it. Paul no longer wants to leave
this whole ethereal idea, this eternal weight of glory undefined.
This building from God, this dwelling from heaven, he doesn’t
want to leave it undefined any longer. He wants the Corinthians
to know what these bodies will be like. He wants you to know. That even though this achy thing
that you’re currently carrying around in a sense that you can’t
wait to shed. He wants you to know there’s
a replacement. And he moves immediately to the consideration of the particulars
of this new house. He says, first of all, that it’s
a house not made with hands. That is, with human hands, the
contrast isn’t so much with the tent, the earthly house, as much
as it is with any other house. When he used that words, he probably
even suggested that they look about them at all the man made
edifices of various form. When we think of somebody building
a house for us, that’s our thoughts immediately are that it’s man
made, literally a stick built, a hand built home. That’s what
Paul wanted. That’s the image that Paul wanted
to elicit in their minds. That phrase was really just used
to mark the spiritual nature of this new dwelling. It’s a
divine work. It’s a God work. Not that these
bodies aren’t a work of God. Not that it’s not a miracle to
be walking around with a soul dwelling in these amazing machines
called the human body, which is what makes it so amazing to
think of. That what God has for us is better
than these, far more efficient, will not wear out. It is a supernaturally constructed
dwelling further. Look at it. This house is eternal
in the heavens. Can you imagine a body that’s
going to last longer than 70 years? It’s not like God had
to do R&D, you know, and come on, we’ve got to have some kind
of better joint operation here. We’ve got to have a joint that
lasts longer than 70 years or 53 or whatever the case may be.
The house isn’t just merely not made with hands and eternal,
but it is important to notice that it exists in the heavens.
This is the heavenly body. There’s nobody walking around
currently down here right now that possesses one. It’s only
for heaven, heavenly use, only for eternity. Instead of this indefinite durability. What a great sounding body this
is. Can’t hardly wait. Now, the bottom
line here is that this isn’t the full and final word on this
new house. Paul, it seems, is really only
trying to remind the Corinthians of this body and to look to it
and to one day hope for it. It seems like he’s reminding
them merely of detail that he had already provided. And he
had. He had. And that’s exactly the
case, because in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in
chapter 15, he provided the most complete treatment of the resurrection,
complete with a detailed description of this eternal dwelling. Now,
I know you get nervous when I say we’re going to jump out of this
book and into another, because we’re currently out of Luke and
into Philippians, out of Philippians, into second Corinthians. I want
to go out of 2nd Corinthians into 1st Corinthians just for
a couple of. Messages, if you would turn to
1st Corinthians, 1st Corinthians 15, this is an unofficial hiatus. You will hardly notice. That
I am out of Luke, out of Philippians, out of 2nd Corinthians and into
the first epistle. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Paul begins there by speaking
of the resurrection as inextricably, inextricably part of the gospel.
It is. You cannot have the gospel without
the resurrection. You cannot have a gospel that
does not include the idea of the very facts of the resurrection
inextricably part of the gospel. In verses one through four, you
see the core elements of the gospel. Paul gives them there.
In chapter five, or pardon me, verse five through ten, Paul
cites a variety of historical appearances that prove the resurrection. In verse eleven, there’s that
conclusion that draws out both preaching and faith that, look,
that’s why we preach and that’s why you believe. There is proof
in the resurrection. Paul goes on from there to talk
about the resurrection as being logically necessary. And he uses
this series of if-then statements. If this is true, then this is
true. And he uses reason. I always love it when people
say, oh, you can’t reason from Scripture. Oh, really? Paul did
it repeatedly. He goes on from there to talk
about the resurrection as being crucial theologically. In verse 20 through verse 34,
everything in our resurrection is tied to the resurrection of
Christ. So don’t tell me the resurrection
of Christ is unimportant because if Christ is not raised, Paul’s
conclusion, if Christ is not raised, we are hopeless. If there is no resurrection of
Christ. Then we are among all men, most
to be pitied. The fact of the resurrection
is already, he’s already sewed up the fact of the resurrection
by the time he gets to verse 34. And he comes now to consider
the manner of it. What’s it like? What is the resurrection
like? And that’s where he begins to
talk about this body, this body that is promised. We have the
resurrection presented to us in an illustration, and that’s
where I want to pick up. It doesn’t look so formidable
at this point, does it? We’re just going to begin in
verse 35 of chapter 15. But someone will say, how are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do
they come? You fool. That which you sow
does not come to life unless it dies. And that which you sow,
you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps
of wheat or something else. But God gives it a body just
as He wished, and to each of the seeds of a body its own.
All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of man
and another of beasts and another of birds and another of fish.
There is also heavenly bodies. There are also heavenly bodies
and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one and the
glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun
and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars.
For stars, a star differs from star and glory. So also is the
resurrection of the dead. It is sown in a perishable body. It is raised an imperishable
body. It is sown in dishonor. It is
raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is
raised in power. It is sown in a natural body.
It is raised in a spiritual body. And if there is a natural body,
there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, the first
man, Adam, became a living soul and the last Adam became a life
giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not
first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man
is from the earth, earthy. The second man is from heaven.
As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy. As is the
heavenly, so also those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne
the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly. What Paul begins to enter into,
as I said, is the nature of the resurrection. What’s it going
to be like? How’s it going to work? What kind of bodies are
we going to have? How is this resurrection going
to take place? What about things like cremation?
What about the situations where somebody falls overboard and
their parts are scattered in the depths of the sea? What about
that? Paul has already, as I said,
established the truth of the doctrine of the resurrection.
That’s not our concern here. We’re going to take that as a
given, but he proceeds to look at the manner, the nature of
the resurrection. What is it like? What is it?
What is this resurrected body going to be like? So let’s consider this passage
for the remainder of this day and perhaps next and perhaps
the next after that. And after that, I think we’ll
be back to Corinthians verse 35. But someone will say, how? How are the dead raised? And
with what kind of body do they come? Is it going to be the same
body that we have now that died? And it’s just going to kind of
somehow be rejuvenated? New cartilage, right? Fresh mind. Lazily treated eyes. All the
good stuff. Is that all that we’re going
to get? The two questions are kind of tied to one another.
You can’t go too far to separate them. The first question focuses
on the hidden working. How is this awakening going to
take place of the body, which is ultimately given over to death?
How is that? Number one, how is it possible
and how is it going to be accomplished? How’s God going to pull this
off? The second question is kind of the result of this amazing
spiritual operation of God. What is the nature? What are
the qualities? What kind of what does that body look like? How
is it even possible that life is going to come out of death?
That that part of it has already been dealt with in the resurrection.
But how is God going to reconstitute human flesh? How is God going
to pull that off? As one said, the great objection
in the minds of the Corinthians to the doctrine of the resurrection
was evidently the same as the Pharisees. Both supposed that
our future bodies are to be like our present ones. They really
thought that our present bodies were going to somehow go to heaven
and be refurbished in some way, shape or form. But Jesus answered the Sadducees
on that very point. And he said the future body essentially
is not going to be like the present. That’s exactly Paul’s point.
The future body is entirely different. But we’re not going to go up
to heaven and just be ghosts, our souls are not just going
to flit about eternity at will. And he uses a series of illustrations
to prove his point. He says that you are going to
have some kind of physical body. There is going to be a physical
presence to us as we understand matter, but it’s not going to
be the same body. And yet somehow you’ll be recognizable
to others. You will function well in heaven,
it will be an extremely efficient body that lasts throughout eternity
and never needs replacement. And he uses a series of illustrations
to point this out, well, We’ll begin this part of it and then
we’ll probably break off and pick up here next week. Look
at verse thirty six. That which you sow does not come
to life unless it dies. He basically says, do you remember
last spring when you planted the garden, right? That’s about
what he says. That which you sow, when you
went out and planted your garden, when you went out and planted
seed, that which you sow, those seeds didn’t come to life unless
they died, unless you actually planted them in the ground and
they begin the process of essentially disintegrating. The outward shell
begins to break down and then the seed begins to regenerate. That’s his point that unless
you planted in the ground and the illustration is very appropriate.
Unless we are planted in the ground, unless we die. This is
every time you plant, you basically provide your own illustration
for this very process. The new living thing isn’t merely
the old one that is reconstituted in some way, shape or form. It’s
got a connection with it. It’s tied to it. It’s directly
tied to it, but it’s entirely different. Jesus said it in John 12. So
truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth
and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much
fruit. He’s just talking about the same
exact process of planting a seed and having it come up completely
as something different. The point is that if God gave
a body to that seed, which you plant in your little garden for
your own benefit. To grow corn or beets or whatever
the case may be, how much more is God going to as he plants
your body in the ground? Does he not have the capacity
to raise up something new and better and different? One said it this way, a seed
cannot live unless it dies. If the seed remains a seed, there
is an end of it. If it stays in the shelf, in
the packet, it’s worthless. But if it dies, if it goes into
the earth, it brings forth much fruit. The seed is really ceases
to be a seed when it is sown as the ground, as the body does
when it is laid in the grave. Look at verse 37 and that which
you sow. You do not sow the body which
is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or something else. In
other words, he says, when you go to plant corn, you don’t plant
the whole ear. And if you do, you at least take
the husk off. You don’t go plant in the ear
of corn with the hopes of growing corn. If I need to explain that,
please see me afterwards. When you plant corn, he says,
you plant an individual seed. And somehow, miraculously, and
I love the process of planting these strange and varied seeds,
each one looking a little bit different from the last and up
from them come a very particular body according to that seed. But the plant, the plant looks
absolutely nothing like the seed itself, and that’s Paul’s point. We plant a seed, the plant suddenly
appears. And if we plant a natural, corruptible
body, a body that is given over to death, from that comes a spiritual,
incorruptible body in time. Very different. One said it this way, just as
the seed is to all appearance very different from the plant
which arises from it. So we learn that the body we
sow in the grave is not the body that is to be. But that resurrection
body, that spiritual body, while it exhibits visible signs of
its connection with the body out of which it is arisen, will
possess many wonderful faculties which are denied to us here.
And we don’t know exactly how, but God says it’s perfectly suited
for an eternal use in heaven. We should be comforted. Many
of us are in the midst of trial. Many of us are in the midst of
physical trial. We should be. We’ve already determined
that our bodies are decaying day by day. And if you don’t
feel it now, you will. But we don’t lose heart. We’re
not going to give up. We’re not going to quit just
because we’re facing stress and difficulty in our various ministries,
just because we face difficulty in this life. We don’t quit.
But though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed
day by day, and we know because Paul said it, because God’s word
lays it out for us perfectly. We have it as a promise of God
that one day we will possess Our souls will dwell in a body
that is perfectly fitted for eternity. We know that if this earthly
tent is torn down, we have a building from God,
a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We’ll
take it up there next Lord’s Day. Let’s pray. Our Father God, Perhaps nothing more despairs
human existence than physical pain and suffering. And Lord,
sometimes when these are brought on by persecution or stress or
difficulty, Lord, there is even more for which to despair. Paul felt it, Paul sensed it,
Paul even acknowledged it. And yet, Lord, Paul didn’t wallow
there or stay there. Paul didn’t give in to his dismay
or his difficulty. But Paul looked beyond with spiritual
eyes and he calls us to do the same. He calls us to look beyond
to eternal glory. And in a very real sense, he
leaves that undefined and that is well and good. We know that
it’s going to be good. We know that it’s going to be
magnificent. And yet, who could describe it? And Lord, we know also that awaiting
in heaven for us is a new dwelling for our soul that will last for
eternity. God’s word says it and we believe
it. Lord, we count it as a great privilege to set our sights on
those heavenly things. Eternal glory. in a glorified
body. Grant us courage. In Jesus’ name,
Amen.