I'm not preaching the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 15. I will be focusing on verses 35 to 58, the second half of the Apostles' argument here. 1 Corinthians 15, beginning at verse 35, where he says, But someone will ask, How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? You foolish person, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there's one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for stars differ from stars in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, the first man became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural. And then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. You know, there are various approaches that you could summarize that our culture takes when it comes to the matter of death. I know we live in California. You're not allowed to die, actually. You know, we deny it, we downplay it, or we deflect it. And that's part of our culture generally. First of all, we deny it. There's sort of a cycle of life view of death. You don't really die. Nothing ever really dies. it just sort of gets plowed back into the nature of things. Or you downplay it. We come up with euphemisms like passing on. That has sort of crept into Christian conversation. Passing on actually comes from Mary Baker Eddy, Christian science. You don't believe in sickness, much less in death. What do you call it? You just sort of pass on. Sort of like, you know, your relatives being with you at Thanksgiving. They're really with you. They haven't died. They haven't gone anywhere. They're still with us, or they're still with us in our memories. Or we have celebrations of life because we can't talk about death, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Or we deflect it. recently with the death of Doris Day. She said, I just can't talk about it. They asked her what she was dying of, if it were in fact terminal, was in fact terminal. And she said, I don't talk about that. I never have talked about death and I never will. As if just by not talking about it, it might go away. Have you noticed how interesting it is during this whole COVID thing? That death is actually mentioned on the evening news every night. Every time you read an article about the illness or you see a report, it talks about how many people not have passed on, but how many people have died. I'm always looking for the silver lining in things. And maybe that's the silver lining of COVID. People are talking about death. Maybe people do actually die. It's a sign of how far we suppress the truth and unrighteousness that we deny this one of all things. It's death and taxes. Everybody knows that that's inevitable. And yet when it comes to our own death, it's very difficult in this culture, apart from Christ, to be able to get the word out. Not long ago, Newsweek's Lisa Miller wrote an interesting article, Heaven, Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, and in it she pointed out that 25% of professing Christians in America believe in reincarnation. And that the great majority of Americans do not believe that they will have a body in heaven. And yet they kind of think that they're going to see their aunts and uncles and grandparents and each other. They're going to know it. It's kind of hard to do if you don't have a body. But people are very confused about this, Miller says. But she says it's kind of crazy to think we would actually have bodies in heaven forever. She said it's a marvelous idea, but she says I think it's pretty irrational. Well, ours is not the first age to feel that way. It's not simply that we're all Hindus or Buddhists now. We have this pretty deep in our history. The great philosopher Plato incorporated this into our own Western history. We're going to finally be able to be freed from the prison house of this body. And even now, the philosopher can so contemplate earnestly that he or she can rise out of the body and no longer experience the pain and suffering of this life. That's the goal of salvation, according to Plato. It was also the view of Celsus, one of the early critics of Christianity. One of his comments was, what kind of body, asking the Christians this, what kind of body, after it's rotted or has been lost at sea or torn apart by a beast, Do you presume to have? It seems that the Christians have misunderstood Plato's doctrine of reincarnation and believe the absurd theory that the physical body will be raised and reconstituted by God and that somehow they will actually see God with their mortal eyes and hear him with their ears and be able to touch him with their hands. Wrote that about 170 A.D. Of course, that is the Christian hope. isn't it? That in Jesus Christ, our elder brother, enfleshed, glorified, fully human, fully alive, we will be able to touch the face of God. We will absolutely be astounded to behold in him the face of our Father. Philo was contemporary of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. And Philo was a Platonist. He was Jewish, but he was a Platonist. And so he sought to incorporate all sorts of Platonist elements into his Judaism. And one of his ideas was that there was a first Adam who was the prototype. He was the paradigm. He was, he called him, the spiritual Adam. And then later God created, on the basis of that prototype, an inferior Adam made of matter. The physical atom, the natural atom. And we're going to come back to that in a moment because I think that's one of the ideas that the Apostle Paul has encountered and is countering in this very passage. So what's happening is in this very church in Corinth, you have people who have been influenced by this kind of platonic idea who still consider themselves Christians, like the 25% of people who believe in reincarnation and try to staple that to the resurrection. And they were saying that the resurrection has already happened. As Paul warns Timothy, there were people saying the resurrection has already happened. But if the resurrection has already happened, we're in pretty bad shape, aren't we? Did I miss it? No, the body must die. That's my first point from the Apostle Paul following his argument here, there are three things. The body must die, the body must be changed, and the body must be raised. I put it in those strong terms because of the argument that Paul makes from these passages. But someone, that is someone who denies the resurrection, remember the rule, the exact form in which Paul puts this is what Celsus said after Paul wrote these words. It's probably what a lot of Paul had heard, Christians had heard a lot of non-Christians already saying. What if you were eaten by a shark? What if you died at sea? What if you were burned? What kind of body is that? You come back as a person who's been charred? That's strange. That's crazy. That's ridiculous. and so Paul says but someone will ask how are the dead raised with what kind of body do they come which justifies his response you foolish person what you sow does not come to life until it dies and what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel perhaps of wheat or some other grain, but God gives it a body as he has chosen and to each kind of seed, its own body. Now, I've turned to 1 Corinthians 15 for a long time for the resurrection, to defend the resurrection, to preach about the resurrection, so forth. It's only been in recent years, I guess, maybe as I'm encountering death more and also the wasting away of the outer man in my own life, that I come to appreciate more this middle part, not just the beginning and the end, but this middle part of Paul's argument here. Not only that we have to be raised and we're looking forward to that resurrection morning, but why we have to die. Why it's actually a gift that we die. Now, that sounds totally counterintuitive, even to us as Christians, because even in this passage, Paul tells us that it is the result of being in Adam that we die. It's a curse. It's a judgment. And so a lot of times we think, well, death is part of the curse. Christians are no longer bearers of the condemnation, but we die because of the curse. And that's certainly true. And then we think, well, it's better that people not suffer. When they reach a place where they're just crying out, Lord, take me home. We want them to have that prayer answered. We pray that prayer ourselves. And that's true too. But that's not what Paul's talking about. Paul's not just saying they'll be free of their sickness, They'll be free of their frailty. He's saying that actually death has to happen. It's essential to our salvation. Not only is the resurrection essential to our salvation, but death is as well. He thinks of death as essential to our salvation because yes, it's a horrible enemy, but it's the last enemy, he calls it in this passage. Death is not our friend. Death is not a portal to life. I remember when my dad died, there was one of the cards that we received from a well-intentioned person had on the front of it a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that just would encourage you probably not to buy a card with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson for anybody, especially a Christian, upon the death of a loved one. But in any case, the sunset is as beautiful as the sun's rising. Isn't that beautiful? The setting of the sun is as beautiful as it's rising. And we know that's hogwash. We have seen too much of death. There's any truth in that at all. Death is not beautiful. Death is not a sunset that is as beautiful as the birth of a baby. But we do know that it is the last enemy. And more than that, even though death itself is not good, God works all things, including things that are not good, together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Outside of Christ, death is only condemnation. It remains the death sentence. But for believers, we've been transferred from Adam to Christ, and therefore the sting of death, which is sin, and the power of sin, which is the law, has been removed from death. Death is no longer a death sentence. Now, for the believer, it's something that has to happen, not just as a prelude to the resurrection, but for reasons we're going to see here in just a moment, because it's essential to our salvation along with the resurrection. We all know we're going to die, but only the Bible tells us why. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, verse 56. And that's pretty bad news for all of us. But second, and I think what Paul is really focusing on here, is that death is necessary for our life. We must die. Not be improved, not just extended, enhanced, modified. No cosmetic changes will give us new life. We need to die in this present form, this present condition. We need to die. Now, that might be easier to say when we're older and we feel the tug of time wearing upon us. But I just want to underscore to those of you who are younger, for you as well, you need to die. You need to die. And you know, there are a lot of people who die before their time as we say and we need to be aware that for all of us for all of us death is necessary and for the believer it's not the last word what if you could take one of those pills that you see in the science fiction movies one of those pills and live forever that's you know time immemorial people have been looking for that elixir of life to keep them alive forever. Paul here is saying no one should take that pill. What if we could go back to Adam before the fall? Wouldn't that be great? Paradise regained. No, we don't want paradise regained. Adam fell. Adam disobeyed God. Adam fell short of the glory of God. Adam failed to enter and lead all of us in his train into that everlasting glory, that confirmation in the city of peace. And so if we could just live forever, we would be alive, but we wouldn't have life. We wouldn't have everlasting life. We wouldn't be glorified. We would be back to an episode before Adam sinned, but he still hadn't attained everlasting confirmation in glory. And so that's what Paul is saying here when he says we must die. We must be put in the ground, that Adamic nature, from which we have natural life, has to be put to an end because the form, the shape, the condition of that nature has been warped by sin. But also because that nature was never confirmed in righteousness. It was never confirmed in glory. And so the body must die. We must all die. Christ had to die. Not for his sins, but for ours. As Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2.24, he himself bore our sins in his body. What an amazing thing. Jesus had to die. Jesus had to be buried. in order to leave that in the grave for him to be raised as the firstfruits of those who sleep. Now we die and rise with Christ, not only spiritually, but physically. Isn't that an amazing truth? And so Paul, throughout this passage and elsewhere, contrasts the spirit and the flesh. Now, here's what we tend to do, again, as Platonists. We put on our Play-Doh glasses. Spirit means spiritual stuff. You know, the part of you that's the real you, that shows up at Thanksgiving, and that goes on after life, the afterlife, as we call it, the real you that belongs to the afterlife. And flesh refers to the bodily stuff, the container. That's how we typically think about it, and that's how it's often thought about in this culture. That's not how the apostle Paul thinks about it. For him, spirit means the Holy Spirit. The Spirit brings the realities of the age to come, resurrection glory, where Christ has already gone in as our forerunner, into the present to reinvigorate us, to prepare us for that life. flesh refers to whatever human beings have the potential to do and to become. So when Paul says flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of God, he doesn't mean bodies can't inherit. He means everything that we are, flesh, body and soul, has no power. We don't have this suit in our wardrobe. We have to get it from someone else. You can extend life, you can improve life, but you can't have everlasting life from medicine or from cosmetics or from haircuts or from doing whatever you can to improve the politics of this passing evil age. It's not about flesh being able to improve ourselves and this world to the point where finally we have everlasting life. We and the world in its present shape must die before there can be new life. There's something better than Eden here, brothers and sisters. Something far better than going back to Adam and Eve before the fall. There's Christ, our last Adam, who has gone up ahead of us and secured the right for us to eat from the tree of life. The body must die, but then secondly, the body must be changed. Now, it's not that we surrender this body for a new one. We've got to be really clear about that. We're not surrendering this body in order to get a different body. Rather, we're surrendering this body, planting it in the earth, putting it an end. I mean, you bury it. It's buried or it's cremated. To put an end to that life, it has to end. We in this particular condition must come to an end. It's not a different body, it's this body in a different condition. And that's what Paul means when he says a seed dies in the ground before it springs forth in new life. It has to die. Any of you who are farmers can explain to us how the chemistry of all this works, but I think it's pretty obvious to all of us that a seed dies. It goes into the ground. It's buried. And that's necessary before there can be a new stock of corn. If God can make such varieties of flesh, Paul says, fish, fowl, humans, then he won't have any problem with the people who die at sea. He won't have any problem giving a body to those who have been buried or have been torn by wild beasts or have been cremated. He won't have any problem making mortal bodies immortal. And that's the contrast. Again, not we surrender this body for a different body, but that this body must put on immortality. That's what it means to have a spiritual body. He talks about here a heavenly body. A body not after the likeness of the first Adam, but a body after the likeness of the last Adam. who has been raised and sits at the right hand of the Father. The body sown is the body raised, but in an entirely new condition. This body must die, but this body must be changed. And that's why he says, so it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. And notice the subject here in each of these clauses. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory, it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power, it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. The subject here is this body. What is raised is what was sown. What goes into the earth is the same body that comes out of the earth. If there is a natural body, he says, there is also a spiritual body. Literally, what he says here, it is sown a body natural, it is raised a body spiritual. You have a natural body and a spiritual body, and they're two different bodies, but it is raised a body that is purely natural, purely of the flesh. that is subject to the powers of this age and what humans can do in their fallen condition versus a spiritual body that is a body that is like Christ. Remember, he ate fish after the resurrection. He said, I'm hungry. Does anybody have any food here? We have bodies in heaven, evidently. Our resurrected Lord was hungry. And our call to worship gives us a wonderful picture of that great feast that we can expect. I don't think we can spiritualize that away. The bottom line here is that we become immortals. We're not by nature immortals. Far from it. We're not only mortal, we are dying and decaying even now. But God has given us the gift of immortality through the gospel. Thus it is written, he says, The first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. See, the first Adam was alive, and we are alive. We have our natural life. Everybody is alive who is alive. We have that kind of natural life. You don't have to be a Christian to be alive. Brush your teeth and get up and go to work. Everybody has that. But the last Adam became a life-giving spirit because he fulfilled that trial that Adam forfeited. Because he went through the gate, because he was glorified and was able to give that glorification to all who were united to him. But it is not the spiritual that is first, he says, but the natural and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Now that's why I think that he has Philo in mind. The Platonistic Jewish philosopher, Contemporary, older contemporary, about 20 years older than Paul. I surmise there are my betters here who can help me with this, but I think Paul was at least aware of the idea, if not, of Philo's stated position on this. Remember, Philo said the first Adam was spiritual in a platonic sense. The second Adam was physical in a platonic sense. Paul is playing with this, I think. He's turning it on its head because people in this church are following that kind of platonized popular soup. And so Paul switches it around. No, actually the first Adam was physical or natural, only had life. And the last Adam gives life. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. So I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. So we have to be changed. We have to die, we have to be changed. We can't just be resuscitated. We have to be changed. We can't go into the everlasting city of God in our fallen natural condition. Just with the promise that we're going to live like that forever. We have to be changed. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says we're presently groaning in our earthly tent. For while we are still in this tent, we groan being burdened. Listen to this, verse four. Not that we would be unclothed. See, that's where we kind of go off the rails. We go Plato. And I say, we're looking forward to being unclothed. We're looking forward to finally flying away. Oh, glory, glory. Our souls will finally leave our bodies. And yes, we are so looking forward to the intermediate state where we are in the presence of the Lord. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But that's not our ultimate hope. Our ultimate hope is the resurrection of the body. Paul says we're burdened, not that we would be unclothed without our body, but that we would be further clothed. So that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. We don't want to be found naked. We want to be found clothed. We want to be further clothed. This is the thing. We will not be less human in heaven, but more human than we've ever been on earth. And we won't just inherit a corner of a cloud bouncing on clouds playing harps the meek will inherit the earth but it won't be the earth in this condition and it won't be our bodies in this condition either we will be changed different seeds different shoots but every shoot will be according to its seed and every body that is raised will be according to the body that was sown And those who are of the man of dust, merely alive in this age, will go to the second death. While those who belong to Christ, the man of heaven, have received everlasting life from him. So apart from Christ, we're just existing for the moment. But devoid of everlasting life, that heavenly life that only Christ can bring. The Spirit doesn't come to make the old Adam a little better, but to kill him so that he can raise him in newness of life. I just thought it would be interesting to tell people when they ask you where you're going, you're getting ready to go to church, to tell people, I'm going to be killed. Just to sort of provoke a conversation. I'm going to church to be killed again. You know, to die. We die to live. That is the Christian life, dying to live. We give up on our powers. to improve ourselves and extend our lives to the point where we can be everlasting. We give up on our expectation if we just all pull together, we can save the world. We give up on that. And you know what happens surprisingly? We start caring about ourselves and our world in a more responsible way than people who don't believe in that. Because they believe they're just leaving it all behind, right? We don't believe we're leaving it all behind. We don't believe in the light great planet Earth. We don't believe that our souls just go and sort of be part of the crackling fire at night or that they sort of bounce on clouds. We believe that the soul will be reunited with the body and that the earth that God created, he has saved. And one day, he will make all things new. But that's the Spirit's work. Flesh cannot accomplish that. Natural life cannot be extended. The only way this can work, God says through Paul, is for this life and this world in its present form to go into the grave. And then he will pull us out immortal. as those united to Christ on resurrection morning. And that brings us to the third point, we must rise. We must die, we must be changed, and the body must die. Why? Why must? Because Christ is raised. That's the logic of Paul's argument. I didn't read that first part of his argument, but if Christ isn't raised, then we're not raised. We're still in our sins. And Paul doesn't say, well, you know, there's a consolation prize. Look, hey, even if this isn't true, haven't you lived better? Haven't you had your best life now? Haven't you been a better you? Haven't you been happier? Haven't you lived a healthier life? The family that prays together, stays together. Haven't there been wonderful consolations, even if Christ isn't raised? And Paul says, no. No, I missed a lot. That's true. No, no, my response is, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. And without the resurrection hope, that's exactly where most of our neighbors are today. But we must rise because our head, the last Adam, is risen. There actually aren't two resurrections. Jesus is raised and then we're raised. It's one resurrection. It's one event. Our resurrection is actually part of the same event as Easter. It's just that the harvest's resurrection comes after the firstfruits appeared. Again, those of you who are farmers can attest to this. You go out and look at your spring firstfruits, first ears of corn, and you have a good idea of what the whole harvest is going to look like. We don't have any question here. Look at Christ. Want to know what we'll be like? Like Christ, we will be like Christ as much as it is possible for someone who is not God to be. Your humanity and my humanity will be exactly as glorified as Jesus Christ's humanity is now. In fact, John Calvin said that Christ considers himself in some measure imperfect at present. until we join him in glory. Isn't that marvelous? That's the unity between firstfruits and harvest, between the head and the body. Brothers and sisters, the resurrection is not a symbol. It's a fact. It happened in history. It occurred. And that's why Paul, in the very beginning of this argument, tells us that it was witnessed. not only by the apostles, but by 500 people who saw Jesus alive. It'll be another sermon to go into the evidence for the resurrection. But this is a fact of history. You could interview people and they could tell you what it was like to have breakfast with Jesus after the resurrection. As he is now, so we must be because we are united to him. We will die, but no longer under a curse. Death can no longer hold us because it could not hold Jesus. And whatever happened to Jesus is going to happen to you. And it's not going to be the resuscitation of a corpse, I'll tell you that. It won't be picking up where you left off. It will be a resurrection. This corruptible must put on incorruptibility. So the resurrection that awaits us is not just a continuation of our natural existence. That's been sort of a point I've been hammering home. It's the end of our natural existence and the beginning of a new creation. Not getting rid of this world that God made. Not getting rid of the body and this earth. But a resurrection, which makes all things new. The whole creation, Paul says in Romans 8, is yearning, is waiting for the children of God to be revealed on that glorious morning because then it will be liberated from its bondage to decay. There will be no death, there will be no sorrow. Aren't you glad? Aren't you glad? Isn't it comforting to know you're going to die? Isn't it comforting in the light of the gospel to know that this body that is decaying, even as we sit here, this body, yes, even you younger people, all of us, this body, this life that we're living where we're filled with temptation and we so often succumb to the sins that easily beset us that there will not be one cell in us, in body or soul, that will go with us into the everlasting city in that condition. It will all have been buried. It will all have been left behind without leaving us behind in the process. Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, he concludes, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. See, this doesn't lead us to laziness. This doesn't lead us to carelessness about our body or about this world. On the contrary, know that what you're doing right now counts forever. justified and renewed by the powers of the age to come through the Holy Spirit, being sanctified day by day, we struggle knowing that we ourselves cannot overcome this great problem that has been with us since Adam. But we know who has, therefore we do not hope in vain. Even when we go about our daily callings, raising kids, loving and serving our neighbors, working in a homeless shelter, going to our various callings, working in a garden or a cubicle, we know that our labor is not in vain. We are steadfast. Even in a world that is liquid, we are immovable. Even in a world that is like a tumultuous ocean, always abounding in the work of the Lord because the vista that he has placed before it. Christ has died. Christ is risen. And Christ will come again. Let's pray. Our great Heavenly Father, we thank you for your precious promises that we find nowhere else. There is no religion, there is no self-help philosophy, there is nothing in this present evil age, the realm of the flesh, lying under sin and death, that is able to take the sting out of death, but your own gospel. Help us, Father, not only to cherish that, but to proclaim it during this intermission, this productive intermission, so that more and more people will be united to your Son and be raised immortals on that glorious morning. Hear us, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.