The Resurrection of Christ [A]

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Transcript:

We’re going to start in Acts chapter 4 this morning. Acts chapter 4. We’ve been looking the last few weeks at some things that I’ve called non-negotiables.

Some things that we as Christians, these are some of the hills we have to stand our ground on. Some of the places where we fight and die. And I don’t mean literally.

Guys, we are not ISIS where we’re going to go out and slaughter people if they disagree with us. That’s not what I’m talking about, but I’m talking about theologically. This is ground we don’t give up.

There are some things that we may look at as important, and believers can agree and disagree about, and we can fight, but it doesn’t make you any less of a Christian. One example of that would be what we think is going to happen in the end times. And there may be a variety of opinions even within this church.

There are those in Christian circles who think that Jesus is going to come back before the tribulation for his believers. There are some who think he’ll come back partway through the middle of the tribulation to take believers to heaven. There are those who think it’ll be afterwards.

And, you know, we can argue about that. We can debate about that, hopefully politely debate about that. But it doesn’t really make you any less of a Christian if you believe one way or the other.

but there are some things that are just non-negotiable. They’re sort of the dividing line between what is Christian teaching and what is heretical or what is another religion. And we talked two weeks ago about the Trinity, that there is one God, and yet there are three persons described as God in the Bible and described as having the attributes of God, and somehow that works together that there’s one God revealed in three eternally distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And we talked about what the Bible teaches on that, and do I completely understand how that works? No, I don’t, and neither do you. But from what we do understand of it, we take it on faith that God says that’s the way it is, and so we believe it, and that is for us a non-negotiable.

If you start talking about the Godhead being anything other than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all being three persons and one God, it undermines the foundations of the gospel. The gospel doesn’t make sense anymore because the gospel is that we’ve sinned against the Father, and so now the Holy Spirit draws us to the Son, and the Son has made peace between us and the Father. We need all three for the gospel to make sense.

We talked last week about the deity and the humanity of Christ, the deity being that Jesus Christ is fully God, and that at the same time he’s fully human. Again, I don’t completely understand how that works, because we’re not talking a 50-50 split in his nature here. We’re talking about 100% and 100%.

That seems to defy the boundaries of my understanding at least. Maybe you don’t have a problem with that, but I have trouble comprehending that. And yet it’s what’s taught in the Bible. And that’s a non-negotiable for us.

It has to be that way because, ladies and gentlemen, if he was not man, if he was not fully man, he could not have died on the cross for us. God is eternal. The Bible says from everlasting to everlasting, he is God. You can’t go kill God.

You can’t go kill God. So for him to die for us on the cross, to die for our sins, he had to be man. And yet to rise again from the dead and prove that he wasn’t just anybody who got himself.

Guys, I can go get myself killed today. I don’t plan to. But I could probably go get myself killed today.

And I could tell you ahead of time that I was going to die for your sins. But if I’m not God, it doesn’t matter what I tell you. I can’t die for your sins.

And if he wasn’t fully God, he couldn’t rise again from the dead, proving that he had the power to forgive your sins. Now, again, do I understand how the two natures fully work together, how all that fits? No, but what God has chosen to reveal in his word, I take on faith as much as, or as little, I should say, as I do understand it, and accept that that’s a non-negotiable, because the gospel doesn’t work apart from that.

And like I said last week, I’m sure it’s not real reassuring to you if the preacher gets up and says, today’s topic I don’t fully understand, but here we go anyway. But I can tell you what little part of it God has revealed to us in the Scriptures. You know, I gave a Friday at the end of the day.

Excuse me, I’m getting a little tongue-tied this morning. At the end of the day on Friday, we did a science experiment in my class because I’d been talking to the third graders about molecules and how they work in science, and by Friday they still couldn’t even remember the word molecule, so we may have to go back and revisit that. But we were talking about molecules and how they work, and so we tried a little experiment with putting a marshmallow in the microwave.

And we took a little poll. I put five options on the board. I said, you know, raise your hand if you think it’s going to do this.

I gave them it’s going to get bigger, it’s going to shrink, it’s going to explode, it’s going to melt, or it’s going to catch fire. And we just kind of took a poll to see what all of them thought. And what it’s going to do if you put a marshmallow in the microwave for 30 seconds is it’s going to puff up really big.

Then when the microwave’s off, it starts to shrink back down, not to its original shape. It kind of flattens out, and it’s terrible to try to clean off of a plate. So just take my word for it.

But I told them at the end, most of them didn’t say it’s just going to get bigger. They were hoping it was going to explode or catch fire. I would have had some explaining to do if I’d caught the classroom on fire with a microwave and a marshmallow.

But it got bigger, and so I began to explain to them how or why it got bigger. It’s because there are water molecules inside the marshmallow, just like in most food, that when it heats up, it’s going to cause it to expand. Now, I didn’t go into it with them, an explanation of how the radiation from the microwave zaps the water molecules and provides energy and excites the molecules, for lack of a better word.

they turn into gas form, and there’s pressure that builds as they’re slamming off of each other, and there’s nowhere to go, and so it expands until they’re not slamming off of each other, until it’s expanded so much that the pressure doesn’t build anymore, and then it cools and it goes back. I didn’t go through the explanation of how all of that works and the heat and the energy and all of this. They didn’t understand that.

Now, they might have if we’d spent a long time trying to explain that, but I didn’t have a long time. They understood, ah, the water molecules heated up and it got bigger. And they didn’t understand all the mechanics of how it worked that the marshmallow got bigger.

But what little bit they understood, they accepted. And it was enough for them to get the idea of the project. Guys, that’s how it sort of is with these non-negotiables.

There are always going to be questions that are not answered for us. There are always going to be things that we’re wondering, how does that work? But God, for whatever reason, and probably for the fact that we are not as brilliant as God is, None of us are as smart as God is, and all of us together are not as smart as God is.

And that may be the reason he has said you can’t understand anyway, that he has not chosen to reveal to us all the mechanics of how these things work. And yet what he has chosen to reveal to us in his word, we can take on faith and say, I don’t understand 100%, but I do believe this is what the Bible teaches, and so I’m going to stand on it. So I don’t want you to think, just because something is hard to understand from the Bible, that it’s not true or it’s not important.

We don’t take that view of the world in anything else and say, well, it’s not true or it’s not important because I don’t understand it. I didn’t until this year understand how a refrigerator worked, that it wasn’t actually making cold, it was just removing heat. That didn’t mean it’s not important how the refrigerator works or that it works.

So we can look at these things and say, I understand enough to know that he’s fully God and fully man. I may not understand how all that fits together, but what I understand, what little bit I understand, I believe. What we’re going to talk about this morning is one I think I have a little better grasp on.

I hope so because I have spent a long time talking to you about it back in the spring. For some of you, this may be familiar. For some of you, you may go, oh, he’s talking about the resurrection again.

Some of you were not here when I went through all the historical and scientific evidence for the resurrection. So this will be a little sneak peek of that for you. The rest of you, it’s going to be a review of.

But the resurrection is a non-negotiable. The resurrection for Christians absolutely is a non-negotiable. When I was growing up, I thought it was just another Bible story.

Not that I disbelieved it. I believed it was true. But I thought, okay, it’s just another Bible story.

We talk about it every once in a while here in children’s church, here in Sunday school. It’s pretty neat, but not that big of a deal. How foolish to say that it was not that big of a deal that somebody died and rose again from the dead. I mean, I’ve never personally seen that happen.

There are people who may be clinically dead on the operating table, and then are up walking around alive again, but for somebody to be dead for three days, to be buried and dead for three days and be back alive again is not something I’ve ever seen. I’m sure it’s not something you’ve ever seen. It is one of the most incredible things that ever happened.

It is, ladies and gentlemen, the reason why we’re here this morning. I don’t care what other churches say. The resurrection is central to the Christian faith.

And the reason I say that is because, you know, some of you live out in the country and may not have this problem, but I have Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door every now and then who teach that Jesus Christ came back, his body dissolved, and then he came back as a spirit being, or I’ve even heard one say a hologram. I don’t know that they knew about holograms 2,000 years ago. Guys, I don’t care what they say.

The resurrection is central to what we believe. I live so close to the main Mormon church for South Oklahoma City that you can walk out on my porch and practically spit and hit their parking lot. They don’t teach the resurrection the way we do, and that doesn’t change the fact that the resurrection is central to what we believe.

Guys, not just the ones we would look at and say, because that’s a fringe group or that’s maybe a cult. Guys, there are churches that use the name Christian. I don’t know about here in Lindsay, but in Oklahoma City I know of some.

That we would say teach liberal theology and say, well, the resurrection is just a story. The resurrection is just a story that the disciples made up to teach the idea that God gives new life to things. Well, God does do that, but God also literally gave new life to God in human flesh when Jesus Christ rose again from the dead.

I don’t understand the purpose of being a Christian if there’s no resurrection. I’ve come to that conclusion over the years. I don’t understand the purpose of claiming to be a Christian if you don’t believe the resurrection.

I don’t understand the purpose of being in church if we’re not teaching the resurrection. Do you realize that if this church doesn’t stand firm on the resurrection, if we don’t stand firm on the resurrection, the only purpose for you in being here this morning is to hear about how to be good, which we can’t do anyway, or to show other people how good you are, which you’re not. And I don’t mean that to be insulting.

I’m not. I, just like everybody else on earth, am a sinner and happen to be a sinner who was saved by grace I didn’t deserve. And if you’re a believer this morning, you are a sinner saved by grace that you don’t deserve.

None of us, by God’s standards, are good people. And so the idea to form an entire religion, an entire practice, take maybe the one day out of your week that you could sleep in and say, instead I’m going to get up and go to this place and sit and listen to some guy drone on for the better part of an hour just to show people how good I am. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Folks, the reason we are here is because 2,000 years ago Jesus was nailed to the cross for our sins. He died. He was buried and he rose again.

He came back to life after three days. It is the most incredible story that has ever been told. It’s the most incredible thing that has ever been happened and it is the very reason or should be the very reason for what for why we do everything that we do as Christians and as a church.

Without the resurrection there’s no reason for the church. Without the resurrection there’s no reason for Christianity. Without the resurrection there’s no reason for you to be here this morning.

But there was a resurrection. We’re going to start in Acts chapter 4 this morning. We’re going to look at a few verses here.

This is taken from some of the earliest days of Christianity, where Peter and John shortly after Jesus rose from the dead and shortly after he ascended back to heaven, were out preaching in the streets of Jerusalem. And I’m going to start in verse, you know, I’m just going to start in verse 1. And as they spake unto the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

So they were preaching to the people of Jerusalem that not only had Jesus Christ risen from the dead less than a year before their speaking, but that because Jesus Christ rose from the dead, we also had the hope of a resurrection as well. And it says here, for once, it’s not the Pharisees. Because the Pharisees, even though they didn’t believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, they did believe in a resurrection.

They did believe that at the last days, God would raise everybody up to be with Him. Now, the Sadducees were another group who were on the other end of the spectrum. They didn’t believe in angels, didn’t believe in spirits, didn’t believe in an afterlife or a resurrection.

And so they were upset. And it says they were grieved that they were preaching the resurrection. Guys, the resurrection was not an idea that was made up 10 years later, 20 years later, 100 years later, 300 years later, that people made up to build a religion.

Within less than a year, we already have evidence. And really, going back to Acts chapter 2, just 50 days after all of this took place, they were already preaching the resurrection. But here we have less than a year.

They’re preaching again the resurrection and they’re preaching so hard on the resurrection that they are making the people upset. There’s about to be a riot, not by the common people, but the religious leadership is about to blow a gasket because they’re out there preaching the resurrection. And they laid hands on them, verse 3, and put them in hold unto the next day, for now it was eventide.

Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed, and the number of men was about 5,000. Guys, this wasn’t a fairy tale either. they were so convincing about what they had seen and heard that they were out there preaching about the resurrection and they were so convincing that 5,000 men converted and believed in the resurrection and trusted Christ as their Savior.

It doesn’t say how many women and children there might have been. Kind of like with the feeding of the 5,000. I always thought it was 5,000 people, but it says 5,000 men.

You factor in their wives and children, we may be looking at the feeding of the 20 or 30,000. But they were upset because these people, Peter and John, were preaching the resurrection, and men were turning and trusting Christ. And it came to pass, verse 5, it came to pass on the morrow that their rulers and elders and scribes, and Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest were gathered together at Jerusalem. And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, by what power or by what name have you done this?

I love this exchange that they have. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, they’re asking, these men have sort of cornered Peter and John together, and they’ve said, who told you that you could preach this way? And Peter, full of the Holy Spirit, says, ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel, if we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man by what means he is made whole, be it known unto you and all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.

So prior to this, there had been an incident where a man was lame and he was not able to walk, and he was asking for money from people at the temple gate. And Peter and John said to him, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give unto thee in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And the Bible said the man rose up and walked.

And everybody was so astonished by this, that Peter and John had an instant audience outside the temple wanting to know, how were you able to do this? And so the ruler, they begin to preach about the resurrection and the rulers corner them and say, who told you you could preach like this? And Peter and John don’t answer the question.

They answer the question they want to have been asked. And they said, if you examine the good deed, by the way, this was not some evil trick. If you examine the good deed that was done this day where the lame man was able to walk.

He said, I want you to know that it was because of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who you crucified, but God raised up from the dead that this man was made whole. So they’re saying it was Jesus who healed him, and yet they’re reminding them again of the resurrection because their purpose never was to just win the argument. It was to get across the idea, the importance that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

And they reminded him, you crucified You tortured him in every way possible. Everything you knew how to do, you did to him. Everything you had in your arsenal, you threw at him.

And you thought you had ridded yourself of the problem. Rid yourself of the problem. One of those is right.

You thought you’d gotten rid of the problem with everything you had. And it still wasn’t good enough because you crucified him, and yet God raised him from the dead. And it’s because of him that this man stands before you whole.

And then he says in verse 11, This is the stone which was set not of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. And neither is there salvation in any other. Hear this.

Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. He lets them know you killed him.

God raised him up. And God’s plan is for him to be the way to salvation. There’s no other name we can claim by which we’re saved.

Ladies and gentlemen, this morning, the name Baptist will not cut any ice with God. Being a member of Missionary Baptist Church in Lindsay, Oklahoma, does not cut you any ice with God. Who your family is.

Maybe grandpa was a preacher, daddy was a deacon, mom taught Sunday school. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t get you any favor with God.

We’re not saved through the name of our denomination. We’re not saved through the name of our church. We’re not saved through our family line, through our family name.

We are saved in and only through the name of Jesus Christ, the one who died for us and rose again from the dead. This would have been upsetting to them who were claiming salvation through the lineage of Abraham. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, thank God he can use even unlearned and ignorant men.

They marveled. They were amazed that these two fishermen, these two lowly fishermen, were able to speak with such authority of the things of God. They marveled and they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.

They said the only explanation here for why these men are able to do the things that they do is because of their relationship with Jesus. And beholding the man which was healed, standing with them, they could say nothing against it. Yeah, you really don’t want to be the political officials who stand up and say how terrible it is that this man was healed.

So they say, okay, that’s fine. But in verse 15 they say, but when they had commanded them to go outside of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying, What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

They said, What are we going to do about these men? Because we can’t go and say, Oh, there’s no miracle here. They’ve done a miracle.

Everybody’s seen it. Everybody knows there’s no covering it up. But that it spread no further among the people, let us straightly threaten them that they speak henceforth that they speak henceforth to no man in this name.

So what we can do so that this doesn’t spread anymore and get out of hand, we can threaten them and say, okay, that’s fine, you’ve preached, you’ve done your miracle, now go on and you better not preach anymore about this Jesus. And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. It’s just like today.

Sometimes in the most respectful way possible, when people try to tell us what we can and can’t teach, you almost want to grab them by the lapels and say, who do you think you are? I don’t know what gave them the authority to say, you’re not going to preach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John handled it much better than I would have and said unto them, whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken to you more than unto God, judge ye.

So he says to these very religious people, okay, if God tells us to speak and you tell us to be quiet, you tell me who we should listen to. So they can’t very well say, well, our word carries more weight than God’s. Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.

For we cannot, we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. All we are doing, all we are doing is telling the people the things that we have seen and heard. And it’s so incredible we can’t stop talking about it.

Now they would end up being thrown in and out of prison for the rest of their lives. Beaten, tortured, so many of these apostles. and many of them even martyred because they continued to speak and teach and preach about the resurrected Christ. It was that important.

They were arrested and they were threatened. Don’t talk anymore about this. And they said, we cannot but speak of the things that we have seen and heard.

The resurrection, ladies and gentlemen, from the earliest days of Christianity was central to everything that we’ve done. It was central to everything that the apostles did. There was no reason to get out of bed in the morning, but for the resurrected Christ. You look back to where they were after he was crucified.

They were defeated. They were beaten down. They went into hiding.

They locked the doors behind them and hid themselves from the Jewish authorities because they were afraid they were going to be next. You don’t just come out of that suddenly feeling better and we’re going to take on the world. There was no reason to go on but for the resurrected Christ. And now for them to be out speaking to the people, there was no reason for that but the resurrected Christ. From the earliest days, all of Christianity has been built on the resurrection of Christ. Now, we won’t have time to finish all of this message this morning.

We’ll continue it tonight. I’m not through yet. But we will eventually come to a stopping point, and I won’t try to squeeze in all of this this morning and keep you here until 1230.

We’ll finish it tonight. But I want to talk to you, first of all, as I already have a little bit, about what the resurrection is. First of all, that Jesus Christ died for our sins.

That’s important because there’s no resurrection if he didn’t die. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 tells us, For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.

For there to be a resurrection, he had to die. And the Bible says that he did die. Historical testimony tells us that he did die.

And not just from Christians. Greeks and Romans and Jews who did not believe that he was the Messiah wrote that he lived and taught and ministered and did what to them appeared to be miracles and that he was crucified. He did die.

And the scriptures tell us that he died for our sins. He didn’t just get himself killed as a political revolutionary because he irritated the wrong people. He came for the purpose of dying for our sins because you and I had sinned against a holy God.

We’d sinned against a holy God. And there’s no amount of good that we can do to earn our own forgiveness. There’s no amount of good that we can do to work off the sin that we’ve committed.

Anytime we disobey God, it condemns us. And we sin because we’re sinners. We’re born under condemnation.

The Bible says Jesus died for our sins. Second of all, he was buried. There’s no proof for a resurrection if he wasn’t buried.

Because one of the best evidences was the fact that the tomb was empty and nobody could deny it. But if he’d never been put in the tomb, then what does an empty tomb mean? It might mean it was never occupied to begin with.

But the Bible says that he was buried. The Bible talks about this man Joseph of Arimathea, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council that condemned Jesus to die. Apparently was not there when the vote was taken.

So was not part of those who voted to condemn him, but was part of that ruling council. Who, when the disciples turned and fled, when the disciples ran away and hid, This Jewish leader named Joseph of Arimathea was the one who went to Pontius Pilate and said, can I have his body to give him a proper burial? And put him in a tomb that was then sealed by the Romans, sealed under authority of the governor.

Folks, what kind of sense would that make for that to be made up? Think about this here. They were not too happy with the early apostles.

We’re not going to be all that happy with the ruling Sanhedrin at that point. They were the ones who had condemned Jesus to die. And while they had run and hid, they’d fled, locked themselves away, not believing at that point what Jesus said, destroy this temple and again I’ll build it in three days.

Forgetting Jesus’ words, Joseph of Arimathea, this Jewish leader, was one of the few people who had the courage, who had the guts, to go to the Romans and say, I’ll identify with Jesus Christ. I have a connection to this man. I have a relationship with this man. I’ll give this man who was condemned by them as a criminal, I’ll give him a respectable burial. If they were going to make up a story about Jesus Christ being buried later on, because it never really happened, we’re just going to make up the story as part of the resurrection narrative, why would they invent a character like Joseph of Arimathea?

You would think it would be Peter, boldly going back and telling Pilate, I want the body or else. You know, Peter drew out his sword when they came to arrest him. Where was Peter’s sword now?

He was in hiding. The only explanation for why that’s in there the way it is is that’s really what happened. Why would the apostles make up stories that made them look bad?

So he died, he was buried, and folks, the tomb was empty. 1 Corinthians 15 says, For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. They heard the message that he’d risen again.

The disciples heard the message from the women that he’d risen again, and they ran to see for themselves, and the tomb was empty. And the tomb’s still empty today. Nobody ever came along and produced the body.

It would be really easy. If the tomb wasn’t empty, the authorities would have been only too glad to say, no, here’s the body right here. See, he’s still dead.

They could have put a stop to this very easily. Jesus rose again the third day, and his tomb was empty. And, folks, Jesus was seen alive again.

He was seen to live again and to walk again and to teach again and to do miracles again. by hundreds of eyewitnesses. And they named some of them here.

It’s not just, oh yeah, a lot of people saw him. They named names. And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, and after that he was seen of the five hundred brethren at once, of whom a greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

And he even goes on from there after verse 7 to talk about James and other apostles and then being seen last of all by Paul himself. Now I won’t go into all of it again this morning like I did back in the spring, the four facts surrounding the resurrection and how I believe it’s absolute historical fact. But that gives you an idea of what the Bible teaches is important about the resurrection story.

He died, he was buried, his tomb was empty, and he was seen to live again. I don’t know about y’all, but one plus one plus one plus one to me equals four. I don’t know about the common core math, but the math I was taught, one plus one plus one, it equals four.

And dead and buried and empty tomb and credible eyewitnesses see him alive again, tells me he died and rose again from the dead. There have been all sorts of other explanations that were brought forward that we’re going to talk about what the resurrection is not. What the resurrection is not.

First of all, Jesus did not merely pass out. Have any of you heard this theory? They call it the swoon theory.

I w