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Tag: resurrection

Is Your Faith Futile?

If in Christ we have hoped in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

1 Corinthians 15:19

Walk up to an unbeliever and tell them, ‘Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.’

What will they think? What will they say?

Will an unbeliever have hope in the resurrection? It is an issue that Paul addresses in writing to the church at Corinth.

We have just celebrated ‘Resurrection Sunday,’ which the world knows as Easter from ‘traditions;’ however Paul addressed the same questions one might ask you: questions like, ‘Is your faith futile?’

Isn’t your faith in the resurrection of a man from the dead (Jesus OR you or me…) rather useless and impractical?

In a word, NO. Paul’s missing question (for unbelievers) would be:

Do you believe in God?

(Remember that Paul is writing to the church. We believe in God. Right?

IF yes; then all things are possible with God. [Matthew 19:26, Mark 9:23, Mark 10:27]

The Resurrection of the Dead

1 Corinthians 15 (English Standard Version)

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

So IF you believe in God, AND IF you believe the Bible is God’s word; do you believe that Jesus Christ is raised from the dead?

13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

STOP here for a moment. Do you believe in God? YES. Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? NO.

(This is what some believe who claim God, but refuse to believe that God would send his only Son to the Cross as a living, human sacrifice for your sins and for mine.) Here is what unbelievers (and some with false claims as christians believe:

NO, God created man to live and die. Live for this day as God would wish.

NO judgment, NO hell, no accountability for sin beyond the grave… WE believe in a God of history, but not a God of the present (or of our future). We may believe in a Jesus of history, too. But our soul dies with our body. No resurrection.

Paul goes on about the gospel (Good News), as if it too were a lie.

15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

It always comes back to that issue of SIN, doesn’t it?

Does GOD require a sacrifice for sin? Shall a mere man suffer consequence for sin at the hand of God?

Is God just? OR is God merciful to all (with justice for none)?

IF there is NO resurrection and NO eternal life; THEN life has no more meaning than a measurement of a man’s time and death no more meaning than the end of a meaningless life.

18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Is there no difference in the soul of a Christian and the soul of one who will not believe God?

Do the dead lie in the ground with lifeless souls rotting with bones and flesh?

OR

Does the soul find rest? Does the soul find sleep? (While the seed of flesh and blood waits in the ground for the germination of new Life of the resurrection?

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

And now Paul refers to our sin, for which Christ paid the ransom of His Life on the Cross.

21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Yes, the Resurrection of Christ Jesus is Good News! He IS the Lord over life, as He IS the Lord over death. The Cross would not be necessary without sin; as the resurrection would not be possible without Christ.

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

HE IS RISEN! Our faith in Christ Jesus as our Lord stands on the proof and evidence of Scripture. Our faith in the resurrection is not in vain; for we are not our flesh and bones, but living souls: born again in Christ Jesus our risen Lord!

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 (and beloved sisters in the Lord), be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

April 21, 2014
Three Widows & a Widower
Fifteen years ago I became a widower. (We had been married more than two decades.) I know personally the loss of the widow (& widower).

Jesus spoke of three widows:
1. one, in a parable on the persistence of prayer to God
2. one, of an unnamed widow who sacrificed only two mites to God at the Temple (leptons or half-farthing, worth less than half of one cent)
3. and one, a familiar widow from scripture.
Jesus’ illustrations were not so much about what Christ followers must do for widows.

Jesus uses these widows to demonstrate faith to us.

Jesus’ rebuke here is how God used a faithful widow who was NOT part of the family of God (Israel). He spoke to the people of his own hometown, Nazareth, were Jesus was rejected.

Let the church remember our widows and widowers, that Christ might not need to site the faith of an unbeliever to christians.

Luke 4:25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.

1 Kings 17

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Widow of Zarephath

8 Then the word of the Lord came to him, 9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10 So he arose and went to Zarephath.

And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks.

Suppose you could only gather sticks to cook some food (what little they had) during a drought. Enter the Prophet of God, Elijah.

And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.”

The widow humbly obeys, as she would her deceased husband or any man of authority.

11 And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

Now this destitute woman challenges the bold request of this strange man.

12 And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”

13 And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said…

(‘Good. I’ll be done with this bothersome stranger,’ she must have thought, ‘and return to my misery.’)

The widow’s son is obviously unable to gather firewood, perhaps because he is only a boy in need of everything (as children must depend on father and mother for everything).

Yet the man of God continues:

… But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son.

14 For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’”

For thus says the Lord…

A command to be obeyed (only IF the man is a true Prophet of the Lord God of Israel).

15 And she went and did as Elijah said.

Time passes, but the provision of God does not.

And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16 The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

More time passes.

17 After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. And his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. 18 And she said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God?

Once more the woman is bold because God has taken the life of her son.

She continues:

You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!”

How inexplicable had been the death of his father to the widow’s young son.
- How great the loss of a mother or father to a young child.
Yet with the help of the Prophet, she has raised her son through her grief; and before her grief is ended her son also dies.
- How tragic to lose your husband.
- How sorrowful to lose your wife.
- How unexpected and hopeless is the untimely death of your own child: the flesh and blood of you own womb; the joy of your own seed!
19 And he said to her, “Give me your son.”

And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged, and laid him on his own bed. 20 And he cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?”

Elijah is crying out to the Lord in prayer. The Man of God is pleading for the life of this son even as his mother has plead to the Man of God in her bold faith.

21 Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”

22 And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. 23 And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother.

And Elijah said, “See, your son lives.”

24 And the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”

RESURRECTION! Bodily resurrection and the resurrection of the soul: both are possible! Both have been witnessed. Both require great faith, as the widow has shown.

The widow of Zarephath had said of Elijah: “Now I know that you are a man of God;” however before she knew it, she had great faith.

Along comes Jesus to His neighbors in Nazareth and it seems that (like many of us) that they have very little faith.

IF a man came to you and asked for your last morsel of bread, would you give it even to Jesus?

Matthew 25:

35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…

42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food,

I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me,

naked and you did not clothe me,

sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’

45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal.

Have you remembered the widows?

The widowers?

Those dejected by the trials of this earthly life?

Perhaps you are gathering your last sticks for the hopeless situation of your family and along comes one asking you for your last morsel of bread.

How will you answer?

Will you have faith?
April 10, 2014
Sanctuary

Some refer to the ‘place’ where the church shares in corporate worship as family of Christ Jesus as “the sanctuary.” (Of course, the “church” is the worshipers.)

Exodus 25:8 KJV And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.

The place may be worthy of the grandeur of the Living God or the place may be so humble as a servant’s living room; never-the less, where two or more are gathered in Jesus’ Name, we gather together in His sanctuary.

Let the worshipers of Jesus our Lord come to the sanctuary of His Holy Presence.

Sanctuary is a peaceful word for souls distracted by sin, hearts gathering safely into the worship of our Savior, Christ Jesus.

Sometimes (like Jesus: in the wilderness… in a place away from the crowds… in a garden or olive grove… in Gethsemane…) we must get away from ALL of the DISTRACTION and noise of the world.

Let the faithful enter into the sanctuary of our Father’s rest.

It may be an empty sanctuary; perhaps a prayer closet; maybe a place in the woods where few feet tread. Maybe you just drive to a place where the lights and noise of the city fade from your rear view mirror into unending scene of mountain or seashore, stream or meadow.

Peace. Sanctuary. A place and a time with God alone: we must find it. We much make a place for it. We must take time for it.

Some crave the sanctuary and relationship of this time with God.

It is more than just meditation. It is more than just talking to yourself. It is more than memories and more than planning ahead. It is much more than just asking what… or asking ‘WHY?’

Sanctuary is our place of PRAYER.

Sanctuary is that HOLY PLACE where God’s Presence hears and answers our prayers of faith.

I was once one of many Christian tourists surprised to discover that many first century Christians in Rome worshiped in the sanctuary of the catacombs, burial places of the dead.

There they could not only meet safely out of sight of their persecutors, but there too (when corporate worship was no longer safe in their homes, as is the case in MANY places in 21st century China, most Arab countries and much of the continents of Africa and Asia), no doubt Christians found in this place to where our dust does return: a sanctuary.

After having spent some hours of several days for many years praying to God in the ‘memorial gardens’ we call the ‘cemetery,’ I find sanctuary and peace in knowing that this is NOT the place where our soul will reside, but a time of rest for our wearied flesh.

Will the dust of your wearied soul bow down to worship the Lord? Will your aching bones and soiled flesh be cleansed in His overflowing love?

Will you invite His peace to dwell in your heart?

Would you have sanctuary in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior?

I pray for this: for you and for others of His dear loved ones.

Turn from our distractions of the flesh and embrace the peace of Christ Jesus.

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

John 11:25-26

April 8, 2014