More than Here and Now

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And what Paul talks about in the text that we’re going to look at today reflects something that I’m seeing more and more of in our world today, which is people who would not necessarily say that they believe Christianity, but they’re defending aspects of it. How many of you know who Richard Dawkins is? Okay, some of you have heard that name.

Richard Dawkins is one of the most well-known atheists in America. He’s a biologist. He’s famous for being in numerous debates and sometimes has been, I don’t know, would it be fair to characterize him as hostile toward Christianity? I think at times he’s been that way.

In the last few months, though, he’s began talking about the benefits of Christianity toward society. Now, he’s not saying he believes Christianity, but he’s saying Christianity is a good idea because there are parts of it that work for society, and especially he’s looking at how the West is sort of descending into chaos as we let some of the Christian foundations of our society be eroded away. He looks at the threat of Islam.

He looks at some of these things and says, you know what, Christianity might be beneficial here. And I remember the first time I heard that and thought, okay, Dawkins defends Christianity. I did not have that on my 2024 bingo card.

Okay, was not expecting that. Another person who was right along with Dawkins in this, being a vocal critic of Christianity for many years, is a woman named Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was born in Somalia, and she was a member of the Dutch Parliament. She went from being a Muslim to being an atheist, and quite a vocal atheist. In the last year or so, she’s come out and said she was a Christian.

She explained that decision in an article she wrote. In that article, she never came out and said Christianity is true. Maybe she believes that.

I don’t want to be too harsh on these people because it may be evidence of God moving their hearts a little bit at a time and we may see genuine conversion. But she talked about how Christianity is what will hold the West together. And I thought, okay, that’s true, but I’m more concerned with is it true or not, not just does it work.

over the last week I heard Ben Shapiro who admits I am not a Christian I am a Jew but defending the value of Christianity and this is odd to me and again I don’t want to I don’t want to look at them and say well no they’re the enemy maybe God is doing something there that they can see some of the benefits the Bible says the goodness of God brings us to repentance maybe they see some of the fruits of Christianity and it opens their eyes to the truth of it. But this idea that we look at Christianity for what it can just benefit us now and what it can make life be now, and that’s all it has to be. That idea is something that is dangerous to us when we begin to live that way.

And I say us, meaning believers. For believers to look at Christianity as, well, this is just something that works for me. It’s dangerous for us.

And this is the very thing that Paul addressed when he was writing to the church at Corinth about the resurrection. If you were here last week, you heard me talk about the beginning of chapter 15, where Paul talks about the resurrection. He goes through what I’ve called the Corinthian Creed.

Somebody said last Sunday night, I’ve never heard of the Corinthian Creed. It’s because it’s a name I made up. I kept hearing people talk about this creed that’s found in 1 Corinthians 15, 3-8.

That’s a lot of words to say. So I just said, okay, let’s call it the Corinthian creed. I made that term up.

So if you’ve never heard of that, you’re fine. You didn’t miss the boat, but you’re caught up now. We talked about this statement of faith that we find in 1 Corinthians 15 that we know from the textual evidence and the historical evidence that the early churches had formulated this and were teaching this within months of the crucifixion.

That means that the resurrection of Jesus was not a later legend that somebody invented. This is what the people who were there on the ground when these things happened, they believed that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and then He began to appear to people who would later give their lives in testimony of what they saw.

And Paul’s purpose in that was not trying to convince these Corinthians that Jesus rose from the dead. They already believed that. They had already been convinced of that.

What Paul was doing was laying the groundwork for what we’re going to look at today of this idea that knowing Jesus rose from the dead, this is our common ground. What do we do with that? And what is different because He rose from the dead?

And that’s what we’re going to look at this morning starting in chapter 15, verse 12. If you’ll turn there with me, if you haven’t already. And once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

If you can’t find 1 Corinthians 15 or you don’t have your Bible, it will be on the screen for you there. But follow along with me as we read. Starting in verse 12, it says, Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection from the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain. Your faith is also vain.

That word vain means empty, meaningless. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact 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 worthless. You are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. And you may be seated. Again, the reason I bring those stories up at the beginning is not to criticize Dawkins and Ali and Shapiro.

It’s entirely possible that God is doing something miraculous and just bringing them one step closer to the gospel. And I don’t want to squelch that at all. But that’s not a good perspective for those of us who are already believers to have.

to treat Christianity as something we embrace just because it works. Because I’m here to tell you there are going to be some days where Christianity does not work for you. What I mean by that are there are going to be days when you just are not feeling it.

There are going to be days when you walk into a situation and you say, Lord, I’m supposed to love them. This doesn’t work for me. There are going to be days where God calls you to sacrifice something for the good of somebody else.

And you say, God, this does not work for me. There are going to be days where you feel, because of the abundance of stuff that we all carry around, there are going to be days where you feel like God doesn’t care about me. Which is not true, but we still feel it sometimes.

Christianity can’t just be true when it works and because it works. Christianity is true because 2,000 years ago Jesus walked out of that grave. And I’m telling you, I have to remind myself of that sometimes.

There are days that I don’t want to do what I’m supposed to do. There are days that I don’t feel the way you think a Christian is supposed to feel. And in my mind, I go back over everything I’ve studied and all that evidence.

And Jesus walked out of that grave. And if I’m convinced as I am that Jesus walked out of that grave 2,000 years ago, then He is who He said He is. He did what He said He could do.

And everything that He told us, He told us with authority. And I need to listen, whether I feel it or not. And Paul was writing to people in the church at Corinth who some of them were looking at Christianity as, well, it works.

It works for me today. It’s beneficial today. It holds things together today.

They were influenced by their philosophies that they had come out of. And worldly philosophies will undermine our hope in the gospel if we let them. He says to these people, he begins with that question, how is it that some of you say that there’s no resurrection from the dead.

And they were not talking about the resurrection of Jesus. They were talking about the general resurrection in the future, where everyone is going to be raised to stand before God. And some are going to spend eternity with Him, and some are going to spend eternity apart from Him.

But these people who, as far as they had professed, believed that Jesus rose again from the dead, believed that Jesus was Lord and Savior, they believed all these things. They didn’t seem to have a grasp on the fact that they were going to be raised to eternal life with They were looking at Christianity as just something in the here and now. And he says, I don’t understand how you get there from here.

But it was their worldly philosophies. There were three main schools of Greek philosophy at that time that would have influenced the people at Corinth. Two of them, the Epicureans and the Stoics, didn’t believe in an afterlife.

They believed that your soul is like the body. It has an expiration date. And when the body dies, the soul dies.

And that’s all she wrote. And so your whole purpose in life is just to live and enjoy life if you’re an Epicurean, or do your duty if you’re a Stoic, because this life is all there is. There was a third major school of Greek philosophy called Platonism.

It’s the name from Plato. And they did believe in a soul, but they believed in something closer to reincarnation. They believed the soul would come back in another form and continue on.

They didn’t necessarily buy into the idea of being raised from the dead and eternal life. And it was weird enough for them to hear that Jesus rose from the dead. As a matter of fact, we see in places like Acts 17, where Paul preaches the resurrection, the people think he’s nuts because people don’t rise from the dead.

Most of them thought there’s nothing after death anyway. What is there to come back? So they laughed at him.

Well, these people at Corinth had been convinced by the overwhelming weight of the evidence that Jesus had, in fact, risen from the dead. but that’s all they were willing to concede. That doesn’t mean we’re coming back.

That doesn’t mean there’s anything for us. So they had believed the gospel message as far as the part about Jesus dying for our sins and rising again and even appearing. And so they were willing to go along with that and get that forgiveness of sins.

They were willing to try to live like believers live because in many ways it does work. You know, if you try to follow Jesus, it will make your home more peaceful. It’s just true.

As a general principle, if you’re all trying to follow Jesus, it’s going to make your home more peaceful. So they were willing to look at this as an ethical system, but they weren’t thinking, oh, He’s going to raise us from the dead. They weren’t thinking about any kind of hope that they had for the future.

They were looking away from the transformative aspects of Christianity. Now, I don’t know of anybody in the church today that would say, yeah, I believe Jesus is Lord and Savior, but I don’t believe there’s a future in heaven. I don’t believe there’s eternal life.

We don’t do that, but we do get so focused on here and now that we don’t think about that. Charla and I have a friend who said she is convinced that a lot of people say, if Christianity means my marriage is good, my kids are well behaved, my house is taken care of, everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to do, That’s all I want. And they don’t think about having Jesus or not.

And I think that’s where the danger lies. And so while we wouldn’t say, no, I don’t believe there’s an eternity, I don’t believe there’s an afterlife. If you’re a believer, you wouldn’t say that today because you’re not immersed in Greek philosophy, but we are immersed in modern philosophy that focuses on the here and now and just ignores those things and treats them like an afterthought.

But here’s the thing. we cannot separate the Christian message from the transforming power of God. We cannot look at Christianity as just something that makes things better here and now, and that’s all there is to it.

And Paul goes through this in verses 12 through 19, and we see some of the things that have to happen if we try to separate those two. If we try to separate Christianity from the transformation that the gospel makes in us, if we try to turn Christianity into just an ethical system, if we try to turn Christianity into a list of rules for a better life, if we try to turn Christianity into something that’s going to help us get ahead, we have to remember, he points out to us in verses 12 and 13, that God is powerful enough to give us life. And if we treat Christianity as something that’s just for the here and now, then we’re ignoring the power of God.

God’s power is not just sufficient to make things work better here. God’s power is sufficient to transform us from the inside out. Somebody told me this week that they hadn’t thought about the fact that God wants to transform us until we talked about it last week in our explanation of what the gospel is.

And so if you missed that, I think it’s an important point to make. God wants to transform you. God created you for a purpose.

And God wants to transform you to bring you in a line with that purpose. to give you a sense of meaning and a connection to Him. God is powerful enough to do all of those things.

That’s why verse 12 says what it says. He’s asking them, if you believe in Jesus’ resurrection, why is the idea that He could raise you problematic? If God could raise Jesus, why is it a stretch then?

Because they had already gone outside their philosophical box. They’d gone outside their box to say, okay, we really hadn’t believed in resurrections, but I believe Jesus rose from the dead. And he’s saying to them, if your box is big enough to encompass that, why is your box not big enough to encompass that there’s an afterlife?

That there’s something beyond this world. If God’s powerful enough to do one, he’s powerful enough to do the other. If he’s powerful enough to give life to the Son when he was in the grave, he’s powerful enough to give life to us.

And he flips it around in verse 13. If there’s no resurrection from the dead, not even Christ has been raised. He said, if you deny the hope of eternity, if you deny the fact that you can live with God forever, then you have to throw that outside your box.

You have to throw that outside your box as well. Because if you can’t be raised, Jesus wasn’t raised either. If God can’t do this, God couldn’t do that either.

So he’s making a point because they already believe in the resurrection of Jesus. He’s making a point here of saying, if you believe that God was powerful enough to raise Jesus from the dead, then it follows that God is powerful enough to give you eternal life as well. God is powerful enough to give you spiritual life now.

God is powerful enough not to just give you a system of rules, but to give you a new heart. And really, when you start from the premise of Genesis 1-1, that God spoke things into existence, that God spoke to nothing and it became something, if you start from that premise, what can’t God do? Certainly He can give you a new life and hope for eternity.

We move further into verses 14 and the ones following, And he begins to talk about the impact of their view on the gospel message itself. Because they had believed that gospel message that’s outlined in verses 3 through 8. And yet they’re still saying there’s no eternal life.

There’s nothing after this life. This is all there is. But he told them, for that to be the case, for there to be no hope for the future, that has to mean that the gospel itself isn’t true.

To live like we have no hope means living like the gospel isn’t true. Verse 14 teaches us that the entire Christian message, everything we preach, everything we teach, everything we practice, everything we live, it would all be meaningless without the resurrection of Christ and without the promise of a resurrection for us. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain and your faith is vain.

It says everything that we’ve said to you is just nonsense. And everything you’re doing as a church, everything you’re doing as believers, It’s all meaningless. If there was no resurrection, if there’s not going to be a resurrection.

He says in verse 15, Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God because we testified against God that He raised Christ whom He did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised. He said if you go to this extreme of saying there’s no life after this, there’s no hope after this, he said then you have no recourse but to believe we’re all liars. All of us who’ve come and told you that we saw the things we saw.

We’re all liars. And again, I ask you, what motive did the disciples have to lie about the empty tomb and about seeing Jesus alive? They didn’t get their hands on power as a result.

Nobody looked up to them for generations. They didn’t get power. They didn’t get money.

They didn’t get women. J. Werner Wallace says those are the three things that usually compel somebody to lie or conspire.

They didn’t get any of those three things. What they got were ill treatment at everyone’s hands and grisly deaths, most of them. Paul himself witnessed Jesus on the road to Damascus, and Paul was beheaded.

He said, for you to believe there’s no eternal life, there’s nothing beyond this life, you’d have to say we’re all lying to you. And in fact, he teaches in verses 16 and 17, there’s no salvation at all. If the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

He says that a few times because he’s making sure they follow his argument here. If the dead are not raised, if there’s no eternal life, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless and you are still in your sins.

And that doesn’t make the saying, well, Jesus didn’t rise, we’re not going to rise. That doesn’t make the problem of sin go away. It makes the problem of sin bigger because God is clear that we’re all sinners.

We’ve all disobeyed Him. His Word says that I know it from experience. When I’m honest with myself, I know what a sinner I am.

You don’t have to watch the news very long to recognize that this is a sin-sick world. Something is wrong in this world. And it’s sin.

The problem is, if you believe there’s no afterlife, and we’re not going to be raised, because apparently God can’t do that, then He couldn’t raise Jesus either. And Jesus died for no reason. He never proved that He could do any of this.

We’re all still in our sins. And that forgiveness that had been promised in the gospel meant nothing. There’s no salvation at all.

And in verse 18, I think some of them were worried about what had happened to those at Corinth who had already passed on. I think that’s what sparked some of this conversation. Because they were teaching, we’ll see them again.

And some in the church, influenced by these worldly philosophies, were saying, they’re not coming back. There’s no resurrection. Paul said, if that’s true, they’re just gone forever.

And where is the hope in this? The gospel message is a message of hope. What they had believed was a message of hope.

And yet by cutting off the ending of it, they had robbed anybody of any hope that had been promised. And that leads us to verse 19, where he says, if we’ve hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. If all Christianity means is that things are a little bit better in this life, we’re in trouble.

If it just means that Christianity improves a few aspects of our lives, we’re in trouble. Because we were not promised. We were not promised that Christianity, that believing the gospel would make our lives easy.

As a matter of fact, didn’t Jesus promise the opposite? He said, in this world you will have trouble. I don’t enjoy this verse, but he says, don’t be amazed when they hate you because they hated me first. I don’t like conflict.

I like everybody to get along. The idea, people are going to hate me. Yeah, if you’re going to follow Jesus, there’s no amount of niceness you can put on it that’s going to make everybody happy.

Some people are just going to hate you because they hate Jesus. What I’m telling you is we were never promised that everything was going to be perfect. And so if all we’re looking at Christianity as is a life improvement program, there are some areas where Christianity will make your life better.

But I’m going to tell you the honest truth. There are some areas where Christianity is going to make your life harder. If we’re just looking at it as a life improvement program, we’re in trouble because I’m not sure we come out ahead on that deal. Instead, what we need to know is whether Christianity is true or not.

Not does it work for me, is it convenient in every single situation. Is it true? I’ve told you before, 2,000 years ago, Jesus either walked out of that grave or He didn’t.

That’s the central question. If He walked out of that grave, then what He said was true was true. If he walked out of that grave, then what he promised, he will deliver.

If he walked out of that grave, then that eternal life he said you’d have by believing in him, you’ll have. Whether there’s room for it in your philosophical box or not. Paul’s main purpose in writing this section of the text was for us to understand this.

If the Father can raise Jesus, he can raise you. And folks, if he can raise you, that’s talking about this resurrection at the end of everything. I’m sure tonight at our Q&A session, somebody’s going to ask me about the timing of that.

I’m going to save you a little bit of time. I don’t know. I hear people say, well, we’re very obviously living in the end times.

I don’t know that. We very well may be. We may have another 200 years.

I don’t know. God did not consult me on the decision of when this is all going to happen. But I do believe, I don’t always understand the order of it, but I believe that what God said about what would happen is true.

And if He can raise Jesus, He can raise us. And yes, we’re talking about that general resurrection someday, but not only that, we’re talking about being raised to new life now. We’re talking about the transformation and change of heart that He works in us now.

That it’s not just about religion, it’s not just about a bunch of works, it’s not about stuff we have to earn or deserve, it’s about new life that He gives us. And if He could give new life to Jesus as He lay there in that grave for three days, He can give new life to you and me today. Christianity has to be more than just a tool that we pull out of the toolbox when we need something that’s going to make life a little better or it’s going to make us successful or make us feel better.

It can do all of those things. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.

I said at the beginning of this, there are days that our faith does not work for me. And what I meant by that is there are just days when you are down and beaten down by the world that you don’t feel like God cares, your feelings lie to you, things like that. But when we stop and think about what God really has done, part of what works about our faith is that knowledge that if God did this, if 2,000 years ago Jesus walked out of that grave, then He really can handle all the things in my life that need to be handled.

And they won’t necessarily turn out the way I expect them to, but I know ultimately He’s got it under His control. Christianity, following Christ, walking with Christ, these things can make life better in some ways, But that can’t be all this is about. Does that make sense?

I’m not trying to turn you. . .

If you’re not a believer this morning, I’m not trying to turn you away from Christ and say, oh, it’s awful. I’m just giving you the full truth that we don’t always clearly state. Sometimes it makes life better and sometimes it’s more difficult to follow Jesus.

But Paul’s point is that if we accept the premise that Jesus is who He claimed to be and that He did the things He said He would do, then it follows automatically that the gospel changes our lives because that’s what he promised and it changes the life to come. So he’s writing this to a group of people that are just looking for something that’s going to work for them today. And he says there’s so much more.

Jesus didn’t come just to fix today for you. Jesus came to change your heart and to give you eternal life with God. And that gospel message that we outlined last week is very simple.

Sometimes we make it hard to understand, but it’s a simple message that we have all disobeyed God. We have all dishonored God in the choices that we’ve made. And God being a righteous judge has to punish that sin.

We look at that and say it’s so harsh that God would punish us. Listen, if somebody killed somebody, if somebody victimized people, and they stood before a judge and the judge just said, well, don’t let it happen again, I’m going to let you off. We would want that judge run off the bench.

We want judges to be just as long as it’s not with us, right? We like the idea that somebody’s going to mete out justice. God being just, our sin has to be punished.

And you and I could spend eternity separated from God because of our sin. But Jesus Christ came to earth willingly to take our punishment so that that sin could be dealt with, so that that sin could be paid for. And Jesus was nailed to the cross and He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.

And He was buried and rose again three days later to prove that He was able to pay for our sins. And He came bringing forgiveness to anyone who would trust in Him as their Savior. And the answer for us today is to stop looking at this as a list of rules that’s just going to, you know, I’ll use it while it works and makes life better.

And look at it instead as Jesus Christ died to pay for my sins so that I could be right with God. So that I could be changed and transformed now. So that I could have eternal life with Him.

And He rose again to prove it and all I have to do is believe and ask for it.