SERMON TITLE: The Resurrection Body SERMON REFERENCE: 1 Corinthians 15 LWF SERMON NUMBER: #2291 We are grateful for the opportunity to provide this transcript produced from a live sermon preached by Adrian Rogers while serving as pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. This transcript is intended for your personal, non-commercial use. Note: Though it has been transcribed from a version used for broadcast, it may contain stutters, stammers, and other authentic remarks as would be common in a live setting. In order to ensure our ability to be good stewards of Adrian Rogers’ messages, Love Worth Finding has reserved all rights to this content. Except for your personal, non-commercial use and except for brief quotations in printed reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means —electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other— without the prior permission of the publisher. Copyright ©2019 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc. Transcripts are used by permission of the Rogers Family Trust. PO Box 38300 | Memphis TN 38183-0300 | (901) 382-7900 lwf.org THE RESURRECTION BODY | 1 CORINTHIANS 15 | #2291 Would you be finding First Corinthians chapter 15, which is the resurrection chapter in the Bible, and we’re going to be thinking today about the resurrection body. There’s something very wonderful that’s going to happen to these bodies of ours. If you know Christian theology, you know that when a believer dies, his spirit goes immediately into the presence of the Lord. The Bible says in Second Corinthians 5:8, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord,” so you may have some loved one whose body is out yonder in the cemetery, but their spirit is with our Lord, rejoicing with Jesus, face to face, which the Bible says is far better. Dr. Rex Russell’s grandmother died and they had taken her down to the funeral home. They were going to have visitation, and they had her body laid out in a particular room. They were going down to view the body. Dr. Russell said to his little boy playing in the back yard, “Would you like to go with me?” And he said, “Great-grandmother has gone to Heaven, but we’re gonna go down and see her;” a little confusing to the boy. So he and the boy got in the car, and they went down to the funeral home and went into that room, and there she was. He looked at her for a while; he looked all around, looked back at her again and said, “So this is Heaven?” No, it wasn’t Heaven. No, the body stays here for a while to rest in the good clean earth until the resurrection, but there is coming a resurrection of the body. These literal bodies are going to be raised up. I heard about a man in England whose name was Solomon Peas and he died, and thought he’d have a little fun, so he had this put on his tombstone, “Beneath this sod and beneath these trees lies the body of Solomon Peas. But this ain’t Peas, it’s just the pod. Peas shelled out and went to God.” And that’s so good. This is just the pod that we live in, the Bible calls it, “Our earthly house,” but the Bible teaches that one of these days there will be a resurrection of the human body. Now look if you will in First Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 35, “But some man will say, ‘How are the dead raised up?’” Implying, how is that possible, and if it were possible, what would it be like? “How are the dead raised up,” speaking of the probability or the possibility of it, “and with what body do they come?” Questions about the resurrected body. So that’s what we’re gonna think about and friend, we’re thinking about you. If you’re a child of God, this is your future, so you need to pay attention. How are the dead raised up? Now some people think that this is scientifically impossible to have the resurrection of the human body. Well, friend, scientifically it may be; we’re not talking about science, we’re talking about Almighty God. Acts 26 and verse 8, Paul said to King Agrippa, who doubted the resurrection, and he said something with inexorable logic, he said, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?” Now he didn’t say that God ‘should’ raise the dead, but that ‘God’ should raise the dead. I mean, if you admit the fact of God, you won’t have any difficulty with miracles, Amen? Friend, listen. If you can get past Genesis 1:1 in the Bible, you won’t have any difficulty with the rest of it. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth.” If God can make the Heavens PAGE 2 Copyright ©2019 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc. Transcripts are used by permission of the Rogers Family Trust. THE RESURRECTION BODY | 1 CORINTHIANS 15 | #2291 and the earth out of nothing, certainly he can raise a human body out of something. Say, “Amen,” to that. I mean, “Why should it be thought a thing impossible with you that God should raise the dead?” Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great preacher of yesteryear, said, “Everything that God does is wonderful till you get used to it.” I mean, you think of all of the miracles. If you’ve never seen a seed before and then saw what a seed, you’d say, “That is incredible.” We’re just used to it. Everything that God does is wonderful until we get used to it. Now, there are five things I want us to learn about your body, your resurrection body. Number one, it is illustrated with grain, it is illustrated with grain. Look now in First Corinthians 15 verses 36 and 37. Paul begins to answer that question, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened,” the word quickened here means made alive, “except it die and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain; it may chance of wheat or some other grain.” Now Paul does not use just a mere seed here as an illustration, but a particular kind of seed; grain. He says that the resurrection is like grain, like wheat, that’s put in the ground, it dies, it rots, it decays, and then it fructifies and comes back as life. Now he didn’t say that it’s like an apple seed, an orange seed, an avocado seed, but he said it’s like grain. What is the difference? Well, in an apple, the fruit of an apple seed is an apple tree. But the fruit of a grain of wheat is another grain of wheat, exactly like it, so Paul is using a little exactitude here. He says, “It’s like grain;” you put grain in the ground, and it dies and then it comes back again, beautiful, wonderful, and brand new. You say, “Well, Adrian, that’s not a particularly good analogy, and here’s the problem with your analogy, Adrian.” Well number one, it’s not mine, it’s Paul’s, but here’s the problem with that. Your mind says, “You know, when a grain of wheat goes into the ground, it only appears to die, it decays, it rots, but there is a germ of life that stays in that seed and therefore, the seed reproduces. But when you’re dead, you’re really dead.” Wrong. There is a part of you, friend, that never dies. There is the spiritual nature in you that does not die. That’s the whole point of the thing. Jesus said in John 11 and verse 26, “He that lives and believes in Me shall never die.” Your ever-living spirit cannot die and that spirit is that which your resurrected body is going to be, raised up around and so don’t have difficulty with the idea that it is illustrated by a seed that rots, it is a wonderful, beautiful analogy. Now, somebody says, “But wait a minute, Pastor. How is that possible? I mean, you think about it, how the body, the human body disintegrates. Here’s a man who’s born in Florida and then he grows up, enlists in the army, he’s drafted and he goes overseas and he gets in a battle and he loses a leg to a land mine and the leg is buried somewhere overseas. And then the man comes back to the United States and he goes out, goes up to New York and he gets a job in a lumber mill and PAGE 3 Copyright ©2019 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc. Transcripts are used by permission of the Rogers Family Trust. THE RESURRECTION BODY | 1 CORINTHIANS 15 | #2291 cuts off a finger and leaves that finger there. And then he finally is called to be a missionary, and he goes to Africa and he dies in Africa and they bury him in Africa beneath an apple tree and the apple tree roots, reaches down and absorbs that man and turns what’s left of him into apples. And then the apples fall on the ground, a pig comes along and eats them. Now Pastor, where is he? Where is he? You tell me how God is going to raise him up?” Well, friend, don’t let that bother you.