First corinthians 15, 110, and 50 through 58. Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel, you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried.

That on the third day, he rose again according to the scriptures, that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. I declare, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor 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 clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that was written will come true. Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where, o death, is your victory? Where, o death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of the sin is the law. But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm.

Let nothing move you always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. The word of the Lord.

It's estimated today that over 3 billion people will say some version of this in hundreds of different languages. Someone will stand at the front of the room and say, he is risen. And then the congregation will shout back, he has risen. Indeed. He is risen.

Indeed. He is risen indeed. We need this amplification by the billions because we live in a hope, as I heard it put in a podcast last week, a hope fatigued world. Our world is even tired of looking for hope. We often underestimate how our present circumstances are shaped by what we believe our future to be.

I once heard it put this way as an illustration. Imagine two people given a very hard labor, long hour job, dismal working conditions, and they have to do it for a year. But to one of the people, you say you'll receive 15, $15,000 at the end of the year. But to the other person, you say you will receive at the end of this year, $15 million. Now we know that it won't be their present circumstances that dictate their endurance and attitude.

What will it be? Their view of the future and what is coming. Christians are people who believe that there's good things coming, not only in the future, but even in the presence of a risen Christ living in us now. In fact, as one poet put it, one of my favorite expressions, christians are Christians because they have the inability to quit hoping and they practice resurrection. It was that way from the very beginning.

There's a great book. You'll find it out in our bookstore, Waterstone. It was written by Rodney Stark, the late Rodney Stark. He for decades taught at the University of Washington, one of America's leading sociologists. In his book, and by the way, not a believer, but he wrote this book to trace how Christianity, like from the cross, was zero followers all the way to 300 ad when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

How did that happen? And Stark's conclusion was this, christians lived by hope, and that hope changed everything for them. For instance, stark makes much of that. In the second and third century, there were plagues worldwide, plagues that especially affected the urban centers in the cities in the Roman Empire. So if you had means, you would get out of the city and save your life.

But christians chose to stay, stay in the cities at risk and cost of life to care for the sick. He also mentions that thousands upon thousands of christians were persecuted and put to death because Rome was beginning to be troubled by how fast this movement was growing. And it's recorded time after time that christians went to their death with great poise and, in fact, praying for their enemies. And third, what began to happen at the height of the roman empire as they swallowed country after country after country, and for the first time in world history, there was a large landmass with open borders. And what happened is that the cities became radically, fiercely multiethnic and therefore full of racial tension.

But Stark says that the church was the first institution to teach that there is a love between people that transcends ethnic backgrounds. And the church became known as one of the most integrated places you could go. Now you have to ask, what enabled the church to do that? How could they be so compassionate to care for the sick? How could they be so forgiving to pray for their enemies?

How can they be so radically inclusive to welcome all? And Stark's conclusion is simply this. When you believe in a resurrection, it changes everything, because you can go in and serve the sick in the cities. If you believe that even if you die, it's an upgrade, you can forgive your enemies. When you believe that when Jesus comes again, he comes as judge and he will put everything right.

And you can believe. Whereas the ancient pagans said there's one God for every nation, the Christians believe that there's one God over all the nations who wants people worshiping him from every tribe and language, tongue and people. And so their view of the future radically shaped their present. And why? Because they believed a story.

They believe the story that Sophie just shared with us, that Jesus died for our sins, according to the scriptures, was buried and raised on the third day. According to the scriptures, Jesus died. He died on a Friday at 03:00 in the afternoon in pitch darkness. It was a sad, sad day. But Jesus had brought it on himself.

For three years, he performed miracle after miracle healings, exorcisms, controls of nature. And it drew crowds, like paparazzi type crowds. And every time he was, so to speak, given the mic, he'd say something like this, well, I'm the word made flesh. Like, if you want to know who God is, look at me. I'm the living bread.

If you want to fill that hunger in your soul, it's me. I'm the living water. If you want that thirst filled in your. It's me. I'm the resurrection and the life.

Even though you die, you can live. It's me. I'm the way, the truth and the life. You know, can you imagine how these, if you were the first to hear these, how they'd go over not so well? I mean, who is this guy?

And he's saying these massive things that sound arrogant, that sound so narrow, and we confess them as a church that follows Jesus, not so that we can be narrow and arrogant, but rather because there's no one else like Jesus who could make these statements, mean them and affect them them. And what's stunning is that Jesus launched his movement within his own religious context. That is the jewish people and the jewish people's worldview was much like our current worldview in the sense that in our world today, in this western culture, our view is this. That it's scientifically impossible for a dead person to come back to life. Just doesn't happen.

Well, the same was true in the jewish culture, except their authority was scripture. They said, scripturally, it is impossible for a person to be God. It just doesn't happen. And so for Jesus to launch his movement within a worldview that says it's impossible, we can only imagine how irresistible he was and stunning and decisive. Those things Jesus said about being the way, the truth, and the life, they're extreme.

And so the only way you can respond to those claims is extremely like either, okay, God, I believe Jesus, you are God. And I throw everything in my life down, and everything has to orbit around you, or, no way, I'm out. Not only will I walk away, but some took it into their hands to put him away. And indeed, he was killed, executed as a radical threat to his religious leaders and to the peace of Rome. And he was buried.

And as far as we know, that Saturday was the only day in the history of the world when not one person believed Jesus was alive. And then on the third day, he rose again and again. Something interesting about his own culture. The jewish people, they believed in a resurrection at the end of the world, when all the followers of God would be raised to life for their new kingdom. But they never, in their wildest imaginations, believed that just one person would come from the future into the middle of history and say, look, I'm here to show you that I can conquer the grave.

Follow me. They never, ever expected that to happen, but it did. That's what Easter means, that Jesus came from the future into the present to begin a world in the middle of ours. And then they believed that story, as Paul goes on to share who wrote the scripture that was read to us earlier to say, if you don't believe me, there are over 500 people, and all of us in this room today have to decide if those were verifiably trustworthy witnesses. He appeared to over 500 people who said, we heard him, we saw him, we touched him, we embraced him, we had meals together.

And Paul saying this, in the roman empire, which, by the way, had the best roads in the world, he's saying this of it, to say, some of them are still alive. Go talk to them, and they'll tell you. And thousands did. And thousands told their neighbors, and thousands told their neighbors, and thousands told their neighbors, you know, it inverted the normal human trajectory, right? Usually when a person, even an influential person, usually when they die, their influence wanes over time.

But Jesus, the exact opposite has happened. Stark estimates that in his book, in 40 AD, you can count the numbers. In the book of acts, which is the early record of the church, there was 10,000 followers of Jesus by 350 AD, 34 million followers of Jesus by 1000 AD. The legacy of Jesus laid the foundations for what we now know as Europe. By 1500 AD, it moved west into this place, our own land.

By the year 2030, listen, it is estimated there will be more christians in the underground church in China than in the United States. By 2060, China will be a majority christian country. Now, folks, we hear it all around us. Oh, Christianity, it's waning. The waves are going out.

I'm suggesting if you study the science and the sociology, the waves are coming in and the story, the legacy of Jesus is as strong and as wide as it's ever been. It's as if Jesus haunts our existence. And each one of us has to decide, is he alive? And who is he? Now, if you believe that he is alive, there are two things that become true about your life.

And again, this is from the very beginning what has characterized the followers of Jesus. First, if you believe Jesus is alive today, your present becomes very anchored. Paul spoke about this when he said, where, o death, is your sting? And the sting of death is sin. Sting there.

It's an interesting word. It literally means poison. In other words, Paul, not to. It's poetry. He's quoting Hosea some 700 years earlier.

But to dissect this a little bit, well, if you get bit by a scorpion, what kills you, the bite or the poison? The poison. Everyone gets bit. That is, everyone dies. But the worst thing about death is what happens after death.

And again, each of us needs to make up our own minds about what happens after death. Paul says, what happens after death? If you die without Jesus, it's poison. It'll kill you. What death actually means is separation from God for all eternity.

And how does that happen? Well, God is characterized by a four letter word, holy. He exists in a reality beyond our imagination, in pure love and light and purity. And if we were to experience his holiness in our current conditions, it would be like getting too close to the sun. We would become undone because we have been devastated by a three letter word, sin.

Not a popular word, but it's probably the easiest to prove from human history that we all have wrong thoughts. We all have said wrong things we've all done wrong things. We've made a mess of a good world. We have been devastated by sin. God lives in perfect holiness.

We what can be done? Well, as you can imagine now, as we go on with this, we're playing theological wordle. All of a sudden, it's a five letter word. Saved. Jesus saves us.

How? He came to earth. He lives the life we should have lived of perfect, sweet, wanting obedience. He does everything right. And then he says to us, if you follow me, it's yours.

So that when God looks at you now, he sees my record, not yours. You've been declared righteous. You now can live in his presence. And then secondly, he not only lived the life we should have lived, he died to death. We should have died.

Our sin should have been a sting. We should have been. We deserve to be separated from him because we made our own choices. But God. And Jesus says, but if you follow me, I'll wipe them out.

I'm a huge, giant white towel, and I'll wash all your sins away. How do we know the resurrection is proof that what Jesus has done, God has accepted and we are now forgiven. It's like the cosmic receipt of the universe, right? How many of you shop over here at the Walmart? Yeah, a lot of us.

And you ever see the guy over there? It's about my height, gray hair. I have. And he sings like an opera star. Anyone know who I'm talking about?

Yeah, he's a really cool dude. So as sweet as he is, I feel it's my duty to remind you what he's actually doing. He's actually making sure that you don't walk out of Walmart with things you haven't paid for. So I've actually fantasized an opera in my head about how this would go. I'll share just a bit of it.

It's quite extended. It begins like this. He comes up to me and says, have you paid for those goods in your hand?

And I respond back to him, trouble me not, o Walmart man. Paid in full.

I'll share more of that at another time.

Do you see what this means? That because of Jesus resurrection, our debt has been paid and we can live with God, not only after we die and forever, but now he wants to be so close to us. He talks about his holy presence, his spirit living in us. He wants to experience every moment of life with us. And so he comes and he lives in us.

That's how we can get through not only the good days, but also the hard days. Back to the early church again. You know, many of them had to walk out onto the coliseum floor and they had to face the lions, and they did it with poise, and they did it knowing no matter what happens, even if the worst happens, it's not the end of me. Well, in our culture and out here in the west, we are fortunate. Not too many of us are being fed to lions.

Maybe unless you live in Detroit.

Sorry, I didn't say that in the other two services. I don't know where that came from just now.

What we might have to face. Not lions, but lumps. No, seriously, lumps. Biopsies, health concerns, struggles, diseases, things, moments, events that threaten our lives. And you're thinking, some of you are visiting and you're thinking, I knew he was going to go there.

I knew he's just going to put Christianity out there as a crutch. It's just a crutch. I want to tell you. You're exactly right. That's what it is.

It's a crutch. It's a crutch. The thing is, every one of us has a crutch. Every one of us believes a story that gives meaning to life and explains our existence. Every one of us already.

You've never lived one moment of your life without faith in a story. We already have the crutch. The only question for you is, is your crutch strong enough to hold you up on the worst day of your life? That's the question. Do you want what they had to face?

The lions? Do you want what they had to face? The lumps? Jesus says, if you follow me and trust in the resurrection and everything I want to give you, you will have an anchor in this present life. But it's not only an anchor in this present life, it's an animation of a future life.

Now, one corinthians Paul again says that amazing language. The mortal will be clothed with immortality, the perishable. These bodies we're now in, they'll be clothed with imperishability. That is, we will be given a body like Jesus resurrection body. He's the first fruits.

We get what he got when we die and are raised to life. And what was that like? It was physical. God loves the physical. He loves these bodies that he made, and we'll live in them again, although they'll be so much more physical.

I mean, Jesus, there's two things that are always encouraging in the gospels. When you read about his resurrection, first is the most common thing he seemed to say to everybody when he appeared to people, after his resurrection was, let's eat. What's there to eat? And then second, these crazy things would happen where Jesus would be so physical on a higher order of physicality that he wouldn't have to walk through walls to appear in locked rooms. He would just appear.

It's what a New Testament scholar named nt Wright calls transphysical, that Jesus resurrection body, which is promised to us, will be a transphysical body. What does that mean? Well, that has to mean maybe write surmises, something like this, like all of us have five senses, right? We see, we smell, we hear. Is the memory a sense?

Because I can't even remember, like the other ones. But all these senses right now, first thing I'd say about all of that is if you're 50 or older in the room, you're not even operating with five anymore. Bifocals, tinnitus. I'm at 3.25 myself. How are you doing out there?

But what if this new body, transphysical, is going to have more than five senses? And what if some of the senses we now have are going to be heightened even more? What if color is something we not only see, but we hear? What does the color purple sound like? I wonder if it's trumpets?

And what about in this new heaven and new earth, the new creation that we're promised to experience in these physical bodies? What if some of the barriers and walls, even between the human world and the animal world, become even more heightened? I read this last week. It's been the one year anniversary of the tragic shooting in Nashville at that covenant school. And I read the article.

Point was about how 70 families who were directly affected by that tragedy adopted rescue puppies, and those puppies have helped them endure the horrific last year. What if those walls in the new heavens and new earth, as we experience them in new bodies, become even more of a deep bond with the animal world? I mean, we can only imagine these things. Here's what I believe, that in Jesus resurrection, what's promised to us, listen. Is the 8th day of creation, and we will see death die, and we will see evil dissolve, and we will see the wounded hands of Jesus extend to us.

And in that moment, realize that even the worst days of my life that I endured with him now make the joy deeper.

Someone asked Martin Luther, the great reformer, when you think of the hope of the resurrection, what do you think? And Martin Luther said, it has to be something like a baby in the womb looking at his hands and saying, what are these hands for? What are these feet for? What's this mouth for, well, Martin Luther is one of my dudes, and so I like to riff on his theology. So let's take it one step further and say this.

What if in the womb, there were twins? And the only evidence that there's another world beyond the womb was what was written in your bodies? Things like lungs. Like in the womb, lungs begin to be formed at ten weeks. At 28 weeks, lungs are actually working, breathing not air, but liquid, preparing to enter the next world.

So what if your other sibling in the womb was a brother, and we'll call him Thomas because he's a doubter?

I thought that was funny. That one didn't go. What if this sibling of yours begins saying, look, so they're there, they're developing. You gotta stay focused on the cord, right? It's oxygen and it's nutrients.

You need those to live. Where do they come from? They come through the cord. All you need is cord dun dun dun dun dun? All you need is cord dun dun dun?

All you need is cord?

All you need? All you need for this life is to watch the stock market. That's your salvation. All you need is Fox News and CNN. All you need is to not waste your time on words like faith or hope or love or beauty, or holy waste of time.

Parents, you've lost your child. Sorry, they're gone. All the hours, countless hours you put into your work. It ends at the grave. Meaningless.

But why? You say back to your doubting sibling, why? Why in this world do I still have these aches in my heart that I miss people? Why does death feel so bad? Why do I have this aching longing for joy and hope and love?

Where does it come from?

Perhaps the truest thing I'll say this morning is this next line. Childbirth is painful. I thought I'd get more amens than that.

It's especially painful for the baby coming through that birth canal, squeezing, expiating that old life out so that that new life can be breathed in. And what happens to that cord that was so essential to life? It becomes. And kids in the room. Lots of kids.

Good to see you. Here's your assignment tonight. Kids, are you listening? I want you all to listen to me now. Kids, that cord that you had in the womb, it's now called your belly button.

So, kids, when you take a shower tonight, here's what I want you to do. Kids, I want you to talk to your belly button, and I want you to say this. You used to be everything to me. You were my life, my breath, my blood, my bread. But I was made for another world.

I've been born. If you do that, kids, your parents, they'll freak out.

All of you here this morning, you look at the stock market, CNN and Fox News. You look at all the things you think that we need for life, love. And you can say to them, you were my life, my blood, my breath, my bread.

But I was made for another world. Cs Lewis once said, if I find in myself a yearning which no human experience can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Let's pray. Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps there's someone here in the room that is thinking, wow, I've never actually really talked to God about anything like this. And maybe for a moment I should.

And if that's you, I would just give you a couple words. Paul, who wrote this letter we read earlier? In another letter, he said, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is lord and believe in your heart. God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Do you want to be saved today?

It's as simple as this. Tell Jesus right now, I believe you are lord. I believe you're alive, and I will follow you the rest of my days. It's as simple as saying to him, I'm yours. I'm yours.

You can do that right now and begin a relationship with God. I'm yours. And Lord, for all of us. May we sit even more deeply in that joy. I know some of us in the room this morning going through the hardest stuff of their lives.

I pray especially for a sense of your presence in their lives. Help them to know they're not alone.

May we all be anchored in the present and animated for the future, because Jesus has risen from the grave. Amen.