Let's begin where we left off in our last lesson in I Corinthians 15:20-23. In verse 20 Paul has been rehearsing the whole scheme of resurrection in this chapter in the first 18 or 19 verses, that if Christ was not raised from the dead, then we have no hope. Because at the very core, the very crux of our Gospel is the fact that Christ was raised from the dead. He was resurrected. I like to define the term "resurrected" because I think often our ministers use the word "resurrection" totally out of it's true meaning. In other words, anyone who has been raised from the dead miraculously, back in Scripture, such as the widow's son, under Elijah. And then there was Lazarus, who was raised from the dead. These were not resurrected, they were merely brought back to life and then they died again. Resurrection speaks of that which only Christ began, and that is that He arose from the dead into the eternal, never to die again. And so when we speak of resurrection scripturally, don't think of someone who has merely died and has been called back to life, because they're going to die again. But once Christ rose from the dead, never to die again, that was resurrection. When we experience resurrection it's going to be final. We will not again have to die and be brought back to life. So resurrection is something that only began when Christ arose from the dead. He was the first to be resurrected. Just keep that straight in your mind. Just the other day I heard someone speaking of Lazarus being resurrected. No he wasn't! He was brought back to life but he was not resurrected because he died again at some later date.


Now, we've been talking about the resurrection from the dead all the way through Chapter 15 on up to verse 19. In verse 20, Paul again, as I've used the expression off and on throughout the book of Corinthians, shifts gears. Now all of a sudden, instead of just talking about the resurrection of Christ at the time of His death, burial and resurrection, goes clear to the end of the age, you might say, and brings up resurrection as a part of the whole picture of God's plan of the Ages. Now again, when we teach the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, that's the way I like to depict it. This is God's plan for the Ages. Now, when I say it's God's plan, I want to take you back to Acts. And let's go to Chapter 2, but keep your hand on I Corinthians 15. When I speak of God's plan for the Ages, what I'm trying to imply is that God, before anything was ever created, the Triune God put everything in motion. He already had it blueprinted.


You know one of the most amazing things, and one of the things that we find hard to comprehend is, that God from the beginning, gave men and nations their own free will. And they have been operating under that free will as nations make decisions to invade other nations supposedly under a free will, but yet from the beginning of time until the end of God's plan for the Ages, everything falls in place exactly as God has predetermined it. Isn't that amazing? How He can leave men and nations with a free will, they do pretty much what they want to do, and the end results in bringing everybody and everything to the end of God's purpose. All right, how did it all begin? Well I like to use this verse in Acts Chapter 2, and verse 23 where Peter is preaching here on the day of Pentecost, and he's preaching not to you and I, but rather to the Nation of Israel. Peter is rehearsing the fact that they had crucified their Messiah, but that's not the point so much that I want to get out of this verse, but rather what I just said, and that is that God has had a plan for the Ages from eternity past.


Acts 2:23

"Him (speaking of Jesus of Nazareth Whom they had crucified), being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:"

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