Well, Pastor already said my name.
It's Gloria.
And I'm reading today's scripture from 1 Corinthians 15, 50 through 57, page 991.
I want to see somebody reach for a Bible in their pew and look that up in the Bible in
the back of your pew.
Okay.
And here it goes.
What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption.
Listen, I'm telling you a mystery.
We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of
an eye at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be changed.
For this corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility and this mortal body
must be clothed with immortality.
When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility and this mortal body is clothed
with immortality, then the saying which is written will take place.
Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where death is your victory, where death is your sting.
The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This is God's word.
Amen.
Thank you.
If you have your Bibles handy there or the Bibles in the pew, yeah, the Bibles in the
back of the pew, I would encourage you to turn over to 1 Corinthians 15.
We'll be spending our time there.
Today we begin a six week journey together titled Ashes, the glory of the gospel.
And this journey tracks with what has historically been called the season of Lent.
And some of you may wonder what is that?
What is Lent?
Is that something in my pocket or my belly button?
No.
Lent is actually derived from an old English word which means the spring season.
And it came to represent more than just the spring season, it actually came to represent
in the Christian faith this season of preparation pointing toward Easter.
It also reflects the 40 days of Jesus' fasting and praying and his temptation in the wilderness.
Lent is 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter if you don't count Sundays.
And Sunday is the Lord's Day.
And since Lent focused around reflection and fasting and repentance, they reserved the
Lord's Day for celebration, feasting and participating together in the Lord's table.
The earliest mention of a season of preparation before Easter or leading up to Easter dates
back to the writings of Irenaeus from the late 100s AD.
Go ahead and put that slide up there, Kaia.
Irenaeus wrote about this season that the saints were going through in preparation for
a celebration of Christ's resurrection.
But it really didn't organize itself, the celebration of Lent and the season of preparation,
until the period right around the Council of Nicaea 325 AD.
And like I said before, the season of preparation was marked by a time of reflection and a time
of fasting or abstaining from certain things, a time of repentance.
And some scholars believe that in the beginning it was first applied to new converts, people
who had just accepted the faith and were preparing for baptism on Easter.
They went through this season, this time of training, learning about the gospel truths
and spending time in repentance, reflection and fasting.
But shortly after that it became much more widely adopted as a practice.
The later Roman Catholic Church had specific rules for observation of Lent, including fasting
and abstinence, whereas Protestant churches began to emphasize Lent as more of a time
of personal reflection and devotion without the strict rules that were laid on by the
Catholic Church.
So you may ask, why are we participating or why are we even bringing this up?
Well, my hope is that we are able throughout the year to mark off certain times and seasons
for preparation, that we turn our hearts to certain things and that the Lord might over
the next six weeks stir in our hearts affection for Him as we study.
My hope is that we wouldn't just fly over this season leading us to Easter, but instead
each one of us would spend time reflecting on three things primarily.
The first being the gravity of the fallen human condition.
Also the goodness of the character of our God.
And finally, the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The gravity of the fallen human condition, the goodness of the character of God and the
glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Yes.
So ashes represent the idea, thank you, Gloria.
Ashes represent the idea that we are formed from dust and to dust we will return.
And so it's a way of reflecting on the brevity of life, our mortality.
So as we prepare and we prepare to reflect on these themes and we're gonna touch on a
few different themes and each time we touch on those themes, I want you to remember these
three kind of points here.
The gravity of the fallen human condition will be present in each of the themes.
The goodness of the character of God, look for that as well.
And ultimately we always want to point to the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
As you personally prepare to remember the cross on Good Friday and celebrate the resurrection
on Easter, I pray that your time of preparation would also serve to deepen the meaning of
both those and that it would stir up your affections to love and glory in who God is.
Today we are going to talk about death.
Many preachers have given up the old ideas about the total corruption of mankind.
People are often, or not often told that they are guilty sinners before a holy God.
Such sermons are looked at as relics of the old dark age.
However, there is one old school preacher and he speaks today as boldly as ever.
He is not popular, though the world is his parish and he travels over every part of the
globe and speaks in every language under the sun.
He visits the poor, he calls on the rich and preaches to people of every religion and many
who are of no religion.
He is an eloquent preacher though, often stirring up feelings which no other preacher could
reach and bringing tears into eyes that seldom weep.
He addresses himself to the conscience and to the heart.
His arguments, none are able to refute nor is there any heart that has remained completely
unmoved by the force of his appeals.
Most people hate him and many are afraid in his presence.
He is not polite.
In fact, he often interrupts in public and breaks rudely on the private pleasures of
life.
He frequents stores, the office and the factory.
He appears among legislators and intrudes on fashionable and religious gatherings at
inconvenient times.
This preacher's name is Death.
And today we are going to face death.
The problem of death is one of the greats, if not the great problems that face all of
humankind.
It does not care whether you are rich or poor.
It does not care what race you are or what class you are a part of.
Death reaches all parts of humanity.
Through human history, people have disagreed on what to do with this problem of death.
And two answers have often been offered to deal with it.
The first is hide.
Hide it.
Hide from it.
Pretend it really doesn't exist or at least keep it out of sight, keep it out of mind.
This is particularly true of the modern Western world.
Jews all over the world experience death, death in the streets, death right in front
of you from a young child's, you know, a young age all the way until you are older, death
is all around.
But here we have cleaned it all up.
We have put death out of sight.
I bet it goes even more deep than that.
You see death in the wrinkles on your face?
Plastic surgery.
I have got to fix this.
More fitness, more herbs, more water, more masks, more quarantines.
Older folks, man, I don't want to see that.
I don't want to see as they march toward death, let's hide them away in nursing homes so we
don't have to deal with the reality and the pain of death.
That's one approach.
The other approach we might take is to fully and completely embrace it.
Death a welcomed friend.
Mark Twain once said that I do not fear death, no.
I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered
the slightest inconvenience from it.
Death?
Oh, well that's just a return back to the infinite rest of my preborn state.
Even Christians who know some biblical truth can fall into this thinking that death is
simply a doorway.
Death is just a means to an end.
And we can civilize it.
We can spruce it up.
We can make it look pretty.
But the Bible actually says something different about death.
On the very first pages of scriptures in Genesis chapter two we see that humankind is eating
of this life giving, life sustaining fruit in the garden.
And they have free access to the tree of life in communion with God with one simple command
which is to obey.
Obey their creator who is good and who wants good for them.
Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good or evil or else you will die.
So what do they do?
They disobey.
They disobey and they rebel and they suffer the penalty which is banishment from the garden,
no more access to the tree of life.
Their physical bodies are now destined to return to the dust from which they were formed.
From dust you are and to dust you will return.
That is the ashes.
In verse 26 of first Corinthians chapter 15, just before the scripture that Gloria read
for us, the apostle Paul is talking about the work of Christ and he calls death the
last enemy.
Death is not a welcome friend.
Death is not some hidden inevitability.
Death is an enemy.
Death is both the consequence of rebellion against the life giving goodness of our God
and it is also the fear of death which produces in us all kinds of sin.
There's a scripture that says eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
Someone who is fatalistic saying hey, it's all gonna end anyways.
What's it worth?
Let's eat, let's drink, let's be merry and people can get in a lot of trouble when they're
merry making and drinking, right?
Let's eat, let's drink, let's be merry.
Tomorrow we die and it's that kind of fatalism that is like the parable of the rich fool
that was told in Luke 16 and he sees his riches that he's amassed, that he's accumulated as
some sort of escape from the reality of death.
I can escape the reality of death, the fear of death by amassing this wealth and numbing
myself to it, by giving myself all the pleasures that I can take so that day after day I'm
stimulated with all of these pleasures and I don't have to think about the reality of
death and the parable in Luke 16 says you fool, that night his life was demanded of
him.
The rich man numbs himself with his wealth, the poor man steals to eat to live to escape
death.
It is the fear of death and what awaits as a result of it that leads brother to turn
on brother, that leads to all kinds of envy and strife, to stealing and murder.
The human condition is tortured and terrorized by the fear of death.
In our scripture this morning in verse 15 or verse 50 we read that flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God nor can corruption inherit the incorruptible.
Flesh and blood is just another way of saying the parts of us that are subject to decay.
Our frame is not strong enough to endure on its own.
Our bodies are flesh and blood and our bodies are corruptible or another word that you could
put there is perishable, some of your translations say that.
Well what does it mean?
Think about a banana peel, a banana peel that someone threw out the window.
Banana peel lands on the side of the road, what happens to that banana peel?
Does it live on forever?
Having a good old life on the side?
You know it, the water slowly is leached out of it, it starts to shrink up pretty soon,
it's like that big and it's as hard as a stick and then the next time you look there it's
gone, dust.
It shrivels up, it hardens and returns to dust.
Why?
Because it has no life in and of itself.
It has no life in and of itself.
It cannot sustain itself forever.
We cannot sustain ourselves.
We are by nature perishable.
This verse says, how can something that is subject to decay and death inherit and benefit
from something that is incorruptible and eternal and the answer is it can't.
The kingdom of God, the eternal rule and reign of God is incorruptible and not subject to
decay.
In 1 Timothy chapter six verse 16 it says that God alone is immortal.
God alone is immortal.
Living an unapproachable life, that he is self powered.
He is not in need of anything, there is no resource that he needs to power himself or
a person to sustain him but instead he is the source of all sustaining life.
Jesus promised that the inheritance of the kingdom of God would go to his disciples,
to those who were poor in spirit, who walked with him in obedience and trust and so something
has to happen for them to inherit this kingdom which is incorruptible and they as human are
corruptible.
When humankind turned its back on God, we slipped steadily down that slope of corruption
and decay and we fell right into the grips of death.
The only one powerful enough, the only one not subject to death's grip is God.
And so if humanity is to be rescued, it will have to be by the gracious power of the very
one that humanity turned their back on.
The only one with the power to save is the one that humanity rejected.
The only hope for this condition is him.
But why would he?
Why would he?
You and I aren't that good.
Rejected, betrayed, stabbed in the back only to go and find a way to save them.
Not frequently at least.
Not repeatedly for sure.
Well the apostle John, when he was writing about this, he wrote that a defining attribute
of God is love.
A defining attribute of our God is love.
God is love and that this God of love so loved the world that he acted to save it.
He so loved the world that he acted to save it that he desires that all would be saved
from this curse of sin and death.
He desires that all would be saved and he desires that he might have the opportunity,
that he might be able to show mercy and forgiveness so that none would perish but all would have
eternal life.
This is in the very character of who God is.
Humanity betrayed, turned their back and rebelled against God.
If it had been any of the gods of the Greeks or any of the gods of the Romans, do you know
what would have happened to humanity?
Done.
Gone.
Toys in the hands of God.
Furious gods.
No, but it happened to a God whose essence, his character, his attribute, defining attribute
that John lays out is love.
He wants to show mercy.
He desires to show mercy.
He wants that none would perish.
He loved the world so he acted to save it, to rescue it.
He's also though a God who is just and holy and righteous and therefore if he was going
to do anything, the way in which that he rescues humanity could in no way minimize.
It could in no way minimize or ignore the rebellion that sin had caused.
And so he is a God of love.
He is a God of mercy.
He is a God of forgiveness.
He's a God of justice.
He's a God of righteousness.
He's a holy God.
Every sin must be paid for.
Every act of rebellion must be punished.
It is only right and fitting for a holy, just, righteous God.
And that's difficult for us because you and I, we tend to move between attitudes and attributes.
We're like loving and then you cross me or you do something bad and I just flip and I'll
apply a different one to you now.
I don't like you.
You messed with the wrong guy.
I went from love and I want to supply for you and care for you to vengeance.
I want to undercut you.
I want to cut you off in the car.
I want to pull you out of your, whatever it is, we switch our attributes, our characteristics.
It's difficult for us to understand a God who is constantly all that he is.
Constantly and consistently all he is without favoring one attribute over the other in perfect
unity and harmony all the time.
When he acts out of his justice, he is also acting out of his mercy, out of his love,
out of his holiness.
He cannot act contrary to who he is.
And so he is both God, the God of love, God of mercy, the God of forgiveness and the God
of justice, the God of holiness.
So how is this going to happen?
How is God going to accomplish the rescue mission that he so wants to have for humanity?
Well, how could God who is immortal, incorruptible and imperishable, how could he retrieve us
from death?
We are in the clutches, the grip of death.
How could that God who has never exposed himself to corruption and cannot fade away for he
is eternal, a source of life within himself, how can he rescue us from the clutches of
the perishable, the corruptible death?
Paul says in verse 51 of our scripture, I love this part, he says, listen, I'm telling
you a mystery.
And that listen is like, lean in, come here.
You're about to hear something revealed for the first time.
I'm gonna reveal something.
And what does he reveal?
He says, we will not all fall asleep, but we all will be changed.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound
and the dead will rise incorruptible and we will all be changed.
Here Paul is saying, again, lean in.
I want to tell you this mystery that God is revealing to you.
When God's defeat of death is once for all put on display for everyone to see, it'll
happen like this.
You ready?
It'll happen like this.
We will not all fall asleep.
What does that mean?
Fall asleep is this kind of euphemism that's used in the New Testament and it's used of
believers specifically.
Other people die, we fall asleep.
Why?
Because we plan on being woken up.
We're coming back.
Not all of us though will fall asleep.
The scripture tells us that some will be alive when that trumpet sounds, when Christ returns.
Not all will be dead.
It's not like humanity comes to the end and everyone dies and there's no one on earth
and then Jesus comes back.
Some are alive.
Some have not fallen asleep yet.
Others have.
But either way, whether you are alive or asleep, you'll be changed.
You'll be changed.
And is this change a process?
Is it an evolutionary process over tens of billions of years that we'll know?
It says in a moment.
It's this Greek word at most.
We get the word Adam from it.
It's something that is undividable.
That's the smallest possible unit.
The smallest possible unit.
In other words, in a moment.
In a moment.
And then he adds onto that, he embellishes on it.
He says in the twinkling of an eye.
And the word twinkling actually means casting or throwing.
So really it's like this.
See this speaker over here?
You guys see that speaker?
When I say go, look at that speaker over there.
Ready?
Set, go.
That fast.
That actually is probably too long, honestly.
Because you had to move your head too.
So I'm gonna walk over here by the speaker.
Look up at the speaker and then look at me.
Ready?
Set, go.
That fast.
And the twinkling of an eye and the throwing of your eye, the casting of your gaze changed.
I remember as a kid thinking about this moment.
When Jesus is coming back and I thought, well, I'm gonna see it and I'm gonna be like, whoa.
And then I'll be like, what?
I gotta run home and tell someone and then I gotta confess really quick for the last
few sins that I've done and pray that God takes me up there.
You're not gonna have any time.
Bam, changed.
Changed.
Twinkling of an eye, a moment, an atmos.
You will be changed.
Some will be alive, some will be dead, but all will be changed.
Then at the sounding of a trumpet.
The trumpet was actually, there was the last trumpet.
The last trumpet was something well known to the Roman community.
It was the trumpet that sounded when the victor won the games.
The last trumpet.
When the victory was won, the trumpet sounded and it signaled triumph.
It signaled overcoming.
The trumpet marked the victor.
And Paul says that the final event of time in history, the final event will be a trumpet
and a change.
A trumpet and a change.
And the new life in the kingdom of God, for those of us who follow after Christ and yearn
to be in his presence and long to be restored to him, the new life in the kingdom of God
under his reign and rule will require new clothes.
It will require new clothes, new equipment and God will have to provide them for us and
that's exactly what he's saying.
I got new threads for you guys.
You're gonna put them on, you're gonna be in.
What we're talking about here is the glorified resurrected body that God has in store for
all who believe.
For those who are dead, I don't know how it's gonna work.
Is he gonna gather up all of the molecules and atoms that represent the dust of those
people and bring them together and reform them and bring new life and a glorified body
into it?
I don't know how it's gonna work.
Some of us will still be alive.
I don't know if it's coming next.
Paul thought maybe it was happening in his time, but either way it's gonna happen, the
dead, a new body, those who are alive walking around with their current body, a change,
a new body.
It'll be theirs.
Resurrection, glorification is the process of equipping our bodies for the kingdom of
God.
Not everyone likes their body here.
In fact, lots of people are tortured by that.
The fading beauty or the beauty that never was or the life that we've had to live in
these bodies.
God will give us a glorified body.
It's coming and it's for all who believe.
And notice something else that it doesn't say that he will destroy everything and remake
it.
He says it'll change, change.
We will be clothed in an incorruptible nature.
And when this happens, we will see, it says we will see the fulfillment of what was promised
before.
And here's the promise, okay?
We're coming up to the end here.
The promise begins in verse 54.
The promise comes after verse 54.
Here we go.
In this corruptible body, it's clothed with incorruptibility.
And this mortal body is clothed with immortality.
Then the saying that was written in Isaiah and Hosea, many hundreds of years before the
events of Jesus Christ, the saying that was said back then will be fulfilled.
And here it is.
Death has been swallowed up in victory.
And then the mocking happens because awesome, that's what they used to do when you defeated
someone is you mocked the person you defeated.
Death, where's your sting?
Oh, death, where's your victory?
Ha, ha.
You don't get the final word.
You thought you were the biggest thing in all the world, in all the universe.
You thought you could swallow up anyone and everyone.
What happened?
Death, ha.
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
How did he do it?
How did God, who is imperishable, go into the heart of death and save humanity from
its grips?
Well, God clothed himself in the corruptible so that we might receive the incorruptible.
He clothed himself in the incarnation.
He became flesh in the person of Jesus, a uniting of his divine nature, and our flesh
nature took place.
And out of that, we have Christ.
He took on our nature.
He became like us, the God we rejected, the God that we rebelled against, we turned on
back on, but the only one in all the cosmos who could save us, he took on our nature.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, Jesus.
And in doing so, he lived in perfect obedience to God.
We rebelled.
We had one, one law.
Don't eat the fruit from that tree.
Just trust me.
We couldn't do it.
Fruit looked really good.
Some weird snake thing said, eat it.
We're like, cool, let's eat it.
Jesus comes along and perfectly obeys the Father, perfectly obeys the Father, and he
does not give in to temptation and sin.
And this one of Word, who became flesh, Jesus, he died on the cross in the God man who was
guilty of no sin ever, willingly took our punishment for our sin.
He paid the wages.
This is how Romans puts it.
The wages of sin is death.
If you sin, like if I go to work or you go to work and you work, you get paid.
If you sin, you get paid.
Death.
The wages of sin is death.
But the one who sinned, not at all, willingly bore the penalty that all of us were on the
hook to pay death.
And it says that he surrendered his life even unto death.
He said, take me death.
Try to swallow me.
But how could death completely swallow up the Son of God?
How could he do that?
It certainly had the power to swallow up you and I, but the eternally existing Son of God,
who is the source of all life, who lives in unapproachable light, how do you swallow him?
And in that, death met its match.
Death never had a chance.
Death deserves mocking because Jesus was victorious over death.
Second Timothy tells us, Second Timothy 1, 10, says that Jesus abolished death.
Death was the penalty for a law that was broken.
Jesus says, no, not anymore, I'll take it.
I took all the penalty on myself.
No longer is death required for the breaking of the law.
The law, the one law, the big law from the Old Testament was the one who sins must die.
And Jesus said, I paid for that one, for all of them.
It's paid.
So that law abolished.
Not necessary anymore.
Death's already paid.
Jesus satisfied the required penalty for our disobedience by paying the price for our debt
and he satisfied God's justice.
God was still just in being able to do this.
His character could still be put on display and gloried in by all of creation because
he was both merciful and loving and just.
The penalty was still paid for and he could save humanity.
What kind of God is this?
If you haven't read large and wide on the other kinds of gods that are out there, do
it.
And you'll go, what kind of God is this?
Who would do such a thing for his creation?
The resurrection, the ultimate resurrection is our hope.
Why?
Because Jesus first went there.
Yes, he went into death and he rescued us, but he came up from the grave, resurrected
as the first fruits for all of us so we could see and we could have a hope in what would
come one day for us.
As Jesus was glorified and walked among his disciples and interacted, so we will have
that body.
He's the first fruits.
And he shows us that the power of death to completely swallow us is broken.
Resurrection is our hope.
I'm gonna read a scripture.
Where did I put my Bible?
All right, here we go.
First Corinthians.
Sorry, I'm getting excited this morning.
This is good stuff, man.
Earlier in 1 Corinthians 15, I'm gonna begin in verse 12.
I'm gonna read a big chunk of scripture here.
It's not gonna be on the board, just glory in it.
Just rest in it.
Just marvel in it.
Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is
no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain.
And so is your faith.
Your faith's worthless if Christ didn't raise.
Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God because we've testified wrongly
about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise up if in fact the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless.
You are still in your sins.
Those then who have fallen asleep in Christ will also perish, those who've gone before.
And if we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, then we are to be pitied above
all others.
But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead and the firstfruits of those who
have fallen asleep.
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man.
For just as in Adam all died, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
Amen.
And in the place of the reign of fear, sin, and death, Jesus established the reign of
grace.
No longer under the reign of terror that is death, we are now under the reign of grace.
Romans five says, because of one man's trespasses, death reigns.
Because of one man's trespasses, death reigns through that one man.
How much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness
reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ?
This morning, we remember the gravity of the fallen human condition.
Death is no welcomed friend.
Death is our great enemy.
It's a neighborhood bully.
And we must remember that our life in this body is temporary.
It is not suited for the kingdom of God.
And that changes a lot of the way we live and how we view this body.
There's a story that Eugene Peterson tells in one of his books.
He went to visit a monastery.
And while visiting the monastery and interacting with the monks, it was meal time.
And so they moved from one area of the compound to the dining hall.
And it was an outdoor path.
And as they walked on the path, this outdoor path to the dining hall, they passed by a
small graveyard.
A graveyard for those who were a part of the monastery or ministered to by the monastery,
a very small one.
And he noticed right near the path, one grave had freshly been dug.
And it was empty.
Nothing was in it yet, but the pile of dirt was next to it.
And it was ready.
And he turned to one of the monks that he was walking with.
And he said, I'm so sorry, like who of your people have died recently?
You guys must be in mourning or someone you know must have died.
And the monk casually looked at him and said, no one.
And then in silence, they kept walking to the dining hall.
And he thought that was odd and peculiar.
And until it dawned on him that this grave had been dug.
As a daily reminder, three times a day, they had to walk from where they were to the dining
hall.
And they walked by an open, empty grave to remind them that they could be next.
And their body will one day go into the ground from dust we were created to dust we will
return.
But I feel like that statement too around ashes and around Ash Wednesday, we talked
about it a little bit earlier where it says, you are dust.
And to dust you will return.
I just I still feel like it's missing something.
I just want to add on there until the resurrection.
From dust you are until the resurrection.
It's coming.
Death where is your sting?
We've remembered the fallen human condition.
We also remember that God in his love, mercy and justice is good.
And he would not allow humanity to slip away into the grips of death.
And so he planned and executed the greatest rescue mission for you and I.
And I think the final thing we did this morning is we gloried in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Death where is your sting?
Oh, death.
Oh, big tough death.
You don't get the last word.
That's right.
You were disarmed.
That's right.
You're powerless.
The neighborhood bully has no more strength.
And therefore we can walk with no fear.
For we are promised a resurrected glorified life in the kingdom of God.