Our Resurrection Bodies - Part 1

·         Let me remind you of some facts about resurrection.

·         It’s very much evident by the time we reach the 15th Chapter of Corinthians and the 35th verse, that the apostle Paul wants us to believe in the bodily resurrection.

·         We are aware that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christian testimony. 

·         The foundation of the gospel. 

·         The basis of the hope of our faith is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

·         The first 34 verses said repeatedly that the resurrection of Christ is the basis of our resurrection that we too will rise. 

·         The idea of resurrection is very basic then to Christianity. 

·         Christ’s resurrection then becomes the guarantee of our resurrection. 

·         Now this is a cardinal element in Christian theology. 

·         It is an essential element in Christianity – anyone denying the bodily resurrection of Christ denies Christ Himself and demonstrates their lack of genuine salvation.

·         Jesus said in John Chapter 5,

·         So Jesus talked about bodily resurrection.

·         The apostle Paul says in Romans 8:22-23, that there is a redemption of the body. 

·         There will be a...an ultimate salvation of even the body is what he’s talking. 

·         In fact, in 2 Corinthians Chapter 5, you don’t need to look up, just to mention what it says, in verses 2, 3, and 4, he says that

·         So the idea that a Spirit could exist eternally without a body is not at all akin to Christianity.

·         Paul says that would be a kind of nakedness. 

·         The believer desires in the next life to be clothed upon with a house that is a heavenly body. 

·         So even the saints today with Christ, those who have gone on are there in Spirit waiting for the body that will come at resurrection to clothe the nakedness that they now experience.

·         God created man as a whole and God will redeem man as a whole, body and spirit. 

·         Jesus looked, for example, at the very extremity of His ministry to men when He said this,

·         In other words, the ultimate act of salvation is the raising of those at the last day who are Christ’s.

·         Now the Greeks wanted to say that the body was a simple prison, was an evil, fleshly, materialistic decaying thing that only imprisoned the spirit,

·         But the New Testament knows nothing of that because the body is something exalted even to the place where it becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. 

·         It is not just a prison from which the spirit is freed forever to go back and be absorbed in some universal cosmic deity.

·         The body is something that will be with us throughout eternity in a changed and a transformed way. 

·         God will not desert the body. 

·         He will raise it at the last day. 

·         Now this is a vital thing and we saw in the last section that if we don’t believe in bodily resurrection, then we lose some great motivation and some great incentive in the Christian life, don’t we?

·         We’ve seen at other times that we lose an incentive to salvation. 

·         And if there’s no resurrection, there’s no hope of reunion then people who come to Christ with the desire to be rejoined with those they love won’t bother.

·         We saw also that resurrection is a great incentive to service. 

·         Paul says,

·         Well, why would I do that if there’s no resurrection? 

·         I just eat and drink and die and forget it. 

·         I just fulfill my sensual needs and I wouldn’t get involved.

·         And we saw that if there’s no resurrection, we lose a great incentive to sanctification or holiness because thing that keeps us desirous of obedience is the fact that we must face  Christ with a sense of accountability. 

·         So Paul has reaffirmed the resurrection. 

·         The resurrection is the gospel he said earlier. 

·         The resurrection must be true. 

·         The whole of the Christian light hinges on this. 

·         And now he is going to deal with another element of their questioning, because as soon as he has he established the reality of the resurrection, they’re going to say, this is what they say in verse 35,

·         All right, Paul, you want to tell us about resurrection, bodily, physical resurrection of the dead. 

·         Well, explain to us how that can possibly happen? 

·         Ha ha, they think it’s real funny. 

·         They’re talking like skeptics, not like honest doubters. 

·         You see they had believed that the body was a prison for the spirit. 

·         And the body just went to dust and the...and the spirit was free to be absorbed in the universal deity. 

·         The cosmic god, whatever that was.

·         And so that’s where they stopped. 

·         And the idea of resurrection was repulsive to them, because they couldn’t imagine a rotted, decade, stinking, corrupted bunch of whatever left in a grave coming altogether again and coming out. 

·         And from the human viewpoint it looked ridiculous. 

·         And on that premise they asked these questions.

·         And by the way, the Greek skeptics had their view somewhat fed by the Rabbis. 

·         In studying a little bit this week on some of what the Rabbis used to think, some of the ancient Rabbis, about resurrection, I came across some interesting information. 

·         One point was that the Rabbis basically taught that the resurrection body would be the identical body to that which died.  

·         It would just be regathered and brought out of the grave. 

·         It would be the same. 

·         For example, in the Apocalypse of Baruk, you don’t need to worry about that, that’s just the name of it, a book, there is the question. 

·         The writer of the Apocalypse of Baruk asks whether there will be any change when men rise? 

·         And the answer from the Rabbi is this,

·         In other words, they were teaching the same body would come out. 

·         And no doubt this came from their own thinking on the text in Job,

·         And they had taken a very literal perspective there that the same thing would come out that went in and the Greeks kind of ho-hoed at that one. 

·         And Celsus said of course that is the hope of worms. 

·         What kind of theology is that? 

·         Who wants it? 

·         Once my spirit is free to float and ascend and wander all through space and be lost in the eternal deity, who needs that cruddy old thing back again?

·         They weren’t even interested, but Paul keeps banging away that there will be resurrection so they say all right, what is going to be like an how are you going to get out of the ground Paul? 

·         They think they’ve found a real flaw in Christianity. 

·         They’ve seen death and they’ve seen decay. 

·         They know what it is for a body to rot away and...and their questions are not unlike questions that I get asked today. 

·         I’ve been asked on many occasions this question.

·         Do you think it’s proper to be cremated? 

·         I’ve been asked...I...I get asked that regularly.

·          And what’s in the back of people’s mind often I’ll say why do you ask? 

·         Well, is it any problem in the resurrection? 

·         I say do you mean can God find the right ashes?  

·         Or people will say well what about...I’ve had this asked, what about somebody who...you know you die at sea and you’re on the bottom in the water changes, you know, and you got all these bones, does God know which knee bone connects with which thigh bone connects with which hip bone so you get the right guy in the end?

·         Listen, that’s right where these critics were. 

·         They think this is some kind of joke.

·          You mean, God is going to go over all the debris of the earth and start sorting out what goes where? 

·         This will be the...this will be the all-time jigsaw.

·         Paul himself asked King Agrippa, who no doubt was exposed to this particular kind of thinking, he said,

·         What about bodies smashed to pieces in a wreck or blown up in a bomb or burned to cinders in a fire? 

·         How is God going to get ashes thrown to the wind and how’s He going to find the right bones on the floor of the ocean and where’s He going to get the dust of somebody to determine from the dust of somebody else and on and on. 

Verse 36 – Paul’s Answer

·         And I like Paul’s answer,

·         “You fool,” that’s the direct approach again. 

·         Paul never minced words.  He doesn’t say now, I’d like to share a few thoughts.  “You fool,” he said.

·         And it’s literally senseless one. 

·         The authorized version is a little more polite than the text, the Greek text. 

·         It says, “Oh senseless one.” 

·         Now the reason he rebukes them is because he knows this is not the query of someone who is wanting to know this is the mockery of someone who thinks he does.

·          This is typical of skeptics who think they have all the answers and they mock the truth.

·          And the fact of the matter is they don’t have the answer at all.

·         And so he is really approaching their mockery with his reply, “you fool.” 

·         Let me give you an answer further is on his mind.

·         And so proceeding from verse 36, he gives them an answer to these two questions that are posed in 35, how are the dead raised and with what body do they come.

·          He basically answers along four lines.

·          He gives them

·         An illustration of resurrection

·         The form of resurrection

·         The contrasts of resurrection, and finally he gives them

·         A prototype of resurrection so they can see exactly what this thing will be like.

1.  An Illustration Of Resurrection

·         He starts out by dealing with the principle of resurrection itself in his illustration

·         Then he talks about the actual form that this resurrection will take

·         And just exactly what it will be like

·         Then he uses contrast to even further clarify the issue and then he gives them a living example in a prototype of such a resurrection. 

·         So that when all is said and done there shouldn’t be any question as to what the resurrection body is like insofar as we can understand it. 

·         There are some questions left unanswered because of the limits of our understanding.

·         Let’s begin then with the illustration of resurrection. 

·         Now he’s not trying to prove the resurrection any more. 

·         He’s not trying to prove bodily resurrection any more.

·          He’s trying to describe it here and give them some insight into the kind of body.

·          Now we’re going to really go through a lot of verses.

·          Verse 36, let’s look there and I want to read a couple of verses to you. 

·         Here’s the illustration.

·         Now we’ll stop there. 

·         His illustration is from the seed. 

·         He uses the illustration of a seed put into the ground, buried that brings forth life.

·          Now this is a very, very clear illustration, as clear as a human illustration can be of an unhuman, supernatural reality.

·         He says, look you shouldn’t have any more problem with the resurrection concept than you have with the concept of harvest.

·         You take a seed and he puts it in their own hand as such “that which thou sowest.” 

·         You go out and you’re a farmer and you sow a seed.

·         And it first goes into the ground and it dies before it lives.

·         The seed decomposes, and then it rises again.

·         And it rises again in a different form. 

·         And yet in some sense it is connected to the seed.

·         So that there are three thoughts here that he’s dealing with,

·         Disillusion,

·         Difference, And

·         Continuity.

·         He says there’s a disillusion of the first element, another comes forth that is different and yet there is the same life principle.

·         In other words, whatever grain you sow, you’re going to get that kind of life coming from that seed.

·         And yet the...that which is produced, the tree or the stalk of grain will be very different in appearance from the seed and yet it will have the same life principle.

·         And he says the whole key is the decomposing of the seed. 

·         The dying of the seed and then from the dying of the seed fired out of that ground comes new life.

·         It is the same kind of life, the same principle of life, and yet it is different.

·         Now Jesus taught this in relation to His own death and resurrection in John 12:24, using the very same analogy.

·         In other words, the time of the death and resurrection, then he says,

·         Same idea, Christ says, I’ll go into the ground, I will die, there will be the end of the old and the beginning of the new. 

·         There will be some kind of transformation take place. 

·         Now I believe that in the resurrection Jesus’ body was some way transformed into a glorified body. 

·         It’s not the same the as the body previous.

·         You see the body that Jesus was born with was in all senses a human body.

·         In Luke it says He

·         His body was once a little baby body, then it became a man, and through that process it followed the normal, natural consequence of human life.

·         But when He went into the grave there was the burial of that old body and what came out of that grave was in some way a unique body. 

·         Perhaps a way to illustrate that and we’ll see it later in the text is the fact that perhaps Jesus had a body like Adam did before the fall.

·          I don’t believe Adam had a glorified body before the fall.

·          I think Adam had a body that was perfect, it was in every sense human and yet was perfect.

·         And I believe that if Adam had passed the test of his probation, if rather than fall Adam had been obedient at some point in time his...his perfect human body would have been transformed into a glorified body fit for eternity.

·         And that’s why you see, once he sinned, God put him out of the garden because He didn’t want him to eat of the tree of life which would have given rise to that glorified body by which he would have lived forever.

·         So Christ had a body that was in some sense natural, but when He went into the grave there was something that came out of that one that was different. 

·         It was so glorious, in fact, that no one recognized Him unless He let them recognize Him, unless He clearly revealed who He was. 

·         And yet when they knew who He was, they saw Him as the same as He was before, with the same scars, the same features and yet in a glorified manner.

·         So there is the sense in which it is the same, but yet different.  

·         That was true of Christ and that’s what Paul is saying will be true of us. 

·         That this body will go into the grave, there’s decomposition and in a sense, in terms of just an analogy, we’re going to come out of that grave in a different way. 

·         This shouldn’t be any harder to understand than a harvest.

·         Now, I want you to note verse 38, he says,

·         Now this is a very basic point for Paul, because the whole issue of resurrection down all the way through this chapter is predicated on the power of God.

·         And he just wants you to remember that the whole process is in God’s hands.

·         God can give anything anybody He wants to give it, okay? 

·         That’s a cardinal truth that we’re dealing with here.

·         God can do anything He wants when it comes to passing out bodies.

·         And if God can take some little seed and give it a body that in resurrection out of the ground, that is in no way like the seed and yet has the same life principle, then don’t you underestimate the body God can give to you in resurrection.

·         It’s a matter of God’s will and what pleases Him. 

·         And by the way, he says, every seed has its own body.

·         Everyone has its own body. 

·         And you know something interesting, you can’t tell what it’s going to be by looking at the seed. 

·         Do you know that? 

·         You can’t tell, always. 

·         So the illustration is a seed. 

2.  The form of resurrection (39-42a)

·         Now let’s go to secondly, the form. 

·         He moves away from this, but his basic point here is that God can give anybody He wants in resurrection, just as He does to seeds, a lot of which look alike and yet give forth different bodies in resurrection as they come out of the ground.

·          But look at the form of resurrection.

·          Now he wants them to understand a further thought about this in verse 39.

·         Now that’s that section. 

·         We’ll stop there.

·         Now don’t get hung up on...on the different, well, how could we possibly have a different body.

·         I mean, whatever goes in, if you’re going to say that it’s got to be what comes out.

·         And he says, why? 

·         God has had had all kinds of bodies.

·         There are all kinds of flesh, all kinds of bodies celestial and terrestrial.

·         Don’t you dare limit God.

·         Backing up to verse 38, God can give any body, any body it pleases Him.

·         That’s the point. 

·         Every seed produces its own plant, depending on the will of God. 

·         Everything has its own flesh. 

·         Now verse 39 is interesting from the scientific viewpoint.

·         All flesh is not the same flesh? 

·         You ought to know that.

·         In fact, there are, according to what I read, 600 octodecilian combinations of amino acids.

·         Now, I don’t know how many 600 octodecilian combinations is, that’s a lot.

·         It’s almost infinitesimal.

·         It’s almost immeasurable.

·         And the reason there are so many is because amino acids are the building blocks of flesh. 

·         Amino acids are what produce you and me and anything else in us.

·         And I have my own little set that work in me, and you have your own little set.

·         And amino acids, for every individual, the combinations are unique.

·         No two people are alike.

·         Have you ever noticed the difference in complexion and skin features and wrinkle capacity and resistance in different people.

·         All the different...colors of the hair, all different features, the growth patterns, width, height, all that stuff? 

·         Everything is different, because every individual there’s no stars alike, no two flowers alike, no two blades of grass alike, no two snowflakes alike, not two any things a like, not even identical twins.

·         They have their own little set of amino acids.

·         Now, this in fact, by the way, is one of the greatest proofs against evolution anywhere in science, because no matter what you eat, it all comes out you. 

·         You can eat nothing but Kentucky Fried Chicken for the next ten years and you won’t grow feathers.

·         And the reason you won’t is because the amino acids and combination in your body will produce you.

·         You can eat nothing but hamburgers and you’ll never moo.

·         You’re not going to turn into a cow because the combination of amino acids is so unique to your body it will produce you.

·         And this just goes to militate against the idea of evolution.

·         For example, that in the evolutionary process snakes became birds. 

·         Snakes can’t become birds, because no matter what snakes wish and the idea of evolution says they climbed up trees and wished they could fly for a million years and finally they got their wish, no matter what they wish...that’s the truth, I mean it’s not the truth, but that’s what they is the truth.

·         That’s a true lie, okay? 

·         But you see no matter what snakes do, their amino acids just keep making more snake.

·         They don’t grow feathers and hollow bones and fly.

·         And when the Bible says there are all kinds of flesh and all flesh is not the same flesh, that’s what it means.

·         Listen, God has no problem when it comes to manufacture.

·         He does not operate on the assembly line basis.

·         He’s not stuck with any model.

·         He can make any, in any limitless capacity, anything He wants to make.

·         So don’t say that whatever goes is going to have to be what comes out or you’re messing with God’s creative ability.

·         That’s basic.

·         That’s what he’s saying.

·         Now, let’s look further in the verse. 

·         And that’s true and they never cross, they never cross.  

·         Verse 40, and then he goes even to a vaster area. 

·         He says not only are there these bodies terrestrial, and that means earthly and that would refer to animals and plants, but there are also celestial bodies. 

·         And he says, that of course mean heavenly bodies.

·         And we know what the heavenly bodies are, the sun, the moon, the stars. 

·         He mentions them in them in the very next verse. 

·         And really folks there...the glory is vastly different.

·         The difference between a pretty flower and the sun is a lot of difference, a lot of difference.

·         A pretty flower is nice and has a certain amount of glory, but it doesn’t have anything like the sun.

·         And there are stars in our universe that are like...like a 1,000 suns and more.

·         The glory of the celestial...listen, whatever you see on earth is not what has to be up there is what he’s saying.

·         From the human viewpoint, we look at a flower and then we look at a star and there’s no comparison. 

·         Flower’s gone in a week, the star has been there since God created. 

·         Now the notice here, there are two kinds of bodies he says then, the earthly kind and the heavenly kind. 

·         There’s a big, big difference. 

·         So what he’s saying is listen in resurrection the body is going to be different. 

·         The glory of the resurrection body can be infinitely beyond anything we can conceive in this earth, the earthly, the terrestrial.

·         Verse 41 takes it a step further. 

·         The word glory means manifestation. 

·         The sun manifests itself in a brilliant shining light one way, the moon in a brilliant shining light another way, the stars in a brilliant shining light another way, and do you know that even stars differ from other stars? 

·         You look up in the sky and they all look alike, but they’re not.

·         Donald Peedy in Readers Digest said this,

·         That’s just an idea.

·         They’re different.

·         Every star is different.

·         Every sun is different.

·         The moons are different.

·         It’s all different.

·         It is unique.

·         There are no two stars alike, no two suns alike, no two people alike, no two flowers alike, no two blades of grass alike, no two birds alike, no two anything alike.

·         So God has limitless capability. 

·         This is the stupidity of the guy who says how’s he every going to get all those crummy little pieces put together back right.

·         Paul says, woo, God can do anything He wants and the limits aren’t there.

·         So seeds vary, earthly bodies vary, heavenly bodies vary, and resurrection bodies can have a glory all their own.

·         And God is not limited, if He wills it, He can accomplish it.

·         Now the word glory simply means manifestation and that’s what he’s saying, but it carries with it the idea of light chakina, and it also carries with it the idea of God’s glow, the very life of God as we shall see. 

·         So he says in verse 42,

·         In other words, the resurrection of the dead is going to be one kind of glory different from any kind of glory we’ve ever seen before. 

·         Don’t limit God.

·         Now, this is amazing in many ways.

·         Two ideas flow from the thought,

·         What are you saying Paul? 

·         Number one, I’m saying this, the resurrection body will be different from the body here.

·         All right? 

·         The resurrection body, our resurrection body is going to be different from the body we have here. 

·         But I think he’s also saying something else. 

·         Now watch this, I think he’s saying in resurrection, the bodies that we possess will be different in some sense from each other.

·         People will often ask this, when we get to heaven will we be like Christ? 

·         Yes, 1 John 3:2.

·         Well, does that mean we’ll all look like Christ, we’ll all be 33 years old forever, etc., etc., etc.

·         People often ask that question.

·         I don’t really think so.

·         I don’t think we’re all going to look like Christ and we’re all going to be the same and we’re going to be sort of like assembly line thing.

·         I think we’ll all be there in a sense unique. 

·         For example, Moses and Elijah long after they had died were given some kind of form to return to appear on the Mount of Transfiguration and were recognizable in some way as Moses and Elijah. 

·         And God is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

·         And we see in the resurrection even at the end at the great white thrown that the standing in resurrection form before God are the small and the great. 

·         Which means the variables are still there. 

·         You say, will I look like me? 

·         Well, yeah, you’ll be recognizable as you. 

·         Will I be the same as I am? 

·         No, you’ll be different, but recognizable as you.

·         So what Paul is saying, you see, is this, the basic form of resurrection will be glorified another level of glory, we will be different from this body and yet different from each other in that body. 

·         That’s exciting to think about. 

·         There are a lot of dear saints who are dead and their spirits are with the Lord and they’re waiting for that day when they get clothed with that body. 

·         And here we’re here and looking at our infirmities and weaknesses and wanting so much that body.

·         We’re going to see more about what that thing is capable of doing in a few minutes. 

·         Sauer, Erik Sauer, says