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The sermon teaches that resurrection is a bodily reality grounded in God’s creative power and Christ’s own resurrection. The resurrected believer remains personally identifiable but is transformed from corruption, weakness, and mortality into incorruption, glory, and immortality. Resurrection is also a universal judgment: the wicked will be raised for eternal punishment. Spurgeon therefore comforts suffering Christians while urgently calling every hearer—regardless of past sin or outward respectability—to trust Christ alone for salvation.
Theological center: God will bodily raise all people, glorify believers through union with the risen Christ, and judge unbelievers eternally; salvation is received through faith in Christ alone.
Applications: Trust Christ for salvation · Look to the risen Christ · Consider bodily resurrection · Tremble at judgment
Primary texts: 1 Corinthians 15:35-38 · 1 Corinthians 15:43 · Revelation 1:14-17
“But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.” 1 Corinthians 15:35-38 WE preach with words, God preaches to us in acts and deeds. If we would but perceive it, creation and providence are two continual sermons, streaming from the mouth of God. The seasons are four evangelists, each of them having his testimony to utter to us. Does not summer preach to us of God’s bounty, of the richness of His goodness, of that lavish munificence with which He has been pleased to supply the earth, not simply with food for man, but with delights for both ear and eye in the beauteous landscape, the melodious birds, and the flowers of various hue? Have you never heard the still small voice of autumn, who bears the wheat sheaf, and whispers to us in the rustling of the sear leaf? He bids us prepare to die. “All we,” saith he, “do fade as a leaf, and all our righteousnesses are but as filthy rags.” Then comes winter, crowned with snow, and he thunders out a most mighty sermon, which, if we would but listen to it, might well impress us with the terrors of God’s vengeance, and let us see how soon He can strip the earth of all its pleasantries, and enrobe it in storm, when He shall come Himself to judge the earth with righteousness, and the people with equity. But it seems to me that spring reads us a most excellent discourse upon the grand doctrine of revelation. This very month of April, which, if it be not the very entrance of spring, yet certainly introduces us to the fullness of it, this very month, bearing by its name the title of the opening month, speaks to us of the resurrection. As we have walked through our gardens, fields, and woods, we have seen the flower buds ready to burst upon the trees, and the fruit blossoms hastening to unfold themselves, we have seen the buried flowers upstarting from the sod, and they have spoken to us with sweet, sweet voice, the words, “Thou too shall rise again, thou too shall be buried in the earth like seeds that are lost in winter, but thou shalt rise again, and thou shalt live and blossom in eternal spring.” I propose this morning, as God shall enable, to listen to that voice of spring, proclaiming the doctrine of the resurrection, a meditation all the more appropriate from the fact, that the Sabbath before last we cons…