Do take a seat. You might find it helpful if you've already closed your Bible. You might find it helpful to open up that passage again. It's on page 1156. It's 1 Corinthians chapter 15, beginning at verse 12. Let me pray as we begin. Father, we thank you that your word is living and active, judging the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts. Please use it now to teach, rebuke, correct, and train us so that we might be equipped for every good work. Oh Jesus, may I decrease and may you increase. And by your Spirit, please take my words and apply them to our hearts for your glory. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. So as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realise there's nothing left. As the words there, combine words of two great poets from our history, the first King David, and the second Coolio, the rapper from the 90s in his song Gangsta's Paradise. Now, we probably all know the phrase, the valley of the shadow of death. It's a kind of a well-known kind of colloquialism. It gets used in songs and all kinds of things like that. And we tend to use it to mean it's someone who has the shadow of death hanging over them kind of imminently. They're in danger in some way. But the reality is all of us walk in the valley of the shadow of death. All of us here, we are all going to die. And we know we're going to die, but to be honest, on the whole, we don't really think about it. And actually, here in the West, we're pretty rubbish at thinking about death in general. It's a pretty taboo subject, it makes us feel uncomfortable, and so we don't talk about it, and death is kind of hidden away behind the scenes. And I can testify to that because I I can tell you now I didn't see my first dead body until I was 21. I think I've seen three in total now. But it was my granddad, he'd been dead for about a day, and we went to the hospital. We'd been in the morgue, in the mortuary, and he was laid out on a on a kind of silver, kind of metal uh table uh with a blue sheet over him. It was like a scene from Silent Witness or something like that. And if you've not seen a dead person, let me tell you, they do not look just like they are sleeping. There are things that don't look quite right. So even just a day in, as I looked at my granddad, there's something about his lips that was just a little bit off, like things were beginning to just recede that little bit already. There's an unnatural stillness there. We take it for granted how much we we see the kind of rise and fall of people's kind of breathing and the small movements. And I remember kind of kissing him on the forehead, and he was just like ice. And it's a shocking thing. We're so used to kind of the warmth of human bodies, and the whole thing is a shock to the system. You know, you look at someone like that, you kind of are expecting them just to wake up. But of course, they're not going to. And that's a really confronting thing. It was confronting for me. Uh, it's confronting in a society that doesn't really think about death. There are places around the world where death is all around them, they have lots of visible reminders, and they they have learned to face up to it a lot better than we have. We are less good at that. So death is there, but generally we put it out of our minds. But there are reminders, and I would say the biggest reminder for me of death is when I look in the mirror. Because every day when I look in the mirror, I can begin to see the onset of a decline. Now I'm 33 years old, and if I'm brutally honest, I think I'm doing alright, quite frankly. But if I see a photo of myself from 10 years ago, I look at myself and I think, crikey, I look so young. And I'm like, I look at myself in the mirror and I go, you're not looking quite so fresh anymore. And I can see the little wrinkles starting to form, bits kind of around the edges and stuff. And I realize that actually for the majority of my life so far, I've been on this very rapid uphill. And some of you are still in that. And those of us who are past that, we don't like you anymore. Anyway, you're in this rapid uphill. But I look I realize now when I look in the mirror, I'm on a gradual, a very gradual decline. That's where I'm going. The signs are all there, and every time I look in the mirror, it just says, it's coming. The other day, Becca, my wife, said to me, You've got grey hair there. And I was like, It's coming. Death is coming. This thing is on the way out. And you know, without wanting to be rude, you know, some of you will find that funny because I'm 33. Some of you are a little bit further along in the process, and you'll be familiar with this more than me. But the reality is we know it doesn't matter what we do. None of us can escape it. Some of us here might be familiar with a series of films called Final Destination. If you've not seen the Final Destination films, don't bother, they're all rubbish. But basically, the plot of every Final Destination film is exactly the same. At the beginning of the film, someone has a premonition of their death and the death of a big group of people. And so they say, look, let's not go, don't get on the plane, you know, don't get on the roller coaster, whatever it is. And a big accident happens and they all avoid death and they cheat death. But then what happens for the rest of the film is that death comes for them and they start to get picked off one by one, normally in more imaginative ways. And they realize what's happening and they try and escape from death, but it's the old kind of you know, you can run but you can't hide type thing. You know, Benjamin Franklin famously said, in this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes. It's true, all the research shows 100% of people die. Death is no respecter of persons. And I can vividly remember the first time I really understood what death was. I must have been about six or seven, um, and I don't know what kind of triggered it. I'd been put to bed and I was in my bed, and somehow at some point, I realized I was gonna die. And I realized I was gonna be dead forever. And I was just gonna stop. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. And I remember this feeling of like impending doom like rising up in me. My blood ran cold. It was like the world just collapsed in on me, and this feeling of kind of overwhelming panic and terror. And I remember just crying and crying and sobbing and calling for my mum, and my mum came and she asked me what was wrong, and I couldn't tell her. I lied. We just moved house, I said, Oh, I miss grandma. It was like a death was too big to deal with, it was scary and inescapable, and I I couldn't talk about it. Aristotle uh said this: death is a dreadful thing, for it is the end. And maybe maybe that's what you think. Maybe you think death is the end. But if we believe that death is the end, let me ask, how does that affect the way you live your life? Because what you think about the future determines what you do in the present. And if we think death is really the end and that's it, then we'll just want to get as much out of this life as we possibly can. We're gonna bleed this thing dry. I'm gonna enjoy as much earthly pleasure as possible right now, I'm gonna cram in as much as possible, experience as much as possible, indulge as much as possible, I'm gonna possess as much as possible, I'm gonna get myself to the top. And, you know, we could sum that up in the words of the passage here, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. And if you believe that death is the end of all things, then you may as well, right? You may as well go down the you know, let us eat and drink route. You know, last few years we saw the rise of the phrase, didn't we? YOLO, you only live once. Before that, we kind of said the same thing by saying carpe diem sees the day. We've seen the rise of the bucket list culture. These are the things you must do before you die. You've got to cram it in because death is the end. And that was that was sort of the Corinthian view here in the Corinthian church. Um, the Corinthians were the product of their culture. And in Greek culture, the human body uh was considered very, very low. They thought the human body was gross, it was disgusting, it was a prison you needed to be set free from. And God couldn't possibly be interested in your body, but he was interested in your soul. So they they did believe in a life after death. They thought you would die and you would kind of shed your body and you would become a soul and you would live on in a kind of spiritual existence, and that would be it. And the idea of a physical resurrection just seemed inconceivable. And so what's happened in this church is that someone, or at least a few people, were teaching that there is no resurrection of the dead. Dead people don't rise. And what that led them to was effectively just do whatever they fancied. Because remember, what you believe about the future determines what you do in the present. So at the end of that passage, at the end of verse, uh, second half of verse 32, if the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Do not be misled. Bad company corrupts good character. Come back to your senses as you ought and stop sinning. For there are some of you who are ignorant of God. I say this to your shame. So because they thought the body wouldn't be raised, these guys were just living a really hedonistic lifestyle, eating, drinking, and kind of making merry. And if you've been here for previous chapters of Corinthians, you'll have seen that through the whole book, you know, eating and drinking and prostitution and all kinds of stuff. And their attitude was really look, let's enjoy as much earthly pleasure now, no matter how simple it is, because when I die, my body is gonna perish, and all my bad moral choices will perish, where they're everything physical will pass away, and I will enter into eternity with a pure spirit, a pure soul. Therefore, kind of just have at it, quite frankly. And what Paul does here in this uh this letter is he draws out some of the logical implications of what they're saying. So you have a look at verses 12 to 15. If it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith. More than that, we're then found to be false witnesses about God. For we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead, but he did not raise him, if in fact the dead are not raised. Now, Paul, where he comes in, he's assuming at this point that these guys believe Jesus rose from the dead. And now I know there will be people here today who won't believe that, and we'll kind of come back to that in a moment. But Paul's saying, look, how can you say therefore there's no resurrection of the dead? You can't say on the one hand that no one rises from the dead, but on the other hand, Christ rose from the dead. He says completely inconsistent. If no one rises from the dead, Christ didn't rise from the dead. And if Christ didn't rise from the dead, well actually, there's no point in him doing any preaching. Their faith is entirely pointless, and everything that he's been teaching and others have been teaching is a lie. So there's no resurrection of the dead, there's no resurrection of Jesus, no Christianity. And in verses 16 to 19, he just kind of reiterates the same kind of argument. The dead are not raised, then Christ is not raised, then faith Christianity is a waste of time. But he kind of says as well, if that's true, then your sins are not forgiven, and people who have died trusting in Jesus, they're lost. So he says, this robs Christianity of its content and of its comfort. And he says, if we only have hope in this life, then actually Christians above all other people ought to be pitied. But I think Paul does us a favor here, because Paul shows us that everything rests on the physical resurrection of Jesus. Now maybe you're here today and you you're unsure what you make of Christianity, and you think, I just wouldn't even know where to start. You know, can I could I believe in a virgin birth? Could I believe in miracles? Could I believe that Jesus is God? Well, actually, all you need to work out is whether you believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Because Paul says if the resurrection isn't true, then quite frankly, none of the rest of it matters. You could believe in those things, but if Jesus' resurrection is not a historical fact, then Christianity is a waste of time. So he does us a favor. I think he does a favor for other of us, others of us here who might be churchgoers. There might be some of us who say we identify as Christians, but we say, I don't think Jesus rose physically from the dead. I think it was a spiritual kind of resurrection, or it's his teaching and his example that lives on. And Paul just says, Well, no. Again, if there's no physical resurrection there, then actually there's no Christianity. Wasting your time. Don't bother coming on Sunday, have a lie in. But there might be others of us here who say, actually, I just don't believe it anyway. Well, I'd like to challenge you. If everything hinges on the resurrection of Jesus, have you actually looked at the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? And really, can you afford not to? Because if Jesus didn't rise, well, it makes no difference. Do what you like. But if he did, then it is the most important event in all human history upon which everything hangs, and it has significant personal and cosmic ramifications. And maybe that's you, and you would say, actually, I would look at it, I'd be happy to look into this. A couple of books, just quickly, you could look at The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, or Dead or Alive by Daniel Clark. Both books written in a very kind of popular style, uh, so very readable, easy to read, that just lay out the evidence for the resurrection and kind of arguments that have been brought against it. So anyway, Paul's thing is look, no resurrection of the uh no resurrection, no Christianity. And then he says, but verse 20, but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn, Christ the first fruits, then when he comes, those who belong to him. Paul says, but actually, Jesus is risen. Jesus is risen bodily. You know, we see in the Gospels, Thomas touched him, the disciples ate food with him, he ate food, he had a body. And Paul says, He is the first fruits from the dead. And the first fruits is a farming image. It's the first picking of the crop that encourages the farmer and tells them that the full harvest is coming. And it shows them what the harvest will be like. You've got a good first fruit, you're gonna have a good harvest, you're gonna get more of the same. And we're told here Christ is the first fruit, he is the first of many to be raised bodily after death. And he is the template for the rest of us. And Paul says, When Jesus comes again, the Christian believers will be raised to a new physical life. Our bodies might sleep for a time, but then they will be risen and restored. We will have physical bodies for a new physical creation. And actually, that's something that sometimes I think Christians are a bit confused about. We're quite ignorant of this. Sometimes I hear Christians talking about heaven as our final destination, being in heaven for eternity with God. Just down the road from us, we've got Eastbourne. And we call Eastbourne God's waiting room, don't we? It's full of old people waiting to die. That's what people say. But actually, Eastbourne is not God's waiting room. Heaven is God's waiting room. That is where the dead are waiting until Jesus returns. And when Jesus returns, believers who have died will return with him, and Jesus will restore creation. There will be new physical bodies for a new physical creation. And Jesus' resurrection is not limited just to him. He's not an isolated case. And we know that because of the parallels that Paul draws between Jesus and Adam. You might know Adam, first man in the Bible, kind of Garden of Eden story. And Adam was one man, but he was the representative of all of humanity. And we understand how a kind of representative works. We might send a representative off to a sporting event to represent our country. And we understand, don't we, that we stand or fall on the performance of our representative. Well, we know the story. Adam fell, he sinned, and the result of his sin was that death entered the world and has been experienced by humanity, those he represents ever since. But Paul says, in the same way, Christ, one man, is the representative of a new humanity. And he came and he lived a perfect life and he died and he rose. And so those he represents will die and rise too. Think of it like two aeroplanes. Two aeroplanes with two different pilots. One is Adam, and the other plane is Jesus. And depending on which plane you're in, there are two destinations. Adam's plane is in a nosedive towards death, and there's no hope of pulling up. And so everyone that's in the plane with Adam is going to share his fate. Jesus' plane is on a route through death and out the other side to new physical bodily life. And everyone who's on that plane is going to the same destination. Vaughan Roberts sums it up well in his book about one Corinthians. He says, On the cross, Jesus was willing to die for others, after which he rose again as firstborn of a new humanity, no longer under condemnation of death, but able to enjoy eternal life in relationship with God his Father. Just as all are in Adam by birth, and so face the terrible consequences of his sin. Now Christians are in Christ by faith, and being joined to him can therefore enjoy the wonderful fruit of his act of righteousness. This means we can be sure that just as he was raised bodily, so those who belong to him will be raised when he comes at the end of time. Now we might want to raise some objections here and say, well, that's all very well, but I don't actually believe the Adam story. Well, again, I want to say everything comes back to the resurrection. Because the logic of the Bible is very much this: if Christ rose, Adam fell. And I think actually, as Christians, we need to be aware of this. We need to be aware of the parallels. I've met plenty of Christians who would say, I don't think Adam was a real person. It's just a metaphor or an allegory. And I want to say, you know what, I certainly think there's metaphor in there and there's allegorical language. I'm absolutely happy with that. But what we mustn't do is allegorize away Adam as a real person. Because that has implications that I think when we say that we're actually unaware of. You know, we look at the Corinthians, they denied the resurrection of the dead. And the implication was actually they ended up undermining the resurrection of Jesus and their whole faith. And what we see here is that Jesus and Adam are direct parallels, one man for the many. So if we deny Adam, the implication is we end up denying Jesus. So the Christian who says there was no Adam has just undermined their entire faith in the same way the Corinthians have. And that's why I say you've got to go back to the resurrection. If Christ rose, Adam fell. And we get a glimpse here as well of the goal, the goal of Jesus' work in verses 24 to 28. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for he has put everything under his feet. Now, when it says that everything is being put under him, it's clear this does not include God Himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son Himself will be made subject to him who has put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. And there's a lot of stuff in there, but the kind of easiest way to summarize it is that the goal of Jesus is the destruction of everything in creation that stands against God the Father. It says he will destroy every dominion and power or authority. That's the Bible's way of talking about demonic spiritual forces, evil spiritual forces. And we're told he will defeat every enemy that stands against God until they are all put under his feet, and then he will hand creation back to the Father. And that's what we see in the Gospels, the stories of Jesus' life. Jesus comes and he defeats every enemy he comes up against. He comes up against illness and he cures the sick. He comes up against the demons and he casts them out. He comes up against the chaotic powers of nature and he calms the storms. And then he dies and he rises from the dead. He defeats death. He strikes at a killer blow. And yes, death is limping on, and it's trying to take with it whoever it can. But actually, it will be finally destroyed at the return of Christ. Christ recovers all that was lost in Adam. Adam was meant to rule over creation, but he fell. And Christ comes as a man and he fulfills that. He puts right what has gone wrong and restores creation. But what are we what are we supposed to take away from this? You know, what does Paul want then to take from what he's saying? What should we take? Is it just kind of simple agreements? Like, oh yeah, okay, the resurrection is going to happen. Well, I think it's more than that. I think actually Paul's point in this passage is this live in light of the future resurrection. There is a resurrection, it's where history is headed. So live in light of that. Because what we do, well, what we think about the future determines what we do in the present. And Paul shows that, you know, in some ways, you know, the Corinthians are already partly living with that view of the future. And even he is. So verse 29 there. Verse 29 is undoubtedly one of the most contended verses in all of the Bible. It's very difficult to know exactly what it means, but the The very surface reading, it's obvious that in the church there, the Corinthian church was baptizing, uh, people were being baptized for people who had already died. And I don't think scripture supports that. I don't think Paul actually endorses it. Um, but Paul uses it as an example to say, look, you are in some way living in light of a future resurrection, but you just don't realize it. You are performing baptism. Baptism is a picture of dying and rising to new life, like dying with Jesus and rising to physical life. Why would you be doing that if you didn't think dead people come back from the dead? He's showing them they're kind of they're inconsistent in what they're doing. And then Paul says about himself in verses 30 to 32, you know, he is living in light of the future. He's endangering his life, going around teaching the gospel, being beaten up and all kinds of things. He said, Why would I do this if there was no hope beyond this life? And it's because he believes in the resurrection and it changes what he does in the now. And so he says, Don't be misled, come to your senses, stop sinning. The resurrection is a reality, so pull yourself together, Christians. Stop making excuses for indulging in sin and just live a godly life. Live in light of a future resurrection. And that's the question, I suppose, for us to think about today, isn't it? Are we living in the light of a future resurrection? You know, the Corinthians, they were living hedonistically because they thought a body didn't matter and they would be raised spiritually. You know, life after death wasn't news to them, but bodily life after death was. So they needed to hear what Paul had to say to say to kind of address that. And our context is a little bit different. Because some of us here, we won't believe in resurrection of the dead or an afterlife at all, or we might just say we can't know. The uh English philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, When I die, worms will devour my body, and I will commit myself to the great perhaps. And maybe that's think, maybe that's as much as you think you could commit to. You know, maybe that's as good as it gets. So we can say perhaps. We can only guess at what's going to happen. The thing is, it's not guesswork, is it, what happens beyond the grave. It's not guesswork if we know of someone who's been through death and then come back again. And that is the claim of the resurrection of Jesus. And so it matters if that is true. And so I would challenge you to look at the evidence for the resurrection, examine its claims. But here's the rub. If you find yourself believing in the resurrection of Jesus, will you let it change you? Will what is coming in the future change you today? Because it's not about simply mentally assenting to the resurrection. But it's about getting on the plane. It's one thing, isn't it, knowing the destination of a plane. It's another thing to get on board and go. So would you actually follow Jesus? Would you trust him as your Lord and Savior and live with that eternal perspective? And put aside that eat and drink for tomorrow we die mentality as something no longer to live by. And we will believe this. And actually, maybe we just need to be reminded about this sometimes to change us now, so that we might live in the light of it all the more. Because, you know, we too might need to turn away from a life of kind of selfish consumption and accumulation. It's easy to get swept up in it, isn't it? Wanting more, the next thing, the better thing, the thing that will bring us glory and status before other people. But will we say, actually, no, I see that's a way to live my life when I have no hope for the future? But actually, I do have a hope, but I have a glorious hope. And so will we be like verse 58 at the end of this chapter, uh, where Paul says, standing firm, letting nothing move us, always giving ourselves fully to the work of the Lord because we know it's not in vain. But I think it helps us to live in light of the future as well, because it ought to strengthen and encourage us. You know, as we age and we lose the advantages and the privileges of our youth, we might start to feel that actually the best thing is our best days are behind us. Life is slipping away, and it's beyond our control. You know, and actually it's that look in the mirror, the the reminder of the ever-approaching inevitability of death. You know, and as we and our loved ones they get sick, our health gets robbed away from us, our bodies and our minds decline, people who we love die. We may look at the future merely as a downward trajectory, just miserable. But actually, the bodily resurrection gives us hope. It's a reminder that though our bodies might wear out, those who are in Christ will one day be restored. No matter how sickness or age might have ravaged our minds or our bodies or the minds and bodies of our loved ones, Jesus' resurrection has paved the way for our resurrection. And one day we will see again those who have died, trusting in Jesus, restored to new life, with bodies no longer subject to sickness and death. And we will be the same. And that can transform our perspective on life right now. Because all of us walk in the valley of the shadow of death. But when you read that psalm where that comes from from King David, afterwards he says, God lays a table for me in the presence of my enemies. After the shadow of death, there is feasting joy for David. And it's the same for us. After death, there is feasting joy, there is a new physical risen life. So let's not live this life as though this life is all there is. Let's live in light of the future resurrection. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you that you are indeed raised from the dead. And we thank you for what that means for us, that those of us who are in Christ, we're in that plane, we are going to the same destination. That you set that pattern for us. Thank you for the hope that gives us in the face of this life as we face death, that final enemy. Lord, thank you that we can know that beyond death there will be new physical life. And those who have we have lost already of gone are not lost, but are simply sleeping and waiting for the resurrection, Lord. Father, help us in light of this to be changed by that now. That what we believe about the future might change the way we act in the present, that we might live all the more day by day in light of this future resurrection. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.