In his sermon, David Green explores the importance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, as outlined in 1 Corinthians 15:1-19. He emphasizes the resurrection as a cornerstone of Christian faith, arguing that without it, preaching and faith are in vain. Green outlines various testimonies supporting the resurrection: the Church of Corinth, scriptures, eyewitnesses like Cephas and the Twelve, Paul’s own experience, and the common message shared by Christians worldwide. He addresses the issue faced by the Corinthians who denied the resurrection of the dead while believing in Christ's resurrection, attributing this confusion to external pagan influences. Green highlights the contemporary parallels, warning against modern misconceptions like AI-generated posthumous interactions. He points out that without the resurrection, Christianity would be meaningless, leaving believers in their sins and without hope beyond the grave. The sermon concludes with a call to appreciate the resurrection as a source of hope and encouragement, emphasizing its relevance beyond funeral contexts.

Okay, you can go ahead and take your copy of God's Word, 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and we'll begin reading at verse 1. We'll go down to verse 19 this morning. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, we'll begin at verse one. Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I proclaimed as good news to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I proclaimed to you as good news, unless you believed for nothing.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. Then he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. After that, he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.

For I am the least of the apostles, and not worthy 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 toward me did not prove vain, but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. Beginning in verse 12 will be our text, going down to verse 19. Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain. Your faith also is vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God because we bore witness against God that He raised Christ whom He did not raise, 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, then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only we are of all men most to be pitied. And this is the infallible, the inerrant, the all-sufficient Word of the Living God. Our text today, as I mentioned, is from verses 12 through 19. We spent a considerable amount of time verses 1 through 11.

I don't anticipate we'll spend as much time verses 12 through 19, although we might, but I don't believe so. Paul was leading up to something when he wrote verses 1 through 11. The evidences of Christ's resurrection is very important. Just as a recap or a reminder, those evidences outlined there was the testimony of the church, verses 1 and 2. The church of Corinth was a testimony to the truthfulness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The church, of course, is an assembly, a local assembly of individuals who have been saved and baptized. And that those changed lives who assembled together, well, that's a testimony to the world that Jesus rose from the dead. So they meet together especially on Sunday morning. And even though the Church of Corinth is long gone, The church has long since gone out of existence. As I mentioned, we fast forward to today and there are churches today that are meeting and in fact the Sovereign Grace Baptist Church is a testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Verses three and four, we find the testimony of scriptures. In the time of the writing of the letter to the church of Corinth, mostly what they had was the Old Testament. And those writings testified of the Lord Jesus Christ, His life, His death, His burial, and His resurrection. Verses 5 through 7, we looked at the testimony of the eyewitnesses. There's the eyewitness accounts of Cephas and of the Twelve, and James saw him, and don't forget about the 500 who saw him alive after his resurrection.

Some of them were dead by the time Paul wrote this letter, but others were still living. And then verses 8 through 10 we find the testimony of Paul. Paul was an apostle, not one of the original 12, but he previously had been an unbeliever, a persecutor of the church, but Jesus had appeared not only post-resurrection, but also post-ascension. He was alive. He appeared to Paul on more than one occasion, making him a valuable witness.

And then in verse 11 was the testimony of the common message. The fact is that wherever Christians are found, it's a common message. The death, the burial, the resurrection. We find that in the New Testament as well as throughout church history. Christianity is not divided on this.

We may be divided on whether or not to celebrate Easter, we may be divided on whether or not to celebrate Christmas, we may be divided on whether or not to what the timing of the rapture is and so on and so forth, but you don't find Christians who, some Christians say, well, I believe in the death and the burial, but not the resurrection. You know, that sort of thing. Christians are identified by the complete gospel message, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And this is a testimony of the truthfulness of the resurrection. This gospel message is preached regardless of where you're at.

You could be in southeast Georgia or in the jungles of Papua New Guinea or in the deserts of Africa. It doesn't matter. It's the same message. And so in verse 12 he begins, now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? So now we begin to get an idea of what's going on at Corinth.

The problem wasn't that there were some in Corinth who had a problem with the resurrection of Christ. The problem at Corinth was that there were some among them who were saying that there's no resurrection of the dead. You see, once again, it's kind of given that they would hold to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were a church, after all. They were a true church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Of course, they would be holding to the gospel message, but They apparently had a problem with the resurrection of the dead. You see, the resurrection of Jesus Christ isn't just a part of Christianity. It is Christianity. You can't separate the two and say, oh well these are Christians, they just don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No, that's not any...

That's delusional to say something like that. That's like saying, that's like saying some, well some off the wall things like what we hear today. Well, somebody might say, well, I was born a woman, but I'm a man now. That's delusional. You can't be a Christian and not believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But some people have some problems with some other doctrines, and this was one of them. There was a problem within Corinth that they believed that Christ had been resurrected from the dead, that he had raised from the dead, but there were some within them who were saying, there's no resurrection of the dead. We know from our studies at Corinth that there were problems within. We know from being Christians for however long we've been that there are problems within sometimes. There the problems that come from without.

But I want you, before I get too far into this, I want you to understand that whatever your problems are, be excited. We have something worth living for, worth fighting for, worth being, and that is that Jesus is alive. Look, I don't know the outcome of everything that's going on. I don't know how all your problems and how all my problems and how all our problems are going to come about. But I do know this, we're winners.

I don't know how things are going to go in this country. I don't know how your problems are going to come out. I don't know how If Isaiah is going to get the truck he wants and all of these things, the big dreams that the kids have and all these, I don't know. But I do know this. Even if gas prices don't go down, if the economy doesn't get better, if things don't always go our way, and if our health doesn't get any better than what it is, Jesus is alive and we have eternal life.

And there is hope beyond the grave. Someone once said, Jesus is all I need, but the older that I get, the more I realize Jesus is all I've got. And even if they do put this body in the grave, and that may happen, maybe sooner than later. It won't be there forever. So with all the other problems that the church of Corneth had, somebody was in there telling them that there's no resurrection.

Can you imagine it? Can you imagine it? Somebody was throwing doubt out there saying, oh, you know what, some of your people are dying, Some of your family members are dying and that's the end. They had accepted that Christ had risen, else they wouldn't have been Christians, or they wouldn't have been members of the church, but they were denying the reality of the resurrection of the dead. Now maybe in your mind you can't wrap your mind around this because it is curious how would they believe one truth but not the other?

They are closely tied together after all, but keep in mind they didn't have 1 Corinthians 15 until the day they got this letter. And then also, also this confusion came about because of the continuing influence that they got from pagan religion that some of them had come out of. You know, this was a church that was a mixture of Jewish and Gentile backgrounds. Even in our day, there are some wild theories of death, and even in our day, the common church member sometimes has theories about death that are wrong, even though we've all got our Bibles, And even though we all sit in church, maybe perhaps it's not as wrong as what the church of Corinth was, but there are people who, and you won't hear it all the time, but preach enough funerals or go to enough funerals and you'll hear it. They'll say things like, well, heaven gained a new angel today.

That's not right. That's not right at all. That's not biblical. Maybe you'll hear somebody in their time of grief or even sometimes even a long time after somebody is dead, they will actually talk to that person as if they're there. We don't have communications with the dead, but yet they'll do it, you see.

And we're entering into an era now where There's some pagan influences that's going to come up in this world that's meant to help grieving people that I believe is very, very dangerous. This whole AI stuff, let me tell you, is very, very dangerous because they are working on AI which will help grieving people so that when somebody dies, they can set up an AI so that their social media will continue to post as if their loved one is still alive and you can interact with them. That's some stuff that I'm... It's not good. It's not good at all.

There's already the technologies out there so you can have an AI so-called girlfriend and boyfriend. Well you can take and have your deceased loved one as an AI bot and go that route and so on and so forth. There are things out there that are not biblical at all. And so, when we look at the church at Corinth and we see what was happening there, we understand that it was outside pagan influences that had gotten a hold of some of them. And Paul says, now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

They were dealing with problems in their day just like we have to deal with problems in our day. AI itself is not a terrible thing. It's like a, I liken it to a knife. A knife in the hands of a surgeon is a very good thing, but in the hands of a murderer it can be a terrible thing. And so we have to understand it's a tool and we got to understand how to use it.

And so how do we make sure that we don't use it wrong? How do we make sure that we don't use it wrong? How do we make sure that we're using it rightly? Will we make sure that when it comes down to grief and when it comes time that when something we love is dead, when our boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever has left us and we're feeling lonely we don't go down that rabbit hole where all of a sudden we've got a girlfriend or boyfriend that's a robot. You know those sorts of things.

I think there's a lot of deception out there and that sort of thing in our world just like there was in their world. But even without AI, There are extreme positions in our world, religions out there that sometimes we don't even think about, such as reincarnation. Where people believe that when somebody dies that they'll come back as somebody else. There's absorption, absorption. The idea that you might come back as a drop of rain.

You don't hear much about that, but there was an old song back in the 70s or 80s, I guess, the highwayman sung that song. He said, I'll come back as a drop of rain, but I will still remain again and again and again. You see these ideas come come into popular culture and then they're made into songs that get into our heads and our minds and some of y'all are thinking about that song. They were good singers, weren't they? I remember hearing that song when I was a kid.

It just sticks with you. It was the idea of soul sleep, and prayers to the dead, even annihilation, all these things. They either have their roots either in pagan religions or in certain verses that were taken out of context and so on and so forth. Now with the Church of Corinth, they would have had not only the Gentile pagan religions, but also the Jewish religions. Remember in our scripture reading we read how that there was differences in the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

The Sadducees, they didn't hold to the resurrection at all. It's always interested me since I discovered it and began to think about it and I've not yet found it but it seems like every every Jew that was saved out of the Jewish religions it seems like that they were always Pharisees that were saved. I don't find any prominent Sadducees being saved. Now that doesn't mean that there weren't Sadducees that were saved, but it was the Pharisees that were being saved. I believe it was probably harder for a Sadducee to really come to Christ, because there were so many hurdles for them to cross over in their religion.

Is God's grace powerful enough to get a Sadducee saved? Absolutely. But it's just an observation I've made since I began looking at this and thinking about that, that it was it was the Pharisees that seemed to be prominently saved in the New Testament. Nonetheless, the Jews would have had family members and and no doubt some of them had that background. It's wild to think that the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection.

They had the Old Testament. It's wild to think that there were some at the Church of Corinth who didn't believe in the resurrection because they had the Old Testament as well. Because in the oldest book of the Bible, in the book of Job, go with me there, please, Job and chapter 19 and that old book that talks about behemoth and Leviathan and all those things. But back there in Job, Job as he went through all of his troubles and trials, chapter 19 and verse 26. Well, Let's start with verse 25.

He says, as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. And at the last, He will rise up over the dust of this world even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall behold God, whom I shall behold, and whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me." You see, Job had a hope that beyond the grave he would see his Redeemer. Psalm 17 and verse 15. In verse 15, As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness.

I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake." So the psalmist, David, as he prayed this prayer, As he sung this Psalm, he said, I'm going to behold your face in righteousness. I'll be satisfied with your likeness when I awake. Daniel is very clear over in Daniel chapter 12. Daniel chapter 12. Verse 2, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake those to everlasting life but the others to reproach the everlasting contempt." And so Daniel is saying that everyone, the lost and the saved, will be resurrected someday to everlasting life, those who are some to everlasting life, others to everlasting contempt.

As we think about that, the church at Corinth, They had the Old Testament, but they also had the teachings of Christ. Even though the New Testament was not completed, they knew the teachings of Christ. Christianity was not just another sect of Jewish teaching. Over in John chapter 6, John chapter 6 and verse 44. Jesus says no one, no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws Him, and I will raise Him up on the last day." I will raise Him up on the last day.

So we've got the Old Testament teachings, we've got the teachings of Christ. Peter and John and the other apostles were not only teaching and preaching the resurrection of Jesus as we saw in the last sermons, but they were also teaching the resurrection over in Acts chapter 4. Acts chapter 4 verses 1 and 2. Now as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them being greatly agitated because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. So they were teaching Jesus and preaching the resurrection of the dead.

Paul too, as he wrote to the Church of Corinth, this was some time after he had already written years before to the church of Thessalonica. We know if you've been to a funeral, you know that we usually read from 1st Thessalonians and 1st Corinthians. Go with me to 1st Thessalonians chapter 4. So I believe that this text and our text in 1st Corinthians, they're not just intended for funeral messages. 1st Corinthians chapter 15 and 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, these passages are intended to encourage us at all times.

Not just times when everybody's crying, we're looking at the casket, thinking about death. Look at there in verse 16, 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 and verse 16, he says, For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the of God and the dead in Christ will rise first." And so, Paul wrote that years before he had been, he had written to Corinth. And so, no doubt when he was at Corinth, he preached, he taught him, these things came up to them. And so, he lays down arguments to the church of Corinth when he hears. See all of this information is coming to him from the house of Chloe.

There's divisions in the church and all these things are happening. And he's writing this letter, his mind is full of things that need to be addressed. The divisions over preachers, the issue of the fornicator that hasn't been excluded, and the problems about the Lord's Supper, all of these things that he's addressing. And he gets to chapter 15 and he begins to address this issue. The issue of the resurrection.

It lays the groundwork. The resurrection of Christ. There's great evidence for the resurrection of Christ. And so now he lays down arguments of what it would mean if there's no resurrection from the dead. And so back to our text there in 1st Corinthians chapter 15 What it would mean if there's no resurrection what it would mean If they lay down your body and my body and it's just left there to rot, and nothing ever happens to it.

If there's no hope beyond the grave, what it would mean if your granddaddy, my granddaddy, if they trusted Christ, and that body is just left there, and there's nothing, nothing, no hope beyond the grave. First of all verse 13. 1st Corinthians 15 verse 13, but if there But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. If your loved one back yonder in the cemetery, if your loved one who's dead, whose body has been left to rot in the cemetery, in the grave, if that loved one's body is not going to be raised from the ground. If there's no hope beyond the grave for the dead in Christ, then Christ, not even, then not even Christ has been raised.

So the first argument is Christ would not be risen if there is no resurrection from the grave. These pagan unbelievers who had been teaching this sort of thing, they may have come to some hodgepodge sort of thing where they did indeed distort the gospel in their teaching. And when they taught it, the common person on the pew maybe didn't quite catch what was happening. And so they say, oh well, I still believe that Jesus died on the cross, he was buried and he rose again. But I'm just not quite sure about the resurrection from the grave.

And that's what happens a lot of times with the false teachers. That's why when you read in the scriptures, Paul and the others, they treat the false teachers a lot more harshly than they do the the ones who are deceived. But the ones who were teaching this sort of thing, The way that they probably taught it was this. They probably held to some sort of a gnostic belief about Jesus that maybe not everybody caught on to, in which they said that Jesus was not really a man, or that he was not fully man. And so that's why that Jesus could be raised from the grave, but not anybody else.

And so that's probably how the teaching went. But Paul says, wait a minute, let's have some time out here, because if there's no resurrection from the grave, if there's no resurrection from the dead, then not even Jesus is raised. Because Jesus is fully man. Let me just remind you, there's a lot of passages I could take you to, but we looked at it to some extent over in second John we'll go there second John in verse 7 second John verse 7 John said for for 2 John 7 John said, For Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver in the Antichrist.

And so, it is deception in Antichrist to say that Jesus Christ is not in the flesh. Not in the flesh. It however way they were arguing this idea I don't know but it would seem that's probably how that it came about. And they were kind of dealing with this sort of thing. It is defeating to fall back to the pagan claim that Jesus only appeared to be human.

The Gnostics were saying this sort of thing and they'd crept into some of the churches. They were causing some to doubt certain things. No, Jesus was fully human and fully God. He physically lived and physically died and physically lived again. To say that there's no physical resurrection means that not even Jesus has been raised.

And so that is argument number one that Paul brings out. Secondly, verse 14. Out. Secondly, verse 14, And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, and your faith also is vain. So the second point is, the preaching of the gospel would be meaningless, and faith in Christ would be worthless if there is no resurrection of the dead.

So the preaching of the gospel is meaningless and faith in Christ is worthless if there's no resurrection from the dead. John MacArthur put it this way, without the resurrection the good news would be bad news and there would be nothing worth preaching. Without the resurrection the gospel would be an empty hopeless message of meaningless nonsense. Unless our Lord conquered sin and death, making a way for men to follow in that victory, there is no gospel to proclaim. Just as no resurrection would make preaching Christ meaningless, it would also make faith in Him worthless.

Faith in such a gospel would be vain, empty, fruitless, void of effect. A dead Savior can give no life. If the dead do not rise, Christ did not rise, and we will not rise either. Imagine, if Jesus did not rise, then All believers of all ages would have believed for nothing, lived for nothing, and died for nothing. Thirdly, verses 15 and 16 says, moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God because we bore witness against God that He raised Christ whom He did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised not even Christ has been raised all witnesses to and all preachers of the resurrection be liars If there's no resurrection in all witnesses, those we looked at, the ones Paul called to the witness stand, the apostles, the prophets, the pastors, the 500, they are all liars. And if they lied about that, then can we trust them on anything else? All the Bible, all of Christianity rises or falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We'll pack it up and go home. Close our Bibles and forget about it.

If there is no resurrection from the dead. Verse 17 gives us our fourth point. All men would still be in their sins. It says, then if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless, you are still in your sins. Plain and simple.

If Jesus did not raise from the dead, if there's no resurrection of the dead, then that would mean Jesus did not raise from the dead, then sin won the victory over Christ and therefore continues to be victorious over all men. The wages of sin is death, you see. Christ gives us the victory. He rose from the grave, and You and I will have the victory. In fact, as we continue on in this chapter, when you're going down to Verse 54, I love how he puts it there.

Or verse 55, he says, O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Now 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." You see, there is victory to be had beyond the grave. When we preach the Gospel, we must preach a risen Christ.

We must preach the reality of the fact that Jesus is risen. And we know that there is hope beyond the grave. Fifthly, he gives them the argument that all former believers would have eternally perished. Verse 18, he says, Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. Every saint, Old Testament saints, Christian saints, all of them would have died and perished forever.

The same consequence would apply for every saint who has died since Paul wrote, if there is no resurrection, the dead. What he's doing here is he's telling them what a terrible thing this is for them to be saying, for them to be teaching, for them to be believing. Indeed, he ends this with the sixth and final argument. Verse 19, he says, If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. Or most miserable is how the King James has it.

We have nothing if there's no resurrection from the dead. There's no difference between us and any other religion in the world if there's no hope beyond the grave. You see, without the resurrection and the salvation and blessings it brings, Christianity would be pointless and pitiable. We'd have Savior, no forgiveness, no gospel, no meaningful faith, no life, certainly no eternal life, no hope of any of these things. And so, whoever had come into the church at Corinth, stirring them up on all of this, may have very well been an apostate teacher, preacher, denier of the gospel.

Some of the people who were believing this, they weren't apostates. They were simply confused. They believed the gospel of Jesus Christ. They believed the resurrection of Jesus, but They didn't believe that the dead were going to be raised up. They failed to see the inconsistencies in their belief system.

And what Paul was doing here is He was bringing it out to them that there is inconsistencies in it, that it is important to believe that the resurrection of the dead, to understand that there is hope beyond the grave, that when we mourn for our lost loved ones, it's okay to mourn, it's okay to grieve. We must do so biblically, understanding that for the child of God, it's not goodbye forever, it's only see you later. That for us, that there is a resurrection morning coming. I hope that you're beginning to see in all of this that this chapter, chapter 15 is much more important than just a text to be read at a gravesite service, a text to be read turned to at a funeral service, But it's one that is a great encouragement to God's people. It's a great text for an apologetic, for the faith.

And certainly, if you're lost today, may this message point you to Christ. He is our Hope as the song said in life and death Let's dismiss in prayer now ask brother Brother, Mary, would you please pray for us?