← Prophecy Watchers
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Welcome to studies with Stearman. Join us as we look deeper into the Bible. Strengthen your faith with us even as we see the day approaching. And now here's Gary. This chapter is where it's at. If you ever lose your way spiritually, if you get down, get depressed, if you get confused or whatever, turn to 1 Corinthians 15 and read it. It'll just straighten you right out. It's amazing. First Corinthians 15 from the literal Greek says this. But, brothers, I make known to you the Gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you stand, by which also you are being kept safe if you hold fast the word which I preached to you. Except it was not in vain that you believed. For among first things, I delivered to you that which I also received. That Christ died on behalf of our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried. That he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to. And then he goes into a list of people the Lord appeared to. Now, that's what the Greek text literally says. Verse two begins this way. Now, in the King James, it says, by which also ye are saved. The tense there is the aorist present in the Greek. It says, by which also you are being kept saved, or continually being kept saved. It's a process. Salvation is a continuing process. Of course, that refers to sanctification. But think about the letter for a moment. Let's review the letter. And when we do, we remember that somebody by the name of Chloe, a woman by the name of Chloe in Corinth wrote Paul a letter saying, we've got problems in our congregation. We have divisions, we have schisms. We have some people who believe this thing, some people who believe that thing. Could you please speak to the divisions that we have? And then the letter of Chloe apparently asks Paul, why is this happening to us? Because Paul then speaks to the divisions and schisms, and then he explains why these schisms and divisions are happening. And he goes into a point by point dissertation on a lot of really horrendous things. Incest, litigation, various kinds of immorality in the congregation. Apparently not only Chloe, but other people had written to Paul saying, we have questions, we have questions about marriage, conduct within marriage. For example, what happens if a believing wife marries an unbelieving husband? How should she behave herself? Is it okay to split that marriage up? Or should she hang in there in spite of everything? All kinds of practical questions. And Paul's answering those. He answers the question, if you recall about making offerings to idols, because it was very common in Greece, in the Greco Roman society, to offer all kinds of things to idols in various kinds of little chapels. There were questions about public worship. How should we conduct our worship service? And what about the sign gifts, the gifts of the Spirit? How should those be conducted? And Paul goes into great lengths, and a couple of weeks ago we talked about 1 Corinthians 14, in which the gifts are to operate in a certain way in public worship, namely, they are to edify the congregation and should never become a feature in and of themselves. The signed gifts were assigned to unbelievers, not to believers. And that's still true to this very day. So he goes on and on and on answering these questions. And then wham. First Corinthians 15. And he starts out with moreover, brethren, moreover, in a sense that says, I've talked about a lot of different things in this letter, but here's something that I really want to emphasize. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you've received, wherein you stand, by which you are continuously being saved, if you keep in memory what I preached to you. Now, here's the thing about salvation. It is ironic because salvation is completely and totally of the Lord, and it is also completely and totally of the individual at one and the same time. And you say, that can't be true. And yet it is. It's like Paul wrote elsewhere, work out your own salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you. Now, how can both of those be true? How can you work out your own salvation and then God work out your own salvation? Isn't there going to be some kind of conflict? No, because we are bound in four dimensions, and God is not bound by any dimensions. And for that reason he can do things without affecting our free will. It's just that simple. We do have the ability to make choices. God also can make choices, and in some way that we at this level do not understand, both conditions can be true. And he states that right here. He says, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also have you received, and wherein you stand, by which also you are continually being saved. If you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you've believed in vain, believed without cause. What he's doing in these first two verses is setting up the conditions for teaching on the Resurrection, because the Resurrection is the absolute center of the Bible, period. The Resurrection is why Adam was created. The race of Adam gave birth to Jesus, who was Born for one reason. To die, to be buried, and to rise again on the third day to fulfill the necessities of redemption. Without the resurrection, everything else, even Christ's death, is meaningless. Let's suppose Jesus had just died and then just stayed in the grave. Oops. The resurrection. We're not talking about resuscitation. It's very common these days. And there have been a lot of books written by people who have been present in emergency rooms at cardiac events. You know when somebody dies for X number of minutes and is finally resuscitated through the intervention of drugs and the electronics and whatever heart massage, that person comes back and says, I was dead for 23 minutes, or whatever. I was dead for six minutes and I went through the great tunnel of light and I saw the great Creator. And the great Creator said, it's not time for you to be with us. You must go back. And so forth. I don't want to scoff at such things, but that was not resurrection. When that person was brought back to life in the emergency room, that was not a resurrection, it was a resuscitation. There's only been one person in the history of humanity resurrected. And furthermore, when he was resurrected, he was not resurrected into his old body. He was resurrected into a new and glorious body and became a type of the body of Christ. Resurrection. The Greek word for resurrection is anastasis. That's where the girl's name, Anastasia comes from. Why you would ever name a girl resurrection, I don't know, but it might not be a bad name. Anastasia. Anastasis. Ana in Greek means up. Ana and means to stand. You put them together and you have anastasis, which means to stand up. CS Lewis used to get into debates with religious liberals who did not believe in the resurrection. And there are a lot of religious liberals who do not believe in the resurrection. They believe in a spiritual Christ who came spiritually and who left spiritually. And he was a kind of a spirit creature. The people who believe this are the spiritual descendants of the Gnostics, the ancient Hellenistic Jews who actually believed in spiritual things, but they didn't believe in physicalities. For example, the Sadducees did not believe in a physical resurrection. They just didn't believe it was possible. It was too much to believe. Well, C.S. lewis would debate with these religious liberals. And of course, C.S. lewis was a Greek scholar. He was an Oxfordian Greek scholar, which means he spoke Greek fluently. He knew all about anastasis. Resurrection means to stand up. And he used to talk to these religious liberals and he would say, let me ask you a question. Precisely what position does a spirit take when it stands up? Meaning, how can a spirit stand up? Well, it can't. If you're a spirit, there's basically no up. You're just kind of floating around. But if you're resurrected in a physical body, you actually do stand up. Now, let's talk about Lazarus. Was he resurrected? Ooh, that's an interesting question, isn't it? Suddenly your mind has to shift gears and start thinking about a whole new set of things. Lazarus. Jesus said, come forth, and he came forth wrapped in grave clothes on the fourth day. There's no indication that Lazarus received a glorified body or lived immortally. His was a special case, I think, of resuscitation. How about Dorcas? Dorcas was dead. Peter went into her and spoke, and she rose from the dead. But was she raised in a glorified body? No. I think Lazarus and Dorcas were examples on a limited scale of that which is to come at the general resurrection, a true resurrection, and this is given all the way through the Old Testament, all the way into the New Testament. A true resurrection depends upon receiving a body of glory, an immortal body of glory, which is our destination as believers, to stand up in an immortal body of glory. Today there is the belief in heaven, a heaven to which everybody goes. There's this general idea that there's this light place, and everybody goes toward the light when they die. And it makes no difference at all what you believe or what you do while you're here on earth. But this sort of belief system has crept into the public thinking that it makes no difference what you did while on planet Earth. We're all going to go to this light when we die, and we'll live in the light. In the presence of perhaps some superior beings, we'll live kind of a superior life. This is pure mythology because all of the patriarchs, all of the apostles had one thing in mind, and that was resurrection into the kingdom. Abraham died with the hope that he would be resurrected into the kingdom and into an eternal life with God. He didn't quite understand how it was all going to come about, but that was his faith. The apostles all believed that, but they had a different perspective. Luke, in the first chapter of Luke, writes this. And Luke, by the way, was an intellectual. He was a bona fide intellectual. And he writes. Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, he says, A lot of people have sat down, tried to write little histories of what happened when Jesus walked among them, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word. We saw it with our eyes. Autopti is the Greek word, eyewitnesses. Autopti, by the way, is where we get the word autopsy, meaning to stare at something, examine it, and critically analyze it until we understand it. Autopti translated to King James as eyewitnesses, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word. He says, we saw this, we experienced it. He said, it seemed good to me also, having had a perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee, in order, most excellent, Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed. So Luke's writing a letter to Theophilus, and he says, theophilus, I saw I was an eyewitness to the life of Jesus. And I'm writing this so that you can have absolute knowledge. Now, when he says absolute knowledge, he means it just certainty, certainty. You go to the 24th chapter of Luke after he's finished all of his writing. He's laid out the meat of the Gospel, the life of Christ. You go to the 24th chapter of Luke and you get this. 24:25. Jesus had been walking with a couple of believers on the road to Emmaus. He converses with them on their own level. They're walking and talking as people do. And they began to wonder, can this really be true? And here in Luke 24:25, it says, then he said unto them, o fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things to enter into his glory? What Jesus is saying, the entire Old Testament, is a preamble to what actually happened in the life of Christ. If you really read and understood the Old Testament, you would understand that the Messiah had to suffer to enter into his glory. Suffering, glory, suffering, glory. Suffering, glory. It is the normal Christian life. Now, am I wishing suffering on all of you here? No, I'm not. But on occasion we do suffer. Look at verse 33 of Luke 24. And they rose up the same hour, returned to Jerusalem, and found the 11 gathered together. Judas, of course, is gone, and them that were with them saying, the Lord is risen indeed and hath appeared unto Simon. Now, later, we're going to refer back to this verse 34 when we continue in 1 Corinthians the Lord is risen indeed hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way and how he was known of them breaking the bread. And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and said unto them, sholem alichem, shalom alichem, peace be unto you. And they were terrified and supposed that they had seen a spirit. That's the human perception in action right there. People believe in spirits. Oh, yeah, that's a ghost spirit. There's a very common belief in spiritism and spirit activity. People love to investigate that world, the world of the psychic and the spiritual and, you know, the crystal ball world, the Ouija board world. The whole idea of ghosts and goblins. People just love to scare themselves with spirit things. And people are primed to believe that there is this dark spirit world. And Jesus comes in and they say it's a ghost. No, the whole point of this is it's not a ghost. To all the Gnostics out there who say that Jesus rose as a spirit being and not a physical being, Luke wrote this. What did Jesus say when they said it's a ghost? Well, he said to them, why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet. That is I myself. It's me. It's not some ghost of me, not some replication of me or duplicate of me. It's me. Here I am. Look at my hands and my feet. He says, handle me. Touch me and see. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have. Well, this is. This is amazing. You cannot allow your mind to drift away from this central idea. It is the center of the gospel. Jesus rose physically in a body and became the first of many who would rise in bodies. Similarly, he did not rise as a spirit being. This single little error in thinking can foul up the entire gospel. It and does quite regularly. It's the root of liberalism. It is the root of religious liberalism to say that Jesus rose in spirit and not a fleshly way. He says, touch me, I'm flesh and bones. And when he had thus spoken, showed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy and wondered, he said unto them, have ye here any meat? Which, by the way, is Jacobean for got anything to eat? Anything around what's in the fridge? You know, that's basically what Jesus is saying. And no spirit asks for something out of the fridge, I guarantee you. They gave him a piece of broiled fish and of a honeycomb. Fish and honeycomb kind of seems strange to our tastes, although I can understand how that would be really good. You know, a little honey spoon spread on little roasted fish. Not bad, not bad. He took it and did eat before them. I once had a debate with a gentleman who did not believe in the bodily resurrection. He belonged to a very famous and well known cult which teaches that Jesus rose spiritually and not bodily. And I had an opportunity throughout an entire evening to debate a gentleman. And it was a sword fight basically. And I mean, we went at it until we came to this place right here and I laid this on him and I said, how was he able to eat fish and honeycomb with his spirit body? And the man had no answer and he went away without an answer. He was very perplexed. Jesus, in a demonstration of his physicality recorded by Luke, gives us the centerpiece of the resurrection story. Eyewitnesses. And of course you remember in our studies in Acts, virtually the entire book of Acts has a series of sermons, one after another. Each and every one of those sermons features the resurrection of Christ as its centerpiece. The physical, fleshly resurrection of Christ, not the spiritual resurrection of Christ. So that's the importance of the resurrection. The importance of the resurrection is that it is a promise of more to come. And that's what chapter 15 is all about. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you've received, wherein you stand, by which also you're saved. If you keep in memory what I preached to you. Unless you've believed in vain, it's easy to drift away from the central doctrines of the faith, to get sloppy in your mind and sort of lose track and even be persuaded to leave these doctrines behind. But if you really are convinced, if you really stick with the teachings of the apostles, you're never going to get confused. You're always going to have events ordered according to their importance. Verse 3. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received. How that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. What scriptures? Well, you may have your own favorite Old Testament scriptures about the resurrection. There are hundreds of them, literally. Psalm 16, David wrote. And the theme of Psalm 16 is that for that individual who trusts in the Lord, there will be eternal life. David writes the whole Psalm about that subject. I can't read the whole Psalm because we don't have time. But starting in verse nine, it says, therefore my heart is glad, my glory rejoices. My flesh also shall rest in hope. My flesh, flesh, flesh, flesh. It's all about a fleshly resurrection, not about a spiritual resurrection. Do you like your body? Well, I like my body, except I'd like it to be better. And every one of you would agree with me. You'd like your body to be better. We're unanimous in that some of us have got better bodies than others. But they're all inferior. They are flawed because of sin. And you say, yes, I like my body, but I'd sure like to have an immortal body. He says, therefore my flesh shall rest in hope, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, in the grave, in Sheol, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to seek corruption. You know, the penalty for failure to receive Christ is hell, the grave, and all that comes after the grave. Corruption, destruction, separation from God, eternal punishment. I hate to have to even think about that. But it's true. And it runs totally counter to the current myth, which is that everybody who's dying is going to a place of light, regardless of their belief system. That's a lie. And it's on tv. It's in books everywhere. There's this lie that we're all going to this place of light, regardless of what we have done. You see TV programs about it, more and more of them. You see novels and books. But David knew the truth. Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to seek corruption. This is a prophecy where Christ would not corrupt in the grave, but would rise again. Thou wilt show me the path of light. In thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. But I would add only at thy right hand. Isaiah 53 might be one of your favorite chapters. And we've all read Isaiah 53. I'm going to turn back there right now and just look at two or three verses. Isaiah 53 talks about the crucifixion of Christ, his brutal treatment, the oppression. And it says in verse nine, he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in death, because he had done no violence. Neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied by his knowledge. Shall my righteous see justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. And of course, Isaiah is simply talking about what happened at the crucifixion. He bore our sins, and by that simple fact we are able to receive redemption. Verse 12 of Isaiah 53. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death. He was numbered with the transgressors, bare the sin of many, and made intercession for transgressors. So there's a complete factual layout of what he did for us. And that's what Paul's saying here in First Corinthians 15, 3, 4. I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins. According to the Scriptures, the centerpiece of the Gospel. He died, but he was physically resurrected, and if he hadn't been, there would be no Gospel. He was buried, Verse four, and he rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures. There are many Scriptures that speak of two days, then three. We're not going to look at them today. Next week, I plan on taking a prophetic view of First Corinthians 15, because there's a great deal of prophecy here. Now, these first four verses are simply talking about the fact of Christ's resurrection. There is a part two of this chapter. It goes from verses 5 through 19, and it deals exclusively with the proofs of the resurrection. And we started out a moment ago by reading Luke, Luke, Chapter 1, Chapter 24. Luke says, we were eyewitnesses. We saw all this happen. Many of us have sat down. We have attempted to set in order the events of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ in order that others would be able in later ages to believe what we saw. It's just that simple. However, have you ever read critical reviews of the Gospels that are designed for one thing only, and that is to remove your confidence in the veracity of the Gospels. Modern academic scholarship, really, starting back in the 1850s and coming to the present, is dedicated to making sure that you have very little faith in the Gospel. There were scribal errors, there were historical errors, there were transpositions, there were editorials, there were redactions. All kinds of things happened. So you really can't trust what you read in the New Testament so much, because there were these medieval monks with a lot of time on their hands, and they tampered and tinkered around with the Scriptures and changed it all. And so probably you really shouldn't believe, particularly, you shouldn't believe the Bible word for word. That is just stupid, right? That is, if you're a true Intellectual. Well, may I just use a scriptural word? Balderdash. God arranged it, for he arranged the Scriptures for one thing. Trust. If you really examine. I don't know whether you've ever done this, but just look at the structure of the New Testament. It is put together in such a way. It's put together in a soothing way, if you will, in an assuring way that if you just read through it, you say, wow, this is the truth. There's just no. It has an internal affirmation, what's called intrinsic value. That is the Scripture validates itself. And the more you read it, the more you discover that there's an internal or intrinsic validation in Scripture. And you end up saying, this is not erroneous. There are no redactions here. This is not intellectual. This is, as the old phrase goes, thy gospel truth. And it is. Look at verse five. After Paul says he rose again the third day, verse five. And that he was seen of Cephas. We call him Cephas, Peter, Simon, the Aramaic. Actually, the way the Aramaic is pronounced is Kepha, which I think Kepha is a good name. So his friends around the lake there called him Kepha, which is written in the New Testament as C, E, P, H, A, S. Kepha is a kind of a neat name, sort of like Kepher. We have a name in the Modern English, Kepher. But Kepha, I think, is even a better name. He was seen of Kepha. That was a special meeting. God had some things to work out. The Lord had some issues to work out with Kepha, if you recall. You know what I mean? It's kind of like, let's go out behind a woodshed here and we're going to have a talk. And I'm sure that he had a special meeting with Peter and then he met with the 12. I take it that would include Matthias. These would be individual meetings of the risen Christ with known people who were close to him while he was alive. After that, he was seen of above 500 brethren at once. Now, 500 brethren at once, that's an audience. The thought here, probably, you know, Jesus had promised to come back and see his Galilean people. He said, I'll come back and I'll see you. This was probably in Galilee. It was probably people who had seen him while he taught around the Sea of Galilee and around north toward Nazareth. These would be people who knew him by reputation, and many of them had known him as the carpenter's son. So he's now risen. He's a beautiful resurrected being. Absolutely perfect. And he has a meeting with 500 people. Don't you think that that word would get out? Yes, it would. What I'm saying is there are a lot of people in the first century who knew firsthand about the physical resurrection of Jesus. And I'll bet at the time that he met with these 500 brethren, he probably shared a meal with them. He sat and ate, broke bread, said, mmm, this is a good casserole. Who made this? You know, wow. I mean, this is Jesus. He's alive. Look what it says. It says, of whom the greater part remain unto this present. But some are fallen asleep. It's A.D. 56. When Paul writes this letter, he says, a lot of these people 20 years later are still alive today. For 20 years these people have been alive. What do you think they're talking about when they sit down to eat or when they go to the marketplace? I know what I'd be talking about. I know exactly what I'd be talking about. I'd be talking about the time that I was a member of that 500 person audience who saw the risen Christ. Wow. There's nothing else to talk about. This is it. After that he was seen of James. A special meeting with James. And James had a special calling. Do you remember what it was? He was the leader of the Jerusalem church and had special. And by the way you talk about having challenges, James had his challenges. How about this then? All of the apostles, in other words, there were numbers of post resurrection meetings with people who had known him while he was alive in his normal body. And last of all, he was seen of me also as one born out of due time. Wow. You know, it's fascinating. I did a study on the two Sauls, King Saul in the Old Testament and Saul the Pharisee in the New Testament. These guys were both exceptional, exceptional people. King Saul was an exceptional man, very talented, but also deeply flawed. Rav Shaul of the New Testament was an exceptional, exceptional human being. Probably the most intelligent man alive in his day in terms of just genius iq, but deeply flawed. Deeply flawed human being and zealous to a fault. Both of these people would have eaten Israel alive if given the opportunity to do so. They would have just eaten it up and spat it out. Both Sauls, both were Benjamites. And when Jacob called his sons together, as given In Genesis chapter 49, when he gathered his 12 sons, he prophesied basically from his deathbed, and he said to each of his sons, this and this and this is going to happen to your offspring. When he got to Benjamin, Benjamin brings up the absolute rear of the 12 tribes tail end. Genesis 49:27 gives us the one sentence prophecy about Benjamin. You know, Judah gets a great big two or three verse prophecy and Joseph gets a big, big, big prophecy. Both have wonderful promises. So Jacob comes down to Benjamin and he says, Benjamin shall raven as a wolf. In the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil. So suppose I'm Benjamin. I'm standing here at Jacob's deathbed and I'm saying, well what is that what I get? Whoa, what a prophecy. Hey, Joseph is a fruitful bough and Judah is a lion. I'm a ravening wolf. Come on dad, you can do better than that. Well see, Jacob spoke the word of God and he prophesied about Benjamin. And the two prominent Benjamites in scripture are Saul of the Old Testament and Sha' Ul of the New Testament. And you remember what they both did. They all but destroyed Israel. And in fact Paul, breathing threatenings and slaughter, obtained letters from the high priest that he might go and route out and even kill families devoted to this crazy new belief in Messiah. Rav Shaul was truly a ravening wolf until Jesus stopped him on the Damascus road and said, hey, what are you doing? And so look what it says in verse 8 of First Corinthians 13 says, and last of all, he was seen of me also as one born out of due time. He says, what happened to me was not supposed to happen. It's a violation of everything. It's even a violation of the prophecy of Jacob. I was a ravening wolf and I deserved only to be stopped and put down. But out of his grace, Jesus chose me to be the one to found the church. We'll have more about that later. Because the irony of a ravening wolf being converted as he was and raised up to found the Church, his 13 epistles define the church is maybe one of the great miracles in the entire Bible. So as Paul goes down a list of proofs of the resurrection, he refers to himself as one born out of due time. Now we're going to come back to that. I told you that there's prophecy in First Corinthians 15. Next week we'll talk about it. This term due time has a very great prophetic rendering. For I am the least of the apostles that am not meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am. His grace, which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all. And I can understand that. I am quite sure that in his early days he was laboring under a load of guilt. He stood at the stoning of Stephen, presided over that affair. He routed out Christian families, tried to destroy the church. The guy had to be operating under a huge load of guilt until he finally got it together. And that took 17 years. I'm the least of the apostles. I'm not even it's not suitable to call me an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. By the grace of God I am what I am. And his grace which was bestowed upon was not in vain. But I labored more abundantly than they all. And that labor came out of, I think, an attempt to make good. And boy, did he ever make good. Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore, whether it were I or they. So we preach. So ye believed. The Gospel rotates around the concept of the physical resurrection of Christ and his physical reality. Look at the verses that come next, verses 12 through 19. Seven ifs. In this section there are seven big ifs. And of course, you know me, when I see 7 of anything in one place together, I go, whoa, ho, there's something. Whoa. Look at that. Seven, the number of completion. In other words, when you see 7 of anything put together, it is always a complete statement of that thing in Scripture. Now look at the seven ifs. Now, if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how, say some among you, there is no resurrection of the dead. But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up. If so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain. You're yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. Notice that 19th verse. The seventh. If. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable to me. This is aimed directly at what has come to be called the prosperity doctrine. Have you ever heard the prosperity doctrine? It's the health, wealth, prosperity, all is well, be ye blessed. Positive confession, etc. Etc. Have you ever heard of that? Well, the meat of that Doctrine is that in Christ you're going to be absolutely slammed with blessing. Your storehouse is going to be full, your coffers will overflow. You'll have health, you'll have wealth, you'll have no opposition from your enemies. Trample on the devil's head. And man, you got it made. Okay, in this life. So what does Paul say? If in this life only we have hope, in Christ, we're of all men most miserable. Suppose I made it my doctrine that you believe in Jesus by the moment you believe in Jesus, from that moment forward until the day you die, everything is just going to be wonderful. That directly contradicts the 19th verse that we just looked at here. Directly contradicts it. Paul makes the exact opposite assertion. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. In other words, the greatest hope we have is after this life, not during this life. Now, which one you going to believe? You know. And then you're going to say to me, well, doesn't the Bible promise blessing for believers? Absolutely. As it was put in the Old Testament, I have not seen a righteous man begging bread. The righteous will be blessed. They will be given health, they'll be given wealth, they'll be given plenty, all sorts of blessings. But if that becomes your motivation for hope, you've taken a wrong turn. Because your real hope is the blessed hope, the hope of the physical resurrection, such as is demonstrated in the life of Christ. Now, if Christ, verse 12, be preached, that he rose from the dead, how say some among you, that there is no resurrection of the dead? The Stoics, the Epicureans, the Platonists, the Hellenistic Jews, by the way, the Hellenistic Jews were Jews back in that day who had fallen under the influence of Greek philosophy and syncretized Greek philosophy into Judaism. And so they had a mixture of Judaism and Gnostic philosophy. Gnostic philosophy says that God cannot be realized. God is so far above the surface of this planet that you can never see him or touch him or know him or experience him in any way. And that the only way he touches the earth is through a series of spiritual emanations. So that God, whatever He is and nobody knows what he is, can never be touched and can never touch man. And if he did, if God ever did touch men, he would be sullied, he'd be dirtied, because men are dirty. And doesn't your own nose teach you that? You know, if you haven't showered in a few days, take a shower. Men are dirty. This world is dirty. It's got dirt all over it. God would never touch this world. That's what the Greeks said. So Paul goes to Athens, remember that? And he says, gentlemen, I want to tell you about God. He's actually walked the earth in physical form. No. And of course they thought he was an idiot for saying that, because God would never touch this earth. It's dirty. That's the essence of Gnosticism. Gnosticism says if a superior being does come to earth, he comes in spiritual form so that he will not have to touch the earth, has no bodily functions to sully himself, and therefore we can accept a spiritual God. But it's a physical God idea. I don't think so. The Sadducees, remember, Christ had several confrontations with the Sadducees, a sect of Jews. They were very wealthy. They were the wealthy liberals of the day. They really didn't believe all the scriptures. They certainly didn't believe believe the divine inspiration of Scripture in most cases. And they fancied themselves intellectuals. Remember, some of them came to Christ and they didn't believe there was such a thing as a resurrection. And they came and asked him how can such things be? And he just sliced and diced them, of course, intellectually. And they just went away perplexed. The Sadducees did, because they denied the resurrection. A lot of the Pharisees really in some ways denied the resurrection in the sense that we now think of it. And all of the Greeks and Romans alive in that day denied the resurrection. So Paul asks this rhetorical question. If Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how, say some among you? There's no resurrection from the dead. There were still people in the Corinthian Church who were having a problem. Whoa, wait a minute. I can believe everything about him, but that he rose physically. I'm having trouble with that. And Paul writes this 15th chapter to deal specifically with this problem. And he says, if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen? If Christ is not risen, then is our preaching vain? That is, it's worthless. Your faith is worthless. Yea. And we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ. And the term raised up in verse 15 is a specific term that means to physically. It does not mean to spiritually raise up, but it's a specific Greek word that means to physically lift something up cannot be used of an evanescent or non physical material. He raised up Christ, whom he raised, not up. If so be that the dead rise not for if the dead rise not. Then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, you're getting your sins. Then they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished, that is, they have dissolved, they're gone, decayed. And then he says, if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we're of all men most miserable. You can satisfy yourself on a number of levels about why we believe in Jesus the way we do. But the number one reason is that he was the first of a new type of being, a glorified human being. He was the prototype, if you will. He's called the firstfruits. But he was prototypical. And the Jewish feast of firstfruits is when the priest went out and waved a sheaf of grain in the spring at the first cutting of the grain. And the reason he did it was to say this. This is the first chief. This is the promise of much, much more to come. So Christ the first fruits is the promise of much, much more to come. John, who walked with Jesus and witnessed the resurrection, said this first. John 4:2 Hereby know ye the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is coming thine the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And then he says, and this is the spirit of Antichrist, whom ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is in the world. So notice that John links the testing of the faith with the fleshly appearance of of Christ and the fleshly post resurrection appearance of Christ. And I could go into a lot more detail, but don't ever let anybody steer you away from that central point. If you're ever in a discussion with unbelievers or with religious liberals, try to steer the conversation to the fleshly appearance of Christ and the fleshly resurrection of Christ. I guarantee you there is no argument against that. And that's why it's in the center of Peter's preaching, it's the center of Paul's preaching, it's in the center of James preaching. They all center on the fleshly appearance, both pre and post resurrection appearance of Christ. Well, wish I had more time. Next week we're going to get into the prophetic implications of the resurrection. Sam.