1 Corinthians 15:1-26 Pew bibles p. 1155

The last enemy who will be destroyed is death . Sunday 12th April 2019

How do congregations change?

Some Easter sermons… On Easter day, the world takes a better turn The Resurrection is the divine inspiration for us, giving us the strength and courage to emulate Jesus Peter is a symbol of human weakness; his discovery of acceptance and forgiveness is personified in the idea of the risen Jesus In their table fellowship after the Crucifixion, the heartbroken disciples gradually came to sense that Jesus was still with them The early Christians came to believe that love is stronger than death. The disciples came to believe that Jesus lives forever in the faith of those who trust his message

Our Context

1 Cor 15.3-5 Jesus Christ died. He was dead and buried. On the third day he was raised from the dead. He appeared to the disciples.

Our Horizon Changes “if the Christian hope of heaven is an illusion, based upon lies, then it must be abandoned as misleading and deceitful. But if it is true, it must be embraced and allowed to transfigure our entire understanding of the place of suffering in life”. Alistair McGrath

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. Heb 2.14-15

the importance of Jesus’ resurrection is not that it somehow proves there is life after death in a general sort of way. What it proves is that God keeps his promises: … The violent and terrible death of Jesus does not stop God from giving what he wants to give, giving consistently and steadily. If Jesus is raised, we can count on the faithfulness of God

[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.

He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him therefore beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain” (1 Cor 15.58).

we have platonized our eschatology; we have moralized our anthropology and we have paganized our soteriology

The last enemy who will be destroyed is death . Sunday 12th April 2019

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, The love of God And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Be with us all, ever more Amen