I believe – 4

Reading: Luke 23:1-12, 1 Cor 15:1-8

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Click here to download the powerpoint presentation that accompanies this talk

I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

But the resurrection has always had its critics and its detractors. Here’s Richard Dawkins:

Presumably what happened to Jesus was what happens to all of us when we die. We decompose. Accounts of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension are about as well-documented as Jack and the Beanstalk. (Richard Dawkins)

If that is true I’ll invest all the money I can find in beans! and Dawkins is not alone. The resurrection has been such a stumbling block to some people ever since it happened so why don’t we quietly drop it or just not talk about it quite so much?

My vision for this morning’s teaching is to show you that it makes sense to trust that the resurrection happened as a historical reality and that the resurrection give us the lens through which we understand and enjoy all that God has for us in Christ

• In fact, to drop the resurrection would leave our gospel powerless and empty. But being confident about it vital to being a Christ-follower! The resurrection doesn’t make any sense without understanding the reasons why Jesus died so what kind of death did he die?

Ali unpacked this for you last week –

• physically it was a brutal crucifixion
• and spiritually we see God behind the scenes working his purposes out

The resurrection matters because

it shows us what happened at Jesus’ death

Jesus death was …

a substitutionary death -

Jesus Christ was our substitute and by dying he settled the price for our wrong-doing that we should have paid.

What is astounding about this is that it is Jesus Christ, God’s son, who paid the price. This is God substituting for himself to buy us back!

John Stott called it the “self-substitution of God” and that neatly describes what God achieved

a redemptive death

If you fall on hard times and have to go to a pawnbroker, you hand over an article that is precious, he gives you the money and then (hopefully) you can but it back later

One of the words used to describe the death of Jesus is exactly this – to buy back – to redeem.

a saving death –

rescued from the wrath of God

When someone is in trouble in a rough sea and is rescued by helicopter they are lifted out of the danger that would otherwise kill them

That’s what the death of Jesus does – it saves us from the danger of God’s wrath on human sin (ours especially) and we are free!

a revelatory death –

Through the death of Jesus something of God’s character is revealed.

• His love is revealed because few people would go to the lengths he did to rescue another person.
• His craftiness is revealed because only this cunning strategy would defeat Satan and render him powerless
• His passion (or zeal) is revealed in that is seems God was utterly determined to go through with this

in the OT when Isaiah was describing what God would do through Jesus Christ he said “The zeal (or passion) of the Lord of hosts with accomplish this” (Isaiah 9:7)

that the creator would allow himself to be subject to the worst excesses of the depravity of his own creation.

What is the most destructive aspect of created life? It’s death! The removal from the earth which God has made of the one thing that was most precious to him – a human being

now God was willing to eve go through that destructive process in order that we might not have to!

Therefore it is a

victorious death –

Satan defeated and the death and resurrection of Jesus showed that Satan is defeatable in our lives.

With all that being true of the death of Jesus Christ you may wonder – what’s the point of the resurrection? Hasn’t God done it all, ticked all the boxes with Jesus’ death?

Not exactly because had Jesus not been raised from the dead we would probably still be debating these things today.

The resurrection put beyond reasonable doubt what God did in the death of Christ <ppt>

I believe that there was one man, Jesus Christ, who was brutally murdered, whose dead body was placed in a grave and was then brought back to life by God.

In maths we have a wide variety of methods of proving things.

• What you may not realise is that we also have some tools for disproving things – and the simplest of these techniques is the counterexample.
• F’rinstance: Suppose I make a claim that there is no-one in Victoria who wears pink underpants. <ppt!> To disprove my assertion, you only have to find a single person who wears them – and he or she is the counterexample. You’ve found an exception to the rule, so the rule isn’t a rule any longer.

What on earth has this got to do with the resurrection you may well ask! <ppt – remove pants!> Simply this:

• For millennia (and it’s not just a recent thing) there have been people who claim “this world is all there is – there’s nothing beyond it – the earth is a closed system – once you’re dead, you’re dead.”
• So to undermine that philosophy I only have to find a single counterexample to show that the assertion is false – and that’s where the resurrection speaks out loud and clear!
• Of course there are other examples in the Bible (and outside it) of people returning to human life after crossing death’s boundary for a short while. They are rare, but they do exist.

Now – the resurrection is the best attested of them

Why is it so vital? <ppt>

and this one is of paramount importance for two reasons

firstly – <ppt> that God clearly brought a human being back to life, thus showing that death is not the end

and secondly – <ppt> because of who that human being was – Jesus Christ – whose ministry had been bringing in the kingdom of God for three remarkable years – and now this event verified all that God did in Jesus’ life itself!

The early Christian spotted this very quickly

For example: Peter on day of Pentecost

Acts 2:23-24 This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

Paul in letter to Corinthians

1 Cor 15:3-6 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living.

This letter was not a private affair intended to confirm the opinions of the already convinced. It was a public document and was to be read out loud in the new churches in Corinth.

So Paul is inviting anyone with misgivings about this to check it out with the 500 people who were actually present.

Looking at these two (Peter on day of Pentecost and Paul writing to the Corinthians) it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to see the common features here.

The physical death of Jesus Christ, the normal burial of his body and the verified resurrection of the same person.

Now I do hear people say “these followers of Jesus were simple folk. They desperately wanted Jesus to be alive again – so their claims that they’d seen him were mere wish-fulfilment”

• the attitude that lies beneath this is a kind of chronological snobbery<ppt>

• It’s the attitude that says “well – these people didn’t use mobile phones or understand DNA and therefore they were were gullible and less able to judge what was there in front of their eyes.”

• Personally I don’t find that convincing. After all many of the worlds greatest philosophies – systems of ideas that we still use today, came from first century middle east.
• The Bible itself shows that the people who wrote it were not gullible, but instead they were rather sceptical until they had investigated for themselves and satisfied their own curiosity that Jesus really had risen from the dead – beyond reasonable doubt!

So what? <ppt>

There is nothing in history that can be proved using laboratory methods.

• However the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a historical fact is better attested than many other historic events we take fro granted.
• Don’t forget that the first century Christian found the resurrection just as inconceivable as some of us today and so they went back to the evidence and to the people who were there to confirm for themselves that it really did happen.

I often preach on the resurrection at Easter and in those sermons I want to help people who may be sceptical to see how reliable and realistic it is to trust that the resurrection actually happened.

• I want to say to my sceptical friends that even if you don’t think the resurrection is true, you should still want it to be true!
• Many people (sceptics included) are passionate about social justice and caring for the poor and alleviating suffering.
• And yet for people who don’t have God in their lives this whole world is an accident, a collection of random causes and effects . But why sacrifice for the needs of others if in the end nothing really matters or will make any difference?

But because Jesus is alive certain things follow

Death is not the end –

• your life has meaning and purpose beyond what you’re doing now!

God is real

• and has demonstrated his love to you in the most intense and passionate way

• In fact by coming to Christ you are adopted into the family of God means that you have the same heavenly father as Jesus Christ

there is power to live life as it should be lived

• the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to us today.

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