The Resurrection

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here this day as we celebrate the resurrection, and we are thrilled you are here. You know, too often, Christians are portrayed as more or less you turn your brain off when you walk through the church doors. Have you ever had that kind of feeling? And you basically come into a group trance we call worship, and then you just say amen to anything the preacher says, and it's an emotional appeal that is made, and you leave good with kind of a lot of good feelings, but not much depth that actually happens. Not much substance. Now that is a caricature of the Christian church, but I think there's some reason why it's even possible to make that caricature. Do you understand? Because we fall into that. I'm not against emotional appeal, but there's so much more to the resurrection than just getting whipped up and excited and happy Easter-ing each other, okay? It's not that Paul talks about a warm, fuzzy story today. It's not a Hallmark movie by any means, but rather the resurrection is an earth-shattering event of encountering the risen Christ, and it actually went against everything that Paul himself once stood for. It was a confrontation with him over his religiousness, and we're going to read probably the most important resurrection chapter in the entire Bible. We're going to read quite a bit of it in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 today. He now is dealing with a wayward church in Corinth, and they're all confused about this topic of resurrection and what it means, and does it matter, and all of that stuff. Paul deals with his own issues in this, as well as the reality and the foundation. As he says, you'll read in the first couple of verses, you'll hear that word, it's something on which we can stand. That is, there's something solid about this. It's not just a wish-dream, a hope, but it's a reality. It's history. It's actuality. So without further ado, we're going to start reading, and it is a long section, but I think you'll understand why. 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 19. Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you, there's that word, stand, and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me, whether then it is I or they. So we preach, and you also believe. Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he was raised, that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. Notice in this text, what's really amazing is how much logic and reasoning and argumentation that's going on in this text. Why all this deductive reasoning going on? Why this argumentation? Part of it is, I think, honestly, think of who's writing this. This is Paul. He was the Pharisee of Pharisees. He was religious to the utmost, the greatest, the best that he could ever be. He was one who was trying to follow all 613, yes, 613 mitzvot, commandments in the Torah, and follow them to the utmost, beyond what was expected by anybody else. And the resurrection of Jesus actually was contrary to everything that he had ever wanted or believed in. He is the last person, I would say one of the last, if not the last person, to ever believe that a human being should be worshipped and glorified and honored and divine. In the first century, the whole Jewish understanding of their faith was, we went into exile once over wo...