Searching for Bedrock

 “Searching for Bedrock”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015

Text: I Corinthians 15:12-21 // Series: Messy Church

Good morning, friends.  My name is Brad, I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.  I want to invite you to take your seats as we continue with our worship gathering this morning.  And as we do, I want to remind you of a game from the past you may have played before.  Take a look at this commercial from the 80’s and see if it jogs your memory.  [VIDEO - 30 sec Jenga commercial]

Do you remember Jenga? (song: You take a block from the bottom and you put it on top, you take a block from the middle and you put it on top…)  Just try getting that song out of your head now! Oh, it’s catchy, isn’t it?! 

Now the key with the game of Jenga is getting and keeping a solid foundation.  You can take blocks out of the middle and put them on top but getting and keeping a solid foundation matters.  Good foundations matter in buildings, they matter in relationships, and they matter in life and in faith.  Now, if I was to ask you “What is the foundation for Christianity?” what would you say?  What is bedrock to being a person of faith who calls themselves a Christian?  Remember: just like with Jenga, the foundation your build your faith on matters.  If it’s shaky or wobbly, the whole thing has a tendency to be wobbly.  So what is the foundation of Christian faith? 

In the New Testament, one of the earliest statements of the foundation of Christianity is found in the book of I Corinthians.  In chapter 15, one of leaders of the early church a man by the name of the Apostle Paul is writing and he sums up the foundation of Christianity in this way:

I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said.

“He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.” I Corinthians 15:4

The foundation of Christian faith is laid out here for us.  That which is most important, which is rooted in the truth of the Old Testament scriptures and in historically verifiable events – that on the very first Good Friday, Jesus Christ was nailed to a Roman cross; put to death by professional executioners.  Then he was buried in a borrowed tomb and guarded by career soldiers.  But on the very first Easter Sunday morning, Jesus was raised from the dead by the power of God just as the Scriptures had said.  Here’s the point Paul is making: You can take out a lot of other blocks or doctrines or events or statements and move them around from the middle to the top – there are non-foundational or secondary things when it comes to Christian belief & practice.  But what Paul is saying here in quoting this ancient Creed is that the events of that first Easter weekend are bedrock for everything else that preceded it in the Old Testament witness and everything that followed it – from the story of the early church, to events that impacts your life & mine. The life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. 

So it might surprise you to discover that just a few verses later in that same text, Paul has to inquire why some people are calling themselves Christians but are not really interested in believing this resurrection business to be true.  There are those just a few short years following the first Easter who are already saying “I want to believe in Jesus and believe that He was / is a good moral teacher and an example to follow, but I don’t think I can believe in this whole resurrection from the dead thing”.  If you are a person who wrestles with doubts, you might find comfort in knowing that your voice & your questions are reflected right in the text of the Bible. 

Sometimes we can default to thinking of “Christian” as monolithic category.  That despite all their diversity theologically, culturally and historically perhaps Christians could at least get it together for 2 minutes to agree on some core, foundational truths.  Jesus’ death, burial & resurrection.  Whether you are Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox… Doesn’t matter your denomination, your tribe, your geography, your placement in history, when you celebrate Easter… you might think that all Christians in all times at all places have seen these things as bedrock.  You would be mistaken.  Because just like today, the earliest churches in the New Testament also had disagreements.  Some of them were really messy. One of the very earliest arguments we get a window into here in I Corinthians 15 is the topic of Jesus’ resurrection.    

This morning, we are launching a brand new teaching series in the book of I Corinthians called “Messy Church”.  I think it’s an appropriate way to celebrate Jericho Ridge’s Birthday.  This congregation was launched 10 years ago today on Easter Sunday 2005 in the cafeteria across the parking lot at RE Mountain - so happy birthday to all of you.  We already ate today to there’re be cake at the baptism BBQ in June.  But it’s intriguing how milestones can cause us to get sentimental and think back to a kinder, gentler, easier time in JRCC’s history where we seemingly agreed on everything.  Or we can look back at a time in church history and idealize it and think “boy, they seemed to sure have it going on in the book of Acts – how come we don’t see that kind of thing today?” 

But what we often don’t account for in our idealistic distortion is that the church is messy.  It always has been.  It always will be.  Church is messy because relationships are messy.  It’s messy because mission is messy and complicated. It’s messy because the Church – this church – is filled with people whose lives and histories and futures and beliefs and styles and cultural understandings and spiritual journeys are all messy… Living together in community is messy.  So the Apostle Paul writes a series of letters to a messy church in an ancient city called Corinth and we’re going to look at his advice & challenges to them and how it applies to each of us. 

We’re actually going to “cheat” and start at the end of I Corinthians, because that’s’ where Paul talks about Easter – but then we’ll go back to chapter 1 and from now till the end of June, we’ll be tackling messy topics like human sexuality, gender and leadership in the church, how to handle disagreements with other people, is it right to judge other people and what do we do with some of the messier spiritual gifts like tongues & prophecy.  It’s going to be fun, but I can also promise that it will get messy! 

Let’s dive into our text for today.  Turn with me in your Bibles or on your phones to the book of I Corinthians 15.  The first messy controversy that Paul wants to address is around the topic of the resurrection.  Let’s look at I Corinthians 15:12-18, I’ll be reading from the NLT   [3 Scripture slides]  

At the beginning of this chapter, we saw laid out what Paul said was of foundational importance for all who profess Christ as Lord and who name themselves Christians – that being Jesus’ life, death, burial, resurrection.  But then hold it… look more closely at verse 12: “some of you are saying that there is no resurrection from the dead”.  So they didn’t agree on everything!  Even something as foundational as this!  It was messy even back at the start of the church!  But notice what Paul does.  He helps them work out the logical extent of this argument and where it leads. 

So he starts by saying “let’s pretend what you say is true and that there is no resurrection.  No life after death. You get to your last breath and it is lights out and then nothing.  What would that mean for Christianity?”  Paul says “if that is true and there is no resurrection, no life after death, then Jesus could not have come back to life after his death.”  But here’s the first problem we bump into – the problem of saying that you are a Christian but not believing what Christians believe as foundational to Christian faith.  Paul points out that if they say there is no resurrection, this would in effect nullify their past faith.  Why?  He reminds them that The Corinthian Christians had based their faith in Christ on the preaching of the Good News which included Jesus’ life, death, burial, resurrection! 

So if you throw out the resurrection, you are throwing out both the baby and bathwater.  Look at what Paul has just said in 15:1-2

“Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand firm in it. It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place!” (15:1-2)

Paul says effectively “I came to you, I told you about the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.  And you responded by saying “yes and amen”! I believe that what you are telling me is true and I will base my life on it.  These people responded by willingly and willfully placing their whole trust and the direction of their lives into the hands of Almighty God. “You guys welcomed that truth and built a foundation upon it.  But now some of you are saying “there’s no resurrection?” but still wanting to say “but I trust Jesus?!”  That doesn’t work.”  You have to base your life and your faith on something, and if it’s faith in Jesus, then it will be based on the reality of His life, death & resurrection.  You can’t deny Jesus’ resurrection but still say you have faith and confidence in Him. 

New Testament scholar and theologian Gordon Fee is his excellent but very, very thick commentary on I Corinthians puts it pretty bluntly: “To deny the resurrection of the dead is to deny the resurrection of the One who makes any and all resurrections possible” (Fee).

So let’s go a step further and personalize this for you and me and ask a foundational question: “What is your faith based on?”  If you claim that you are a Christian, what is the foundation of your understanding that you are a Christian?  For some in our world, it is cultural – a sense that if I was born in a country that has a lot of Christian influences or heritage or a lot of Christians in it, then I am, by default or by osmosis, a Christian.  But look carefully at those verses – there’s an active element essential there.  Not only in the preaching, but also in the receiving – you welcomed it, Paul says.  You believed it.  You embraced it.  Friends, don’t miss this.  You don’t become a Christian any other way. You don’t’ become a Christian because you grew up in a Christian household with Christian parents and grandparents and great-great grandparents.  You aren’t a Christian because you went to a Christian school or because you go to church.  You don’t get to be a Christian because you have a Mennonite or Dutch or German last name – that doesn’t’ get you anything except the invitation to spell it out for people over and over again these days! 

Faith – Christian faith - is based on an active choice to believe that Jesus is who He said He is and He did what He said he was going to do. 

Friend, my deepest hope for you today is that if you have not yet done so, that you would make that active choice.  I’m going to give you fair warning that at the end of this talk, I am going to lead you in a prayer and I want you to wrestle with it and consider making that choice here today before you leave.  The way to lay a fresh and firm foundation in your life is clear: Romans 10:9 says “if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord & believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved!” 

There’s a clear logical implication that I don’t’ want you to miss and that is this: You cannot be a Christian and not believe in life after death. 

Sometimes Christians think there is an incompatibility with our culture –believing in life after death, isn’t that a bit, well “out there” for such a modern, rational, scientific, developed culture such as ours?  This past week, I was intrigued to see a brand new Canadian study conducted by the Angus Reed Institute entitled “Religion in Canada”. Pollsters surveyed thousands of people across the country and from perspectives on questions of a religious nature and what they found might surprise you. 

Some of the stats were quoted in this week’s issue of Maclean’s magazine.  Listen to what the author says: “However polarized we may be on certain questions, there are some surprising beliefs shared by many Canadians.  The percentage of people who believe it’s possible to communicate with the dead has doubled over the past three decades, up to 42 percent… up to 1/3 of Canadians believe they will be reincarnated.”(Macleans, Society, April 13 2015 “Hallaujah! A Whole New Flock)

It’s fascinating to see that despite the tone of dialogue and some of the perceptions around religion and religious people in our culture today, there is still a sense that Christians share some foundational convictions with those who do not identify as Christians.  Surprisingly, some aspects of belief have held very firm… And one of them is on the topic of life after death.  The Angus Reed survey went on to note that “Some two-in-three (66%) Canadians acknowledge that they believe in life after death – virtually the same proportion as in the mid-70s.”

On top of this [Bar Graph SLIDE] Almost 80 % of people across all age categories think often or somewhat often about what happens about life after death 

Friends, this is deeply intriguing.  2 out of 3 people in Canada believe in life after death and 8 out of 10 of your neighbours, acquaintances, school mates, relatives across all age categories are wondering from ‘sometimes to often’ about what happens after their own death.  It makes me wonder if Christians are shying away from a topic that the rest of our culture is actively wanting to talk about.

At some points in its history, the church has gotten caught in the messy trap of only emphasizing the moral dimensions of Christianity: Of saying things like “Jesus will make you into a better person” but friends, this is not what Christianity is founded on.  It is founded in an historical event – the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We can’t escape or deny the foundation of the resurrection and still call ourselves Christians. 

This is bedrock stuff.  Bottom-block Jenga kind of stuff, friends.  We can disagree about a whole ton of things and still live together in God’s messy family called the church, but if you throw this one out, you are building your life and faith on some foundation, but it certainly isn’t the teachings of the Apostles and prophets and the story of Jesus revealed to us in the Bible.  The resurrection is the ground zero of our faith – everything else builds on this solid foundation. If you take away the resurrection: it ALL FALLS DOWN

And that’s what Paul turns his thinking to next in this discussion.  He says listen, if there is no resurrection that first Easter, not only is your foundation of your faith off, your past faith nullified, but Problem #2 – This really, really undermines your present life!  Building Christianity on a foundation of being a moral or good person is untenable because if Jesus is still dead, then this Makes faith useless (we are still dead in our sins) – This is what Paul is saying in verse 17.      

“Face it—if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors... And if Christ weren’t raised, then all you’re doing is wandering about in the dark, as lost as ever.”  

If nothing happened to Jesus – nothing has happened or is happening to you at a spiritual level.  If Jesus is still dead, you shouldn’t believe God hears or answers prayers, you shouldn’t believe transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit is possible… If Jesus is dead, faith is dead.  

On top of that, not only is your faith useless, you’re lying to yourself and to everybody around you.  This really Taints credibility of witness (because we are liars).  Look at verse 15And we apostles would all be lying about God-for we said that God raised Christ from the grave.”  

Paul says everyone you talk to about Christianity and God, you are a liar because it’s not true.  Not only are you a liar, but you are making God out to be a liar and you get the sense that Paul is kind of offended because that would also mean that the Corinthians are making HIM and all those who were eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Jesus liars.  If Jesus is dead and you’re going around calling yourself a Christian, you got a lotta nerve!    

You’re also a little bit crazy, because if Christianity isn’t true, then this 

Mocks sacrifices you are currently making for Jesus.  Why serve people who are poor like our team did in Guatemala, why give money away, whyshow up on Sunday mornings?  Paul, who was actively persecuted for his faith – you can read about his life in the book of Acts in the NT he asks “Why should we risk our lives?”  (I Corinthians 15:30)

British journalist A.N. Wilson grew up in what he describes as a moderately secular British home in the 1950’s. He wrote an article in yesterday’s edition of the Daily Mail newspaper in the UK.  Wrestling with how to celebrate Easter - bunnies and chocolate vs. going to church he writes “We can easily dismiss Easter as a fairytale — especially if we hide from ourselves the uncomfortable fact that the first men and women who claimed to be witnesses to Easter were prepared to be tortured and to die horribly rather than deny the risen Christ. We think we are justified in shutting Easter out of our lives because we cannot believe unlikely stories about a man rising from death. But the truth is what deters most of us from contemplating Easter is not the thought of Christ’s death, but our own. How much easier it is just to sit on the sofa and eat chocolate”

This is the final problem that the Paul is speaking to here in this text: That if Jesus didn’t experience resurrection, ain’t nobody gonna experience resurrection.  15:19 says “If our hope in Christ is only for this life, that we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.”  This is where I love verse 20 – “But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.”  Not But if.  But in fact.  Friends, these are the most powerful, beautiful, hope-filled words that have been uttered in all of human history.  They are worth committing to memory as a foundational building block for you.  I like the succinct way that Paul puts the same thing in Romans 8:11 so that’s our Bible Memory Challenge for this week – this is a short one, but a good one: Say it with me all together out loud: “Yet God raised Jesus to life!  God’s Spirit now lives in you, and He will raise you to life by His Spirit

One of the foundational promises of resurrection is that God has offered to those who place their trust in Him freedom from the penalty of sin, all of the wrong things that you and I have done and the good things we have left undone. If we are honest with ourselves, each of us lives with shame, guilt, and fear that follows us through our lives from birth to death.  Most of the time, we would much rather sit on the couch and eat chocolate than think about these things.  All of us live with things that have the power to grip and govern and destroy our lives.  But the message of the resurrection is that there is forgiveness of sins and abundant life that has the possibility of beginning now and going on into eternity because of what Jesus has done.  Because He is alive and has defeated death, so you and I can live with confidence and hope and peace and joy and life.  Ron and team are going to come and lead us in songs that express these truths.  And as we do so, I want to close with three quick implications and applications:

Implication and Application:

1. If it’s true, you have wrestle with it – you have to build your life on something.  For myself, and millions of others, we have found the truth of the resurrection to be a firm foundation for life.  That gives purpose, meaning and hope for the future.  I want that for you.  I want you to pray with me in a minute. If you are not ready, don’t pray just to make me happy.  Keep wrestling with this – it is a serious commitment to make to turn your life over to God, but it is life to the fullest.

Second word is for those who are people of faith.  This Easter, would you renew your commitment with me that   

2. If it’s true, you’ll want to share it – There youth in our city who are lost on the margins, join us in serving dinner on April 22.  There are neighbours that are new that need a genuine and hospitable welcome.  Between Easter and Christmas, step up and be bold – share with 2 other people about your faith in Christ and what He means to you.

Because  

3. If it’s true, you have to live like it 

The resurrection gives us bold hope to live our lives secure in the knowledge that ultimately, death will not have the last word.  The last word spoken over your life if you place your trust in Jesus and live in the power of the Spirit is victory.  Verse 57 of this chapter 15 closes this way “But Thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our lord Jesus Christ!”  We have a prayer team – they would love to pray with you for areas of you life that you need hope in.  You need a trusted friend to walk with you…  I am going to pray with those who want to trust Christ with their whole lives this morning and we’ll sing as we close. 

Let me pray with you.