Prayer of Thanksgiving: Thank God for his immutability because if He cannot change then all his promises will come true and for his mercy to us withholding the punishments we deserve.

Prayer of Supplication: Pray for the health of our senior members and for our expectant mothers.

Bible reading and commentary:

Read: 1 Corinthians 15:50-58

Paul concludes this chapter by describing the glorious moment at the end of human history when Christ will decisively achieve the resurrection of his people, who are purchased by the shedding of his blood. This event is so beautiful that Paul cannot help but burst out in a beautiful song celebrating Christ’s victory of sin and death.

The focus of these verses isn’t to speculate when Jesus will return but to explain the ways that Christ’s resurrection has satisfied God’s law, broken the power of sin, vanquished the grave, and destroyed death forever. Commentators emphasize that the final resurrection involves the salvation of our present bodies transformed. Paul’s allusion to several Old Testament passages in his song of triumph (1 Cor. 15:55-56) causes scholars to discuss the proper method of gleaning the plain, simple, and clear meaning of prophetic texts.

This is a doctrine that needs to be confessed but also the future resurrection of believers’ offers extraordinary comfort and joy to Christians as they mourn the death of loved ones, struggle with sin, and encounter intense suffering in this present life. Among the practical concerns of resurrection hope, scholars emphasize the need for steadfast courage and godly labor in the service of the risen Christ, for those who labor in the Lord will bear lasting fruit and enjoy eternal glory.

Katharina Schütz Zell (born 1497/8 - September 5, 1562) was a Protestant reformer and writer during the Protestant Reformation. She was one of the first Protestant women to marry a clergyman. Katharina lived all of her life in Strasbourg. The following address was delivered by her at the graveside of her deceased husband, Matthias Zell, in January 1548. “With my husband and all believers, I hope to obtain that costly resurrection of Jesus Christ, who could not experience corruption. We must experience corruption, but we will not remain in it. For the Spirit of God will bring our flesh and bones together again, signal the dawn, and make us alive, as the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel and also our holy Christ himself have testified: that the hour will come when the dead who are in the grave will hear the voice of the Lamb of God and go forth. St. Paul also says this. I hope to obtain and see that resurrection with my dear husband, along with our dear children. (Together we had two, and they lie in this graveyard.) It is now in the twenty-first year since – with great pain! – we carried our first child and trod this place with him; he was the first person buried in this graveyard, where with such fitting earnestness he [her husband] so often longed to come. Therefore, just as he desired to be buried in this place with his and my children, so I hope that this place will also be my abiding place until the trumpet and voice come: “Rise up, you dead, for the judgment.” Then my good husband and all the believing dead will hear the happy voice of our worthy Lord Jesus Christ: “Come here, you blessed, into the kingdom that was prepared for you from the beginning; you have fed me, sheltered me, given me drink, clothed me, and comforted me.”