“The Resurrection”

I would like for you to take your Bibles, please, and find the gospel of Luke, the third book in the New Testament of your Bible.  Matthew, Mark and Luke and we will begin there this morning.

I have been thinking for a long time, not just this week, about the Resurrection, and what that means, and my mind has gone down many paths and many places of scripture.  I thought about the first coming of Christ as a babe.  I thought about his crucifixion and his resurrection.  I thought about his promised return in the Book of the Revelation.  Many things have gone through my mind, and so, what we're doing this morning you could call a sermon, but it's also a meditation.  I want you to walk with me through my thoughts that I trust the Lord's Holy Spirit has directed over the last several days, to think about something we have thought about a lot.

Now, I need your help again and I really would like for you to do this so we can all see.  Easter comes once a year.  Now, we as Christians celebrate the resurrection every Sunday, but some of you have been in church consecutively on Easter Sundays for many years and I want to find out how many; there is method to my madness.  So, if you have been in church on an Easter Sunday for at least 10 consecutive years, raise your hand.  Hold them up, put them up high, I want everybody to see. Alright just keep them up until I hit your number, 20 consecutive years, 30, 40, 50, 60.  Oh…OK  I got to stop , we're going to get to age, I forgot about that.  I'll never forget the time in my first pastorate we still were in the tradition of recognizing mothers at Mother's Day.  You know one of the awards we used to give was the oldest mother.  Have you ever tried to graciously and pastorally recognize the oldest lady in your church?  You don't know how hard that is, do you?  Okay, you who are the oldest stand up.

The point is this: You've heard the same message that many times.  And sometimes of all Sundays on Easter Sunday we come knowing what to expect.  The preacher is going to preach on resurrection.  He's going to tell us that we are going to die one day and if we don't have faith in Jesus Christ, we are not going to be raised to life.  We are going to be raised to eternal destruction.  So what else is new?  Let's get out of here so I can go eat Easter dinner and the kids can hunt eggs.  I know what's on your mind.  And the great thing about it is, you get to wear clothes you bought for spring and freeze to death in Kentucky. [Laughter]

Well, as I began to think about the resurrection, the first thing that came to mind, seriously, was the way we react to the truth of someone being raised from the dead.  I just really started thinking about that, thinking about what’s it like to think hard about somebody who was lying in a grave for 3 days, they are raised to life and you see them, eyeball-to-eyeball.  And, in thinking about them in a serious fashion, I found that our response to that is a very bland, colorless, non distinct kind of response.  I don’t mean to be morbid or irreverent in any way.  But if you were in a funeral home at a visitation and the corpse sat up and started talking to the people there, I think there would be a response!

Luke Chapter 7, Verse 11:  This is telling the story of Jesus' life. He has healed the Centurion's servant.  He is traveling on foot, and, what has happened is he has acquired a great crowd.  He is approaching a city called, Nain.  His disciples are with him.  There is a great crowd with him.  But, when he is arriving at the city gate there is a crowd coming out of the gate and the two crowds meet.  Soon afterward… Verse 11…

Luke 7:11 -16

Soon afterward, he went into a town called Nain; and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.  As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother and she was a widow,  [The woman had had a rough life] and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.  And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, "Do not weep." [Now you can't say that at a funeral unless you have the authority to do something about it]  Then he came up and touched the bier and the bearers stood still, and he said, "Young man, I say to you, "arise." And the dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him to his mother [he gave him to his mother because he was the one who had authority over him and no one else]. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God.

Fear took them.  Fear had a hold of them.  There was an emotional, a physiological  reaction that someone had been raised from the dead and they knew God was among them, and I thought, that's the normal reaction of someone being raised from the dead. But, it goes a lot deeper than that.  We have to think on levels we're not used to thinking about a resurrection from the dead is not our normal way of thinking.  It's not normal; it's not natural.

So I want you to look at Luke 16.  I'm not going to read the whole story, but so you can see where it is, this is a story that Jesus told.  It's argued a little bit back and forth whether he's telling a real story or a parable.  It really doesn’t have any characteristics of a parable, so I take it to be a story, that through his divine knowledge he knows, but, it begins like this:

Luke 16:19

There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.  Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.  The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.  The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.  And he called out, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. 

I'm just going to read the whole story and let the Lord tell it Himself.

Verse 25: But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.  And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us. And he said, "Then I beg you, father; to send them to my father's house-- for I have five brothers---so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment, but Abraham said, "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.  And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.  He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead."

When I thought about those two passages together, I thought, my mind has not yet grasped the issue about something in humans and people rising from the dead. We have from the teaching of Jesus Christ, the Lord of all Life, that if someone to rise from the dead, that is not enough to convince people to believe God, or believe in Him, and we think, "well, I've just spent 20 Easters in a row giving an apologetic sermon trying to convince people to believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a reality, that he really did raise from the dead.  Yes, he did.  Yes, it's fact.  But….what do we learn from that fact?

One more resurrection story in Gospel of John, if you want to find that, one book over a little further back in your Bible, Chapter 12.  You see, this is where my mind was running this week; thinking about the Gospel, thinking about the resurrection of the dead.  Thinking about our contemporary response to it and how plain vanilla and bland it seems that our response it. 

In John Chapter 11, Jesus' friend, Lazarus, died, who was the brother of Mary and Martha.  He stayed away four days so Lazarus had been lying in the tomb for four days.  He comes to the tomb, he asks them to move away the stone, and he says, "Lazarus, Come forth." And Lazarus comes out of the grave, alive, he says, "Unbind him from his grave clothes and let him go." After that, we find that the Jews who were there, some of them believed in Jesus.  Others ran and tattled on Jesus to the Pharisees.  "Did you know he raised Lazarus of Bethany from the dead?" Would you not expect the religious leaders of the day, to say, "YES! The power of God has visited us; he is here; we have reason to believe the Messiah is here," but they planned, according to that report, to arrest and kill Jesus.  Is that not an odd response to a miracle of a resurrection?  As a matter  of fact, we see in Chapter 12, verse 9, look at that.  This is after Lazarus resurrection, he's been alive for awhile now. It says:

John 12:9

When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came not only on account of him [that is Jesus], but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. [Oh, what a happy party it should be.  I guess every party has a pooper and this one had one.] So the chief priest made plans to put Lazarus to death as well.

Man, he died once, let's kill him again! What kind of response is that to a man who has been raised from the dead? And what do we learn from that.  I have learned this.  I can factually convince you that Jesus' tomb is empty because he was raised from the dead and that won't do you any eternal good, because something has to happen.  God did not raise Jesus from the dead to get you to believe.  He raised Jesus from the dead so that you would be able to believe.  So that you could believe.  You see, Jesus Christ's resurrection was not a miracle for us to step back and go, "Wow! That's really cool, God."  It was the finishing act of his work of redemption of mankind that cannot be separated from his incarnation when he was a baby, from his life, from his death on the cross, from his burial, now his resurrection, his ascension into heaven and his promised return.  The reason that happened is so that it is possible for us to believe in God through Christ.  What has to happen, however, according to looking at the scriptures, a resurrection is not enough.  There has to be a deeper work in the human heart.  You learn through the reading of the scriptures that a miracle…that any arm of any miracle is never long enough to reach into the depths of your or my human heart.  And that is why our response to a resurrection is so dull and predictable. 

Has God ever touched your heart with that truth? Or, are you a nominal church-going Christian who can talk about the resurrection about Jesus Christ from the dead with the same level enthusiasm as a boring graduation speaker.  Because evidently that's highly possible.  As a matter  of fact, some people have the exact opposite response.  They wanted to kill the guy that was raised from the dead, so this revealed to me the depth of our hearts and the real reason for the resurrection.  I look at humanity and how we live today.  We want things that are distinct.  We have specs, we have expectations that we want for our house and for our car, we have them for our athletic teams and whoever is the new coach of the Big Blue Nation, which you now have.  We want to know…. I thought we were going to have 50 funerals from people dying on the spot when they heard Billy Donovan wasn't coming! [laughter]

But, when I talk of faith with people….as a matter  of fact, I was pumping gas the other day, putting gas in the car at Thornton's, and I scanned around and I looked over at the building and there was a poster advertising one of those energy drinks.  You know what the two words were that described it? Obscene Energy.  You know what that is?  That comes from a society who no longer has words to use.  When you can describe a drink that a 10-year-old could go buy as obscene we are a vain society who has no words to describe extremities.  Why do we need caffeine drinks loaded up anyway, my friend?  Is your life that empty that you have to fill it up and get a buzz from something so you can simply make it through a day?

Christianity has become so bland, so rounded, so angle-less, but the Christianity of the Bible is clear, distinct, full of color.  It's everything but bland.  Take your Bible and let's look at 1 Corinthians, please, Chapter 15.

We'll look at our memory verses for just a minute. This is a meditation of just the path my mind has been on for the last many days.  I'm asking you to walk it with me, thinking… not so much about my path, but walking with me down this path so you can think about your own life and those around you.  1 Corinthians 15 is the great resurrection passage in this chapter to this church. And this is why I say that the Christianity of the Bible is very clear, distinct, in full color with sharp angles.  It is not something that you could take to Oprah and everybody would like.

By the way……[laughter] Have you ever given serious thought to the spirituality of our day? Now, if I told you things like this…."You know, you could really have your life changed by believing in God.  You need ….The Secret is, and if you know Oprah or if you've read or seen The Secret , you need to think positive things and draw them to you.  And you need to have a positive faith in God.  You need to really believe in him, because when you do that, that's going to change your life.  Well, what God do you believe in? Well, I find God through Jesus and my friend over here finds God through Buddha, and my friend over here finds God through Taoism and my friend over here finds God through Hinduism, and, as you see, God is all the same; we're just climbing the same mountain up different sides and…we're sincere about our faith and we just have a nice holy huddle.

Have you ever really given thought? Do you know that no writer of any of those religions has ever taught that we're climbing the same mountain to the same God?  That's offensive to a Muslim!  It's offensive to a Buddhist, and it ought to be offensive to a Christian!  Why do we have different religions if we've got the same God? We don't! But, think about this.  Many people are saying they are believing in and serving in a God that exists no where except in their own mind.  And if I would ever classify anything as foolish, that would be it.  How do you know what you know about God?  Well, I just think that's the way God ought to be.  I'm glad Joie doesn’t know me that way.  We know each other by experience; by talking to one another; by revealing truth about ourselves to one another.  And that's the way you know God.  You know Him by what He says about Himself, not what you think about him. That's the same thing as breaking the commandment to have no Gods before me and to have a graven image.  You might not carve a totem pole but you've got a graven image of God in your mind, and I want to tell you, He's just like the idols of the Old Testament; He cannot talk, He cannot walk and He cannot hear or answer prayers.  But, the one who is raised from the dead can.

Let's look at the specific description:  1 Corinthians 15:1

1 Cor. 15:1

"Now I would remind you brothers of the gospel which I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain."

Now the first thing that came to mind as I read this scripture, on this trail of the resurrection, was an interesting phrase in verse 2, and he says, "And by which you are being saved."  You've got to think about that.  And it made me realize that if I presently am not in the process of being saved, I've never been saved.  You see, because once it starts, God, who began a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.  There is no such thing as, I got saved here and nothing happens, I die and go to heaven.  You are always in the process of being saved, so you can say, "I am saved, I am being saved, I will be saved totally when I go to heaven."

So, we see that in that verse.  And then we get to our memory verses, Verse 3 says:

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that….

There is no shadow, there is bright light, it is distinct, clear, sharp and simple.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

Clear, plain, distinct.  And then I followed the distinction of this passage…And I thought about how bland and soft we have gotten with Christian distinctions, and as long as your belief is sincere you're okay.  I could sincerely believe I could run out in the road and stop a Mack truck like Superman. But, I'd be sincerely wrong.

Now, look at how clear the gospel faith of the New Testament is:  Verse 12 of Chapter 15.  There was a problem in Corinth.  Some of them had gotten soft.  They didn't believe in the doctrine of the resurrection, so Paul begins to correct them with the plain gospel and clear thinking.  He says, in verse 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? [And then he argues…] But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. [He says that because of the real humanity of Christ.  He was real.  His body was real.  He was a real human, though he was God.] Then he says in Verse 14: If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

What he's saying is, if the plain truth of Christianity is not there in all its sharpness, clarity and distinctiveness, then what I am preaching to you is nothing but utter emptiness; go home! Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, is the philosophy we should have if Christ isn't raised from the dead, and when I look at some church people, that's the philosophy they live.

Verse 15: We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ whom he did not raise.  [We make God a liar if we preach a resurrection from the dead… he goes on..] For if the dead are not raised, 16 not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile [it's worthless] and you… you are still in your sins. 18 Then those who have fallen asleep [that is those who have died] in Christ have perished.  If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Have you ever heard someone, or even made the silly argument yourself, 'You know, if Christianity wasn't even true, if there wasn't even a Jesus I'd still live by Christian principles because that's the best way to live."  If you think that you don't understand the Bible because that's not true!  If there is no Jesus and no resurrection of the dead, there is no such thing as morality. Do what you want to do, live it up! But, if there is, my friend, and you want a full life, listen to what he says.  That's exactly what Paul is saying, "If in this life your hope is in Christ only, you, of all people are most to be pitied." You're wasting your time.  You've got a false hope. When you die you’re going to perish.  That's how clear his gospel was. 

And then, strangely, my thoughts were drawn a couple of chapters back to Chapter 11.  The Lord's Supper. And I began to listen to the volume of silence.  The incredibly loud experience of quietness.   In 1 Corinthians 11 we have a great passage on The Lord's Supper.  Paul uses the same terminology as he used when he delivered to them the gospel.  He says, in verse 23, these words:

1 Corinthians 11:23

"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, [It's not from Paul, it's from God, it's from Jesus Christ himself] that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said "This is my body which is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me."

John Stott said of all things that Jesus wants to be remembered for above all, he wants to be remembered for his death, and I agree.

And he says, in verse 25: In the same way, also he took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me….. Now here's the verse…..this is the loudness of quiet; this is the volume of silence…."For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

You want to know what's loud about that verse of scripture? If, when I take the bread and the cup, and I'm looking back…way back to Christ's death on the cross, and I remember that, and then I experience I'm looking way forward, waaaay forward to his return, his coming back, that shouts to me, He's resurrected from the grave! He's alive!  He is alive, because if he was dead and he's coming back, he can't still be dead, so the volume  of the silence of this verse begins to shout at me, and proclaim at me these ideas.

Take your Bible and go to one more place, all the way to the last book of the Bible, the Book of the Revelation, Chapter 19.

Revelation 19, we'll begin reading in just a moment in verse 11; now remember, God did not raise Jesus from the dead as some kind of trick or miracle to get you to believe in God.  The testimony of the Bible is that miracles never breed faith.  Did you watch Cecil B. DeMille's Ten Commandments last night? They always play it at Easter.  I love parts of that show.  It's old, some of it's corny but it sure is fun because God gets the victory!

If you would have been with Israel and you would have seen the plagues and God part the Red Sea and God provide manna for you in the wilderness and not let your clothes wear out, wouldn't you have believed in him? Uh uh.  You'd been just like the rest of them unless God with his Almighty Hand reached deep into your heart and did a work no one else could do.  Miracles point us to God.  The resurrection points us to God.  It is true, it is historic, it is objective, so we have a certain faith, we must believe in that, we rest on that, but we rest on what was done by  that in that God, through the crucifixion of his son, paid the penalty for our sins, he raised him from the dead to prove he could do that and give us new life in Christ, and it is the resurrection that is the proof that's all true so we rest on the gospel.  So, in this volume of silence, that he died, that he's coming back, it got me to thinking.  Many of you in this room, if not most of you, believe in what we call the incarnation: when Christ became man, because you celebrate Christmas, right? And Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ.  Now, just as the resurrection is no small thing, it is no small thing to think that God, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent was squeezed, condensed into the form of a baby boy, but we believe that, right?  We believe that to be true.  We believe the Jesus lived and died on a cross. That may be the most concrete, the clearest of things for you to believe.  That he really did die on a cross, and he was buried in an empty tomb.  And we say that we believe in this resurrection, that he was raised from the dead, but all that's in the past.  Then, my question went to, in this bland, colorless, non distinct faith of today, why then would it be so hard to believe that this resurrected One is going to return as he said, on a white horse.

Revelation 19:11

"Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.  His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he as a name written that no knows but himself.  He is clothed in a robe dipped In blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.  And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, [that's a picturesque term, metaphorical term for The Word of God, that he speaks] to strike down the nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron.  And he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.  On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords."

It's true.  The two biggest questions, 'What is your response to the resurrection? And are you ready for his return?

I looked at the widow's story with her only son, she'd already buried her husband. Must have been a popular woman in the town of Nain, they must have

felt sorry for her because she is walking out in the funeral procession and a large crowd was with her, as we read earlier.  Jesus comes in and the crowd of his followers meets her, and he is the one who can reach in and touch the depth of your soul.  He saw the woman's grief and had compassion on her.  He touched her son, because, you see, he is the resurrection and the life, and raised him from the dead.  He did the same for Lazarus, Mary and Martha's brother. 

That's a picture of us.  We always yearn for more. We've got to have more.  We want to know a clearer purpose.  We've got this hunger for some kind of deeper substance to life.  We want this issue of permanence and no matter  how good our situation is, there is still this longing in this soul in which God placed eternity that we've got to have more.  Then he gave us this objective gospel.  The real Christ in human flesh.  A real life in human history.  A real crucifixion and a real resurrection, so that when my life is presently empty, I don't go by how I feel.  I don't judge by my sincerity.  I stand upon the death, burial and resurrection of Christ to know that I will always have some measure of unfulfilled desires in my soul here, but that I will always have a hope that takes me to a place where all of my desires will be increased and fulfilled.  Increased and fulfilled.  Because heaven will be the place of perfect and everlasting maturing and growth. So the yearnings of our soul, there is an objective gospel, not tricks of the resurrection to get us to believe, but the completion of a resurrection to show us we can rest and we don't go by feelings, we go by facts, and because of those other wonderful stories of those odd responses to resurrections, that if a man were raised from the dead by Jesus' own lips, he wouldn't convince them to believe in God, and when another man was raised, the religious leaders wanted to put him to death because he didn't go along with their faith, I found out the depths of my and your human heart and soul. 

But, yet, people still believe.  How does that happen? It happens because he's alive!  You see, the work of conversion is an individual work.  God knows his children's names and he comes to you on an individual basis, and yes, through that gospel of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, he presents himself and then his ever present Holy Spirit, because Christ left and the Spirit came, begins to move past your 5 senses into your soul! And does that work within you and your eyes are opened and you say, "Oh, it's true!" and your faith is no more bland, rounded and colorless, but it is distinct, saving, eternal and clear.

So what are you resting on? A God made up in your own mind that can do nothing but give you some warm fuzzies? Or, do you serve a Mighty Savior who lived for you, died for you, raised from the dead for you and will come back again for you, upon which you rest?  You just rest!  That's what faith is.  This is faith.