Easter Sunday 20th April
Read Psalm 105
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
Psalm 105 is a poetic rendering of the early history of the people of Israel from Abraham right up to the settlement in the promised land. Imagine a poetic history was written about your life, what would it say? What would be its salient points? The Psalmist sees the history of his people as a history of what God has done and his faithfulness to them through all the years right up to his current time when he summons the people to worship and praise Him. If what we do on Sunday is anything it is precisely this. Conscious of all our past and his presence in it, but most especially at Easter with his death and resurrection for us, we rejoice and praise Him.
READINGS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
As you read the Bible Stop; Read; Ponder; and Pray.
Monday 1 Corinthians 14:26-40
Paul now tells the Church that when they meet everything must be done decently and in order and not give an impression of chaotic behaviour. He accepts that in the Church they ought to allow everyone to exercise the gifts God has given them – singing, teaching and special word from God about their situation (v26). Hearing this many of our contemporaries may say, ‘but that isn’t how we do it’ and indeed, over the centuries, Church gatherings have built up their own way of meeting but this is how the early Church did things. Down the years some have tried to copy this kind of pattern – the Reformers, the Brethren, some Puritans and more – but over the years things often crystallise or harden however it is always worthwhile to reflect on the apostle’s guidance.
Because speaking in tongues was creating a problem caused by people speaking in Church out of order he tells them to limit it and to make sure that there is interpretation, that is an expression in the current language. He also mentions that although speaking in the Spirit is an inspiration from the Spirit it doesn’t mean that the utterance is out of control of the speaker (v32). The speaker is able to speak or not to speak and he reminds them that the Holy Spirit is not a God of disorder but of peace.
Verses 34 and 35 have caused a lot of problems in the Church over women. Let’s look at these verses in conjunction with others. For example in chapter 11 we saw Paul speaking about women prophesying in the Church (1 Cor 11:5), in this chapter he speaks of wanting all of you to speak in tongues or to prophesy (14:5), all to speak in tongues (v23) and that all could prophesy (v31) so whatever else he is speaking of it is not that women’s mouths should stay shut. So, what is this about? The last verse should give us the setting for Paul concludes with “everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way”. The whole chapter has been about order in the Church so the bit about women (or wives) being silent and speaking to their husbands afterwards, if it was to fit into this orderliness, must be something to do with avoiding some kind of disorderliness. It might appear that in the freedom that women began to experience in the Church things ran away with them and they forgot the order that God had given between husbands and wives and here, in the Corinthian Church, Paul is rapping their knuckles to remember the headship of the husbands and submission of the wives as given in the law (Genesis 2).
Tuesday 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
In Chapter 15 Paul turns to the foundations of their and our faith. The word ‘faith’ is often spoken of today without any context as to what or who it refers to. The expression “I have faith” means next to nothing without saying what the faith is in. Here Paul wants to remind them of what their faith was in unless they had fallen away or never had this true faith in the first place. It is the gospel that is the means of salvation and he tells them what that gospel is in three points, (1) Jesus died for our sins, (2) Jesus rose again, (3) he appeared to apostles and 500 others after his resurrection.
Notice in the first two he says that they were “according to the scriptures” and Paul says he passed on this gospel to the Corinthians “as of first importance”. The gospel isn’t just about the life and doings of Jesus, it is about his death and resurrection. Most of the pages of the gospels in the Bible are predominately about his death so we need to come to terms with that before anything else. His death was for our sins and his resurrection proof that he had accomplished the result for which he died, namely the forgiveness of our sins through faith in him. This is the faith that saves.
Paul goes on to say that, though he was called to be an apostle, he was one of the least in that he had persecuted the Church but the grace of God had changed him and made him what he was.
Wednesday 1 Corinthians 15:12-22
The apostle now moves on to problem that was seen to exist in the Church, namely that some were believing that there was no resurrection from the dead (v12). This was a problem because this was at the heart of the gospel which stated clearly that Christ was raised from the dead; if that was not so then their faith was useless and the apostles were false witnesses. Having stated what they had preached at first was Christ dying for their sins and being raised, if there was no resurrection from the dead then Christ was not raised and they were still in their sins. Whatsmore, and this would strike home to the bereaved, those who had died in Christ were lost. How could they call themselves Christian believers if that were the case.
Paul now goes on to spell out the nature of the death and resurrection of Christ and its affect on us and he does this through comparing Adam and Christ (he does the same thing in Romans 5). He links Adam and death, Christ and life. We are all born as Adamites, that is our spiritual DNA has its roots in Adam and we can’t escape from that heritage which destines us for death. Let me ask you a question, what will you be in 50 years time? DEAD. Through faith in Christ what are you now and what will you be in 50 years’ time? ALIVE. Your state will be different but your life will not. The American evangelist once said, “Some day you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now”
Thursday 1 Corinthians 15:22-34
“Death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes through a man”; this is the heart of what Paul is spelling out here. A caterpillar walks, a butterfly flies; we could say walking comes through a caterpillar but flying also comes from a caterpillar, the same creature but metamorphosed. The one collection of atoms and molecules in the chrysalis becomes transformed into the flying body of the butterfly. Now that earthly illustration that can’t be pushed because the incarnation of the Son of God is unique but I give it as a way on the grasping of what the apostle is revealing. The verses have sometimes caused debate as to whether Paul is teaching universalism, i.e. that all will be saved – “in Adam all die, in Christ all will be made alive” (v22). We must however look at other parts of scripture (just as we did with women speaking in the Church) and when we do we find plenty instances of scripture that don’t teach a universal salvation, for example Jesus teaching about the sheep and the goats (Matt 25). Being “in Christ”, which is the position of believers, is not the same as being “in Adam” which is the position of all humanity.
In the resurrection Christ is the forerunner or firstfruits as Paul puts it, in other words he is resurrected from the dead first, only at his return will those who are in Christ be resurrected. When Christ comes that is the end of the ages when, Paul says, the Kingdom is handed over to the Father (v25). Christ nullifies or brings to an end all authority, dominion or power; this might indicate non-corporeal spiritual powers but the last enemy to be destroyed will be death. ‘Everything’ does not mean the Father for it is to him that Christ will render everything at last.
In v29 Paul alludes to a practice of baptism for the dead practised by ‘those’ (he doesn’t refer to the Corinthians) who used this practice which he is not necessarily approving but says that the fact some do it shows they believe in resurrection. He also asks them why they think Paul and his companions endanger themselves under persecution if they are not going to be resurrected from the dead. He tells them to come back to their senses implying that they have been keeping bad company in disbelieving in the resurrection of the dead and he concludes by telling them to stand firm, victory will be given them through Christ.
Friday 1 Corinthians 15:35-58
Paul deals now with a question that not only his early 1st Century opponents would ask but present day believers and unbelievers might ask. In the resurrection how will our bodies appear? People sometimes ask will I be resurrected as my 20-year-old self or my elderly body? Paul says they are foolish who try to imagine what their resurrected form will be like and he gives an example of a seed and its fully grown form. The seed ‘dies’ to its ‘seedy’ existence, it doesn’t rise as a big seed, it rises in the form of what it was meant to become; so also with us, God will give us the body he has determined (v38). Our body is our operating system whereby we touch, feel, see, hear, and understand the world around us, in the resurrection our bodies will be of a kind to experience and understand the new creation God brings us into.
The apostle tells us that when we die our body is ‘sown’ a perishable body but in the resurrection it is ‘raised’ imperishable (v42), and also in glory and power as a spiritual body. We cannot understand what that will be like although Jesus gave us in his own resurrected body something to think about. His resurrected body was entirely under his control to be corporeally present (as in the upper room or at the seaside breakfast) or kept from being visible. He could be in a locked room with the disciples or walking incognito with the two on the toad to Emmaus, he could appear to 500 at a time or to none (1Cor 15:6). Jesus resurrected body was the same yet different from his body at, say, his baptism or his crucifixion.
The difference is seen in the following verses where he speaks of the natural body and the spiritual body – “The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven” (v47) – and his argument that we shall be resurrected in a heavenly body (v48)
From v50 he deals with another matter. What happens at Christ’s second coming? How can those who have not died be resurrected? He then says that he is telling them a mystery that all will not be dead when Christ appears but what will happen is that they will be changed, suddenly, or in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye! The perishable – our earthly bodies – will be changed, becoming immortal and when that happens death will have been swallowed up in victory (v54) and he quotes from Hosea 13:14 “Where is your victory, where is your sting?”
In chapter 16 the subject matter changes completely. The Church in Jerusalem and Judea was impoverished and suffering probably through their being isolated from the Jews who had not converted and possibly because they were more from lower classes. The Church had also grown in numbers and, because of this poverty, the Churches in Asia and Greece were asked to provide assistance for their poor brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Paul made arrangements to collect monetary resources from the scattered Churches and take the same to Jerusalem.
He tells the Corinthian Church how to go about this collection by setting aside a proportion of their money on the first day of the week – Sunday, the day of the Lord’s resurrection. – and to do so regularly so that there would be no need for a big collection to be made when Paul visits.
He tells them of his travel plans, hoping to go to the North, to Macedonia, and then to make his way down to Corinth where he hopes to spend some time with them. As he writes he tells them that he is going to continue staying in Ephesus for a while because he says, “a great door for effective work has opened for me”, although “there are many who oppose me”. Isn’t it interesting that opportunity and opposition go together and seem to be bed fellows throughout Paul’s missionary journeys. We should never expect Christian discipleship to be simple and without struggle either internally or from without.
