Go

Contact Us

  • Phone: (509) 747-3007
  • Email:
  • Mosaic Address:
    606 West 3rd Ave., Spokane, WA 99201

Service Times

  • Sunday:  8:30 am, 10 am, 11:30 am
  • Infant through 5th grade Sunday School classes available
  • FREE Parking!

Sermons

FILTER BY:

Back To List

    Apr 17, 2022

    Resurrection Results

    Passage: 1 Corinthians

    Preacher: John Repsold

    Category: Easter

    Keywords: death, gospel; victory over sin, satan; social calendar, resurrection rewards; death of others

    Summary:

    We live in a world that wants results. So what are the results of Jesus' resurrection to life today. This message looks at four biblical results that can transform our lives both now and even into eternity.

    Detail:

    Resurrection Results

    Easter Sunday—April 17, 2022

     

    TESTIMONY INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: (Lee Trueblood)

    At Mosaic we like to hear people’s stories so we can see what God is up to in our world.  Lee Trueblood is one of our senior saints here that many of you may not have had the privilege of knowing yet.  So, we’re going to help you get started today by giving you a 5-minute window into what God has done in her life. 

    • How did God first get a hold of your life? (Salvation story)
    • Life isn’t always smooth-sailing. Tell us about one of the more difficult experiences God walked you through.
    • What good did God bring out of that experience?

    PRAY

     

    INTRO:  Last week we finished a couple of Sundays of seeing some of what God has to say about our bodies and the use of them, particularly our sexuality.  As today is Resurrection Sunday, we’re also talking about the human body, but from a different perspective—it’s relationship to death and eternal life. 

    Resurrection Sunday is one of the most important Sundays of the year.  In fact, the Bible tells us, if what we are celebrating today didn’t happen…if Jesus did NOT physically, bodily rise from the dead with a new, incorruptible (not-able-to-be-killed/die) body…then our entire Christian faith is empty.  It’s worthless. It’s a hoax, a fraud and a sick joke. 

    1 Corinthians 15:17—"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”  Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in his translation called The Message, “If Christ [wasn’t] raised, then all you’re doing is wandering about in the dark, as lost as ever. It’s even worse for those who died hoping in Christ and resurrection, because they’re already in their graves. If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we’re a pretty sorry lot.” 

                I’ve entitled today’s sermon, “Resurrection Results.”  Most of us want RESULTS in life, right? 

    • If we order something on Amazon, we want to see Amazon deliver on their advertised product.
    • If we order a burger, we want to see the waiter bring out the burger we ordered, not a bowl of oatmeal.

    If the most important event of Christianity doesn’t deliver results, why believe in the message?  That’s the question I want us to at least partially answer today:  What are the actual, real, life-impacting results of the resurrection on OUR lives?  Another way of asking that is, “If the resurrection didn’t happen, what difference would it make to my life?” 

    1. We have the Gospel (the Good News of all we have in Christ) & all its blessings thanks to the resurrection.

    We just saw in 1 Corinthians 15 (THE resurrection chapter) that as far as the greatest evangelist of all times, Paul, is concerned, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, there is no Gospel whatsoever.  No one has been saved from their sins by the death of Jesus. We’re living a lie.  There is no hope of life with God either now or after death.  Unless this humanly impossible miracle of taking dead elements of a body and recomposing them into immortal, never-can-die elements of a new eternal body of some kind happened, all of Christianity is a hoax. 

                It’s interesting to look at the book of Acts and how many times, when someone is preaching the Gospel, the bodily resurrection of Jesus comes up.  From chapter 1 to chapter 24 there are multiple references to the Apostles preaching the Gospel and talking about the centrality of the resurrection in the Gospel.  They apparently linked everything Jesus had taught and promised with the reality of the resurrection. 

                The very fact that the resurrection turned them from being a bunch of scared, cowardly, uneducated, hiding-in-locked rooms band of people into an unstoppable force that changed the known world and has never been silenced since, is nothing short of astounding. A hoax cannot account for that. An empty promise cannot produce that.  But a resurrection did.  We have the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead to thank for the Gospel someone shared with us and the world-changing results that have happened to millions of people over the past 20 centuries. 

                Romans 1:4 tells us that Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord….”  If all we had were the wonderful teachings and life of Jesus in the Gospels, we would not KNOW with certainty that Jesus was, in fact, who he claimed to be—the Christ, God’s Messiah, the Savior of the world.  This is why, “No resurrection; no Son of God as Savior.”  The resurrection we celebrate today is not just a nice add-on to the Gospel.  It’s the fundamental requirement for its authenticity. 

                So, the first “result” of the resurrection is the GOSPEL of Jesus Christ that has utterly changed the world and millions of people in it. 

    1. Jesus’ resurrection is the proof of His victory over SIN, DEATH and THE DEVIL.

    Let’s take these 3 victories one at a time.

    1. Over our SIN: If you are awake this morning, you should be asking yourself, “But even if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, didn’t his death on the cross still cancel sin and take care of my problem of separation from God?”  Isn’t the cross of Christ sufficient to take care of this sin-break between us and God? 

    The question is, “How would you know if Jesus death actually was sufficient without the resurrection?”  For that answer, let me give you a hypothetical story. 

    ILL:  Imagine you are 1 of 6 boys in your family. One day, five of you sneak out of your rooms, ride your bikes to the local Indian reservation, steal some firecrackers and lighters, come home and start blowing stuff up in your back yard. Being naughty and not very bright young boys, you start lighting the firecrackers off without checking to see if mom and dad are at home. They are and pretty soon your parental units are both outside and the five of you are in big trouble.

    Mom and Dad sit all of you down and tell you that the punishment for this little crime is that they will confine you to your room for the rest of the day, send you to bed without dinner and then ground you to inside the house for the rest of the week. 

    But just then, your older brother, who has been studying calculus in his room during summer break, comes to your defense and offers to be punished in your place, even though he had no part in your crime.  Your parents miraculously agree to this, send him to his room to start the punishment and make clear that though the five of you are guilty as sin and your older brother is innocent, he will pay for your sin and purchase your forgiveness by going to his room and being confined to the house the rest of the week. You, however, are free to go play outside for the rest of the week. 

    Now as long as big brother is in his room or confined to the house, it feels as though you are not yet completely cleared from your crime. Until the door opens and your big brother joins you outside to play, you sense that the punishment is still being meted out. You don’t know if this little switcheroo is actually going to work.

    But once big brother is set free, you know your penalty has been paid and Mom and Dad have nothing to hold against you. The empty room and freedom to rejoin life indicates the satisfaction of parental justice.

    Since God says that “the wage that sin pays is death,” as long as death holds even our substitute penalty-payer captive, we don’t really know that the judgment has been paid.  Death still holds all the cards as far as we can tell.  It still won.  Like the scene of Aslan’s murder on the stone table in Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, it looks like the Witch won because death, as always, seems to have ended Aslan’s reign.  But then comes the resurrection.

    The resurrection of Jesus is proof that the debt of sin has been paid.  It was enough to atone for sin, enough to reconcile us to God, enough to present us holy in God’s presence. We know that because today Jesus is free from the penalty—death. 

    Christ won; sin, death, and the devil lost—that’s the good news of the empty tomb. The resurrection means Christ proved himself righteous enough to bear the sins of the whole world.  It completely satisfied the justice of God and the righteous requirements of the Law of God.   That is why Romans 4:25 says Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” The cross and the empty tomb cannot be separated. The two events are dependent upon each other. Together they demonstrate that Christ’s payment for sin has been accepted and his victory over sin and death is ours.  As 1 Corinthians 15:17 says, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” 

    1. Over DEATH:

    Remember the story of Jesus’ good friend Lazarus being raised from the dead (resuscitated actually since the body raised was corruptible and died again)?  In Jesus’ conversation with Martha before Lazarus is raised, Jesus makes this seemingly preposterous claim for any human being to make.  John 11-- 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” 

                I’ve never heard or read of anyone in their right mind who claimed they could beat death themselves let alone keep other people and their bodies from being permanent captives to the grave.  But Jesus claims to be able to do both—to BE the resurrection and the life that never ends and to have the ability to share that eternal life and bodily resurrection with others. 

                As this story unfolds, the next statement Jesus makes to Martha is a question:  Do you believe this?” Here Jesus is asking Martha to declare whether she believes He has this kind of power and authority over death and can carry through with His promise.  Her response is one of the earliest and clearest declarations of human faith in who Jesus is.  27 “She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”” 

                What would have happened to Jesus promise and her declaration if Jesus had not risen from the dead that first Easter Sunday?  Well, death would have been more powerful than Jesus’ claim.  And Martha’s faith would have been displaced, shattered and destroyed. 

                But it wasn’t because Jesus did rise and Martha did get the proof that her faith longed for that this man was, in fact, the resurrection we are all longing for.  He was the life eternal we all desperately desire to be true. 

    Death is the sin-penalty we’re all under.  We’re all guilty of sins that produce 100% of the time a deadly outcome.

    ILL:  Forgive me for using this trauma-provoking illustration.  But imagine that some new pathogen, some new virus that has a 100% death rate, is released in our world next year.  Everyone eventually gets this virus and everyone eventually dies from it. 

    But imagine that your sister, who has three PhDs in molecular biology, immunology and epidemiology, claims to have developed a treatment that will protect you from death but only once you’ve contracted the disease, been hospitalized and gone into a coma for a week. 

    Everyone you know and have heard of who has ever contracted this disease had to go to the hospital, slipped into a coma and died there…everyone!  But your sister (who has never lied to you in her life), says to you, “Yes, you’re going to catch this virus.  Yes, you’re going to get seriously ill and be hospitalized.  But I’ve developed the treatment.  If you will trust me and sign right here right now that you will take this treatment, I promise this will not destroy you.” 

    What’s the challenge to her claim, truthful as you have known her to be? 

    • You haven’t seen anyone escape death due to this virus yet.
    • You haven’t seen anyone demonstrate the power of this treatment to beat the virus.

    So, your sister informs you that she is going to deliberately expose herself to this virus, get sick and go into the hospital, lapse into a coma and receive the treatment she has created. 

                How will you know her claims of a cure are true?  When she walks out of the hospital having contracted the virus and beat it! 

    Until that point, her claims are simply words—good, hopeful and truthful words—but lacking any sort of ‘proof’ that really anything she has claimed is actually true.  BUT, when she chooses to contract the disease, enter the hospital and undergo her own treatment…and walks out the hospital rather than being carried out in a pine box…now you’ve got reason to believe that she actually has the treatment needed for this disease. 

                When it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, the disease of sin has been deadly to 100% of humanity.  But our Savior has chosen to willingly leave the safe, secure and sterile environment of heaven in order to bring the treatment we need for sin AND prove to us that His treatment actually works.  His resurrection is proof of this…and only His resurrection. 

    I Cor. 15:21-26--21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

                Without the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, death itself would be unbreakable.  Death would triumph over life.  Death would hold every corpse captive for all of eternity.  But because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we know that every person who has ever lived will rise again with bodies that will never die.  We know that those who say “yes” to His treatment of the disease of sin will rise to live with Him forever.  We know that death itself will ultimately be destroyed.  The Destroyer will become the destroyed.  Death will be swallowed up in life. 

    1. Over SATAN & HIS FORCES

    Colossians 2:11-15— In him also you were circumcised …12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

    (See also Eph. 4:8.)

    Notice the close relationship between the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the “disarming” of the evil ‘rulers and authorities’ of this world.  Without the resurrection, we would not have the proof we need that Satan and his minions do not have the upper hand.  We would not have the proof we need to ride into the battle of life, pushing back the darkness of evil, knowing that the end of the story will be the utter subjugation of evil and triumph of God and good.

    APP: 

    • The resurrection of Jesus is the fuel you and I need to stand up against evil, moral darkness, the pressure of this world and the lies of Satan in our media and minds. Strong as they may seem day after day, according to this passage, the best they can do is shout at us and hope to get us to believe a lie.  The most damage they can inflict is to yell in our ear and hope to drown out the truth of God and His word. Satan, crafty as he is, has been defanged and disarmed.  He only has whatever power I will cede to him.  The resurrection of Jesus proved that Jesus has already disarmed them and triumphed over them. 
    • Do you ever grow weary of evil in this world? Do you ever wonder, “Is God going to triumph?  Is evil really going to lose?  Is God ever going to set it all right and show His absolute power over this world more than the people who willingly follow Him now?”  To those questions, the resurrection of Jesus makes another claim: “YES, He shall reign forever and ever.  And He will rule the nations with a rod of iron.”  (Rev. 2:27; 11:15; 19:15)

    The resurrection of Jesus is proof that He has triumphed over sin, death and the devil…and therefore, so will we one day who are ‘in Christ’…forever and ever. 

     

    1. The good we do now will be repaid in life with God later (Lk. 14:14) as will the evil sinners do (Jn. 5:29)

    Here’s a fact about the resurrection that might change your social calendar.  Jesus was always pushing back against the common belief of his day by many that there would be no eternal resurrection.  But for Jesus, the reality of the resurrection was something that shaped his own social calendar.  Invited to all kinds of homes as he was, from the rich and famous to the despised and shunned, Jesus let us know that the reality of the resurrection was something that should shape even who we choose to hang out with at social events.  In Luke 14, we’re told,  12 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

                Remember how we read in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus’ resurrection was just the “firstfruits” of our coming resurrection?  22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”

                We don’t use this term “first-fruits” in our normal conversation.  It’s a harvest term that means the first and best part of a harvest that is used to worship God.  It’s not the bulk or majority of a harvest, just the first part. 

                As far as God is concerned, Jesus was the first part of this ‘harvest of resurrection’ that will happen in several stages. Our resurrection body will be like his—not able to die anymore, not corruptible or killable, having clearly physical nature yet also of different dimensions such that we will be able to appear one moment in one place and the next in another.  They will be recognizable as “us” in some ways yet will also be different enough as to be doubted by those without faith.

                Given that our resurrected bodies will one day experience the blessing of being ‘repaid’ by God himself for how we have treated those whose bodies here on earth were not highly valued by the world, the resurrection of Jesus should remind us that we are called to a very different eternal reality.  I don’t think it is just by chance that Jesus calls us to entertain people whose bodies are less-than-normal/perfect.  Three of the four types of people he mentions have physical disabilities:  “crippled,” “lame,” and “blind.”  The fourth is simply listed as “poor” which could cover a host of types of poverty—financial, mental, emotional, relational, etc. 

                If you go to the grocery store today, are these the kind of people featured on the tabloids for sale at the check-out line?  How well would a magazine filled with those folks sell? 

                But in God’s economy, he wants us to hang out with precisely those types of people—people whose bodies remind us that what is seen in this life will not be what is honored in the next.  What if the resurrection is The Great Reversal—where those who have been overlooked by the world will be the most beautiful, glorious and amazing beings in the next? What if the way we treat those the world tends to avoid now will determine in some measure the kind of experience we will have in our own resurrection body?  We can only surmise about the kind of “repayment” God himself will make for whatever time, attention, love, friendship and food we share with those who the world would just as soon dispense of. 

    APP:   Since our own future resurrection will prove to be The Great Reversal of this world’s priorities and prizes, how should that impending fact, guaranteed by Jesus’ own resurrection, affect how we choose to currently expend the use of these declining bodies? 

    One last life-shaping consequence/result of the resurrection of Jesus.         

    1. The resurrection of Jesus can utterly change the way we approach death itself—ours and others.

    Most of us have attended funerals, right?  Some of us have been at the bedside of someone dying…or at the scene of an accident or tragedy where someone has died.  Some have seen the trauma of death in war.  Death at any stage and way is life-shaking. 

    Death slaps us in the face with the reality that the human body is obviously more than just a clump of cells.  At death we know intuitively that human bodies house something far more precious and wonderful.  Our bodies link our, souls, our eternal spirits and our personalities with this world and with other people.  And however that linkage ends, whether through a catastrophic explosion or in the quietness of a hospital room where you hear someone take their last breath, death shapes how we, the living, continue on in life.  There is really no single, universal experience as powerful as death in human experience that can so shape life for those who remain.

    But if death is this powerful, how powerful can the resurrection from the dead be for us?  If, as the Bible says, resurrection life is more powerful than every possible form of human death…actually overpowering to death…, should not the reality of our future resurrection shape our present experience even more than death? 

    Part of the challenge is that we cannot consider the resurrection of Jesus without facing death itself.  It will only have power in our lives insofar as we are willing to face death directly.  In a culture that hides death away as much as possible because it doesn’t have answers for life or death, the resurrection of Jesus may not be a popular topic to contemplate.  But it is still extremely powerful. 

    Q:  What are some of the positive things death can do for the lives of us, the living? 

    How can going to a funeral be more beneficial than going to a party?  (Ecc. 7:2)  ILL:  Coral B’s statement to me at the death of her son from AIDS—“I’ve always thought death was for the living.” 

    • Learn from their positive and negative traits.
    • Be reminded of the importance of impacting others.
    • See the effects of choices, good and bad.
    • Gain wisdom.
    • Determine to live better.
    • Value life more.
    • Clarify what really matters in living life, i.e. people, healthy relationships, character, fruit of the Spirit….

    Q:  How can the fact that every person we ever bury will be resurrected change the way we handle other people’s death?

    Read:  I Cor. 15—The Message

    I Corinthians 15

    35-38 Some skeptic is sure to ask, “Show me how resurrection works. Give me a diagram; draw me a picture. What does this ‘resurrection body’ look like?” If you look at this question closely, you realize how absurd it is. There are no diagrams for this kind of thing. We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a “dead” seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed. What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don’t look anything alike. The dead body that we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes from it will be dramatically different.

    42-44 This image of planting a dead seed and raising a live plant is a mere sketch at best, but perhaps it will help in approaching the mystery of the resurrection body—but only if you keep in mind that when we’re raised, we’re raised for good, alive forever! The corpse that’s planted is no beauty, but when it’s raised, it’s glorious. Put in the ground weak, it comes up powerful. The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural—same seed, same body, but what a difference from when it goes down in physical mortality to when it is raised up in spiritual immortality!

    • Treat burial as an act of faith in the future resurrection.
    • Rejoice/take comfort in the fact that we will see others again in a corporal/material/ somehow physical body.
    • Relate to and treat others bodies as holy, special, unique, God-given and to be respected and honored. Never violate another person’s divine gift of a body.
    • Focus us on the eternal nature of people—body, soul & spirit.

    Q:  How can the resurrection change how we approach our own life and death?

    • Anticipate the replacement of our imperfect bodies. Use this life’s aches and pains to long more deeply for the next.  (ILL:  driving a clunker knowing that you have a brand new Lexus or Audie on order.)  Loss of any part or capacity of our bodies does not mean we have lost the most enduring part of ourselves.  On the contrary, such loss may actually result in greater soul-growth.  (Ask Joni Erickson-Tadda.)
    • Care well for these bodies BUT don’t make them the focus of life. Bodies matter to God, as we saw the last few weeks in 1 Thess. 4.  He creates them, sustains them, heals them and eventually takes them back.  He also tells is that He is going to recreate at the resurrection of both the just and the unjust.  Only this time those bodies will never cease to exist. 
    • Don’t hold so tightly to life that we don’t spend our lives for the right things. “The body they may kill,” but the soul that will inhabit the next eternal body we are in charge of. When push comes to shove regarding whether to cater to the body or the soul, the soul should always triumph.

    CLOSE: 

    BENADICTION: Hebrews 13:20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.