In the sermon 'We Will All Be Changed' by David Green, the central theme revolves around the resurrection as outlined in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. The speaker emphasizes that flesh and blood cannot inherit God's kingdom, necessitating a transformation from corruptible to incorruptible. Paul addresses doubts about the resurrection that existed in the Corinthian church, stressing the resurrection of Jesus as a cornerstone of Christian faith. He uses the analogy of a seed to explain how the dead will be raised with new, glorified bodies. The sermon highlights the transient nature of death for believers, likening it to sleep, and assures that all will be changed in an instant at the sound of the last trumpet, a moment often referred to as the rapture. The resurrection of Jesus provides believers with victory over sin and death, offering hope beyond the grave. Finally, believers are encouraged to remain steadfast and immovable in their work for the Lord, knowing their labor is not in vain because of the promised resurrection and eternal life.

You can go ahead and take your copy of God's Word and let's go ahead and go to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Beginning verse 50, going down to verse 58. Now I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the corruptible inherit the incorruptible. Behold I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we will be changed. For this corruptible must put on the incorruptible and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible puts on the incorruptible and this mortal puts on immortality, then will come about the word that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh 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. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." This is the infallible inerrant and the all-sufficient word of our living God. A text that is often only read at funerals. But I'm glad.

I'm glad to be able to open able to open my Bible and preach it among the living. 1st Corinthians chapter 15 is of course taken in its context is perhaps Paul's most logical argument in this whole letter. The church at Corinth had a lot of problems, and apparently there were some among them, or some who had come among them, who were saying that there is no resurrection of the dead. Some of their loved ones were in the grave. They had passed on.

So the question comes up, as it often does, what happens to them? Where do they go? Is death final? Someone said, that's it, there is no resurrection. And this chapter, chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, is the longest sustained doctrinal section in all of 1 Corinthians.

And praise God that it is. I'm thankful for it. I praise God for it. I mean it is a breath of fresh air compared to some of the other things that we've read about. Right?

I mean he had to deal with the disunity. He had to deal with the squabbling that was going on at Corinth. He had to deal with the fornication that was happening in their midst. He had to deal with those things, but I'm glad that Paul, in the midst of this church with a lot of problems, takes time to deal with this issue and to talk about the resurrection, the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection of the saints. Praise God that because Jesus lives, we live.

Amen. That As he goes through this, well, just as a review, we spend a lot of time in verses 1 through 11, as he talked about the resurrection of Christ. I'm sure you remember it, but he gave the arguments there, making it quite evident the gospel of Jesus Christ that Jesus did indeed. That it is true, He died on the cross, he was buried and rose again, and there were evidences that were given. But if Christ had not risen from the dead, then the preaching is empty.

Faith is empty. The apostles are liars. Sins are unforgiven, the dead in Christ have perished, and Christians are the most pitiable, miserable people alive." Paul even points out in this letter after presenting all the evidences of the resurrection that To deny the bodily resurrection of believers is a slippery slope, because it denies the very gospel of Jesus Christ. I mean, if there's no resurrection of the dead, then Jesus has not been raised. So they were in a terrible slippery slope, were they not?

Jesus had died physically, and he was raised from the dead. And because Jesus died, was buried and rose again, and he is alive because he lives. We live. Because he was raised from the dead, you and I will raise from the dead also. We will live.

Paul brought up supporting arguments as he went through this. He mentioned the practice of baptism for the dead. Obviously that's a questionable thing that was happening in Corinth, apparently, but they knew what it meant. If they were doing it in Corinth, Not necessarily in the church, but someone was doing it in the city of Corinth. They were acting like the resurrection is real.

Why were they saying? Why were they saying that there's no resurrection? But he also brought up arguments that Paul's own daily danger and suffering made no sense if there's no resurrection. He even quoted from one of their poets. Remember the quote, if the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.

Isn't that the attitude of the pagans? Even in our day, that's the attitude of many practical atheists, I call them. They may not say with their lips, there is no God, but they act that way, don't they? Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. They act as if there's no eternity.

They act as if the grave is it. But beloved, there is something beyond the grave, and that is there is judgment coming. For those who are lost, this is a fearful thing. But for the child of God, It is a wonderful thing to think about and to consider that there is more to life than just what we see and feel and touch and smell and experience. Oh beloved, the pain and the trouble and the agony soon will be over.

For the child of God, it's just going to get better. But for those who die without Christ, it's only going to get worse. Jesus is the answer for this world. Jesus is the answer for every man, woman, boy and girl in this world. Last week we looked at verses 35 through 49 and it was almost as if Paul had anticipated objections or maybe he had heard them.

How are the dead raised? With what kind of body? Remember he used the analogy of a seed. You plant a bare seed into the ground, and what grows is something glorious and different, yet continuous with what was sown. God gives bodies as He chooses.

He contrasted earthly and heavenly bodies and draws a parallel between Adam and Christ. The first Adam was a living soul made of dust. The last Adam is a life-giving spirit, being Jesus from heaven. Believers have borne the image of the earth, earthy man, and will bear the image of the heavenly. And so now, now we come to this final mystery.

This last part of the text. Now I say this brothers, verse 50. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, Nor does the corruptible inherit the incorruptible. Our bodies, flesh and blood as they are, are not compatible with God's eternal heavenly glory as they are now. I don't think I need to tell you this, but Just in case you haven't noticed, they are fragile.

They're prone to disease and pain and death. It can happen in an instant. You can be going along, you can be all, everything well, and you might as one of The preachers up north that I heard about, trip over an extension cord and break your foot. That happened. Brother Rex Smith, pastor of Midland Missionary Baptist Church.

So one instant, everything's going well with the foot, and then another instant there's pain and suffering. You can be driving along and end up in a car wreck and end up either being hurt or even killed. And be on vacation. Have a good time just out there fishing and even as a young man fishing and enjoying the sunshine and then be miserable the rest of the week because of a terrible sunburn That happened to me. The body is fragile, weak, subject to disease, coming home from a trip, feel fine and then all of a sudden wake up the next morning with a sore throat, come down with COVID or the flu or some other disease and be down for weeks, end up even in the hospital or dead.

We don't know. Not suited for eternity is what I'm trying to say. These bodies are not suited for eternity. They grow old and eventually die. Corruptible must change.

He says there in our text, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the corruptible inherit the incorruptible. Verse 51, behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep. We will all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed." He says, I tell you a mystery. As I said, I love preaching this text and I love preaching this among the living.

Not just when I stand over your casket. I've preached this text plenty of times over caskets. And it's a good sermon to preach at funerals. But it's also good to preach among the living. It's good to preach when people aren't with tears streaming down their eyes thinking about their loved one who has just died.

This is a good passage to consider. Paul is telling these troubled saints, these children of God who have been tricked about the resurrection of the dead. He's telling them about the coming resurrection. We're not all going to sleep. We're not all going to die.

But we all will be changed. In other words, Paul didn't know everything about the future. He was looking for Jesus to come back, And he expected that Jesus could come back in his lifetime. And if that happened, they all weren't going to die. We call it the rapture.

We call it the rapture. He said, I tell you a mystery, we're not all going to die, but we will all be changed. He used the word sleep because people tend to think of death as being permanent, but sleep, guess what happens when someone goes to sleep? Someone in this house goes to sleep, what do they say? Wake me up in an hour.

Wake me up in 15 minutes. I'm just going to take a nap because it's temporary. It's not expected to last forever. Give me five minutes and I'll wake up. It's just a temporary thing.

That's what death is for the child of God. And we would do well if we thought of that more often. I'm not talking about soul sleep like some people think of. I'm talking about Death is temporary. When we put that person in the grave, that body in the grave, understand that's temporary.

You buy that cemetery plot for that loved one, that's not that we're buying it, we're renting it. That's temporary. They're not gonna be there forever. In fact, that's just their body. They're already with the Lord.

Our loved one is already with the Lord, but that body is going to come up out of the grave changed. And this change he's talking about, he said, we shall not all sleep, but we shall It's not going to happen right away. In other words, you put somebody in the grave, they might be there for a long time. And indeed, the history of the world has told us that they've been in the grave for a long, long time. Even now at this point, Paul has been in the grave, the Apostle Paul I'm talking about, he's been in a grave somewhere for some 2, 000 years.

Guess what? His body done decayed a lot. But someday, there's going to be a change to his body. And when that change happens, it's going to happen immediately. The way the Bible words are here, the way Paul wrote it, he said it's going to happen in a moment, Verse 52 says, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, the last trumpet, with cameras, Leah's big into cameras, so she'll know something about this, but there's such a thing as shutter speeds and there's all these things.

And you take a camera and you move it from one thing to another and it's the way that there's focuses and all of those things. The eye is amazing. God has designed the eye in such a way that cameras can't keep up with it. The way that your eye is designed to focus from far away to close up to move, and The movement of the eye is just quick. And the focus, the way it focuses, it's just amazing.

You ever stop and think about that? How amazing the eye is? And to compare it to a camera, cameras can't do what the eye can do. And you get a little bit of dust in the lens of a camera and it's all over. How much dust do you get in your eye and all that?

And just automatically all that gets cleared out and all those, it's just amazing how God has created the eye. And it all happens so quick. Even blinking through the day you blink and you don't even hardly think about it. You don't hardly notice. You imagine if you noticed every time you blinked how many car wrecks there would be on the road?

Like oh what happened? Sorry, I blinked I guess and just ran off the road or something, you know But you You can blink and all that stuff and you don't lose... When the eye is functioning right, it's just amazing. The movement of the eye, the way the eye operates is just quick. The movements of the eye, extremely rapid.

And what he's talking about here, when he says the twinkling of the eye, he's illustrating the sudden transformation of raptured believers. Somebody said, I wish I could be in the cemetery when Jesus comes back. I don't know how much everything is going to happen so quickly. I don't know how much you'll really be able to see, but you know, maybe, but... And I know the word rapture isn't found in the Bible, and I know there's some good brothers that have problems with that word, but while the word may not be there, the teaching is.

And one of those passages is here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and the other passage is over in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. Let's go over there for just a moment. The Church of Thessalonica was also troubled over these questions. 1 Thessalonians 4 versus 13 through 18. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus." The resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fact that He is alive, has practical implications in our lives. Christ is our hope in life and death, as the song said. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air so we shall always be with the Lord therefore comfort one another with these words." And so this promise of the coming Christ in the clouds to to call those who have died in Christ, those who are asleep, and then those who are alive and remain.

This is a great comfort to, this was a great comfort to the early Christians, and this ought to be a great comfort to us as well. And again, not just, not just at funerals, but for us to think about and to consider always. In fact, as Paul goes on in writing to the church at Corinth, he says some He says some things there in verses 53 through 57 that has always been one of my favorites of this passage. He says, for this corruptible must put on the incorruptible, this mortal must put on immortality. Talking about this change, he says, but when this corruptible puts on the incorruptible, this mortal puts on immortality, then will come about the word is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? Now the sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is excited about the thoughts of this future resurrection when death is finally and totally defeated. And you and I, we have victory over death in the grave.

We have victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Because He lives, we live. Because He rose from the grave, we will rise from the grave. And in this section, Paul actually is quoting from the Old Testament passages, Isaiah chapter 25 and verse 8. He will swallow up death for all time.

And Lord Yahweh will wipe tears away from all faces. He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth, for Yahweh has spoken. Hosea chapter 13 and verse 14. Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death?

Oh death, where are your thorns? Oshio, where is your sting? Compassion will be hidden from my sight. Death is personified and even taunted in these passages, almost as if it's nothing more than a little bee. You know, bees are a terrible thing if you're allergic to them or if you've never been stung.

But if you're not allergic to them, and once you've been stung by one and you realize that they're they're just bees, again if you're not allergic, if you're allergic, that's something else. But if you're not allergic, you get stung by a bee, you just remove the stinger and go on with your day. It hurts, but it won't, it's not the end of the world. Death For the child of God is no big deal. In fact, When we close our eyes in death, our bodies will remain here, but we'll already be with the Lord.

And these bodies will be buried in the ground and will be with our Lord until that time comes, that great resurrection, when we're given a new body. The sting of death, it is a sting, It does hurt. That sting is sin. That's what he says here. The sting of Death is sin.

The power of sin is the law. So the sting was the sin that was exposed by the law of God. But it's conquered. It's conquered not by us. No, no, it's conquered by Christ in His death.

Paul's second letter to the church of Corinth. 2 Corinthians 5. Verse 21. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." You see, We have the victory over the grave. We have the victory over death.

We have victory over sin because of Christ. So in that final verse, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul doesn't just end it there. I mean he could, he could have ended it there with these great thoughts of the life to come, but he doesn't. He ends it with verse 58, Because we could dwell on life to come, but there's still the here and now, you see. Therefore, knowing everything that we know about Jesus Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection, knowing everything we know about the resurrection of believers in our hope beyond the grave.

Therefore, my Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. So as we think about that, stand firm in your conviction of the resurrection. Don't waver in doubts or fears. Don't waver in opposition. There are skeptics out there.

There are troublemakers out there. Just like The Church of Corinth had them, so we've got them in our world. Be immovable. Stand in the Word of God. Resist the occurrence of false teaching and cultural drift.

Remain rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, stand on the Word of God, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Your labor is not in vain in the light of the coming glory no sacrifice is in vain as done We have hope beyond the grave. There is more to life than just the here and the now. Because He lives, we will also live. There is a Savior who died, was buried, rose again.

He is alive forevermore. His name is Jesus. The only way of salvation, the only way to be sure that when you die, heaven will be your home. As a Christian, nothing done in His name according to the scriptures is wasted in light of the coming glory and reward. Heaven is waiting for us, not because of anything good that we've done, but because of what He has done.

And we rejoice this morning over that. May God add the blessing to the preaching of his word. Let's be dismissed in prayer. I'll ask Isaiah would you Please pray for us.