SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: It is so good to see you here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I hope everybody had a great Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: Happy New Year's.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Garrett McCord.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the youth pastor here at FBC Bernie, and it's a pleasure to be here with you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So, as a senior in high school, I worked at a sprint store in the town that I grew up in.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and one evening, about two weeks after I started that job, we were closing, and one of my coworkers went to take out the trash.
SPEAKER_00: And after a few minutes, she knocks on the back door to get in.
SPEAKER_00: We open the door to let her in, and to my surprise, a man with a gun comes over the top of her.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so the next thing I know, I have a pistol pointed in my face, and I'm being told to get on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And I listened because it felt like the smart decision in that moment.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm face down on the ground, I'm getting yelled at to open the safe.
SPEAKER_00: I have no clue how to open the safe because I've worked here for two weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and they thankfully realized it was open.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how you missed that detail, but it was.
SPEAKER_00: And they they get all the phones and then they leave.
SPEAKER_00: And it was over like that.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're kind of laying on the ground, we're just kind of processing what just happened.
SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing was that the differences in reactions uh between me and my co-workers, right?
SPEAKER_00: They leave, and one guy that I work with uh just having a meltdown, like hysterical, forgets how to breathe, like he does not know how to handle himself.
SPEAKER_00: And then a lady I work with had worked with Sprint for a long time, and apparently this was just like an occupational hazard for her.
SPEAKER_00: Like she's just sitting in the corner of the room, like, Y'all's first time, like what in the world?
SPEAKER_00: Like how?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, this is my first time being robbed at gunpoint.
SPEAKER_00: And so for me, I I'm you know, just glad it's over, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just glad I get to go home, right?
SPEAKER_00: I go home and I think I'm fine.
SPEAKER_00: And and I even go to school the next day, and I couldn't help but that whole day at school, the scene just replayed over and over and over in my mind.
SPEAKER_00: And and I was actually pretty shaken up, and I realized the reason I was shaken up is because for the first time in my life, I realized that I could have just died.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that I I could have just died, but one day I would die.
SPEAKER_00: And the hard truth is that I have a lot less control over that day than I'd like to think.
SPEAKER_00: And I started to view death as much more real and scary than I had ever before.
SPEAKER_00: And so why am I telling you that story this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Well, most of you have probably never been robbed at gunpoint.
SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
SPEAKER_00: Many of us have probably had similar thoughts, this deep awareness of death.
SPEAKER_00: And I've talked with countless people who have this genuine fear of death or dying.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just their own life ending, but of losing a loved one, a spouse, a child, a parent.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and it ranges from just like background anxiety to just completely debilitating fear.
SPEAKER_00: And for others of you, it's not so much fear as it is familiarity.
SPEAKER_00: You've already been touched by death.
SPEAKER_00: You've lost someone that you love, someone close to you, and you're living in that up and down process of grief that feels like it will never quite be over.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of you that haven't experienced either of those yet, the hard thing I have to tell you this morning is that one day you will.
SPEAKER_00: Because death touches all of us.
SPEAKER_00: And this is probably the point in the sermon where you're thinking, really, the death sermon the Sunday after Christmas, like, bro, I have family in town.
SPEAKER_00: Like you couldn't like go like joy, happiness.
SPEAKER_00: But hang with me, because in the weeks leading up to Christmas, we've been walking through our why he came series.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been trying to answer that question.
SPEAKER_00: Why did Jesus come?
SPEAKER_00: Most of us mentally would be able to say, well, to forgive our sins, to die for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, but as we've seen these past few weeks, we we dove into that question throughout scripture, and we've seen that there's so much more to it than just that.
SPEAKER_00: There's all of these different layers.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen that Jesus came to glorify God, that he came to serve, and that he came to destroy the works of the devil, to give abundant life, to seek and save the lost.
SPEAKER_00: And every single one of those things has incredible, profound implications for how we live our lives and how we view the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to this morning's topic: that Jesus came to defeat death.
SPEAKER_00: And the wonderful thing is the Bible doesn't try to skirt around death like everybody else seems to try and do.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the Bible speaks about death quite often and very clearly, and it doesn't give us this nihilistic, cynical viewpoint on death.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually very hopeful.
SPEAKER_00: As one quote I found reads, the Christian faith doesn't give us the, or sorry, the Christian faith gives us the resources to face death without denial, without despair, and without bitterness.
SPEAKER_00: And that quote is true because of passages like 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 28, which is where we're gonna be this morning, if you want to go ahead and flip there.
SPEAKER_00: And as you flip there, a little bit of context in the letter of 1 Corinthians, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: And in the church in Corinth is dumpster fire.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's sin going on, there's false teaching, like it's just a wreck.
SPEAKER_00: And in the first part of this letter, he's addressing a lot of those, just, hey, you gotta clean this sin up before you can get anything else going.
SPEAKER_00: And then now at this part of the letter, he started to move to false teachings, specifically one false teaching, that there is no resurrection of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: That once your light's cut out, it's game over, that's it, there's no afterlife.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, hey, you can't have Christianity without the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus did not get out of that grave, then this is all just one big waste of time.
SPEAKER_00: And then in verses 20 through 28, Paul continues that argument and he explains what Jesus' resurrection means for our future.
SPEAKER_00: He explains why death needed to be defeated, how Jesus' resurrection did that, and then what that means for the rest of our lives and worldview.
SPEAKER_00: And that's going to be the flow of our sermon here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we're gonna jump in, 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.
SPEAKER_00: For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
SPEAKER_00: We pray with me.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for your word this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that we would have ears to listen, a heart to respond.
SPEAKER_00: God, that I would preach your word faithfully, and Father, that we would leave here with a new peace that goes beyond all understanding when it comes to the topic of death.
SPEAKER_00: God, that we would let your gospel speak to us in a powerful way this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We'd leave change, we would see the miracle of salvation even today.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we love and praise you.
SPEAKER_00: Praise things in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So, Paul begins that passage, and what he does is he reaffirms what he just said earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has been raised.
SPEAKER_00: But then he adds a really important part.
SPEAKER_00: He calls Jesus the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
SPEAKER_00: And that phrase fallen asleep, don't get hung up on it.
SPEAKER_00: That's just a figure of speech that was used in that culture for death.
SPEAKER_00: But the key word to focus on is first fruits.
SPEAKER_00: Because in the ancient world, the first fruits were the first portion of the harvest.
SPEAKER_00: They were like the very first thing to be able to be harvested, and they were a guarantee.
SPEAKER_00: Because you knew that if those first fruits appeared, the rest of the harvest was coming.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like a down payment or earnest money.
SPEAKER_00: You know the rest is gonna find its way here.
SPEAKER_00: And so what Paul is saying is that Jesus' resurrection was not a one-off miracle, rather, it was the beginning of the resurrection of all who are in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's a preview and a promise of what's coming.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that's extremely dense, but hold on to it because the whole rest of our passage and time here this morning is gonna be Paul explaining exactly what he means by that.
SPEAKER_00: And so in verses 21 and 22, he zooms out and he says, Death came through a man and life comes through a man.
SPEAKER_00: And then he sharpens it, and Adam all die, and Christ all will be made alive.
SPEAKER_00: So, why in the world is Paul talking about Adam here?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what he's doing is he's taking us back to where death began.
SPEAKER_00: Adam, Garden of Eden, Genesis 3.
SPEAKER_00: Because in the beginning, God creates the world and he creates everything in it, and he creates it good, and he creates mankind in his image.
SPEAKER_00: That word image is the word for a statue, meaning that we are to be the visible representation of the invisible God and his creation, to show the world, to be a picture of what he's like.
SPEAKER_00: And so he places man in this garden to be his partners and bringing order and beauty and culture and creation to the world.
SPEAKER_00: And in that garden, he places two trees.
SPEAKER_00: One is the tree of life in the middle, and it's this visible reminder that life is something you receive.
SPEAKER_00: This is something I didn't learn until fairly recently.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve did not have inherent eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that, we all know they weren't supposed to die, and so you just think, oh, we were made immortal.
SPEAKER_00: But but that eternal life they had access to was not inside themselves, as it is God.
SPEAKER_00: God has inherent eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve had eternal life because they had access to the tree of life, which was the conduit of life from God, who is the source.
SPEAKER_00: So they could go to that tree, they could eat the fruit as an act of worship to God, and that was their way of participating in life with God.
SPEAKER_00: And on the other side of that garden is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: And God said, Don't eat from this tree or you will die.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not God being petty or cruel, he didn't poison that fruit and make it look really good, like, oh, I know you want to, but no.
SPEAKER_00: The reason he says that is because that tree represents autonomy.
SPEAKER_00: The belief that we as humans get to define good and evil for ourselves, apart from God.
SPEAKER_00: To eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is to essentially say, hey, God, I don't want life on your terms.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do it your way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna decide what's right and wrong for myself.
SPEAKER_00: And when you take that to its logical conclusion, eating from that tree is essentially declaring yourself God.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the key that the decision to eat from that tree is ultimately a decision to disconnect from the source of life, God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so the moment that Adam disobeys and he eats the fruit, he's choosing to disconnect from that source of life, and death is the logical and natural result.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
SPEAKER_00: If I unplug a lamp from its power source, what happens?
SPEAKER_00: The light's cut out.
SPEAKER_00: And now Adam doesn't drop dead immediately, but death begins to rain.
SPEAKER_00: And so you see that spiritual death begins.
SPEAKER_00: They hide from God, even though they've walked, know nothing but walking with perfect fellowship with Him.
SPEAKER_00: You start to see spiritual death, you start to see relational death.
SPEAKER_00: They cover themselves, they feel guilt and shame, they point the finger, shift blame, blame God.
SPEAKER_00: We see creational death, we see that work becomes a burden, that childbearing becomes painful, that the animals run.
SPEAKER_00: And then we eventually see physical death.
SPEAKER_00: They age and they die.
SPEAKER_00: One man's decision sets off this chain reaction.
SPEAKER_00: And ever since that moment, humanity's been making the same decision as Adam for all of history.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We love to put it on him in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: We've all said, God, I don't want to do it your way.
SPEAKER_00: I want to do it my way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna live by my rules.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be the God of my own life.
SPEAKER_00: And now, because of that, we all live under the shadow of death.
SPEAKER_00: And whether we realize it or not, that shadow shapes our lives in way more ways than we'd like to think.
SPEAKER_00: Take Brian Johnson, for example.
SPEAKER_00: He's a tech CEO, and his full-time hobby is not dying.
SPEAKER_00: Full-time hobby, meaning that he has unlimited access to resources, and every day is scheduled, every meal is measured, he has no sugar, he has no alcohol, he has dozens of supplements, he gets constant blood work, he has MRIs, scans track the biological age of his organs, which I didn't know that was a thing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but my knees are probably nowhere near uh 27.
SPEAKER_00: They're probably way down that scale.
SPEAKER_00: And at one point, he even did plasma infusions from his teenage son, which I really, really want to hear how that conversation went.
SPEAKER_00: And he'll tell you it's all in the name of science.
SPEAKER_00: And sure, there's real data there, it's probably helpful, there'll there'll be some new wonder drug that helps us, you know, live a couple months longer.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: underneath all that data and the lab coats and the tests, it's the same old human question.
SPEAKER_00: How do I keep death away?
SPEAKER_00: And for all that money, for all that control, the answer is still the exact same.
SPEAKER_00: You can't.
SPEAKER_00: He's still gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: But we sure like to try, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so many of us spend so much time and energy and resources trying to delay death.
SPEAKER_00: You control what you eat, you obsess over health metrics, steps, heart rate, sleep scores, blood pressure.
SPEAKER_00: You you check, you adjust.
SPEAKER_00: You cling to youth with filters and creams and procedures and injections and fillers and thinking that maybe if you can slow the signs, you can slow the reality.
SPEAKER_00: And look, none of those things are inherently wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them are wise, but they can't deliver.
SPEAKER_00: Or for many of you, you're not trying to delay death, you're just trying to distract from it.
SPEAKER_00: When your mind starts to drift to that place, you just try to drown it out with noise.
SPEAKER_00: Spotify, work emails, Netflix, TikTok, Instagram.
SPEAKER_00: You avoid certain places, conversations, and memories because they remind you of loss.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, there's a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, called Hughley that I hate to drive by every single time.
SPEAKER_00: You joke about death, you minimize it, you change the subject that the moments get serious.
SPEAKER_00: And for some of you, it's even different.
SPEAKER_00: You just try to claim as much pressure, or you just try to cram as much pleasure, experience, sex, alcohol, and adrenaline into life, hoping that if you can't outrun death, well, maybe I can just live it up so my life won't be wasted.
SPEAKER_00: Look, you can pick your poison, but it's all the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: You know death is coming and you don't have an answer.
SPEAKER_00: You can cope, you can manage, you can numb.
SPEAKER_00: But Hebrews 2 calls it what it really is.
SPEAKER_00: It says that we live under slavery to the fear of death.
SPEAKER_00: Because, see, death is not just something that happens to us at the end of life, it's something that rules over us now.
SPEAKER_00: Think about how it influences everything we do, our choices, our violence, our need for control.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is the death can't just be forgiven or ignored.
SPEAKER_00: It has to be defeated, it has to have its power taken.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Paul talks about next.
SPEAKER_00: So back in verse 21, he says, For since a man, or for since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is trying to get you to feel the weight of death before he gives you the solution.
SPEAKER_00: And his solution is the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Just as death entered through Adam, life entered through Christ, who was fully God, fully man.
SPEAKER_00: And so what this means is that God saw the issue of death, and he doesn't just stand back and wag his finger at us and shake his head like, I told you so.
SPEAKER_00: Live with it, deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: These are the consequences of your actions.
SPEAKER_00: No, God actually put on flesh and stepped in and did something about it.
SPEAKER_00: Think of it this way has anybody here ever been to a Rosti or know at all what I'm talking about when I mention that name?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can tell the people who have, because they're like, yes.
SPEAKER_00: It's a chiropractic and soft tissue place.
SPEAKER_00: Uh a while back I was dealing with some chronic knee pain and I had tried all the surface level solutions, you know, YouTube videos, all this, advice.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody was like, hey man, you just need to sleep more.
SPEAKER_00: Like, brother, I got two kids under two.
SPEAKER_00: That's not gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: They need something else.
SPEAKER_00: And so finally I hear about this place, I go, I make an appointment, they do some assessments, and they tell you to lie down on a table.
SPEAKER_00: And what comes next, I think uh the word that people use for it is torture.
SPEAKER_00: Because they find wherever you have a knot or a muscle or tightness, and somehow they manage to put every ounce of their body weight into that spot uh through one thumb.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh there was one time that the doctor did something called like a psoas release, which your psoas is somewhere around here, and apparently it's the one muscle your body never wants anyone to touch.
SPEAKER_00: And they like dig into it, get up under my hip.
SPEAKER_00: I am literally sweating, laughing, and crying simultaneously.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how.
SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure the doctor holds me down so I can't drag myself off the table.
SPEAKER_00: The most painful thing I've ever done, and I paid for it.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the crazy thing it actually worked.
SPEAKER_00: My knee pain was better.
SPEAKER_00: Because you see, I had tried all of these surface-level solutions.
SPEAKER_00: Everything else was trying to fix the problem from the outside.
SPEAKER_00: But what I needed was someone who was willing to step into the pain to find exactly the place that hurt, to press into it and to deal with the issue from the inside.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see it?
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus did with death.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't try to avoid it, he didn't try to outsmart it, he didn't try to work around it.
SPEAKER_00: He stepped into death through perfect obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He lived his entire life to perfection, where we constantly turn from God to do it our own way.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus constantly turned towards the Father in obedience and said, Not my will, but yours.
SPEAKER_00: And there's nowhere where this is more clear than in the Garden of Gethsemane, which is very intentionally meant to draw your mind's eye back to the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: It's this reversal where Jesus, the night before he's about to be crucified, steps in as the new and better Adam.
SPEAKER_00: Because Adam faced temptation surrounded by life, and he chose disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus faced temptation surrounded by suffering, and he chose obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Adam reached for autonomy and said, I'm gonna decide for myself.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus surrendered his will and said, Not my will, but yours be done.
SPEAKER_00: In the first garden, Adam grasped at what wasn't his and death followed.
SPEAKER_00: In the second garden, Jesus released his rights and faced death to secure life available to all.
SPEAKER_00: Because ultimately it all culminates in his gruesome death on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't accidental, it wasn't against his will, it was an intentional, supreme act of love, a fully faithful human life, fully surrendered to God.
SPEAKER_00: And on that cross, Jesus became our sin.
SPEAKER_00: He absorbed the wrath of the Father against all sin.
SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't against the Father's will.
SPEAKER_00: This was a willful decision for God to absorb our punishment, our death into himself.
SPEAKER_00: It was a substitution.
SPEAKER_00: He took what our death had earned so that we could have access to what his obedience had earned.
SPEAKER_00: Eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: that sounds great, but if Jesus stayed dead, then death is still undefeated.
SPEAKER_00: It claimed him like everyone else in history.
SPEAKER_00: Except we have incredibly convincing evidence that Jesus got up and walked out of that grave.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was publicly executed by Rome.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody who is intellectually honest disputes that.
SPEAKER_00: Days later, the tomb was empty and the first witnesses were women.
SPEAKER_00: A detail that you would never have picked to make up a story in that culture.
SPEAKER_00: And the disciples went from hiding cowards who had all rejected and abandoned Jesus to publicly proclaiming Christ crucified and resurrected, even though it cost all of them everything.
SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't some legend that grew later.
SPEAKER_00: Paul in his writings even says, hey, a bunch of the people who saw Jesus after his resurrection are still alive.
SPEAKER_00: Go ask them.
SPEAKER_00: When you put it all together, the resurrection explains the data better than any alternative.
SPEAKER_00: It's real.
SPEAKER_00: It happened.
SPEAKER_00: And if it happened, then death has finally been conquered.
SPEAKER_00: Because up to that point, death had washed over and claimed every human being, and rightfully so.
SPEAKER_00: We sold ourselves to sin.
SPEAKER_00: We handed ourselves over it.
SPEAKER_00: We turned away from God and chose the path that led to death.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus stepped into death on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: And for the first time in history, death had no rightful claim.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't sell himself to it, he stepped into it.
SPEAKER_00: And it couldn't hold him, it didn't get to keep him.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus punched a hole through death and came out on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't just defeat death for himself, he defeated it for us.
SPEAKER_00: As Romans 10 9 says if you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Saved from what?
unknown: Death.
SPEAKER_00: Elsewhere, the Bible describes it this way in Galatians 2.20 and talks about being in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, when you place your faith in Jesus, you are joined to him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's Paul's argument here.
SPEAKER_00: If you are in Christ, then what is true of him is true of you now.
SPEAKER_00: If he went into the grave and came out alive, you can be 100% sure that you will too.
SPEAKER_00: It's the song, it's the words to the worship song, ain't no grave.
SPEAKER_00: If you walked out of the grave, I'm walking too.
SPEAKER_00: Think of it this way: for most of human history, there were points that were considered like points of no return.
SPEAKER_00: And for the Europeans, for a long time, the Atlantic Ocean was one of those places.
SPEAKER_00: And people believe that once you sailed far enough, you just didn't come back, right?
SPEAKER_00: For the public imagination, there was some end of the world out there.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you fell off the edge, maybe it was the Kraken, I don't know, but you don't come back from this.
SPEAKER_00: The Atlantic felt like certain death, a prison that swallowed up everyone that entered it.
SPEAKER_00: Until it wasn't.
SPEAKER_00: Because one day someone came back.
SPEAKER_00: You all know it, right?
SPEAKER_00: In 1492.
SPEAKER_00: There we go.
SPEAKER_00: I was really nervous about that one.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I don't think anyone's gonna say this.
SPEAKER_00: Columbus sailed the ocean blue, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we know that history buffs, I know he wasn't the first one.
SPEAKER_00: Just track with me, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The illustrations aren't perfect.
SPEAKER_00: But when he returned, everything changed.
SPEAKER_00: What had once been thought to be a prison became a doorway.
SPEAKER_00: What used to be thought of as the end now became an opportunity for a new life, a chance to begin again in the new world.
SPEAKER_00: And because someone had gone through and returned, now others had the confidence to do the same.
SPEAKER_00: And soon after, wave after wave of people crossed those same waters.
SPEAKER_00: And not because the danger had disappeared, but because the outcome was known.
SPEAKER_00: And track with me, no illustration's perfect, but in the same way, that's what the resurrection does with death.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus went through what humanity thought was the ultimate point of no return, and he comes back.
SPEAKER_00: And because he came back, death is no longer a prison.
SPEAKER_00: It is a doorway into resurrection life.
SPEAKER_00: And you might say, well, people still die.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get to that here in a second.
SPEAKER_00: But though people might die, Jesus hasn't removed death from the world completely yet, but he does remove the uncertainty about what lies beyond it for those who are in him.
SPEAKER_00: Because if Jesus, God in the flesh, walked through death on our behalf and came out alive, then we can be a hundred percent certain that we will too.
SPEAKER_00: And what we're gonna see at the end of Paul's argument here is that knowing that truth should change everything about how you view your life.
SPEAKER_00: Should how you change everything about how you view the world that you live in.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's pick up in verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: Then comes the end.
SPEAKER_00: When he hands over the kingdom to God and Father, when he has abolished all rule and all authority and power.
SPEAKER_00: For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
SPEAKER_00: The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
SPEAKER_00: That last line is key.
SPEAKER_00: The last enemy to be abolished is death.
SPEAKER_00: And you might hear that and think, but I thought death was defeated.
SPEAKER_00: Like I thought that's the whole point.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, death has been defeated.
SPEAKER_00: Yet it has not completely been abolished.
SPEAKER_00: People still die.
SPEAKER_00: Grief is still real.
SPEAKER_00: Loss still hurts.
SPEAKER_00: But we know now that death is not the end.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul is saying is there is coming a day when death will be finished once and for all.
SPEAKER_00: Not just in principle, but abolished, wiped clean, gone from the face of the planet.
SPEAKER_00: It's what John writes about at the end of Revelation, Revelation 21, 1 through 4.
SPEAKER_00: This is a lot, but I just want to read this and I want you to soak this in with me.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe close your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Just imagine what this would be like.
SPEAKER_00: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: It's new creation.
SPEAKER_00: For the first heaven and first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
SPEAKER_00: And the sea is the symbol for chaos.
SPEAKER_00: There's no more chaos.
SPEAKER_00: Perfect peace.
SPEAKER_00: I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
SPEAKER_00: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.
SPEAKER_00: They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
SPEAKER_00: He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I long for that day.
SPEAKER_00: The day that, as J.R.R.
SPEAKER_00: Tolkien writes about in the Lord of the Rings, every sad thing will be made untrue.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul wants us to know that this isn't just vague optimism.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just some wishful thinking, some abstract hope.
SPEAKER_00: This coming day, Scripture calls it the day of the Lord, is an anchor for our future.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that we hold on to in the middle of life storms, and it changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: And I learned this truth really clearly last fall.
SPEAKER_00: In September, Christina and I found out that she was pregnant, and we had begun sharing the news with some people.
SPEAKER_00: And on the morning of September 24th, I was at Bernie High for See You at the Poll, and I got the phone call that you never want to get.
SPEAKER_00: That we need to go to the doctor.
SPEAKER_00: And so we dropped our kids at the church, we went to the hospital, and uh there we learned that um unfortunately we had miscarried.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember to this day exactly what the room looked like, what it smelled like, sitting there, having absolutely no idea what to say or feel.
SPEAKER_00: But in that moment, in something that I can only describe as a word from the Lord came to me in my heart, and it was this realization and peace that while we wouldn't get to meet our baby in nine months, we would one day.
SPEAKER_00: That she passed through death, but I know what's on the other side because of Jesus, and that is life.
SPEAKER_00: Life to the full, life abundantly.
SPEAKER_00: All that that sweet baby has ever known is life with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And she is more alive than any of us here in this room today.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we we decided it was important for us.
SPEAKER_00: We wanted to name her, and we named her Zoe, which is the Greek word for life.
SPEAKER_00: And I look forward with more hope to the day that I can see her again, and I can pick her a big hug and just get to catch up and just get to see her face.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how the resurrection changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: Because death is not the end.
SPEAKER_00: There is hope.
SPEAKER_00: There is life on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: We can face life storm holding on to that hope.
SPEAKER_00: And I share that with you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I don't seek to gain pity or sympathy.
SPEAKER_00: God is good.
SPEAKER_00: We're fine.
SPEAKER_00: But I know that many of you have walked through something similar.
SPEAKER_00: And it might not have been a miscarriage, it might not have been a kid, but I know that the pain and sting of death has touched every single one of us.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to plead with you this morning that you don't have to let that pain define you.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to live in slavery to the fear of death or the despair that comes with it because Jesus went through death and came out on the other side so that you can be free.
SPEAKER_00: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
SPEAKER_00: And so you don't have to live in constant fear of losing a loved one.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to visit WebMD every time you experience a pain or a twitch.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to replay worst-case scenarios every night when your kids are asleep down the hall.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to measure every joy by how quickly you could lose it.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to wonder if every goodbye will be the last one, and you don't have to hold people at an arm's length because you're afraid of how badly it'll hurt when they're gone.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, you don't have to live your life as if death gets the last word because it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: There is hope on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: If you are in Christ, death no longer defines your reality.
SPEAKER_00: Resurrection does.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a day with no more cancer, no more pain, no more miscarriage, no more war.
SPEAKER_00: That day is coming and we can cling to that day.
SPEAKER_00: And it gives us a hope, it gives us a joy to weather life storms.
SPEAKER_00: There's life on the other side, and Jesus is the door.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to close with one of my favorite illustrations.
SPEAKER_00: All of us this morning are standing in the ocean of life.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a big old wave coming called death.
SPEAKER_00: And when you're standing waist deep in the ocean, and there's a 15-foot wall of water coming at you, you got three choices.
SPEAKER_00: One, you can stand there and resign yourself to fate, despair, feel sorry for yourself, and just wallow in pity and get crushed by that wave sad.
SPEAKER_00: Two, you can strive.
SPEAKER_00: You can try as hard as you can to run from that wave, get far enough ahead of it, hoping maybe I can be it, maybe I can beat it.
SPEAKER_00: All to just be crushed by that wave tired.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can survive the wave.
SPEAKER_00: Not by running from it, not by standing up against it, but by diving into it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about killing yourself, that's not the point.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus Christ entered our sufferings.
SPEAKER_00: He entered the difficulties of this life.
SPEAKER_00: He entered death on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: He sweat, he hungered, he thirsted, he was rejected.
SPEAKER_00: He lived the perfect life that we could not, and he dove into death.
SPEAKER_00: And we watched him appear on the other side and he said, Follow me.
SPEAKER_00: And so many of us try to spend our life running from death, ignoring death.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus dove into it and punched a hole in its mouth, and we can see the light streaming in from the other side.
SPEAKER_00: And through that light is a hand that says, Come and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the invitation I offer you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know Jesus, you are still living as a slave to the fear of death, whether you realize it or not.
SPEAKER_00: And the most loving thing I can do this morning is to tell you that.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a way.
SPEAKER_00: There is someone who went before you, who did what you could not do to give you life everlasting, to turn death into a doorway.
SPEAKER_00: And if you are in Christ, if you're a believer, have been for however long, and those examples I gave about the fear of death, like you you almost even felt your anxiety coming up in you then.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't have to be that way.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't want to make it sound simpler or easier than it is.
SPEAKER_00: It might mean counseling, it might mean uh community, it probably means all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you this that you are already free.
SPEAKER_00: You might not have experienced that freedom yet, but it has been purchased with the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And you can hold on to that as fact, as truth.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, Jesus' hand is reaching out, his hand is reaching through that lathe, and the invitation is come and follow me to the other side.
SPEAKER_00: And so my question this morning is, will you?
SPEAKER_00: We'll have some people here up front who is more than happy to pray with you, to counsel through response.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to make that decision, as Romans 10.
SPEAKER_00: You can be saved this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And walk out of here knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there's life on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe something resonated with you.
SPEAKER_00: By the grace of God, something clicked.
SPEAKER_00: Come, let us pray with you.
SPEAKER_00: Let us counsel you through it.
SPEAKER_00: You're not meant to do this alone.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we're here.
SPEAKER_00: It's community, not just to attend, not just to watch a service, not just to enjoy amazing worship.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all great things.
SPEAKER_00: But the church is to build each other up.
SPEAKER_00: We're a family here.
SPEAKER_00: So let me pray and then let's respond.
SPEAKER_00: Father God, we thank you this morning for your word.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the life that you have bought for us with your blood.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that you entered death on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: You did what we could not do, that it had no claim, that you got up and that you punched a hole in its mouth, and that we can have life to the full, life eternal because of you.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that everybody under the sound of my voice right now would get to experience that and get to experience the peace that goes beyond all transcending or that transcends all understanding this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray for boldness and courage to respond.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you and we praise you.
SPEAKER_00: Praise things in the name of Jesus.