As we continue this series on the Task of the Church and specifically about mission we must zero in what that message of hope to this world is all about. If we must be sharp about this subject and provide the Biblical message that was supposed to be proclaimed by the Church.
It is interesting to know why people think the way they do. We are a product of our own environment and we as Christians must always challenge that environment in light of the Bible. We must ask ourselves the question, “Do we believe what we believe about the afterlife because of our culture or because of Biblical teaching?”
LEFT BEHIND AND ALL THAT:
You will see many bumper stickers that read “Upon Rapture this Car will be unoccupied.” There are movies that you can watch now that show a scene where an airplane has many people disappear off of it and their clothes are left behind and they are gone. The basic message of many churches today is ‘Get Saved and Make sure you Raptured out and not Get Left Behind.”
Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins have made a lot of money on the series of books based on this theory of Rapture and people being left behind on earth to endure a time of tribulation.
That takes us to the point of today’s lesson-
THE TASK OF THE CHURCH IS TO IMPLEMENT THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST IN ITS WORK.
To express to a lost world the true hope of Christianity we must cut through the cultural clutter of our time.
We have been greatly influenced in the Western world by the philosophy of Plato and with the developments of Christianity during the Middle Ages.
Plato – Taught that matter was evil and bad and that the best hope one could have would be to escape from the flesh and become a pure spirit. This greatly influenced pagans and heretics in the times of the early Church.
Dante- Dante with his work called the Inferno influenced many people’s picture of the afterlife. Many times Christians have a mental picture that is more in line with what Christians thought in the Middle Ages and less of what the early Church taught.
The earliest Christians focused on the message of the Resurrection and less about going to Heaven when we die. That doesn’t mean that going to Heaven when you die is not important but it wasn’t the central message of Christianity.
One moment in Church history illustrates this in Lyon, France. In 177 AD the church there underwent a terrible persecution because of one specific message and that was the Resurrection. In the ancient world bodily resurrection was a ridiculous concept. The Greeks didn’t want a new body, they wanted to be pure spirit.
So this delve into some Biblical passages that bring out this point:
I. LIFE AFTER DEATH
Lets start with a question many people have on their mind. What happens when you die?
One way the Bible describes where we go when we die is Paradise:
PARADISE:
Luke 23: 42-43
42 And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" 43 And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."
Another Phase used by Jesus and the Jews of His time was the: Bosom of Abraham.
Luke 16: 19-30 - Rich Man And Lazarus
Rich Man was in torment and Lazarus was in the bosom of Abraham.
Another Phrase used about this same state is HOME WITH THE LORD
2 Corinthians 5: 8-9
we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. 9 Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.
PAUL – ASLEEP – METAPHOR USED BY THE JEWS TO MEAN BODILY DEATH NOT A SOUL SLEEP. THERE WILL BE AN CONCIOUS EXISTENCE AFTER DEATH. WHEN WE DIE OUR SOULS AND NOT OUR FLESH PART OF WHO WE ARE WILL GO HOME TO BE WITH THE LORD
What about Mansions in Heaven? Many people visualize Heaven as a place where they will get their own mansion.
John 14:1-3
"Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 "In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.
MONAI – Dwelling places – in Greek refers to a temporary place. The word Jesus uses in this passage for dwelling places specifically refers to a temporary stopover and not an eternal resting place.
This is a temporary place of rest, refreshment, and waiting for the ultimate hope.
The ultimate hope is the vindication of the body and the created Earth.
II. LIFE AFTER LIFE AFTER DEATH - Resurrection
Jews believed in the Resurrection from the dead but never imagined that someone would be raised from the dead early.
The Jews believed in a general resurrection (with the exception of the Saducees) but no one every imagined that there would be one raised before that time as an advanced sign of what God would accomplish. The story in John 11 when Lazarus dies shows Mary and Martha’s faith in this idea of a general resurrection.
Sin brought death into this world. Sin Separated us from God, but sin also brought a curse upon this creation. Because of that we age, get sick and eventually die. God has not sickness or death but only sin through the agency of Satan brings about those terrible things.
God’s plan is to put all of this back together again. If our best hope is for this world to be utterly destroyed and all physical matter done away with as well as our bodies to go away and become like Casper the Friendly Ghost then Satan wins. Satan destroyed God’s good creation as well as our bodies through sin. When Jesus rose from the dead everything changed.
JESUS IS THE FIRST FRUITS
1 Corinthians 15: 16- 21
6 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
20 But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. 21 For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
Jesus is the firstfruits meaning that He was the advanced sign of what God wants to accomplish for all of us. He is like the first plant that is reaped in a bumper crop. He is in our language, a PROTOTYPE of what is to come.
RESURRECTION WAS NOT SOME TYPE OF MAGIC ACT-
In the RESURRECTION God is showing his plan to renew all of Creation. That has been the message of the Bible from the Old Testament to the New.
ISAIAH –
Isaiah Chapters 52-53 – The Servant and suffering servant (How the Messiah would die)
Isaiah Chapter 54 – Renew the Covenant (New Covenant established by Christ)
Isaiah Chapter 55 – New Creation (Hope of the Coming renewal)
JOHN 1 – In the beginning
Holy Week – Palm Sunday being the first day of the Passion week
John 19: 5 Behold the Man – Day Six - Man is created on day six
Day Seven – Saturday Jesus rested in the tomb
Day Eight – The First day of the Week – John 20 – ONE THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK
THE FIRST DAY OF NEW CREATION
JOHN 20: 22 JESUS BREATHED ON THEM AND SAID RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT- GENESIS 2:7 BREATHED THE BREATH OF LIFE INTO THE MAN.
THE SAME SPIRIT THAT HOVERED OVER THE CHAOS OF THE FORMLESS, VOIDLESS CREATION AND BROUGHT SHAPE AND ORDER IS THE SAME SPIRIT THAT IS BROUHT TO THIS WORLD AT PENTECOST TO BRING ABOUT THE NEW CREATION.
When Jesus of Nazareth came out of the Tomb it signaled to the world that Heaven and Earth have come together in the man of Jesus. Heaven and earth have interlocked never to be separated.
In a world that tries to separate the secular and sacred and make a two storey universe the Resurrection says NO.
Things are different.
III. Implementing the Resurrection of Jesus: How does this apply to US – Practically
Philippians 3: 10-12
10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3: 20-21
20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; 21 who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
Paul’s ultimate hope is the resurrection of the dead. He strives and works to put his life in line with that of Christ so that he may attain a resurrected body. He wants to live a life of self sacrifice- ‘conformed to the death of Christ’ to attain resurrection from the dead.
Also in I Corinthians 6 Paul makes his argument against Immorality based on the fact of the future resurrection.
Our ultimate motivator and hope is a body that will be like the resurrected Jesus.
How will this work out? What about those that have died on this Day of Resurrection?
It is a mystery but in some way the soul of the person will be reunited with a new resurrected body.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, the great treatise on resurrection, lets us know that on the day of CHRIST’S COMING those that are in Christ will be resurrected.
1 Corinthians 15: 23-24
3 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, 24 then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.
1 Thessalonians 4: 15-17
5 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.
IV. What type of bodies will the Resurrected body be like? Type of bodies that we will have – New Bodies
I Corinthians 15: 44
44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
Physical Body – Psche and Pnuema. It is what they are powered by but not the substance. The new Resurrected body will be just as real as Jesus resurrected body was. We will be recognizable but different.
Difference in saying a ship is powered by steam or by wind. Many have read this as it is describing what we will be made of but that is not what the Greek is saying it is what powers our new resurrected bodies. Psche dies and gives out but Pneuma never dies it will never run out of steam.
Some people read this passage to mean that our resurrected body will not be corporeal but just a ghost and they have built a misunderstanding based on not knowing what the original language says.
In this passage Paul is just telling us that our New Bodies will not run down like the old ones because they will be powered by God’s Spirit.
We will be like Him!
I John 3 : 2
2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is
If we want to know what our resurrected Bodies will be like we need only to look back at Jesus resurrected body.
Jesus body had some similarity with his prior body but there was some difference. At one place we learn that the disciples did not dare ask Him who he was. From John’s gospel we see that Jesus ate in front of his disciples after his resurrection. John in his first epistle makes it clear that Jesus had a body that they could handle and touch. He was not a ghost but a resurrected physical body.
It was this physical body that Jesus ascended to Heaven with. Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father with a resurrected body like the on that we will get. We can assume from the account of Jesus that our bodies will be different and enhanced but also have some continuity with our old bodies.
This is the ultimate hope of the Christian Church and that is the resurrection.
In the resurrection God puts back together what sin destroyed. The last ally of Satan is death and destruction of our bodies but Christ trumped that ally by rising from the dead.
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