Transformed

I’m Ron. It seems like forever since I’ve
been in the pulpit. It was only two weeks, and two
weeks out of the pulpit seems like a long, long time. I do remember, however, that
we were in the midst of our study of 1 Corinthians 15, and if you
wouldn’t mind turning there, I’d like to pick up right where
we left off by, at least this morning, introducing this next
section. We have the Lord’s Table to celebrate
this morning, so our time in 1 Corinthians will have to be
a bit briefer this morning. But we’ll get started today and
finish up this section, Lord willing, next Sunday. Paul, again, is presenting the
doctrine of the resurrection with a thoroughness like nowhere
else in the Bible. Paul had learned that there were
some people in the Church of Corinth who were beginning to
deny the resurrection, maybe not Christ’s resurrection, but
certainly a denial of the idea of a general resurrection of
all people. Worse yet, some of them were
beginning to actively promote such falsehood in their teaching. Paul is discussing Christ’s resurrection
from the dead specifically, but he’s using that historical fact
to teach about the general resurrection, the resurrection as it pertains
to you and I, to every believer in Christ. Just as Adam’s fall
was our fall into sin, so also Christ’s resurrection is our
resurrection. Well, we need to do just a quick
and very short review. Many people, including me, have
missed at least one of the first five weeks of this chapter. And I’d like to pull us all back
together just by a glide into this particular passage. There
are, as I pointed out, five major sections in this chapter. Verses
1-11, verses 12-19, verses 20-34, verses 35-49, and then the final,
verse 50-55. Now, in verse 1 through 11, we
saw that the resurrection is inextricably part of the gospel. They are inseparable. You cannot
talk about the resurrection without leading into the gospel, and
you cannot give the gospel without referencing, pointing to, articulating
the resurrection. The resurrection was at the core
of what Paul had preached and taught in Corinth, and these
people had embraced it. They received it. Ultimately,
they were transformed, they were established, and saved by the
gospel of the resurrection. That Christ had died, was buried,
and raised again. That was part of the gospel.
That message to Paul was of first importance, as he told us. And
just in case someone in the midst demanded it, in verses 5 through
8, Paul sets forth a lengthy list of eyewitnesses who could
come and testify to the fact that they had seen Jesus Christ
risen from the dead. Well, in verses 12 through 19,
the next section, we saw that the gospel is logically necessary. It was completely absurd for
these Corinthian believers who had believed the gospel message
to now be denying the resurrection that is woven into that message. What then had they believed?
How do some among you say that there is no resurrection from
the dead? Paul queries. And Paul goes on
to present logical arguments for the doctrine of the resurrection.
If someone denies the resurrection, there are logical conclusions
to which they must hold. And so Paul dismantles such errant
thinking. In the third section, verses
20 through 28, Paul showed that the resurrection is also theologically
crucial. More than just important, it
is of vital importance. It affects everything. It impacts
our thinking, our thinking impacts our doctrine, and our doctrine
impacts our life. the way that we carry and conduct
ourselves in the world. What we believe about the resurrection
will affect the way that we live. Paul began this section by presenting
some magnificent features of the resurrection. That Jesus
Christ was necessarily the first to be raised from the dead. He
was the firstfruits, but that immediately implies that others
would be raised as well. As such, Jesus Christ is the
necessary means of resurrection. It is by the man Christ Jesus,
because as Paul says, by a man came death, Adam, so also by
a man came life. the Lord Jesus Christ. This is
all due to what Paul shows us thirdly there, the consequential
sphere in which we live. And we got that word sphere from
that tiny little word in verse 22, in. It identifies the sphere
in which we reside. And it’s either a sphere of cursing
and death, or it’s a sphere of blessing. resurrection, life. In Adam all die, but there’s
another sphere entered into only by faith, faith in Jesus Christ,
and that sphere is in Christ. All will be made alive in who
are in Christ, and the divine climax of Christ’s resurrection
there in verses 23 and 24 is the order of events for the resurrection
itself. Paul says Christ first, then
believers, then comes the end. It’s that simple. Paul adds a
remarkable explanation in verse 25 through 28, a description
of the kingdom of God’s beloved son. his reign, his vanquished
enemies, even what we read about this morning in Psalm 139, the
culmination of that reign, which ends with the presentation of
his unblemished bride to his heavenly father. It’s a remarkable
scene that Paul paints. And then in verses 29 through
32, Paul turns again to logic. in order to undergird the doctrine
of the resurrection. But when he employs logic here
in these verses, instead of reasoning against a denial of the resurrection,
his arguments are for, in favor of the resurrection. And he takes
aim at the absurdities of doubting the resurrection from the dead. And then, suddenly, In verse
35, Paul changes up the nature of his argument once again. His
fourth argument, the resurrection is not only inextricably part
of the gospel, not only logically necessary, not only theologically
crucial, Here in verse 35, Paul begins to show that the resurrection
is substantively different. I’ll pick another word the next
time I preach this. Substantively. Paul wants to
be thorough here in his argument. There can be no doubt, but to
the point that he begins to make in verse 35 is not an extraneous
point. It is essential to his overall
argument. Resurrection brings about change. Not wholesale change, not an
entirely different being, but transformation of the individual. The bodies of resurrected believers
will be raised and transformed in an amazing way. And Paul describes
it in verses 35 through 49. Would you follow along? 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 of its own.
All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men
and another flesh of beasts and another flesh of birds, and another
of fish. 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 star differs from star in 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 a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there
is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, the first
man became Adam, became a living soul. 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 those who are earthy, and as is the
heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have
borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of
the heavenly. Paul begins this section by answering
a hypothetical question. It’s only as if someone has posed
this question. Paul is wisely thinking ahead,
considering the possible challenges to his argument thus far about
the doctrine of the resurrection, and he mulls over the argument
that he has given so far, and he thinks of one particular challenge
that was likely to be raised. And he articulates it in verse
35. Would you just glance there, please? But someone will say,
it was almost a sure thing that he was going to face this contention. Someone will say, how were the
dead raised? And with what kind of body do
they come? There are two questions that
this hypothetical person asks. The first, how are the dead raised? And if you’ve ever had a conversation
with a non-believer about the topic of the resurrection, the
question is likely to come up. They don’t even have to be harsh
skeptics of Christianity. They could well be well-meaning individuals just looking for
answers. How? How does it work exactly,
this resurrection thing? How is it that someone who is
long dead suddenly is made to rise from the dead? And to what? It’s a pretty straightforward
question. Does God reconstitute the blood in the body and restart
the heart and then the brain activity? Speaking of how, how is it exactly
that they come up out of the ground? Or worse yet, if they
were drowned in the sea and their flesh was consumed and their
bones cast adrift in the ocean currents, how would that work? And while we’re at it, what about
cremation? What about those who were cremated,
reduced to ashes? How would it be possible, even
for God, to gather up all the DNA, all the dust that comprises
an individual’s body and reconstitute it back into a body of flesh. How? How are the dead raised? But it really is a faithless
question. Listen to this from the expanded
account of the creation of mankind from Genesis 2. Genesis 2, 4
through 7, just listen. This is the account of the heavens
and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord
God made the earth and heaven. Now no shrub of the field was
yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted,
for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there
was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from
the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. Then the
Lord God formed man of dust from the ground. And he breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. Did we get that? From the dust
of the ground, the Lord formed Adam. And you know what, when
Adam and Eve fell into sin, part of Adam’s curse, you’ll remember,
was not only that the ground would be cursed because of his
sin, but that one day he would die, and he would return to the
ground, and God gives the reason for that at the end of Adam’s
curse. For you are dust, and to dust
you shall return. That really is all that constitutes
Mr. Adam. Dust. Dirt. So, as Paul asked King Agrippa
in King Agrippa’s courtroom, why is it so incredible if God
does raise the dead? After all, he’s God. The God
of all creation who first formed man out of a handful of dust
can surely do a like miracle in reconstituting a body out
of that same dust by raising it from the dead. So how? Easy. He’s almighty God, creator
of heaven and earth. But there’s a second question.
And since Paul points out that this second question comes from
the same individual, the initial question becomes much more suspect
now. The second question is this,
and with what kind of body do they come? Not just how, but
even if God can somehow pull off raising someone from the
dead, with what kind of body? What will they be like? With
what kind of body do they come? Now, this is subtle, but we can
tell by Paul’s response to this question, especially to this
particular question, that there is a distinct undertone of skepticism
here. He’s asking about the nature
of the resurrected body, if it were to be raised from the dead.
And that line of thinking would go something like this. So, Paul, Are you suggesting
that God is going to bring back this achy body of mine after
I die? This body, given over to weakness,
degenerating ever since I hit 20 years old, prone to sickness
and disease, this body? Are you saying that God is going
to raise this body, the same one with the weak and bleary
eyes, capable of contracting cancer or heart disease, able
to lose fingers or limbs or organs? You mean this body? And you can
almost hear the guffaws and the snickering of the man’s friends
as he lodges this question. What kind of body are we talking
about here, Paul? Paul begins his four-point response
in verse 36. All of which is designed to show
that the resurrection body is nothing like the earthly body,
in which our souls currently reside on earth. Let’s consider
each of Paul’s four responses. We’ll take up the fourth next
week. Behind this imaginary individual’s questions lies a colossal assumption. The resurrected bodies will be
made up of the same material that he has always known. He
knows of only one kind, flesh and bone. And his errant assumption
is that resurrected bodies will be a reconstituted version of
the original. Not so. First of all, he employs
a comparison with the world of vegetation. But look at the heat behind Paul’s
response here. You fool. There, as you can understand,
are exceedingly strong words, which means that Paul puts questions
such as these almost on a level with blasphemy. Such a person
is either not thinking or lacks the basic knowledge to engage
in the process of thinking. He can’t put it together. He’s
not using his head. Listen to the way that this word
is used by Paul, Romans 2. In Romans 2, he chides the religious
Jews for aspiring to be a corrector of the foolish, those who just
don’t know, they’re just not thinking. In Ephesians 5, similarly,
he urges those believers Do not be foolish, but understand what
the will of the Lord is. Put your mind to work. Seek wisdom
and knowledge and apply it. So Paul says that such questions
come from an individual who just isn’t thinking or doesn’t have
the correct information on which to draw. He’s an unwise person. These are mindless questions,
empty-headed questions, and the nature of them indicates that
such a person isn’t even interested in adding to his very depleted
pool of knowledge. He doesn’t really want to know
the answer. Such is a skeptic. The questions,
neither one of them are as innocent as they sound, and together they
are a cynical challenge to the idea of the resurrection. Paul takes up and counters this
challenge. Look again, if you would, at
the middle of verse 36. That which you sow does not come
to life unless it dies. Did someone speak of sowing,
planting seeds? If you know me, I’m always up
for a good garden analogy. And here it is lying right on
the surface. For any uninitiated gardeners
out there, let me just explain. When Paul references that which
you sow, he’s pointing to planting day in the garden, which for
us this spring has been slowed a bit by the great amount of
rain. Paul’s image is this. The gardener
goes out to his garden with a great host of seeds, radishes and squash,
cucumbers and the like, and one by one, the hopeful gardener
places the seeds one by one into the soil. Anytime we plant anything,
we are witnessing a resurrection of sorts. in microcosm. Watch this. It is death being
restored to life. What a fascinating turn that
Paul uses. Jesus employed this same illustration
in John chapter 12. John 12, 24, truly, 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. You leave it on the shelf, it’s
a dead seed. You place it into the ground
and God adds moisture to that seed, it is reconstituted, resurrected,
if you will, to new life. Jesus speaks of the same exact
process there. In Paul’s passage, Paul says,
is the death analogy. The seed is buried, as it were,
into the soil. Then once water is added, the
miracle of life begins to occur. The seed imbibes the moisture
and life is restored. It’s a miracle. And Paul makes
a second point in 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. Now this one, you have to admit,
is almost humorous. Let’s go with it. When Paul says
you do not sow the body which is to be, you don’t plant a beet. You don’t plant a watermelon.
He basically makes the point that if you want a watermelon,
you don’t plant the entire watermelon into the soil and sit back and
wait. What Paul calls here the body,
which is to be. You plant the seed of the watermelon,
a bare grain. A watermelon seed grows watermelons. Particular plants are not the
same in their various phases of life. Whether you hold one
of those little black watermelon seeds, or you behold the distinctive
oak-leafed plant that emerges from that seed, or you try to
lift that heavy green oblong fruit later that summer, at any
stage it’s a watermelon. And once planted into the soil
and watered, what emerges looks dramatically different from the
bland, dead seed that was planted. Likewise, the fruit of the plant,
it bears no resemblance to even the most fantastic foliage that
bore and for some season protected the delicate fruit. And yet it’s
all watermelon. The seeds are specific to the
kind of plant and the type of fruit or vegetable that you desire
to grow. If you want to eat turnips, your
choice, you don’t plant kernels of corn. If you really want a
turnip, you’re going to have to plant turnip seed. Paul’s
point is simple. All flesh is not the same. A
watermelon seed is different from the plant, is different
from the fruit. The portion of the watermelon
placed into the earth is not the same as that which we eat.
Likewise, the body that enters the grave is not the same which
enters into heaven for eternity. Just as in the miraculous changes
that occur in the plant world, so also in the realm of believers
drawn into eternity, they are transformed, changed. We will be changed. Our bodies
will be changed. But it will be similar. Glance
down at verse 38, where Paul completes this argument. God,
but God gives it a body just as he wished and to each of the
seeds, a body of his own. He’s still talking about plants,
but he’s making his point. This verse applies to God’s sovereignty
down to the minutest detail. And God chooses which seed is
going to produce which plant and which fruit. And God established
this prerogative at creation. Listen to this from the opening
chapter of Genesis, verses 11 and 12, just listen. Then God
said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and the
fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed
in them. And it was so. The earth brought
forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind. and trees bearing fruit with
seed in them after their kind.” God was the one that determined
a watermelon seed is going to produce watermelon. Paul’s point
of comparison here, if God chooses the mature form that each seed
produces among the plant world And he’s able to sustain that
down throughout all time. A watermelon seed still produces
watermelons. Then God can, in his divine sovereignty,
grant whatever form he chooses to those to whom he grants a
resurrected body. That’s Paul’s point. The questions
posed at the outset are foolish questions. And Jesus’ own resurrection
marvelously presents this truth. Remember, after Jesus’ resurrection,
Jesus was different enough, transformed, different enough not to be recognized. Remember Miss Mary Magdalene. She went to Jesus’ tomb, and
she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, her beloved Savior,
and she did not know that it was Jesus. John chapter 21, day was now
breaking, Jesus stood on the beach, remember he’s there to
restore Peter specifically to ministry, yet the disciples did
not know it was Jesus. And the liberal commentators
will always say that perhaps it was not quite dawn, it was
pre-dawn, and they couldn’t quite get a glimpse of him. He was
changed and he was changed enough that they did not recognize him.
Remember the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Now there is
some really close quarters. We’re not talking about Mary
Magdalene at the grave early in the morning. We’re not talking
of the disciples who were in the boat looking at Jesus from
afar. We’re talking about men that
walked with him for miles. And it said, those disciples
on the road to Emmaus, their eyes were prevented from recognizing
him. He was changed enough, they didn’t
know who he was. And yet his body bore the likeness
of that which was placed in the tomb enough that a mere greeting,
in Mary’s case, one word, Mary, that was enough. John chapter
20, it was evening the first day when the doors were shut,
the disciples were for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood
in their midst and said to them, peace be to you. And when he
had said this, he showed him his hands on his side and the
disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. They figured out
who it was. He revealed who he was to them.
Paul makes yet another argument in verse 39, this one of the
creaturely substance. Look at verse 39, please. All
flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men
and another flesh of beasts and another flesh of birds and another
of fish. Now, the contrast shifts here
from the vegetable world to the literal world of flesh, the muscles
and sinews of various creatures. Paul compares and contrasts the
flesh of men, the flesh of beasts, the flesh of birds, the flesh
of fish. No person in their right mind
would try to pass off pheasant as pork. or salmon as hamburger,
or filet mignon as turkey, or if you’re a cannibal, lobster
as human. All flesh is not the same flesh. It’s a simple point. Let me try
to explain it this way. The next time some person slides
a plate of mystery meat your way, and suggest to you it tastes
just like chicken. You can rest assured it’s not
chicken. If it’s not chicken, it’s another
kind of flesh. And all flesh is not the same
flesh. Think of the sheer vastness of
the kinds of creatures, the things with flesh and blood that God
has created. It’s mind-boggling. The order
in which Paul presents the various creatures here is fascinating
as well. The creation order is fish, birds,
beast, then man. Paul reverses it here, man, beast,
birds, fish. It’s as if to say, tell Charles
Darwin, no, people did not evolve from fish. All flesh is not the
same flesh. And when we see the immenseness
and the differences of flesh of different creatures, we can
understand just how different our resurrected bodies will be
from the model in which our souls currently reside. That difference
could not be greater than a buffalo and a tadpole. Paul’s point is
that from creature to creature, there are differences in their
fleshly bodies. And the bottom line is that different
creatures do not all taste the same. And if that’s true in the
natural world, the world of God’s creation, then it may also be
true in the spiritual world. Physical, earthly flesh is not
the same kind of flesh as spiritual or heavenly. Well, not only does the substance
of vegetables and fruit vary from type to type, but flesh,
the type of flesh varies as well, and you know what? Paul introduces
a third contrast in verse 40. This time, the contrast is of
the celestial bodies. Glance, if you would, at verse
40. There’s 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 star differs from star in
glory. Paul makes the same point again. Here, of the celestial substance,
it’s not all the same. By heavenly bodies, Paul points
to stars, those lights in the sky that differ from point to
point. There are stars that are suns,
there are stars that are quasars, there are stars that are entire
galaxies, and stars that are comets, stars that are supernovas. all stars are not the same. Their
glories or natures differ from one to the next, and stars must
even be differentiated from what Paul calls earthly bodies, planets. The basic difference is that
some stars produce their own lights, while planets and moons
merely reflect the light of the sun. The sun, more than a hundred times larger
than the earth. The moon is about a quarter of
the size of the earth. The sun is a constantly burning
body. The moon, however, only reflects
the sun’s light. And a person could never observe
the sun during the day and then the moon at night and come away
with the idea that they are of the same substance. And if you
were able to back away and compare the moon and the earth, the differences
are dramatic. Listen to this. On Christmas
Eve 1968, yes, I was alive. Apollo 8 was orbiting around
the moon, and their craft had just emerged from what is called
the dark side of the moon, when suddenly, the three astronauts,
Borman, Lovell, and Anders, I see people nodding their head that
were watching the TV, they got a thrill that no human being
had ever experienced. Earthrise. We think of sunrise,
we even can observe moonrise in the fall. they experienced
Earthrise. And their contact was restored
with, as their contact was restored with mission control, they glanced
out the window to a spectacular view of Earth with the cold gray
and white moon in bold relief. There was the Earth. on the horizon. No one had ever seen the Earth
from that perspective. Frank Borman said of that moment,
it was the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life. It was the
only thing in space that had any color to it. Everything else
was either black or white, but not the Earth. Jim Lovell echoed,
up there, it’s a black and white world. There’s no color in the
whole universe. Wherever we looked, The only
bit of color was back on earth. It was the most beautiful thing
there was to see in all the heavens. See, the substance of vegetables
are different, the substance of creatures are different, and
the substance of the heavenly bodies, planets, and stars are
different. Why then Should it be surprising
to know or impossible to acknowledge that a resurrected body is not
going to be of the same substance as the original form? And so
the original question that was posed is indeed a foolish one. Paul says it very succinctly
at the end of this chapter, we will all be changed. We will be changed. These clunky,
earthly bodies will be supernaturally transformed, not merely into
newer models, but of entirely different substance, what Paul
will go on to call spiritual bodies. This is Paul’s fourth
and final argument. We see it in verses 42 through
49. And we’ll take up consideration of that argument next Lord’s
Day. Would you humble yourself before
our Creator God?