If the Resurrection Never Happened

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Transcript:

1 Corinthians chapter 15. We’re going to talk about the resurrection this morning. I’m sure that’s no surprise to you it being Easter Sunday.

And the resurrection, I told you last week, you know, I grew up looking at it as just one of the Bible stories. It’s just one of the stories of the Bible like the others. That’s not to say I didn’t believe it was true.

When I say Bible stories, I don’t mean that I don’t think they’re true. I believe they really happen. But folks, the resurrection is not just like any other Bible story.

The resurrection is the Bible story. The resurrection is the nail we hang our hats on, so to speak. And it’s the central fact of history.

If you weren’t sure that I’m passionate about the resurrection, you should have been here last Sunday night when I spoke for over an hour on evidence for it. And if you weren’t here or are interested, I put the audio from that presentation online where you can go and hear about the evidence for the resurrection. And I can give that to you later if you want that information.

But we’re going to look at the resurrection this morning. And we’ve already talked last Sunday night about the evidence for it. I believe it’s not just a fairy tale, not just a story that was made up, but it’s actual historic and scientific fact that Jesus Christ lived and died, as the Bible said, that he was buried and that tomb was empty three days later.

There was nobody else who could have emptied the tomb that had motive, means, and opportunity. Jesus was seen alive by eyewitnesses who knew him beforehand, talked with him afterwards, put their hands in the nail prints. Folks knew it was him who was alive.

And all these changes that can’t otherwise be explained other than the resurrection. Folks, the resurrection is absolute certain fact. As much as we can know anything about ancient history, the resurrection is fact.

If we throw out the resurrection, then we have to throw out everything else we know about ancient history. from Julius Caesar to all of the other. Folks, there’s nobody that’s better attested.

There’s no event that’s better attested than the resurrection. And so we talked about all of that last Sunday night, but we didn’t really get into why the resurrection matters. And we can talk all day.

We can talk until I can talk until I’m blue in the face about why I know for a fact that the resurrection happened, even though I wasn’t there. why I know as certainly as I know anything else that the resurrection happened, but it doesn’t matter too much if we don’t know why it’s important. And that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning, is if the resurrection never happened.

We’re going to look at what Paul said about the hypothetical circumstances. If the resurrection had never happened, what would be different? And when I read this passage that we’re going to look at this morning, I always think of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.

I’ve only seen the movie two or three times, so I don’t always remember every detail, but the few times I’ve seen it, I love that movie. And if you’ve seen it, if you remember it, the basic point of the movie is that the main character Jimmy Stewart plays, goes through some difficult business circumstances and everything else and decides, you know, I just wish I’d never been born. And so his guardian angel comes down and the theology gets, they play a little fast and loose with the theology through the movie, but it’s a good movie nonetheless.

The guardian angel comes and shows him what the world would be like if he had never been born, because he’s convinced that he’d be better off. He’s convinced that the town of Bedford Falls and his whole family would be better off if he’d never been born. And one seemingly insignificant detail changing changed the entire course of history for so many people.

We could look at it and say, well, it’s just one man if he’d never been born, If that had never happened, what difference would it make? But you see throughout the movie the entire town, I mean, it’s just full of bars and strip clubs and slums. His uncle is in an insane asylum. His brother ends up drowning as a child.

I mean, it’s a bleak future presented in the movie if George Bailey, if Jimmy Stewart’s character had never been born. We’re not talking about massive shifts in history. One little detail had been different, and everything changed as a result.

And folks, I realize that’s make-believe. I realize it’s a movie. But I think it really well illustrates the point that one little change can make a difference with everything.

And if we’re talking about the birth of one individual in that movie, how much more impact would it have had on history if a real person who was God in human flesh had died and not risen again? How everything would be different. And when we look at what would be different for us today, as opposed to what is today in reality, we can see the difference that the resurrection makes and why we should care and why we should live every day in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We’re going to start, we’re not going to look in detail at all of the chapter, but I want to start in verse 1.

And as I mentioned last week, a good part of 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is an early Christian creed, something that they would commit to memory and tell to others who became Christians as a sort of short way to help them remember what was important about Christian teaching. And we know that even though this was recorded in 1 Corinthians in the mid-50s AD, that Paul would have learned this from the Jerusalem apostles some 20 years earlier when he met with them. And we can date this passage to within about three to four years of the resurrection.

Within three to four years of the resurrection. I mean, this isn’t a fairy tale that was made up later. People were already convinced and were teaching that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

And he says in 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 1, Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. And then he starts talking about the essence of the gospel here in verse 3. 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.

Folks, you want to know what the gospel is? You want to know what God’s plan of salvation is? You want to know how to get to heaven?

It’s really not as complicated as people, as preachers, as churches like to make it. It’s right there for us. Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

Jesus died because we sinned against God and then he rose again from the dead. And verse 5 says, and then he was seen of Cephas or Peter, then of the twelve. After that he was seen of above 500 brethren at once of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

And after that he was seen of James and of all the apostles. Okay, so in verses 3 through 7 he goes through this early Christian creed and says Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures it was foretold in the old testament that he would die for our sins and he did he was buried and he rose again the third day according to the scriptures because it also was prophesied and then he says he was seen of peter and of the 12 and of these other apostles and 500 other brethren he said some of whom have died but a lot of whom are still still here testifying to what they’d seen and then he says of himself in verse 8 and last of all he was seen of me also as of one born of due time. And we know that Jesus appeared, the resurrected Jesus Christ appeared to Saul of Tarsus who would become the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.

And he says in verse 9, for I am the least of the apostles that I am not meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. And he says, you know, I’m not worthy even to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Christians and yet I’m an apostle because God called me to be, not because I deserve to be one. But by the grace of God, I am what I am.

And his grace, which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all yet. Not I, but the grace of God, which was in me, therefore, whether it were I or they, so we preach. And so you believe.

And he says, basically, it doesn’t matter whether you heard it from me or whether you heard it from Peter, whether you heard it from John, it’s the same gospel of the same resurrected of Christ and it’s the same gospel that you’ve heard and believed and been saved by. Then in verse 12, he gets really into the heart of what we want to talk about this morning when he talks about the importance of the resurrection. He has already mentioned the resurrection.

He’s already mentioned that Jesus Christ rose from the dead after the crucifixion. He’s already mentioned that he was seen by the eyewitnesses and he sort of answers the question that some of them might have been asking. Some of you might be asking this morning, so what?

I mean, it’s an incredible story. He was crucified. He rose from the dead.

It’s an incredible story, but so what? Here’s what he says in verse 12. Now, if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Now, again, if people are saying it’s an incredible story, but there are a lot of incredible stories, what does it prove?

What does it mean? he points to them that they were looking for a hope of something better to come. They were looking for a hope beyond this world that so many people are looking for in our world today.

They say, you know, this world, we may have fun here, there may be good times, but there are a lot of bad times also. And we really look forward to something on the other side. And there are a lot of people even who don’t believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior who are hoping for something better.

They’re hoping for heaven. They’re hoping for an afterlife. But what Paul says is that if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, what basis do we have of believing that any of us will live again?

He says if Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead because there is no such thing as a resurrection, why would we believe that one day we will live again after death? If Jesus Christ didn’t experience life after death, why would we think that any of us would? And he says, so if Christ has not been risen, if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain?

Everything we’ve taught to you is vain, and your faith is vain. And I’m going to say this, I’m just going to lay it out for you this morning, that if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, then you can disregard everything that I say to you this morning. If he was not raised from the dead, you can disregard everything I’ve ever preached, or anybody else has ever preached to you.

If Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, you can disregard all of the Christian teaching that you’ve ever believed, Because it’s meaningless. If Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, then we are just following the teachings of a good, wise, ethical teacher, to be sure, but just another man. Now, but hopefully you’ve heard enough from me in the last few weeks to know that I believe he was raised from the dead.

But if he’s not, if he’s not, then none of this means anything. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, he says in verse 15. Because we’ve testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.

He says, not only is everything that we’ve believed meaningless, he said, but we’re actually liars. He says, if Christ didn’t rise from the dead, we’ve been lying on God. We’ve been saying that he raised Jesus up.

One of the first public Christian sermons ever was what Peter preached at the day of Pentecost, 50 days after the resurrection, when he stood before the men of Jerusalem and said, the same Jesus who you crucified, that same Jesus God has raised up. And folks, the Christian churches began proclaiming the resurrection at Pentecost, began publicly proclaiming and preaching the resurrection at Pentecost, and we have not stopped for 2,000 years. And you know what?

If the resurrection is central to our preaching, central to our message about Christ, and yet Christ wasn’t raised from the dead, we’ve been lying and saying God did something that he didn’t do. He says, for if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised? And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, you are yet in your sins.

So if Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead, we’re not forgiven. We’re not forgiven. Then they also, which are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished.

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. He said, if the only hope that I have in Jesus Christ, if the only hope that I have in Jesus Christ is the hope for a better life he gives me here on earth, then I am a miserable, miserable man. Because quite frankly, Jesus Christ does give us hope.

He does give us hope. But I want to dispel any notion that people may have given us that when we come to Christ, it’s supposed to mean that we’re going to have a perfect life here on earth. That’s not the truth.

Now we have joy. We’re supposed to have joy and peace. here on earth, even in the midst of suffering, even in the midst of storms in life, because of what Jesus Christ has done for us.

But it doesn’t mean that God has promised us a happy and carefree life when we come to Christ. And a lot of times we’ll try to, well, I shouldn’t say we, because I don’t know that we in this room are guilty of it. But I’ve heard preachers that I would say are borderline guilty of trying to sucker people into the Christian faith by promising them that they’ll have a wonderful life and that’s just not necessarily true. Coming to Christ doesn’t promise us that we’ll have no problems, that we’ll have no difficulties, that we’ll have no struggles.

For Paul, his struggles really began. Paul who wrote this, his struggles really began when he came to Christ. Before he came to Christ, he was one of the in crowd as far as the Pharisees. He was one of their leaders.

The high priest Gamaliel trained him and I know that doesn’t mean a whole lot to us, but that would be for them the equivalent of going to Harvard. I mean, he went to the prestigious place to be trained, and he was one of the up-and-comers in the ruling class of the Jews. And yet he comes to Christ, and for the rest of his life, people are wanting to beat him.

They’re wanting to kill him. They’re wanting to silence him, and they eventually did kill him in order to stop him from preaching. His trouble only started when he came to Jesus Christ. And so his message to them is, if the only hope I have in Jesus Christ is the hope of what’s here and now, then I am of all men most miserable.

Then I would be the unhappiest man who’s ever lived. And this paints a bleak picture for us. It sounds a little strange to be preaching on Easter Sunday a message on if the resurrection never happened.

But Paul lays out for us what would be different. Folks, the resurrection is not incidental to our Christian faith. It’s the center of it.

The resurrection is not incidental to our hope. It’s the center of it. And I am perplexed by the fact that you could go into any number of churches this morning who profess to be Christian.

I don’t know if there are any of them here in Lindsay, but I know there are some in Oklahoma City and more where I drove from this morning, that you could walk into churches that call themselves Christian who are teaching this morning that the resurrection is a good idea and an inspiring story, but a fairy tale. I don’t understand how we can call ourselves Christians and deny the truth of the resurrection. Because if the resurrection didn’t happen as the Bible says it is, there’s no point in any of the rest of it.

I’ve read the writings of a lot of bright men and women too, I guess. I’ve read some Thomas Jefferson. I’ve read some Shakespeare.

I’ve read some Voltaire. And they have some, well, sometimes they have some bad ideas. But occasionally they have some good ideas on some things too.

But you know what? They’re just men. And I don’t base my entire life on their teachings.

If Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead, he’s just another man, and it makes no sense to base our lives on his teachings. But Paul outlines here in the text five things that I see, if the resurrection had never happened, would be different. So if we want to look at this in sort of the it’s a wonderful life way and visualize what the world would be like if this one detail was different, what the world would look like today, he gives it to us.

First of all, if the resurrection, and I’ve hit on this, some of these a little bit, but if the resurrection never happened, our preaching is meaningless. Our preaching is meaningless. If the resurrection never happened, then what I’m doing up here is foolish.

Not just preaching about the resurrection, because obviously that would be wrong, but I preached to you messages on worship. I preach to you messages on sanctification, on how our life is supposed to change as a result of what Jesus Christ has done for us. That not in order to get saved do we clean up our lives.

We can’t clean up our lives enough for God to forgive us. But as a result of God forgiving us through Jesus Christ, then our lives are supposed to change. I preach to you messages on prayer.

I preach to you messages on the miracles of Jesus. I’m here to tell you that everything I have preached means nothing if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead. They’re good stories, and they may inspire us to do good things and be better people, but they would be nothing but fairy tales if Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead.

He says in verse 14, if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain. As Christians, folks, it’s not just the preacher here that we’re talking about preaching. I preached a whole series of messages in Fayetteville called Christ-centered preaching.

and I think they thought I was going to be talking about what it is I do in the pulpit. No, so many times when the Bible talks about preaching in the New Testament, it’s talking about simply conveying a message. And we as Christians, if you this morning are a believer in Jesus Christ, if you’ve been born again, then you have a message to preach when you leave this place.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to stand on stage somewhere or that you’re going to go out to the street corner here downtown and you’re going to get on a soapbox with a bullhorn. Maybe you should or could. But that’s not necessarily what preaching is.

But the way you talk to your friends, your family, your neighbors, all the time. And convey to them the truth about Jesus Christ and Him dying for us. And Him rising again.

And what He expects from us. When I talk to my son and try to explain to him the golden rule. Try to explain to him the golden rule.

I don’t know how many times. Friday, I was telling him, do unto others. Or telling him, don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.

one of those is going to end up on my tombstone one day, I’m sure, because my kids, that’s what they’re going to hopefully remember. But when I teach him about what God’s word says, folks, that’s preaching, even if I’m not doing it from up here. We all have a message to preach as Christians, and it doesn’t mean we’re doing what we think of as preaching.

It means as we talk and communicate a message to people. Folks, everything that we communicate, everything that I have communicated, Every person who has ever dedicated, at Brother Hodge’s funeral yesterday, they talked about his love for soul winning, his love for souls. Every person who’s ever gone out and dedicated their lives, dedicated their time to telling other people how they could have forgiveness in Jesus Christ. It was all meaningless if there’s no resurrection.

If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain. And I want you to think here about the emptiness, the emptiness if we were to realize that everything we’ve done all up to this point has been worthless. Now the resurrection is not incidental. Second of all, if the resurrection never happened, our faith is foolish.

Not just what we tell people, but the things we ourselves believe. The things we ourselves believe are foolish if the resurrection never happened. He says in verses 14 and then again in 17, If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

He says in verse 17, And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain. Ye are yet in your sins. Ladies and gentlemen, there are some things that I believe because I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that he died for my sins.

I believe that with everything within me. I believe that he offered that salvation by faith. Now, some of you may be sitting there and saying, but I doubt.

You know what? I’ve doubted too. Until I came to realize that he did all the work.

And doubting salvation because I doubted myself or doubted what I prayed or doubted this or that had nothing to do with believing what he did. And my salvation had nothing to do with me. Had everything to do with him.

And folks, I believe that he died for my sins. I believe as a result of that that I’m forgiven. And even though I’m going to sin and slip up, I know that my sins are forgiven and that I can come back and have forgiveness from him and that I can repent and come back.

I believe that I don’t have to live life in fear that I’m going to slip up and end up in hell. Folks, I believe that there’s a hope that God has plans for me. Again, not always a happy, carefree life, but that God has plans for me, that God has plans for you, that God plans to use us if we’re willing to be used.

I believe that God has something better prepared for us on the other side. Folks, I believe as a result of what Jesus Christ did that there are certain ways I’m supposed to live. There are certain lines that you don’t cross.

And it’s not because He desires to spoil our fun, but because He loves us and doesn’t want to see us get hurt. I believe there are certain attitudes that He wants us to have that I have to work really hard on. Being loving and forgiving of others, especially when they’ve done us wrong.

Think that’s easy? but I try to do it because I believe that’s what he wants us to do. I believe that’s what his word teaches.

There are things that we as, and that’s not the whole list, but that’s just some examples. There are things that we as Christians believe. There are ways we live as a result of what Jesus Christ has done.

And all of that, all of the things that we believe are foolish if he didn’t rise from the dead. If he didn’t rise from the dead and he’s not God, then who’s to say that we should follow the love thy neighbor stuff any more than we should follow the survival of the fittest stuff that other wise men have taught, if you want to argue that they’re really wise men. Who’s to say that his way of living is any better?

Folks, if Christ has not raised our faith, everything that we believe not only about the Christian faith, but about the way it forms the way we’re supposed to live our lives, is foolish if there’s no resurrection. Third of all, if the resurrection never happened, our testimony of God is wrong. I mentioned this earlier that we’ve lied about God.

He says we are found false witnesses. That word false witnesses means liars. We are found false witnesses of God because we’ve testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up.

If so, be that the dead rise not. We’ve lied about who God is. And the resurrection is sort of the ultimate demonstration of God’s power.

I mean, it’s one thing for him to raise Lazarus up. It’s one thing for Jesus Christ to turn water into wine. It’s one thing for Jesus Christ to heal a leper.

But to be able to raise himself because he’s God in human flesh. And that is unheard of in human history. That’s unheard of in recorded history for someone to raise himself.

It’s the ultimate demonstration of his power, not only over life and death, but over everything in the universe. If he can control death, what’s outside of his control? And we look to the resurrection and say there is nothing that is impossible with God.

And yet if Jesus Christ wasn’t raised, then we’ve lied about who God is and what he’s done and what he’s capable of. And if Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead, it doesn’t mean that God’s powerless. But we need to go back and rethink what we’ve taught about God.

If the resurrection, number four, if the resurrection never happened, our sins cannot be forgiven. Folks, this should be a chilling one to anybody who claims to be a Christian and yet doesn’t believe Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead. He says, again in verse 17, If Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain, ye are yet in your sins.

We are still in our sins. There are places in the New Testament where he talks about this idea of translating someone. And it’s the same word that God used in the Old Testament for Enoch in the book of Genesis.

That Enoch in Genesis walked with God and it says, and then he was not for God took him. Enoch is one of only two people who didn’t die. God just sort of took them up into heaven.

And the word there is translated. God just carried them from one place to another. Well, the Bible says that we are translated in a similar way from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

We’re translated from our sins into the forgiveness of God and the righteousness of Christ. Because of what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross. Well, if Jesus Christ died on the cross and said it is finished, but didn’t have the resurrection to back it up and to prove that he was God in human flesh, able to forgive sins, then what proof do we have that our sins are forgiven? We’re believing an empty promise without proof.

And we haven’t been translated at all. We haven’t been picked up from one place and put into the other. We are still right back where we started in our sins, separated from God.

and destined for eternity in hell apart from Jesus Christ. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to follow a form of Christianity that says, well, you’ve got to live up to these wonderful teachings of Jesus and yet there’s no forgiveness of sins in it. You just listen to the things that the man taught and hope everything works out in the end. Or I should say wish everything works out in the end.

What is that? He says, if Christ be not raised, our faith is vain. We are yet in our sins.

There is no forgiveness of sins. Because if Jesus Christ didn’t rise again from the dead, then he was just a man who got himself killed. I could go out and shed my blood today and it wouldn’t do you a bit of good as far as God’s concerned because I’m a sinner too.

We could all go out and die for our sins today and we’d just be getting what we deserved. It wouldn’t do us a bit of good because we’re sinners. But Jesus Christ, according to the Bible, is able to forgive sins because he was a perfect sinless sacrifice because he was God in human flesh.

And we know that because he rose again from the dead. But if he wasn’t raised, Paul says our faith is vain and we’re yet in our sins. And then number five this morning, if the resurrection never happened, our hope is non-existent.

The hope that I spoke on a few weeks ago, the hope that we have of a relationship with God, the hope that we have of a future home with him in heaven, the hope that we have of this future glorification is non-existent. He says, then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. The Bible so many times uses for Christians who’ve passed away the phrase, they’ve fallen asleep because they’re just asleep.

They’re not dead. It’s not the end of everything. They’ve passed from this life into the next.

They’ve stepped from time into eternity. They are absent from the body and present with the Lord, as the Bible says. Those who’ve fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

He says, if Christ wasn’t raised, then those that we’ve said, it’s not the end, they’re not gone. They’re asleep in Christ and they’re with him now. They’ve actually perished.

They’re gone. It’s over. There’s no afterlife.

There’s no resurrection for us if Christ wasn’t raised. And he says, if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. If there’s nothing to hope for, if there’s no heaven, if there’s no future resurrection of the dead, of us, not just of Jesus Christ does the Bible speak of resurrection, but says that one day all men will be raised and those who are in Christ will be raised to new life with him.

If Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead, there’s none of that. We’re not raised to live with him. There’s no eternity in heaven.

There’s no relationship with God. We just die and cease to exist and go into the ground. And he says, if that’s all there is in Christ is just the hope of the here and now, what a miserable, miserable life that is.

You see, if we look at it in these hypothetical terms that Paul lays out, it’s kind of depressing to think about, isn’t it? If we look at it from the perspective of it’s a wonderful life and say, what would change if this one detail changed? One, if I can say it this way, one little detail.

Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. One little detail. is different.

Everything is different. But the fact is, we know from the Bible and we know from history that Jesus Christ died and rose again from the dead. Jesus Christ did die and did rise again from the dead.

And because of that, everything is different. That was what changed all of history. As a result, none of these things are true.

Our preaching is not meaningless, ladies and gentlemen. When we talk to other people about Jesus Christ, when we talk to people about what the Bible says, when we, and folks in this, I’m talking about witnessing, but no