EASTER SUNDAY
AT FIDDLER’S GREEN
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 3:16
APRIL 19, 1992
Your body is a divine miracle, ten trillion cells coming together to comprise all the parts which perform all the functions necessary to sustain life. Today, your heart will beat approximately 100,000 times and pump 2,475 gallons of blood. At this very moment, as you sit here in Fiddler’s Green, the five quarts of blood in your body are being pumped through the hundred thousand miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries that comprise your circulatory system.
Your brain, with its a hundred billion cells, has a cerebral cortex so complex that each half cubic inch contains 620 miles of connecting fibers. Incredible. Your brain is more sophisticated than the most advanced computer imagined by men. Your brain regulates all the activities of your body, sending and receiving messages through your nervous system, some of the messages traveling at 220 miles per hour. And it’s not just your nervous system and your circulatory system that are miraculous. Your body is a miracle.
Your skeletal system, your muscular system, your digestive system, your urinary system, endocrine system, your respiratory system, your reproductive system, your entire body is a miracle of God. Yet your body has one big problem. That problem is your body is going to die. Your body can’t last. It wears out and it winds down. Every day in your body two billion cells die and need to be replaced, every day. Some cells can’t be replaced. If you’re over 30 years of age here today, then every day you are losing 100,000 brain cells and they cannot be replaced. It’s a horrible, tragic truth that as we get older, our brain shrinks, our respiratory and circular circulatory systems become less efficient. Our skeletal systems loses strength and flexibility and you see, eventually it all just winds down and the body dies. If it doesn’t die from old age, then it’ll die from disease or from bodily injury.
Now you can buy a new house and you can buy a new car, and if your washing machine breaks down, you can just buy a new one. And you buy a new light bulb when an old one breaks. But where does a person go? Where does a person go to get a new body when he needs one? You see, that’s what Easter is all about. Jesus Christ came from heaven to earth. He shared our humanity.
There was a man named Jeremy Bentham. For 132 years he served on the University College Board. He was dead. It was all after 1832 when he died. You say, “Well, how can that be?” You see, the explanation is that before he died, he left a massive amount of money to the University College Hospital contingent upon them placing his dead body on their board. So they had his body specially prepared and preserved and they put it in a mahogany case with glass windows and they wheeled it in to every board meeting. They really didn’t want him on the board living or dead, but they wanted his money. It took 92 years for the money to run out and then they didn’t wheel him in anymore.
But you know, it’s easy to preserve and protect the body after death. I mean, the Egyptians made an art out of that through their process of mummification. Scientists today have improved on that through the science of cryogenics. It is easy to protect and preserve and sustain the human body after death. The problem is protecting and sustaining the body while it’s alive. That’s what’s hard. I mean, how do you protect and sustain these frail bodies while they live?
I mean, why does Michael Jackson get into an oxygen rich environment and container capsule every night? He does that because he’s trying to preserve and protect his body. He also does that because he’s a little strange. But I think all of us, all of us want to protect and preserve our body. That’s why most of us try to eat right. We try to exercise regularly. Perhaps you take vitamins, perhaps you practice stress management, you do these things because you’re seeking to sustain a healthy body. But you see it’s a losing effort. Eventually these bodies just fail because these bodies are so frail.
I must say in the course of my ministry at Cherry Hills Community Church, I’ve seen a lot damaged earth suits, particularly when I used to go to the hospitals and did all of our hospital calls in the early years. I’ve seen a lot of broken limbs and I’ve seen a lot of diseased bodies and some bodies horribly diseased and afflicted. I’ve stood over the graves of some of your loved ones performing service of commitment. I’ve seen your tears as you felt the pain of separation from someone you greatly love. I’ve committed those bodies to the earth, “dust to dust, ashes to ashes” in the sure hope of the resurrection from the dead.
The Bible promises, and I believe, we who believe in Jesus Christ will rise and we will rise in bodies indestructible no longer subject to decay. “Death will be no more,” the Bible says, “neither shall there be mourning nor crying, nor pain anymore.” Indestructible bodies is what’s promised in the resurrection.
Thirdly, the resurrection body we’re told is a powerful body. You see, the bodies we have now are kind of weak, but the body that’s promised in Christ, the eternal body that’s given to Christians, that body will be powerful. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most powerful man who ever lived was Paul Anderson. Paul Anderson was the gold medal winner in the Olympics in 1956 in super heavyweight power lifting. Paul Anderson has lifted 6,270 pounds in a single lift. 6,270 pounds he lifted off the ground. That’s pretty strong. I remember seeing Paul Anderson in the 1960s in Glendale, California when he spoke at Glendale High School at the auditorium there. I remember he had a table down on the stage and he asked a bunch of people to come up and sit on the table. They were big people. I think he had about eight people sit on the table. Then he got underneath it and he lifted it up in the air. I remember he set the table down, he went to the microphone and he shouted, “I’m the strongest man in the world.” And there were no rebuttals.
But you see strong as Paul Anderson is and was, he’s not really that powerful. If you were to line him up against a freight train, he’d be rail bait in a nanosecond because you see the human body just isn’t that strong. It’s not that powerful. The fact is our bodies are relatively weak. But the Bible says the resurrection body will be a body of power. The Greek word is the word dunamis, from which we get the word dynamite. This word was used to describe not simply raw physical power, but it was used to describe a broader scope of power. The miracles of Jesus Christ were called powers. The word is dunamis. When He calmed the sea and when He rebuked the wind and when He cleansed lepers, when He caused the blind to see and the lame to walk, the death to hear, the dead to live, that was power, dunamis.
It’s hard to imagine the abilities that the people of God will have in their resurrection bodies. Perhaps some of the things that are now part of the realm of parapsychology will be characteristic of Christians in their resurrection bodies. Perhaps mental telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis. Perhaps these abilities will be ours. We do not know, but this we know: the resurrection body is raised in power and it has power.
Fourthly, we’re told that the resurrection body is glorious. The Greek word is doxa and it means worthy of praise. When we sing a doxology, we sing a word of praise. And certainly, a lot of people in the world today spend a lot of time trying to make their body worthy of praise. I think that’s what Arnold Schwarzenegger has tried to do. Arnold Schwarzenegger has tried to make his body praiseworthy glorious. You see, he doesn’t lift for power. He lifts weights for glory. In fact, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in terms of power lifting is not really that strong. It wouldn’t be smart to pick a fight with him, but he is not really that strong because power lifters look more like Sumo wrestlers. But you see Arnold Schwarzenegger lifts for glory. He lifts in order that he might have a body that is praiseworthy. He does a lot of repetitions. He wants to make his body chiseled. He wants it to be well-defined. He wants it to be cut and shaped so that it might be worthy of praise. There’s a lot of people who in various ways in our society seek to make their bodies worthy of praise or glorious, but it’s a losing effort.
I mean, eventually facelifts don’t do any good. Various surgeries that people have on their bodies that are cosmetic can only do so much good because the bodies eventually decay. The word glory that is describing the resurrection body doesn’t really refer to the shape of our body anyway. I mean, the word glory in the Bible had a special use and it referred to the divine presence. The divine presence is described by this word glory. The Hebrew people used to speak of the Shekinah glory, the presence of God which hovered over the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies and the tabernacle. Wherever the Shekinah was, that was glory. Wherever the presence of God was, that was glory. We are to understand that in some sense, the divine presence will attend the resurrection body of believers.
If you look at Jesus Christ, as He rose from the dead and after His ascension into heaven, when He appeared to the Apostle John on the island of Patmos, He appeared in celestial glory. He radiated light. The Bible says John fell on his face as though he were dead when he looked at the resurrected Christ. The Bible says Christ’s face was shining like the sun at full strength. When you look at the Old and New Testaments and you see angelic visitations, there’s a certain celestial countenance, a certain glory that attended their form, that attended their body. In some sense, this is promised to Christians. In fact, it says in the Book of Daniel that the people of God in the life to come “will shine forth like the stars of the firmament forever.”
So you see, the glory of the resurrection body isn’t really based on your shape. It’s not really based on whether it’s chiseled. I mean, you could look like John Candy or Roseanne Barr, but if you had the Shekinah glory surrounding you, that would be glorious.
Finally, the resurrection body, the Bible tells us, is spiritual. The spiritual body. The Greek word is “pneumatikos.” That word means that it is governed by the spirit of God. The body that you have now, the earth suit that you wear now, in a sense it’s governed by the flesh. It does not always honor God in the things that you do. My body does not always go honor God in the things that I do. But the body that is promised in the resurrection is a spiritual body. It doesn’t mean that it’s not physical. In fact, Christ went to great length to try to show His followers after His resurrection that His body was physical. He said, “Touch me. Touch my hands, touch my side. See that a spirit has not flesh and bone as you see that I have.” And He ate fish in the upper room with His disciples and by the sea of Galilee with His disciples in His resurrection body. He wanted them to know that it was physical. But the resurrection body is spiritual in the sense that it’s governed by the spirit.
You see, the Bible tells us that all the people in the world are spiritually dead. Apart from Christ, we’re all spiritually dead. Even people who come to Christ and belong to Christ and who are made alive in Christ and are born of the Spirit oftentimes are not that spiritual. You may have noticed that. I mean, oftentimes as Christians, we don’t live the way we were meant to live, but we’re promised that in the life to come, our resurrection body will be spiritual, governed by the Spirit. We’ll honor God, we’ll honor the Lord in all we do. You see, God wouldn’t give us a body that’s heavenly fit for the heavens, that’s indestructible, not subject to decay that’s powerful and glorious unless it were also spiritual. Because if it were not spiritual, then the body would be used wrongly and it would not be used to serve the kingdom of Christ, but it would be used for some wrong purpose.
This morning, as we conclude, I would just like to pose this question: how can you get a body like this? How can you know you’re going to get a body that’s heavenly, indestructible, powerful, glorious, and spiritual? The Bible says if you really want to have a body like that, you need to undergo a metamorphosis. You need to undergo a change. The change needs to be internal. I know scientists and biologists tend to use the word metamorphosis to refer to external chain, the three stages of a frog, the four stages of a butterfly. But you see the Greek word “metamorpho” does not really refer to external chain as it’s used in the Bible. It refers to internal change.
Metasch?matiz? is the Greek word for external change. It’s the word used to describe the resurrection body. But metamorphis, that refers to the change within. The Bible says that if we want to have that outward change, we want to have the new resurrection body, we must have an inward change. We must undergo a metamorphosis internally, a transformation. The Bible calls this transformation, the new birth. The Bible calls this transformation, refers to this transformation of being born anew, being born from above. The Bible says that when we ask Jesus Christ to be our Savior and to be our Lord, that by His spirit, He comes into us and we are given a new nature within. When we confess our sin and receive Him as Savior, He begins to make us new from the inside out. That’s what’s required if ever we are to receive the resurrection body promised at Easter, we must be born anew. We must be transformed within. We must confess our sin and embrace Christ as Savior and as Lord.
You know, there’s two types of death. There’s physical death and there’s spiritual death. Physical death is separation of your soul and spirit from your body. That’s serious. But spiritual death is far more serious. Spiritual death is separation of your soul and your spirit from God. Spiritual death is caused by sin. The Bible tells us, unless we deal with sin, we will remain spiritually dead. Unless we deal with sin, we will be separated from God forever.
There’s a lot of people in the world who believe there’s no such thing as sin. Yet deep down they have the guilt of sin. They might go to counselors and psychologists to seek help with this guilt. But you see, counselors and psychologists don’t have the power to forgive sin. They don’t even have the power to take away true guilt. They can help us with false guilt, but they can’t take away true guilt. Some people try to deal with sin through the religions of the world.
The Hindu people have millions of followers who pilgrimage to the Ganges River every year, and they bathe in those polluted waters because they think they are sacred, hoping that somehow they might remove the sin in their life. The Hindu people hope that somehow their good karma might cancel out their sin, might overshadow their sin, that their good karma might outweigh their bad.
You see, the Bible says you can’t outweigh sin. You can’t cancel out sin by your good works. You got to deal with sin. You see, in the Islamic religion, millions of people make a pilgrimage to Mecca and they circle the Kaaba and they kiss the black stone which allegedly fell from heaven, hoping that somehow God might have mercy on them. With great diligence, they practice the five disciplines of Islam hoping that somehow that might outweigh their sin and cancel out their sin, overshadow their sin. The Bible says you got to deal with sin. If you don’t deal with sin, you’re spiritually dead.
The Jewish people understood this. They knew that sin had to be paid for sin had to be atoned for, and that’s why they sacrificed the blood of animals upon the altars of Israel. That’s why the high priest, once a year went into the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled the blood of animals on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, hoping to atone for the sin of the people. That’s why he vested the sin of the people on the scapegoat and sent the scapegoat into the wilderness, symbolically removing the sin of the people from them. But it was all just a foreshadowing of the true sacrifice, the true atonement that was to come.
You see, all the blood of all the animals who ever lived could not atone for the sin of one human being. It was perfect human life that was forfeited in the beginning and only a perfect human life could save us. So Jesus Christ came and He lived that perfect life and He died on Calvary’s cross, and He paid the penalty for my sin and for your sin. If we would really deal with sin, we need to embrace Him as Savior. The name Jesus means savior. The Bible says, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sin.”
So this morning, we want to invite you to receive forgiveness of sin and eternal life from the promise, the hope of a resurrection body. We invite you to do this through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. “God loved the world so much, He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Our commonwealth is in heaven. From it, we await a savior. The Lord Jesus Christ will change our lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him to subject all things unto himself. Let’s pray.