Getting the Body You've Always Wanted - Part A

Can you imagine having a body that never gets tired, never needs a nap, never gets exhausted, never grows weary? Can you imagine having a body that is not susceptible to disease at all or atrophy or handicaps or aches or pains?

Imagine having a body that never gains weight. Never lose his hair, never gets wrinkled. Never SAG's never droops.

Imagine that our culture is obsessed with outward appearance. Just look at the beauty industry, which rakes in billions of dollars every year. Today on Connect with Skip Hightech Skip helps you gain an eternal perspective on how to view and care for your body. Now, before we begin, we want to tell you about a resource that tells a compelling story and explores affairs in the Middle East.

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OK, we're in First Corinthians, chapter fifteen and Skip High Tech starts today. Study.

Now I know that the message title sounds like it's an advertisement for a health spa or a workout program on television. Getting the body you've always wanted.

It is what people want these days. I was reading USA Today last week and I found something that just cracked me up. You know how in front of USA Today they have in the left hand corner little fast facts and sometimes they're odd facts and figures.

It said that during this summer it is projected as they go from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the summer Americans will consume seven billion hotdogs.

And that averages out to be according to the same little piece of information. Eight hundred and eighteen hotdogs every second are consumed.

That is not the way to get the body you've always wanted, by the way. But the body, the physical body is what motivates people to run, to lift weights, to bicycle, in some cases, to nip and tuck and stretch and do everything they can to preserve the body. It's just the diet industry alone is thirty three billion dollars per year. There was a poll that was conducted in a very interesting question, was asked in the poll if you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? That's a that's a good question. By the way, if you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? What's interesting is that the results, none of them had to do with character.

My habits, lifestyle, almost overwhelmingly it was I would change something about my outward physical appearance, age, hair, weight, body type, face, etc. and it seems to even be affecting kids.

There was a mom trying to break her little boy of sucking his thumb, and she was so frustrated because he wouldn't stop. And finally she said, what good is it to suck your thumb? And he said, well, it is non fattening, mother. One day your dream will come true. One day in your resurrected glorified body, it will be the body you've always dreamed of having. I broke down this week and saw Indiana Jones. I wanted to see it. And I saw it. And talk about a resurrection. NATO guy is still kicking butt. But at the beginning of the film, and I won't give it away. But at the beginning of the film, Indiana Jones is talking to the dean of the college and he's about to go out on an adventure and his friend, as he looks at Indiana. And they're both getting older.

He says to Indiana Jones, We seem to have reached the age where life seems to stop giving us things and starts taking things away.

That's true, isn't it? The older we get, we noticed that things that we have been given, they start leaving. People that we love start dying, our health starts leaving, et cetera.

And so we groan.

As we said last week, somebody in this fellowship graciously gave me a really great illustration I want to share with you. This person writes, I want to live my next life backwards.

I'll start out dead and get that out of the way, right off the bat, and then I'll wake up in a nursing home feeling better every day when I'm kicked out of the home for being too healthy. I'll spend several years enjoying my retirement, collecting benefit checks when I start work. I'll get a gold watch on my first day. I'll work for 40 years or so. Getting younger every day until pretty soon I'll be too young to work.

So then I'll go to high school, play sports date and party. As I get younger, I'll become a kid again.

I'll go to elementary school, play and have no responsibilities. In a few years I'll become a baby and everyone will run themselves ragged just trying to keep me happy. Finally, I'll spend my last nine months floating peacefully in luxury and spa like conditions with central heating and Rome. Room service on tap.

That's classic life in reverse.

Can you imagine having a body that doesn't wear out? Can you imagine having a body that never gets tired, never needs a nap, never gets exhausted, never grows weary? Can you imagine having a body that is not susceptible to disease at all or atrophy or handicaps or aches or pains?

Imagine having a body that never gains weight. Never lose this hair. Never gets wrinkled.

Never SAG's never droops. Imagine that. Now you're saying that's all I can do is imagine now. But one day it will be reality. You won't have to imagine that the scripture teaches that we are both body and soul.

And God's plan for redemption includes both. And he includes both of them to be eternally together.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. You know the story.

Nobody could put Humpty back together again after he fell and broke into pieces. God's plan is to put us back together again. But in a whole lot better shape than before. We continue our little study in this chapter that we began last week. And it's part of a greater series called From the Edge of Eternity. And we're dealing with the resurrection of the body. As we mentioned last week, Chapter 15 of First Corinthians is the most exhaustive treatment on bodily resurrection in all of the Bible. So we begin in verse 35. And here's the layout in this paragraph.

Paul begins by introducing two questions. He goes from questions that are asked to illustrations to answer the question. So he asks two questions. He gives three illustrations and he follows that, summing it all up by four declarations. So questions, illustrations and declarations. Let's look at verse thirty five for the questions.

But someone will say, how are the dead raised up and with what body do they come? These are two good questions. The how question and the what question. How does this all work? And if it does work, what will we look like when it does work? Last week, there were our Saturday night service. A lot of people will sit in the cool of evening out in the amphitheater for overflow. Couple guys were sitting there and one turned to his friend and said, isn't this amazing?

Can you figure this out? Can you get your mind around? Are resurrected body? And I guy went, I can't even pay my rent, let alone think about paying my resurrected body. It's just so enormous a thing to imagine. The resurrection is bewildering. It does prompt questions, and the questions that Paul introduces seem to have been questions that were being asked by people in Corinth. In a mocking kind of a way, a sneering kind of a way, these were sarcastic taunts.

How will the dead right. Raise? Now, here's why.

Corinth was a Greek city. It was permeated with Greek philosophy. And as you may know, the Greeks thought very ill of any idea of a resurrection. It was abhorrent to them. The body, they said, is the prison. The goal is to escape the body and not come back with the body. Who on earth would want to be resurrected? They would think since the goal is to escape the body. Why get trapped again? That's one segment that brought these questions. Another segment came from within the church itself. There were a group of people in the church known as Gnostics. Have you ever heard that term Gnostic? It's spelled g n o s t. I see Gnostic. And it was a group of people who said they were Christians, but their belief system was the whole material world is evil.

Everything material tangible is evil and only that which is spiritual, intangible, immaterial is good.

So they said a good God would not have created a material universe.

Also, they said Jesus must not have been physical. He must have been a phantom. He looked like he was real, but he really wasn't because everything material is evil.

So they had a problem with the physical resurrection as well. They denied the resurrection.

I'm going to bring something up that sort of helps interface with this. Maybe you've caught a couple of the articles in National Geographic on this discovered book known as the Gospel of Judas. Anybody ever heard of the Gospel of Judas and the idea of the Gospel of Judas? It's the real story. So the story you as Christians haven't been told. It's a Gnostic gospel. And in the gospel of Judas, there's supposed conversations with Judas Iscariot. He is identified in the book as the 13th Spirit sent to liberate Jesus Christ from his body.

He's been trapped by the incarnation. So he actually did Jesus a service by betraying him to the Romans who would kill him to release his spirit from his body, the trapped him. So Judas is now the hero of the story. All of that reflects Gnostic thinking, Gnostic antipathy toward physical resurrection.

That's going on in Corinth, as Paul is writing this. I would say things really haven't changed much these days.

I would say that if you were to go out on the street and ask the average person, what do you believe happens when a person dies, you'll get a few different responses. The most overwhelming response is absolutely nothing.

There are annihilations.

They believe that you live, you die, your body decays. It's gone. Nothing happens after that. You just cease to exist. There's another group. I'll call them spiritualists. They think, well, you live forever in your soul in some form or fashion, doing something or another. We don't exactly know what, but you sort of continue to drift out there as a spirit. And still, another group, a growing group, I would say, in our country believes in reincarnation. Twenty five percent of Americans now believe in reincarnation. The transmigration of the soul from one body to another. There's even past life therapists who will tell you what you used to be in that previous body before you got into this body. Now, here's the point. Once you die and leave this corpse, it's discarded. No use for it at all. You get a new form.

All of that is the complete opposite to what Paul is teaching. But it forms the mindset of these questions. How are the dead raised? What will they look like?

Well, we asked some of the same questions only with a different motivation. We ask questions like how how is God going to raise the dead if, let's say, the guy gets cremated and now his ashes are over four different mountain ranges? How is guy going to pull out one off or what if a guy gets killed at sea and is eaten by sharks?

The sharks go 100 miles away from each other or out in the wilderness. A lion gets one limb, a wildebeest gets another. The lion gets eaten by a wildebeest. The wildebeest gets eaten by a gorilla. And now they're in all these different species all over the jungle. Or what about an amputee? Well, an amputee. Be an amputee forever. Well, a stroke victim, be incapacitated forever. These are very real questions that we have. So let's move from questions to answering the questions by three illustrations. Verse 36. Very interesting. Paul begins his answer, he says, Foolish one.

What you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you so you do not so that body that shall be but mere grain, perhaps wheat or some other grain. God gives it a body as he pleases and to each seed its own body.

All flesh is not the same flesh. There's one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another. A fish and other of birds. There are also celestial bodies up in the sky and terrestrial bodies down on the earth. The glory of the celestial is one. The glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun and other glory of the moon and other glory of the stars. For one star differs from another star. In glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead.

He answers the questions by three illustrations. One illustration from botany. The Seed. One illustration from zoology. The species of different kinds of flesh. And an illustration from astronomy. The different kind of stars. The first illustration is particularly helpful. It helps us understand what it's gonna be like in our bodies. You see, a seed gets put into the ground. It dies. It decomposes. And the seed ceases to exist in that form. It is transformed, though. It's it's the seed. It gets changed into something completely different and beautiful.

I was watching YouTube this week trying to find seeds that grow for this illustration. And if you ever seen the time lapse photography shots of how plants grow very rapidly. Well, they showed radish seeds put in the ground, decomposing, dying.

And then after a period of time, little roots start to jet out toward the bottom root themselves in the soil, then more roots and then a root system and then a little stem and then a little plant.

And then the plant grows and finally radishes. Fabulous transformation. I'm not saying you're going to be a radish in the resurrection or anywhere near that, but the amazing transformation, that's what Paul is getting at with this illustration and this simple illustration brings out three important truths about our resurrection.

Three important truth. Mystery number one, continuity number two and improvement number three. Now, follow me here. First is mystery, a seed going into the ground and dying.

And up comes a plant illustrates the mystery of one of the greatest principals in all of the scripture. And here's the principal.

Life. Comes from death. The product of death is life.

That's a great mystery. It's a great truth. Jesus uses the same illustration to speak about his death and resurrection. John, Chapter 12. He says, unless a grain of wheat goes into the ground and dies, it abides alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.

Speaking about his death and resurrection. Jesus could not offer salvation.

He could not offer eternal life unless he first died on a cross out of death comes life. That's the mystery of a great principle.

Second truth. This illustration gives us his continuity.

There is a continuity between the seed and the plant. There's DNA inside the seed that is so programed that will determine that that seed, once dead, will produce something great. Inside of an acorn is the DNA to produce an oak? The seeds that you're going to spit over your fence this summer, those watermelons say there's genetic coding in each one of those seeds that will produce roots, plant and fruit, watermelon. There is a continuity. And just as there is continuity between seeds and plants, there's also continuity between these bodies that are decaying and the body that will come afterwards.

The third truth of this illustration is improvement. How are you going to look improved? Much better. And what a great example. Which looks better. A bouquet of flowers or a handful of seeds. All the flowers look a lot better than the seeds. They're the same substance, but a different form. This last Mother's Day. Did you give your wife, your mother, a handful of seeds here? Woman work, grow, grow that stuff?

No, I hope you didn't give her beaten up brown dead seeds, but you gave her flowers, the fruit of it. You see, there's a great improvement from the sea that goes into the ground to die.

And what comes forth from at the beautiful bouquet of flowers on a wedding day? Does the bride walk down the aisle with a bouquet of seeds? Now, a spread of flowers adorns her.

I'm going to read these passages in a translation by Eugene Peterson, known as The Message. Here's his take on it. We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a dead seed. Soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between the seed and the plant. You can never guess what a tomato would look like. By looking at a tomato seed, what we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don't look anything alike. The dead body we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes from it will be dramatically different.

That's helpful, isn't it? The difference between the way you are today and the way you will be in the resurrection is like the difference between dead brown bulbs and a beautiful garden of flowers. Very helpful illustration.

That's the botany part. Second illustration is he moves to zoology, verse 39. All flesh is not the same flesh. There's one kind of flesh of men and other flesh of animals and other a fish. And another of birds.

Don't you think it's impossible for a caterpillar to imagine what it will become?

I know you're thinking, look, it's impossible for a caterpillar to imagine anything at all because it's a caterpillar. But certainly that caterpillar didn't look up and go, it's what I'm going to be one day. That butterfly effect I heard about two caterpillars trudging through the grass together and over them saw a beautiful butterfly and one caterpillar turned to his buddy and said, You wouldn't get me up on one of those things for a million dollars.

Truth is, you'll be up in one of those things, but you can't imagine the metamorphosis that will take place in that body.

Next, he moves on and then verse 41 to astronomy, looking up into the night sky. There's one glory of the sun, glory of the moon, glory of the stars. One star differs from another in glory. You look up and you see planets. You see stars. You see the moon. If you have telescopes, moons of other planets and stars in our galaxy.

And if you look closely, you even see their different colors, different colors, different glories, depending on the temperature of the star. It could be yellowish or reddish or even a cold color bluish.

So they're all magnificent. Paul's point. They're all different.

What does he mean by this?

Well, he could be meaning that in the kingdom, age, in glory, in heaven will be given different positions.

Well, I'll stand before the judgment seat of Christ will all receive as Christians rewards or lack thereof for what we do on Earth. In fact, we'll do a whole study on that, that in the kingdom, our position in heaven is determined by what we do here on Earth has nothing to do with salvation by works. The Bible rejects that. It's not salvation. It's your position in the kingdom.

In fact, Daniel uses this very wording when he says in Daniel Chapter 12, those who are wise will shine as the brightness of the firmament. And those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.

That Skip Heisey with a message from the series From the Edge of Eternity. Right now, here's Skip to tell you how your support helps keep these messages coming your way and connects more people to God's word. Here's an important truth. God doesn't need us to accomplish his work in the world, but he desires to use us and bring us into his plan.

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Again that's eight hundred nine two two 1888. Tune in tomorrow and scoop hightech. Share some helpful insight. You'll want to hear about the future glorified body. God's prepared. Connect with Skip Heitziged is a presentation of connection communications connecting you two guards and ever changing truth in ever changing times.