Title: God Who Gives Victory. -resurrection
1 Corinthians 15:55-58.
On this Blessed Resurrection Sunday, I pray that God's grace and blessing will be filled with all of you who come to God's temple to worship, and your families and families.
God created the universe and life for us in six days. God's creation was perfect and beautiful. It was a place where there was no pain, no sorrow, no suffering, no death. Its name was the Kingdom of God.
However, we humans have lost that paradise because we sinned by eating the fruit of the forbidden fruit. Not only that, but eternal life was also lost. The perfect and beautiful world has become a world covered with thistles and thorns, and a country full of sorrow, pain, suffering and death.
God did not want us to live that way, even though we sinned and became so. He paid the price of death himself and tried to deliver us humans from that sin and death.
To save us humans, Jesus gave up His heavenly throne and came to this earth in a human body, then He completed the work of salvation by dying on the cross. So he saved his people who had decided to trust and follow God again.
Because we sin and sin, we must suffer both pain and death, but in the end and the end of the believer, not suffering and death, but resurrection and eternal life. What I have said so far can be said to be the core truth of our Christianity.
Jesus overcame the power of death and rose again to reveal and show our resurrection and eternal life. Our Christianity is the religion of resurrection. It is the religion of eternal life. It is the religion of salvation.
We believe in the resurrection. I believe in eternal life. I believe in the kingdom of God. I believe in salvation.
There are things that belief like this gives us.
The first is hope.
A philosopher named Kierkegaard called despair a disease unto death. In fact, many people are dying from this despair, and even if they are alive, they are living a life of death.
Not long ago, a child who was doing well at a local school where he was doing well fell out of his apartment and committed suicide. The will he left behind is very heartbreaking.
"I can't stand it any longer."
The child fell into the real trap and died.
Despair is truly a disease that leads to death. But faith in the resurrection takes away that despair from us. Those who truly believe in the resurrection faith can overcome it even in the harsh life of hell in this harsh world.
The resurrection of Jesus became our hope. If despair is a disease that leads to death, hope is the medicine that leads to life.
The second is courage.
A theologian named Paul Tillik wrote a book called The Courage of Being. In that book, he says that the most important thing to be human is courage.
I agree with that. One of the things I needed the most at every moment of my life was courage.
The scariest thing in the world is death and failure. However, whenever the world and Satan constantly try to live according to God's will and way, they say, 'Then you lose. then it's ruined Then you will die.'
It took courage to overcome it and get rid of it each time. Not all of Satan's threats and blackmails were false. Rather, most of it was true.
It is the world we live in and our reality that we will have no choice but to die, perish, and fail. Nevertheless, I had the courage to challenge it, not because it wasn't real and true, but because it wasn't the ultimate end and end of my life.
It was because he had seen the glory, victory, and life beyond that failure and death. The greatest of courage is martyrdom. Many martyrs in the world died for their faith. Without avoiding the avoidable death, he broke through head-on.
They were truly courageous people who were not really afraid of death. They were therefore people the world, Satan could not handle.
Even the Apostle Paul had such faith. Paul's faith is well expressed in today's text.
“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. We thank God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)
Third is wisdom.
In John 8:32, Jesus says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Wisdom means knowing the truth. We have to live in this world, discerning and judging many things. You don't know how difficult it is to live with the right judgment and the right decision.
Every time we make wrong judgments and decisions, we experience failure and death. Foolishness is really another disease that causes us to die.
But by our sin we have a fatal flaw in this wisdom. The root of sin is greed, and greed always blinds us. When we are blinded by greed, we all become fools. You will lose your wisdom.
Wisdom can only be obtained by letting go of the greed that appears before your eyes. But nothing in the world is as difficult as that. What I desire and desire is right in front of my eyes and in front of my nose, and it is impossible to pass it on without looking at it unless I have mastered it.
But faith in the resurrection makes it possible for us.
Because I am a sinner, sometimes I do not want to live a good life and I have the urge to live my life haphazardly. There are times when I envy the prosperity of the wicked.
If this world were my everything, if death were the end of all life, I would probably live only for what I saw before my eyes. He must have lived in compromise with the world and sin, living in <one world this way, one world that way>.
But I believe in the resurrection. We believe in the Second Coming, Judgment, and Resurrection of Jesus. So no matter how hard and difficult it is, we cannot live as if the world is over. We cannot live in one world after this.
I cannot live by pouring out the treasures I have on the ground. Although we can't see it, we strive to live by accumulating treasures in the kingdom of God.
Sometimes it's a shame if I lose my mind (corrupted mind). I don't want to. However, if you are truly sane, you will be temperamental again, chastising yourself, and challenging yourself to a life that is just, rewarding, and worthwhile.
The Apostle Paul had the same faith. So Paul tells us at the end of today's text
<Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.> (1 Corinthians 15:58) Amen.
I'm about to finish my talk.
I believe in the cross of Jesus. Because of this, I believe that even though I am a sinner at the time of Jesus' second coming and judgment, I was saved despite being judged and deserved to be condemned to eternal death. I believe in the resurrection, eternal life, and the kingdom of God.
That belief gave me hope. It brought courage. brought wisdom.
It affected not only the kingdom of God after death, but also life in the world before death. It means that the world before death becomes the kingdom of God.
I am so glad and grateful that I believe in Jesus. I don't want to lose the grace and blessings this faith has brought me no matter what.
Jesus is resurrected.
To prove that we also have the hope of resurrection and eternal life, Jesus rose from the dead this morning.
I believe in resurrection.
I pray in the name of the Lord that all of you also believe in this resurrection and become witnesses of the wonderful blessings that faith in the resurrection brings to us. Amen.