The Hope of the Resurrection
REFLECTION QUOTES
“All the money you earn, all the stocks you buy, all the mutual funds you trade–all of that is mostly smoke and mirrors. It’s still going to be a quarter-past late whether you tell the time on a Timex or a Rolex. No matter how large your bank account, no matter how many credit cards you have, sooner or later things will begin to go wrong with the only three things you have that you can really call your own: your body, your spirit, and your mind.”
~Stephen King (1947-present), American novelist and short-story writer
“If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”
~Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
“Where Christ is preached as ascended in the flesh, it cannot be said that the flesh is unworthy of the upward call. And if it is worthy, or has been made worthy, then it follows that the flesh can neither be despised nor indulged, but must rather be disciplined and trained for glory.”
~Dr. Douglas Farrow of McGill University in Montreal
“Preaching should break a hard heart and heal a broken one.”
~John Newton (1725-1807)
“The faster we run, the further away the dreams that we chase become
And lost in the sun spinning and turning, blind in the burning light of day
We have to turn away.”
~“Lost in the Sun” by Dan Fogelberg (1951-2007)
“OK, a lot of people say there is no happiness in this life and certainly there’s no permanent happiness … I’m not exactly sure what happiness even means, to tell you the truth. I don’t know if I personally could define it.…[I]t’s like water—it slips through your hands.”
~Bob Dylan (1941-present) in AARP Magazine interview
SERMON PASSAGE
selections from 1 Corinthians 15 (ESV)
12Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?13But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain…. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead….
50I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.