Andrew Lim

24 August 2008  -  1 Corinthians 15:12 – 22; 35-58 

Have you never heard what we’re made of?

A famous British chemist / by the name of Dr. Charles Henry Maye
 tried to determine exactly what a human person is made of
  and what’s his chemical worth / he came up with uis:

 The average human body has
 enough fat to make 7 bars of soap / enough iron to make a 3 inch nail
 enough sugar to sweeten a cup of coffee
 enough carbon to make 900 pencils / potassium to fire a toy cannon
 enough phosphorus to yield 2,200 match heads
 enough magnesium to take a photograph
 enough sulphur to kill all the fleas on an average dog
 and finally / enough water to fill a ten-gallon tank

 Now / how very humbling is that
 You can put it all into a brown paper bag & carry home on your bicycle

 But what’s even more humbling / is the fact
  that at that time of the research / all those various materials
   was valued in the region of around 25 Swiss Francs
  Going by this weeks exchange rate / that amounts to NZ$31.99

  Now / that really hurts / Why would it hurt?
  Because I looked it up / and found that that’s cheaper
   than a Group Meat at KFC – called Big Bucket
   comes with 20 pieces of chicken / a Coke / fries / and coleslaw
    - that $35.90

But the amazing thing is that though we’ve been made
 out of some rather simple elements
  the human body is a wonder efficient machine
 The Scripture says / We are fearfully and wonderfully made
 
 Indeed / our marvellous body is a miracle indeed
  and in thousands of ways / our body contributes
   to our being truly fully human

  We live in our bodies / through our bodies / by our bodies
   Your marvellous body is a miracle indeed
   The Scripture says / We are fearfully and wonderfully made

But / as marvellous a piece of art as it is
 our bodies will not last forever / it is going to disintegrate
 
 Few of you know that I was a sprinter / and a javelin thrower
  And I used to run for the school 4 X 100m relay

 Now I can't walk up three flights of stairs
  without stopping to catch my breath
 My hair is not only getting whiter
  on some days as I look at the mirror / they’re no were to be found
 My chin sagging / and my belly just won't stay tucked in

 They say old age is a metallic age
  silver in your hair / gold in your teeth and lead in you bottom
 The only people who'll never grow old / who're evergreen
  are Micky Mouse Speedy Gonzales / Road Runner Donald Duck
 
Marvelous as they are / bodies die
 they wear out / they age / they sag and wrinkle
  the joints get creaky / the arteries harden
  gravity pulls everything downward / the heart slows down
  the eyes grow dim / teeth fall out / back becomes stooped
  the arms grow weary / bones break / muscles weaken
   they bulge in parts we don’t to be seen with a bulge

 You’re prescribed bifocals / soon that’s even not good enough
  You begin to check out large-print books you read large-print Bibles

 Someone says / you know you're getting old when:
   You sit in a rocking chair / and can't get it rocking
  Your knees buckle / and your belt won’t
  Your back goes out / more often than you do
  You sink your teeth into a steak / and they stay there
  You’re asleep / but others worry that you’re dead

 The fact is our body won’t last forever
 You can follow Atkins Diet / eat all the low-carb ice cream you want
  all the diet coke / your body will still fall apart in the end

And this deterioration will push on relentlessly
 until one day the Bible says / your body will return to the dust
  and your spirit to the God who made you

 Death remains the enemy we must face

And it is at this point / that we come face to face
 with the perennial question philosophers / theologians / grieving families
  have asked very the centuries

 Job asked it thousands of years ago:
  “If a man dies / shall he live again?” Job 4:14

And the most astonishing message proclaimed by Christians / is this
 that Jesus of Nazareth resurrected from the dead
 that this resurrection is not to be seen as an isolated event
  but carries with it the promise / that we too / will one day
   have our bodies resurrected from the grave
 
 The teaching of the resurrection is foundational to Christianity
 Gerald O'Collins once said / “Christianity without the resurrection
  is not simply Christianity without its final chapter
   It is not Christianity at all”

 Death is a beginning not an end / As John Owen / so well puts it
  we see the death of Christ we see the death of death
   The One Who gave us life will give us life again
   Our Creator is also our Re-creator

  No / Death does not have the last word
   Because Jesus Himself rose again from the dead
    death has been transformed - from an ending to a beginning
  Jesus said: “I am the resurrection and the life
   He who believes in me / though he die / Yet shall he live”

So our bodies will be raised / But what kind of body will it be

One thing needs to be clear
 we will not be raised the way Lazarus was raised / only to die again
  We will be resurrected with a new “spiritual body”
 
  This does not mean the body will not be physical
  It is just like when we say someone is a “spiritual” person
   we don’t men he’s ceased to be in the flesh
    A person can be spiritual / and still remain in the flesh

 So when Paul says we will have a new spiritual body
  he’s not saying we will not have a physical body

 He is instead saying that our bodies / sinful and subject to decay
  cannot inherit the kingdom of God
   unless they are first changed / transformed into spiritual bodies

  This is why in the very next phrase / he says
   - “that which is corrupt cannot inherit incorruption”

Now as to what that future resurrected body will be like / Paul is quite clear

One / “It is sown a perishable body / it is raised an imperishable body”
 1 Corinthians 15:42

 You will be imperishable! / incapable of decay!
  “This perishable body must put on imperishability
   and this mortal body must put on immortality” / 1 Cor 15:53

 All the quest for the fountain of eternal youth will come to an end
  You will put dentists / doctors / morticians out of business
   We will be raised immortal

Two / “It is sown in weakness / it is raised in power” / 1 Cor 15:43
 Jesus' resurrected body had the power to pass through locked doors
  You are far too immature to handle such powers now
   but the day will come / when God will endow your body
    with a power you never dreamed possible

Three / “It is sown in dishonor / it is raised in glory” / 1 Cor 15:43a
 Will we be raised with a body showing the age at which we died?
 Will those who died in infancy / be infants forever?
 Will those who died with massive physical defects
  be the same that way?

  Well / come next Sunday / if you want an answer to all that
   when we finally reach the last line of the Creed
    where it says “I believe in life everlasting”

 But for now / I want to affirm that the body you lowered into the grave
  may be dishonorable
   but when it is raised / it will be a glorious body
   Surrounding our resurrected bodies
    there will always be this bright exulting shining radiance
  And that will be so fitting in line with our position of exaltation
   as we rule over all creation that God has given us

Four / “It is sown a physical body / it is raised a spiritual body” 1 Cor 15:44
   We will have a body designed to inhabit not time / but eternity
    one fully oriented to and filled with the Holy Spirit
  
But one thing is clear
 You will not be resurrected in ANOTHER body
 You will be resurrected / in this very same body you now inhabit

 Listen to the language
  “It” is sown a perishable body / “It” is raised an imperishable body”
   - they refer to the one same entity
   - he is speaking of a continuity
    between our present body and our resurrected body

 The phrase “resurrection of the dead”
  means that that which is dead / namely, our body / is made alive
   If the same body that died is not the body that was raised
    - it would not be right for Paul to call it
     the “resurrection of the dead”
    - it would not be a resurrection at all

 John Piper asks the question
  “If God intended to give us a brand new body
   one that has no continuity with the body we have now
    why would Paul say “the dead will be raised”?
    If God had intended to start us all over with a new body
   why would he not say / “the dead will not be raised”
    so God could start from scratch”?

   The fact remains that He did not say that
   Instead He tells us / that it is “the dead” that will be raised

So / our new spiritual body will arise out of our old body
 Its going to be that same body that’s been laid in the grave
  that will one day be transformed into new spiritual body

 Jesus Himself was raised in the same body He had / before He died
  His resurrected body retained scars from the crucifixion
   And we too / will also be raised with the same body

But just how will our decomposed bodies come together to form the new?
 Some people died at sea / and were buried at sea
 - how is it ever possible for all the disintegrated atoms and molecules
  that once composed the person
   to be gathered together again in one person?
 Surely their bodies have decayed and decomposed to such an extent
  that the original composition seems entirely gone

 What about those who died of bomb blasts
 And the many people were incinerated on 9/11
  when the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed 
   - their bodies simply vaporized

 How will God resurrect the bodies of believers who died that day?

 Well / let me disappointed you / by saying I don’t have the answer
 But surely the God who formed you from the dust
  the God who holds every molecule of the universe in his hand
   can retrieve the right ones when the time comes

 Wayne Grudem says surely God can keep track
  of the elements from each body to form a ‘seed’
   from which to form a new body
   - Gen. 50:25; Job 19:26; Ezek. 37:1-14; Heb. 11:22

So much for the assurance of our own resurrection

Now / For the rest of our time / I want to emphasis the fact
 that when we are finally resurrected / it will be a resurrection of the body

 Notice how very solid and concrete / the teaching is
  It does not talk about “the resurrection of the dead”
   but “the resurrection of the body”

God does not frown on the body
 Bodies make possible for us to relate to one another
 In the resurrection / we will still have bodies
  - we will not be bodiless phantoms / ephemeral and ethereal
  - we will have real tangible bodies

Jesus himself was resurrected bodily
 In His resurrected body / He even prepared breakfast
  he could eat / drink / he could be touched
 In fact He ate and drank with them over a period of 40 days
  He said / “See my hands and my feet / that it is I myself
   handle me and see / for a spirit has not flesh and bones
    as you see that I have” / Lk 24:39

 Just as the resurrected body of Jesus is in every sense a real body
  we too will be resurrect bodily

John Updike has a poem called Seven Stanzas at Easter
 “Make no mistake / if He rose at all / It was His body
   In a most detailed and graphic way
  he talks about the reversal of the dissolution of our bodily cells
   the re-knitting together of the molecules
   the re-kindling of amino acids
      he talks about the hinged joints of the thumb and toes
  he talks about “valved heart”
   Its altogether theologically spot-on and that coming from a poet
    - just a most fascinating poem to read!

When Jesus said / “Destroy this temple / and I will raise it up in three days”
 he really wasn’t talking about the physical temple that stood there
 And all the other-worldly Christians / on hearing this
  have been quick to point out “There I told you
   physical church buildings are of no value”
 But they cannot see the point
  that though he wasn’t talking abut the physical temple
   he was talking about his physical body
    bones / muscle tissues / tendons / sinews and all
    tibia / fibula / radius / ulna / ileum / femur / clavicle
    sternum / scapula / biceps / triceps and all!!

C.S. Lewis puts it in six simple words: “God loves matter / He created it”

 Have you ever thought that of all the analogies God could have used
  to express an entrance into new life
   He chose to use something so common / so materialistic as water
   and he gets the entire body to participate
    in an act of immersion in water
   It is no wonder / that Philip Larkin / the poet
    describes baptism as a “joyous / devout drenching” 

 No wonder Archbishop William Temple
  describes Christianity / as “the most materialistic religion”
  - real baby skin / real baby burps / real baby smell
   in the manger at Bethlehem
  - real flesh that was torn apart by the nails on the cross
  - real slab of granite that was rolled away – not a papier mache one
  - real oil / real water / real bread / real wine
 Jesus spat real saliva / slime smell and all / into his real huge hands
  rubbed it over the blind man’s real sore eyes
   so that his defected eyes may open up again
    for the light rays to hit his retina
  those were real legs He healed / real leprosy scabs He touched

  You may have many religions that look down upon matter
   - not Christianity
    For Christianity there’s nothing demeaning about matter

Unlike the ancient Greeks / and some modern-day Hindus
 the Bible has a high view of the physical body

 The Greeks had a very low view of the human body
 The Greeks believed that the body is merely the “container” for the soul
  - the body is inherently evil / the prison-house of the soul
   and not until the soul is released from its body
    will it truly be redeemed
  - so the sooner we discard of the body when we die
   the better for the soul to be set free

 To the Greeks / only the soul is indestructible and eternal
  - the soul will continue to live on without the body
   because it has always lived
  - it existed before a person’s physical birth
   and it will go existing after the body decays
  - it is incapable of annihilation
  - it may return to earth in another receptacle
   but it will not / indeed it cannot die

But quite contrary to the view of the Greeks
 - the Bible does not teach the immortality of the soul
  The soul is created at conception / it has no existence of its own
  
 Apart from the creative and sustaining power of God
  it has no power of existence
 It may survive the death of the body in an intermediate form of existence
  but it depends on God who sustains it

 So while the Greeks see redemption as redemption from the body
  - the Christian sees redemption as redemption of the body

On this point / over the many years / I have personally been much saddened
 by how the Church as a whole / worldwide
  has been badly infected by this virus
   of Greek thinking about the body / and about matter as a whole

 Of church the Church is quite unaware of it
  but they have badly been infected by the virus of Greek thinking
 How else can you account for the way the average church
  demeans the value of the physical side of life and things
   and in a lop-sided way / concentrated narrowly on the spiritual

 What does the average church think about the place
  of fine dining / fine cuisine / literature / movie-making
   the arts – both performing arts and visual arts
    about design / painting / crafts / so on

  I’ll tell you what the average church thinks about these things
   - they are evil / and we will not touch them with a ten foot pole

Two nights ago / I spoke at the Massey Christian group
 and I told of an incident at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
  where I once studied
 Dr Bruce Lockerbie the then dean of Conservatory of Music at Wheaton
  spoke at the morning chapel / to all the seminary students

He started off saying this / He said: 
 “I'm going to read out some names / See if you can spot a Christian
   It might be interesting to find a X’n / much less the evangelicals”

He started with the world of Photography:
 He mentioned names like / Irving Penn / Alfred Stieglitz / Ansel Adams
 Diane Arbus / Walker Evans / Robert Frank / Lee Friedlander

  And Dr Lockerbie asked / “Can you spot a Christian there?
  It drew a blank
 
Then he move to the world of Sculpture:
 Nevelson / Garbo / Moore / Calder / Brancusi / Hanson
 Spot a Christian? / Again a pin-drop silence

What about Painting he asked:
 Pablo Piccaso / Edward Munc (Moo-unk) / Salvador Dali
 Andrew Jamie Wyeth / Floyd Leitchenstein / Georgia O'Keefe
 Chuck Close / George Renol (some Christian leanings - the one
 who does stain-glass paintings) / Philip Pearlsteine / Willem de Koning
 Jackson Pollock / Mark Roscoe /  Barnett Newman / Andy Worhol

    Any luck so far? Dr. Lockerbie asked / Zilch!

Maybe we can find a Christian in the Theatre / he continued:
 Tom Stopper / Tennessee Williams / Harold Pinter / Neil Simon
 Eugene Ionesko / Bertold Bretch / Arthur Miller / Archibald
 MacLeish / Edward Albee / Thornton Wilder

  Not one Christian was spotted there!

Lastly / he asked / “What about Film Directors?”
 Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, Taxi Driver, Hardcore – (some
  redemption theme but still far off)
 Woody Allen (Radio Days) / Cecil de Mille (Ten Commandments)
 Francis Coppola (The Godfather)   /   George Lukas (Star Wars)
Michael Cimino (The Deerhunter)  /  Arthur Penn (Bonny & Clyde)  
Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho)   /   John Houston (Maltese Falcon)  
Arthur Hailer (Love Story)   /   William Wyler (Ben Hur)
Stanley Kubrick (2001)   /  William Friedkin (Exorcist)
Bob Fosse (Cabaret) / Stephen Spielberg (Close Encounters of 3rd Kind)
Robert Wise (West Side Story)  / Robert Altman (M.A.S.H.)

 Again Dr Lockerbie asked: “Did you spot an evangelical?
 A son of Trinity / Westminster / Wheaton / Moody /Calvin /Westmont?”

That was a sad day at Trinity!
 Most heads were bowed / before a silent / but eloquent rebuke

 It is ironic isn’t it
 that those best equipped to give answers / have no answers to give
  while those who’ve got the answers
  have frightfully isolated themselves behind a barricade of ignorance

 There is a fortress that’s been occupied by the enemies
  and from the safety of that fortress / they taunt us
   by the way they so cleverly cut down our children / one by one

 I am speaking of the fortress of the media through the arts
 We need to scale that fortress / and take it over 

 The arts is a formidable weapon and in the hands of the right people
  and we’ve surrendered them / we’ve lost out by default

 We think it is worldly to be involved in those areas
 We think that’s “not spiritual” / we’ve got to “spiritual”
  You see the false dualism there
   and that’s the Greek virus that’s infected us
  Is it any wonder why until today / you’ll still get Christians
   who will have nothing to do with the arts / literature
    with movies / with the media in general

  This is a mistake / because its never the media itself that’s evil
   but the wrong use of the media / that’s evil

 Ever wonder / why in our evangelistic efforts
  we often find it so hard to relate to the people in the world

  We have insulated and isolated ourselves
   and as a result we have become / out of touch / irrelevant
    and God is not glorified or honoured

  And the price of our isolationism / turns out to be our irrelevance
 
It saddens me to see so many Christians adopting an “other-worldly” posture
 they wouldn’t be found enjoying a feast / watching a good movie
  
 Several years ago / a young girl in church told us
  that her mother wouldn’t let her do embroidery
  For Jesus is coming soon / souls are perishing out there
   and you mustn’t be wasting your time doing embroidery

But you read the writing of souls like John Calvin / Richard Neibuhr
Francis Schaeffer / Chad Walsh / Frank Gaebelein / Abraham Kuyper 
Bruce Lockerbie / Hans Rookmaaker Leland Ryken / Dorothy Sayers
C.S.Lewis / Madeleine L’Engle / Gene Veith / Nicholas Wolterstorff
 and you surfaced from their books / refreshingly enliven
   when you see the sheer breath of their vision
 
 Gerald Manley Hopkins / in one of his best known nature poems
  Pied Beauty has a beautiful line / that says
   “Glory be to God for dappled things”

If we cannot take pleasures in God’s good gifts / then
 every nun who irons her habit / would be wasting her time
 everyone who did some fine carving on a piece of macrocarpa
  or paints a porcelain plate / turns out a clay pot / composes a poem
   writes a symphony / would be wasting her time

 And where the physical building of a temple for God is concerned
  Did God say / any hastily erected-hut or shelter will do?
  No / Instead He gave detailed plans of how the Temple is to be built
   with the finest of gems-stones / finest of timber / minerals
    and the most costly of furnishings

 For far too many centuries now / we’ve allowed the iconoclasts
  to almost deliberately make the church as ugly as they possibly can
   - bringing no glory to God

 When the woman took out a box of the most expensive perfume
  opened it and started out anointing the feet of Our Lord Jesus
   all the disciples were being “other-worldly”
    “Let sell it and give the proceeds to the poor” / they cried
        Jesus said / “The poor you will always have with you”

John Warwick Montgomery / a Lutheran thinker and apologist
 tells us that so many Christians have allowed
  their negative attitude toward "the world"
   to cut themselves off from God’s creative gifts
    of arts / crafts / literature / and food

 Take the matter of food for example
 So many Christians stay away from enjoying a fine meal

 But Montgomery rightly says we must not confuse
  the deadly sin of gluttony with fine gastronomy

 He says we need to note that throughout Scripture
  eating and drinking are regularly associated with events
   of the highest theological and spiritual importance

  The Bible opens with people eating / and closes with people eating
  It opens / with a description of people
   choosing to eat not what God had provided
    but what He had forbidden
  And it closes with the great Marriage Supper of the Lamb
   waiting for us to enjoy
    a kind of a deliberate eschatological restoration of Eden
    and ushering in the new Heaven and new earth / Rev. 19:9

 And of all the examples that God could have given
  to illustrate the idea of grace
   He introduced the Passover meal and the Lord’s Supper
  Can you imagine that
   To symbolize His grace / He served people bread and wine

 And how did the early church celebrated their coming together
  with her agapes feast or love feasts / by feasting and drinking

 And Jesus did not come back in the form of a phantom
 He came back with a physical body
  and He actually had fish for breakfast with His disciples
   in His resurrected body

 Isn’t this such great news for us food-lovers
 The resurrected body of Jesus ate fish

  And eat we will / We’ll sit down at table
   and enjoy the marriage supper of the Lamb
  
 And did you not know that it comes with a bonus
  We won’t have to worry
   about fat / cholesterol / diabetes / high blood pressure
    Sorry Jude / Weight-Watchers will be out of business
    Jenny Craig will be looking for another career path
  
So this teaching of the resurrection of the body / is such a vital teaching
 Salvation does not only involve salvation of our souls
  It involves our whole person / our bodies as well
 Our redemption includes the redemption of the body

 In fact it is not wrong to say / that our redemption will not be complete
  until our body itself  is resurrected from the death

 It is only finally / when our bodies are raised
  that death will be totally defeated

 Paul writes / “When this perishable will have put on the imperishable
  and this mortal will have put on immortality
  then will come about the saying that is written
  ‘Death is swallowed up in victory / O death, where is your victory?
    O death, where is your sting’” / 1 Cor. 15:54-55

 This is why the Word of God makes it so abundantly clear
  that there will be a resurrection of the body
   For if there is no resurrection of the body
    then death is not defeated

  Christ redeemed us not only from sin
   but also from the penalty of sin / which is death

And it would also be true to say / that Christ is not glorified
 not until death is destroyed
  and the only evidence that death is finally destroyed
   is when we are raised from our death

 Glorification finally takes place at the destruction of death itself

 So Christ must raise believers from the dead
  if He is to fully claim the victory
   He won over death at His resurrection
    and if He is to fully deliver us from the penalty of our sins

  We would not have full salvation
   if our bodies were not raised from the dead

We praise God / that Christ did everything
 to fully conquer evil
  including His swallowing death up in victory at the resurrection

 What a great doctrine this is / the resurrection of the body

_____________________________________________________________