The Turning Point
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
I’m going to mention a scenario that all parents will find familiar. You know you have to take your child somewhere they don’t want to go. Maybe you have to take them to the doctor for some shots, or you have some grown-up event they’ll find completely boring and you couldn’t get a sitter; or maybe they even have to sit and listen to a Baptist preacher. What do you do? If you’re like my wife and I and most other parents, you promise them something they can look forward to. You say something like,
“Listen, let’s just do this, and afterward, we’ll go get ice cream.” What are you doing, exactly? This isn’t bribery, although parents aren’t above that either. You’re not giving the kid a choice. What you’re doing is giving them hope. And our kids learn from the very beginning that you can withstand nearly anything if you have hope. We’re in a series right now about the unique kind of hope we have as Christians, and how that may be the very most attractive thing we have to offer people who don’t know Christ. As we seek to represent our Lord well in a culture that is increasingly non-Christian, we need to show them the hope we have. But back to the scenario of taking the kid to the doctor. In order for this to work, two things have to be true. First, the hope you offer has to be tangible . In other words, you have to offer the child something that he or she knows about, can relate to, and wants. You can’t just say, “Listen, buddy,
I’ll make this worth your while. Trust me.” Second, the hope has to be reliable . If you make a promise to your child and don’t keep it, if you are so busy after the doctor’s office you decide not to go get ice cream after all, they won’t believe you anymore. As the Proverb says Hope deferred saddens the heart .
The problem many people face today, the reason they don’t have hope, is because their hope isn’t tangible…just a general sense that “Maybe things will get better soon,” won’t work. And their hope isn’t reliable. They’ve put their hope in people and circumstances that haven’t worked out. They’ve given up.
Today, as we continue our look at 1 Corinthians 15, we’re going to see how our hope is in something tangible, and how we know it’s reliable.
When you read this passage, you sort of feel like you’ve walked into a debate that started thirty minutes ago, and that can be confusing. So let’s clarify what Paul is talking about here. V. 12 says,
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can you say there is no resurrection from the dead? Paul is writing to a church in the city of Corinth. At that time, there was a controversy; some of the members said, “There’s no such thing as the resurrection.” Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here: They weren’t saying that there’s no heaven, no afterlife. They were talking about a physical resurrection that we all will experience when Christ returns. In John 5:28, Jesus said , a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out
. That’s just one of many passages in

the New Testament that promise a bodily resurrection for all of us. And yet Jesus is the same man who as
He was dying on the cross told the thief dying next to Him, Today you will be with me in paradise. So what does this mean? Scripture clearly teaches that those who die in Christ are immediately with Him. 2
Corinthians 5 tells us that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Honestly, we don’t know much about what that will be like. We know Christ will be there, and sin won’t be, so it will be better than here. But we don’t know enough for us to have a living hope…that’s not tangible. But when
Christ returns and this old earth is replaced by a new earth, our bodies will be raised, and we will inhabit perfect, imperishable bodies for all eternity. In other words, God is promising us something tangible.
That’s where our hope is. Everyone who has ever suffered physically has said to themselves, “It would be so nice to be young again… or well again…or able to do stuff I can’t physically do.” When you say that, you’re expressing a longing for a hope that will only be fulfilled in Christ, and only when He returns.
Next week, we’ll take a look at what these new bodies of ours will be like, but for now, just know that’s what this passage is about. Some Corinthians believed that when we die, we spend eternity in an ethereal, disembodied existence, spirits floating in the ether. They didn’t have a tangible hope. We do.
Paul uses logic to show these Corinthians how wrong they are. He says if there’s no resurrection, then that means that even Jesus didn’t rise again. And if Jesus didn’t rise, Paul says, four things are true:
First, we’ve been preaching lies to you . In other words, the Gospel isn’t true. Second, your faith is in vain.
Forget being a Christian; it’s meaningless without the resurrection. Third, people who’ve died in
Christ are gone forever ; all the nice words we said at their funeral about how we’d see them again someday were just pie in the sky. And fourth, we are the most pathetic, pitiful people on Earth .
Remember, Christians in that era gave up a lot to follow Christ. It was costly to be a disciple. They had been rejected by their families, had suffered the loss of income because no one wanted to hire a Christfollower, faced judgment and ridicule on a regular basis; but if Christ didn’t rise again, it was all for nothing. Do you see what Paul is doing? He is saying that the resurrection of Jesus is the most important event in history. Your future and mine and the future of this planet hinges on whether or not a firstcentury Jewish rabbi stayed dead. And Paul gives us the answer. He says in v. 20, But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
That term “first fruits” goes back to the Old Testament, when God commanded the Israelites to give the firstborn of all of their animals, and the first part of their harvest, to Him. It was only a portion, but it was a way for them to be reminded that all that they owned belonged to Him. So in saying Christ was the first fruits of those who’ve died, he’s saying, “On that first Easter, Jesus rose again. But He’s just the first fruits. There’s a whole lot more where that came from.” So the real point of Easter is not just that Jesus was the Messiah
He claimed to be—although that’s an important part of it. And it’s not just proof that there is life after

death, although to that we say Hallelujah! Easter means that we will arise. It means that we will not spend eternity in some ethereal, disembodied Heaven like we see in movies. We won’t be absorbed into some larger consciousness, as some Eastern religions teach. No, we will inhabit a real Earth in real bodies. That is our tangible hope. And since Jesus rose again, it’s a reliable hope, too.
How do we know it’s reliable? Think for a moment about how other religions begin.
Mohammed said he was praying in a cave and Allah came and spoke to him. Mohammed managed to convince people of the truth of his message, and Islam was born. Joseph Smith said the angel Moroni gave him golden tablets with the book of Mormon inscribed on them. Smith says he copied those words down, and the angel took the tablets away. Gautama Buddha said, “I have discovered a Noble Eightfold
Path to perfect enlightenment.” Here’s the thing: You can’t evaluate any of those claims. You either believe them or don’t. Christianity is unique because it is the only religion based on a historical event that was witnessed by hundreds of people. But how do we know it actually happened? I have said that you can actually evaluate the authenticity of Christianity; if you want to dismiss the Gospel, you have to account for at least the following four things:
1) The empty tomb: As you surely know if you have lived most of your life above the surface of the earth, some people believe that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F Kennedy. For years, there was a rumor that Oswald wasn’t really buried in Ft Worth, but that it was instead the body of a
Russian agent in the tomb in front of his headstone. In 1981, with the permission of his widow, Marina,
Oswald’s body was exhumed, and dental tests confirmed that the body was indeed Oswald’s.
Remember, Christianity began in Jerusalem, the same city where Jesus was crucified and buried. The enemies of the Gospel message, the very same people who successfully arranged for Jesus to be crucified, could have easily squelched the movement. All they had to do was take people to the sealed tomb and say, “See? No one has come out of this tomb.” Or if they really wanted to be morbid, they could roll away the stone and bring out the remains of the poor crucified carpenter-rabbi. But they didn’t do that.
Why? Because the tomb was empty. Instead, they made up a story about His disciples stealing the body when the guards fell asleep.
2) The eyewitnesses: So, why not believe the story that the Sanhedrin told, about the disciples stealing the body? Because, as Paul says here, hundreds of people saw Jesus alive. This is why he goes to the trouble of naming them. He essentially says, “Most of them are still alive. Ask them.” Here’s something else regarding those eyewitnesses. Many of these people died for this belief. They were martyred for their faith. You might say, “So what? People die in the name of religion all the time.” Yes, people will die for what they believe to be true; no one dies for what they know is a lie. An idealistic young man may

believe a religious leader who says, “If you strap a bomb to yourself and through your death kill many infidels, you will have eternal bliss.” But these eyewitnesses weren’t trusting in the teaching or testimony of anyone else. They were arrested, condemned and commanded to renounce Christ, then killed in horrific ways, and not one of them said, “Wait! I made the whole thing up! Let me go!”
3) The authenticity of the accounts: Maybe you still aren’t convinced. Maybe you think these hundreds of eyewitnesses were able to hold onto a lie at the cost of their own lives because they were all delusional or just plain stubborn. As unlikely as that is, think about this: If they made the whole story up, why would they invent details which would be self-defeating? Why would they say that at His crucifixion, they all ran away like cowards? Why would they say He was buried by a member of the very same Sanhedrin who condemned Him as a criminal? Why would they say that the first eyewitnesses of the risen Christ were women? Women in that era were not considered trustworthy; their testimony was not considered in a court of law unless it was corroborated by the testimony of a man. And the woman the Gospels say was the first to see Christ risen was Mary Magdalene, well known for having been possessed by demons.
Why would they say they were baffled and terrified when they first saw Him risen? Why would they say some of them actually doubted? These all sound like true statements, not the words of a group of delusional psychopaths having a hallucination or stubborn con men who were making up a story.
4) The existence of Christianity: Again, when you study most major religions, it is easy to see why they spread. A charismatic leader emerges who claims to have a vision from God or a new way of thinking about the spiritual world. He appeals to pre-conceived ideas and values in his particular culture, and he does it so skillfully, people are convinced. But when Jesus died, charismatic as He was, He had only a few hundred followers. Yet within a few years, thousands of Jewish men and women had rejected their former ideas and values, instead accepting the message of this crucified rabbi. They stopped performing animal sacrifice, started worshipping on Sundays, and changed their views on Messiah, all of which broke thousands of years of tradition and ethnic identity. Early Christians took the bizarre step of centering their entire religious ritual around communion, which commemorated a crucifixion. Think about that. It would be like the admirers of Martin Luther King celebrating his assassination instead of talking about his civil rights work. This new religious movement, unlike Judaism and the polytheism of the Greeks and
Romans, wasn’t tied to any national identity. It was despised universally, by both Jews and pagans. Yet within 300 years, it became the official religion of the Roman empire. This is inexplicable apart from something supernatural happening. As NT Wright says, “The emergence of the church ripped a resurrection-shaped hole in history that the skeptical historian is powerless to stop up.”

Long ago, in the time of the French Revolution, a man named Lepeaux was determined that his new belief system was destined to replace Christianity as the official religion of France. He eagerly preached against hypocritical Christians and greedy bishops. He won a few followers, but not enough to register as a significant movement. Finally, he sought an audience with the eminent statesman
Talleyrand, who was well-known to be a critic of the church. Talleyrand gave this advice to Lepeaux: "It is no easy matter to introduce a new religion. But I will tell you what I recommend you do. I recommend you to be crucified and to rise again on the third day.”
What the world needs is a hope that is tangible. Jesus offers that, in the promise of a future world, a physical world in a physical body. The world also needs a hope that is reliable. Jesus proved in
His resurrection that He can back up His promises, and His resurrection is an incredibly well-attested historical fact. Is this tangible, reliable hope the hope of your life? took you on a crystal ball trip into your future and you saw with indubitable certainty that despite everything—your sin, your smallness, your stupidity—you could have free for the asking your whole crazy heart's deepest desire: heaven, eternal joy. Would you not return fearless and singing? What can earth do to you, if you are guaranteed heaven? To fear the worst earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny—less, a scratch on a sin, your smallness, your stupidity—you could have free for the asking your whole crazy heart's deepest desire: heaven, eternal joy. Would you not return fearless and singing? What can earth do to you, if you are guaranteed heaven? To fear the worst earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny—less, a scratch on a penny. Suppose God took you on a crystal ball trip into your future and you saw with indubitable certainty that despite everything—your sin, your smallness, your stupidity—you could have free for the asking your whole crazy heart's deepest desire: heaven, eternal joy.
Would you not return fearless and singing? What can earth do to you, if you are guaranteed heaven? To fear the worst earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny—less, a scratch on a penny.