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Living Hope SDA Church

Christian Martin

The Foolishness of the Resurrection

My message today is entitled, The Foolishness of the Resurrection.

My prayer is that the Word of God would minister to your hearts, as well as the painted Word.

May each stroke of the brush on the canvas of our hearts be a picture that the Holy Spirit brings to our hearts and minds today.

So would you bow your heads with me as we acknowledge Him once more.

Father in heaven, this is your time, we're here today because we need you.

And we ask that you would minister to our hearts through all our senses, that the Holy Spirit would have His own way in us.

We thank You, Lord, because we know that this is a prayer that You love to answer when we open our hearts to you and ask you to come in.

It's been practiced for several centuries by different cultures in various ways, occurring on the first of April each year.

You know, traditions on this day include practical jokes on others, often yelling, April Fools!

At the end to clue in the subject of the April Fools prank.

And for those who know me more than others, you know that I often have a prank or 2 in my back pocket, up my sleeve, around this time of the year.

Unfortunately for my family, they know that too well.

You see, I've had some epic April Fool's pranks throughout the years.

From the photo of our beautiful wooden floor that I sent to my wife Heidi while she was at work, showing a beautiful smile of her precious boy holding a knife, having carved a beautiful message so it appeared on the floor.

To a photo I texted to my surgeon in Maryland who had performed my hip replacement.

Needless to say the initial reaction, initial I said, was a bit of shock, followed by a great relief after revealing the truth, that in fact it was an extra board that was carefully placed on top of the floor, not a scratch on the beautiful wooden floor of our home.

And it was a random x-ray of someone else's dislocated hardware with the added note that my hip was still hip.

Well, for both my wife and my beloved surgeon, they were greatly relieved, and that would be an understatement.

You know the truth always ought to follow a good April Fool's prank.

You see, when done properly, They're intended to cause a feeling of reassurance when truth is eventually revealed.

It's clean, It's harmless, it's appropriate and fun.

But there are hellish April Fools which call truth a lie.

And the end goal is for the subject to be perpetually left with an untruth.

Needlessly caught many by surprise and they were lost.

April fools, looking at that bronze serpent, won't heal you.

A lie that still keeps many wondering with no uncertainty, with no certainty rather.

A lie that keeps many isolated and so on and so forth.

An enemy has done this As he comes to introduce a lie as a truth and then leave us in that lie, never exposing his devilish motives.

And the lies have continued for quite a long time.

And 1 of the most impactive lies that has done great damage to the souls of men is a lie that was spoken a long time ago and yet continues to be a lie that many believe to be true.

First told by the chief priests and elders themselves, and still, millenniums later, believed by the majority of Earth's population.

And not just by the billions of non-Christians and atheists.

Wouldn't we safely assume that surely that lie is not believed by those that take the name of Christ?

Barna Research Group, a very respectable, a very respectable entity that researches various world views and thoughts and opinions about practicing Christians.

It is somewhat disconcerting to learn That a recent survey by Barna found that 30% of born-again Christians do not believe that Jesus came back to physical life after he was crucified.

Overall, only 37% of Americans believe that there will be a bodily resurrection of the dead, while that same number, 72%, believe that your soul goes straight to heaven at death.

That same group significantly less believe in a bodily resurrection.

And among teens who identify as Christians just 50 percent believe Christ was resurrected.

And these are stats among those who take the name of Christ, not to mention the billions of others that don't and also do not believe.

A deadly lie that continues to deceive even those who are called by his name.

Evidently, Christians, even Christians, don't make sense, or rather, Christianity doesn't make sense to many people, much less the resurrection from the dead.

It has been in the thoughts of man to conclude that such teachings are foolishness.

In fact, the Apostle Paul said it then, and it's still applicable in the 21st century.

He said, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.

Yet God, he continues, was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

You see, the conclusion that dead bodies that we witness with our very eyes, be lowered 6 feet underground, will be commended to come out of their grave sites and they will obey?

This confounds the reasoning of the world.

Those who do not discern spiritual things, they hear this and they call it out, foolishness.

You see, but God's way of reasoning, God's way, is in accord with things of the Spirit.

Not of the world, not of the flesh, but of the spirit.

And that's why Paul concludes that the foolishness of God is wiser than human reasoning because spiritual things are wiser than carnal ones.

And so later in the same letter to the Corinthians, Paul emphatically declares that Christ was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

According to Paul in this chapter, Denying the possibility of a general resurrection could result in the collapse of Christianity itself.

You take the resurrection out of the picture and Paul argues that Christianity will crumble.

Because the resurrection is central to Christianity.

It's not just 1 of the many teachings of Christianity.

The resurrection is the foundation, the fundamental belief of Christianity.

Well, the Apostle Paul explained it in this way with a series of if-then statements.

According to verse 13, Christ would not have resurrected.

If there's no resurrection, then Christ didn't resurrect, and we would be lying about God.

Verse 13, but if there's no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.

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The Foolishness of the Resurrection

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