Word of Salvation – Vol.52 No.16 – April 2007
We’ve Only Just Begun!
A Sermon by Rev Sjirk Bajema
on Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 22
Scripture Reading: Corinthians 15:35-58
Brothers and sisters, boys and girls…
Now here’s a real mystery. In a religion filled with mysteries here’s one to top them all! The Bible’s teaching on the resurrection of the body seems so mind-boggling and faith-demanding! Even the language and phrases Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15 are hard to understand.
Paul knows it is a difficult doctrine, and yet it is absolutely fundamental. The fact that Paul spends so much time on the resurrection of the body in a letter that is full of other doctrines shows how crucial this truth is. It’s not simple, but it must be absolutely basic. Christianity stands or falls with the resurrection.
It is no coincidence that churches throughout the ages have often first slipped on their way to liberalism through getting the resurrection wrong. It is hard. But it must be clear.
Congregation, let’s recognise this as we consider the Lord’s teaching in three ways: Firstly: IT’S REALLY NOT MUCH YET…
Secondly: THOUGH IT GETS YOU SET…
and Thirdly: FOR THE GLORY YOU WILL GET!
So, just how do you teach something we cannot fully know yet? Perhaps if you picture it – you know, use a simple illustration to make it clearer. That’s exactly what Paul does when he answers the questions that were being asked: “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”
Well, Paul replies with a straight-forward illustration. In 1 Corinthians 15:16-17 he writes, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow you don’t plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.”
Congregation, a seed. That’s what you are now. Not much? No – a seed really doesn’t look so impressive. But it’s a very good way to show what our lives in Jesus Christ are like right now! Paul didn’t have the knowledge we have today about DNA cells, and how they in their tiniest form contain the whole pattern for living things. But Paul did know, as he says in verse 38, “But God has given its body just as he determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.”
A seed. Something so small – so seemingly insignificant. Yet it’s got a whole plant there! Isn’t that so mysterious? How can we expect something to become such a big and beautiful plant when it’s such a dried up seed now? IT’S REALLY NOT MUCH YET.
You know, it takes a kind of faith to plant that seed. You have to believe in something you can’t yet see when you put that seed in the ground.
How about it boys and girls? I’m sure you’ve done that kind of experiment at school or home or somewhere! Don’t you wonder if it will really work? As you hold those seeds in the palm of your hand, can you honestly see them as long, lush, plants? They’re just seeds!
That’s what our Catechism says, too. Answer 58 begins about the article concerning “life everlasting” in the Apostles’ Creed, “Even as I already now experience in my heart the beginning of eternal life…” The beginning of! Not the end of! Not the half way of! Not even a small part of! No – “the beginning of.”
It’s the tiniest indication of how great everlasting life will be! But just this little bit gives you a taste of what’s going to happen later! As Romans 14:17 says, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
How does that seed look? It’s whole; it’s got its own shape and size; you can even tell roughly what kind of plant or tree it will be (at least, a seed expert can). All that from just looking at the seed. Now, isn’t that what your seed of faith shows so well! What – no? Not exactly all the time? And even when you do try it’s hard to tell?
Dear believer, doesn’t our seeming lack of progress also show IT’S REALLY NOT MUCH YET? For you can feel you’re really getting stuck into the things of the faith, and yet it’s just a small bit. Even if you’re the busiest believer around, you know that it’s only a small part of the obedience that God requires of us.
Do you believe that? Can you see that for all the good a believer does, yet it’s only a beginning – and a small one too! – a small beginning of this trip down eternity’s lane?
But even if IT’S REALLY NOT MUCH YET, we must also see, in the second place, IT GETS YOU SET. Here is our second point: IT’S REALLY NOT MUCH YET , THOUGH IT GETS YOU SET.
Here the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones are most apt: “Life here is earth’s preparatory school for heaven’s university.” This is kindergarten compared with the great tertiary complex above!
Boys and girls, you’ve taken that seed and planted it. It’s buried. It’s all underground. You can’t see a thing! And who’s rushing out there every morning to see if anything’s grown? Why – you are, of course! You’re waiting so anxiously. Will it come? Yes, you’re pretty sure it will come. But you want to know when. Even better – you want to be there when it happens!
That’s the wonderful thing about “the resurrection of the body.” You’re waiting for it to happen! Like Paul says in Philippians 3:20-21, “Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
Notice how Question 57 of the Catechism asks, “How does ‘the resurrection of the body’ comfort you?” Comfort. Not comfortable, not cosy, not feeling nice and soft.
Comfort. This is about hope. The hope! The way of the Holy Spirit which motivates us to always be looking to heaven – to what we will become. So powerful that we can always be heavenly-minded! Perhaps you’ve heard an expression sometimes said about a Christian, “Oh, he’s so heavenly-minded he’s of no earthly use!” Well, that saying is quite wrong. In fact, the more we live with and experience the comfort that one day we will be in heaven, the more we will experience a difference to our lives right now!
Perhaps that’s the most tragic thing about Christian churches in our age. Rather than look to the great future we have, and who’s giving it to us, we become bogged down with our present situations, and with trying to make our own way through! They forget what the apostle John says in 1 John 3:2, that “what will be has not yet been made known.”
Instead of focussing on future glory, Christians allow the world to push them its way. The advertisements in the paper and magazines, the commercials on TV and the radio, they all say, “You can have it now!” We see that in the so-called ‘health and wealth’ churches who preach that since you’re saved you should have all the benefits right now. And then there are all those so-called Christian speakers and books which tell us about ‘self-fulfilment’, how to find your own potential, and promising us the answer to our low self-esteem. It’s the ‘me‘ generation. What’s in it for me? You make it so that I can get something out of it right now!
Isn’t that “me-first” attitude so far away from Answer 57? How often do we forget the comfort that things will be so very different in heaven? No wonder our faith can seem so fragile! There doesn’t appear to be the joy that God keeps telling us about in His Word. Yes, sometimes there is a bit of a buzz out of things. But for many of us, not long after the temporary “buzz”, something gets us down and it takes a long time before we’re up again!
Is it your hope that your soul will be taken straightaway to heaven when you die? Have you stopped to think that your own flesh – that body which can cause you so much anguish now – will be like Christ’s glorious body?
Death is the one thing you can be sure of. But what is death to you? Many people ask, “Isn’t death when you rest in peace? You know – a kind of sleep?” It’s a nice soothing thought. Especially for the unbeliever. But death is no sleep – it’s the breakthrough! Didn’t we read that in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52? Paul said, “We won’t all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we’ll be changed!”
IT’S REALLY NOT MUCH YET… THOUGH IT GETS YOU SET… FOR THE GLORY YOU WILL GET! Our third point: FOR THE GLORY YOU WILL GET!
Congregation, death is the gate to paradise! Those angels which kept Adam and Eve from returning to the Garden are letting us in! As Answer 58 continues in its fourth line, “so after this life I will have perfect blessedness such as no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, no man has ever imagined: a blessedness in which to praise God eternally.”
Boys and girls, do you remember that seed? You know – the one you planted. The one you rushed to every morning to see if it was growing. You so much want to see it pop up! Well, it has! The shoot bursts through. Its green vibrant life rushes up!
Now, you always expected something beautiful. What a thrill, though, to see it actually come! Because it’s the seed you were always so anxiously waiting for, it’s so special that it’s popped up! Sure, there are seeds popping up into plants all the time. But this is your seed! This is what you have planted and watered and looked for all the time!
How much more is that true, dear believer, for us spiritually? A plant will itself die soon enough. But what we pop up to be in heaven is forever! That’s the most special beauty of knowing Jesus in all His glory. In the words of our Lord, in His High Priestly prayer in John 17:3, about us believers, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
When you believe in Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord, you start walking on this road. Then you find that everything makes sense, because the Spirit of Jesus the Good Shepherd is helping you on the way. And the Lord loves showing us that we’re on the right way. I mean, we have the road map which is His Word, the Holy Bible!
And in God’s kindness to us, to confirm it to our hearts further, we have the sacraments. That’s why the Form for the Lord’s Supper can describe that sacrament as a foretaste of the eternal banquet. You see, it is! Just as much as our lives are the seeds of faith being planted, so that small piece of bread, and the sip of wine, shows what a feast there is up ahead!
You believe it, don’t you? “Well… yes and no. I can just begin to see through this example of the seed what I hope for.” But the actual life in heaven will be so much more!
The picture of a seed makes it simple. It’s a Biblical illustration, and so it’s a very good illustration. We shouldn’t look for anything more. Keep it that way. True faith is, after all, a simple belief. The Bible is simply God’s Word. And aren’t the sacraments the most simple signs? What could be more basic than water for baptism, and bread and wine for the Lord’s Supper?
Basic – yes. Essential – absolutely! For here you have the crux of what life is about today. And it’s much more, too. For here is everything which you will ever need to have. And here is the message you can give to the world tonight!
Paul himself said it earlier in 1 Corinthians 15:17-20. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Jesus is the first-fruits. He’s the first seed to burst out its splendour. And He is in heaven right now, preparing for our glory, too!
Dear friend – look at that seed of faith. Even though it be as small as a mustard seed it can move mountains! It is enough to move God in heaven itself to let us in – not because of the strength of our faith, of course, but because of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice on that cursed cross!
Boys and girls, you were given that seed. The teacher wants you to know that it does grow. So you go and plant it! Believer, you do the same! You plant in every part of that life which you live. And you live waiting to grow. Then you will surely know!
Amen.