The King Will Do What All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men Couldn’t
May 11, 2025
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
1 Corinthians 15:35-49
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
This morning we’ll talk about two realities: the present agony we have in our bodies, and we’ll talk about the future glory for our bodies—present agony, but future glory. The experience of present agony can be so great that it feels like dark clouds blocking the glory of the sun. You know the sun is there. You just can’t see or feel its heat.
Let’s pray that through the preaching of the Word, even if for a moment, God would blow away the clouds and we would get a glimpse of our future glory. Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
1. The present agony over our bodies
You’ve probably noticed this before, and if you haven’t, once I point it out, you’ll never not notice it: Nursery rhymes can be weird and often much darker than their happy, bobbity melodies seem to communicate.
I think of the poor three blind mice who had their tails cut off by the farmer’s wife—and we just watch these blind mice without tails running around.
And have you considered what it means to sing over an infant “Rock-a-bye Baby”? I don’t know why the baby and cradle are high in a tree to begin with, but if the baby were old enough to understand the lyrics, she might have trouble sleeping because she’s worried about the wind blowing and falling, cradle and all.
Or there’s one about poor Jack and Jill, who go on their errand but don’t make it down the hill without injuries. All very weird, right? There are several like this.
Probably the one I’ve thought most about is “Humpty Dumpty.” This came up at our small group Bible study, but I really have thought about it a lot. I wrote an article back in 2017 for a popular Christian website and used lines from the poem. So I really have thought about this over the years. Imagine saying, “Gather round, children, I want to tell you about a giant egg that was a person. It goes like this: ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, / Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; / All the king’s horses and all the king’s men / Couldn’t put Humpty together again.’ Okay, kids, go and play—be careful not to fall.”
This nursery rhyme, this children’s rhyme, sounds like it comes from the book of Ecclesiastes, a book in the Bible that offers a scathing critique of the futility and vanity we all experience, whether in our bodies or otherwise.
And on this theme, we have the link to our passage. A lot has changed over the years since Paul sent a letter to the church in Corinth nearly two thousand years ago. But the backdrop to his letter—at least the backdrop for much of what he writes in chapter 15—has not changed. We can feel the present agony of our bodies and the great falls that seem to create problems no one can fix. And if not in our own bodies, then in those around us.
At our breakfast table over the last few weeks, we’ve been praying for my uncle-in-law, who’s been fighting for his life in an intensive care unit. A church member let the pastor-elders know of a recent cancer diagnosis. Some of our mothers have had miscarriages this year—and today is Mother’s Day. Others have significant marriage struggles or struggles at work or with finances, such that even though the struggles are not strictly related to the body, our bodies are keeping the score in other ways, as when anxiety and fears and stress produce physical manifestations.
And speaking of keeping score, I haven’t been this year yet to a game with our church softball team, but I would bet that a few of the guys have gone home after some doubleheader and thought to themselves that perhaps last year—or for sure the year before that—slow pitch softball didn’t seem to hurt so much. Sliding into second base didn’t use to require a week of recovery. Humpty Dumpty used to be able to hop off the wall or even over the wall without knee or back pain.
Again, here we have the link to the backdrop of our passage: the present agony of our bodies. Look with me again at 1 Corinthians 15:42–43.
42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.
Of course, in these verses, Paul encourages us with the future glory of our bodies for those in Christ, which we certainly want to say more about in a moment. But sit with the brokenness for just a minute longer. Stare with me at the bottom of the wall and see all the king’s horses and all the king’s men who don’t know what to do because they’ve done all that they can do, and yet they can’t put the body back together again.
This is why Paul calls our bodies “perishable.” When you buy perishable items from the grocery store, like bananas and bread, you know they won’t last long. Our bodies are perishable like that. It’s perishable.
Paul also speaks of our bodies as having “dishonor.” The idea here is not so much that we do dishonorable things, although we do. But as we age and lose certain functions, we start to decay and get sick, which is all a kind of loss of honor and dignity and glory.
Paul also speaks of our earthly bodies as having “weaknesses.” We run and we grow weary. We might sleep for six hours, eight hours, or ten hours. And maybe some of us need more sleep than we typically get; I’m sure that’s true for most of us. But Paul’s pointing out, not that we need more sleep, but we need sleep. Period. We need food. We need water. We need sleep. Even the most glorious bodies among us have weaknesses and dishonor and will one day perish.
This, again, is the background of the passage, the present agony over our bodies. Look at the start of our passage again. Look at vv. 35–36.
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why Paul says, “You foolish person.” Perhaps the agrarian metaphors of sowing and reaping were so common to them that they should have had some idea that our new bodies will be better. “Look,” he’s saying, “if you’ve put a seed of wheat into the ground a thousand times, and you know that seed is small and frail, and that it dies, but you know it comes up as something stronger and very much alive. So then, you should know that whether with wheat or acorns or pomegranates, what goes in the ground in death, comes out in glory.” Maybe that’s why he calls them foolish; they knew a lot more about sowing and reaping than most of us.
But I think there is more. Look back in vv. 12–13 of the chapter. Paul writes,
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
We spent a good bit of time on this the other week. Some were saying that there was no resurrection at all. “At the end of time, people will not get out of their graves when Christ calls their name,” some said. And Paul uses a half dozen or so verses to show the devastating implications of thinking there is no bodily resurrection.
With this in mind, look again at v. 35. “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’” Paul responds to his rhetorical questions with, “You foolish person!” Paul’s response seems to indicate that the question was not sincere. The question likely comes from the same group in v. 12. The question “how are the dead raised?” functioned as a kind of jab at the ludicrous nature of resurrection. “Hey, Paul, if there’s really a resurrection—and there is no way there is—what kind of body will we even have? We start from dust; we go back to dust. And the best we can hope for is God to save our souls and get rid of our bodies.” Paul says, No.
I don’t think many of us are denying the resurrection at the end of time and therefore scoffing at the idea that anyone would be raised. But where this can hit us is when we look around, when we look at Humpty Dumpty in all his pieces and go, “I don’t see how this is going to work. The pieces are just too broken. There’s no king’s men, there’s no doctor, there’s no medicine, there’s no nothing to fix the thing we all want fixed.
2. The future glory of our bodies
And this is where this passage gets good. Paul looks at those of us in despair over the present agony of our bodies and describes the future glory that awaits. And maybe you don’t feel that agony right now. That’s great. Tuck these truths away for a rainy day, or a rainy season. Also, find someone you know today who needs these truths now. You can text them. You can call them and just say, “Hey, I was thinking about you today and just want to remind you that our bodies will have a glory that we can hardly imagine.” Or, while you’re walking your dogs or out in the yard doing work and you see a neighbor, maybe one who doesn’t go to church. You can just say, “You know what, I was at church today and it was so encouraging. You don’t have to listen to the sermon or anything, but I got reminded of how there’s a better life coming after death, and it really encouraged me.” And then just say, “I know this is probably jumping into a lot of stuff, but what do you believe about all of that?”
Well, what did Paul believe? What is this glory that awaits? It’s better than what Lazarus experienced. You know, Lazarus, right? In John 11, Jesus goes to the tomb of his friend who had died. First, he weeps. And when others mock his power, he gets up, marches to the tomb, tells them to take away the stone, and yells, “Lazarus, come forth.” (Here’s another silly preacher joke. People say the power of Jesus is such that he had to specify Lazarus or everyone in their graves would have been raised. Silly but true.)
The New Testament records a few other people whom Jesus raised back to life. But here’s the thing. These handful of raisings to life certainly show the power of Jesus over death. But they were a return to life, normal life. The soul of Lazarus was in heaven with God. Did you ever think that Lazarus had a cool story to tell after being raised, but it was kind of a bummer that he had to die again?
You see, Lazarus was raised to life again, but he wasn’t yet raised to resurrected life, the life that Paul talks about here, and the life you’ll experience one day. You will not simply return to life as is here now. I’ll read vv. 42–43 again.
42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.
There is a significant difference between your life now and the life you’ll have then, a significant difference between the body you have now and the one you’ll have then.
Paul has several metaphors for this that would have hit them: stars and moon and plants and animals and all of that. I once heard a preacher describe this in terms of home renovations, perhaps something we know more about.
Imagine a land developer who buys two dilapidated houses sitting side by side. Both houses have peeling paint, broken windows, patchy landscaping, and cracks in the foundation. The home inspection performed during the appraisal process catalogs a list of a hundred areas needing repair. With the first house, the developer makes cosmetic updates, replacing the paint and windows and adding new carpet and fixtures. However, the deeper flaws in the house, such as the old furnace and cracked foundation, remain. With the other house, the developer demolishes it, even ripping out the foundation, and then builds a new house from the ground up using the best materials.
While the final difference between these houses is significant, and we clearly know which house we would rather own, even this distinction fails to capture the change that God will bring to your body in your resurrection. In the illustration, both houses could still burn to the ground in a fire. But our resurrected bodies will rise with the power of endless life. (I heard the premise of this illustration in a recording of a sermon given by Dane Ortlund at Naperville Presbyterian Church from April 17, 2022.)
Indeed, Paul’s argument is that our bodies become like the resurrected body of Jesus. Look at the last two verses in our passage, vv. 48–49.
48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Historically, Christian burial has preferred a bodily burial as opposed to cremation. A few of you have asked me about this. Historically, there have been some connections with cremation to pagan religions, which is one of the reasons Christians have been against it. But the main reason is that the burial of a body has a way of preaching that the way we go in, is the way we’ll come out.
I get all that. But it the Lord stays away long enough, whether your body is buried in a box or your ashes get buried or whether your ashes get spread to the wind, all of us will eventually go back to dust. That’s Paul’s point. In Genesis 2, God made the first man, Adam, from the dust, and he went back to the dust.
And since Adam’s been dead a long, long time, not only did he go back into the dust, but he has become dust again himself. And Paul says this is not a problem for Christ.
We often say when we have a baptism at church, that the story of Jesus becomes our story: as he went into the grave and came out, so we will come out. Although Paul is not talking here about baptism, he is making this exact point. He’s talking about this Adam and that Adam, this man of dust and that man of heaven. But then we read of a group called “those.” If you have turned from your sins and trusted in Jesus as Lord, then I can say over you, “Just as you have borne the image of the man of dust, you shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” His story is our story.
And speaking of Jesus, we get whispers of what this will be like when we reflect on the handful of stories in the Bible about Jesus after he was resurrected. The disciples could recognize Jesus. They ate meals with Jesus. One of the disciples was invited to put his hands in the side of Jesus and to see his wrists and see his feet. The idea is that Jesus, even in his resurrected body, has some markings of the life he had and the death he died. But with a huge difference. The marks that were once considered signs of shame and defeat now signal victory, power, glory.
I know that the scars you have on your body you did not get them while saving the world from the punishment of sin. I know that. The scars from your double bypass surgery, or your ankle surgery, or the emotional scars no one sees from lost relationships, I know you didn’t get those while saving the world from sin. But the resurrected life of Jesus and these verses here from Paul indicate that whatever dust and dishonor and death mark your body now, one day you’ll be marked by glory, power, and honor.
Conclusion
This passage is not asking us to understand every detail about how this will work. What age will we be then? Will an old man be an old man? Will a child be a child? We don’t know. Next week, in our last sermon from chapter 15, Pastor Ron will have the lines from Paul where he calls this a mystery. So we’re not commanded to understand exactly how God will change everything about everything. We are simply invited to believe that God will change everything about everything, because he can, and he already did for Jesus what he will do for us.
What all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t do, the King of kings will do. No piece of you that’s truly you will remain in the dust. No piece of any Christian you’ve loved and cared for who has gone into the grave will remain there. And when you come out and when they come out, there will be so much to do in our bodies. Yes, we’ll worship Christ together. We will certainly do that. And one of those ways is by enjoying the recreated world in ways we only hear a whisper of now.
A friend of mine wrote a book about the topic of heaven and how heaven will come down to earth with Christ comes to earth. My friend’s name is Stephen Morefield and he’s a pastor in Kansas. I’d like to close by reading one of my favorite paragraphs from his book Always Longing. In the paragraph, he invites us to take these truths that Paul wrote about and imagine what that will mean for our lives together with one another when we all have bodies and glory and power. He writes,
If you are an adventurous type, imagine the thrill Columbus felt when he saw the New World from the bow of his ship or the rush Armstrong felt when he stepped onto the moon. Can you imagine what new mountains, oceans, planets, or creatures we will discover? Perhaps you are more of an artistic type. Imagine the satisfaction Bezalel felt when he finished building God’s tabernacle or the joy Michelangelo felt when the Sistine Chapel was completed. How will you decorate the New Heavens and Earth? What will it be like to directly present your masterpieces to God? If you are a handy type, imagine the excitement felt when the first light bulb worked or the relief experienced when the first tractor plowed a field. What technology will you build for the glory of God and the stewardship of the New Earth? Perhaps you are a nurturing type. Can you imagine the delight felt when the first orange tree was pruned, cared for, and gently harvested and eaten? When Eve watched the first children walk? When the first puppy was domesticated? What will you nurture in the New Heavens and Earth? What will you gently steward and encourage? Imagine all of this without sin, fear, or selfishness but with Christ and your forever family. It’s quite the future. (Stephen R. Morefield, Always Longing: Discovering the Joy of Heaven, 74).
Indeed, it is quite the future. Let’s pray and invite our worship team to lead us in song.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
