“Resurrection Realities”

I invite you to take your Bibles please and let's find the book of 1 Corinthians Chapter 15.  We'll concentrate this morning on one verse in particular and that's the last verse in that chapter, Verse 58.  If you would like to follow along in the pew Bible you can find that on Page 962, I think, in that blue book the pew rack in front of you. 

I don't like doing this but because I think you would be interested, I will give you a brief update on my health so that you can know it and I wont' have to tell it 50 more times after church is over.  I am standing up straight and that is delightful as you can see. I am still in therapy and I am in a series of shots in my spine.  It's about as fun as it sounds.  That's probably enough said, and I have two more of those to go. My dilemma at this point is, I have a numb left leg.  I don’t have a lot of feeling in it and if I bend it very far, well I just fall over.  So, if you see me fall over, it's not because I'm slain in the Spirit, [Laughter] it's because I just put too much weight on my left leg and you might want to come help me stand up.  And, other than that I'm fine, I just have to behave for another 4 weeks, they say, and do very little.  Pray for my family, particularly Joie.

And, by the way, I have gotten tons of cards and I know you've been praying and I just want to say "Thank You" for that, they do help.  Don't stop praying, please.

This morning, we want to talk about resurrection realities, and I mean realities.  The first thing I have to consider, though, before standing up and talking to you, and I want you to consider it with me, is who is listening.  Most of you are here by habit.  Some of you are here because it's new and some of you are here because someone made you come. But, with what ears are you listening this morning and who are you that are listening to me? It's very important to determine that because, for one thing if you are a long-time churchgoer, you probably have on your "church ears" and that means you are already sifting everything said through, "Yeah, I know that grid."  I'm not going to tell you a single thing new today, but your life, your behavior tells me if you really know it or not.  So, let's measure this not against your knowledge, but against your living, your behavior, because that's what matters.  But, think about the circumstances of the people that are hearing this, this morning.  I'm speaking to those who are expecting their first child and all the excitement and fear that comes along with that.  I'm speaking to married couples who are at the top of their marriage.  They are having a delightful time relationally, but they're flat broke, and that's about to disturb their relational bliss.  I'm speaking to spouses who have cheated and spouses who have been cheated on.  I'm speaking to a few, well, most of the college students aren't here yet, but college and high school students whose hearts are on fire for the Lord Jesus Christ, you couldn't put them out with a fire truck.  And I'm speaking to a few who are acting like their hearts are on fire, but they are big hypocrites and they live like the Devil during the week or when their other friends are around.  I speak to some who have determined that they believe that the virtual world is more important than the real world.  You do know we now live in a world that sees the virtual as more real than the real and there is a big difference, and, at the teenage level of culture, that has produced a whole arena of kids that are sarcastic, narcissistic, self-centered thinking that they are smarter than their stupid schoolteachers and their ignorant parents.  You can look at me cross-eyed if you want to, but that's just the truth of life.  If you listen to them talk, you will find that sharp-tongued, intelligent…seemingly intelligent conversation flipping out real quickly. But what they and everyone around them can't see is that they can't get control  of their room, let alone their lives, and so their immaturity is betrayed by their lifestyle.  There are adults who have been in church for 30 years and have seen virtually no change.

How are some of those things possible if Jesus Christ rose from the dead?  We act as if resurrection from the dead is just a normal average every day thing because of the impact it has on us that is measurable and seeable, it would cause us to ask those questions.  However, I'm also talking to people this morning whose hearts are broken.  They've buried loved ones.  Their child is sick.  They've lost their job.  There are three things I want you to keep in mind as we begin, as we go through and as we end.

The first is the church as a whole, not the church as a whole in the world, the church as a whole, as our church.  Anybody know what today is?  What? Sunday, that's good.  What else is it?  Thank you, R.A.  Today is the 2^nd anniversary of being in this building.  I have a question.  Why are we not full? Do you think it's because we're satisfied?  Do you think we're comfortable now, except for those of you who keep complaining about the cold air that comes out of the vents and hits you on the back of the neck, we'll work on that for you.  I think, maybe, we've lost sight, clear view, focused in of who God is, who we are and why we are here, so we need to think very practically about the church. 

Then you need to think practically about yourself as an individual and let me speak to those of you who are hurting.  You may be hurting physically, you may be hurting financially, you could be hurting relationally, you might be hurting psychologically deep within your soul, I want you to know that the resurrected Christ is seated at the right hand of God interceding for those who come to God by him to say, "He can comfort your hurt."  I want you to come, not to hear the confrontation that frankly some of us need to hear, but to hear the deep eternal overflowing, sympathetic comfort that comes from one who was tempted and suffered in every way imaginable, yet without sin, who now can sympathize with you and he's alive to do that.  That's what resurrection says to those in need, and even those in sin. 

So, the church, those in need of comfort, and from the perspective of those in need of confrontation and conviction.  Is it really a possibility that we could receive Christ by faith as our Lord and Savior and claim that he has taken up residence in our soul and it not make change in our lives? Yes it is possible to grow almost stone cold as a believer, but if you are God's child, he will not let you stay there.  He'll build a fire under you and you will change and maybe some of you need a fire built under you this morning.  So, who is listening?

The first thing I want to do is read just that one verse, 1 Corinthians 15:58. It's very brief, it's very earthy, and it's very present tense.  The thing that stuns me about this passage of scripture is how it ends.  It is the passage in the New Testament about the church, the Christian and the resurrection of Christ. And the way it ends is quite remarkable. It does not end with pie in the sky by and by.  It does not end with being so heavenly minded you're no earthly good.  It ends with saying because there is a resurrected Lord, you plant your feet firmly in that earthly soil while I have you there and where I have you there and go to work for me.  Because right after, right after he finishes that verse, he goes into what we've labeled as Chapter 16, Verse 1, he starts talking about the collection for the needy saints, he starts talking about his travel plans and who's going to come see them and telling them all good-bye.  If that is not a connection to real life, I don't know what is.  This is his advice based on a resurrected Christ, Verse 58:

"Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."

That is what the resurrection reality says to us.  Now, we're going to run through the chapter and look at some of those realities he has awakened them to so this reality can come true in their lives and in ours.  What are those realities?  He's basing his realities on whether or not Christ really is raised from the dead, actually whether or not there is a resurrection for all of us, does it really matter? Well, Paul said, "Yeah, it matters." He said, "We are the people on earth that should be pitied the most if in this life we have hope in Christ only."  But, the practicalities he tells us, or we learn from this chapter:

If there is no resurrection from the dead, people are not presently being saved.   In other words the church is a hoax and there is no hope.  We'll cover all those. 

Look at Chapter 15:1-2:

"Now I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand [key phrase] Verse 2 and by which you are being saved."

The gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.  If Christ is not raised from the dead, you are not being saved and nobody is being saved.  That's a resurrection reality.

Another one is that all the Christian preaching that has even been done, all the Christian teaching that has ever been done are totally vain, empty and worthless. Verse 14:

"And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain [empty, worthless of no account]. 

Not only that, your faith is worthless, that's another one we will sit out by itself in verse 14, something that we continually offer people as a comfort to their soul and the security of eternal life, look at verse 17:

"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins."  There is no forgiveness available if Christ is not raised from the dead.

And then, when our loved one dies who has had faith in Christ and we look at their body lying in the casket and they've suffered for months and someone comforts us by saying, "They're in a better place now," if Christ is not raised from the dead, that's a big, fat lie.  Verse 18:

"Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ, or those who have died, have perished."

You notice that the Apostle Paul says… he doesn’t say that if there is no resurrection there is no eternal punishment.  He said if there is no resurrection, just get ready for eternal punishment.  It's not annihilation, there's a perishing event.

So what is this connection between this resurrection that happened so long ago and the promise it brings for a future so far away? What does it speak to me today?

Now, look at Verse 58 and let's concentrate there for just a few minutes. The first thing in connecting between resurrection, Christ's resurrection and our reality is it provides reason for us to live.  It's very simple, just look at the scriptures; verse 58:

"Therefore, my beloved brothers, and he goes on with it… the simple word, therefore, is telling us he is saying what he's saying based on the truth of the resurrection, based on this reasoning, you, therefore, have a reason to live. Based on the resurrection of Christ and he ends that with "your labor is not in vain." Have you ever felt like everything you were doing was worthless? Why bother?  You know, why bother being nice? Why bother being true in a world of falsehood? Why bother stopping at the railroad track when the lights are flashing and everybody else is going over it?  Why would I bring that up? Because I broke the law this morning and went over in front of the train when the lights were flashing because I didn't want to be late to church.  You know you'll get a ticket for that, don't you? You can ask my wife.  She's had personal experience….. [Laughter] I don't know how to get out of what I just did.  [Laughter] Uh…. Reason….we're back to reason here.

Your life is not in vain.  Don't you think it would be nice that most every step you took, most every decision you made you felt like there was a reason behind it? You weren't trumping it up, you weren't just trying to internally motivate yourself, but external from you in the realities of human history and the work of God, there was reason for what you were doing.  Paul says, there is.  I want you to know there is reason, so he's getting in our brains and he's telling us that there is purpose in our living.  Second, it calls for relationship. Therefore, my beloved brothers…. These are words of affection.  These are gentile Christian that Paul is writing to in the Godless city of Corinth, some of them were thieves, some of them were drunkards, some of them were homosexuals and Paul is now calling them "my beloved brothers" and that word means brothers and sisters; he's including the whole congregation. This gospel of this resurrected Lord has forgiven sin, has broken down racial barriers, has broken down lifestyle barriers and has taken people of the most opposite extremes and put them together.  If there is anything in this virtual world that we live in that we need it is real relationships.  There is no way to have a relationship through a computer screen or a PDA. You're living in a make-believe world, but you need the gospel to have a real relationship so the barriers of sin can be dropped, the reality of your soul can be seen.  Beloved brethren in the Lord…

It provides reason, it calls for relationships, and it invades my reality.  "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord."

You know what, God, if you really understood what I was going through, you wouldn't be mouthing off to me like that!  Now, I know you don't talk to God that way, but I could just about guarantee you many of you have thought that way.  When life stinks, nothing goes right, everything you touch is destroyed, nobody likes you, it's terrible!  You feel bad inside, you feel bad outside, nothing is lining up in your life and you're ready to call it quits and here is God saying, "Okay, brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord."  How dare him say something like that when my life is so hard!  Why does he say that?  Because Jesus is alive! Think with me for just a minute. 

One of my favorite sections of the scripture is in Hebrews Chapter 4, verses 12-16.  You don't have to turn there; we're just going to talk about it for a minute.  It's one that I want to obey more. It's the one that tells that God's Word is sharper than any two-edged sword; it tells us that it slices into the human soul, it can divide and separate my soul and my spirit, my joints and my marrow, it can even get between the thoughts and intentions of my heart.  It's limitless in how deep the Word of God can penetrate.  And then, in the very next verse, in verse 13, it says, "We all, every one of us, are naked and laid bare before the eyes of him with whom we have to do."  Now, stay with me just a minute.  You need to let that verse do two things to you, the first thing it needs to do to you is frighten you, and that's okay.  What I mean is…God knows everything about you.  He knows what you haven't told your spouse, he knows what you haven't told your parents, he knows what you're involved in doing, he knows your successes and he knows your failures.  He knows those deep inner workings of the psychology of your own soul, those hatreds that you have, those doubts that you have, those thoughts that you have.  He knows what you do at work when nobody is looking.  He says every creature is naked and laid bare before the eyes of him with whom we have to do."  That scares me!  Because there are things that I did that I hid from my parents and they never found out.  There are things that I did when I was under the supervision of the football coach that I did and wasn't supposed to do, and well, he did find out, and it wasn't pleasant what the consequences were.  I really wished I hadn't done it.  God doesn’t have to find out anything.  So, what's the point, Tony?

The point is so you can do something most humans rarely ever do… and that's look at yourself for what you really are. One of the grandest things that ever happens is to be allowed to look at yourself and see yourself for what you are….really what you are.  Selfish, insecure, sinful, but also you get to look at the truth of what you are, made in the image of God, filled with skills and talents, relational skills, vocational skills, artistic skills.  You can honestly look at yourself because God honestly sees you.  But once he sees you and you get past what he's made you in the good part, and you see what you've made yourself in the bad part, that raises up fear and then that verse tells us this, "Since we have a high priest, Jesus, the Son of God, who has passed through the heavens, he's able to sympathize with our weaknesses because he was tempted in every way like as we are, yet without sin." Now here comes the clincher, I've just learned that God knows everything about me, everything inside of me, deep as you can go, he knows everything about me, and I want to tell you there are things in me I don't like, and if you're honest there are things in you, you don't like and you would like to change, and, just about that time, when you're expecting God to say, "Get out of here, you're dirty," knowing everything about me, he says, "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may attain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need."

See, some of us mess up, all of us mess up, some of us mess up really bad, and then, a certain kind of peer pressure seems to happen when those around us are a little better than us, they never say it, they may never make us feel that way, but we feel sublevel as a Christian, and it's because we don't understand the resurrected Lord.  This is for those of you that are hurting in any way or any fashion…"He was tempted in every way like as you are, yet without sin."  He had to suffer like his brothers so he could be a merciful and faithful high priest.  And because he is alive, he is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  By his Holy Spirit, you have direct connection to him who has direct connection to God Almighty, and you can bring all your sin, all your sorrows, all your brokenness to him and lay it there.  Please understand…before God it is not your goodness that gets you his favor.  And it is not your badness that keeps you away from him if you'll rest in Christ's goodness. I don't care who you are or what you've done, God's grace can cover it, and the resurrection says, not only can he, but he will comfort. Find that comfort. 

But he invades my reality and says be steadfast, immovable. That's negative.  Things that try to move you off the path, things that try to get you in a way you shouldn't be, things that try to stop you, you resist, that's the negative.  But he says, always abounding in the work of the Lord.  Moving forward, that's positive. 

What would life then be like without the resurrection? We've looked at this, I want to look at it from a little different angle.  The connection between the resurrection reality is that it provides reason for us, it calls for relationship in Christ and it invades my reality and how God wants me to live.  We're going to come back to that before we close. Life without the resurrection, quickly, is a life without purpose. Paul said, "If there is no resurrection from the dead, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die," and I would totally agree with that.  If we're going to be Christians let's be honest about our Christianity, Okay? If Christ is not raised from the dead, let's go get a beer today, have a good time, let's just get stoned drunk.  Why not? Give me one reason.  If Christ is not raised from the dead, that I can't be an adulterer, a drunkard, a thief, you can't give me a reason.  There is no reason for purpose or morality.  Life is without purpose, life is without pardon because we're still in our sins, life is without morals.  We don't make that connection.  Christianity is not a moralizing religion.  It's not to make you a moral person, it's to make you what God wants you to be and what God intended for you to be, which is like Him, which the fruit of that is morality.  The church has been far too long trying to make moral people who don't drink, don't smoke, don't cuss, don't  chew, don't go with girls that do, and all those kind of things. [Laughter]   The church has been after people doing that, and I've known people who tithe, who are at church every Sunday and they're mean as snakes, because they do a list of "Do's" and their heart has never been changed.  Christianity is not a list of Do's and Don’ts, it’s a relationship with the resurrected Lord! But it does make us moral people.  Why? Because God's a Holy God, and because there is a God, he has set a structure up in this life, a structure of authority, a word we don't like.  Nature, itself, reflects that.  There's the authority of gravity.  Now gravity, in one sense, doesn’t tell us what to do, but it does.  You have the full privilege to go out and jump off of one of the bridges over the Ohio River if you want to, or jump off the edge of the Grand Canyon.  You can do that if you want to and God's not going to stop  you, but the Law of Gravity is going to put you to an instant and immediate death, if your jump is high enough.  So you can be an immoral person, but you'll answer for those consequences because there is a God who lives and reigns, but if Jesus isn't raised from the dead, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.  There is no reason, the evolutionists are right!

And, finally, there are no morals, there's no meaning…. Now that's finally in this box, that's not finally for it's all over, I made a preacher mistake.  We say that word too many times.  I'm almost to the end.  It's also without a resurrection we don't have a means to measure worth in life.  You would measure worth as in whether or not you got invited to the Barnes Stable Party the night before the Derby.  You would measure worth in how big your house was, or you would measure worth in how many women you had on the side, or men, why? Because without a crucified and resurrected Lord, then all values are relative.  You have no way to measure if a monogamous relationship to the same woman or the same man throughout all of life is better or not.  Can you make that connection? You see, because if he's not raised from the dead, there is no chance of getting beyond death to a new life and this life is all there is, and there's no reckoning beyond that, so what's it matter? How in the world would you ever choose if sex is better than purity? If stealing is better than working? If drugs are better than having the Holy Spirit dwell within your heart? There is no way to make that choice if Christ is not resurrected from the dead.  Therefore, if we act like he is not, then Christians are given to be immoral people because we are bent to that, but that's not where I want to stay. Suppose, you took very seriously the fact that Jesus is raised from the dead.  Most of us in this room would say we did because we are in church today, but my study of this, and, who knows, maybe my time of being laid up has caused me to think a little differently, not about the truth, but about the response to the truth.  The result of resurrected living is that your life is marked with purpose, not self-centered, small self-gratifying purpose as if "God's got a purpose for me and I'll be fulfilled when I find it" kind of stuff.  That's Christianized navel-gazing.  What I mean is, God has a mission in this world and he has called you to be part of it, and he does have a purpose for your life because he's ordained things for you to walk in from before the foundation of the world, and finding that is fulfillment, but it's also glory to God.  When you look at the resurrected Christ and find that true, your life is marked with purpose, and I reflected on my own life and the life of our church…. I couldn't come but to one conclusion.  We are not intentional enough with the gospel.  So I think we're not viewing the resurrected Lord properly.  I don’t really think that at this point we are convinced lost people in Oldham County go to hell if they die without Christ, because we have too many empty spaces in this church 2 years after she's been built.  Could we not get intentional about penetrating the community in creative ways? Maybe things like we should say "Thanks" to a lot of people who are doing a lot of good works, whether they are Christian or not.  Maybe we ought to think about doing a luncheon for all of the public and elected officials in this town.  We've got a beautiful kitchen and a fellowship hall over here.  I don't mean to get our tracts and pass them out and say, "Hey, man, turn or burn; let's get right or get left."  I am talking about genuine Christian hospitality that says, "We are here, we are God's people, we want to infect this place with the gospel and what we'd like to do for you is thank you for the great work that you do." Why not a luncheon, or maybe not a luncheon, why don't we select a school next school year and every week we take food to the Teacher's Lounge at a different school every week? Do you think possibly when a need came up in someone's life, they'd say, "You know, man I need some help.  I wonder where I could find that? At LaGrange Baptist Church.  Those wonderful people, they brought some food here, something makes them care, I wonder what that would be? Then they see the life of the resurrected Christ in us.  There's a zillion things we could do.  What about running the risk of invading a lost person's world and having a Christian say, "I wonder what he's doing there, he shouldn't be there, he's a Christian." It's like the Pharisees said about Jesus, "What's he doing eating with tax collectors and sinners?"

I had to look at my life and our lives and say, "Is it marked with purpose?" Your life is filled with people because the purpose of the gospel is to save God's people.  It's the mercy of God come down from heaven, dying on a cross in our place, being buried and raised fro the dead, it calls for relationship.  And when you understand the purpose given to the resurrection and when you understand the people that need to be around you because of the resurrection, you then are also to live your life with a grounded power.  In other words, you are to be both anchored in the truth of the gospel, and yet abounding in this earthly life.  No Christian holy huddles.  There are tons of things that want to deceive you, yes, and that's why you need to be anchored in the gospel, steadfast, immovable, but there's a world that needs to know the Savior and my Bible says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son," and we are his church.  God did not give the church a mission.  God has a mission and he gave the church to fulfill it.  That's what we're here for!  Anchored and abounding!

Three things that we started with: The church….where are we in relation to a resurrected Christ? Hurting people who need comfort; I don't know what your hurt is, but I know many of you are hurting.  I don't know if it's in your soul or in your body, in your relationships or in your financial status, but have you genuinely called out to the resurrected Christ and said, "I need help?"  I have learned that most of the time God sends his help through his people.  Every now and then he decides to zap a straight one from heaven to you, but most of the time his Holy Spirit stirs the answer to that prayer in the heart of someone else, and sometimes it doesn’t come in a package we'd like for it to come with. 

I'll never forget God's answer to a great need in our lives one year, 1991, when I crashed and burned, hit the bottom of the barrel, was in a state I never thought I'd be in in my life.  He sent me to the first counselor.  It's very embarrassing for a preacher to ever have to go to a counselor, because I'm supposed to be the counselor, you know? And this guy had it all together.  He was a published author, he was a well known Ph.D. in Psychology across the Christian world and he didn't do squat for me.  He was actually worthless in helping me. I thought it was my fault at the time, but I really wanted him to be my counselor because he was cool.  He lived in a nice expensive condo on the beach in South Florida, lots of people knew him there and I thought this would be really cool, I could get help with this guy.  He knew how to dress, and for me he was worthless.  I'm not saying he was worthless, for me he was worthless.  He was obviously a very used man of God, I shouldn't have said it the way I did.

But, he sent me to a friend of his.  I've got a friend that can help you.  This guy that he sent me to had more degrees than a thermometer.  He had a Ph.D. in Psychology, a Master's Degree in both of the Biblical languages and a degree in something else, and he looked like, now we're in South Florida, and he looked Casper the Ghost!  He hadn't seen a ray of sun a day in his life.  His clothes were ugly because he was colorblind and couldn't tell if something was red, green, blue, black, striped or plaid.  So, if his wife didn't pick out his clothes, he looked like he got dressed at the Goodwill Store. On top of that, it was his second wife, he'd been divorced.  And in my depth of depression, my pride was still high enough to say, "God, couldn't you have at least sent me to a good Christian man instead of a secondhand guy that can't pick out his clothes, won't get suntanned, and can't hold his marriage together?"

Do you know who God used to help me? That man!  There are a lot of messages in there.  God doesn’t need strong people to help him, he uses weak people because then we get helped, he gets the glory.  Are you hurting this morning? Why don’t you ask God to help you?

Church, I think we need to get more intentional.  Now, give your leadership time, it's not that we're not aware of this. But, I believe by the time this fall is here, we will confront the issues of leadership and what kind of leadership we need, we'll confront the issues of evangelism and what kind of evangelism we need, but all along the way we're going to need your help of confronting the realities of church.  And, finally, for those of you who are goof-off Christians, who really are just coasting, I would encourage you, it's time to stop goofing off.  There's nothing mild about our resurrected Lord.  He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He has a mission and he just wants to know, "are you going to be on the playing field or not?" What are you going to do about it?