God Created Our Bodies

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. I think you're going to find through this series over the coming weeks some hope for this actual life that you're living right now. Your embodied life, purpose for your days, your real earthly days. Instead of despairing over our limitations, which we all feel at times because of our bodies, we will see God working through our bodies in service toward others. Instead of wanting to escape from this world, you know, stop the world, I want to get off. And I think we all feel that at times. To some, quote, Neverland, we'll see how the good news impacts right here and now, and how you and I, we can make a difference, giving us plenty of things to do every day of our lives. Traditionally, this Sunday, the one after Easter, a lot of churches read about doubting Thomas, because, well, it happened a week after Easter. After the first day of resurrection that Sunday night, Thomas was missing. He wasn't there when Jesus appeared to all the other disciples in that locked room. And so Jesus shows up a week later. And we deride Thomas because he didn't believe that he was doubting, but I think we forget to ask, to realize that he was asking a very important question. Jesus is not simply immaterially alive, you know, spiritually in some form. No, he wasn't like a ghost or anything. Thomas wanted to see the body. Okay. John chapter 20. Now, Thomas, also known as Didymus, one of the 12, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later, his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe. Thomas said to him, my Lord and my God. Then Jesus told him, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. I'm going to be blunt. If Jesus didn't bodily rise from the dead, your faith is worthless. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Creation, this material world, everything that you see, everything that we touch, smell, feel, all of these things that we experience, even the thoughts in our heads because it's part of creation, everything is not like a bus stop on the way to somewhere else. I think a lot of people kind of think that. And so what happens here doesn't really matter. It's just a holding pattern for a little bit and then we're going to get to the real place. It's all going to go away. It's all going to burn. I used to say that all the time. It's all going to burn anyway, so don't worry about it. That's not quite it. Because if you kind of believe in that direction, well, it's not as biblical as you think, and it's much more what, well, Greek philosophy thought. People like the Stoics and the Epicureans and the Platonists. To many world religions, you assert that the whole material world, well, that's the problem. You're trapped in it. You're stuck. And once you finally get released into the spiritual realm, that's when everything's good. And I'll be honest, part of the reason for this series is also, I grew up with kind of that thinking myself that, you know, someday I'm going to get to heaven. And heaven is it. And you're going like, what's wrong with? The Bible ends with heaven and earth coming together. The marriage of heaven and earth together, the material and spiritual, and God finds his home right in the material creation himself. That's his choice. That's his destination, and that's ours. I think a lot of Christians think the goal is to just kind of hang out like this is God's waiting room. Have you ever heard that? And just be patient. And then one day we're going to finally go through that door and get to this whatever. We don't know what it is. But God did not create this as a waiting room. He did not create it as a temporary place to move on from. Here we see already in Genesis chapter one, his intent. And we're not reading the whole story of Genesis one. It's really kind of a liturgy. It's a description of the six days of creation with a seventh to cap it off that becomes holy and blessed. And it's really how he is building all of his creation as he is speaking these words and bringing it about purposefully and fully to be a temple to display his glory. It's really like building a temple, all of creation. We read in Genesis chapter one, starting at verse 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image for after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over e...