At this time, we'll dismiss the children, the children's church. If you'll open your Bibles, the first Corinthians chapter 15. Are you all hot? Thank you, Rosa. I'll take my coat off. I'll never take it off a coat that's Sunday morning service, except one time in Mississippi when it was 98 degrees, but it's hot up here. I don't know what's life down there, but it is hot up here, so feel for it. Just don't pass out there in the summer. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for the gift and the privilege of being with your people to worship you this morning. Of all the places we could be, Lord, I thank you that you've seen fit your sovereign love and mercy to draw us here. Lord, we thank you for the great salvation you have brought within our souls, so that we can appreciate the beauty of the music that we've heard, so that we can rejoice in the privilege we have to sing together the hymns of the church, so that we can give you thanks that we have been blessed, that we are able to give, follow that we are so blessed, that we can sit beside the people in the pews, the people we love, care for new people that you're bringing to us, follow the great privilege we have to be part of your church in this place in this time. Lord, we thank you, because you are ever faithful, you are patient and you are tired. Lord, help us that in beholding your face we would reflect your character. Lord, we come to you as your people this morning, not because we've got it all together, not because we've done it all right this past week or even this morning, but because you are gone and where else could we come and worship you? Lord, we thank you for the new babies with which you've blessed our church, blessed the families of our church. Lord, we thank you that you are watching over us to protect us and care for us, that you entrust to us these new lives. May we be found faithful. Lord, I pray for Tim this week as he goes before the Presbyteria Committee for ordination exam. Lord, you don't have stressful the past few weeks that being as he's been studying and studying. Lord, it's all way stressful to walk in there, no way that they can ask you anything and everything, and yet it's also a blessed experience. Because when we come through, we realize that ordination in this church is not a small thing, or there are a lot of folks who could not even begin to do that, but it's part of the affirmation of your calling. And so I pray that in the midst of the nerves and the remembering that there would be this incredible peace that comes so that he can enjoy the process and give you praise. Lord, we thank you for blessing us. Lord, you blessed us as a church with our secretary and we pray that she would have a great and restful time on her vacation this week. How we love a land and give you thanks for her, for she's much more than a secretary. She is a minister among us. And how I praise you for that is an answer to prayer. Lord, I thank you for camping. Lord, you know the years and years I have waited to have someone in that position who could do what she does, and do it with the spirit with which she does. Thank you for her. Thank you for bringing her here. Thank you for using her to lift up our hearts, to guide us in music and worship. Lord, I thank you for team. I just can't thank you enough for bringing him here. For the joy he's brought to me, the challenge, the ability to sit with him and intellectually spa, to spiritually sharpen each other, to share a vision for what you can and will do in our doing in his place. Lord, I praise you for him. Lord, I thank you for this church, the congregation of this church is just a blessing continually. Lord, thank you for giving me the privilege of being the pastor here in this place. Now, Father, we turn to your Word. If you do not by your spirit inspire the preacher, then all we will hear are the words of man. Words that will soon pass away and should. Lord, if you would be pleased to know what you're serving, that he might speak the Word of God. But then, Father, we know that the preacher can preach with the anointing from on high, from the depths of his soul, and the Word of God fall on deaf ears and hard hearts. Holy Spirit, just as we pray that you would anoint the preacher, we pray that you would anoint the listeners so that their ears would be open, their minds would be receptive, their hearts would be sensitive to what you are saying to them. And then that their wills would conform so that they would do what they hear, but most of all, in the preaching of your Word, glorify yourself by changing us. And that would pray in Jesus' name, amen. We continue our study and Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. We begin reading this morning at verse 35. Verse 35. But someone may ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come? How foolish. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just to see. Perhaps a weed or something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives his own body. All flesh is not the same. Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another, and fish another. They are also heavenly bodies and they are earthly bodies. But the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another, and the stars another, and star differs from star in splendor. So it will be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable. It is raised imperishable. It is sown in this honor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written, the first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that, the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth. The second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth, and as is the man from heaven, so are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothe with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Whereodeth is your victory. Whereodeth is your sting. The sting of death is sinned, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God. He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the worth of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. May the Lord bless the reading and the preaching of His Word to our hearts this morning. John Calvin said, nothing is more repugnant to human reason than this tenant of the faith. For nobody else except God can convince us that after our bodies, which are already subject to corruption, have brought it away, or been consumed by fire, or been torn to pieces by wild animals, that they will be restored in their fullness, but in a far better nature. In the apostles' creed, we affirm our faith in the resurrection of the body, and yet what kind of body are we talking about? Previously, we've seen in this chapter that Paul spoke of the resurrection. You see the first part of the chapter, Paul talks about the resurrection as a fact. It's something that happened in time and space. It is an historical reality, and then secondly, he talks about the ramifications of no resurrection. What are the implications for our faith if there is no resurrection from the day? Two weeks ago, we preached about that. Now Paul turns his attention to the resurrection body. Now, let me give a disclaimer. Paul is not answering every conceivable question you might have about what the resurrection body will be like. That's not his purpose. His purpose is not to fill in all the blanks. The purpose is simply to tell you the truth and tell you enough of what God has revealed so that you will be encouraged and have hope and not despair. So don't think that every little question you have about the resurrection body will be answered, but the questions that are meaningful will be answered. In a nutshell, if we bold this segment down to its essence, what Paul is teaching is that the resurrection body is vastly superior to our present physical bodies. That should encourage us as we live for Christ. This is not all there is, and that which is to come is indeed valid. When you begin to feel the aches and pains of a body that no longer functions as well as it did, then you begin to say, that sounds good. When they tell me of a superior body, when I was a kid growing up, the cortex used to say this song about this old house. You know what? I thought about my grandparents when I heard that. This old house is getting creaky, this old house is getting old. You know what I think about now? I think about my back. What Paul saying? These bodies are wasting away, but the bodies promised to us in Christ in the resurrection are vastly superior, so be encouraged. The best is yet to come. Listen to Peter, he says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the day at 1 Peter 1 3. There was the hope of the apostles. It's been the hope of the church that Jesus Christ will raise up his church, incorruptible, eternal, physical. This morning I want us to walk through Paul's discussion and began by stating the issue as he addresses it. You see that in verses 35 through 41, the issue. What is the issue? The issue is how are the dead raised? Now why would that be such an issue in the church? What kind of bodies are people going to have? Why is that matter? It matters because there were those who were false teachers who attacked directly the resurrection. The physical resurrection of the dead, they said, well then what kind of bodies are you going to have? People say, oh no, Paul says, let me tell you. Let me tell you what we know. Rather than skirting the issue or saying it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that you have faith, Paul meets the issue head on. What kind of body? Let me tell you. Notice in verses 36 through 38 that Paul uses the analogy of a seed. First of all, he says it's foolish to think common sense would tell you that you don't get the same kind of thing you put in the ground out of the ground. Take agriculture. That's all he's doing. He's taking something that these people knew very well and he says you put a seed in the ground. Is that what you expect to get out? No. Now I remember as a boy my dad had a garden, my grandparents had gardens and you know what? We'd put those corn seeds in the ground and those little corn plants would come on. It was a little kernel, didn't look anything like the plant that came out of the ground and I remember as a little fella I was always amazed. I loved it when those things started popping up through the dirt because it wasn't long when there was a plant. These things grew but they weren't like the seeds you put in the ground. That's what Paul says. He says not this same old body that's been put in the ground that's going to be dug up. Now when you say, you think, well that's obvious to us, is it? Do you see what's on your television screen this weekend as they show all the horror shows? What kind of bodies are depicted? I don't see any resurrection bodies that are beautiful, blind and strong, handsome. No, I see all these grotesque man-made images of a rotten corpse that somehow has been animated. It's just horror movies, isn't it? I would submit to you there's a whole lot more philosophical proof behind it than we would want to play. What kind of body? Well I don't know that I want a resurrection body if it looks like some of that stuff I've seen on TV when I was a kid. And if I'm going to look like Herman Lomster, I just assume look like myself. You get the point. That's what Paul says. It's insane to think that you've put a seed in the ground and dig it up and watch how it's partly rotted and that's the kind of thing that comes up now. Jesus is not going to resurrect a bunch of grotesque zombies. He said just like the seed that's put in the ground and the new kind of body is going to come up not totally different but radically different. That's the kind of body.