Good day dear friends.
Nellie, the girls and I, drove down here to McAllen to be present at a dear friend's retirement party. While here we received the local paper and found out a dear member of our previous church, El Mesias, died a few days short of her 100th birthday; so, we were able to visit with the family. Please keep the Barrera family in your prayers.
Here is our study guide for today:
Tuesday: Read 1 Corinthians 15:12-19. Is it me or do you get the impression that the Apostle Paul is a bit angry at those who say there is no resurrection? Remember Paul is the one who had the Damascus Road experience (Acts 9) where the Risen Christ met him and converted him from being a hater of Christians to being the chief among the evangelists.
Here is that passage:
"12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."
The Apostle Paul had an near-life experience with the Risen Lord on the Damascus Road. He came face to face with Jesus who called him by name and questioned his life. Paul was blinded in that experience and spent the first three days of his new life as a Christian in prayer and fasting. He neither ate nor drank anything just spent it praying and listening to the Lord as the Lord revealed to him everything he needed to know about this new life he had as a believer. One of the things that the Lord revealed to him was how much Paul was to suffer for being a Christian and also how he was to die. Would you have still said yes to Christ had you know that? Paul did and one of the reasons is that the Lord revealed to him the power of resurrection and the promise of life beyond death. Paul especially said yes to Jesus because he experienced Christ's love and knew, as he would write later on, in Romans 8; that there is nothing that can separate us from that love.
Paul encountered the human condition. Paul's early message was filled with promises of Jesus coming soon. What happened was that the Lord did not come back in bodily form as Paul believed him to, and new Christians began to suffer persecution for their faith. Suddenly, families were being separated by death brought on by governmental interference in people's lives. And so some of the new Christians began to question the foundation of the faith which was resurrection of the dead. You can safely bet that Paul was frustrated if not angry by these fairweather Christians. He rails against them by saying if you believe that, then Christ himself was not raised. And if Christ was not raised then our faith is meaningless. And worse, your sins are still with you!
Paul knew, as should we, that God is faithful in His word. If the promise to us if resurrection then we can go to the bank with it. Life can bring whatever it wants to us, but it should not shake our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Ours is a faith grounded in the surity of life beyond life as we have experienced it through Jesus.
PRAYER: Come Lord of life and bring all of us new hope and new strength to bear witness to the world about all that we believe and all that we have. Let us strive to live our lives in the fullness brought to us by Jesus so that in our living and our dying we would be yours. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen
Have a great and blessed day!
e.v.
