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May 23, 2021

The Difference Resurrection Makes

The Difference Resurrection Makes

Passage: 1 Corinthians 15:50-58

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Let Us Not Mock God with Metaphor

It rings as a kind of truth to hear that the brevity and unpredictability of life warrants a certain posture toward life--one of urgency and intensity. How does the hope of resurrection both affirm that posture, but also challenge it?

Readings & Scriptures

PREPARATION: Habakkuk 3:17-19

LEADER: 17 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 

ALL: 18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. 19 GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.

 

PRAYER:  Victory                                             
LEADER:   O Divine Redeemer, Great is Thy goodness.
ALL: in undertaking our redemption.

LEADER:   Great is Thy wisdom,
ALL:  in devising this eternal means of salvation.

LEADER:   Great is Thy love,
ALL: in manifesting and fulfilling this great work.

LEADER: And great is Thy sovereign grace,
ALL: in giving the Spirit as Comforter, Teacher, and Transforming Power.

LEADER:   Bathe our souls in the rich consolations of life in You.
ALL: And lead us to love and serve one another by the power Your Spirit.

CENTRAL TEXT:     1 Corinthians 15:50-58

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in 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. 58 Therefore, 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.

BENEDICTION: 1 Corinthians 15:54-57

LEADER: 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. 

ALL: 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Related Scriptures

  • Psalm 23
  • Luke 6:38
  • Luke 20:35-36
  • John 3:3-6
  • John 20
  • 1 Peter 3:18-19
  • 1 John 2:28-3:4

Illustrations

InView Media 5.23.21 Album

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Any life lessons from your days as a teenager that most stood out? What were they and why do you think they stuck with you--whether just for a while or abide still?
  2. How does this passage suggest resurrection is far more than mere resuscitation? 
  3. Death--sting--law: what has Jesus done to death? How has death changed on account of Him?
  4. The last verse of the passage outlines certain things that follow from believing in the gift of resurrection. Why do you think those things follow? How do those things fit together?
  5. How is the gift of resurrection something that gives even now--before you near death?
  6. How does what resurrection promises either fit with or differ from those life lessons you heard at an earlier age?

QUOTES:

  • The world created by modern individuals to make themselves fully at home turns out to have made human beings less at home than ever.  - Peter Augustine Lawler
  • People, get ready
    There's a train a-coming
    You don't need no ticket
    You just get on board
    -     Curtis Mayfield
  • People are amazed that God, who made all things from nothing, makes a heavenly body from human flesh. . . .Is he who was able to make you when you did not exist not able to make over what you once were? -  Augustine
  • Can you not see death as a friend and deliverer? . . . What is there to be afraid of? . . .Your sins are confessed. . . . Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind. . . . Our Lord says to you, “Peace, child, peace. Relax. Let go. I will catch you.” - C.S. Lewis in a letter to a dying woman
  • Finally after hours of stumbling along,
    you see daylight ahead, a faint blue glimmer;
    air never looked so beautiful before.
    That is what I feel I’m waiting for:
    a faintest glimmer I am going to get out
    somehow alive from this. - Robert Lowell, “For Elizabeth Bishop, 3”