Stewardship of God’s Gift of Salvation: He Is Alive!
Passage: I Corinthians 15:3-8, 12-22, 54-58
I am not a fan of hip-hop rap music, the style is too fast for my old ears, but there is one excellent Christian exception, Shai Linne. He was an atheist who converted about 20 years ago, became a solid Reformed Christian, and does Christian hip-hop and rap music. One of his raps is called Jesus is Alive in which he powerfully drives home how all the famous people we have ever heard of, all the greatest people in history, all our heroes are all dead.
Nero is dead, Constantine is dead
Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun are dead
Alexander the Great is dead
Napoleon and Henry VIII are dead
Saddam Hussein is dead
Osama bin Laden, Idi Amin.
Elvis is dead, Picasso is dead
Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin are dead
Marilyn Monroe is dead
Princess Di and John Lennon are dead
FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan
Billy Graham, Mother Teresa
Martin Luther, John Calvin, C.S. Lewis
Plato is dead, Socrates is dead
Aristotle and Immanuel Kant are dead
Neitzsche and Darwin are dead
Buddha is dead, Mohammed is dead
Confucius and Ghandi are dead
Pharaoh is dead, Cyrus is dead
Darius and Nebuchadnezzar are dead
Caesar is dead, Herod is dead
Ananias, Caiaphas and Judas are dead
Pontius Pilate is dead
In the entire history of mankind, all the prophets, priests and kings, all the poets, preachers and philosophers, all the scholars, academics, and rocket scientists, all the religious leaders, political leaders, business leaders, military leaders, spiritual leaders, all our heroes, all are dead.
Only once in history has someone died and been laid in a tomb and then walked out of a tomb and never returned to the grave. Of the billions of people who have walked on this planet and then died, only once has someone come back from the dead and never died again. Only once.
So it makes sense that that one singular event would be a defining moment in all of human history. It makes sense that that one person should have our undivided attention.
If all the chapters of the Bible were a mountain range certain chapters would tower above others. Psalm 23, the shepherds psalm; Isaiah 53, the suffering servant; Matthew 5-7, Sermon on the Mount; I Corinthians 13, the love chapter; and I Corinthians 15, the New Testament’s longest and most detailed treatise on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul in this great chapter on the resurrection challengings those who don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead and he drives home several points. Let me highlight three.